Chapter: "He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes
     to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed."--FULLER.


Young Ladislaw did not pay that visit to which Mr. Brooke had invited
him, and only six days afterwards Mr. Casaubon mentioned that his young
relative had started for the Continent, seeming by this cold vagueness
to waive inquiry.  Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any more precise
destination than the entire area of Europe.  Genius, he held, is
necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the
utmost play for its spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await
those messages from the universe which summon it to its peculiar work,
only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime
chances.  The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had
sincerely tried many of them.  He was not excessively fond of wine, but
he had several times taken too much, simply as an experiment in that
form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he was faint, and then supped on
lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium.  Nothing greatly
original had resulted from these measures; and the effects of the opium
had convinced him that there was an entire dissimilarity between his
constitution and De Quincey's. The superadded circumstance which would
evolve the genius had not yet come; the universe had not yet beckoned.
Even Caesar's fortune at one time was, but a grand presentiment.  We
know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes
may be disguised in helpless embryos.--In fact, the world is full of
hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities.  Will
saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing
no chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose
plodding application, rows of note-books, and small taper of learned
theory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a
moral entirely encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the
intentions of the universe with regard to himself.  He held that
reliance to be a mark of genius; and certainly it is no mark to the
contrary; genius consisting neither in self-conceit nor in humility,
but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, but something in
particular.  Let him start for the Continent, then, without our
pronouncing on his future.  Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the
most gratuitous.

But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment interests me
more in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to his young cousin.  If to
Dorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere occasion which had set alight
the fine inflammable material of her youthful illusions, does it follow
that he was fairly represented in the minds of those less impassioned
personages who have hitherto delivered their judgments concerning him?
I protest against any absolute conclusion, any prejudice derived from
Mrs. Cadwallader's contempt for a neighboring clergyman's alleged
greatness of soul, or Sir James Chettam's poor opinion of his rival's
legs,--from Mr. Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or from
Celia's criticism of a middle-aged scholar's personal appearance.  I am
not sure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary
superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of
himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his
portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin.
Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling
rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or
fine feeling in him.  Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of
hieroglyphs write detestable verses?  Has the theory of the solar
system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact?
Suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener
interest, what is the report of his own consciousness about his doings
or capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors;
what fading of hopes, or what deeper fixity of self-delusion the years
are marking off within him; and with what spirit he wrestles against
universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and bring
his heart to its final pause.  Doubtless his lot is important in his
own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place
in our consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer
him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held
sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he
may have got from us.  Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre of his own
world; if he was liable to think that others were providentially made
for him, and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness
for the author of a "Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not quite
alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals, claims
some of our pity.

Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched him more
nearly than it did any one of the persons who have hitherto shown their
disapproval of it, and in the present stage of things I feel more
tenderly towards his experience of success than towards the
disappointment of the amiable Sir James.  For in truth, as the day
fixed for his marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find his
spirits rising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial garden
scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was to be bordered
with flowers, prove persistently more enchanting to him than the
accustomed vaults where he walked taper in hand.  He did not confess to
himself, still less could he have breathed to another, his surprise
that though he had won a lovely and noble-hearted girl he had not won
delight,--which he had also regarded as an object to be found by
search.  It is true that he knew all the classical passages implying
the contrary; but knowing classical passages, we find, is a mode of
motion, which explains why they leave so little extra force for their
personal application.

Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studious bachelorhood had
stored up for him a compound interest of enjoyment, and that large
drafts on his affections would not fail to be honored; for we all of
us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act
fatally on the strength of them.  And now he was in danger of being
saddened by the very conviction that his circumstances were unusually
happy: there was nothing external by which he could account for a
certain blankness of sensibility which came over him just when his
expectant gladness should have been most lively, just when he exchanged
the accustomed dulness of his Lowick library for his visits to the
Grange.  Here was a weary experience in which he was as utterly
condemned to loneliness as in the despair which sometimes threatened
him while toiling in the morass of authorship without seeming nearer to
the goal.  And his was that worst loneliness which would shrink from
sympathy.  He could not but wish that Dorothea should think him not
less happy than the world would expect her successful suitor to be; and
in relation to his authorship he leaned on her young trust and
veneration, he liked to draw forth her fresh interest in listening, as
a means of encouragement to himself: in talking to her he presented all
his performance and intention with the reflected confidence of the
pedagogue, and rid himself for the time of that chilling ideal audience
which crowded his laborious uncreative hours with the vaporous pressure
of Tartarean shades.

For to Dorothea, after that toy-box history of the world adapted to
young ladies which had made the chief part of her education, Mr.
Casaubon's talk about his great book was full of new vistas; and this
sense of revelation, this surprise of a nearer introduction to Stoics
and Alexandrians, as people who had ideas not totally unlike her own,
kept in abeyance for the time her usual eagerness for a binding theory
which could bring her own life and doctrine into strict connection with
that amazing past, and give the remotest sources of knowledge some
bearing on her actions.  That more complete teaching would come--Mr.
Casaubon would tell her all that: she was looking forward to higher
initiation in ideas, as she was looking forward to marriage, and
blending her dim conceptions of both.  It would be a great mistake to
suppose that Dorothea would have cared about any share in Mr.
Casaubon's learning as mere accomplishment; for though opinion in the
neighborhood of Freshitt and Tipton had pronounced her clever, that
epithet would not have described her to circles in whose more precise
vocabulary cleverness implies mere aptitude for knowing and doing,
apart from character.  All her eagerness for acquirement lay within
that full current of sympathetic motive in which her ideas and impulses
were habitually swept along.  She did not want to deck herself with
knowledge--to wear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her
action; and if she had written a book she must have done it as Saint
Theresa did, under the command of an authority that constrained her
conscience.  But something she yearned for by which her life might be
filled with action at once rational and ardent; and since the time was
gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer
heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but
knowledge?  Surely learned men kept the only oil; and who more learned
than Mr. Casaubon?

Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea's joyous grateful expectation was
unbroken, and however her lover might occasionally be conscious of
flatness, he could never refer it to any slackening of her affectionate
interest.

The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extending the
wedding journey as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon was anxious for this
because he wished to inspect some manuscripts in the Vatican.

"I still regret that your sister is not to accompany us," he said one
morning, some time after it had been ascertained that Celia objected to
go, and that Dorothea did not wish for her companionship.  "You will
have many lonely hours, Dorothea, for I shall be constrained to make
the utmost use of my time during our stay in Rome, and I should feel
more at liberty if you had a companion."

The words "I should feel more at liberty" grated on Dorothea.  For the
first time in speaking to Mr. Casaubon she colored from annoyance.

"You must have misunderstood me very much," she said, "if you think I
should not enter into the value of your time--if you think that I
should not willingly give up whatever interfered with your using it to
the best purpose."

"That is very amiable in you, my dear Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon, not
in the least noticing that she was hurt; "but if you had a lady as your
companion, I could put you both under the care of a cicerone, and we
could thus achieve two purposes in the same space of time."

"I beg you will not refer to this again," said Dorothea, rather
haughtily.  But immediately she feared that she was wrong, and turning
towards him she laid her hand on his, adding in a different tone, "Pray
do not be anxious about me.  I shall have so much to think of when I am
alone.  And Tantripp will be a sufficient companion, just to take care
of me.  I could not bear to have Celia: she would be miserable."

It was time to dress.  There was to be a dinner-party that day, the
last of the parties which were held at the Grange as proper
preliminaries to the wedding, and Dorothea was glad of a reason for
moving away at once on the sound of the bell, as if she needed more
than her usual amount of preparation.  She was ashamed of being
irritated from some cause she could not define even to herself; for
though she had no intention to be untruthful, her reply had not touched
the real hurt within her.  Mr. Casaubon's words had been quite
reasonable, yet they had brought a vague instantaneous sense of
aloofness on his part.

"Surely I am in a strangely selfish weak state of mind," she said to
herself.  "How can I have a husband who is so much above me without
knowing that he needs me less than I need him?"

Having convinced herself that Mr. Casaubon was altogether right, she
recovered her equanimity, and was an agreeable image of serene dignity
when she came into the drawing-room in her silver-gray dress--the
simple lines of her dark-brown hair parted over her brow and coiled
massively behind, in keeping with the entire absence from her manner
and expression of all search after mere effect.  Sometimes when
Dorothea was in company, there seemed to be as complete an air of
repose about her as if she had been a picture of Santa Barbara looking
out from her tower into the clear air; but these intervals of quietude
made the energy of her speech and emotion the more remarked when some
outward appeal had touched her.

She was naturally the subject of many observations this evening, for
the dinner-party was large and rather more miscellaneous as to the male
portion than any which had been held at the Grange since Mr. Brooke's
nieces had resided with him, so that the talking was done in duos and
trios more or less inharmonious.  There was the newly elected mayor of
Middlemarch, who happened to be a manufacturer; the philanthropic
banker his brother-in-law, who predominated so much in the town that
some called him a Methodist, others a hypocrite, according to the
resources of their vocabulary; and there were various professional men.
In fact, Mrs. Cadwallader said that Brooke was beginning to treat the
Middlemarchers, and that she preferred the farmers at the tithe-dinner,
who drank her health unpretentiously, and were not ashamed of their
grandfathers' furniture.  For in that part of the country, before
reform had done its notable part in developing the political
consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer
distinction of parties; so that Mr. Brooke's miscellaneous invitations
seemed to belong to that general laxity which came from his inordinate
travel and habit of taking too much in the form of ideas.

Already, as Miss Brooke passed out of the dining-room, opportunity was
found for some interjectional "asides."

"A fine woman, Miss Brooke! an uncommonly fine woman, by God!" said Mr.
Standish, the old lawyer, who had been so long concerned with the
landed gentry that he had become landed himself, and used that oath in
a deep-mouthed manner as a sort of armorial bearings, stamping the
speech of a man who held a good position.

Mr. Bulstrode, the banker, seemed to be addressed, but that gentleman
disliked coarseness and profanity, and merely bowed.  The remark was
taken up by Mr. Chichely, a middle-aged bachelor and coursing
celebrity, who had a complexion something like an Easter egg, a few
hairs carefully arranged, and a carriage implying the consciousness of
a distinguished appearance.

"Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a
little more to please us.  There should be a little filigree about a
woman--something of the coquette.  A man likes a sort of challenge.
The more of a dead set she makes at you the better."

"There's some truth in that," said Mr. Standish, disposed to be genial.
"And, by God, it's usually the way with them.  I suppose it answers
some wise ends: Providence made them so, eh, Bulstrode?"

"I should be disposed to refer coquetry to another source," said Mr.
Bulstrode.  "I should rather refer it to the devil."

"Ay, to be sure, there should be a little devil in a woman," said Mr.
Chichely, whose study of the fair sex seemed to have been detrimental
to his theology.  "And I like them blond, with a certain gait, and a
swan neck.  Between ourselves, the mayor's daughter is more to my taste
than Miss Brooke or Miss Celia either.  If I were a marrying man I
should choose Miss Vincy before either of them."

"Well, make up, make up," said Mr. Standish, jocosely; "you see the
middle-aged fellows early the day."

Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to
incur the certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose.

The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely's ideal was of
course not present; for Mr. Brooke, always objecting to go too far,
would not have chosen that his nieces should meet the daughter of a
Middlemarch manufacturer, unless it were on a public occasion.  The
feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs.
Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel's widow, was
not only unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on
the ground of her complaint, which puzzled the doctors, and seemed
clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might need
the supplement of quackery.  Lady Chettam, who attributed her own
remarkable health to home-made bitters united with constant medical
attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs.
Renfrew's account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her
case of all strengthening medicines.

"Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear?" said the
mild but stately dowager, turning to Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively,
when Mrs. Renfrew's attention was called away.

"It strengthens the disease," said the Rector's wife, much too
well-born not to be an amateur in medicine.  "Everything depends on the
constitution: some people make fat, some blood, and some bile--that's
my view of the matter; and whatever they take is a sort of grist to the
mill."

"Then she ought to take medicines that would reduce--reduce the
disease, you know, if you are right, my dear.  And I think what you say
is reasonable."

"Certainly it is reasonable.  You have two sorts of potatoes, fed on
the same soil.  One of them grows more and more watery--"

"Ah! like this poor Mrs. Renfrew--that is what I think.  Dropsy!  There
is no swelling yet--it is inward.  I should say she ought to take
drying medicines, shouldn't you?--or a dry hot-air bath.  Many things
might be tried, of a drying nature."

"Let her try a certain person's pamphlets," said Mrs. Cadwallader in an
undertone, seeing the gentlemen enter.  "He does not want drying."

"Who, my dear?" said Lady Chettam, a charming woman, not so quick as to
nullify the pleasure of explanation.

"The bridegroom--Casaubon. He has certainly been drying up faster since
the engagement: the flame of passion, I suppose."

"I should think he is far from having a good constitution," said Lady
Chettam, with a still deeper undertone.  "And then his studies--so very
dry, as you say."

"Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a death's head skinned
over for the occasion.  Mark my words: in a year from this time that
girl will hate him.  She looks up to him as an oracle now, and
by-and-by she will be at the other extreme.  All flightiness!"

"How very shocking!  I fear she is headstrong.  But tell me--you know
all about him--is there anything very bad?  What is the truth?"

"The truth? he is as bad as the wrong physic--nasty to take, and sure
to disagree."

"There could not be anything worse than that," said Lady Chettam, with
so vivid a conception of the physic that she seemed to have learned
something exact about Mr. Casaubon's disadvantages.  "However, James
will hear nothing against Miss Brooke.  He says she is the mirror of
women still."

"That is a generous make-believe of his.  Depend upon it, he likes
little Celia better, and she appreciates him.  I hope you like my
little Celia?"

"Certainly; she is fonder of geraniums, and seems more docile, though
not so fine a figure.  But we were talking of physic.  Tell me about
this new young surgeon, Mr. Lydgate.  I am told he is wonderfully
clever: he certainly looks it--a fine brow indeed."

"He is a gentleman.  I heard him talking to Humphrey.  He talks well."

"Yes. Mr. Brooke says he is one of the Lydgates of Northumberland,
really well connected.  One does not expect it in a practitioner of
that kind.  For my own part, I like a medical man more on a footing
with the servants; they are often all the cleverer.  I assure you I
found poor Hicks's judgment unfailing; I never knew him wrong.  He was
coarse and butcher-like, but he knew my constitution.  It was a loss to
me his going off so suddenly.  Dear me, what a very animated
conversation Miss Brooke seems to be having with this Mr. Lydgate!"

"She is talking cottages and hospitals with him," said Mrs.
Cadwallader, whose ears and power of interpretation were quick.  "I
believe he is a sort of philanthropist, so Brooke is sure to take him
up."

"James," said Lady Chettam when her son came near, "bring Mr. Lydgate
and introduce him to me.  I want to test him."

The affable dowager declared herself delighted with this opportunity of
making Mr. Lydgate's acquaintance, having heard of his success in
treating fever on a new plan.

Mr. Lydgate had the medical accomplishment of looking perfectly grave
whatever nonsense was talked to him, and his dark steady eyes gave him
impressiveness as a listener.  He was as little as possible like the
lamented Hicks, especially in a certain careless refinement about his
toilet and utterance.  Yet Lady Chettam gathered much confidence in
him.  He confirmed her view of her own constitution as being peculiar,
by admitting that all constitutions might be called peculiar, and he
did not deny that hers might be more peculiar than others.  He did not
approve of a too lowering system, including reckless cupping, nor, on
the other hand, of incessant port wine and bark.  He said "I think so"
with an air of so much deference accompanying the insight of agreement,
that she formed the most cordial opinion of his talents.

"I am quite pleased with your protege," she said to Mr. Brooke before
going away.

"My protege?--dear me!--who is that?" said Mr. Brooke.

"This young Lydgate, the new doctor. He seems to me to understand his
profession admirably."

"Oh, Lydgate! he is not my protege, you know; only I knew an uncle of
his who sent me a letter about him.  However, I think he is likely to
be first-rate--has studied in Paris, knew Broussais; has ideas, you
know--wants to raise the profession."

"Lydgate has lots of ideas, quite new, about ventilation and diet, that
sort of thing," resumed Mr. Brooke, after he had handed out Lady
Chettam, and had returned to be civil to a group of Middlemarchers.

"Hang it, do you think that is quite sound?--upsetting The old
treatment, which has made Englishmen what they are?" said Mr. Standish.

"Medical knowledge is at a low ebb among us," said Mr. Bulstrode, who
spoke in a subdued tone, and had rather a sickly air.  "I, for my part,
hail the advent of Mr. Lydgate.  I hope to find good reason for
confiding the new hospital to his management."

"That is all very fine," replied Mr. Standish, who was not fond of Mr.
Bulstrode; "if you like him to try experiments on your hospital
patients, and kill a few people for charity I have no objection.  But I
am not going to hand money out of my purse to have experiments tried on
me.  I like treatment that has been tested a little."

"Well, you know, Standish, every dose you take is an experiment-an
experiment, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards the lawyer.

"Oh, if you talk in that sense!" said Mr. Standish, with as much
disgust at such non-legal quibbling as a man can well betray towards a
valuable client.

"I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me without reducing
me to a skeleton, like poor Grainger," said Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a
florid man, who would have served for a study of flesh in striking
contrast with the Franciscan tints of Mr. Bulstrode.  "It's an
uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the
shafts of disease, as somebody said,--and I think it a very good
expression myself."

Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing.  He had quitted the party
early, and would have thought it altogether tedious but for the novelty
of certain introductions, especially the introduction to Miss Brooke,
whose youthful bloom, with her approaching marriage to that faded
scholar, and her interest in matters socially useful, gave her the
piquancy of an unusual combination.

"She is a good creature--that fine girl--but a little too earnest," he
thought.  "It is troublesome to talk to such women.  They are always
wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of
any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle
things after their own taste."

Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate's style of woman any more
than Mr. Chichely's. Considered, indeed, in relation to the latter,
whose mind was matured, she was altogether a mistake, and calculated to
shock his trust in final causes, including the adaptation of fine young
women to purplefaced bachelors.  But Lydgate was less ripe, and might
possibly have experience before him which would modify his opinion as
to the most excellent things in woman.

Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of these gentlemen
under her maiden name.  Not long after that dinner-party she had become
Mrs. Casaubon, and was on her way to Rome.

 Will Ladislaw leaves for Europe, and Mr. Casaubon and Dorothea complete their plans for the wedding and honeymoon. They're planning to honeymoon in Italy, but it's going to be a working trip for Mr. Casaubon - he'll spend most of his time in libraries and museums, studying. He says that he wishes Celia could come along to keep Dorothea company, and Dorothea's annoyed that he thinks that she'd even need company, or mind being alone, if it meant that he'd be able to get his precious work done. Mr. Casaubon doesn't notice that she's at all annoyed. As she gets dressed for dinner, she convinces herself that he was right, and she was wrong, and is no longer irritated. There are a lot of guests for dinner that night, and some of the men discuss Dorothea's beauty amongst themselves. Another woman is brought up, by way of comparison - the lovely Miss Vincy, who is more of a flirt than either Dorothea or Celia. Some of the men present prefer a flirt, and say so. Luckily Mr. Vincy isn't nearby to overhear. Meanwhile, some of the older women in the group are discussing their various health problems and the relative merits of the doctors in the town. One of them brings up Mr. Lydgate, the new young surgeon who's just moved to Middlemarch. He's also at the party, but out of earshot, so they can discuss him openly. He has "new ideas" about the medical profession. The ladies are of mixed opinion about those new ideas, but they all agree that he's a "gentleman" and talks well. Lydgate isn't asked, but he'd be in the same camp as the guys who prefer the flirty Miss Vincy to the more serious-minded Dorothea Brooke.

