18 Middlemarch - Read By Stephanie Poppins

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Chapter 10 further continued.

Tell me about this new young surgeon,

Mr.

Lidgate,

Continued Lady Chetham.

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 very well,

Said Mrs.

Cadwallader.

Yes,

Mr.

Brooks says he is one of the Lidgates of Northumberland.

Very well connected.

One does not expect it in a practitioner of that kind.

For my part,

I like a medical man more on a footing with the servants.

They are often all the cleverer.

I assure you I found Paul Heath'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 Brooks seems to be having with this Mr.

Lidgate.

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 Brooks is sure to take him up.

James,

Said Lady Chetham when her son came near,

Bring Mr.

Lidgate and introduce him to me.

I want to test him.

The affable dowager declared herself delighted with this opportunity of making Mr.

Lidgate's acquaintance,

Having heard of his success in treating fever on a new plan.

Mr.

Lidgate had the medical accomplishment of looking perfectly grave,

Whatever nonsense was taught 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 toilette and utterance.

Yet Lady Chetham gathered much confidence in him.

He confirmed her view of her own constitution as being peculiar by admitting all constitutions might be called peculiar,

And he did not deny 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 protégé,

She said to Mr.

Brooke before going away.

My protégé,

Dear me,

Who's that?

Said Mr.

Brooke.

This young Lydgate,

The new doctor,

He seems to understand his profession admirably.

Lydgate is not my protégé,

You know,

Said Mr.

Brooke.

I knew an uncle of his who sent me a letter about him,

However,

I think he's likely to be first-rate.

He studied in Paris,

And he has ideas,

You know,

He wants to raise the profession.

He has lots of ideas,

Quite new about ventilation and diet and that sort of thing.

He handed out Lady Chetham,

And had returned to be civil to a group of middle-marchers when he carried on.

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 picancy of an unusual combination.

She is a good creature,

That fine girl,

But a little too earnest,

He thought.

It's troublesome to talk to such women,

They're always wanting reasons,

But they're too ignorant to understand the merits of any question,

And usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste.

Miss Brooke was not seen again in public under her maiden name.

Not long after that dinner party,

She had become Mrs.

Cassavon,

And was on her way to Rome.

Lydgate was already conscious of being fascinated by a woman strikingly different from Miss Brooke.

He did not in the least suppose he'd lost his balance and fallen in love,

But he had said of this particular woman,

She is grace itself,

She is perfectly lovely and accomplished.

That is what a woman ought to be,

She ought to produce the effect of exquisite music.

Plain women,

He regarded as he did the other severe facts of life,

To be faced with philosophy investigated by science.

But Rosamund Vinci seemed to have the true melodic charm,

And when a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily,

His remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.

Dr.

Lydgate believed he should not marry for several years,

Not marry until he'd trodden out a good clear path for himself,

Away from the broad road which was quite ready made.

He had seen Miss Vinci above his horizon almost as long as it had taken Mr.

Cassavon to become engaged and married.

But this learned gentleman was possessed of a fortune.

He had assembled his voluminous notes and made that sort of reputation which precedes performance,

Often the larger part of a man's fame.

He took a wife,

As we have seen,

To adorn the remaining quadrant of his course,

And be a little moon that would cause hardly a calculable perturbation.

But Lydgate was young,

Poor,

Ambitious.

He had his half-century before him instead of behind him,

And he'd come to Middlemarch bent on doing many things that were not directly fitted to make his fortune or even secure him a good income.

To a man under such circumstances,

Taking a wife is something more than a question of adornment,

However highly he may treat this,

And Lydgate was disposed to give it the first place among wifely functions.

To his taste,

Guided by a single conversation,

Here was the point on which Miss Brooke would be found wanting,

Notwithstanding her undeniable beauty.

She did not look at things from the proper feminine angle.

The society of such women was about as relaxing as going from your work to teach the second form,

Instead of reclining in a paradise with sweet laughs for bird notes and blue eyes for a heaven.

Certainly nothing at present could seem much less important to Lydgate than the turn of Miss Brooke's mind,

Or to Miss Brooke,

Than the qualities of the woman who had attracted this young surgeon.

But anyone watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots,

Sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another,

Which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbour.

All provincial society had its share of this subtle movement.

Had not only its striking downfalls,

Its brilliant young professional dandies who ended by living up an entry with a drab and six children for their establishment,

But also those less marked vicissitudes,

Which are constantly shifting the boundaries of social intercourse and begetting new consciousness of interdependence.

Some slipped a little downwards,

Some got higher footing,

Some were caught in political currents,

Some in ecclesiastical,

And perhaps found themselves surprisingly grouped in consequence,

While a few personages or families that stood with rocky firmness amid all this fluctuation were slowly presenting new aspects in spite of solidity,

And altering with a double change of self and beholder.

Municipal town and rural parish gradually made fresh threads of connection.

Gradually as the old stocking gave way to the savings bank and the worship of the soul of Guinea became extinct,

While squires and baronets,

And even lords who'd once lived blamelessly afar from the civic mind,

Gathered the faultiness of closer acquaintanceship.

Settlers came from distant counties,

Some with an alarming novelty of skill,

Others with an offensive advantage in cunning.

Rosamund Rincey,

Who had excellent taste in costume,

With a nymph-like figure and pure blondess,

Which gave the largest range to choice in the flow and colour of drapery,

Was admitted to be the flower of Mrs Lemon's school.

The chief's school in the county,

Where the teaching included all that was demanded in the accomplished female,

Even to extras such as the getting in and out of a carriage.

Mrs Lemon herself had always held up Miss Rincey as an example.

No pupil,

She said,

Exceeded that young lady for mental acquisition and propriety of speech,

While her musical execution was quite exceptional.

We cannot help the way in which people speak of us,

And probably if Mrs Lemon had undertaken to describe Juliet or Imogen,

These heroines would not have seemed poetical.

The first vision of Rosamund would have been enough with most judges to dispel any prejudice excited by Mrs Lemon's praise.

Lydgate could not be long in Middlemarch without having that agreeable vision.

Or even without making the acquaintance of the Rincey family.

For though Mr Peacock,

Whose practice he had paid something to enter on,

Had not been their doctor,

He had many patients among their connections and acquaintances.

For who of any consequence in Middlemarch was not connected or at least acquainted with the Rinceys?

They were old manufacturers and had kept a good house for three generations in which there had naturally been much intermarrying with neighbours more or less decidedly genteel.

Mr Rincey's sister had made a wealthy match in accepting Mr Bolstroad who,

However as a man not born in the town and altogether of dimly known origin,

Was considered to have done well in uniting himself with a real Middlemarch family.

On the other hand,

Mr Rincey had descended a little,

Having taken an innkeeper's daughter.

But on this side too there was a cheering sense of money,

For Mrs Rincey's sister had been a second wife to a rich old Mr Featherstone and had died childless years ago,

So her nephews and nieces might be supposed to touch the affections of the widower.

And it happened that Mr Bolstroad and Mr Featherstone,

Two of Peacock's most important patients,

Had,

From different causes,

Given an especially good reception to his successor who had raised some partisanship as well as discussion.

Mr Rinch,

Medical attendant to the Rincey family,

Very early had grounds for thinking lightly of Lydgate's discretion and there was no report about him which was not retailed at the Rincey's where visitors were frequent.

Mr Rincey was more inclined to general good fellowship than to taking sides,

But there was no need for him to be hasty in making a new man's acquaintance.

Rosamund silently wished her father would invite Mr Lydgate.

She was tired of the faces and figures she'd always been used to,

The various irregular profiles and gaits and turns of phrase distinguishing those middle-march young men whom she'd known as boys.

She had been at school with girls of higher position,

Whose brothers she felt sure it would have been possible for her to be more interested in than these inevitable middle-march companions.

But she would not have chosen to mention her wish to her father and he,

For his part,

Was in no hurry on the subject.

An older man about to be mayor must by and by enlarge his dinner parties,

But at present there were plenty of guests at his well-spread table.