Bab Bab 7 · Chapter VII

“Piacer e popone

Vuol la sua stagione.”

—_Italian Proverb_.

Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great deal of his time at

the Grange in these weeks, and the hindrance which courtship occasioned

to the progress of his great work—the Key to all Mythologies—naturally

made him look forward the more eagerly to the happy termination of

courtship. But he had deliberately incurred the hindrance, having made

up his mind that it was now time for him to adorn his life with the

graces of female companionship, to irradiate the gloom which fatigue

was apt to hang over the intervals of studious labor with the play of

female fancy, and to secure in this, his culminating age, the solace of

female tendance for his declining years. Hence he determined to abandon

himself to the stream of feeling, and perhaps was surprised to find

what an exceedingly shallow rill it was. As in droughty regions baptism

by immersion could only be performed symbolically, Mr. Casaubon found

that sprinkling was the utmost approach to a plunge which his stream

would afford him; and he concluded that the poets had much exaggerated

the force of masculine passion. Nevertheless, he observed with pleasure

that Miss Brooke showed an ardent submissive affection which promised

to fulfil his most agreeable previsions of marriage. It had once or

twice crossed his mind that possibly there was some deficiency in

Dorothea to account for the moderation of his abandonment; but he was

unable to discern the deficiency, or to figure to himself a woman who

would have pleased him better; so that there was clearly no reason to

fall back upon but the exaggerations of human tradition.

“Could I not be preparing myself now to be more useful?” said Dorothea

to him, one morning, early in the time of courtship; “could I not learn

to read Latin and Greek aloud to you, as Milton’s daughters did to

their father, without understanding what they read?”

“I fear that would be wearisome to you,” said Mr. Casaubon, smiling;

“and, indeed, if I remember rightly, the young women you have mentioned

regarded that exercise in unknown tongues as a ground for rebellion

against the poet.”

“Yes; but in the first place they were very naughty girls, else they

would have been proud to minister to such a father; and in the second

place they might have studied privately and taught themselves to

understand what they read, and then it would have been interesting. I

hope you don’t expect me to be naughty and stupid?”

“I expect you to be all that an exquisite young lady can be in every

possible relation of life. Certainly it might be a great advantage if

you were able to copy the Greek character, and to that end it were well

to begin with a little reading.”

Dorothea seized this as a precious permission. She would not have asked

Mr. Casaubon at once to teach her the languages, dreading of all things

to be tiresome instead of helpful; but it was not entirely out of

devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin and Greek.

Those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her a standing-ground

from which all truth could be seen more truly. As it was, she

constantly doubted her own conclusions, because she felt her own

ignorance: how could she be confident that one-roomed cottages were not

for the glory of God, when men who knew the classics appeared to

conciliate indifference to the cottages with zeal for the glory?

Perhaps even Hebrew might be necessary—at least the alphabet and a few

roots—in order to arrive at the core of things, and judge soundly on

the social duties of the Christian. And she had not reached that point

of renunciation at which she would have been satisfied with having a

wise husband: she wished, poor child, to be wise herself. Miss Brooke

was certainly very naive with all her alleged cleverness. Celia, whose

mind had never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness of other

people’s pretensions much more readily. To have in general but little

feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any

particular occasion.

However, Mr. Casaubon consented to listen and teach for an hour

together, like a schoolmaster of little boys, or rather like a lover,

to whom a mistress’s elementary ignorance and difficulties have a

touching fitness. Few scholars would have disliked teaching the

alphabet under such circumstances. But Dorothea herself was a little

shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity, and the answers she got

to some timid questions about the value of the Greek accents gave her a

painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not capable

of explanation to a woman’s reason.

Mr. Brooke had no doubt on that point, and expressed himself with his

usual strength upon it one day that he came into the library while the

reading was going forward.

“Well, but now, Casaubon, such deep studies, classics, mathematics,

that kind of thing, are too taxing for a woman—too taxing, you know.”

“Dorothea is learning to read the characters simply,” said Mr.

Casaubon, evading the question. “She had the very considerate thought

of saving my eyes.”

“Ah, well, without understanding, you know—that may not be so bad. But

there is a lightness about the feminine mind—a touch and go—music, the

fine arts, that kind of thing—they should study those up to a certain

point, women should; but in a light way, you know. A woman should be

able to sit down and play you or sing you a good old English tune. That

is what I like; though I have heard most things—been at the opera in

Vienna: Gluck, Mozart, everything of that sort. But I’m a conservative

in music—it’s not like ideas, you know. I stick to the good old tunes.”

“Mr. Casaubon is not fond of the piano, and I am very glad he is not,”

said Dorothea, whose slight regard for domestic music and feminine fine

art must be forgiven her, considering the small tinkling and smearing

in which they chiefly consisted at that dark period. She smiled and

looked up at her betrothed with grateful eyes. If he had always been

asking her to play the “Last Rose of Summer,” she would have required

much resignation. “He says there is only an old harpsichord at Lowick,

and it is covered with books.”

“Ah, there you are behind Celia, my dear. Celia, now, plays very

prettily, and is always ready to play. However, since Casaubon does not

like it, you are all right. But it’s a pity you should not have little

recreations of that sort, Casaubon: the bow always strung—that kind of

thing, you know—will not do.”

“I never could look on it in the light of a recreation to have my ears

teased with measured noises,” said Mr. Casaubon. “A tune much iterated

has the ridiculous effect of making the words in my mind perform a sort

of minuet to keep time—an effect hardly tolerable, I imagine, after

boyhood. As to the grander forms of music, worthy to accompany solemn

celebrations, and even to serve as an educating influence according to

the ancient conception, I say nothing, for with these we are not

immediately concerned.”

“No; but music of that sort I should enjoy,” said Dorothea. “When we

were coming home from Lausanne my uncle took us to hear the great organ

at Freiberg, and it made me sob.”

“That kind of thing is not healthy, my dear,” said Mr. Brooke.

“Casaubon, she will be in your hands now: you must teach my niece to

take things more quietly, eh, Dorothea?”

He ended with a smile, not wishing to hurt his niece, but really

thinking that it was perhaps better for her to be early married to so

sober a fellow as Casaubon, since she would not hear of Chettam.

“It is wonderful, though,” he said to himself as he shuffled out of the

room—“it is wonderful that she should have liked him. However, the

match is good. I should have been travelling out of my brief to have

hindered it, let Mrs. Cadwallader say what she will. He is pretty

certain to be a bishop, is Casaubon. That was a very seasonable

pamphlet of his on the Catholic Question:—a deanery at least. They owe

him a deanery.”

And here I must vindicate a claim to philosophical reflectiveness, by

remarking that Mr. Brooke on this occasion little thought of the

Radical speech which, at a later period, he was led to make on the

incomes of the bishops. What elegant historian would neglect a striking

opportunity for pointing out that his heroes did not foresee the

history of the world, or even their own actions?—For example, that

Henry of Navarre, when a Protestant baby, little thought of being a

Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the Great, when he measured his

laborious nights with burning candles, had no idea of future gentlemen

measuring their idle days with watches. Here is a mine of truth, which,

however vigorously it may be worked, is likely to outlast our coal.

But of Mr. Brooke I make a further remark perhaps less warranted by

precedent—namely, that if he had foreknown his speech, it might not

have made any great difference. To think with pleasure of his niece’s

husband having a large ecclesiastical income was one thing—to make a

Liberal speech was another thing; and it is a narrow mind which cannot

look at a subject from various points of view.