Chương Chương 18 · Chapter XVIII

“Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth

Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,

Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence;

Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line,

May languish with the scurvy.”

Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the

chaplaincy gathered any practical import for Lydgate, and without

telling himself the reason, he deferred the predetermination on which

side he should give his vote. It would really have been a matter of

total indifference to him—that is to say, he would have taken the more

convenient side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke without

any hesitation—if he had not cared personally for Mr. Farebrother.

But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph’s grew with growing

acquaintanceship. That, entering into Lydgate’s position as a new-comer

who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr. Farebrother should

have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain his interest, showed

an unusual delicacy and generosity, which Lydgate’s nature was keenly

alive to. It went along with other points of conduct in Mr. Farebrother

which were exceptionally fine, and made his character resemble those

southern landscapes which seem divided between natural grandeur and

social slovenliness. Very few men could have been as filial and

chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and sister, whose dependence

on him had in many ways shaped his life rather uneasily for himself;

few men who feel the pressure of small needs are so nobly resolute not

to dress up their inevitably self-interested desires in a pretext of

better motives. In these matters he was conscious that his life would

bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps the consciousness encouraged a

little defiance towards the critical strictness of persons whose

celestial intimacies seemed not to improve their domestic manners, and

whose lofty aims were not needed to account for their actions. Then,

his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like the preaching of the

English Church in its robust age, and his sermons were delivered

without book. People outside his parish went to hear him; and, since to

fill the church was always the most difficult part of a clergyman’s

function, here was another ground for a careless sense of superiority.

Besides, he was a likable man: sweet-tempered, ready-witted, frank,

without grins of suppressed bitterness or other conversational flavors

which make half of us an affliction to our friends. Lydgate liked him

heartily, and wished for his friendship.

With this feeling uppermost, he continued to waive the question of the

chaplaincy, and to persuade himself that it was not only no proper

business of his, but likely enough never to vex him with a demand for

his vote. Lydgate, at Mr. Bulstrode’s request, was laying down plans

for the internal arrangements of the new hospital, and the two were

often in consultation. The banker was always presupposing that he could

count in general on Lydgate as a coadjutor, but made no special

recurrence to the coming decision between Tyke and Farebrother. When

the General Board of the Infirmary had met, however, and Lydgate had

notice that the question of the chaplaincy was thrown on a council of

the directors and medical men, to meet on the following Friday, he had

a vexed sense that he must make up his mind on this trivial Middlemarch

business. He could not help hearing within him the distinct declaration

that Bulstrode was prime minister, and that the Tyke affair was a

question of office or no office; and he could not help an equally

pronounced dislike to giving up the prospect of office. For his

observation was constantly confirming Mr. Farebrother’s assurance that

the banker would not overlook opposition. “Confound their petty

politics!” was one of his thoughts for three mornings in the meditative

process of shaving, when he had begun to feel that he must really hold

a court of conscience on this matter. Certainly there were valid things

to be said against the election of Mr. Farebrother: he had too much on

his hands already, especially considering how much time he spent on

non-clerical occupations. Then again it was a continually repeated

shock, disturbing Lydgate’s esteem, that the Vicar should obviously

play for the sake of money, liking the play indeed, but evidently

liking some end which it served. Mr. Farebrother contended on theory

for the desirability of all games, and said that Englishmen’s wit was

stagnant for want of them; but Lydgate felt certain that he would have

played very much less but for the money. There was a billiard-room at

the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers and wives regarded as the

chief temptation in Middlemarch. The Vicar was a first-rate

billiard-player, and though he did not frequent the Green Dragon, there

were reports that he had sometimes been there in the daytime and had

won money. And as to the chaplaincy, he did not pretend that he cared

for it, except for the sake of the forty pounds. Lydgate was no

Puritan, but he did not care for play, and winning money at it had

always seemed a meanness to him; besides, he had an ideal of life which

made this subservience of conduct to the gaining of small sums

thoroughly hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life his wants had been

supplied without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was

always to be liberal with half-crowns as matters of no importance to a

gentleman; it had never occurred to him to devise a plan for getting

half-crowns. He had always known in a general way that he was not rich,

but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining the part

which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men. Money

had never been a motive to him. Hence he was not ready to frame excuses

for this deliberate pursuit of small gains. It was altogether repulsive

to him, and he never entered into any calculation of the ratio between

the Vicar’s income and his more or less necessary expenditure. It was

possible that he would not have made such a calculation in his own

case.

And now, when the question of voting had come, this repulsive fact told

more strongly against Mr. Farebrother than it had done before. One

would know much better what to do if men’s characters were more

consistent, and especially if one’s friends were invariably fit for any

function they desired to undertake! Lydgate was convinced that if there

had been no valid objection to Mr. Farebrother, he would have voted for

him, whatever Bulstrode might have felt on the subject: he did not

intend to be a vassal of Bulstrode’s. On the other hand, there was

Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simply

curate at a chapel of ease in St. Peter’s parish, and had time for

extra duty. Nobody had anything to say against Mr. Tyke, except that

they could not bear him, and suspected him of cant. Really, from his

point of view, Bulstrode was thoroughly justified.

But whichever way Lydgate began to incline, there was something to make

him wince; and being a proud man, he was a little exasperated at being

obliged to wince. He did not like frustrating his own best purposes by

getting on bad terms with Bulstrode; he did not like voting against

Farebrother, and helping to deprive him of function and salary; and the

question occurred whether the additional forty pounds might not leave

the Vicar free from that ignoble care about winning at cards. Moreover,

Lydgate did not like the consciousness that in voting for Tyke he

should be voting on the side obviously convenient for himself. But

would the end really be his own convenience? Other people would say so,

and would allege that he was currying favor with Bulstrode for the sake

of making himself important and getting on in the world. What then? He

for his own part knew that if his personal prospects simply had been

concerned, he would not have cared a rotten nut for the banker’s

friendship or enmity. What he really cared for was a medium for his

work, a vehicle for his ideas; and after all, was he not bound to

prefer the object of getting a good hospital, where he could

demonstrate the specific distinctions of fever and test therapeutic

results, before anything else connected with this chaplaincy? For the

first time Lydgate was feeling the hampering threadlike pressure of

small social conditions, and their frustrating complexity. At the end

of his inward debate, when he set out for the hospital, his hope was

really in the chance that discussion might somehow give a new aspect to

the question, and make the scale dip so as to exclude the necessity for

voting. I think he trusted a little also to the energy which is

begotten by circumstances—some feeling rushing warmly and making

resolve easy, while debate in cool blood had only made it more

difficult. However it was, he did not distinctly say to himself on

which side he would vote; and all the while he was inwardly resenting

the subjection which had been forced upon him. It would have seemed

beforehand like a ridiculous piece of bad logic that he, with his

unmixed resolutions of independence and his select purposes, would find

himself at the very outset in the grasp of petty alternatives, each of

which was repugnant to him. In his student’s chambers, he had

prearranged his social action quite differently.

Lydgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two other

surgeons, and several of the directors had arrived early; Mr.

Bulstrode, treasurer and chairman, being among those who were still

absent. The conversation seemed to imply that the issue was

problematical, and that a majority for Tyke was not so certain as had

been generally supposed. The two physicians, for a wonder, turned out

to be unanimous, or rather, though of different minds, they concurred

in action. Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as every one had

foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother. The Doctor was more than

suspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this

deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor; indeed it is

probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the

world-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still

potent in the minds even of lady-patients who had the strictest ideas

of frilling and sentiment. It was perhaps this negation in the Doctor

which made his neighbors call him hard-headed and dry-witted;

conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of

judgments connected with drugs. At all events, it is certain that if

any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having

very definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and of

otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general

presumption against his medical skill.

On this ground it was (professionally speaking) fortunate for Dr.

Minchin that his religious sympathies were of a general kind, and such

as gave a distant medical sanction to all serious sentiment, whether of

Church or Dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular tenets. If

Mr. Bulstrode insisted, as he was apt to do, on the Lutheran doctrine

of justification, as that by which a Church must stand or fall, Dr.

Minchin in return was quite sure that man was not a mere machine or a

fortuitous conjunction of atoms; if Mrs. Wimple insisted on a

particular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchin

for his part liked to keep the mental windows open and objected to

fixed limits; if the Unitarian brewer jested about the Athanasian

Creed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope’s “Essay on Man.” He objected to the

rather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague indulged, preferring

well-sanctioned quotations, and liking refinement of all kinds: it was

generally known that he had some kinship to a bishop, and sometimes

spent his holidays at “the palace.”

Dr. Minchin was soft-handed, pale-complexioned, and of rounded outline,

not to be distinguished from a mild clergyman in appearance: whereas

Dr. Sprague was superfluously tall; his trousers got creased at the

knees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemed

necessary to any dignity of bearing; you heard him go in and out, and

up and down, as if he had come to see after the roofing. In short, he

had weight, and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw

it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to detect it lurking and to

circumvent it. They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of

medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt

for each other’s skill. Regarding themselves as Middlemarch

institutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators, and

against non-professionals given to interference. On this ground they

were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr.

Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differed

from him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found

that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution. A layman who pried

into the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtruding

his reforms,—though he was less directly embarrassing to the two

physicians than to the surgeon-apothecaries who attended paupers by

contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as

such; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new pique against Bulstrode,

excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate. The

long-established practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were just

now standing apart and having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreed

that Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve Bulstrode’s purpose.

To non-medical friends they had already concurred in praising the other

young practitioner, who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock’s

retirement without further recommendation than his own merits and such

argument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered from

his having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge. It

was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast

imputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between his

own rank as a general practitioner and that of the physicians, who, in

the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various

grades,—especially against a man who had not been to either of the

English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside

study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in

Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, but

hardly sound.

Thus it happened that on this occasion Bulstrode became identified with

Lydgate, and Lydgate with Tyke; and owing to this variety of

interchangeable names for the chaplaincy question, diverse minds were

enabled to form the same judgment concerning it.

Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly to the group assembled when he

entered, “I go for Farebrother. A salary, with all my heart. But why

take it from the Vicar? He has none too much—has to insure his life,

besides keeping house, and doing a vicar’s charities. Put forty pounds

in his pocket and you’ll do no harm. He’s a good fellow, is

Farebrother, with as little of the parson about him as will serve to

carry orders.”

“Ho, ho! Doctor,” said old Mr. Powderell, a retired iron-monger of some

standing—his interjection being something between a laugh and a

Parliamentary disapproval; “we must let you have your say. But what we

have to consider is not anybody’s income—it’s the souls of the poor

sick people”—here Mr. Powderell’s voice and face had a sincere pathos

in them. “He is a real Gospel preacher, is Mr. Tyke. I should vote

against my conscience if I voted against Mr. Tyke—I should indeed.”

“Mr. Tyke’s opponents have not asked any one to vote against his

conscience, I believe,” said Mr. Hackbutt, a rich tanner of fluent

speech, whose glittering spectacles and erect hair were turned with

some severity towards innocent Mr. Powderell. “But in my judgment it

behoves us, as Directors, to consider whether we will regard it as our

whole business to carry out propositions emanating from a single

quarter. Will any member of the committee aver that he would have

entertained the idea of displacing the gentleman who has always

discharged the function of chaplain here, if it had not been suggested

to him by parties whose disposition it is to regard every institution

of this town as a machinery for carrying out their own views? I tax no

man’s motives: let them lie between himself and a higher Power; but I

do say, that there are influences at work here which are incompatible

with genuine independence, and that a crawling servility is usually

dictated by circumstances which gentlemen so conducting themselves

could not afford either morally or financially to avow. I myself am a

layman, but I have given no inconsiderable attention to the divisions

in the Church and—”

“Oh, damn the divisions!” burst in Mr. Frank Hawley, lawyer and

town-clerk, who rarely presented himself at the board, but now looked

in hurriedly, whip in hand. “We have nothing to do with them here.

Farebrother has been doing the work—what there was—without pay, and if

pay is to be given, it should be given to him. I call it a confounded

job to take the thing away from Farebrother.”

“I think it would be as well for gentlemen not to give their remarks a

personal bearing,” said Mr. Plymdale. “I shall vote for the appointment

of Mr. Tyke, but I should not have known, if Mr. Hackbutt hadn’t hinted

it, that I was a Servile Crawler.”

“I disclaim any personalities. I expressly said, if I may be allowed to

repeat, or even to conclude what I was about to say—”

“Ah, here’s Minchin!” said Mr. Frank Hawley; at which everybody turned

away from Mr. Hackbutt, leaving him to feel the uselessness of superior

gifts in Middlemarch. “Come, Doctor, I must have you on the right side,

eh?”

“I hope so,” said Dr. Minchin, nodding and shaking hands here and

there; “at whatever cost to my feelings.”

“If there’s any feeling here, it should be feeling for the man who is

turned out, I think,” said Mr. Frank Hawley.

“I confess I have feelings on the other side also. I have a divided

esteem,” said Dr. Minchin, rubbing his hands. “I consider Mr. Tyke an

exemplary man—none more so—and I believe him to be proposed from

unimpeachable motives. I, for my part, wish that I could give him my

vote. But I am constrained to take a view of the case which gives the

preponderance to Mr. Farebrother’s claims. He is an amiable man, an

able preacher, and has been longer among us.”

Old Mr. Powderell looked on, sad and silent. Mr. Plymdale settled his

cravat, uneasily.

“You don’t set up Farebrother as a pattern of what a clergyman ought to

be, I hope,” said Mr. Larcher, the eminent carrier, who had just come

in. “I have no ill-will towards him, but I think we owe something to

the public, not to speak of anything higher, in these appointments. In

my opinion Farebrother is too lax for a clergyman. I don’t wish to

bring up particulars against him; but he will make a little attendance

here go as far as he can.”

“And a devilish deal better than too much,” said Mr. Hawley, whose bad

language was notorious in that part of the county. “Sick people can’t

bear so much praying and preaching. And that methodistical sort of

religion is bad for the spirits—bad for the inside, eh?” he added,

turning quickly round to the four medical men who were assembled.

But any answer was dispensed with by the entrance of three gentlemen,

with whom there were greetings more or less cordial. These were the

Reverend Edward Thesiger, Rector of St. Peter’s, Mr. Bulstrode, and our

friend Mr. Brooke of Tipton, who had lately allowed himself to be put

on the board of directors in his turn, but had never before attended,

his attendance now being due to Mr. Bulstrode’s exertions. Lydgate was

the only person still expected.

Every one now sat down, Mr. Bulstrode presiding, pale and

self-restrained as usual. Mr. Thesiger, a moderate evangelical, wished

for the appointment of his friend Mr. Tyke, a zealous able man, who,

officiating at a chapel of ease, had not a cure of souls too extensive

to leave him ample time for the new duty. It was desirable that

chaplaincies of this kind should be entered on with a fervent

intention: they were peculiar opportunities for spiritual influence;

and while it was good that a salary should be allotted, there was the

more need for scrupulous watching lest the office should be perverted

into a mere question of salary. Mr. Thesiger’s manner had so much quiet

propriety that objectors could only simmer in silence.

Mr. Brooke believed that everybody meant well in the matter. He had not

himself attended to the affairs of the Infirmary, though he had a

strong interest in whatever was for the benefit of Middlemarch, and was

most happy to meet the gentlemen present on any public question—“any

public question, you know,” Mr. Brooke repeated, with his nod of

perfect understanding. “I am a good deal occupied as a magistrate, and

in the collection of documentary evidence, but I regard my time as

being at the disposal of the public—and, in short, my friends have

convinced me that a chaplain with a salary—a salary, you know—is a very

good thing, and I am happy to be able to come here and vote for the

appointment of Mr. Tyke, who, I understand, is an unexceptionable man,

apostolic and eloquent and everything of that kind—and I am the last

man to withhold my vote—under the circumstances, you know.”

“It seems to me that you have been crammed with one side of the

question, Mr. Brooke,” said Mr. Frank Hawley, who was afraid of nobody,

and was a Tory suspicious of electioneering intentions. “You don’t seem

to know that one of the worthiest men we have has been doing duty as

chaplain here for years without pay, and that Mr. Tyke is proposed to

supersede him.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Hawley,” said Mr. Bulstrode. “Mr. Brooke has been fully

informed of Mr. Farebrother’s character and position.”

“By his enemies,” flashed out Mr. Hawley.

“I trust there is no personal hostility concerned here,” said Mr.

Thesiger.

“I’ll swear there is, though,” retorted Mr. Hawley.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Bulstrode, in a subdued tone, “the merits of the

question may be very briefly stated, and if any one present doubts that

every gentleman who is about to give his vote has not been fully

informed, I can now recapitulate the considerations that should weigh

on either side.”

“I don’t see the good of that,” said Mr. Hawley. “I suppose we all know

whom we mean to vote for. Any man who wants to do justice does not wait

till the last minute to hear both sides of the question. I have no time

to lose, and I propose that the matter be put to the vote at once.”

A brief but still hot discussion followed before each person wrote

“Tyke” or “Farebrother” on a piece of paper and slipped it into a glass

tumbler; and in the mean time Mr. Bulstrode saw Lydgate enter.

“I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present,” said Mr.

Bulstrode, in a clear biting voice. Then, looking up at Lydgate—

“There is a casting-vote still to be given. It is yours, Mr. Lydgate:

will you be good enough to write?”

“The thing is settled now,” said Mr. Wrench, rising. “We all know how

Mr. Lydgate will vote.”

“You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir,” said Lydgate,

rather defiantly, and keeping his pencil suspended.

“I merely mean that you are expected to vote with Mr. Bulstrode. Do you

regard that meaning as offensive?”

“It may be offensive to others. But I shall not desist from voting with

him on that account.” Lydgate immediately wrote down “Tyke.”

So the Rev. Walter Tyke became chaplain to the Infirmary, and Lydgate

continued to work with Mr. Bulstrode. He was really uncertain whether

Tyke were not the more suitable candidate, and yet his consciousness

told him that if he had been quite free from indirect bias he should

have voted for Mr. Farebrother. The affair of the chaplaincy remained a

sore point in his memory as a case in which this petty medium of

Middlemarch had been too strong for him. How could a man be satisfied

with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances?

No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he has chosen from

among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at

best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

But Mr. Farebrother met him with the same friendliness as before. The

character of the publican and sinner is not always practically

incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us

scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the

faultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness of our own jokes. But

the Vicar of St. Botolph’s had certainly escaped the slightest tincture

of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too

much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in

this—that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and

could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him.

“The world has been too strong for _me_, I know,” he said one day to

Lydgate. “But then I am not a mighty man—I shall never be a man of

renown. The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes it

easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough. Another

story says that he came to hold the distaff, and at last wore the

Nessus shirt. I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if

everybody else’s resolve helped him.”

The Vicar’s talk was not always inspiriting: he had escaped being a

Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low estimate of possibilities

which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure.

Lydgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of will in Mr.

Farebrother.