Middlemarch

“1t Gent. Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws,
Carry no weight, no force.

2d Gent. But levity
Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight.
For power finds its place in lack of power;
Advance is cession, and the driven ship
May run aground because the helmsman’s thought
Lacked force to balance opposites.”

It was on a morning of May that Peter Featherstone was buried. In the
prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch, May was not always warm and sunny,
and on this particular morning a chill wind was blowing the blossoms
from the surrounding gardens on to the green mounds of Lowick
churchyard. Swiftly moving clouds only now and then allowed a gleam to
light up any object, whether ugly or beautiful, that happened to stand
within its golden shower. In the churchyard the objects were remarkably
various, for there was a little country crowd waiting to see the
funeral. The news had spread that it was to be a “big burying;” the old
gentleman had left written directions about everything and meant to
have a funeral “beyond his betters.” This was true; for old
Featherstone had not been a Harpagon whose passions had all been
devoured by the ever-lean and ever-hungry passion of saving, and who
would drive a bargain with his undertaker beforehand. He loved money,
but he also loved to spend it in gratifying his peculiar tastes, and
perhaps he loved it best of all as a means of making others feel his
power more or less uncomfortably. If any one will here contend that
there must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstone, I will not
presume to deny this; but I must observe that goodness is of a modest
nature, easily discouraged, and when much privacy, elbowed in early
life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that
it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old
gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments
based on his personal acquaintance. In any case, he had been bent on
having a handsome funeral, and on having persons “bid” to it who would
rather have stayed at home. He had even desired that female relatives
should follow him to the grave, and poor sister Martha had taken a
difficult journey for this purpose from the Chalky Flats. She and Jane
would have been altogether cheered (in a tearful manner) by this sign
that a brother who disliked seeing them while he was living had been
prospectively fond of their presence when he should have become a
testator, if the sign had not been made equivocal by being extended to
Mrs. Vincy, whose expense in handsome crape seemed to imply the most
presumptuous hopes, aggravated by a bloom of complexion which told
pretty plainly that she was not a blood-relation, but of that generally
objectionable class called wife’s kin.

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the
brood of desire; and poor old Featherstone, who laughed much at the way
in which others cajoled themselves, did not escape the fellowship of
illusion. In writing the programme for his burial he certainly did not
make clear to himself that his pleasure in the little drama of which it
formed a part was confined to anticipation. In chuckling over the
vexations he could inflict by the rigid clutch of his dead hand, he
inevitably mingled his consciousness with that livid stagnant presence,
and so far as he was preoccupied with a future life, it was with one of
gratification inside his coffin. Thus old Featherstone was imaginative,
after his fashion.

However, the three mourning-coaches were filled according to the
written orders of the deceased. There were pall-bearers on horseback,
with the richest scarfs and hatbands, and even the under-bearers had
trappings of woe which were of a good well-priced quality. The black
procession, when dismounted, looked the larger for the smallness of the
churchyard; the heavy human faces and the black draperies shivering in
the wind seemed to tell of a world strangely incongruous with the
lightly dropping blossoms and the gleams of sunshine on the daisies.
The clergyman who met the procession was Mr. Cadwallader—also according
to the request of Peter Featherstone, prompted as usual by peculiar
reasons. Having a contempt for curates, whom he always called
understrappers, he was resolved to be buried by a beneficed clergyman.
Mr. Casaubon was out of the question, not merely because he declined
duty of this sort, but because Featherstone had an especial dislike to
him as the rector of his own parish, who had a lien on the land in the
shape of tithe, also as the deliverer of morning sermons, which the old
man, being in his pew and not at all sleepy, had been obliged to sit
through with an inward snarl. He had an objection to a parson stuck up
above his head preaching to him. But his relations with Mr. Cadwallader
had been of a different kind: the trout-stream which ran through Mr.
Casaubon’s land took its course through Featherstone’s also, so that
Mr. Cadwallader was a parson who had had to ask a favor instead of
preaching. Moreover, he was one of the high gentry living four miles
away from Lowick, and was thus exalted to an equal sky with the sheriff
of the county and other dignities vaguely regarded as necessary to the
system of things. There would be a satisfaction in being buried by Mr.
Cadwallader, whose very name offered a fine opportunity for pronouncing
wrongly if you liked.

This distinction conferred on the Rector of Tipton and Freshitt was the
reason why Mrs. Cadwallader made one of the group that watched old
Featherstone’s funeral from an upper window of the manor. She was not
fond of visiting that house, but she liked, as she said, to see
collections of strange animals such as there would be at this funeral;
and she had persuaded Sir James and the young Lady Chettam to drive the
Rector and herself to Lowick in order that the visit might be
altogether pleasant.

“I will go anywhere with you, Mrs. Cadwallader,” Celia had said; “but I
don’t like funerals.”

“Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must
accommodate your tastes: I did that very early. When I married Humphrey
I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very
much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I
couldn’t have the end without them.”

“No, to be sure not,” said the Dowager Lady Chettam, with stately
emphasis.

The upper window from which the funeral could be well seen was in the
room occupied by Mr. Casaubon when he had been forbidden to work; but
he had resumed nearly his habitual style of life now in spite of
warnings and prescriptions, and after politely welcoming Mrs.
Cadwallader had slipped again into the library to chew a cud of erudite
mistake about Cush and Mizraim.

But for her visitors Dorothea too might have been shut up in the
library, and would not have witnessed this scene of old Featherstone’s
funeral, which, aloof as it seemed to be from the tenor of her life,
always afterwards came back to her at the touch of certain sensitive
points in memory, just as the vision of St. Peter’s at Rome was inwoven
with moods of despondency. Scenes which make vital changes in our
neighbors’ lot are but the background of our own, yet, like a
particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for
us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of that unity
which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness.

The dream-like association of something alien and ill-understood with
the deepest secrets of her experience seemed to mirror that sense of
loneliness which was due to the very ardor of Dorothea’s nature. The
country gentry of old time lived in a rarefied social air: dotted apart
on their stations up the mountain they looked down with imperfect
discrimination on the belts of thicker life below. And Dorothea was not
at ease in the perspective and chilliness of that height.

“I shall not look any more,” said Celia, after the train had entered
the church, placing herself a little behind her husband’s elbow so that
she could slyly touch his coat with her cheek. “I dare say Dodo likes
it: she is fond of melancholy things and ugly people.”

“I am fond of knowing something about the people I live among,” said
Dorothea, who had been watching everything with the interest of a monk
on his holiday tour. “It seems to me we know nothing of our neighbors,
unless they are cottagers. One is constantly wondering what sort of
lives other people lead, and how they take things. I am quite obliged
to Mrs. Cadwallader for coming and calling me out of the library.”

“Quite right to feel obliged to me,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “Your rich
Lowick farmers are as curious as any buffaloes or bisons, and I dare
say you don’t half see them at church. They are quite different from
your uncle’s tenants or Sir James’s—monsters—farmers without
landlords—one can’t tell how to class them.”

“Most of these followers are not Lowick people,” said Sir James; “I
suppose they are legatees from a distance, or from Middlemarch.
Lovegood tells me the old fellow has left a good deal of money as well
as land.”

“Think of that now! when so many younger sons can’t dine at their own
expense,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “Ah,” turning round at the sound of
the opening door, “here is Mr. Brooke. I felt that we were incomplete
before, and here is the explanation. You are come to see this odd
funeral, of course?”

“No, I came to look after Casaubon—to see how he goes on, you know. And
to bring a little news—a little news, my dear,” said Mr. Brooke,
nodding at Dorothea as she came towards him. “I looked into the
library, and I saw Casaubon over his books. I told him it wouldn’t do:
I said, ‘This will never do, you know: think of your wife, Casaubon.’
And he promised me to come up. I didn’t tell him my news: I said, he
must come up.”

“Ah, now they are coming out of church,” Mrs. Cadwallader exclaimed.
“Dear me, what a wonderfully mixed set! Mr. Lydgate as doctor, I
suppose. But that is really a good looking woman, and the fair young
man must be her son. Who are they, Sir James, do you know?”

“I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife and
son,” said Sir James, looking interrogatively at Mr. Brooke, who nodded
and said—

“Yes, a very decent family—a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to the
manufacturing interest. You have seen him at my house, you know.”

“Ah, yes: one of your secret committee,” said Mrs. Cadwallader,
provokingly.

“A coursing fellow, though,” said Sir James, with a fox-hunter’s
disgust.

“And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom
weavers in Tipton and Freshitt. That is how his family look so fair and
sleek,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “Those dark, purple-faced people are an
excellent foil. Dear me, they are like a set of jugs! Do look at
Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above them in
his white surplice.”

“It’s a solemn thing, though, a funeral,” said Mr. Brooke, “if you take
it in that light, you know.”

“But I am not taking it in that light. I can’t wear my solemnity too
often, else it will go to rags. It was time the old man died, and none
of these people are sorry.”

“How piteous!” said Dorothea. “This funeral seems to me the most dismal
thing I ever saw. It is a blot on the morning. I cannot bear to think
that any one should die and leave no love behind.”

She was going to say more, but she saw her husband enter and seat
himself a little in the background. The difference his presence made to
her was not always a happy one: she felt that he often inwardly
objected to her speech.

“Positively,” exclaimed Mrs. Cadwallader, “there is a new face come out
from behind that broad man queerer than any of them: a little round
head with bulging eyes—a sort of frog-face—do look. He must be of
another blood, I think.”

“Let me see!” said Celia, with awakened curiosity, standing behind Mrs.
Cadwallader and leaning forward over her head. “Oh, what an odd face!”
Then with a quick change to another sort of surprised expression, she
added, “Why, Dodo, you never told me that Mr. Ladislaw was come again!”

Dorothea felt a shock of alarm: every one noticed her sudden paleness
as she looked up immediately at her uncle, while Mr. Casaubon looked at
her.

“He came with me, you know; he is my guest—puts up with me at the
Grange,” said Mr. Brooke, in his easiest tone, nodding at Dorothea, as
if the announcement were just what she might have expected. “And we
have brought the picture at the top of the carriage. I knew you would
be pleased with the surprise, Casaubon. There you are to the very
life—as Aquinas, you know. Quite the right sort of thing. And you will
hear young Ladislaw talk about it. He talks uncommonly well—points out
this, that, and the other—knows art and everything of that
kind—companionable, you know—is up with you in any track—what I’ve been
wanting a long while.”

Mr. Casaubon bowed with cold politeness, mastering his irritation, but
only so far as to be silent. He remembered Will’s letter quite as well
as Dorothea did; he had noticed that it was not among the letters which
had been reserved for him on his recovery, and secretly concluding that
Dorothea had sent word to Will not to come to Lowick, he had shrunk
with proud sensitiveness from ever recurring to the subject. He now
inferred that she had asked her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and
she felt it impossible at that moment to enter into any explanation.

Mrs. Cadwallader’s eyes, diverted from the churchyard, saw a good deal
of dumb show which was not so intelligible to her as she could have
desired, and could not repress the question, “Who is Mr. Ladislaw?”

“A young relative of Mr. Casaubon’s,” said Sir James, promptly. His
good-nature often made him quick and clear-seeing in personal matters,
and he had divined from Dorothea’s glance at her husband that there was
some alarm in her mind.

“A very nice young fellow—Casaubon has done everything for him,”
explained Mr. Brooke. “He repays your expense in him, Casaubon,” he
went on, nodding encouragingly. “I hope he will stay with me a long
while and we shall make something of my documents. I have plenty of
ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he is just the man to put them
into shape—remembers what the right quotations are, omne tulit
punctum, and that sort of thing—gives subjects a kind of turn. I
invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon; Dorothea said
you couldn’t have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to
write.”

Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle’s was about as pleasant
as a grain of sand in the eye to Mr. Casaubon. It would be altogether
unfitting now to explain that she had not wished her uncle to invite
Will Ladislaw. She could not in the least make clear to herself the
reasons for her husband’s dislike to his presence—a dislike painfully
impressed on her by the scene in the library; but she felt the
unbecomingness of saying anything that might convey a notion of it to
others. Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly represented those
mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of
us, seeking rather for justification than for self-knowledge. But he
wished to repress outward signs, and only Dorothea could discern the
changes in her husband’s face before he observed with more of dignified
bending and sing-song than usual—

“You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you
acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative of
mine.”

The funeral was ended now, and the churchyard was being cleared.

“Now you can see him, Mrs. Cadwallader,” said Celia. “He is just like a
miniature of Mr. Casaubon’s aunt that hangs in Dorothea’s boudoir—quite
nice-looking.”

“A very pretty sprig,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, dryly. “What is your
nephew to be, Mr. Casaubon?”

“Pardon me, he is not my nephew. He is my cousin.”

“Well, you know,” interposed Mr. Brooke, “he is trying his wings. He is
just the sort of young fellow to rise. I should be glad to give him an
opportunity. He would make a good secretary, now, like Hobbes, Milton,
Swift—that sort of man.”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “One who can write speeches.”

“I’ll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon?” said Mr. Brooke. “He wouldn’t
come in till I had announced him, you know. And we’ll go down and look
at the picture. There you are to the life: a deep subtle sort of
thinker with his fore-finger on the page, while Saint Bonaventure or
somebody else, rather fat and florid, is looking up at the Trinity.
Everything is symbolical, you know—the higher style of art: I like that
up to a certain point, but not too far—it’s rather straining to keep up
with, you know. But you are at home in that, Casaubon. And your
painter’s flesh is good—solidity, transparency, everything of that
sort. I went into that a great deal at one time. However, I’ll go and
fetch Ladislaw.”