Middlemarch

“iacer 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.