4 Middlemarch - Read By Stephanie Poppins

Middlemarch by George Eliot explores the lives of its inhabitants as they navigate societal expectations, personal aspirations, and the changing world around them. The story centres on Dorothea Brooke, a young, idealistic woman who marries an older scholar.

In this episode:
At dinner, Dorothea considers the merits of Mr. Casaubon.

Transcript

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Chapter Two Further Continued Celia thought privately,

Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chetham,

I believe she would not accept him.

Celia felt that this was a pity.

She had never been deceived as to the object of the baronet's interest,

Sometimes indeed she reflected that Dodo would perhaps not make a husband happy who had not her way of looking at things,

And stifled in the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister Dorothea was too religious for family comfort.

Notions and scruples were like split needles,

Making one afraid of treading or sitting down or even eating.

When Dorothea was at the tea table,

Sir James came to sit down by her,

Not having felt her mode of answering him at all offensive.

Why should he?

He thought it probable Miss Brooke liked him,

And that manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted by preconceptions either confident or distrustful.

She was indeed thoroughly charming,

But of course he theorised a little about his attachment.

He was made of excellent human dough,

And had the rare merit of knowing his talents even if let loose would not set the smallest stream in the county on fire,

Hence he liked the prospect of a wife to whom he could say,

What shall we do,

About this or that,

Who could help her husband out with reasons,

And would also have the proper qualification for doing so.

As to the excessive religiousness alleged against Miss Brooke,

He thought it would die out with marriage.

In short,

He felt ready to endure a great deal of predominance,

Which after all a man could always put down when he liked.

Sir James had no idea he should ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl in whose cleverness he'd enlightened.

Why not?

A man's mind,

What there is of it,

Has always the advantage of being masculine,

As the smallest birch tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,

And even his ignorance is of sounder quality.

Sir James might not have originated this estimate,

But a kind providence furnishes to limp his personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition.

Let me hope you will rescind that resolution about the horse,

Miss Brooke,

Said the persevering admirer.

I assure you,

Riding is the most healthy of exercises.

I am aware of it,

Said Dorothea coldly.

I think it would do Celia good if she would take to it.

But you are such a perfect horsewoman.

Excuse me,

I have had very little practice and I should be easily thrown.

Then that is a reason for more practice.

Every lady ought to be a perfect horsewoman that she may accompany her husband.

You see how widely we differ,

Sir James.

I've made up my mind I ought not to be a perfect horsewoman,

And so I should never correspond to your pattern of a lady.

Dorothea looked straight before her and spoke with cold brusquery,

Very much with the air of a handsome boy,

In amusing contrast with the solicitous amiability of her admirer.

I should like to know your reasons for this cruel resolution.

Is it not possible you should think horsemanship wrong?

It's quite possible I should think it wrong for me.

Oh,

Why?

Said Sir James in a tender tone of remonstrance.

Mr.

Cassabon had come up to the table,

Tea-cup in hand,

And was listening.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives,

He interposed in his measured way.

Miss Brooke knows they are apt to become feeble in the utterance.

The aroma is mixed with a grosser air.

We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

Dorothea coloured with pleasure and looked up gratefully to the speaker.

Here was a man who could understand the higher inward life,

And with whom there could be some spiritual communication.

Nay,

Who could illuminate principle with the widest knowledge.

A man whose learning almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed.

Dorothea's inferences may seem large,

But really life could never have gone on,

At any period,

But for this liberal allowance of conclusions,

Which has facilitated marriage under the difficulties of civilisation.

Has anyone ever pinched into its pillarless smallness the cobweb of prematrimonial acquaintanceship?

Certainly,

Said good Sir James,

Miss Brooke shall not be urged to tell reasons she would rather be silent upon.

I'm sure her reasons would do her honour.

He was not at the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea looked up at Mr Cassebon.

It never occurred to him a girl to whom he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm towards fifty,

Except indeed in a religious sort of way,

As for a clergyman of some distinction.

However,

Since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with Mr Cassebon about the va-doir clergy,

Sir James betook himself to Celia and talked to her about her sister,

Spoke of a house in town,

And asked where the Miss Brooke disliked London.

Away from her sister,

Celia talked quite easily,

And Sir James said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty,

Though not,

As some people pretended,

More clever and sensible than the elder sister.

He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior,

And a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best.

He would be the very maw-worm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it.

CHAPTER THREE If it really had occurred to Mr Cassebon to think of Miss Brooke as a suitable wife for him,

The reasons that might induce her to accept were already planted in her mind,

And by the evening of the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed.

For they had had a long conversation in the morning,

While Celia,

Who did not like the company of Mr Cassebon's moles and sallowness,

Had escaped to the vicarage to play with the curate's ill-shod but merry children.

Dorothea,

By this time,

Had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of Mr Cassebon's mind,

Seeing reflected there in vague labyrinthine extension every quality she herself brought,

Had opened much of her own experience to him,

And had understood from him the scope of his great work,

Also of attractively labyrinthine extent.

For he had been as instructive as Milton's affable archangel,

And with something of the archangelic manner he told her how he had undertaken to show that all the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the world were corruptions of a tradition originally revealed.

Having once mastered the true position and taken a firm footing there,

The vast field of mythical constructions became intelligible,

Nay luminous,

With a reflected light of correspondences.

But to gather in this great harvest of truth was no light or speedy work.

His notes already made a formidable range of volumes,

But the crowning task would be to condense these voluminous,

Still accumulating results,

And bring them,

Like the earlier vintage of Hippocratic books,

To fit a little shelf.

In explaining this to Dorothea,

Mr Cassebon expressed himself nearly as he would have done to a fellow student,

For he had not two styles of talking at command.

It is true when he used a Greek or Latin phrase,

He always gave the English with scrupulous care,

But he would probably have done this in any case.

A learned provincial clergyman is accustomed to think of his acquaintance as of lords,

Knights,

And other noble and worthy men that con Latin but litil.

Dorothea was altogether captivated by the wide embrace of this conception.

Here was something beyond the shallows of lady school literature.

Here was a living Bousset,

Whose work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted piety.

Here was a modern Augustine,

Who united the glories of doctor and saint.

The sanctity seemed no less clearly marked than the learning,

For when Dorothea was impelled to open her mind on certain themes,

Which she could speak of to no one whom she had before seen at Tipton,

Especially on the secondary importance of ecclesiastical forms and the articles of belief compared with that spiritual religion,

That submergence of self in communion with divine perfection,

Which seemed to her to be expressed in the best Christian books of widely distant ages,

She found in Mr.

Casabon a listener who understood her at once,

Who could assure her of his own agreement with that view,

When duly tempered with wise conformity,

And could mention historical examples before unknown to her.

He thinks with me,

Said Dorothea to herself.

Rather,

He thinks a whole world of which my thought is but a poor two-penny mirror,

And his feelings,

Too,

His whole experience.

What a lake compared with my little pool.