Middlemarch

Lydgate visits Mr. Farebrother at the old parsonage beside St. Botolph's church, expecting a bachelor's study. Instead he is ushered into a drawing-room where three ladies await him — the Vicar's white-haired mother, his meeker sister Miss Noble, and his nipped, unmarried elder sister Miss Winifred. Miss Noble carries a small basket into which she diverts bits of sugar from her saucer: the basket holds savings for the children of her poor friends, a habit she regards much as a pleasant vice. Mrs. Farebrother runs the conversation, insisting on her certainties — she will not be argued out of what her parents taught her, and she will not change once, let alone twenty times. Farebrother deflects her with gentle teasing. Eventually he rescues Lydgate by leading him to his study, which is as bare as promised, with only a porcelain pipe and a tobacco-box for comfort, and drawers full of beautifully arranged insects in exquisite writing. There Farebrother is a different man: frank, amusing, utterly without pretence. He smokes — and notes that Bulstrode and Company will allege the pipe against him, but is convinced the devil would be pleased if he gave it up. He has made a near-exhaustive study of the entomology of the district; he needs "spiritual tobacco" to keep from going out. Lydgate spots a glass jar with a lovely anencephalous monster and they agree a trade: sea-mice and Robert Brown's paper on pollen, for the jar. Farebrother mentions he knew Lydgate through Trawley — a former friend of Lydgate's who had meant to found a Pythagorean community in the Backwoods and has ended by practising at a German bath and marrying a rich patient. "Then my notions wear the best, so far," says Lydgate. Farebrother then warns him plainly: voting for Farebrother will offend Bulstrode. But he will not take it personally — "I don't translate my own convenience into other people's duties." He describes his opponents as a "worldly-spiritual cliqueism" who look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass to nourish them for heaven. And then: "I am not a model clergyman—only a decent makeshift." He adds, seriously: "you must keep yourself independent. Very few men can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellows pull you." He mentions Caleb Garth as a parishioner who has pulled through partly by the help of a good wife. And the Garths' daughter — Mary — "She has taken notice of you, though, depend upon it." He gauges everybody, that girl.