When Work Becomes Prison — Middlemarch

Casaubon has no second attack as severe as the first and begins to recover. Lydgate uses his stethoscope, sits quietly, and warns that intellectual overwork caused the illness: moderate application, varied relaxation. Brooke suggests fishing, toy-making, backgammon, shuttlecock, conchology, and Smollett read aloud. Casaubon replies that such pastimes would feel like tow-picking in a house of correction. Lydgate revises: submit to be mildly bored rather than go on working.

Brooke tells Lydgate to speak to Dorothea, who is clever enough for amusing tactics. Lydgate meets her returning from a windy walk with Celia and takes her into the shuttered library. She throws off bonnet and gloves and begs plain speech: she cannot bear hidden facts that would have changed her conduct. Lydgate says Casaubon may live fifteen years if careful against mental agitation and excessive application, or the disease may move faster; death can be sudden.

Dorothea asks what she can do. Travel abroad? Rome made things worse; nothing will help that he does not enjoy. As Lydgate leaves she cries that he knows life and death and that she and her husband mind about nothing else. Later she reads Will's letters, learns he is coming to England with Naumann's painting, and asks Brooke to discourage a visit because of Casaubon's health. Brooke's pen evolves a three-page letter that ends by inviting Will to Tipton Grange instead, then seals it without telling Dorothea.