Middlemarch

Sir James Chettam comes alone to lunch with the Cadwalladers — he cannot speak freely before Celia. The subject is Brooke's purchase of the Pioneer and his political ambitions. Mrs. Cadwallader says it is frightful: "lying in bed all day and playing at dominoes would be more private and bearable." The Rector reports that the Trumpet has already begun attacking Brooke for receiving his own rents while his estate falls to rack. Sir James has been making inquiries about Middlemarch politics — the county is his usual business. He thinks the nomination can be staved off: Ladislaw himself is against Brooke standing this time, and "I think he'll turn him round." But Ladislaw's own position troubles him: he has had Will at the Hall as a guest, thinking him only on a flying visit, and now finds him announced everywhere as editor of the Pioneer — "a quill-driving alien, a foreign emissary, and what not." Mrs. Cadwallader calls Will "a dangerous young sprig... a sort of Byronic hero — an amorous conspirator." The Rector thinks the whole thing will likely end in smoke. Sir James wishes Brooke would take on Garth again: "He got rid of Garth twelve years ago, and everything has been going wrong since." Then Brooke arrives — shuffling in cheerfully, asking "what do you think of things?" The Rector picks up the Trumpet and reads aloud: _If we had to describe a man who is retrogressive in the most evil sense of the word — we should say, he is one who would dub himself a reformer of our constitution, while every interest for which he is immediately responsible is going to decay: a philanthropist who cannot bear one rogue to be hanged, but does not mind five honest tenants being half-starved... a man who roars himself red at rotten boroughs, and does not mind if every field on his farms has a rotten gate._ Brooke colors and smiles nervously but tries to take it well: satire should be true up to a certain point. Sir James presses the point about gates: Dagley has complained he hasn't got a decent gate on his farm. Brooke deflects to Chettam's "fancy farming." Mrs. Cadwallader tries to frighten Brooke away from expense; the Rector tries to frighten him into expenditure on the estate; both strategies diverge. Brooke departs, nettled, saying he has his own ideas and takes his stand on them. After he goes, the Rector gives his verdict: it doesn't signify two straws about the Pioneer or Ladislaw or Brooke's speechifying to the Middlemarchers — "but it does signify about the parishioners in Tipton being comfortable."