Middlemarch

While Lydgate fights for medical reform against Middlemarch, Middlemarch grows conscious of the national struggle for political Reform. Lord John Russell's bill is being debated; a dissolution of Parliament seems likely. Will tells Brooke the public temper is reaching "cometary heat" and urges him not to stand yet — to spend the time on the Pioneer and political meetings. Brooke agrees warmly to everything and then immediately retreats: "I want to keep myself independent about Reform, you know — I don't want to go too far." When Will says a reform short of fundamental change is "like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to thunder," Brooke says: "That is fine, Ladislaw — write that down." He compares Will to Burke. Will is not displeased, for it is "a little too trying to human flesh to be conscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have it noticed." Eliot makes frank the underlying reason Will is in Middlemarch at all: "It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Dorothea was, and perhaps the want of knowing what else to do, Will would not at this time have been meditating on the needs of the English people." He would probably have been rambling in Italy, sketching plans for several dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, observing that after all self-culture was the principal point. But he has now accepted his work, and his nature warms easily to subjects "visibly mixed with life and action." Town opinion, however, is forming against him. Mr. Hawley says Casaubon "has devilish good reasons for turning the cold shoulder" on young Ladislaw. Keck of the Trumpet calls him a Polish emissary and "crack-brained" — and writes a leading article denouncing his speech at a Reform meeting as "the violence of an energumen." When Dr. Sprague asks what an energumen is, Keck says, "Oh, a term that came up in the French Revolution." Against this, Will has other habits that make Middlemarch observe him with curiosity: a fondness for little children — "the smaller they were on tolerably active legs, and the funnier their clothing, the better Will liked to surprise and please them." He leads a troop of hatless, scant-shirted boys and girls on gypsy excursions to Halsell Wood at nutting-time, and in cold weather to gather sticks for a bonfire, where he draws out a small feast of gingerbread and improvises a Punch-and-Judy drama with home-made puppets. He also has the habit of stretching at full length on the rug while talking, which in houses where he is not well known tends to confirm suspicions of his "dangerously mixed blood and general laxity." The house where he visits oftenest and lies most on the rug is Lydgate's. One March evening the scene is domestic and charged: Rosamond in her cherry-colored dress sits at the tea-table; Lydgate, tired and troubled by a letter about an unpaid furniture bill, is flicking through the Pioneer; Will is stretched on the rug, humming "When first I saw thy face"; the house spaniel regards the usurper of the rug with silent strong objection. A political argument breaks out. Lydgate accuses Will of crying up a measure "as if it were a universal cure" and crying up men who are "a part of the very disease that wants curing." Will replies: "The only conscience we can trust to is the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work is the wisdom of balancing claims." When Lydgate, explaining his own position with Bulstrode, seems to imply that Will has personal interests in backing Brooke, Will turns sharp: "My personal independence is as important to me as yours is to you." Lydgate apologizes sincerely. Rosamond ends it: "How very unpleasant you both are this evening!... You can both of you go on quarrelling with all the world and with each other." After Will is gone, Rosamond asks what vexed Lydgate. "Oh, outdoor things — business," he says. Rosamond is expecting a baby, and he wishes to save her from perturbation.