Middlemarch by George Eliot (ebook and pdf reader TXT) 📕

was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time. With the glowworm lights of country places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given up the Pioneer⁠—which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in the van of progress⁠—because it had taken Peel’s side about the Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the Trumpet, which⁠—since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)⁠—had become feeble in its blowing.

It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the Pioneer, when the crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance to public action on the part of men whose minds had from long experience acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of judgment as well as tolerance, dispassionateness as well as energy⁠—in fact, all those qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the least disposed to share lodgings.

Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely than usual, and leaving much uncertainty as to its ultimate channel, was heard to say in Mr. Hawley’s office that the article in question “emanated” from Brooke of Tipton, and that Brooke had secretly bought the Pioneer some months ago.

“That means mischief, eh?” said Mr. Hawley. “He’s got the freak of being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise. So much the worse for him. I’ve had my eye on him for some time. He shall be prettily pumped upon. He’s a damned bad landlord. What business has an old county man to come currying favor with a low set of dark-blue freemen? As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing himself. It would be worth our paying for.”

“I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who can write the highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything in the London papers. And he means to take very high ground on Reform.”

“Let Brooke reform his rent-roll. He’s a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his estate are going to rack. I suppose this young fellow is some loose fish from London.”

“His name is Ladislaw. He is said to be of foreign extraction.”

“I know the sort,” said Mr. Hawley; “some emissary. He’ll begin with flourishing about the Rights of Man and end with murdering a wench. That’s the style.”

“You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley,” said Mr. Hackbutt, foreseeing some political disagreement with his family lawyer. “I myself should never favor immoderate views⁠—in fact I take my stand with Huskisson⁠—but I cannot blind myself to the consideration that the non-representation of large towns⁠—”

“Large towns be damned!” said Mr. Hawley, impatient of exposition. “I know a little too much about Middlemarch elections. Let ’em quash every pocket borough tomorrow, and bring in every mushroom town in the kingdom⁠—they’ll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament. I go upon facts.”

Mr. Hawley’s disgust at the notion of the Pioneer being edited by an emissary, and of Brooke becoming actively political⁠—as if a tortoise of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and become rampant⁠—was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members of Mr. Brooke’s own family. The result had oozed forth gradually, like the discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of manufacture which will be permanently under your nostrils without legal remedy. The Pioneer had been secretly bought even before Will Ladislaw’s arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which did not pay; and in the interval since Mr. Brooke had written his invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but had hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover.

The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which proved greater even than he had anticipated. For it seemed that Will was not only at home in all those artistic and literary subjects which Mr. Brooke had gone into at one time, but that he was strikingly ready at seizing the points of the political situation, and dealing with them in that large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to quotation and general effectiveness of treatment.

“He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know,” Mr. Brooke took an opportunity of saying, for the gratification of Mr. Casaubon. “I don’t mean as to anything objectionable⁠—laxities or atheism, or anything of that kind, you know⁠—Ladislaw’s sentiments in every way I am sure are good⁠—indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night. But he has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation⁠—a fine thing under guidance⁠—under guidance, you know. I think I shall be able to put him on the right track; and I am the more pleased because he is a relation of yours, Casaubon.”

If the right track implied anything more precise than the rest of Mr. Brooke’s speech, Mr. Casaubon silently hoped that it referred to some occupation at a great distance from Lowick. He had disliked Will while he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will had declined his help. That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents