Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager
want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who
descended a step in order to gain them. He was now experiencing
something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar
hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things
which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for,
though the demand for payment has become pressing.
How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or
knowledge of prices. When a man in setting up a house and preparing
for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come
to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay
for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses,
horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds
of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred
per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred,
chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he
minds it or not, he is in debt. Those were less expensive times than
our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease
with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought
that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied
without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent
for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts,
can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath
his consideration. Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant
household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering
the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed
that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did
not see how they were to live otherwise. If each head of household
expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have
probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one
had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the
substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him
simply a penny-wise, mean notion. Rosamond, even without such an
occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations,
and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not
interfere. This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional
prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable. It is true Lydgate
was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his
prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by
this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in
men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by
side and never compare them with each other? Expenditure--like
ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own
personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is
manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others. Lydgate
believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man
who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a
matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things
were naturally ordered in sheaves. It must be remembered that he had
never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by
habit, not by self-criticism. But the check had come.