Old provincial society had its share of this subtle movement: had not
only its striking downfalls, its brilliant young professional dandies
who ended by living up an entry with a drab and six children for their
establishment, but also those less marked vicissitudes which are
constantly shifting the boundaries of social intercourse, and begetting
new consciousness of interdependence. Some slipped a little downward,
some got higher footing: people denied aspirates, gained wealth, and
fastidious gentlemen stood for boroughs; some were caught in political
currents, some in ecclesiastical, and perhaps found themselves
surprisingly grouped in consequence; while a few personages or families
that stood with rocky firmness amid all this fluctuation, were slowly
presenting new aspects in spite of solidity, and altering with the
double change of self and beholder. Municipal town and rural parish
gradually made fresh threads of connection--gradually, as the old
stocking gave way to the savings-bank, and the worship of the solar
guinea became extinct; while squires and baronets, and even lords who
had once lived blamelessly afar from the civic mind, gathered the
faultiness of closer acquaintanceship. Settlers, too, came from
distant counties, some with an alarming novelty of skill, others with
an offensive advantage in cunning. In fact, much the same sort of
movement and mixture went on in old England as we find in older
Herodotus, who also, in telling what had been, thought it well to take
a woman's lot for his starting-point; though Io, as a maiden apparently
beguiled by attractive merchandise, was the reverse of Miss Brooke, and
in this respect perhaps bore more resemblance to Rosamond Vincy, who
had excellent taste in costume, with that nymph-like figure and pure
blindness which give the largest range to choice in the flow and color
of drapery. But these things made only part of her charm. She was
admitted to be the flower of Mrs. Lemon's school, the chief school in
the county, where the teaching included all that was demanded in the
accomplished female--even to extras, such as the getting in and out of
a carriage. Mrs. Lemon herself had always held up Miss Vincy as an
example: no pupil, she said, exceeded that young lady for mental
acquisition and propriety of speech, while her musical execution was
quite exceptional. We cannot help the way in which people speak of us,
and probably if Mrs. Lemon had undertaken to describe Juliet or Imogen,
these heroines would not have seemed poetical. The first vision of
Rosamond would have been enough with most judges to dispel any
prejudice excited by Mrs. Lemon's praise.
Lydgate could not be long in Middlemarch without having that agreeable
vision, or even without making the acquaintance of the Vincy family;
for though Mr. Peacock, whose practice he had paid something to enter
on, had not been their doctor (Mrs. Vincy not liking the lowering
system adopted by him), he had many patients among their connections
and acquaintances. For who of any consequence in Middlemarch was not
connected or at least acquainted with the Vincys? They were old
manufacturers, and had kept a good house for three generations, in
which there had naturally been much intermarrying with neighbors more
or less decidedly genteel. Mr. Vincy's sister had made a wealthy match
in accepting Mr. Bulstrode, who, however, as a man not born in the
town, and altogether of dimly known origin, was considered to have done
well in uniting himself with a real Middlemarch family; on the other
hand, Mr. Vincy had descended a little, having taken an innkeeper's
daughter. But on this side too there was a cheering sense of money;
for Mrs. Vincy's sister had been second wife to rich old Mr.
Featherstone, and had died childless years ago, so that her nephews and
nieces might be supposed to touch the affections of the widower. And
it happened that Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Featherstone, two of Peacock's
most important patients, had, from different causes, given an
especially good reception to his successor, who had raised some
partisanship as well as discussion. Mr. Wrench, medical attendant to
the Vincy family, very early had grounds for thinking lightly of
Lydgate's professional discretion, and there was no report about him
which was not retailed at the Vincys', where visitors were frequent.
Mr. Vincy was more inclined to general good-fellowship than to taking
sides, but there was no need for him to be hasty in making any new man
acquaintance. Rosamond silently wished that her father would invite
Mr. Lydgate. She was tired of the faces and figures she had always
been used to--the various irregular profiles and gaits and turns of
phrase distinguishing those Middlemarch young men whom she had known as
boys. She had been at school with girls of higher position, whose
brothers, she felt sure, it would have been possible for her to be more
interested in, than in these inevitable Middlemarch companions. But
she would not have chosen to mention her wish to her father; and he,
for his part, was in no hurry on the subject. An alderman about to be
mayor must by-and-by enlarge his dinner-parties, but at present there
were plenty of guests at his well-spread table.