Middlemarch

Hawley Investigates Bulstrode’s Scandal

The gossip spreads “like the smell of fire.” Hawley sends a trusted clerk to Stone Court under pretext of inquiring about hay, and learns from the housekeeper Mrs. Abel that Caleb Garth had driven Raffles out in his gig. Visiting Garth under pretense of asking about arbitration work, Hawley draws Caleb into admitting he had given up acting for Bulstrode within the past week. Hawley then infers—and spreads the inference as fact—that Garth is the chief publisher of Bulstrode’s misdemeanors.

Rumors Link Bulstrode to Lydgate’s Debt Payoff

Hawley rides to Lowick to inspect the parish register and confer with Mr. Farebrother, who receives the news of Bulstrode’s past with his customary fairness. In Farebrother’s mind, however, another combination forms: he connects Bulstrode’s dread of Raffles with his sudden munificence toward Lydgate and forebodes “malignant effect on Lydgate’s reputation.” While deflecting the topic, Farebrother notes the strange genealogy that has emerged for Ladislaw. News of Lydgate’s sudden ability to discharge his debts and the execution spreads through Middlemarch, and Mrs. Bulstrode innocently confirms the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who passes it on to the TOLLER family and beyond. The scandal becomes so public it requires dinners to “feed it.”

Middlemarch Public Speculation on Scandal

Hawley convenes a select party of the two physicians, Mr. Toller, and Mr. Wrench to examine the particulars of Raffles’s death and Lydgate’s certificate attributing it to delirium tremens. The medical men find no positive grounds for suspicion, but the moral grounds remain: Bulstrode’s clear motive to be rid of Raffles, his timely financial rescue of Lydgate, the town’s disposition to believe Bulstrode unscrupulous, and Lydgate’s long-standing reputation for truckling to the banker. The party disperses with the sense that the affair has “an ugly look.” More generally, mystery outweighs fact: conjecture, more confident and accommodating than knowledge, allows Middlemarch to imagine the worst.

Local Tavern Debate Over Bulstrode

The chapter closes at the Tankard in Slaughter Lane, where Mrs. Dollop presides over customers who treat her intuitions as equal to outside reports. Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker, recalls a misattributed Wellington quotation; Mr. Crabbe, the glazier, gropes among his dim news; Mr. Dill, the barber, reports that Fletcher, Hawley’s clerk, says Mr. Thesiger has turned against Bulstrode and wants him out of the parish. Debate ranges over whether Ladislaw could touch a penny of Bulstrode’s money (Dill thinks not), whether the town can afford to lose Bulstrode’s wealth (Limp worries), and whether the law is any use in establishing parentage at all—Mrs. Dollop closes the chapter by indignantly refusing to be “Fletchered” and insisting that the law must surely be able to do more than prove a man came out of the Fens.

CHAPTER LXXI.

CHAPTER LXXI.

This chapter traces the rapid spread of scandal surrounding Bulstrode following the death of Raffles. Tavern gossip at Mrs. Dollop’s gives voice to suspicions about Bulstrode’s fortune and the suspicious death, with particular venom directed at Lydgate as a doctor willing to use undetectable drugs. The rumors reach prominent families—Lowick Parsonage, Tipton Grange, and the Vincy household—and harden into organized opposition among the principal townsmen. Bulstrode, meanwhile, conceals his guilt behind plans for a spiritually restorative journey to Cheltenham and a secret dread that Lydgate may suspect him. The tension comes to a head at a town-hall sanitary meeting, where Hawley, backed by eight fellow-townsmen, demands that Bulstrode either refute the dead Raffles’s accusations or resign his public positions. Bulstrode responds with a bitter, accusatory outburst, is rebuked by the chairman Thesiger, and totters from the room supported by Lydgate—whose act of compassion brings him the agonizing realization that the thousand-pound loan was a bribe and that Raffles’s treatment had been tampered with for evil ends.

Tavern gossip about Bulstrode’s scandal

Tavern gossip about Bulstrode’s scandal

At Mrs. Dollop’s tavern, regulars including Mr. Dill, Mr. Crabbe the glazier, and Mr. Jonas the dyer exchange suspicions about Bulstrode. Mrs. Dollop, landlady of Slaughter Lane, recalls how the tax-gatherer Mr. Baldwin accused Bulstrode of building his fortune on “thieving and swindling,” and she professes to have always found him sinister-looking. Mr. Crabbe notes that Raffles had once been a finer gentleman than Bulstrode, and hints darkly that some know more than they should about how he came to lie in Lowick churchyard. Mrs. Dollop, scornful of those who hedge, declares that a man enticed to a lone house, attended by a hospital-funded nurse and a doctor who “sticks at nothing” and is poor yet flush enough to pay off long-standing butchers’ bills, must have come to foul ends—reaching conclusions she says need no Prayer-book service to justify. She turns her suspicion next upon Lydgate, the club surgeon whose drugs, she claims, can neither be smelled nor seen, and congratulates the town that he was never taken onto their club. Mr. Limp, overwhelmed, silently compresses his hands between his knees until further drink can restore his faculties.