Middlemarch

The Pity of Faithful

The narrator reflects on the rare blessing of being truly guiltless before a condemning crowd, noting that the most pitiable lot belongs to one who is stoned not for professing the Right but for not being the man he professed to be. This philosophical musing distinguishes between the martyr who stands innocent and the one whose condemnation stems from the gap between aspiration and achievement. The passage suggests that Bulstrode’s position falls into the latter, more pitiable category.

Bulstrode’s Withering Consciousness

Bulstrode prepares to depart Middlemarch for a “sad refuge, the indifference of new faces,” while enduring a withering consciousness of guilt. His wife’s duteous and merciful constancy has delivered him from one dread, yet her presence remains “a tribunal before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy.” The chapter explores his equivocations with himself about Raffles’s death, his prayers to an Omniscience he dreads, and his inability to expose his deeds to full judgment through confession.

Concealment and Dread

Bulstrode harbors a terror that prevents him from making a full confession to his wife, fearing the names she might call his acts—what he could not bear was her silently calling them Murder. He feels shrouded by her doubt and gains strength only from the sense that she cannot yet feel warranted in pronouncing the worst condemnation. He believes that perhaps at dying, in the deep shadow when she holds his hand, she might listen without recoiling. Yet concealment has been the habit of his life, and the impulse to confession has no power against the dread of deeper humiliation.

Mrs. Bulstrode’s Grief

Mrs. Bulstrode has sent her daughters away to board at a school on the coast to hide this crisis from them. Freed from the necessity of accounting for her grief or witnessing their frightened wonder, she can live unconstrainedly with sorrow that is “every day streaking her hair with whiteness and making her eyelids languid.” Two months have aged her from a bright and blooming face to one that has aged to keep sad company with Bulstrode’s own withered features.

Property Arrangements

Bulstrode tells his wife he intends not to sell his land in the neighborhood but to leave it to her as a safe provision. When she returns from visiting her brother, she expresses a desire to “make some amends” to her brother’s family, especially for Rosamond and Lydgate, whose practice has become almost worthless and who have very little left. Bulstrode reveals that Lydgate has rejected further service from him, having returned the thousand pounds lent to him—advanced by Mrs. Casaubon for that purpose. The mention of Mrs. Casaubon’s loan cuts Mrs. Bulstrode severely as a reflection of public feeling that everyone would avoid connection with her husband.

The Proposal for Fred Vincy

Bulstrode proposes an alternative means of helping his wife’s brother’s family: placing her nephew Fred at Stone Court under management by Garth. He explains that Garth once thought of undertaking Stone Court’s management for this purpose, with the stock remaining and a share of profits paid instead of ordinary rent. Bulstrode instructs his wife to approach Garth directly, emphasizing that the land will be virtually hers and that Garth need have no transactions with him. Communications can go through Standish, and Bulstrode provides a paper Garth himself drew up with conditions, hoping Garth will accept when the proposal comes from Mrs. Bulstrode for her nephew’s sake.

CHAPITRE LXXXVI.

This chapter opens with a Victor Hugo quote reflecting on the enduring, preservative power of love formed early in life, setting a thematic throughline for the sections that follow. It first chronicles warm, intimate moments with the Garth family, culminating in Fred Vincy and Mary Garth confirming their engagement and learning of Fred’s upcoming opportunity to manage Stone Court farm. The chapter’s finale then outlines the long, happy married life of Fred and Mary, before closing with an update on the later years of Tertius Lydgate and Rosamond.