Middlemarch

CHAPITRE XVI.

Chapter XVI is set at the Vincys’ dinner party and explores Mr. Bulstrode’s influence over Middlemarch through the contested appointment of a hospital chaplain, Lydgate’s friction with local medical and legal opinion over professional reform, his growing fascination with Rosamond Vincy, and the cheerful domestic atmosphere that draws even Mr. Farebrother into the gathering. The chapter opens with a verse from Sir Charles Sedley celebrating feminine beauty and kindness, a motif that frames the scene at the Vincy household.

The Power of Mr. Bulstrode

The Middlemarchers are divided over whether Mr. Tyke should be appointed salaried chaplain to the hospital, a debate that reveals the political sway held by Mr. Bulstrode. Though clearly the town’s ruler, the banker faces an opposition party, and even some of his allies admit their support is a necessary compromise. Bulstrode’s power rests not only on his control of credit as a country banker but on a carefully administered beneficence that binds his neighbors in gratitude and dependence. By intervening in the smallest private affairs—apprenticing the shoemaker’s son Tegg, defending the washerwoman Mrs. Strype against unjust exactions—he accumulates a moral dominion over hope and fear. He justifies all this to himself as service to God’s glory, but cruder minds in Middlemarch, unable to comprehend his austere habits, suspect he feeds on a kind of vampiric mastery.

The Hospital Chaplaincy

The chaplaincy question becomes the catalyst for discussion at Mr. Vincy’s dinner table. Although the Vincys are connected to Bulstrode, the family speaks frankly, with Mr. Vincy opposing the appointment chiefly because he dislikes Mr. Tyke’s doctrinal sermons and prefers Mr. Farebrother’s warmer preaching. Vincy would gladly see the chaplain salaried if Farebrother received the post, praising him as an excellent preacher and companion. The subject thus sets the stage for the social and ideological tensions Lydgate is about to encounter.

Dinner at Mr. Vincy’s

Mr. Vincy, glad to no longer serve as a Director, proposes referring the matter jointly to the Directors and the Medical Board, throwing some of the responsibility onto Lydgate and the senior physician Dr. Sprague. He jests that the medical gentlemen must decide what sort of “black draught” to prescribe. Dr. Sprague, whose professional standing rests on a long-forgotten treatise and whose manner reflects the established order, listens with marked displeasure as Lydgate offers a more radical view.

Lydgate on Professional Reforms

Lydgate observes that appointments are too often decided by personal liking rather than by competence, suggesting that real reform sometimes requires pensioning off beloved but less capable incumbents. His remark unsettles Dr. Sprague, who perceives in the young man a dangerous foreign-inflected showiness and a disposition to upend what his elders have long settled. The narrative sympathetically notes that one’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed form of property, unpleasant to find deprecated.

An Argument Over the Coroner

Lydgate’s comments provoke Mr. Chichely, the coroner, who accuses him of siding with the Lancet against the legal profession. Dr. Sprague intervenes to denounce Wakley, then grudgingly concedes Wakley is sometimes right. Lydgate presses his case, arguing that legal training leaves a man incompetent in matters requiring medical knowledge and that evidence cannot be weighed like coin by an uninformed Justice. When he innocently appeals to Dr. Sprague for support, the older man retreats into qualified agreement about populous districts and the metropolis. Vincy closes the discussion with jovial common sense, preferring a coroner who is a good coursing man, and the gentlemen prepare to join the ladies, leaving Lydgate aware that in good Middlemarch society it is dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office.

In the Drawing-Room with Rosamond

In the drawing-room, Lydgate is quickly monopolized by Rosamond, while Mrs. Vincy presides over the tea-table with cheerful, blooming good nature. The narrator observes how the matron’s unpretentious, inoffensive vulgarity only throws into relief the daughter’s refinement, which exceeds Lydgate’s expectations. Rosamond’s small feet, perfect shoulders, exquisite curves of lip and eyelid, and gift for saying exactly the right thing combine to enchant him; her cleverness is real but confined to every tone except the humorous, and she wisely never attempts to joke. They fall easily into conversation about music, her limited experience of London, and his time in Paris, and she confesses with a blush that she is really afraid of him, while he compares her favorably to his former love Laure.