Hope you had a good week and stayed safe during all this extreme weather! Discussion questions are in the comments like always :)

Summary

A big event is happening in Middlemarch: an auction! The entire town shows up and treats it like a festival, with gossip and food galore. Will, who has remained in Middlemarch despite his earlier announcement that he was leaving immediately, is sent by Bulstrode to purchase a painting. Mr. Raffles introduces himself to Will, claiming to have known Ladislaw’s parents. He says that Ladislaw’s mother ran away from home because her family ran a thieving business, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Will is disturbed and offended by the implication that he comes from an inferior family, and storms off.

The next chapter is all about Bulstrode. We learn that he has an entire secret past life that he’s kept hidden even from his own wife. He used to be a Dissenter in London, where he became involved with a pawnbroking business that often sold stolen items. He had concerns about the morality of this business at first, but eventually agreed to become a partner. When his boss died, he married the man’s wealthy widow. Her daughter had run away years before to become an actress, and ended up marrying and giving birth to Will. It was Bulstrode's first wife’s wish to bequeath her wealth to her grandson, but Bulstrode bribed Raffles to hide the fact that he had found Will and his mother. Bulstrode inherited all the money instead, and has been wracked with guilt ever since. However, he has convinced himself that the Ladislaws were immoral people who didn't deserve the money, while he is a benefactor who is an instrument of God's will.

When Raffles shows up again in Middlemarch, Bulstrode decides to come clean. He confesses everything to Will and offers him £500 per year during Bulstrode’s lifetime, with a more substantial inheritance upon Bulstrode's death. Will is shocked and upset to learn this about his mother and her family. He tells Bulstrode that he won’t accept the money if its source is immoral, partially because he knows he would be too embarrassed to admit the truth to Dorothea. He storms out (again, moody Will!) leaving Bulstrode in tears.

References

The epigraph from chapter 60 is from part II of Shakespeare’s Henry IV.

At an auction, a reserve is the minimum price the seller will accept. The fact that the Larchers’ furniture and art will be sold without reserve means there’s the opportunity for some good deals!

Will’s skin is described as pale as if he were on the “qui vive,” French for “on the alert.”

One of the auction bidders is described as a young Slender, a reference to a character in The Merry Wives of Windsor who is dull and not particularly bright.

Ruffles describes the Dunkirks' business as a receiving-house, a place where stolen goods are accepted for sale.

The epigraph from the beginning of chapter 61 is a quote from Rasselas by Johnson.

Before his life of respectability as a banker, Bulstrode was a Dissenter in London. Religious dissenters were extreme Protestants in the tradition of Calvin and Cromwell.

Eliot asserts that Bulstrode did not set out to deliberately “gull” the world. Gulling means cheating or hoaxing.

In a long metaphor Eliot refers to the earth as a “putrefying nidus.” In pathology, a nidus is a focus of infection.