Happy Saturday, Middlemarchers!

Summary

Rumor is starting to spread that the Lydgates are living beyond their means, and Mrs. Vincy openly gossips about how Lydgate neglects Rosamond while he works for free at the new hospital setting up a cholera ward. Meanwhile at the Vincys’ holiday party, Farebrother tries to show support for Lydgate, who brushes him off. Farebrother also realizes that Fred is jealous of him, and is unsettled that his feelings for Mary haven’t gone away yet.

Lydgate’s debts continue to plague him, and he is in a foul mood almost all the time, which displeases Rosamond. He tries to convince her to live more modestly by dismissing servants and selling their house and furniture to Ned Plymdale and his new wife. Rosamond is deeply offended by this (probably because she previously turned her nose up at Plymdale’s proposal), and goes behind her husband’s back to prevent the sale. Rosamond refuses to live poorly in Middlemarch, and would prefer to leave outright, but Lydgate doesn’t see the sense in starting his career over somewhere else. Rosamond blames him for alienating patients with his cold demeanor, refusing to prescribe medication, and snubbing his rich relations in the north. Lydgate is furious and hurt when he finds out about his wife’s meddling with the house sale, but he doesn’t yet know that she’s also written to his rich uncle to ask for money.

References

Systole and diastole are the rhythmic contraction and dilation of the chambers of the heart.

Lydgate is described as behaving strangely, with an odd light in his eyes, and Rosamond says he’s been taking opiates. In the original draft and first edition, this passage originally described him as having dilated eyes. A surgeon wrote to Eliot and pointed out that opium causes the pupils to contract, so Eliot fixed it in subsequent editions.

Tic-doulourex is facial neuralgia in French.

Ken and Tillotson were famous seventeenth-century churchmen and writers.

A waternixie is a water spirit, beautiful but usually devious, dishonest, or unfriendly.

Torpedo-contact here refers to contact with the ray-fish, which numbs its prey by emitting electricity.