I remember that when I first had the pleasure of seeing you at Tipton Grange before your marriage, you were asking me some questions about the way in which the health of the poor was affected by their miserable housing.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Dorothea, brightening. “I shall be quite grateful to you if you will tell me how I can help to make things a little better. Everything of that sort has slipped away from me since I have been married. I mean,” she said, after a moment’s hesitation, “that the people in our village are tolerably comfortable, and my mind has been too much taken up for me to inquire further. But here—in such a place as Middlemarch—there must be a great deal to be done.”
“There is everything to be done,” said Lydgate, with abrupt energy. “And this Hospital is a capital piece of work, due entirely to Mr Bulstrode’s exertions, and in a great degree to his money. But one man can’t do everything in a scheme of this sort. Of course he looked forward to help. And now there’s a mean, petty feud set up against the thing in the town, by certain persons who want to make it a failure.”
“What can be their reasons?” said Dorothea, with naïve surprise.
“Chiefly Mr Bulstrode’s unpopularity, to begin with. Half the town would almost take trouble for the sake of thwarting him. In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set. I had no connection with Bulstrode before I came here. I look at him quite impartially, and I see that he has some notions—that he has set things on foot—which I can turn to good public purpose. If a fair number of the better educated men went to work with the belief that their observations might contribute to the reform of medical doctrine and practice, we should soon see a change for the better. That's my point of view. I hold that by refusing to work with Mr Bulstrode I should be turning my back on an opportunity of making my profession more generally serviceable.”
“I quite agree with you,” said Dorothea, at once fascinated by the situation sketched in Lydgate's words. “But what is there against Mr Bulstrode? I know that my uncle is friendly with him.”
“People don’t like his religious tone,” said Lydgate, breaking off there.
“That is all the stronger reason for despising such an opposition,” said Dorothea, looking at the affairs of Middlemarch by the light of the great persecutions.
“To put the matter quite fairly, they have other objections to him:—he is masterful and rather unsociable, and he is concerned with trade, which has complaints of its own that I know nothing about. But what has that to do with the question whether it would not be a fine thing to establish here a more valuable hospital than any they have in the county? The immediate motive to the opposition, however, is the fact that Bulstrode has put the medical direction into my
