In the Garden

(London, summer 1839)

The room was full of roses. Blush-pink damasks were doubled in the great gilt mirror above the fireplace, crinkled gallicas stood on the chiffonière, icy albas beside the sofa, and a crimson variety which Mr Farebrother could not identify adorned the piano: so packed was the room with blooms that it resembled a hothouse. But the room lacked life, despite the abundance of botanicals – it wanted music, singing, laughter! Were it not for the scent suffusing the summer air, sickly and heavy, it might be mistaken for a picture into which he had wandered by mistake.

Near ten years are flown since we left the Vicar. The old king is dead and a young queen crowned; cholera wields his sharp scythe again, and the railway's iron web stretches from the capital to Middlemarch and beyond. The Anatomy Act so eagerly anticipated in certain quarters was enshrined in law some seven years past, and conferred on all the destitute that distinction accorded in earlier times only to the hanged. Its chief proponent died just in time to be among the first to benefit, Mr Bentham's body being dissected at his request by his friend Mr Southwood Smith before half the curious of London. His chastely dressed skeleton, its severed, shrivelled head in a glass case at its feet, ensured that the turnover of chambermaids in the Southwood Smith household was fully three times faster than the average of the metropolis, besides presiding monthly over meetings of the Great Man's disciples (though accounts which swore it voted on motions were surely contrary to the notions of its original owner).

The philosopher rested not half a mile distant from the Lydgates' drawing-room; had Mrs Lydgate but known it, she might have thought Henrietta Place rather less eligible, despite its sunny aspect, fine proportions and proximity to Cavendish Square. (It is strange, perhaps, that Rosamond did not know it, for besides his utilitarian tendencies, Southwood Smith was resident physician at the most enlightened Fever Hospital in the capital, and had written a definitive treatise on fever. But her husband had given up fever – or at least he only treated those febrile patients who could pay their guinea.)

The mistress of the house swept in at last to greet her guest. 'I am sorry to keep you waiting, Mr Farebrother,' she said sweetly.

Her presence completed the room, a temple which reflected its goddess: the showy blooms bowed down before the showiest rose of all. Rosamond was little altered by the years. Neither the London air nor the Riveria sun had spoiled her complexion, for she applied Gowland's lotion assiduously and kept a dozen pretty parasols; nor had three successful confinements ruined the delicate undulations of her figure: with her mother's ample example before her eyes, she had taken early to her uncle Bulstrode's dietary precepts.

'Tertius is not yet returned from his surgery,' she continued, 'but I have sent a servant to hurry him.'

'It's no matter, Mrs Lydgate. I have been admiring your roses – Celsiana, Agatha and Blanche de Belgique I know, but what is this little charmer?'

'It is a new French variety. I believe Tertius called it Assemblage des Beautés,' she said, and her faint blush told its own story. 'We cannot have a garden here, as I was used to in Middlemarch, so Tertius brings the flowers to me.'

Though Farebrother was an old bachelor, he understood his part in this performance. 'A most apt name,' he said, sketching a little bow.

Rosamond cast her eyes down and coloured very prettily. 'But you did not come here to flatter me, I am sure,' she said.

'I left your brother and Mary very well, you'll be pleased to know. They have just purchased a smart pony for the boys, and young Caleb begs that you should visit again so that he might show off his horsemanship.'

'Oh, but I hardly ever ride now,' said Rosamond. If truth be told her only interest in her Vincy nephews was in keeping her daughters away from the influence of their curly heads and grubby fingers. 'Keeping saddle horses is such a waste in London, when there is so little time to exercise them, don't you agree?'

The Vicar seldom visited the capital and had never ridden there; God having stinted him in that conversational power which allows some to discourse without disclosing anything, a silence fell. Rosamond was revolving those arguments to press upon her husband to persuade him of the absolute necessity for a barouche; Farebrother was wondering how best to broach a particular topic that had been exercising his mind for several months.

'Does Mr Lydgate read German?' he began abruptly, the urgency of introducing his enquiry before its subject should walk into the drawing-room lending him courage, if not eloquence.

'I could hardly say,' said Rosamond. 'He speaks French, to be sure' – she was recalling those times when he had read her love poetry in that language – 'and every gentleman knows Latin. But German is so ugly.' She gave a little trilling laugh. 'I am sure nothing of any true beauty could ever be expressed in a language with so many clumsy consonants.'

'Do you know— Have you ever seen a book by Herr Dr Schwann?' And Farebrother rattled off the title of a monograph that had, since its publication a few months earlier, loomed large in all the letters from his friends of the learned societies. If their panegyrics were to be credited, the German's achievement in establishing the fundamental cellular architecture underlying all animal tissues – the very bricks from which all flesh was built – was the most important of the century. (The zoologist friend with whom the Vicar was staying had gone so far as to claim that it would render all earlier essays into the microscopic anatomy quite as obsolete as the steam engine was making the horse!)

'Oh, Tertius is forever buying books!' said Rosamond, noticing nothing amiss in her guest's manner. 'He must spend more on them than ever I spend on dresses! There are hundreds of volumes in his study, and very probably some of them are in foreign languages. I could not say which,' she added complacently, 'for I never enter it.'

'He has not seemed low in spirits lately?'

'Why ever should he be? Tertius delights in Baby above all things. Sir Godwyn sent a beautiful silver cup as a christening gift, though he could not attend himself, for you know he never travels now. To be sure, London is very dull in summer, but Tertius is always busy, his practice is expanding all the time! Why, only the other week he was called to attend Lord S— but of course one should not talk of names.'

'But does he seem frustrated in his research?' Farebrother abandoned indirection. 'I mean in his search for the primitive tissue?'

'Oh, no, he has given all that up. And I am glad because it is perfectly horrid, whatever Tertius might say about Vesalius being a hero!' Rosamond shuddered, and drew her shawl closer about her shoulders, a delicate flower sheltering beneath its sepals. 'Now, shall you take some tea?' she said, and they conversed on indifferent matters until her husband returned.

Those restrained greetings of two men who know each others' weaknesses but have not met above thrice in seven years were exchanged. Farebrother privately considered his friend much changed; though his back was unbowed and his hair free from grey, the ardent flame in his eyes had sunk to a mere bed-candle, and the Vicar feared even more to introduce the topic which might make that candle sputter out.

'So what brings you to London, Farebrother?' the doctor asked.

'It's not quite the Royal Society,' said Farebrother modestly, 'but I have been invited to read my paper on comparative studies of Coleopteran mouthparts to the Linnean, thanks to the offices of my good friend George Waterhouse.'

Rosamond prided herself upon her good information on all matters of substance. 'Pray, what are Coleoptera?' she enquired.

'Beetles,' said Farebrother.

'Oh,' she said, and then, 'Do you not think little Godwyn is very handsome?' – the nurse luckily having, just that moment, brought in the children to say their good nights to their father, and so the conversation turned.

'Come now, Rosy, you can't expect a bachelor like Farebrother to be interested in his looks!' said the father, and indeed young master Lydgate was at that undistinguished stage when only those who have experienced parenthood firsthand could find him attractive. 'He's a healthy boy, with prominent frontal development and pronounced organs of causality and concentrativeness' – for even the most modern of medical practitioners could not be expected to resist the old ways entirely, when they should happen to augur well for his own offspring. 'He will make a fine scientist, I am sure.'

'Or a lawyer,' said Rosamond. 'Science cannot be allowed to claim all the clever minds.'

The proud parents' debate over his past achievements and future prospects ranged on while the infant prodigy slumbered in the arms of his nurse. His youngest sister, meanwhile, clung to her mamma's skirts, only peeking out her head now and again, but one of the other girls, Lily, swiftly seemed to discern that the visitor was harmless. She approached and tugged his coat. 'I like beetles,' she announced confidentially.

'So do I,' said the Vicar. 'My friend George has beetles from faraway islands in every colour of the rainbow! But I believe I spied a ladybird on one of your mamma's roses. Shall we try to find her?'

The Coccinella specimen was soon discovered trundling over the crisp petal of an alba, a ruby drop amidst the snowy white. It proved to be a humble seven spot. 'Does that mean she's seven, like me?' enquired Lily, allowing the insect to exercise upon her palm.

'What a liar!' said her twin, who was perched upon the sofa with her skirts outspread like a china doll. 'Everyone knows we're both still only six.'

Lily ignored this interjection of prosaic reality, as imaginative persons of all ages will. 'Shall we let her fly away home?' she asked.

But before this charitable notion could be pursued, her sister called out, 'Mamma, Lily is being naughty again!'

'You must not pester poor Farebrother, girls!' said their father, and both children were recalled to their mother's side. The family made a charming group, arranged au naturel with a backdrop of roses; all three daughters shared their mamma's ethereally fair colouring, and the baby, if little more than a bundle, was certainly a bundle of the finest lace and linen.

Can Adam and Eve ever scale the wall to regain the Garden of Eden? Or can patient ploughing and harrowing transform the thorns and thistles of the wilderness into a garden quite as pleasant? Only God can answer the first question, and as to the second, the answer remains to be determined. All that I can say with certainty is that the fire in Lydgate's eyes seemed to flare up once again as he took his son from the nurse and lifted him into his arms. The doctor would never now become a fellow of the Royal Society, and his discoveries would never be hallowed in the textbooks on anatomy, but – God willing – the name of Lydgate would endure.