Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager

want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who

descended a step in order to gain them. He was now experiencing

something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar

hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things

which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for,

though the demand for payment has become pressing.

How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or

knowledge of prices. When a man in setting up a house and preparing

for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come

to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay

for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses,

horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds

of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred

per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred,

chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he

minds it or not, he is in debt. Those were less expensive times than

our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease

with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought

that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied

without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent

for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts,

can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath

his consideration. Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant

household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering

the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed

that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did

not see how they were to live otherwise. If each head of household

expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have

probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one

had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the

substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him

simply a penny-wise, mean notion. Rosamond, even without such an

occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations,

and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not

interfere. This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional

prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable. It is true Lydgate

was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his

prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by

this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in

men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by

side and never compare them with each other? Expenditure--like

ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own

personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is

manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others. Lydgate

believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man

who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a

matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things

were naturally ordered in sheaves. It must be remembered that he had

never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by

habit, not by self-criticism. But the check had come.




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