A scene from provincial life

Having first mentioned Edward Casaubon, a character from Middlemarch, at reference 2, I thought to share another snippet this morning.

Casaubon was a 45 year cleric from somewhere in the middle of England in the first part of the nineteenth century. A rich and learned cleric of studious disposition who wrote pamphlets about things that interested him, things like the Catholic Question (this being about the time of emancipation) and the fish-headed gods of the ancient Etruscans, rather than riding to hounds, playing cards or going into society. A rather dry and not particularly healthy gentleman.

So rather late in life (by the standards of the day), he thinks to take a young girl, not yet twenty, to wife. A young girl who aspires to knowledge and who is very keen on him despite the reservations - not to say horror - of her friends and relations.

All of what Casaubon knows of such matters has been drawn from the classics, the writers of ancient Greece and Rome, writers who led him to think that taking a wife was going to be a momentous business, full of fire and passion. He was rather disappointed, not to say put out, that he did not find the experience momentous and there was precious little fire or passion. Altogether a bit of a let down.

Last night, on a couple of glasses of wine, this seemed very funny, the sort of thing that Aldous Huxley might have made something of. This morning it just seems rather sad.

I also associate to a one-time near neighbour who was a lecturer in classics at Cambridge. When he was not lecturing, his special interest was pornography from the time of the early Roman empire, of which there was, it seems, a great deal. But one supposes that our Casaubon did not keep such stuff in his library, under lock and key or otherwise.

Reference 1: Middlemarch - George Eliot - 1971/2.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/computers-that-play-chess.html.