Farebrother, Reverend Camden

Vicar of St. Botolph's, Middlemarch; a generous, honourable man with a gift for good preaching, and a liking for natural science. "It went along with other points of conduct in Mr. Farebrother which were exceptionally fine, and made his character resemble those southern landscapes which seem divided between natural grandeur and social slovenliness. Very few men could have been as filial and chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and sister, whose dependence on him had in many ways shaped his life rather uneasily for himself... Then, his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like the preaching of the English Church in its robust age, and his sermons were delivered without book. People outside his pariah went to hear him; and since to fill the church was always the most difficult part of a clergyman's function, here was another ground for a careless sense of superiority. Besides, he was a likeable man; sweet- tempered, ready- witted, frank, without grins of supprellled bitterness or other conversational
flavours which make half of us an affliction to our friends." On an insufficient income he has to aupport hie mother, aunt, and sister, and so is led into card-playing for money. For the same reason he would like to obtain the salaried chaplaincy of Bulstrode's new hospital, but from a sense of delicacy refrains from asking Lydgate, who has the deciding vote, to aid his candidacy against Bulstrode's candidate, Mr. Tyke. He is in love with Mary Garth, but renounces his own hopes in that direction in order to help Fred Vincy win Mary. Through Lydgate Mrs. Casaubon becomes interested in him and gives him the desirable Lowick living.

<em>Middlemarch</em>

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