Calling Dr. Furness

As soon as I entered the building, I forgot the name of the person I was there to see. Thinking it would help me remember, I went up and down the halls, looking at the names on the doors, but none seemed familiar. By the time I’d checked them all, and assuming I was now late for my appointment, I stopped to ask for help in a reception area that wasn’t there when I first came in. “Hello,” I said to a tired young woman looking up at me, “I think I’m a little late. I’m here to see — ” “Dr. Furness,” she said without hesitation. Furness, I thought. That’s it. Or is it? And I wondered if that was really how it was spelled. Could it be Furnace? And how did she know which doctor I was looking for, when I didn’t know I was looking for a doctor at all? Maybe she knew more about me than I did, or that I could remember. Maybe my malady was common knowledge everywhere in the building. Furness. Just what kind of doctor was she, or he? Furness — wait, I thought, wait — long ago, Furness was the editor of the “Furness Variorum” of Shakespeare! H.H. Furness. Then I woke up. Or did I?

Read the fifty-second and fifty-third chapters of Middlemarch, finishing the second of three volumes and Book V, “The Dead Hand,” bringing me to Vol. III and Book VI, “The Widow and the Wife.”

October 10, 2023.

[ 1893 ]