Nicholas Bulstrode—John Raffles relationship

Nicholas Bulstrode—John Raffles relationship is a coercive bond between a prosperous banker and a man who knows the discreditable history behind his position. Raffles turns that knowledge into leverage; Bulstrode tries to control where he goes, what he tells others, and whether he will return. The relationship’s decisive consequence is not simply the threat of exposure but the moral crisis it creates: Bulstrode’s relief at Raffles’s death is entangled with his own choices, while the secret proves impossible to bury with its bearer.

The Return and the Threat

The renewed encounter begins when Bulstrode comes back from business in Brassing and his wife tells him that a red-faced stranger with large whiskers has been waiting for him. The visitor called himself Bulstrode’s old friend, referred to him as Nick, and remarked on his good fortune in wives. Harriet Bulstrode had refused to let him wait in the house; he left after the family dog, Blucher, broke its chain and ran into the garden. Her account makes clear that Raffles has intruded into Bulstrode’s private household before the banker can manage the encounter himself.

Bulstrode identifies the visitor as a man who might once have done better but has declined into drunkenness and dissipation. The description marks the distance between them in present circumstance, but not in knowledge: Raffles’s weakness does not make him harmless. At their interview at the Bank, Raffles says that he came to Middlemarch partly to see whether he might settle there, and partly to visit his old friend and learn about his prosperity. He needs more money than he expected for debts, but still has the two hundred pounds previously given to him; a further twenty-five pounds would suffice for his immediate departure. He also reserves the possibility of returning for a longer stay.

The interview establishes that the money is not a clean settlement. Raffles declines to be seen off the premises by Bulstrode and will not leave Middlemarch under his eye. Bulstrode cannot rely on a threat or an appeal to friendship to determine what Raffles does. His fear is directed less toward prosecution or financial ruin than toward the judgment of his neighbors and the discovery, by Harriet, of a past that would make him an object of scorn and damage the religious respectability with which he has associated himself.

A Shared Past and Unequal Leverage

The source of Raffles’s power lies in Bulstrode’s earlier dealings. After a confidential subordinate partner died, Bulstrode accepted an offer to become confidential accountant in a large pawnbroking business. He learned that one source of its considerable profits was the easy acceptance of goods without strict inquiry into their origins. The business’s respectable appearance, including its west-end branch, did not erase the moral question of how those profits were made.

The past also involves a woman’s daughter: the daughter had been found, but Bulstrode and only one other man knew it. That other man was paid to keep silent and go away. The detail clarifies the structure of the old secrecy. Bulstrode had not merely committed acts he could later describe in general terms as regrettable; he had relied on another person’s silence, and Raffles’s knowledge made that arrangement vulnerable to reversal.

Bulstrode has tried to understand restitution as a way of repairing the past and perhaps preventing its consequences. After Raffles recognized Will Ladislaw at Mr. Larcher’s sale, Bulstrode attempted restitution, hoping it might move Divine Providence to avert what followed. Yet the effort does not free him from dependence on Raffles, nor does it establish that the earlier harm has been repaired. His changing plans and interests are linked to the severe experience of fearing Raffles’s return, and his moral accounting remains entangled with the wish to escape public disgrace.

Payments, Secrecy, and the Christmas Eve Return

When Raffles reappears on Christmas Eve at The Shrubs, Bulstrode is at home and tries to prevent him from communicating with the rest of the family. He cannot control the circumstances enough to keep the visit from alarming Harriet. Raffles insists on staying in the house. Bulstrode judges that keeping him in his own room for the evening is no worse than allowing him to go into town, where he might speak more freely.

The next morning Bulstrode takes a firmer line. He has a carriage made ready for half-past seven and says he will conduct Raffles to Ilsely, where Raffles can take the railway or wait for a coach. He offers money now and a reasonable sum from time to time on application by letter, but warns that a return to Middlemarch or speech injurious to him will end his support. Raffles leaves contentedly after receiving a hundred pounds. The payment secures a departure for the moment, not a reliable promise of silence: Bulstrode himself cannot be sure that the offer has ended the danger.

The scene exposes a recurrent imbalance. Bulstrode has wealth, a carriage, and the ability to make payments; Raffles has the power to make the banker’s concealed history public. The money therefore functions at once as aid, hush payment, and attempted purchase of distance. Bulstrode’s generosity is not a simple expression of benevolence. Watching Raffles’s uneasy sleep, he notices how much the man has deteriorated since the first gift of two hundred pounds, but he does not fully examine the different motives that have led him to give again.

Illness, Care, and Bulstrode’s Moral Crisis

Raffles eventually returns so ill that Caleb Garth comes to report that a stranger needs a doctor. The stranger is Raffles. Bulstrode asks whether Caleb has been led to him by slanders and seeks to learn what Raffles has said. Caleb declines to repeat it: unless something unknown compels him, he will keep the information to himself. He speaks instead of the possibility that Bulstrode once gained through harmful dealing and deceit, recognizes that regret cannot undo the past, and refuses to make the banker’s life harder by carrying Raffles’s words onward.

Raffles’s illness makes secrecy an immediate practical problem. He repeatedly asks for brandy, refuses the food Lydgate orders, and begs Bulstrode not to punish him by denying him what he wants. In his confused state, he insists that he has told no one anything against Bulstrode. Bulstrode finds the accusation troubling, but an even more alarming change in Raffles’s delirium is his apparent belief that a doctor is present and says Bulstrode wants him starved to death.

As Raffles’s condition worsens, Bulstrode imagines his death as a possible deliverance. He reasons that if he does not hasten it and faithfully follows the prescribed treatment, there is no sin in regarding death as the desirable outcome. Yet even this self-exculpating argument is unsettled: he wonders whether treatment can hasten death and whether a human prescription may be mistaken, then retreats toward the claim that intention determines right and wrong. The relationship thus forces his religious self-justification into direct contact with his conduct and his self-interest.

When Raffles is dying, Bulstrode feels more at rest as the man falls into silence. He experiences secrecy as relief and reviews memoranda about arrangements for leaving Middlemarch, reconsidering how long his absence need be. He also considers economies and hopes that Dorothea will contribute substantially to the hospital’s expenses. These thoughts place the immediate quiet around Raffles’s bed beside Bulstrode’s continuing attention to reputation, management, and money. His relief is real, but it does not amount to an honest resolution of the past.

Exposure and the Limits of Silence

Raffles’s death does not achieve the permanent concealment Bulstrode had hoped for. At the Green Dragon, Mr. Bambridge tells a growing group of listeners a narrative that includes the fact about Will Ladislaw. The account adds local circumstance to what is already known and gives public form to the history Bulstrode had feared would be buried with Raffles’s corpse. The secret passes from private leverage into town talk, with the town-clerk among those gathered to hear it.

Bulstrode has not yet admitted to himself that he contrived to bring about Raffles’s death; he has accepted what seemed to have been offered and believes it cannot be proved that he hastened it. That distinction reveals the lasting tension in their relationship. Raffles’s knowledge has made Bulstrode afraid, but fear alone does not explain Bulstrode’s predicament: payments, attempted restitution, control of the sick man’s care, and relief at his silence all become part of the moral history that survives him. The relationship’s final irony is that Raffles can no longer speak, yet the life Bulstrode tried to seal away is again before the judgment of his neighbors.