Clara Hopgood

Accordingly, both the girls left, and both knew the reason for

leaving. The druggist's faith was sorely tried. If Miss Pratt's had

been a worldly seminary he would have thought nothing of such

behaviour, but he did not expect it from one of the faithful. The

next Sunday morning after he received the news, he stayed at home out

of his turn to make up any medicines which might be urgently

required, and sent his assistant to church.

As to Madge, she enjoyed her expulsion as a great joke, and her

Brighton experiences were the cause of much laughter. She had

learned a good deal while she was away from home, not precisely what

it was intended she should learn, and she came back with a strong,

insurgent tendency, which was even more noticeable when she returned

from Germany. Neither of the sisters lived at the school in Weimar,

but at the house of a lady who had been recommended to Mrs Hopgood,

and by this lady they were introduced to the great German classics.

She herself was an enthusiast for Goethe, whom she well remembered in

his old age, and Clara and Madge, each of them in turn, learned to

know the poet as they would never have known him in England. Even

the town taught them much about him, for in many ways it was

expressive of him and seemed as if it had shaped itself for him. It

was a delightful time for them. They enjoyed the society and

constant mental stimulus; they loved the beautiful park; not a

separate enclosure walled round like an English park, but suffering

the streets to end in it, and in summer time there were excursions

into the Thuringer Wald, generally to some point memorable in

history, or for some literary association. The drawback was the

contrast, when they went home, with Fenmarket, with its dulness and

its complete isolation from the intellectual world. At Weimar, in

the evening, they could see Egmont or hear Fidelio, or talk with

friends about the last utterance upon the Leben Jesu; but the

Fenmarket Egmont was a travelling wax-work show, its Fidelio psalm

tunes, or at best some of Bishop's glees, performed by a few of the

tradesfolk, who had never had an hour's instruction in music; and for

theological criticism there were the parish church and Ram Lane

Chapel. They did their best; they read their old favourites and

subscribed for a German as well as an English literary weekly

newspaper, but at times they were almost beaten. Madge more than

Clara was liable to depression.

No Fenmarket maiden, other than the Hopgoods, was supposed to have

any connection whatever, or to have any capacity for any connection

with anything outside the world in which 'young ladies' dwelt, and if

a Fenmarket girl read a book, a rare occurrence, for there were no

circulating libraries there in those days, she never permitted

herself to say anything more than that it was 'nice,' or it was 'not

nice,' or she 'liked it' or did 'not like it;' and if she had

ventured to say more, Fenmarket would have thought her odd, not to

say a little improper. The Hopgood young women were almost entirely

isolated, for the tradesfolk felt themselves uncomfortable and

inferior in every way in their presence, and they were ineligible for

rectory and brewery society, not only because their father was merely

a manager, but because of their strange ways. Mrs Tubbs, the

brewer's wife, thought they were due to Germany. From what she knew

of Germany she considered it most injudicious, and even morally

wrong, to send girls there. She once made the acquaintance of a

German lady at an hotel at Tunbridge Wells, and was quite shocked.

She could see quite plainly that the standard of female delicacy must

be much lower in that country than in England. Mr Tubbs was sure Mrs

Hopgood must have been French, and said to his daughters,

mysteriously, 'you never can tell who Frenchwomen are.'