Clara Hopgood

She opened the window, and Baruch rose and went home.

Whenever Mrs Caffyn talked about the labourers at Great Oakhurst,

whom she knew so well, Clara always felt as if all her reading had

been a farce, and, indeed, if we come into close contact with actual

life, art, poetry and philosophy seem little better than trifling.

When the mist hangs over the heavy clay land in January, and men and

women shiver in the bitter cold and eat raw turnips, to indulge in

fireside ecstasies over the divine Plato or Shakespeare is surely not

such a virtue as we imagine it to be.