Clara Hopgood

M >> Mark Rutherford >> Clara Hopgood

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

Transcribed from the 1907 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

CLARA HOPGOOD

CHAPTER I

About ten miles north-east of Eastthorpe lies the town of Fenmarket,
very like Eastthorpe generally; and as we are already familiar with
Eastthorpe, a particular description of Fenmarket is unnecessary.
There is, however, one marked difference between them. Eastthorpe,
it will be remembered, is on the border between the low uplands and
the Fens, and has one side open to soft, swelling hills. Fenmarket
is entirely in the Fens, and all the roads that lead out of it are
alike level, monotonous, straight, and flanked by deep and stagnant
ditches. The river, also, here is broader and slower; more reluctant
than it is even at Eastthorpe to hasten its journey to the inevitable
sea. During the greater part of the year the visitor to Fenmarket
would perhaps find it dull and depressing, and at times, under a
grey, wintry sky, almost unendurable; but nevertheless, for days and
weeks it has a charm possessed by few other landscapes in England,
provided only that behind the eye which looks there is something to
which a landscape of that peculiar character answers. There is, for
example, the wide, dome-like expanse of the sky, there is the
distance, there is the freedom and there are the stars on a clear
night. The orderly, geometrical march of the constellations from the
extreme eastern horizon across the meridian and down to the west has
a solemn majesty, which is only partially discernible when their
course is interrupted by broken country.

On a dark afternoon in November 1844, two young women, Clara and
Madge Hopgood, were playing chess in the back parlour of their
mother's house at Fenmarket, just before tea. Clara, the elder, was
about five-and-twenty, fair, with rather light hair worn flat at the
side of her face, after the fashion of that time. Her features were
tolerably regular. It is true they were somewhat marred by an uneven
nasal outline, but this was redeemed by the curved lips of a mouth
which was small and rather compressed, and by a definite, symmetrical
and graceful figure. Her eyes were grey, with a curious peculiarity
in them. Ordinarily they were steady, strong eyes, excellent and
renowned optical instruments. Over and over again she had detected,
along the stretch of the Eastthorpe road, approaching visitors, and
had named them when her companions could see nothing but specks.
Occasionally, however, these steady, strong, grey eyes utterly
changed. They were the same eyes, the same colour, but they ceased
to be mere optical instruments and became instruments of expression,
transmissive of radiance to such a degree that the light which was
reflected from them seemed insufficient to account for it. It was
also curious that this change, though it must have been accompanied
by some emotion, was just as often not attended by any other sign of
it. Clara was, in fact, little given to any display of feeling.

Madge, four years younger than her sister, was of a different type
altogether, and one more easily comprehended. She had very heavy
dark hair, and she had blue eyes, a combination which fascinated
Fenmarket. Fenmarket admired Madge more than it was admired by her
in return, and she kept herself very much to herself, notwithstanding
what it considered to be its temptations. If she went shopping she
nearly always went with her sister; she stood aloof from all the
small gaieties of the town; walked swiftly through its streets, and
repelled, frigidly and decisively, all offers, and they were not a
few, which had been made to her by the sons of the Fenmarket
tradesfolk. Fenmarket pronounced her 'stuck-up,' and having thus
labelled her, considered it had exhausted her. The very important
question, Whether there was anything which naturally stuck up?
Fenmarket never asked. It was a great relief to that provincial
little town in 1844, in this and in other cases, to find a word which
released it from further mental effort and put out of sight any
troublesome, straggling, indefinable qualities which it would
otherwise have been forced to examine and name. Madge was certainly
stuck-up, but the projection above those around her was not
artificial. Both she and her sister found the ways of Fenmarket were
not to their taste. The reason lay partly in their nature and partly
in their history.

Mrs Hopgood was the widow of the late manager in the Fenmarket branch
of the bank of Rumbold, Martin & Rumbold, and when her husband died
she had of course to leave the Bank Buildings. As her income was
somewhat straitened, she was obliged to take a small house, and she
was now living next door to the 'Crown and Sceptre,' the principal
inn in the town. There was then no fringe of villas to Fenmarket for
retired quality; the private houses and shops were all mixed
together, and Mrs Hopgood's cottage was squeezed in between the
ironmonger's and the inn. It was very much lower than either of its
big neighbours, but it had a brass knocker and a bell, and distinctly
asserted and maintained a kind of aristocratic superiority.

Mr Hopgood was not a Fenmarket man. He came straight from London to
be manager. He was in the bank of the London agents of Rumbold,
Martin & Rumbold, and had been strongly recommended by the city firm
as just the person to take charge of a branch which needed thorough
reorganisation. He succeeded, and nobody in Fenmarket was more
respected. He lived, however, a life apart from his neighbours,
excepting so far as business was concerned. He went to church once
on Sunday because the bank expected him to go, but only once, and had
nothing to do with any of its dependent institutions. He was a great
botanist, very fond of walking, and in the evening, when Fenmarket
generally gathered itself into groups for gossip, either in the
street or in back parlours, or in the 'Crown and Sceptre,' Mr
Hopgood, tall, lean and stately, might be seen wandering along the
solitary roads searching for flowers, which, in that part of the
world, were rather scarce. He was also a great reader of the best
books, English, German and French, and held high doctrine, very high
for those days, on the training of girls, maintaining that they need,
even more than boys, exact discipline and knowledge. Boys, he
thought, find health in an occupation; but an uncultivated, unmarried
girl dwells with her own untutored thoughts, which often breed
disease. His two daughters, therefore, received an education much
above that which was usual amongst people in their position, and each
of them--an unheard of wonder in Fenmarket--had spent some time in a
school in Weimar. Mr Hopgood was also peculiar in his way of dealing
with his children. He talked to them and made them talk to him, and
whatever they read was translated into speech; thought, in his house,
was vocal.

Mrs Hopgood, too, had been the intimate friend of her husband, and
was the intimate friend of her daughters. She was now nearly sixty,
but still erect and graceful, and everybody could see that the
picture of a beautiful girl of one-and-twenty, which hung opposite
the fireplace, had once been her portrait. She had been brought up,
as thoroughly as a woman could be brought up, in those days, to be a
governess. The war prevented her education abroad, but her father,
who was a clergyman, not too rich, engaged a French emigrant lady to
live in his house to teach her French and other accomplishments. She
consequently spoke French perfectly, and she could also read and
speak Spanish fairly well, for the French lady had spent some years
in Spain. Mr Hopgood had never been particularly in earnest about
religion, but his wife was a believer, neither High Church nor Low
Church, but inclined towards a kind of quietism not uncommon in the
Church of England, even during its bad time, a reaction against the
formalism which generally prevailed. When she married, Mrs Hopgood
did not altogether follow her husband. She never separated herself
from her faith, and never would have confessed that she had separated
herself from her church. But although she knew that his creed
externally was not hers, her own was not sharply cut, and she
persuaded herself that, in substance, his and her belief were
identical. As she grew older her relationship to the Unseen became
more and more intimate, but she was less and less inclined to
criticise her husband's freedom, or to impose on the children a rule
which they would certainly have observed, but only for her sake.
Every now and then she felt a little lonely; when, for example, she
read one or two books which were particularly her own; when she
thought of her dead father and mother, and when she prayed her
solitary prayer. Mr Hopgood took great pains never to disturb that
sacred moment. Indeed, he never for an instant permitted a finger to
be laid upon what she considered precious. He loved her because she
had the strength to be what she was when he first knew her and she
had so fascinated him. He would have been disappointed if the
mistress of his youth had become some other person, although the
change, in a sense, might have been development and progress. He did
really love her piety, too, for its own sake. It mixed something
with her behaviour to him and to the children which charmed him, and
he did not know from what other existing source anything comparable
to it could be supplied. Mrs Hopgood seldom went to church. The
church, to be sure, was horribly dead, but she did not give that as a
reason. She had, she said, an infirmity, a strange restlessness
which prevented her from sitting still for an hour. She often
pleaded this excuse, and her husband and daughters never, by word or
smile, gave her the least reason to suppose that they did not believe
her.

CHAPTER II

Both Clara and Madge went first to an English day-school, and Clara
went straight from this school to Germany, but Madge's course was a
little different. She was not very well, and it was decided that she
should have at least a twelvemonth in a boarding-school at Brighton
before going abroad. It had been very highly recommended, but the
head-mistress was Low Church and aggressive. Mr Hopgood, far away
from the High and Low Church controversy, came to the conclusion
that, in Madge's case, the theology would have no effect on her. It
was quite impossible, moreover, to find a school which would be just
what he could wish it to be. Madge, accordingly, was sent to
Brighton, and was introduced into a new world. She was just
beginning to ask herself WHY certain things were right and other
things were wrong, and the Brighton answer was that the former were
directed by revelation and the latter forbidden, and that the 'body'
was an affliction to the soul, a means of 'probation,' our principal
duty being to 'war' against it.

Madge's bedroom companion was a Miss Selina Fish, daughter of
Barnabas Fish, Esquire, of Clapham, and merchant of the City of
London. Miss Fish was not traitorous at heart, but when she found
out that Madge had not been christened, she was so overcome that she
was obliged to tell her mother. Miss Fish was really unhappy, and
one cold night, when Madge crept into her neighbour's bed, contrary
to law, but in accordance with custom when the weather was very
bitter, poor Miss Fish shrank from her, half-believing that something
dreadful might happen if she should by any chance touch unbaptised,
naked flesh. Mrs Fish told her daughter that perhaps Miss Hopgood
might be a Dissenter, and that although Dissenters were to be pitied,
and even to be condemned, many of them were undoubtedly among the
redeemed, as for example, that man of God, Dr Doddridge, whose Family
Expositor was read systematically at home, as Selina knew. Then
there were Matthew Henry, whose commentary her father preferred to
any other, and the venerable saint, the Reverend William Jay of Bath,
whom she was proud to call her friend. Miss Fish, therefore, made
further inquiries gently and delicately, but she found to her horror
that Madge had neither been sprinkled nor immersed! Perhaps she was
a Jewess or a heathen! This was a happy thought, for then she might
be converted. Selina knew what interest her mother took in missions
to heathens and Jews; and if Madge, by the humble instrumentality of
a child, could be brought to the foot of the Cross, what would her
mother and father say? What would they not say? Fancy taking Madge
to Clapham in a nice white dress--it should be white, thought Selina-
-and presenting her as a saved lamb!

The very next night she began, -

'I suppose your father is a foreigner?'

'No, he is an Englishman.'

'But if he is an Englishman you must have been baptised, or
sprinkled, or immersed, and your father and mother must belong to
church or chapel. I know there are thousands of wicked people who
belong to neither, but they are drunkards and liars and robbers, and
even they have their children christened.'

'Well, he is an Englishman,' said Madge, smiling.

'Perhaps,' said Selina, timidly, 'he may be--he may be--Jewish.
Mamma and papa pray for the Jews every morning. They are not like
other unbelievers.'

'No, he is certainly not a Jew.'

'What is he, then?'

'He is my papa and a very honest, good man.'

'Oh, my dear Madge! honesty is a broken reed. I have heard mamma say
that she is more hopeful of thieves than honest people who think they
are saved by works, for the thief who was crucified went to heaven,
and if he had been only an honest man he never would have found the
Saviour and would have gone to hell. Your father must be something.'

'I can only tell you again that he is honest and good.'

Selina was confounded. She had heard of those people who were
NOTHING, and had always considered them as so dreadful that she could
not bear to think of them. The efforts of her father and mother did
not extend to them; they were beyond the reach of the preacher--mere
vessels of wrath. If Madge had confessed herself Roman Catholic, or
idolator, Selina knew how to begin. She would have pointed out to
the Catholic how unscriptural it was to suppose that anybody could
forgive sins excepting God, and she would at once have been able to
bring the idolator to his knees by exposing the absurdity of
worshipping bits of wood and stone; but with a person who was nothing
she could not tell what to do. She was puzzled to understand what
right Madge had to her name. Who had any authority to say she was to
be called Madge Hopgood? She determined at last to pray to God and
again ask her mother's help.

She did pray earnestly that very night, and had not finished until
long after Madge had said her Lord's Prayer. This was always said
night and morning, both by Madge and Clara. They had been taught it
by their mother. It was, by the way, one of poor Selina's troubles
that Madge said nothing but the Lord's Prayer when she lay down and
when she rose; of course, the Lord's Prayer was the best--how could
it be otherwise, seeing that our Lord used it?--but those who
supplemented it with no petitions of their own were set down as
formalists, and it was always suspected that they had not received
the true enlightenment from above. Selina cried to God till the
counterpane was wet with her tears, but it was the answer from her
mother which came first, telling her that however praiseworthy her
intentions might be, argument with such a DANGEROUS infidel as Madge
would be most perilous, and she was to desist from it at once. Mrs
Fish had by that post written to Miss Pratt, the schoolmistress, and
Selina no doubt would not be exposed to further temptation. Mrs
Fish's letter to Miss Pratt was very strong, and did not mince
matters. She informed Miss Pratt that a wolf was in her fold, and
that if the creature were not promptly expelled, Selina must be
removed into safety. Miss Pratt was astonished, and instantly, as
her custom was, sought the advice of her sister, Miss Hannah Pratt,
who had charge of the wardrobes and household matters generally.
Miss Hannah Pratt was never in the best of tempers, and just now was
a little worse than usual. It was one of the rules of the school
that no tradesmen's daughters should be admitted, but it was very
difficult to draw the line, and when drawn, the Misses Pratt were
obliged to admit it was rather ridiculous. There was much debate
over an application by an auctioneer. He was clearly not a
tradesman, but he sold chairs, tables and pigs, and, as Miss Hannah
said, used vulgar language in recommending them. However, his wife
had money; they lived in a pleasant house in Lewes, and the line went
outside him. But when a druggist, with a shop in Bond Street,
proposed his daughter, Miss Hannah took a firm stand. What is the
use of a principle, she inquired severely, if we do not adhere to it?
On the other hand, the druggist's daughter was the eldest of six, who
might all come when they were old enough to leave home, and Miss
Pratt thought there was a real difference between a druggist and,
say, a bootmaker.

'Bootmaker!' said Miss Hannah with great scorn. 'I am surprised that
you venture to hint the remotest possibility of such a contingency.'

At last it was settled that the line should also be drawn outside the
druggist. Miss Hannah, however, had her revenge. A tanner in
Bermondsey with a house in Bedford Square, had sent two of his
children to Miss Pratt's seminary. Their mother found out that they
had struck up a friendship with a young person whose father
compounded prescriptions for her, and when she next visited Brighton
she called on Miss Pratt, reminded her that it was understood that
her pupils would 'all be taken from a superior class in society,' and
gently hinted that she could not allow Bedford Square to be
contaminated by Bond Street. Miss Pratt was most apologetic,
enlarged upon the druggist's respectability, and more particularly
upon his well-known piety and upon his generous contributions to the
cause of religion. This, indeed, was what decided her to make an
exception in his favour, and the piety also of his daughter was 'most
exemplary.' However, the tanner's lady, although a shining light in
the church herself, was not satisfied that a retail saint could
produce a proper companion for her own offspring, and went away
leaving Miss Pratt very uncomfortable.

'I warned you,' said Miss Hannah; 'I told you what would happen, and
as to Mr Hopgood, I suspected him from the first. Besides, he is
only a banker's clerk.'

'Well, what is to be done?'

'Put your foot down at once.' Miss Hannah suited the action to the
word, and put down, with emphasis, on the hearthrug a very large,
plate-shaped foot cased in a black felt shoe.

'But I cannot dismiss them. Don't you think it will be better, first
of all, to talk to Miss Hopgood? Perhaps we could do her some good.'

'Good! Now, do you think we can do any good to an atheist? Besides,
we have to consider our reputation. Whatever good we might do, it
would be believed that the infection remained.'

'We have no excuse for dismissing the other.'

'Excuse! none is needed, nor would any be justifiable. Excuses are
immoral. Say at once--of course politely and with regret--that the
school is established on a certain basis. It will be an advantage to
us if it is known why these girls do not remain. I will dictate the
letter, if you like.'

Miss Hannah Pratt had not received the education which had been given
to her younger sister, and therefore, was nominally subordinate, but
really she was chief. She considered it especially her duty not only
to look after the children's clothes, the servants and the accounts,
but to maintain TONE everywhere in the establishment, and to stiffen
her sister when necessary, and preserve in proper sharpness her
orthodoxy, both in theology and morals.

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.'

'But, papa,' said Miss Tubbs, 'you know Mrs Hopgood's maiden name; we
found that out. It was Molyneux.'

'Of course, my dear, of course; but if she was a Frenchwoman resident
in England she would prefer to assume an English name, that is to say
if she wished to be married.'

Occasionally the Miss Hopgoods were encountered, and they confounded
Fenmarket sorely. On one memorable occasion there was a party at the
Rectory: it was the annual party into which were swept all the
unclassifiable odds-and-ends which could not be put into the two
gatherings which included the aristocracy and the democracy of the
place. Miss Clara Hopgood amazed everybody by 'beginning talk,' by
asking Mrs Greatorex, her hostess, who had been far away to Sidmouth
for a holiday, whether she had been to the place where Coleridge was
born, and when the parson's wife said she had not, and that she could
not be expected to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of an infidel,
Miss Hopgood expressed her surprise, and declared she would walk
twenty miles any day to see Ottery St Mary. Still worse, when
somebody observed that an Anti-Corn-Law lecturer was coming to
Fenmarket, and the parson's daughter cried 'How horrid!' Miss
Hopgood talked again, and actually told the parson that, so far as
she had read upon the subject--fancy her reading about the Corn-
Laws!--the argument was all one way, and that after Colonel Thompson
nothing new could really be urged.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11