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.
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