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.
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