72. "I am afraid I am tiring all my friends": Alice's sister Lizzie

Alice's younger sister Elizabeth was born with a club foot, which was remedied by a painful operation when she was a teenager.  Lizzie's health was never strong.  She stayed at home to look after her parents when her brothers and sisters were married, and she was a thoughtful and considerate woman.  In 1863 when Alice was worn out and pregnant with her tenth baby, Lizzie looked after her, keeping her in bed and feeding her up.  She was nearly 37 when her parents died.

Three months later, on 14 June 1864, she married their doctor, William Harrison.  (He was the brother-in-law who wrote so kindly to John in 1869 advising him to stop work because of his breakdown).  Lizzie must have known him most of her life.  His father and grandfather had been doctors in Gargrave near Skipton before him, and he and Lizzie were much of an age.  Perhaps they had waited to marry until she was no longer needed by her parents.  

In early 1866 Lizzie and William must have been sure that she was expecting a baby, and soon afterwards Alice became pregnant with her twelfth.  Lizzie's pregnancy did not go well.  Ellen Ewing tells us that Lizzie 

wrote singularly matter-of-fact letters to Alice about her prospects.  Her condition caused anxiety; but she seemed more concerned about the inconvenience to others than about the danger to herself. [1]

Alice kept "Dearest Lizzie's last letter" which included the lines

I am afraid I am tiring all my friends.  I wish I could set all at ease.  I can assure you I should be glad of freedom myself, though to be purchased at such a cost; but it has to be done and the sooner it comes, the sooner it will be over.  My dear husband gets very anxious. [2]

Lizzie died on 14 May 1866 after a week of puerperal fever.  There is no birth or death certificate for the babe.  Mary Hopkinson wrote in the Preface

Aunt Lizzie was very dear to those of her nephews and nieces who were old enough to know her. [3]

After Lizzie's death, Sissie Harrison kept house for her elder brother.  Their last years were spent at Dean Hill House on Matlock Green, just to the north of Matlock in Derbyshire.  (The house stood near today's cricket pitch).  The Harrisons were always close to the Hopkinsons – for example, in the 1881 census for their household we find 17 year old medical student Albert Hopkinson staying there.  

Sissie was a favourite of the Hopkinson family and she often visited and took holidays with them.  She and Alice were very close, as can be seen from a letter Alice wrote to her on 9 November 1904.  Alice was then 80 years old and Sissie, now alone after her brother's death, was 66:  

My pen has hardly been unsheathed this last fortnight.  My heart turns lovingly and trustingly to my dear Sissy and, as there is rather more life in me today, notwithstanding much pain from local troubles, I will use a little of it in sending you a few lines. [4]

Almshouses at Matlock Green,
by Mary and Angus Hogg

In the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Sissie built almshouses at Matlock Green, not far from her home at Dean Hill House.  

Above the door is the dedication 

To the Glory of God – these Almshouses are built and as a memorial of her beloved brother, Wm Harrison MD, of Dean Hill House, Matlock, by his sister, Margaret Harrison, to provide rest for the aged poor 

Sissie outlived Alice, dying on 6 March 1918.

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 47

[2] ibid., p. 47-8

[3] ibid., p. XXVI

[4] ibid., p. 109

71. Alice's special friends

John spent his days surrounded by other men whether he was at work, at the chapel or in the Council chamber.  He must regularly have encountered men he knew from his schooldays such as his fellow Alderman Joseph Thompson, but we don't know the names of his particular friends.  Alice, her daughter Mary wrote, "being so lovable and sympathetic" was "endeared to many".[1]  Mary names four special friends:  Miss Margaret Harrison, Miss J Knox Smith, Mrs West and Mrs Haworth.  A quick look at these friends might help cast more light on Alice and her interests and sympathies.

Mrs Haworth was probably Mary Ann, the widow of Dr George Haworth, who lived nearby in Oxford Road and had five children who were much the same age as Alice's own children.  

I think Mrs West was the widow of John West, who ran a well known gas meter manufactury at Oldham.  Elizabeth West lived with her children at 151 Plymouth Grove, not far from Alice.  She was clearly a woman of some enterprise and energy – when her husband died, she ran the business for a time.  Born in Manchester and the same age as Alice, she shared Alice's love of gardens.  Alice wrote of the garden at Grove House, their home from 1874

Our garden is lovely; the shadows fall so beautifully.  There are some special elements of beauty about this place; it is a privilege to have something to feast the eye upon [2]

Mrs West was a life member of the Royal Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society.  In the Manchester Courier of 14 May 1880, I find her listed as one of the Lady Visitors at the Northern Counties Hospital for the Incurables in Ardwick Green for the week beginning 17 May.  Her fellow Lady Visitor was "Mrs Hopkinson, Grove House".  I wonder if this was actually Alice or whether it should have read "Miss Hopkinson", and it was really Mary, always an energetic volunteer worker, who was going to the Hospital that week.  

Royal Society of Chemistry landmark
at the site of Dr Angus Smith's laboratory
in Grosvenor Square, Manchester, by Duncan Hull

Miss Jessie Knox Smith was a Scotswoman who lived in York Place with her uncle Dr Robert Angus Smith, the distinguished analytic chemist who discovered the phenomenon which we now call "acid rain", caused by burning coal rich in sulphur.  One of Dr Angus Smith's early papers was "On the Air and Rain of Manchester", which must surely have interested John, as Manchester's air pollution was of great concern to the city council.  

Dr Angus Smith's wide interests included spiritualism and his native Scotland.   Jessie evidently shared Alice's love of mountain scenery.  She and her uncle must have spent long hours beside Loch Etive, north of Oban, as she provided the delicate illustrations for Dr Angus Smith's book Loch Etive and the sons of Uisnach (which can be read online at the National Library of Scotland website).  

Miss Harrison was a particularly close friend who came from near Skipton.  Her Christian name was Margaret but she was always known to the Hopkinsons as Sissie.  Fourteen years Alice's junior, she was the younger sister of Dr William Harrison, the husband of Alice's sister Lizzie.

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. XXX

[2] ibid., p. 76

70. Esther Wells: the daughter-in-law who converted to Anglicanism

It is Alfred's eldest son Arthur who suggests that the marriage gave John and Alice some concern on religious grounds.  Esther had come into the Hopkinson family in 1865 as a 19 year old governess.  Alfred was then 14 years old and he quickly fell for Esther – within months John was writing to Alice 

Alfred was expressing great approval of Miss Wells to me last night. [1]

One of John and Alice's criteria for applicants for the job was that they should be able to fit in with the family's religious education, and Esther's letter of application was supported by a letter from her 31 year old sister Miss Anne Eliza Wells, a teacher:

Ours is, I may say, hereditarily a congregational family … My uncle Mr Arthur Wells' name is probably familiar to you in connection with many religious and denominational efforts.  And my two sisters with myself, have long been members of the Church here.  Esther has, of course, been brought up in the same persuasion, but is not yet a member.  The Rev C Colemance, our present minister, considers her in a hopeful state of mind; but she has not yet made a public profession.  And we should be most thankful to see her admitted into a truly Christian family where impressions which I know she has received would be encouraged and brought forward. [2]

John and Alice were very pleased with the letters from the Wells sisters and offered Esther the post.  We don't know how long Esther stayed with them.  Her father Henry Wells, a Nottingham solicitor, died aged 61 in October 1869 and she may have been called home that year.  By 1870 she was back in Nottingham living with her rich uncle Arthur Wells and returning to Manchester as a guest and friend of Alfred's sister Ellen, seven years her junior and evidently a great admirer.

Esther barely appears in Ellen Ewing's account after her appearance as a governess.  As Gerald Hurst says in his Preface,

the Esther Wells whose first appearance in its pages under the date of 1865 presents to later generations what seems a strange contrast with the vivid and dominant personality whom they knew in after years. [3]

But we know that Alfred had fallen deeply in love with her.  And Ellen Ewing includes a letter in which Alice wrote to John on 9 March 1872 

Alfred proposes to come home by Nottingham, staying a few days.  Poor lad.  I feel his heart is there.  I am sorry for it under the present circumstances [4]

but it isn't clear why Alice was sorry nor what the "present circumstances" were.  Possibly Alice is thinking of her struggle to adapt to young John's engagement to Evelyn, as "the Mother's sympathy, confidence and love are no longer needed".  Possibly Esther was steadily turning Alfred down.  Possibly Alice wasn't convinced that Alfred and Esther were really suited; the marriage was to be an unhappy one.  And possibly it was because Esther had by then been confirmed into the Church of England and this development had made them doubt Alice and John's understanding of Esther and whether she was the right wife for Alfred.

Esther's son Arthur – who was devoted to his mother and entirely on her side – gives Esther's side of the story and we have no other.  Before her marriage

She came under the influence of a great priest, Canon Hutton of Sneinton, and was confirmed.  It was a brave step, and she needed grace and courage then and thereafter, for at the time of her marriage to my father he was strongly anti-Church, and especially bitter against Baptism.  His people were Congregationalists or, as they preferred to be called in the old days, Independents.  They would have been glad to get my mother back to the denomination in which she had been brought up.  But nothing shook her loyalty to the Church, nor her determination to have her children baptized.  I expect the battle was fought and won over me, for my six younger brothers and sisters were baptized as a matter of course. [5]

And so on 3 July 1873 Alfred and Esther were married at St. Leodegarius' Church in what was then the village of Basford outside Nottingham.  Their grandchildren had a story that John had pressured Esther into marrying Alfred by saying that the lad would take his own life if she didn't agree to marry him.  After spending so long in John's (virtual) company, I find this absolutely impossible to believe.  I can imagine one of the sisters, perhaps Ellen, would be very keen to emphasise to Esther quite how much Alfred was besotted with her, but I cannot think those serious girls would make so light of the idea of suicide, so grave a sin as it was to them, and also still a crime under English law.

The officiating clergyman at the wedding was Alfred's uncle Revd George Ibberson Tubbs of St Mary's, Reading.  Like Esther, he had undergone a conversion.

When I last mentioned George Ibberson Tubbs it was at his wedding to John's sister Ellen in February 1839.  He was then a Congregationalist minister in Warminster in Wiltshire.  Eight years later he amazed his congregation at the Common Close Chapel by announcing that he was leaving for the Church of England.  The Patriot on 13 May 1847 reported that the subscribers of the Common-close Chapel of Warminster had unanimously adopted a resolution expressing their "most unfeigned regret" at the resignation of their "beloved pastor".  They deeply deplored 

the circumstances which have made it appear to him his imperative duty to sever those bonds which they had fondly hoped would have been long perpetuated

(I can only think that his studies had converted him to the Book of Common Prayer and the necessity for Bishops).  They were sending a deputation to wait upon Mr Tubbs "to request him to reconsider".  George didn't change his mind.  

St Mary's, Castle Street, Reading
by Stephen Richards

He became a priest in the Church of Ireland.  In 1850 he left his curacy in the diocese of Lismore for London, to become a curate at Trinity Church, St Mary Newington, south of the river in the parish of Lambeth.  Two years later he became incumbent of St Mary's Episcopal Chapel in Castle Street in Reading.  There he stayed for more than 30 years.  

It had been founded by breakaway Anglican evangelicals and for nearly 40 years had been outside the Church of England, taking its ministers mainly from the Calvinistic churches of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion.  In 1836 it had been accepted back into the Church of England, but it must always have been close in spirit to the Nonconformist churches – no wonder it was a good home for George Tubbs.  The church has come full circle in recent years.  In 1994 the Church of England (Continuing) was founded there and it is once more outside the Church of England.

We have no idea what John and his mother and sisters made of George's conversion to Anglicanism, nor whether George's wife Ellen agreed with him, nor how difficult it was for her to adjust to being a vicar's wife in County Tipperary.  On the other hand, we can have a pretty good idea of what John and Alice thought when Esther's brother Arthur became a Roman Catholic priest.

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 46

[2] ibid., p. 45

[3] ibid., p. VII

[4] ibid., p. 61

[5] Arthur W Hopkinson, Pastor's Progress (1942) pub. Michael Joseph Ltd., p. 134 of Religious Book Club edition

69. Evelyn Oldenbourg: the daughter-in-law with no religious belief

Dr Maclaren's guidance must have been a great resource when she was coping with the challenge that came in the person of her new daughter-in-law Evelyn Oldenbourg, and perhaps we can see both challenges in her letter to John on 9 March 1872.  Ellen Ewing quotes her saying, after she had been writing about Evelyn,

I am wondering whether it is good for us or not to hear statements contrary to what we believe to be truth; it tries me most when I see some reason in what is advanced and yet feel the view at variance with what I have long been accustomed to regard as undoubted truth.  If, by this means, we are driven to prayer and more earnest searching, no doubt the result will be good.  Certainly it is more easy to go on undisturbed, enjoying our belief and living upon it, refusing to listen to any opposition.  What is right is another question [1]

Evelyn, a school friend of young John's sister Ellen, came from a very different background.  Her father Gustave Oldenbourg, who died when she was a baby, was a German-born stuff and yarn merchant in Leeds, and her mother Angelina was from Yorkshire.  Ellen Ewing quotes her mother Evelyn's memoirs:

Perhaps my young life abroad and such a varied outlook and education did not quite fit with the somewhat serious severe atmosphere of this family, though I was happier there than anywhere else. [2]

Katharine Chorley, remembering her Aunt Evelyn, thought that the "months on end" Evelyn had spent with family in the "so much softer and sunnier and more expansive" surroundings of Dresden and Munich had 

infused into her outlook the richness and the freedom which raised her mentally a head and shoulders above almost all the women I knew when I was young. [3]

She described with great fondness Evelyn's unconventionality and eccentricities, her energy and bravery, indicating that Evelyn, who was to suffer such dreadful losses in her life, had no religious faith

her philosophy of life threw her on to her own resources and offered her neither comfort nor explanation.  She did without and, unarmed, threw back the challenge of suffering with a gallant 'No Surrender'. [4]

A greater contrast with her future mother-in-law cannot be imagined.  Evelyn's daughter Ellen Ewing wrote

Evelyn sensed that she was not entirely acceptable, though she probably failed to realize the spiritual upheaval which her advent in the family had caused, especially in the Mother and even the level headed Ellen. [5]

Almost everything about her seems to have been a challenge.  When Alice visited John and Evelyn in their first home near Birmingham, she wrote to John on 21 April 1873

Evelyn is really a fascinating hostess; her bright, happy face is quite contagious.  I must follow up your advice and not trouble about scratched furniture, plate, etc., and all best things in daily use.  I say to myself it is only a matter of money – earlier replacement, no great concern if they can afford it, and, if not, they must use the spoilt or do without.  What say you to my conclusions? [6]

But Alice grew steadily more and more comfortable with Evelyn, writing on 18 May 1890 to John 

When left alone with Evelyn we get on very well; she is very daughterly and interesting as well, and I can say more of my mind to her than to any of the four daughters-in-law [7]

John and Evelyn had married on 4 March 1873 at St John's Church in rural Longsight, half an hour's walk west of his parents' home at Grove House (the church is now a mosque).  His younger brother Alfred was married four months later, and his marriage also took place in a parish church.

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 61

[2] ibid., p. 54

[3] Katharine Chorley, Manchester Made Them, pub Faber & Faber Ltd (1950) p. 232

[4] ibid., p. 227

[5] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 61

[6] ibid. p. 63

[7] ibid., p. 97

68. Challenges to faith: a son's imperviousness, science & new theology

John, their first child, was a strong and independent character even from babyhood.  On 21 June 1851, when he was 18 months old, his father John wrote to the little boy's grandmother Alice 

he is a dear little fellow, most loving and affectionate but so determined and headstrong that we sometimes hardly know how to treat him.  He has so much perseverance and energy that he will make either a very good or a very bad man [1]

In 1852 little Johnnie was impeding his mother as she wrote to John

I am writing whilst Johnnie is at my side telling me he wants to be naughty; you must excuse incoherency. [2]

We can see how much careful thought Alice and John gave to the best way of bringing up their children in a letter of Alice's in February 1854

Johnnie has been getting very crooked with Grandpapa this afternoon.  The scene made me pray that we might be spared to bring up our dear children – harshness and hastiness would ruin Johnnie, whereas gentle loving correction seems to bring out all his tenderest affection.  I have had occasion to put him to bed twice lately; when he comes to himself the dear little fellow has clung to me with more than his usual affection.  Alfred is rather obstreperous; he has a prouder spirit than Johnnie.  I fancy he will be more difficult to subdue yet he is a winning pleasant child [3]

They hoped fervently that their children would come to experience conversion, the experience that Fanny Dickens had described to the Revd James Griffin:

By degrees my eyes were opened, and I saw with shame and confusion my utter worthlessness in the sight of God, and that unless I came to Him through His dear Son, I could not be saved  

They hoped and prayed that daily Bible reading, chapel attendance and careful teaching would help the children on their way.  They often spoke of it to each other, as John wrote to Alice in August 1867 from Paris, when young John was 18  

We went to a little prayer meeting at eight.  There were several very earnest faithful addresses.  Oh how I longed that it might be the turn of our dear John's conversion [4]

But young John was impervious to all their teaching.  From her visit in October 1881 to young John and Evelyn in Kensington, Alice wrote to John in something like bewilderment

There is very much to be thankful for in this home – a growing mutual affection and, in the main, a wholesome training of the children.  But I do feel the want of religion in the home; it is like the perpetual banishment of a cherished needed friend.  And yet, strange to say, John seems to be more of a 'good' man than many a professing religious man. [5]

This was a conundrum that she and John had not expected.  But it didn't affect their relationship with their remarkable son.  In Bertram Hopkinson's memoir, he wrote of old John Dewhurst that his nonconformist principles were 

the expression of a sturdy independence of character, and it taught an almost stern devotion to truth and duty.  These were the qualities which Alice Hopkinson learnt from her father and passed on to her son.  Of the narrowness which sometimes marred the nonconformist faith in those days there was none in her teaching.  Thus it was, that though John Hopkinson in part rejected the form of her creed, he was able to keep its essence, and this slight divergence never affected the sympathy between him and his mother.  To the end of his life it remained, a perpetual joy to both of them [6]

In the years after Alice's death in 1910 her children generally drifted away from Congregationalism but not necessarily from faith, her daughters especially remaining truly devout.  Alfred was clearly the most torn in mind, leaving a legacy in his Will to the Rusholme Road Chapel Sunday School, disapproving heartily of infant baptism, but finding himself strongly drawn to the paintings of the Madonna he found in his holidays on the Continent.  His niece Katharine Chorley wrote that he had "a rather troubled spirit" and, she suspected, "an unresolved philosophy of life." [7] Distinct social differences had opened up between chapel people and church-goers by the early 20th century, but she thought that the great draw of the Church of England among her family and neighbours was on aesthetic grounds and because of the "grave and noble dignity of the Book of Common Prayer".  Her father's brothers and sisters had deserted one by one the Congregationalist chapels of their upbringing and she felt they were "drawn by the alluring beauty and majesty of the Litany" [8]

The second challenge to John and Alice's faith were the momentous 19th century developments in science and scholarship which brought immense difficulties to so many.  Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and the eruption into British scholarship of liberal German theology are the most famous examples of this.  

Alfred could remember the shock of the liberal theology.  He wrote in his memoirs of how in Puritan households like theirs the Bible was the literature that "absorbed most attention and was read most constantly" and was considered "literally and verbally inspired" and that

I can remember at the age of fifteen or sixteen feeling rather shocked by the remark of an older boy that what is recounted in the Bible before the Call of Abraham must be taken as really allegorical. [9]

Dr Alexander Maclaren
(1826-1910)

Alice's adjustment must have been made much easier by the minister at the chapel she now attended, the Union Baptist Chapel in Oxford Road, close to their home in York Place.  Her daughters Ellen and Mary had started attending in 1873 and Alice must have followed soon after.  The minister there was the celebrated Dr Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910) who was famous as an expository preacher – that is, he explained in detail the meaning of Scriptural texts.  Listening to his sermons would be like listening to an excellent lecture.  In a lunchtime lecture in 2010 (it can be found on the Evangelical Library website), the Revd Gary Brady quoted an American professor of homiletics who described Dr Maclaren [10] as one of the great preachers of the world – 

First of all, he had the physical outfit of an impressive speaker – an erect figure, a good action, a flashing eye, an expressive countenance, a carrying voice.  The character lying back of the utterance was one of singular purity, depth, simplicity and humility.

Alice's son Alfred describes meeting the great actor Sir Henry Irving at the opening of the John Rylands Library, when Dr Maclaren had given a speech.  Sir Henry had been greatly impressed – "Good heavens," he said to Alfred, "What an actor that man would have made!"[11] 

The Union Chapel was built to hold 1,500 worshippers and its seats were filled morning and evening to hear Dr Maclaren preach for anything up to 45 minutes.  And Alice could actually hear Dr Maclaren's clear, carrying voice and distinct enunciation long after her deafness cut her off from so many other things.  Extracts from Dr Maclaren's works can be read online on the Bible Hub website or from the link at the bottom of his Wikipedia page so we can see how he dealt with some of the puzzles posed by science.  On Genesis 1:26 he wrote [12]

We are not to look to Genesis for a scientific cosmogony, and are not to be disturbed by physicists' criticisms on it as such. Its purpose is quite another, and far more important; namely, to imprint deep and ineffaceable the conviction that the one God created all things …

The work of the first four days is the preparation of the dwelling-place for the living creatures who are afterwards created to inhabit it.  How far the details of these days' work coincide with the order as science has made it out, we are not careful to ask here ... 

On the sixth day the earth is replenished with living creatures.  Then, last of all, comes man, the apex of creation.  Obviously the purpose of the whole is to concentrate the light on man; and it is a matter of no importance whether the narrative is correct according to zoology, or not.  What it says is that God made all the universe, that He prepared the earth for the delight of living creatures

When it came to the new German "higher criticism" which applied scholarly historical and critical methods to Bible study, Gary Brady quotes Willis B Glover, who wrote of Dr Maclaren in 1954 that 

His greatness as a preacher rested on his emphasis on evangelical certainties rather than on the reconciling of old theology with new theories. Nevertheless, the example of so great a preacher who was tolerant of higher criticism and who even entertained the possibility that the story of the fall was mythical could not have been without effect.

While old Lord Shaftesbury in his undeviating and rigid Fundamentalism was dreadfully troubled by the threat from the higher criticism (scientific discoveries, as Alice's great-granddaughter Georgina Battiscombe explains in her biography of the Earl, [13] bothered him far less), Alice could leave it all to Dr Maclaren, secure in his learning and guidance.  

Next:  69. Evelyn Oldenbourg: the daughter-in-law with no religious belief

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 18

[2] ibid., p. 20

[3] ibid., p. 24

[4] ibid., p. 50

[5] ibid., p. 77-8

[6] Original Papers by the late John Hopkinson, D.Sc., F.R.S. edited with a Memoir by B. Hopkinson, B.Sc (1901), Vol 1, pub. CUP, (available online at archive.org)

 p. xii

[7] Katharine Chorley, Manchester Made Them, pub Faber & Faber Ltd (1950), p. 218

[8] ibid., p172-4

[9] Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., LL.D., Penultima (1930) pub. Martin Hopkinson Ltd, p. 79

[10] cf https://www.evangelical-library.org.uk/articles/Maclaren_Lecture.pdf

[11] Penultima, p. 242

[12] https://biblehub.com/sermons/auth/maclaren/the_vision_of_creation.htm

[13] Georgina Battiscombe, Shaftesbury: A Biography of the Seventh Earl 1801-1885, (1974), pub Constable & Company Ltd

67. "Spiritual worship" & "mockery of religion"?

John and Alice were deeply attached to the ways of their own chapel.  This wasn't without music, as is sometimes said, as we have seen in the story of Henry Burnett & Fanny Dickens (in Chapter 27 )

We can see that Alice enjoyed music in chapel from her letter to John on 30 October 1865 from Bristol, where she was staying with her sister-in-law Mrs Alice Wills

I was at Chapel twice yesterday.  I enjoyed the singing and the evening service.  The morning minister I could not hear.  The chapel is really beautiful.  I only hope that the idea of spiritual worship will be retained amongst us along with so much that charms the senses  [1]

As Bijan Omrani wrote in God is an Englishman (2025), Puritanism was

the move made from devotion through the senses to devotion through word and intellect 

and Alice is clearly rather unsettled by Congregational chapels adopting a rather more welcoming approach to the appeal to the senses.  Her grandson Arthur wrote of his grandparents

What saved them from the unattractiveness of Puritanism was their intense love for poetry … They loved the beauty of Nature as revealing the glory of God.  It is strange that only in religious matters would they banish sacramentalism from life.  My grandmother was an enthusiastic admirer of Wordsworth, the most sacramentally-minded poet of her time.  She used to enjoy telling the story of how one day she was walking near Grasmere and saw a venerable figure coming towards her: she asked a roadmender seated on his heap of stones, "Is that Wordsworth?" and met the rebuke, "That's Mister Wordsworth, mam."  My grandfather's chief enthusiasm was for John Milton, as combining poet and Puritan. [2]

As John's willingness to attend the Anglican service in the cathedral shows, he was all in favour of union between Protestant denominations.  Catholicism was another matter.  Arthur wrote that

the austerity bred by their type of religion was lightened by a true kindliness towards all honest folk, whatever their religious convictions – except, of course, Roman Catholics, whom they would not have regarded as honest folks.  This deep-rooted prejudice of "No Popery" was an ugly flaw. [3]

"No Popery" was the centuries' old cry of Protestant England.  Hostility to Catholicism became a live topic again with the mass migration of Irish Catholics into Manchester from the late 18th century, and the ancient fears were stirred up once more when Pope Pius IX reinstated Catholic church organisation and hierarchy in 1850.  But the edited letters show that Alice and John could take a more nuanced view than simply "No Popery".  They evidently weren't so ferociously a Protestant as to refuse to set foot in a Catholic church, though Alice found her first visit as a young woman an upsetting experience.  When she and John visited Paris in the summer of 1855 they attended the Baroque church of Saint-Roch in the rue Saint-Honoré.  She told Alice Wills on their return to England in a letter of 25 August 1855

Paris seems wholly given up to the worship of pleasure.  We attended a Roman Catholic service in St Roch: it really was painful to me – it seemed to me nothing more than a spectacle.  I could have wept all the time; it seemed such a mockery of religion [4]

By the time Alice was in her fifties her view was rather different.  In October 1881 she went to stay with young John and Evelyn and their five small children in their home in Kensington.  One Sunday, after going to chapel and leaving unhappily because she couldn't hear a word of the service, she and Evelyn had a good walk in the sunshine.  Then

We looked into the Roman Catholic Church and saw Cardinal Manning in his scarlet robes escorted in all form to the pulpit … The super-abundance of ceremony and symbol appears like the return to the infancy of religion instead of going on to perfection … My desire was to worship; but the bowings curtsyings and movements of the officiating minister (I suppose I ought to say Priest) completely distracted my attention.  A Quaker's silent meeting would have suited me better and proved a better help to devotion.  Minds are differently constituted, and in this way we explain to ourselves that there are those who find help in these outward forms. [5]

Cardinal Manning (1808-92)

So now she was considering the idea that there were people who found help in the "outward forms" that she once felt were "such a mockery of religion".  She and Evelyn had probably seen the 73 year old Cardinal at the Pro-Cathedral on Kensington High Street.  (The building of Westminster Cathedral had not yet begun; the Pro-Cathedral was destroyed in the Second World War and the Church of Our Lady of Victories stands on the site).  Cardinal Manning was one of the century's famous converts to Catholicism, having been an eminent High Church clergyman before his conversion.  The ceremonial and the "outward forms" of the Catholicism nearly a century before Vatican II would certainly be quite unlike anything Alice was used to.  

John's views are not made clear in the edited letters, though we can see he wasn't exactly friendly when he wrote on 29 November 1885 after Alfred was unsuccessful in the election

The brewing interest, the public house keepers and the Roman Catholics – these carried the day against Alfred [6]

but, having attended the service of the Established Church in the Anglican cathedral as mayor, he also went to a Roman Catholic bazaar and fancy fair in aid of the charitable works of the sisters who lived at St Gertrude's House, Alexandra Park.  

The items for sale at the bazaar, reported the Manchester Evening News on 5 December 1882, included articles sent to the nuns from churches in Borneo, India, Mozambique and Fiji.  The 8th Earl of Denbigh, a Catholic convert, opened the bazaar and Lady Herbert of Lea, known for her philanthropic work, was running a stall.  She was Elizabeth Herbert, society hostess, writer, translator, a devoted friend, supporter and assistant of Florence Nightingale, and she had become a Catholic under Cardinal Manning's influence when she was widowed.  In this unlikely setting there was stout Protestant Alderman Hopkinson in his capacity as mayor, and giving a brief address after Lord Denbigh had called for support

whether we called ourselves Catholics or Protestants, we ought to do all we could, according to our consciences, to help the progress of Christianity among the heathen.  (Applause)

Into John and Alice's settled world of faith during their married life there came three challenges.  The first was from raising their beloved eldest son; the second from the challenges to faith from the new science; and the third came from unexpected in-laws.

Next:  68. Challenges to faith: a son's imperviousness, science & new theology

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 47

[2] Arthur W Hopkinson, Pastor's Progress (1942) pub. Michael Joseph Ltd., p. 216 of Religious Book Club edition, 

[3] ibid.

[4] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910, p. 25

[5] ibid., p. 78

[6] ibid., p. 90

66. "Impossible for us to be Conservatives": being a Nonconformist

Nearly all the religious disabilities set up after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 had been removed when John was a little boy, but they were not quite gone and they were not forgotten.  Alfred wrote that 

It was impossible for us to be Conservatives – to be content with existing conditions at a time when Nonconformists were excluded from the Public Schools and the Universities; when contribution to Church Rates was compulsory and when even the graveyards by the churches which were called national, were closed to almost half of the nation [1]

The Great Gate of Trinity College
by Andrew Dunn

The last of the old religious "Tests" that restricted the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham to members of the Church of England had not yet been abolished.  So when Alfred's elder brother John reached the peak of his academic career at Trinity College, Cambridge, the Manchester Evening News of 9 February 1871 quickly picked up the report coming from the Cambridge correspondent of the Daily News (the paper founded by Charles Dickens as a radical rival to the right-wing Morning Chronicle):

A general rumour prevails that Dr Hopkinson, the senior wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman, will be unable to be presented to a fellowship of his college in consequence of his being a Nonconformist, his religious convictions preventing his signing the Thirty-nine Articles, and, possessing a stalwart conscience, he cannot consider signing these Articles a mere matter of form.

Incidentally, John didn't actually have strong religious convictions but, as his son Bertram wrote "at Cambridge he greatly relished his position as a Nonconformist and Radical among the Tory Churchmen, and seized every opportunity of playing the Philistine."  [2]

In the 1850s non-Anglicans had at last been allowed to go to the universities, but men who were serious in their own religious convictions were never able to take up professorships, fellowships and other senior positions because of the barrier of having to subscribe to the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England.  This had continued to be "a cause of dispute and bitterness both within and beyond" the universities, as The Times noted on 14 June 1871.  The University Tests Bill, which would abolish the restriction that fettered professorships, fellowships and the like, was making its way through Parliament and on 17 March 1871 The Times reported that it would probably become law, its opponents having at last reached the position that they were 

only anxious that the change shall be made consistently with the full maintenance of Christian teaching.  Such language is very different from what we have heard in years past, when the struggle was avowedly one of Church against Dissent, and the clerical garrisons of the Universities thought it their duty to defend the fortress against every one beyond their pale ... Within the last few years two Senior Wranglers have been prevented, and a third, if this Bill does not pass, will be prevented, from obtaining a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge.  The individual suffers, the College suffers, ability and industry are discouraged.

The third Senior Wrangler was young John.  In fact, Trinity College changed its own laws before the Bill passed.  But John found himself in the eye of the storm and his brother Alfred wrote years later 

I remember well how at various meetings my brother's case was alluded to, as he had been both Senior Wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman, and how he used to say: "They made a little lion of me and made me roar against the disabilities of Nonconformists"  [3]

We can see how the memory of the civic disabilities stayed with old John Hopkinson from a letter he wrote on 29 November 1885 when Alfred had just had an unsuccessful run at being elected to Parliament and the Liberals had lost the election

the Tories can't do much harm in home legislation … They can't re-impose the Test Acts or treat dissenters as criminals … They can't restore the power of the landlords or take back the franchise  [4]

The Nonconformists in Manchester lived in a culture of striving.  Perhaps this came from their history – the Church of England's long struggle for sole supremacy in England and Wales from the time of Charles II's restoration had kept Protestant Nonconformists outside the power and status of the ruling classes.  It was true that they had been left free to succeed in the new and competitive fields of commerce and finance, but they were very conscious of their excluded position.  The effect of this culture of striving seemed, to later generations, strangely paradoxical.  As Gerald Hurst wrote in his Preface

The parents' Puritanism had windows which opened on two worlds.  One window always faced 'eternity'; the other, disregarding the mediaeval conceit that citizenship is in Heaven, constantly contemplated hard work, self-help, conquest. [5]

Alfred's eldest son Arthur, who became an Anglican priest, wrote of his grandparents' Puritanism

I was sorely puzzled by its inconsistencies, particularly the assumption that God will bless His own with worldly success, and that failure to achieve it is a sign of divine disapproval [6]

Alfred himself felt his parents' attitude was more nuanced.  Without denying that they welcomed and applauded worldly success, he explained that it was secondary to their faith:

In my old home Evangelical religion certainly prevailed and religion was the subject which was regarded by our parents as the most important of any, but it did not lead either of them to endeavour to impose their views upon their children after they were in a position really to think for themselves, but by precept and by practice they presented Evangelical religion in a favourable light.  

Their adhesion to it did mean undoubtedly that there was something, in their opinion, more important than worldly success and not dependent on the opinions held by other people.  It is true that, out of kindly consideration for the habits and opinions of others on matters that were not vital, they would conform to the customs current amongst the people they associated with.  

For example, my father, I know, disliked the paraphernalia then thought necessary at funerals in all classes and the extravagant expense to which people even of very small means were put in order to give what they thought a becoming funeral to their relatives or friends; but I have seen him on a hot day, when he would gladly have worn a straw hat, walking down to the old chapel with a heavy crape band round his silk hat and a scarf over his shoulders tied with a bow at the back.  The cost of providing crape and various signs of mourning, including black gloves, for everybody invited to a funeral, must have been a terrible burden to many families. [7]

Historian Tom Holland in Dominion (2019) in his description of the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie gives us an understanding of how the emphasis on worldly success could come about.  When Carnegie's Scottish Presbyterian parents, he wrote, travelled to America

they had brought with them, just as the Pilgrim Fathers had once done, the knowledge that regeneration did not come easily to fallen humanity.  A man had to live in obedience to his calling.  Only if he laboured as though everything were dependent on his own exertions would reward then come from God.

And this striving and this view of life was especially unsurprising as John was raised and formed in 19th century Manchester – a city of competition, dynamic, innovative, immensely proud of its importance to the nation and Empire and keen to trumpet all its citizens' achievements to the world.

Next:  67. "Spiritual worship" & "mockery of religion"?

Notes

[1] Sir Alfred Hopkinson, K.C., LL.D., Penultima (1930) pub. Martin Hopkinson Ltd, p. 36

[2] Original Papers by the late John Hopkinson, D.Sc., F.R.S. edited with a Memoir by B. Hopkinson, B.Sc (1901), Vol 1, pub. CUP, p. xxvi

(available online at archive.org)

[3] Penultima, p. 243

[4] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 90

[5] ibid., p. XI

[6] Arthur W Hopkinson, Pastor's Progress (1942) pub. Michael Joseph Ltd., p. 217 of Religious Book Club edition

[7] Penultima, p. 131-2