From Greene to Yonge, and more crinolines

 

The Trial by Charlotte M Yonge

published 1864

(set in 1860 in part)

Last week's post looking at Graham Greene and a charity fete also had a strong Charlotte M Yonge connection

Graham Greene: The Man for a White Elephant Stall

so it seemed time for another look at her - I have been fascinated by her for a while.

Charlotte M Yonge’s first huge success was called The Daisy Chain. When I read it and wrote about it in 2020 I said this:

The chain is supposedly the family, but quite surprisingly that is scarcely mentioned: at the beginning one of the children says that Dr May thinks of his family as his Daisy Chain, and that’s about it. (TBH I had been fully expecting that the heroine would be called Daisy, rather than Ethel.)

One of the younger children, Gertrude, is called Daisy some of the time, because she is a key part of the chain, apparently. The title of this book – which is a sequel to The Daisy Chain – is equally surprising, in a completely different way. Having read several Yonge books by now, I assumed that the trial would be metaphorical or perhaps religious – troubles and challenges for Ethel and her siblings. Those difficulties and spiritual troubles abound…

But to my astonishment it is not a metaphor: someone dies – is murdered – in the book and someone is brought to trial for the murder and there is a mystery about what happened.

Could I have BEEN  more surprised? Of course as an Agatha Christie afficionado the crime didn’t hold me up much – but then I have also (and I think uniquely) identified a mistake in Agatha Christie about Charlotte M Yonge – do consult this post.

But the trial and various related horrors and injustices are only a part of the long eventful book.

Reading Yonge reminds you of the death rate then – too many people wiped out by illnesses. Families ravaged: scarlet fever, typhus and we assume consumption. Yonge doesn’t hold back. And so unsurprisingly there are various descriptions of mourning (sometimes it seems surprising anyone was ever out of it).

But we are of a lighter heart here, so we are going to consider crinolines, a favourite topic of the moment.

Crinolines and their Comfort Zone

Crinolines – the followup

A bereaved young woman is being helped by a friend:

Mary then begged to remove her tight heavy dress, and make her comfortable.

'Oh, I can't! Then I could not go back.'

'Yes, you could; this is quite a dress; besides, one can move so much more quietly without crinoline.'…

She stood up, and unfastened her hooks. A mountain of mohair and scarlet petticoat remained on the floor, upborne by an over-grown steel mouse-trap.

The date of 1860 is mentioned, which is very much peak crinoline time.

Later, a group of them are in the local church and the opportunity arises to climb the tower and get out onto the roof – ‘The ascent of the tower was a feat performed two or three times in a lifetime at Stoneborough.’ Up they go:

At last, Aubrey, who was foremost, pushed up the trap-door, and emerged; but, as Dickie followed him, exclaimed, 'Here we are; but you ladies in crinolines will never follow! You'll stick fast for ever, and Leonard can't pass, so there you'll all have to stay.'

'Aunt Daisy will sail away like a balloon,' added Dickie, roguishly, looking back at her, and holding on his cap. But Gertrude vigorously compressed her hoop, and squeezed through, followed by Ethel and Leonard.

 (sadly, couldn't find a picture of this...)

As is only natural in a Yonge book, the expedition almost ends in disaster – someone falling over the battlements –  and Gertrude is ‘confused and distressed… by the puffs of wind at her hoop’ ie her crinoline, which is quite hard to imagine.

Elsewhere – one family heads off for America (to escape disgrace and shame), while a child, a young relative, is sent from New Zealand to England to stay with the core family..

Yonge always good for a weird Victorian health issue:

Averil had been subject to distressing attacks of gasping and rigidity, often passing into faintness; and though at the moment of emotion she often showed composure and self-command, yet that nature always thus revenged herself.

There is a romance going wrong with people misunderstanding each other. (No wonder Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver liked Charlotte M Yonge so much)

The weirdness to modern eyes of not telling members of a family what else is going on, so in one case a child literally doesn’t know if her brother is alive or dead.

Yonge doesn’t hold back on who is facing not much future…

Life, for the last five years, had been mournful work; there had been one year of blind self-will, discord, and bitterness, then a crushing stroke, and the rest exhausted submission and hopeless bending to sorrow after sorrow, with self-reproach running through all. Wearied out, she was glad to lay down the burthen, and accept the evening gleam as sunset radiance, without energy to believe it as the dawn of a brighter day.

It gets a bit much – but then, Yonge is not exaggerating the dangers and deaths. A visit to any UK graveyard of the era will show you stones with too many child deaths, families half-wiped out, women dying in childbirth.

Meanwhile the tougher members of the families in the book are out converting the heathen in a way that does not suit modern eyes. Religion plays a major, and unabashed, part in the books, and presumably that was part of their attraction for many.

 As with crinolines, Yonge is a good marker of what is going on in the outside worlds apart from religion, health and death. Croquet was just becoming very popular among the Yonge classes. There are some visitors:

Caroline and Annie Cheviot were ladylike, nice-looking girls; but when they found no croquet mallets in the garden, they seemed at a loss what life had to offer...

'I used to garden once, but we have no flower-beds now, they spoilt the lawn for croquet.'

Tom...observed that he had seen the Andersons knocking about the balls in the new gardens by the river; and proposed to go down and try to get up a match.

It is clear that Ethel and Charlotte do not think much of the idea of turning the garden into a croquet lawn, but equally don't think much of the idea of playing it in a public place.

More about Yonge in other posts – including this one listing her famous (and frankly astonishing) fans.

And, here's a shoutout for her modern fans:

Charlotte M. Yonge – The Charlotte M. Yonge Fellowship

is the website to go to - see comment below

File:Winslow Homer - Croquet Scene - Google Art Project.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

October 20, 1865 | Dillon family group including Lord Clonbr… | Flickr