Yonge, C. M. (1887 ). Under the Storm. Hamburg, Tredition Classics (from Gutenberg).

 Back at work so a little sporadic but hope to get one day a week in the BL.

Over the years I have heard Charlotte M. Yonge disparaged as "pious" and "goody" many times. But because I read the <i>Little Duke</i> when I was about ten I've kept an open mind (not least because the other epithet often levelled at her, "didactic" is a word I would like to rescue).  So I opened <i>Under the Storm</i> with some expectations but unfearfully.

It is a superb, fascinating, nuanced book and if you like children's historicals go buy it immediately. I found a copy on Amazon from Tredition Classics but you can download it as well.

This is a book which sets out to tell the story of ordinary people in the English Civil War, and in the tale of a boy uninterested in the affairs of King and Parliament, but loyal unto death to the Church, it really does achieve this, despite Steadfast Kenton pausing in his daily business to assist Charles II and Jane Lane. In addition, unlike many of the 19th century authors Yonge tries very hard to conjure the period, so that she makes it clear that the life of a middle or upper class woman was still one of work and domesticity, that relationships between master and man were far more intimate (if not necessarily nicer) and that behaviour is a complex thing.

The story: when their mother dies in childbirth Patience, all of eleven, becomes the housewife. The eldest son Jephthah is a bit of a waste of space, caught up by any idea and uninterested in the farm. The second son, Steadfast, is a "clown", a "lump" but hard working, conscientious and like his sister Patience, is able to read--one of the interesting things in this book is that quickness is not automatically linked with intellgence. The two younger children are (Je)Rusha, who is about eight, and the little Benino who is a baby at the start but turns into a slight young man who ends up training as a parson. There is also Emlyn, the little daugher of a Royalist who they find and look after and who Steadfast falls in love with.

Things go even worse for the children when John Kenton, their faither, is killed by looting cavaliers. Jeph, looking for a cause, rushes off to join Parliament, leaving his siblings to fend for themselves, and turns into a canting puritan who is secure in his self justification. It is Steadfast Kenton who, with Patience, keeps the family together, paying the due for the land and holding to it even tho they are unable to live in the now burned house and survive in a hovel in the woods.

Of Jeph Yonge writes, 

"No doubt he believed in this reward himself, in his relief at finding his brothers and sisters all together and not starving, and considered their condition a specia blessing due to his own zeal, instead of to Steadfast's patient exertion." (83)

But Steadfast holds a secret, the location of the church plate, and just as all is going well, he is attacked by Royalists, alerted by Emlyn (now in service and who tries yo persuade him to sell hte plate so they can marry sooner ), who assert it is the King's plate (147) and is mortally wounded. He takes several years to die, during which time Emlyn (having been engaged to Steadfast) leaves for a match with a long lost cousin and heir, and Patience turns down an offer of marriage. He lives long enough to hand over the plate to the returned minister (and for his brother to marry in Ireland and give over the land, which Rusha and her husband inherit, p. 147) The book ends with the return of the old service and pictutes peoplestruggling to remember the responses. (187)  And then with Stead's death.Both are described beautifully,

 

But what is fascinating about the book is that this is very much A Plague on Both Their Houses.  Yonge has no illiusions why many people fought: "many of the country people were too ignorant to understand the difference between the sides, but only took part with their squire, or if they loved their clergyman, clung to him." (97) and is it this clinging to Church that she explores.

 

The children's mother was a Puritan (hence their names) but there is no instinctive siding with one or the other. Jeph, it is made clear, acts in a rush. Earlier he was seen cheering the King's men. Jeph, we see acquire the canting language of the extreme Puritan, castigating Emlyn as "The child of a Midianitish woman!" (86) but in reality not the kind of man who could throw out a child.Yonge is not interested in ideology as such but what it covers. Of Jeph she writes that he "expoudned his singular mercies, which apparently meant is achievements in kiling Cavaliers...One of these mercies was the retention of his home and land, though he kindly explained that his brothers and sisters were welcome to get their livelihood there while he was serving with the army but some day he should come home.." (87) Later, he acquires an Irish estate and a Papist wife. His Puritanism, it is made clear, is only skin deep. But this, Yonge makes clear, is not always the case. In dealing with Roundheads, Stead is "a good deal confused between the piety and good conduct of these Roundheads, in contrast with their utter contempt of the Church, and rude dealing with all he had been taught to hold sacred." (91)

 

And even a Puritan approved minister, as is brought in by the new Lord when the old one dies, can be a good man (113) even if he be Presbyterian. 

"Stead was puzzled. The minister was not like the soldiers whom he had heard raving about the reign of the saints, and abusing the church. He prayed for the King's having a good deliverance from his troubles, and for the peace of the kingdom, and he gave out that there was to be a week of fasting, preaching and preparation for the Lord's Supper.' (114) Patience admires him and feels him "lawful" tempting Stead to give up the plate to the new minister Only after he discusses it with an old Prelate in the neighbourhood, who agrees to conduct a secret Whitsuntide service "from the book" does he decide against.

When selling to the Royalists, "Whatever the country people brought into the town was eagerly bought up, and was paid for, not often in the coin of the realm, but by tokens made of tin or some such metal with odd stamps upon them, and though they could be used as money they would not go nearly as far as the sums they were held to represent--at least in anyone's hands but those of officers." (67-68) Later Jeph will assert that all market goods should be sold to the Parliametary army first, indicating both armies to be very similar in outlook, but later we are told that "Captain Venn, ... never sanctioned plunder." (108) There is also a comment which I can't find that while Roundheads were courteous to females, they showed contempt for the church, while the Royalists doffed their hats at clergy and harrassed the women of the town.

I am not at all sure however if Yonge gets all her own ironies. Frequently, Steadfast is advised, "Is not what is good enough for better men than you fit to please you?" (124) or to listen to his elders (126), from Puritan and Cavalier alike, but Steadfast reads his bible and thinks (if slowly) and goes his own way, which of course has far more in common with radical Protestantism, than it does with the "listen to the vicar" teachings of the Oxford movement which we see restored at the end of the book--althoiugh I suspect Yonge has the right of it.