In 1836 John Keble became rector of the neighboring parish of Hursley and would be, after her father, the greatest influence on the entire cast of her mind and thought. Keble's life paralleled William Yonge's: he had given up a brilliant career at Oxford, where his sermon on "National Apostasy" launched the Oxford Movement in 1833, first to fulfill family duties and then to take up the work of a parish priest. In preparing Charlotte Yonge for confirmation he recognized her brilliant mind and passionate love of history. She absorbed all he had to teach her about the doctrine of the Church of England; and in her later life, neither the claims of the Roman Catholic church on the one hand nor the prevalence of religious doubt on the other seem ever to have troubled her faith. Indeed, religious doubt is the only "sin" for which she, as a novelist, could find little sympathy. Her circle also included the family--which eventually numbered fifteen children--of George Moberly, headmaster of Winchester College. The Kebles, Moberlys, Yonges, and the Yonges' Coleridge relations formed a close circle of mutual interests and stimulation. When this group broke up in the 1860s from the inevitable causes of change and decay, Charlotte Yonge, who was excessively shy, never developed another group to replace it.From 1859 to 1874 Miss Yonge met periodically in London with a group of teenage girls who corresponded under her direction on literary and historical questions for the purpose of self-cultivation.
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