Both were principles that her parents also held sacred. William Yonge, for instance, had abandoned his military career (it was a matter of pride to Charlotte that he had seen action at Waterloo) at the behest of Mary Bargus, who was reluctant to let her daughter marry into a marching regiment. Instead he settled down in his mother-in-law's house in Otterbourne, Hampshire, where he and his wife involved themselves in good works and the education of Charlotte and her younger brother, Julian, along lines laid out in the works of Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Yonge thus grew up from infancy in a family that stressed sacrifice, charity, moral guidance, and quiet--values she was to cherish until her death.
The task of the Yonge biographer is rendered difficult by what might seem to be the family's commitment to inaction; in Georgina Battiscombe's phrase, Yonge's was "an uneventful life." She never married, was educated at home, only once traveled outside England, had a comfortable income, enjoyed good health, and held no inflammatory opinions. The most meaningful event of her existence, indeed, may well have been her confirmation, held in the autumn of 1837 under the guidance of the new local vicar, John Keble.
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