The Carbonels (1895) by Charlotte M. Yonge was based on and inspired by her parents’ early years in the Hampshire village of Otterbourne and what an entertaining novel she produced from such source material.

In the summer of 1822 Captain Edmund Carbonel, who ‘had been in the army just in time for the final battles of the Peninsular war’, comes to live at Greenhow Farm ‘an estate bringing in about £500 a year.’ It is the local ‘big house’ in the village of Uphill. He is accompanied by his young wife Mary and her sister Dorothea; another younger sister Sophia is still at school in London. The Uphill people are described as ‘a thoroughly bad lot … no one will do anything with them.’ Astonished at their poverty and crudity, the Carbonels decide to reform Uphill.

While dealing with serious societal shifts of the early nineteenth century, CMY’s gentle humour illuminates young people slightly out of their depth in dealing with their cunning rural neighbours. There is the involved saga of the upside-down length of wallpaper in their drawing-room, ‘very delicate white, on which were traced in tender colouring – baskets of vine leaves and laburnhams.’ But as Dora exclaims, ‘see, the laburnhams and grapes are hanging upward.’ The origin of this interior design disagreement sets up a dangerous antipathy between one of the workmen, Dan Hewlett and Captain Carbonel. Its denouement takes place in the thrilling final chapters of the novel with the Captain Swing riots of 1830.

Before that there is the old-fashioned (and to the Carbonels) ugly church with its enormous pews and the three-decker pulpit they find peculiar. They are shocked by Dame Verdon’s school, only kept in order by her young but energetic granddaughter. Villagers are differentiated with their many and overlapping stories: the mischievous but fascinating Tirzah Todd (with her ‘gypsy connections’ ) who disposes of her poacher husband’s game; the hypocritical Nanny Barton who always puts on ‘a white apron and brought out a big Bible when she saw the ladies’ about to visit and the gentle invalid Judith Grey and her poor sister Molly, wife of Dan who ‘had been going deeper into the mire ever since.’

To modern readers the Carbonels approach to improving the villagers’ lives and prospects can often be both crass and patronising. There is a shocking scene where Dora and Sophia cut off the dirty, ragged and pungent hair of the schoolgirls in triumphant delight. ‘Lend me your scissors, Mrs Thorpe’ is Dora’s battle cry before being carried away despite the shock and weeping of the children. Captain Carbonel, with the assent of Mary, reprimands Dora, ‘but the children were not your slaves … You have done more harm than you will undo in a hurry.’ Tirzah Todd warns her neighbours against the ‘gentlefolk, with their soft words and such’ who will treat them all, ‘just like the blackamoors.’

This is a slight Charlotte M. Yonge novel in comparison with many of her earlier and best works, one more of her many publications for the National Society. Nonetheless The Carobonels is full of argument, memorable characters and there was a sequel too.

This book was part of the November 2023 CMY Fellowship book group read.