Charles Reade’s popular historical romance, The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages, represented the labor of two years. Reade was hired in 1859 by the publishers of Once a Week to help that periodical compete with Charles Dickens’s All the Year Round. Dickens had deserted those same publishers when he abruptly discontinued Household Words in 1859, having led the publication to success by publishing his own work in serial form.
The publishers would have preferred to hire work from Anthony Trollope, at that time engaged by The Cornhill Magazine. Because Reade had enjoyed recent success with It Is Never Too Late to Mend: A Matter of Fact Romance (1856), the publishers turned to him to contribute to Once a Week. Reade began a serial titled A Good Fight, which he based on the early life of Gerard Eliason, Dutch father to Erasmus.
However, an argument with the publication’s editor over changes made to Reade’s manuscript prompted the author to conclude the series abruptly. He decided to continue with the plot and advance his interest in 15th-century history, so, secluded at Oxford until 1861, he produced The Cloister and the Hearth, an extension of his previous serial at five times its length.
Reade’s background in sensation fiction allowed him to exploit the dramatic aspects of the many adventures of Gerard, and he structured the novel much like the old picaresque. With heightened emotion, he produced a book that embodied the spirit of pre-Renaissance times, emphasizing the human desire to move forward, both intellectually and artistically. Reade’s scholarly efforts are obvious in his attention to authentic detail of the era, but those details never become tedious.
An example is the description of a confectionery “on a Titanic scale,” served by Philip “the Good,” Earl of Holland, at a celebratory feast: “cathedrals of sugar, all gilt and painted in the interstices of the bas-reliefs; castles with their moats, and ditches, imitated to the life; elephants, camels, toads; knights on horseback, jousting; kings and princesses looking on; trumpeters blowing; and all these personages delicious eating.” The Cambridge History of English and American Literature comments that “the documentary method” proves triumphant in Reade’s novel, adding that Reade rises above his morass of research “to view as from a peak the dawn of the renascence over medieval Europe.”
Critics found his book most appealing in reflecting the curiosity of Reade’s own age, the excitement over new discoveries and inventions, even though set centuries earlier. At the time of its publication, Walter Besant stated in an introduction to the novel that the book was Reade’s greatest work. He declares it better than historical fiction by Sir Walter Scott, noting that the reader of The Cloister and the Hearth “breathes the air just before the Great Dawn of Learning and Religion; it is still twilight, but the birds are twittering already on the boughs; it is a time when men are weary of the past; there is no freshness or vigour in the poetry; all the tunes are old tunes.”
As with Reade’s other books, this one reflected autobiographical elements. In the rising action, Gerard loses touch with Margaret, the woman he loves, due to the plotting of his own family and the local burgomaster, Van Swikten, guilty of defrauding Margaret and her father of their fortune. Forced to flee Holland, he goes to Rome and, as an artist, meets with an honored reception and gains a certificate to marry Margaret.
When he returns home, Van Swikten has him arrested, and his plans for marriage to the pregnant Margaret are ruined. He escapes and returns to Italy with documents that prove Van Swikten’s guilt.
As he wanders through Europe, he joins a soldier, Denys, and after several adventures, Denys returns to Rotterdam with a letter for Margaret. She and Gerard’s parents are reconciled and summon Gerard home, but Van Swikten prepares a forged letter to Gerard, informing him that Margaret has died. Inconsolable, Gerard indulges in wide-ranging debauchery, blaming the church for his problems.
Rescued from a suicide attempt at drowning, Gerard comes into the care of Father Jerome and eventually becomes a Dominican monk, a position that prohibits his marriage. Reade himself had become a Fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford, an appointment that carried with it a requirement that he remain unmarried. He condemned adherence to such severe rules in the novel, suggesting the same condemnation of such controls still exercised centuries later.
Known as Brother Clement, Gerard gains a reputation for his art and language skills and eventually returns to his homeland. He sees Margaret and confronts those who had deceived him, after which the dying burgomaster returns Margaret’s fortunes. Brother Clement explains they can never marry, but Margaret leaves their son in his cell. Not knowing the child’s identity, Brother Clement shows him affection, after which Margaret reveals the child is his. She swears never to interfere with Brother Clement’s brilliant career and dies of the plague when Little Gerard is school age. Brother Clement also dies in the Dominican convent, and their orphaned son matures into the great Erasmus.
In early printings, Reade engaged in creating a format suggesting his background in drama. He inserted various typographical techniques for emphasis, including tiny type when characters whispered and all capital letters for important passages. That technique also reflected on the protagonist’s talents for manuscript calligraphy and illustration featured in the novel. The chapter structure depended heavily on dramatic scenes, and most ended abruptly, imitating the fall of a theater curtain.
Such a format may put off modern readers, as might Reade’s complicated dialogue with abundant anachronisms, as when Gerard tells his quest guide, Denys, “So prithee call me at the first blush of rosy-fingered morn, and let’s away ere the woman with the hands be stirring.” They may also chafe at the coincidence that dooms the lovers, as Reade shapes his fiction to suit history. The rendition does provide ready material for application of Marxist, feminist, and new historical criticism, with its obvious power structures, strict gender roles, and reflection of Reade’s own era and interests.
Although Reade’s works no longer enjoy the popularity afforded them in the 19th century, The Cloister and the Hearth remains easily available in both print and as electronic text. Of all Reade’s works, it is the most read in the 21st century. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature states that it escapes true classification, suggesting the novel’s whole far outweighs the sum of its parts. It concludes its entry on the novel by stating that “the age must be rich indeed” which can consider Charles Reade a minor novelist.
By the time of the 1944 edition, the introduction ranked Reade “not among the great novelists,” noting his characters as “picturesque rather than psychological” and pointing to the novel’s sensationalism as a weakness.
Bibliography
Besant, Walter. Introduction to The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade. Available online. URL: http://www.blackmask.com/jrusk/ch/ch01.htm. Downloaded on February 25, 2024.
“Cloister and the Hearth, The.” The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume 13. The Victorian Age, Part One. Available online. URL: http://www.bartleby.com/223/1311.html. Downloaded on February 25, 2024.
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