The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana

by Jess Nevins

The Cloister and the Hearth (1859)

copyright © Jess Nevins 2022

The Cloister and the Hearth was written by Charles Reade and first appeared as “A Good Fight” (Once a Week, July-Sept 1859). Reade (1814-1884), a long-time Fellow at Oxford's Magdalen College, is notable in English letters as the inventor of reform literature (a.k.a. "Fiction with a Purpose"), as a friend of Wilkie Collins (who advised Reade on his writings), and as the author of The Cloister and the Hearth, which is the work he is most known for.

The Cloister and the Hearth is the story of the parents of Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536), the Dutch theologian and philosopher. Little is known about Erasmus' parents, and that only from the writings of Erasmus himself. Reade used Erasmus' work as the basis for The Cloister and the Hearth, which is why the novel does not display the excessive melodrama which can be found in many of Reade's other works and which is one of Reade's notable flaws–Reade had too much respect for the historical truth to mar it with invention.

Gerard Eliasson lives in Tergou with his family. His parents are Elias and Catherine, two decent and respectable Dutch burghers. Gerard wants to join the clergy when he is old enough, but on the way to Rotterdam to enter an art competition he meets Margaret Brandt and her father, "Peter the Magician," and does the pair of them a good turn.

Gerard and Margaret fall in love, but Gerard’s parents are opposed to it. They are in desperate financial straits, and will be dependent on the revenue from Gerard’s benefice, which came as the favor of a family friend, and so can see that Gerard is dooming them and his brothers and sisters to permanent poverty and want with his foolish love affair. Gerard and Margaret decide to elope, but before the banns can be completely announced objections arise, and Gerard is arrested by Ghysbrecht van Swieten, the local burgomaster, who dislikes Gerard and Margaret, in large part because van Swieten had defrauded Margaret of money and lands which were rightfully hers. Margaret and Gerard’s crippled younger sister Kate and dwarf brother Giles rescue Gerard, and Gerard and Margaret make their escape, unsuccessfully pursued by van Swieten. They separate, Margaret to return home and Gerard to go to Rome, where his artistic talents will be appreciated more than they are in Holland.

But events keep Gerard and Margaret separated. Gerard befriends a Burgundian soldier, Denys, and encounters a variety of people and incidents. Margaret practices medicine illegally and is arrested for her troubles. Gerard is shipwrecked on his way to Rome and is forced to decorate playing cards for a living. A letter secretly sent by van Swieten fools Gerard into thinking that Margaret is dead. He tries to kill himself, but is saved and takes his monastic vows with the Dominicans. Margaret gives birth to Gerard’s son, Gerard, Jr. Gerard Sr. wanders across Europe, preaching, and crosses paths with Margaret without either recognizing the other. Gerard Sr. eventually settles down to a hermit’s life outside of Rotterdam, but Margaret finds him and proves herself to him by showing him Gerard, Jr. The two are reconciled and live together, though not as husband and wife, since Gerard remains with the Dominicans. When Gerard, Jr. is ten Margaret dies of the plague. Gerard, Sr. dies soon after of a broken heart. Gerard, Jr. grows up to become the great Erasmus.

The Cloister and the Hearth was well received in its time, with Sir Walter Besant calling it the greatest historical novel in the English language¹ and with Swinburne placing it above the work of Scott and Dumas. Even today The Cloister and the Hearth is seen by critics as one of the best historical novels of the nineteenth century. The novel does have several things to recommend it. Reade did an enormous amount of research, and The Cloister and The Hearth is the better for it. It is full of real-seeming details and descriptions of people, places, events and things. The fair at Rotterdam and the scenes at the Burgundian Inn, where Gerard and Denys fight off a gang of thieves, feel accurate. The brutality of the era and its painful transition to the Renaissance are effectively portrayed, as are the real concerns of people living through those times. A few of the characters, such as Margaret, Denys, and Gerard’s mother Catherine, are likeably characterized. The picaresque elements of the story are entertaining. And Reade effectively makes the case, as was his intention, that the celibacy rules of the Church do far more harm than good to men and women.

Yet The Cloister and The Hearth is ultimately uninteresting. Gerard does not hold the attention as well as Denys does because Gerard is not as lively a character. Despite Reade’s stated fidelity to the historical facts he too often seems to be stacking the deck against his characters for the sake of making a point and showing the misery of the lives of the poor. The genuine pathos of the novel’s beginning, when Elias and Catherine do everything to feed their children, only to have their children leave them one by one and break their hearts, is frittered away by the plot complications required to separate Margaret and Gerard. Reade’s prose style is smoother than that of Walter Scott (see: Ivanhoe, Waverley), but Scott’s storytelling sense is much better than Reade’s, whose dedication to Fiction With A Purpose led him astray.

The Cloister and the Hearth may stand as a vitally important example of the historical romance, as one of the bestsellers that was a transitional form between the slavish imitators of Scott of the 1830s and of Bulwer Lytton in the 1840s and the more popular swashbucklers of Robert Louis Stevenson and Stanley J. Weyman (see: From the Memoirs of a Minister of France, The Red Cockade) of the 1880s and 1890s. But as prose it is disappointingly dull.

Recommended Edition

Print: Charles Reade, The Cloister and the Hearth. London: British Library, 2011.

Online: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006061430/