The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade

First published: 1861

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical romance

Time of work: Fifteenth century

Locale: Holland, Germany, France, and Italy

The Story:

Gerard was the son of Elias, a Dutch cloth and leather merchant, and Katherine, his wife. His talent for penmanship and illuminating developed at an early age. At first, Gerard was aided by the monks of the local convent for which he was destined. When the monks could teach the young artist no more, he became the pupil of Margaret Van Eyck, sister of the famous painter, Jan Van Eyck. She and her servant, Reicht Heynes, encouraged the lad to enter a prize art competition sponsored by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and Earl of Holland.

On his way to Rotterdam to an exhibit of the entries, Gerard met an old man, Peter Brandt, and his daughter, Margaret, who sat exhausted by the wayside. He went with them into the town. There he took a letter of introduction from Dame Van Eyck to the Princess Marie, daughter of Prince Philip. Impressed by the lad’s talent, the princess promised him a benefice near his village of Tergou as soon as he had taken holy orders. He won a prize in the contest and returned to Tergou, wondering whether he would ever again see Margaret Brandt, with whom he had fallen in love.

Gerard accidentally learned from Ghysbrecht Van Swieten, Tergou’s burgomaster, that the old man and his daughter lived in Sevenbergen, a nearby village. He began to frequent their cottage. Ghysbrecht disclosed to Katherine, Gerard’s mother, that the young man was interested in Margaret Brandt. A quarrel ensued in the family, and Elias threatened to have Gerard imprisoned to prevent his marriage. Margaret Van Eyck gave Gerard money and valuable advice on art and recommended that he and the girl go to Italy, where Gerard’s talents were sure to be appreciated. Gerard and Margaret Brandt became betrothed, but before they could be married, the burgomaster had Gerard seized and put in jail. He was rescued at night from the prison by Margaret, his sweetheart; Giles, his dwarf brother; and Kate, his crippled sister. In the rescue, Giles removed from a chest in the cell some parchments that the villainous Ghysbrecht had hidden there. At Sevenbergen, Gerard buried all the parchments except a deed, which concerned Margaret’s father.

After an exciting pursuit, Gerard and Margaret escaped the vicinity of Tergou. They separated; Margaret was to return to Sevenbergen, and Gerard was to proceed to Rome. On the way, he was befriended by a Burgundian soldier named Denys, and the pair traveled toward the Rhine. They experienced a variety of adventures together.

Meanwhile, in Sevenbergen, Margaret Brandt fell sick and was befriended by Margaret Van Eyck. Martin, an old soldier friend of the young lovers, went to Rotterdam where he procured a pardon for Gerard from Prince Philip. Dame Van Eyck gave a letter to Hans Memling to deliver to Gerard in Italy, but Memling was waylaid by agents of the burgomaster, and the letter was taken from him.

Gerard and Denys came upon a company of Burgundian soldiers on their way to the wars, and Denys was ordered to ride with them to Flanders. Gerard was left to make his solitary way to Rome. Released because of wounds received in the duke’s service, Denys later set out for Holland, where he hoped to find Gerard. Elias and Katherine welcomed him in Tergou when he told them that he had been Gerard’s comrade. Meanwhile, old Brandt and Margaret disappeared from Sevenbergen, and Denys searched all Holland for the girl. They had gone to Rotterdam, but only the burgomaster knew their whereabouts. When Margaret practiced medicine illegally, she was arrested and sentenced to pay a large fine. In order to stay alive, she took in laundry. Denys discovered Margaret in Rotterdam, and the pair returned to Tergou, where Gerard’s family had become reconciled to his attachment to the girl.

Gerard made his dangerous way through France and Germany to Venice. From there, he took a coastal vessel and continued to Rome. When the ship was wrecked in a storm, Gerard displayed bravery in saving the lives of a Roman matron and her child. He went on to Rome and took lodgings, but he found work all but impossible to obtain. He and another young artist, Pietro, decorated playing cards for a living. Finally, through the good graces of the woman whose life he had saved in the shipwreck, Gerard was hired to decorate manuscripts for Fra Colonna, a leading classical scholar.

Hans Memling brought a letter to Rome. Sent by Ghysbrecht, the letter gave Gerard the false news that Margaret had died. Gerard forsook the Church and in despair threw himself into the Tiber, but he was saved and carried to a monastery, where he recovered and eventually took monastic vows. He became Brother Clement of the Dominican Order. After a period of training, he was sent to teach at the University of Basle in Switzerland. Meanwhile, in Holland, Margaret gave birth to Gerard’s son.

Brother Clement received orders to proceed to England. Preaching as he went, he began the journey down the Rhine.

In Rotterdam, Luke Peterson became Margaret’s suitor. She told him he could prove his love for her by seeking out Gerard, but Luke’s and Brother Clement’s paths were fated not to cross. The priest went to Sevenbergen, where he was unable to find the grave of Margaret. He proceeded to Rotterdam, and there Margaret heard him preach without recognizing him as Gerard. He next went to Tergou to see Ghysbrecht. The burgomaster was dying; he confessed to Brother Clement that he had defrauded Margaret of the wealth that was rightfully hers. On his deathbed, Ghysbrecht made full restitution.

When Brother Clement left the burgomaster, he returned to Rotterdam and took refuge in a hermit’s cave outside the city. There he mortified himself out of hatred for mankind.

Having learned his whereabouts through court gossip, Margaret went to him, but he repulsed her in the belief that she was a spirit sent by Satan. Margaret took her son to the cave in an attempt to win back his reason. Brother Clement’s acquaintance with his son, also named Gerard, brought him to his senses. By shrewd argument, Margaret persuaded him to come with her to Gouda, where he would be parson by arrangement with church authorities. They lived in Gouda but remained apart; Gerard tended his flock, and Margaret assisted him in his many charitable works.

After ten years at Gouda, Margaret died of the plague. Gerard, no longer anxious to live after her death, died two weeks later. Their son, Gerard, grew up to be Erasmus, the world-famous sixteenth-century biblical scholar and man of letters.

Critical Evaluation:

The two outstanding features of this novel are its photographic details of fifteenth century European life, and the vivid character portrayal of Denys, the Burgundian crossbowman. Charles Reade did tremendous research in order to achieve his accurate descriptions of fifteenth century European life. His Denys is one of the most delightful characters in English literature. Among the variety of literary types found in THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH are the long letter, poetry, dramatic dialogue, the tale within the tale, and picaresque romance. The description of the Catholic Church and clergy in the late Middle Ages is illuminating.

Essentially a picaresque novel, THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH is rich with incident and vividly drawn characters, if not always profound or thoughtful. The accurate detail is never boring, and a good-natured humor pervades the narrative. Despite its great length, the novel moves briskly, maintaining the reader’s interest constantly. The scenes at the Burgundian Inn, for example, describing the gory battle between Gerard and Denys and the gang of thieves, are among the most thrilling in English fiction and are worthy of the senior Dumas or Balzac.

THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH may have been in part an imitation of Scott’s historical novels (many others, including George Eliot in ROMOLA, were also copying Scott at this time), but it became much more than that. It stands by itself as a great novel. Much of the book is a quest, the story of a youth’s education and pursuit of both a livelihood and a romantic goal. The pattern of the first half of the book is that of Gerard’s learning process. He does not know what his destiny will be, but each step takes him closer to it. Only at the end, after his death, is the pattern finished and the meaning made clear. Gerard and his beloved Margaret are living not only for themselves but for their future son.

Denys, the Burgundian bowman and “Pilgrim of Friendship,” bursts with vitality, and every page on which he strides and boasts is filled with life. Katherine, Gerard’s mother, is another excellent characterization: lively, witty, and sensible. She begins as a type but soon transcends type to become a sympathetic, clever, and amusing individual. The reader suspects that Reade was, himself, fond of her. The spinster Margaret Van Eyck emerges as a vivid personality—an intelligent, liberated female in an age when women were required to be both married and docile.

Reade kept voluminous files of clippings and notebooks in which he recorded all manner of information that interested him; in writing his novels, he made use of this material. A novel, he believed, must be based on facts. His method of handling detail, setting, and episodes brought artistic truth to his books. He saturated himself in medieval history, art, and social customs and manners to write THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH. By absorbing himself in the literature and history of the period, Reade produced in this novel a picture of a remote era so faithfully and so finely etched and so vividly realistic that it never has been surpassed and rarely approached.

In THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH, Reade caught much of the tone of light and dark that dominated the end of the Middle Ages and the beginnings of the Renaissance; it was a brutal and turbulent time, stiff and heavy with death. The Dukes of Burgundy, with their ostentation, violence, and half-mad pride, were perhaps its representative rulers. The novel is crowded with wandering, lost individuals and at times becomes a danse macabre, a picture of rapidly growing cities, violence, wild superstition, crumbling religion, cynical realism, and ever-lusty humor. Reade’s style is sometimes nervous and irritating, but it is always vigorous and compelling and never fake or gushing like that of so many of his contemporaries. His perspective on the period of the novel is acute and perceptive, and his panorama crowded and colorful, yet never confusing.

Born in 1814 in Oxfordshire, the son of a country squire, Reade received his B.A. at Magdalen College, Oxford, and became a fellow of the college. He kept his fellowship at Magdalen all of his life but spent the greater part of his time in London where he began his career as a dramatist. On the advice of the actress Laura Seymour, who later became his housekeeper and mistress, he transformed one of his plays into a novel. Several other novels followed in quick succession. The flaws of his fiction, a certain theatricality and occasional falseness of tone, can be attributed to the sensational theater pieces of the day and their influence upon him.

THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH was originally published serially as the long story “A Good Fight” in the magazine ONCE A WEEK; it was then expanded to more than five times its length before it was published in four volumes. The novel, published (at the author’s expense) on commission, provided Reade with his first financial success at the age of forty-eight.

Returning from the fifteenth century to modern English life, Reade produced another well-received novel, HARD CASH, in which he directed attention to the abuses of private lunatic asylums. Three other novels “with a purpose” followed, in which he grappled with trade unions, the degrading conditions of village life, and other problems. The Reade of later years, who had earned the admiration of such different artists as Dickens and Swinburne, was accused of wasting his talents in pursuit of social reforms. ..FT.-Reade’s last and greatest success as a dramatist was DRINK, an adaptation of Zola’s L’ASSOMMOIR, produced in 1879. In that year, Laura Seymour died, and soon Reade’s health failed. He died in 1884, leaving behind him a completed novel, A PERILOUS SECRET, which showed no decline in his abilities to weave a complicated plot and to devise thrilling situations.

The epic theme of THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH is the misery caused by the vow of celibacy demanded of its priests by the Roman Church. Margaret, who loves and is beloved by Gerard, is the mother of his child and yet is denied the privilege of being his wife because he is a priest. This situation is described with excruciating pathos. Reade’s own study of medicine led to the minor theme and indictment of the practice of bleeding patients that is so vividly presented in the novel. The growth of the arts during the first days of the Renaissance provides a continuing theme that reaches its peak of interest in the chapters in Italy.

The imaginative power of the narration is shown in many vivid scenes (for example, the frail wooden ship battling the storm off the Italian coast), yet the author’s imagination seems to fail with the minor characters, who tend to be reduced to cliches of good and evil. This oversimplification of character is the one serious flaw in the novel, but it does not distract from the power and sweep of the story and the impact of the conclusion when the reader learns that from these two troubled lives (Gerard and Margaret) will come the greatest humanist and writer of the period.

Principal Characters:

• Gerard Eliason, a young artist
• Margaret Brandt, his betrothed
• Denys, a Burgundian bowman
• Margaret van Eyck, the sister of Jan Van Eyck
• Ghysbrecht van Swieten, a burgomaster