Brown grained cloth with gilt lettering on the spine. Embossed ship on front cover.

The Cloister and the Hearth (1861) is a historical novel by the English author Charles Reade. Set in the 15th century, it relates the travels of a young scribe and illuminator, Gerard Eliassoen, through several European countries. The Cloister and the Hearth often describes the events, people and their practices in minute detail. Its main theme is the struggle between man’s obligations to family and to Church.

Based on a few lines by the humanist Erasmus about the life of his parents, the novel began as a serial in Once a Week magazine in 1859 under the title “A Good Fight“, but when Reade disagreed with the proprietors of the magazine over some of the subject matter (principally the unmarried pregnancy of the heroine), he curtailed the serialisation with a false happy ending. Reade continued to work on the novel and published it in 1861, thoroughly revised and extended, as The Cloister and the Hearth.

THE PLOT Married to Margaret Brandt, Gerard sets off to Rome from Holland to escape the persecution of a vicious burgomaster as well as to earn money for the support of his family. Margaret awaits his return in Holland and in the meantime gives birth to his son. As Gerard is the favourite with his parents, his two lazy and jealous brothers decide to divert him from Holland and receive a larger share of fortune after their parents’ death. They compose and dispatch a letter to Gerard informing him falsely that Margaret has died. Gerard believes the news and, stricken by grief, gives himself to a dissolute life and even attempts a suicide. After being saved from death by chance, he takes vows and becomes a Dominican friar. Later Gerard preaches throughout Europe and, while in Holland, discovers that Margaret is alive. He is afraid of temptation and to shun Margaret becomes a hermit. Margaret discovers Gerard’s hiding place and convinces him to come back to normal life in which he becomes a vicar of a small town. Gerard and Margaret no longer live as a man and wife, but nevertheless see each other several times a week. A few years pass, Gerard’s son grows up and is sent to a private school. After a decade reunited, Margaret catches the plague and dies; Gerard re-enters the monastery and dies shortly after. He is buried with a lock of Margaret’s hair on his chest.

The author of The Cloister and the Hearth, at the end of this story, reveals that Margaret’s and Gerard’s son, also named Gerard, became the great Catholic scholar and Humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam, a major historical figure. Indeed, little is actually known about Erasmus’ actual parentage (apparently illegitimate), though his parents were in reality named Margaret Roger and Gerard. Reade was apparently using his imagination to fill in some historical gaps in Erasmus’ background. The Cloister and the Hearth can easily be read as anti-Catholic, as it presents Catholic discipline regarding the celibate priesthood as an unsympathetic obstacle preventing Margaret’s and Gerard’s love from continuing to be consummated.

Charles Reade (8 June 1814 – 11 April 1884) was an English novelist and dramatist, best known for The Cloister and the Hearth.

Reade fell out of fashion by the turn of the century—”it is unusual to meet anyone who has voluntarily read him,” wrote George Orwell in an essay on Reade —but during the 19th century Reade was one of England’s most popular novelists. He was not highly regarded by critics. The following assessment by Justin McCarthy, writing in 1872, is typical:

A strong, healthy air of honest and high purpose breathes through nearly all the stories. An utter absence of cant, affectation, and sham distinguishes them. A surprising variety of descriptive power, at once bold, broad, and realistic is one of their great merits. Mr. Reade can describe a sea-fight, a storm, the forging of a horseshoe, the ravages of an inundation, the trimming of a lady’s dress, the tuning of a piano, with equal accuracy and apparent zest. . . . Mr. Reade wants no quality which is necessary to make a powerful storyteller, while he is distinguished from all mere story-tellers by the fact that he has some great social object to serve in nearly everything he undertakes to detail. More than this I do not believe he is, nor, despite the evidences of something yet higher which were given in ‘Christie Johnstone’ and ‘The Cloister and the Hearth,’ do I think he ever could have been. He is a magnificent specimen of the modern special correspondent, endowed with the additional and unique gift of a faculty for throwing his report into the form of a thrilling story. But it requires something more than this, something higher than this, to make a great novelist whom the world will always remember. Mr. Reade is unsurpassed in the second class of English novelists, but he does not belong to the front rank. His success has been great in its way, but it is for an age and not for time.

The author George Orwell summed up Reade’s attraction as “the same charm as one finds in R. Austin Freeman’s detective stories or Lieutenant-Commander Gould’s collections of curiosities—the charm of useless knowledge,” going on to say that

Reade was a man of what one might call penny-encyclopaedic learning. He possessed vast stocks of disconnected information which a lively narrative gift allowed him to cram into books which would at any rate pass as novels. If you have the sort of mind that takes a pleasure in dates, lists, catalogues, concrete details, descriptions of processes, junk-shop windows and back numbers of the Exchange and Mart, the sort of mind that likes knowing exactly how a medieval catapult worked or just what objects a prison cell of the eighteen-forties contained, then you can hardly help enjoying Reade.

During his career, the prolific Reade was involved in several literary feuds involving accusations of plagiarism. He strongly defended himself but invoked standards on literary borrowing that are looser than those of today. Reade is frequently discussed in studies of evolving attitudes toward plagiarism.

Reade is credited with the quote: “Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny”. These days it is often adapted to:

“Mind your thoughts for they become your words; mind your words for they become your actions; mind your actions for they become your habits; mind your habits for they become your character; mind your character for it becomes your destiny.”

(This was used in the film, The Iron Lady (2011), spoken by Meryl Streep playing Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister.)

Reade’s newspaper cuttings, notebooks and correspondence are held at The London Library.