The Cloister and the Hearth ... Library edition, etc

Front matter

fames 41i. jUnsirmtun $aik ©aril ens, SS.11. THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH CHARLES READE' S NOVELS New Collected Library Edition, complete in Seventeen Volumes, set in new longprimer type, printed on laid paper, and elegantly bound in cloth, price 3s. 6d. each. The volumes will appear in the following order : — i. Peg Woffington; and Christie Johnstone. 2. Hard Cash. 3. The Cloister and the Hearth. With a Preface by Sir Walter Besant. 4. It Is Never Too Late to Mend. [Dec. The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth ; and Slngleheart and Doubleface. [Jan. 1896. 6. The Autobiography of a Thief; Jack of all Trades ; A Hero and a Martyr; and The Wandering Heir. [Feb. 7. Love Me Little, Love Me Long. [Mar. 8. The Double Marriage. [April. g. Griffith Gaunt. [May. jo. Foul Play. [/««*■. ii. Put Yourself In His Place. [July 12.

A Terrible Temptation. {Aug. 13. A Simpleton. [Sept. 14. A Woman-Hater. [Oct. 15. The Jilt, and other Stories ; and Good Stories of Men and Other Animals. [Nov. 16. A Perilous Secret. [Dec. 17. Readlana ; and Bible Characters. [Jan. 1897. The Red-Cloth Edition, crown 8vo, cloth extra, mostly illustrated, 3s. 6d. each ; post Svo, illustrated boards, 2s. each. Foul Play. Peg Woffington. Christie Johnstone. Put Yourself in His Place. A Terrible Temptation. It is Never Too Late to Mend. The Course of True Love Never A Simpleton. Did Run Smooth. The Wandering Heir. A Woman-Hater. The Autobiography of a Thief ; Jack of all Trades ; and James Lambert. Singleheart and Doubleface. Love Me Little, Love Me Long. The Double .Marriage. Good Stories of Men and Other Animals. The Jilt, and other Stories.

A Perilous Secret. The Cloister and the Hearth. Hard Cash. Griffith Gaunt. Readiana. Popular Editions. Medium Svo, 6d. each ; cloth, is. each. It is Never Too Late to Mend. i The Cloister and the Hearth. Peg Woffington ; and Christie Johnstone. Christie Johnstone. With Frontispiece. Choicely printed in Elzevir style. Fcap. 8vo, half-Roxburghe, 2s. 6d. Peg Woffington. Choicely printed in Elzevir style. Fcap. 8vo, half-Roxburghe, 2s. 6d. The Cloister and the Hearth. In Four Vols., post 8vo, with an Introduction by Sir Walter Besant, and a Frontispiece to each vol., 14s. the set ; and the Illustrated Library Edition, with Illustrations on every page, Two Vols., crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 42s. net. Bible Characters. Fcap. 8vo, leatherette, is. Selections from the Works of Charles Reade. With an Introduction by Mrs. Alex.

Introduction

BY SIR WALTER BESANT LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY i895 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co At the Ballantyne Press V

INTRODUCTION.

"The Cloister and the Hearth" is Charles Reade's greatest work — -and, I believe, the greatest historical novel in the language. It has been my happy lot to pasture in the fair fields of mediæval literature, and my delight humbly to attempt from time to time the restoration of life as it was during or before the great Renascence. Now, life at all times, except perhaps during the cave-and-flint weapon period, has been, and is, many-sided, complex, and perpetually varying. Think how it will fare in five hundred years with the writer who attempts to portray England in this year of grace ; by what mighty labours — what examination of old documents — what comparisons, reading of contemporary essays, descriptions of Functions, ceremonies, and debates, estimate of forces — as the influences of the Land League, the real power of Nonconformists, the strength of the Church, the prejudices of the people — he will arrive at something like a picture of life as it is now.

And even in the hands of the most skilful how meagre will probably be the result ! Because the historian will not be able to understand the relative importance of questions, nor will he perceive that what seems to him the most important of events may have seemed to us a mere trifle compared with the weight of a speech in the House, or a new book, or even an article in a magazine. Therefore I do not say that the whole of life, as it was at the end of the fourteenth century, may be found in "The Cloister and the Hearth;" but I do say, that there is portrayed so vigorous, lifelike, and truthful a picture of a time long gone by, and differing in almost every particular from our own, that the world has never seen its like. To me it is a picture of the past more faithful than anything in the works of Scott. As one reads it, one feels in the very atmosphere of the century ; one breathes the air just before the Great Dawn VI

INTRODUCTION.

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. There is plenty of fanaticism, but no faith ; under the tiara the Pope yawns ; under the scarlet cloak the cardinals scoff; in his chamber the scholar asks whether the newly found Greek is not better than all the ecclesiastical jargon ; in the very cloister are monks secretly at work on the new learning, and cursing the stupid iteration of the bell ; even the children of the soil are asking themselves how long. Alas ! they must wait till the Greater Jacquerie of 1792 relieves them. There is uncertainty everywhere; there is the restless movement which goes before a change.

There is, however, plenty of ordered activity in certain directions. Soldiers fight, and great lords lead armies ; there are court ceremonies at which knights feast and common people gape ; prentice lads go a-wandering along the roads ; with them tramp the vagrant scholars ; the forests are full of robbers ; the beggars are a nation to themselves, and a very horrible, noisome, miserable nation ; the towns are crowded within narrow walls ; fever and the plague are constantly breaking out ; there is no ladder by which men can climb except that lowered for them by the Church ; where a man is born, there he sticks. A fine, picturesque time ; with plenty of robberies and murders in it ; vast quantities of injustice in it ; with lords among the peasants, like locusts among corn, devouring the substance; with fierce punishments for the wicked, but not so fierce as those which certainly await most people in the next world ; with gibbets, racks, red-hot pincers, wheels, processions of penitents, heavy wax candles, cutting off of hands, and eveiy possible stimulus to virtue ; yet a world in which virtue was singularly rare.

All this life — and more — is in " The Cloister and the Hearth ; " not described, bid acted. The reader who knows the literature of the times says to himself as he goes on : " Here is Erasmus ; here is Froissart ; here is Deschamps ; here is Coquillart ; here is Gringoire ; here is Villon ; here is Luther," and so on, taking pleasure in proving the sources. The reader who does not know, or does not inquire, presently finds himself drawn completely out of himself and his own time ; before he reaches the end he thinks like Ishe characters in the book; he feels

INTRODUCTION.

like them; he talks like them. This is the general effect of the book; but, besides, there runs through it the sweetest, saddest, and most tender love story ever devised by wit of man. There is no heroine in fiction more dear to me than Margaret ; she is always real; always the true woman; brave in the darkest hour ; and for ever yearning in womanly fashion for the love that has been cruelly torn from her. " Oh I my love," cried the lover-priest at her death-bed, " if thou hast lived doubting of thy Gerard's heart, die not so ; for never was woman loved so tenderly as thou this ten years past." ' ' Calm thyself, dear one," said the dying woman, with a heavenly smile. " I knew it, only, being but a woman, / could not die happy till I heard thee say so." I do not suppose that by these remarks one can add anything to the real reputation of Charles Reade, or to the admiration with which the English-speaking races regard his works.

They may, however, lead others to consider the position occupied by this writer, which is — and has been, since the death of Thackeray and Dickens — alone in the front rank. That is to say, alone because he resembles no other writer living or dead — not alone, because there has been no other in line with him. His merits are his own, and they are those of the first order of writers. He cannot be classified or compared ; in order to be classified, a man must be either a leader or one of a following. Reade cannot, certainly, be accused of following. One can only say that he stands in the first rank, and that he stands alone. One can only say that this great writer — there is no greater praise — paints women as they are, men as they are, things as they are. What we call genius is first the power of seeing men, women, and things as they are — most of us, being without genius, are purblind — and then the power of showing them by means of "invention" — by the grafting of "invention" upon fact. No man has shown greater power of grasping fact and of *weaving invention upon it than Charles Reade. WALTER BESANT.

Preface

A small portion of this tale appeared in Once a Week, July- September 1859, under the title of "A Good Fight." After writing it, I took wider views of the subject, and also felt uneasy at having deviated unnecessarily from the historical outline of a true story. These two sentiments have cost me more than a year's very hard labour, which I venture to think has not been wasted. After this plain statement, I trust all who comment on this work will see that to describe it as a reprint would be unfair to the pubbc and to me. The English language is copious, and, in any true man's hands, quite able to convey the truth — namely, that one-fifth of the present work is a reprint, and four-fifths of it a new composition. CHARLES READE.

Chapter I

Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, the greater part will never be known till that hour, when many that are great shall be small, and the small great ; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep : their lives and char acters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record them. The general reader cannot feel them, they are presented so curtly and coldly : they are not like breathing stories appealing to his heart, but little historic hailstones striking him but to glance off his bosom : nor can he understand them ; for epitomes are not narratives, as skeletons are not human figures. Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk ; the writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so rare a gift.

Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the public — as an interpreter. There is a musty chronicle, written in tolerable Latin, and in it a chapter where every sentence holds a fact. Here is told, with harsh brevity, the strange history of a pair, who lived untrumpeted, and died unsung, four hundred years ago ; and lie now, as unpitied, in that stern page, as fossils in a rock. Thus, living or dead, Fate is still unjust to them. For if I can but show you what lies below that dry chronicler's words, methinks you will correct the indifference of centuries, and give those two sore-tried souls a place in your heart — for a day. It was past the middle of the fifteenth century ; Louis XI. was sovereign of France ; Edward IV. was wrongful king of 1 A England ; and Philip "the Good," having by force and cunning dispossessed his cousin Jacqueline, and broken her heart, reigned undisturbed this many years in Holland, where our tale begins.

Elias, and Catherine his wife, lived in the little town of Tergou. He traded, wholesale and retail, in cloth, silk, brown holland, and, above all, in curried leather, a material highly valued by the middling people, because it would stand twenty years' wear, and turn an ordinary knife, no small virtue in a jerkin of that century, in which folk were so liberal of their steel ; even at dinner a man would leave his meat awhile, and carve you his neighbour, on a very moderate difference of opinion. The couple were well to do, and would have been free from all earthly care, but for nine children. When these were coming into the world, one per annum, each was hailed with rejoicings, and the saints were thanked, not expostulated with ; and when parents and children were all young together, the latter were looked upon as lovely little playthings invented by Heaven for the amusement, joy, and evening solace of people in business.

But as the olive-branches shot up, and the parents grew older, and saw with their own eyes the fate of large families, misgivings and care mingled with their love. They belonged to a singularly wise and provident people : in Holland reckless parents were as rare as disobedient children. So now when the huge loaf came in on a gigantic trencher, looking like a fortress in its moat, and, the tour of the table once made, seemed to have melted away, Elias and Catherine would look at one another and say, " Who is to find bread for them all when we are gone ? " At this observation the younger ones needed all their filial respect to keep their little Dutch countenances ; for in their opinion dinner and supper came by nature like sunrise and sunset, and, so long as that luminary should travel round the earth, so long must the brown loaf go round their family circle, and set in their stomachs only to rise again in the family oven.

But the remark awakened the national thoughtfulness of the elder boys, and being often repeated, set several of the family thinking, some of them good thoughts, some ill thoughts, according to the nature of the thinkers. " Kate, the children grow so, this table will soon be too small." " We cannot afford it, Eli," replied Catherine, answering not his words, but his thought, after the manner of women. Their anxiety for the future took at times a less dismal but more mortifying turn. The free burghers had their pride as well as the nobles ; and these two could not bear that any of their blood should go down in the burgh after their decease. So by prudence and self-denial they managed to clothe all the little bodies, and feed all the great mouths, and yet put by a small hoard to meet the future ; and, as it grew and grew, they felt a pleasure the miser hoarding for himself knows not.

One day the eldest boy but one, aged nineteen, came to his mother, and, with that outward composure which has so misled some persons as to the real nature of this people, begged her to intercede with his father to send him to Amsterdam, and place him with a merchant. " It is the way of life that likes me : merchants are wealthy ; I am good at numbers ; prithee, good mother, take my part in this, and I shall ever be, as I am now, your debtor." Catherine threw up her hands with dismay and incredulity. " What ! leave Tergou ? " " What is one street to me more than another ? If I can leave the folk of Tergou, I can surely leave the stones." " What ! quit your poor father now he is no longer young ? " " Mother, if I can leave you, I can leave him." " What ! leave your poor brothers and sisters, that love you so dear ?

" "There are enough in the house without me." " What mean you, Richart ? Who is more thought of than you ? Stay, have I spoken sharp to you ? Have I been unkind to you ? " " Never that I know of ; and if you had, you should never hear of it from me. Mother," said Richart gravely, but the tear was in his eye, "it all lies in a word, and nothing can change my mind. There will be one mouth less for you to feed." " There now, see what my tongue has done," said Catherine, and the next moment she began to cry. For she saw her first young bird on the edge of the nest trying his wings to fly into the world. Richart had a calm, strong will, and she knew he never wasted a word. It ended as nature has willed all such discourse shall end : young Richart went to Amsterdam with a face so long and sad as it had never been seen before, and a heart like granite.

That afternoon at supper there was one mouth less. Catherine looked at Richart's chair and wept bitterly. On this Elias shouted roughly and angrily to the children, " Sit wider, can't ye : sit wider ! " and turned his head away over the back of his seat awhile, and was silent. Richart was launched, and never cost them another penny ; but to fit him out and place him in the house of Vander Stegen, the merchant, took all the little hoard but one gold crown. They began again. Two years passed, Richart found a niche in commerce for his brother Jacob, and Jacob left Tergou directly after dinner, which was at eleven in the forenoon. At supper that day Elias remembered what had happened the last time ; so it was in a low whisper he said, " Sit wider, dears ! " Now until that moment, Catherine would not see the gap at table, for her daughter Catherine had besought her not to grieve to-night, and she had said, "No, sweetheart, I promise I will not, since it vexes my children."

But when Elias whispered " Sit wider ! " says she, " Ay ! the table will soon be too big for the children, and you thought it would be too small ; " and having delivered this with forced calmness, she put up her apron the next moment, and wept sore. " 'Tis the best that leave us," sobbed she ; " that is the cruel part." " Nay ! nay ! " said Elias, " our children are good children, and all are dear to us alike. Heed her not ! What God takes from us still seems better than what He spares to us : that is to say, men are by nature unthankful — and women silly." "And I say Richart and Jacob were the flower of the flock," sobbed Catherine. The little coffer was empty again, and to fill it they gathered like ants. In those days speculation was pretty much confined to the card-and-dice business. Elias knew no way to wealth but the slow and sure one.

" A penny saved is a penny gained," was his humble creed. All that was not required for the business and the necessaries of life went into the little coffer with steel bands and florid key. They denied themselves in turn the humblest luxuries, and then, catching one another's looks, smiled ; perhaps with a greater joy than self-indulgence has to bestow. And so in three years more they had gleaned enough to set up their fourth son as a master-tailor, and their eldest daughter as a robemaker, in Tergou. Here were two more provided for: their own trade would enable them to throw work into the hands of this pair. But the coffer was drained to the dregs, and this time the shop too bled a little in goods if not in coin. Alas ! there remained on hand two that were unable to get their bread, and two that were unwilling.

The unable ones were, 1, Giles, a dwarf, of the wrong sort, half stupidity, half malice, all head and claws and voice, run from by dogs and unprejudiced females, and sided with through thick and thin by his mother ; 2, Little Catherine, a poor little girl that could only move on crutches. She lived in pain, but smiled through it, with her marble face and violet eyes and long silky lashes ; and fretful or repining word never came from her lips. The unwilling ones were Sybrandt, the youngest, a ne'er-do-weel, too much in love with play to work ; and Cornelis, the eldest, who had made calculations, and stuck to the hearth, waiting for dead men's shoes. Almost worn out by their repeated efforts, and above all dispirited by the moral and physical infirmities of those that now remained on hand, the anxious couple would often say, " What will become of all these when we shall be no longer here to take care of them ?

" But when they had said this a good many times, suddenly the domestic horizon cleared, and then they used still to say it, because a habit is a habit, but they uttered it half mechanically now, and added brightly and cheerfully, " But thanks to St. Bavon and all the saints, there's Gerard." Young Gerard was for many years of his life a son apart and distinct, object of no fears and no great hopes. No fears, for he was going into the Church, and the Church could always maintain her children by hook or by crook in those days ; no great hopes, because his family had no interest with the great to get him a benefice, and the young man's own habits were frivolous, and, indeed, such as our cloth merchant would not have put up with in any one but a clerk that was to be. His trivialities were reading and penmanship, and he was so wrapped up in them that often he could hardly be got away to his meals.

The day was never long enough for him ; and he carried ever a tinder-box and brimstone matches, and begged ends of candles of the neighbours, which he lighted at unreasonable hours — ay, even at eight of the clock at night in winter, when the very burgomaster was abed. Endured at home, his practices were encouraged by the monks of a neighbouring convent. They had taught him penmanship, and continued to teach him, until one day they discovered, in the middle of a lesson, that he was teaching them. They pointed this out to him in a merry way : he hung his head and blushed : he had suspected as much him self, but mistrusted his judgment in so delicate a matter. " But, my son," said an elderly monk, "how is it that you, to whom God has given an eye so true, a hand so subtle yet firm, and a heart to love these beautiful crafts, how is it you do not colour as well as write ?

A scroll looks but barren unless a border of fruit, and leaves, and rich arabesques surround the good words, and charm the sense as those do the soul and understanding ; to say nothing of the pictures of holy men and women departed, with which the several chapters should be adorned, and not alone the eye soothed with the brave and sweetly blended colours, but the heart lifted by effigies of the saints in glory. Answer me, my son." At this Gerard was confused, and muttered that he had made several trials at illuminating, but had not succeeded well ; and thus the matter rested. Soon after this a fellow-enthusiast came on the scene in the unwonted form of an old lady. Margaret, sister and survivor of the brothers Van Eyck, left Flanders, and came to end her days in her native country. She bought a small house near Tergou.

In course of time she heard of Gerard, and saw some of his handiwork : it pleased her so well that she sent a female servant, Reicht Heynes, to ask him to come to her. This led to an acquaintance : it could hardly be otherwise, for little Tergou had never held so many as two zealots of this sort before. At first the old lady damped Gerard's courage terribly. At each visit she fished out of holes and corners drawings and paintings, some of them by her own hand, that seemed to him unapproachable ; but if the artist overpowered him, the woman kept his heart up. She and Reicht soon turned him inside out like a glove : among other things, they drew from him what the good monks had failed to hit upon, the reason why he did not illuminate, viz., that he could not afford the gold, the blue, and the red, but only the cheap earths ; and that he was afraid to ask his mother to buy the choice colours, and was sure he should ask her in vain.

Then Margaret Van Eyck gave him a little brush-gold, and some vermilion and ultramarine, and a piece of good vellum to lay them on. He almost adored her. As he left the house Reicht ran after him with a candle and two quarters : he quite kissed her. But better even than the gold and lapis-lazuli to the illuminator was the sympathy to the isolated enthusiast. That sympathy was always ready, and, as he returned it, an affection sprung up between the old painter and the young caligrapher that was doubly characteristic of the time. For this was a century in which the fine arts and the higher mechanical arts were not separated by any distinct boundary, nor were those who practised them ; and it was an age in which artists sought out and loved one another. Should this last statement stagger a painter or writer of our day, let me remind him that even Christians loved one another at first starting.

Backed by an acquaintance so venerable, and strengthened by female sympathy, Gerard advanced in learning and skill. His spirits, too, rose visibly : he still looked behind him when dragged to dinner in the middle of an initial G; but once seated, showed great social qualities ; likewise a gay humour, that had hitherto but peeped in him, shone out, and often he set the table in a roar, and kept it there, sometimes with his own wit, sometimes with jests which were glossy new to his family, being drawn from antiquity. As a return for all he owed his friends the monks, he made them exquisite copies from two of their choicest MSS., viz., the life of their founder, and their Comedies of Terence, the monas tery finding the vellum. The high and puissant Prince, Philip " the Good," Duke of Burgundy, Luxemburg, and Brabant, Earl of Holland and Zealand, Lord of Friesland, Count of Flanders, Artois, and Hainault, Lord of Salins and Macklyn — was versatile.

He could fight as well as any king going ; and he could lie as well as any, except the King of France. He was a mighty hunter, and could read and write. His tastes were wide and ardent. He loved jewels like a woman, and gorgeous apparel. He dearly loved maids of honour, and indeed paintings gener ally ; in proof of which he ennobled Jan Van Eyck. He had also a rage for giants, dwarfs, and Turks. These last stood ever planted about him, turbaned and blazing with jewels. His agents inveigled them from Istamboul with fair promises ; but the moment he had got them, he baptized them by brute force in a large tub; and, this done, let them squat with their faces towards Mecca, and invoke Mahound as much as they pleased, laughing in his sleeve at their simplicity in fancying they were still infidels.

He had lions in cages, and fleet leopards trained by Orientals to run down hares and deer. In short, he relished all rarities, except the humdrum virtues. For anything singu larly pretty, or diabolically ugly, this was your customer. The best of him was, he was open-handed to the poor; and the next best was, he fostered the arts in earnest : whereof he now gave a signal proof. He offered prizes for the best specimens of otfevrerie in two kinds, religious and secular : item, for the best paintings in white of egg, oils, and tempera ; these to be on panel, silk, or metal, as the artists chose : item, for the best transparent painting on glass : item, for the best illuminating and border painting on vellum : item, for the fairest writing on vellum. The burgomasters of the several towns were com manded to aid all the poorer competitors by receiving their specimens and sending them with due care to Rotterdam at the expense of their several burghs.

When this was cried by the bellman through the streets of Tergou, a thousand mouths opened, and one heart beat — Gerard's. He told his family timidly he should try for two of those prizes. They stared in silence, for their breath was gone at his audacity ; but one horrid laugh exploded on the floor like a petard. Gerard looked down, and there was the dwarf, slit and fanged from ear to ear at his expense, and laughing like a Hon. Nature, relenting at having made Giles so small, had given him as a set-oft the biggest voice on record. His very whisper was a bassoon, tie was like those stunted wide-mouthed pieces of ordnance we see on fortifications ; more like a flower-pot than a cannon ; but ods tympana how they bellow ! Gerard turned red with anger, the more so as the others began to titter.