Quiz: Name the fictional 19th-century pet!

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Favourite Novel: The Cloister and the Hearth, Charles Reade (1861)

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

In an article published in January 1898, in Munsey’s Magazine, Arthur Conan Doyle was the latest in a series of contemporary big names to write about his favourite writers and books. The novel he talks about as his particular favourite – containing more ‘accurate knowledge and ripe wisdom and passionate human emotion’ than any other – was Charles Reade’s 1861 historical romance The Cloister and the Hearth.

Over the last couple of weeks, I read Reade’s classic to discover why it garnered so much praise in the nineteenth century, from Doyle and others, and to spot any clues as to why, since then, it has fallen into relative obscurity.

The Cloister and the Hearth is a mediaeval drama, set around 1450. The story begins in Holland, not far from Rotterdam, but deals with a journey that takes its hero through France and eventually to Rome. Much of Doyle’s praise is given to the research that went into Reade’s writing of the novel and the vividness with which a far-flung period of history is made real to us. He writes: ‘it is a human medievalism, neither stiff nor conventional nor unnatural, but palpitating with rude life and with primitive emotions.’

The immediacy of the world Reade writes about certainly still holds true today. The novel is packed with excitement and incident (think bear attacks, sieges, prison escapes, bandits) and populated with characters so recognisable in their humanity that you can connect despite the archaic dialogue, and distinctly period vocabulary. Here, for instance, a mother-in-law forces advice and money on her daughter-in-law:

‘She then recapitulated her experiences of infants, and instructed Margaret what to do in each coming emergency, and pressed money upon her, Margaret declined it with thanks, Catherine insisted, and turned angry. Margaret made excuses all so reasonable that Catherine rejected them with calm contempt; to her mind they lacked femininity.’

Sometimes the characters, or at least their living conditions, do indeed seem ‘rude’ or ‘primitive’. This is how an inn that Gerard, our hero, must sleep in is described:

‘He had peeped into a large but low room, the middle of which was filled by a huge round stove, or clay oven, that reached to the ceiling; round this, wet clothes were drying-some on lines, and some more compendiously, on rustics. These latter habiliments, impregnated with the wet of the day, but the dirt of a life, and lined with what another foot traveller in these parts call "rammish clowns," evolved rank vapours and compound odours inexpressible, in steaming clouds. In one corner was a travelling family, a large one: thence flowed into the common stock the peculiar sickly smell of neglected brats. Garlic filled up the interstices of the air. And all this with closed window, and intense heat of the central furnace, and the breath of at least forty persons.’

But Reade is careful not to let his Victorian readers sit back too secure in their superiority:

‘When men drive a bargain, they strive to get the sunny side of it; it matters not one straw whether it is with man or Heaven they are bargaining. In this respect we are the same now, at bottom, as we were four hundred years ago: only in those days we did it a grain or two more naively, and that naivete shone out more palpably, because, in that rude age, body prevailing over mind, all sentiments took material forms.’

Less palatable to a modern reader than this mantra of shared humanity, however, is the moral assumptions that lead to the novel’s conclusion. Doyle writes of the novel that ‘such an indictment against celibacy of the clergy has never yet been penned’, yet, for a modern reader, Gerard’s prioritisation of the priesthood over his wedding vows is more difficult to understand – prompting not, as presumably intended, critical feelings towards the Catholic Church, but rather extreme irritation with the novel’s apparently admirable characters.

This in turn has a negative effect on the novel’s ability to evoke pathos. Doyle writes of one deathbed scene ‘the man who can read that chapter with dry eyes is a man whom I do not wish to know’, but a reader today might be inclined to dash his or her head at a brick wall, rather than to cry, so frustrating is the religiosity. It’s all a question of degree. A Victorian reader might sympathise with Margaret’s helpless and ambiguous position, and think she would be well suited to the role of clergyman’s wife. Yet a reader now might take exception to the very assumption of her inferiority (the phrase ‘I am but a woman’ appears in the novel 11 times).

Doyle writes about the particular appeal of this historical period for fictionalisation, explaining:

‘Printing was coming, the Reformation was coming, the revival of learning was just at hand, but the greater part of Europe still lay in that blackest night which precedes the dawn.’

What’s interesting in this is the parallels I find in how writers now approach the nineteenth century. In my Neo-Victorian Voices series, I’ve seen how twenty-first century writers respond to the late 1800s as a period just on the cusp, focusing on the advent of evolutionary theory, women’s education and suffrage movements, and questions of race and colonialism. Victorianism is a period of relative darkness for us – a dangerous world in which are own social concerns can be played out by novelists – just as the Middle Ages fulfils that role for Reade.

The Cloister and the Hearth is probably only a handful of people’s ‘favourite’ novel today, but it’s a well-written book, that reveals as much about the period in which it was conceived as it does about the time in which it was set.

What novel would you like to see the Secret Victorianist read next? Let me know – here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Theatre Review: The Singular Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, Don't Go Into the Cellar, London

The Secret Victorianist goes into the cellar

On Friday, thanks to the wonders of Twitter, and the proactive team at the Don't Go Into the Cellar theatre company, I, with slightly bemused companion in tow, found myself in the Tea House Theatre in Vauxhall - otherwise, for the night, 21b Baker Street - enjoying a whirlwind tour through the history of one of English literature's best-loved detectives. 

The Singular Exploits of Sherlock Holmes is a true labour of love, written and performed by Jonathan Goodwin, who has the distinction of being, not only a versatile actor, but a true Sherlockian, having joined the London Sherlock Holmes Society aged only 13 (only just pipped to the title of youngest ever member by Stephen Fry). What this means is that the whole production, while remaining fun and followable, has a fan-boyish feel. Book history, reception studies and literary criticism are all part of the course, but carried off with aplomb by Goodwin who seems to entirely inhabit the main character who is the life force of the production.

The main takeaway from the production for me was just how much of a one man show Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes books (which first appeared in 1887) always are - not only when brought to life in a one actor play or featuring Benedict Cumberbatch. While Goodwin voiced multiple other characters briefly and convincingly it was definitely all about Sherlock. Watson could even be reduced to a silent coat stand without any substantial loss, and Holmes mockingly elucidated the thought patterns of his non-existent conversation partners succinctly, before dismissing them out of hand.

The production also inspired me to think about the art of storytelling and performance in intimate homely settings. The small audience in Vauxhall sat in armchairs surrounded by tea room bric-a-brac and Holmes’s possessions – fiddle, skull, trunk in which his embodied self is imagined to be trapped, falling into the English Channel, as his life flashes before his eyes (and ours). This is a play, but one which feeds on a tradition of dramatic recital and familial performance popular in the nineteenth century, and, as such, it was an interesting experience.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock on the BBC

The greater your interest in the Sherlock Holmes canon, the more you’ll get out of this production (which will be continuing its tour in Lichfield, Barnsley, Buxton and elsewhere) – it’s an overview, rather than a whodunit. But Goodwin is worth watching in himself, for his masterly handling of the audience, conversational air and captivatingly eccentric performance. There’s talent and some great ideas here, even if this isn’t your typical polished London theatre, and I’ d definitely go back into the cellar for more.

Have you seen Don't Go Into the Cellar's production? What did you think? And who is your favourite ever Sherlock Holmes? Let me know below, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist!

Victorians in Brief

Whether it’s Wuthering Heights or Tess of the d’Urbervilles, many students’ first introduction to nineteenth-century literature is through a lengthy Victorian novel. How many pages? This is only the first volume? The cries go up from classrooms all around the UK. Reading is seen as a struggle, not entertainment. Even at university, my contemporaries studying English were quick to dismiss the writers I liked for this very reason, claiming they padded plots out, were paid by the word, or, if informed, citing the ubiquitous power of circulating lending libraries like Mudie's which promoted the three volume or triple-decker novel. 

Once you have trust in a writer, a large novel is a joy, but it’s hard to launch straight in to War and Peace or Middlemarch. They are other shorter works (of modern novella length or less) which I’d recommend for those approaching Victorian literature for the first time or who just don’t want to face the time commitment required by a 900-pager.

Lois the Witch, Elizabeth Gaskell (1861): This is an unexpected delight – very different from Gaskell’s longer works with their interest in contemporary issues (working conditions in North and South, illegitimacy in Ruth), this is an historical fiction, set in the time of the Salem witch trials. In its depiction of America, the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, could be a fruitful point of comparison. Despite the early setting, this short work feels incredibly modern and is interesting in that it throws a heroine with stereotypically nineteenth-century virtues, into unfamiliar narrative waters. It can be purchased easily and cheaply as a paperback.

Milly Darrell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1873): A relatively unsensational work by the queen of sensation fiction, whose most famous novel, Lady Audley’s Secret, left society scandalised. Fans of Jane Eyre will be interested in its first person treatment of a woman who must seek her own income, while the plot culminates in a murder plot which features a female poisoner, linking it to much Victorian crime fiction and reportage. The novella (at around 100 pages) can be purchased in paperback online and is also digitised for free on Project Gutenberg.

‘The Haunted Hotel’, Wilkie Collins (1878): This is my favourite of the Collins short stories I’ve read so far and is readily available (as a free e-book, as an Oxford World’s Classic with other stories or in various ghost story anthologies). The Italian setting, fast-paced plot and gruesome climactic scene make this a fun read. I’d especially recommend it for students studying earlier or later Gothic literature.

‘The Sphinx Without a Secret’, Oscar Wilde (1891): The shortest piece I recommend here, this story is readily available in collections of Wilde’s work. Its conceit is in reversing readerly expectations and is a good instance of how shorter forms can flag up their difference from novels. If you’re studying The Picture of Dorian Gray, this is also a representative example of Wilde’s shorter prose works, and is well worth the 5-10 minutes it will take to read.

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