I recently read Charlotte Mary Yonge’s 1853 novel, The Heir of Redclyffe, which tells the story of the relationship between two principal characters, the youthful heir to the Redclyffe estate, Sir Guy Morville, and his rather impulsive and slightly older cousin, Captain Philip Morville, who stands to inherit the estate in the event of Guy’s death. It is not great literature. Yonge’s work has not stood the test of time and has been overshadowed by the likes of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens. Yet in her day, Yonge’s books were tremendously popular, bearing the marks of early Victorian romanticism and sentimental piety.
From a literary standpoint, we can see that Yonge writes as an all-knowing narrator, inhabiting the thoughts of the principal characters in quick succession, constantly shifting vantage points–sometimes within a single paragraph–thereby making the story difficult at times to follow. The book is overly long, although I can’t say how many pages it has. The copy I purchased from Amazon was obviously downloaded and printed from an online source without title page or page numbers! It starts slowly and takes too long to build to its denouement, although at that point it nearly becomes a page turner, only to be followed by the final chapters once more taking their time to wrap things up.
So why read a mediocre novel from a mostly forgotten author? Because The Heir of Redclyffe played a large role in what James Bratt calls the first conversion of Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper’s fiancée, Johanna Schaay, gave him a copy of the novel not quite a decade after it was published. During their long engagement, Kuyper had somewhat patronizingly assigned to his future wife a regimen of readings intended to raise her educational level to his own and thereby make her a spouse suitable to his aspirations and ambitions. When Kuyper read Yonge’s novel, he identified with the overbearing young Philip, who is similarly ambitious. When Philip’s impetuous ways lead to Guy’s untimely death, he is humbled and penitent, finally recognizing the spiritual superiority of a young man whom he had regarded as his physical and intellectual inferior.
Jan de Bruijn tells of the impact this book had on the young Kuyper:
Kuyper wrote that the novel “for me, although not having equal value, ranks next to the Bible in significance.” He felt a strong affinity for one of the characters, the confident Philip, who came to see the error of his ways; but he was also deeply moved by the image of the Church of England as described in this book: the mother church in which the faithful found a sense of security. “Such a church I never saw or knew. Oh, to have such a church, ‘a mother who guides our steps from our youth!’ It became the thirst of my life.”
Yonge was highly influenced by the Oxford Movement, an effort to recover the catholic roots of the Church of England when it was threatened with disestablishment, thereby possibly losing its status as a national church. The movement started when John Keble, Yonge’s parish priest who vetted the novel before publication, preached a famous sermon on “National Apostasy” in 1833. Followers were disturbed at the increasing influence of secularism in Britain and of confessional liberalism within the churches. Attempting to find a firmer foundation for the Church, adherents looked to the traditions of the ancient church antedating the Reformation and began to look on Rome and Constantinople as sister churches. Although this would eventually lead to the rise of Anglo-Catholicism and the ritualist movement, the Oxford Movement was initially more preoccupied with confessional and ecclesiological issues than with the outward ceremonials with which Anglo-Catholics would later come to be associated.
The issue of the church was one that would preoccupy Kuyper, both when he served within the established Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk and after he led the Doleantie out of that body in 1886. The passage of the novel that most spoke to him was the following:
The blessing of peace came in the precious English burial-service, as they laid him to rest in the earth, beneath the spreading chestnut-tree, rendered a home by those words of his Mother Church—the mother who had guided each of his steps in his orphaned life. It was a distant grave, far from his home and kindred, but in a hallowed spot, and a most fair one; and there might his mortal frame meetly rest till the day when he should rise, while from their ancestral tombs should likewise awaken the forefathers whose sins were indeed visited on him in his early death; but, thanks to Him who giveth the victory, in death without the sting.
Indeed the entire novel portrays the characters surrounded by the ministries of the church. Guy’s young widow bequeaths his personal copy of the Book of Common Prayer to Philip. On that last transcendent evening before his illness takes hold, Guy and his new bride Amabel chant Psalm 29 together:
There is only one thing wanting,’ said Amy. ‘You may sing now. You are far from Philip’s hearing. Suppose we chant this afternoon’s psalms.’
It was the fifth day of the month, and the psalms seemed especially suitable to their thoughts. Before the 29th was finished, it was beginning to grow dark. There were a few pale flashes of lightning in the mountains, and at the words ‘The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness,’ a low but solemn peal of thunder came as an accompaniment.
‘The Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace.’
The full sweet melody died away, but the echo caught it up and answered like the chant of a spirit in the distance—‘The blessing of peace.’
The effect was too solemn and mysterious to be disturbed by word or remark. Guy drew her arm into his, and they turned homewards.
The reference, of course, is to the prayer-book’s 30-day schedule for praying through the Psalms, in which Psalms 27-29 are prescribed for the evening of the fifth of the month.
While not great literature, Yonge’s best-selling novel is nevertheless compelling in that it is suffused with faith in Jesus Christ as mediated by the institutional church. Even as the characters navigate the intricate proprieties of Victorian England and incur guilt through various sins of commission and omission, the church is there for them, making up the mostly implicit backdrop for all their activities.
While Christendom has fallen into disrepute in recent decades, there can be no doubt that something has been lost in its decline. We can no longer hold our neighbours to the standards of a gospel to which they do not adhere, except in so far as its teachings continue to exert a vestigial influence on them. Our society validates the authentic self and the personal quest to find it, irrespective of the damage it may inflict on our communities and interpersonal relationships. If Christendom has declined, it has not made our society any less religious. Instead, it remains deeply religious, with its allegiance now focussed on the socially fragmenting idol of the ego and its desires.
But imagine living in a community in which praying through the Psalms on a monthly basis is simply taken for granted. Where the cadences of Scripture come easily to people’s lips. Where the church and its sacraments initiate and nourish its members throughout their lives. Where the presence of God is generally acknowledged and people measure their lives by his word. Where even a deep-seated personal clash might be healed by an attitude of repentance and forgiveness. Where faith in the resurrection illuminates the present age.
This is what Yonge’s novel offers in its pages, and it was more than enough to bring a famous Dutchman to his knees.
