Cleveland: A Tale of the Catholic Church

On its appearance in 1847, the anonymous Cleveland: A Tale of the Catholic Church garnered a surprisingly strong review from Fraser's Magazine--a venue not necessarily favorable to religious fiction--which praised it as "one of the best and most  powerfully written novels which have appeared for some time" (552).   A reviewer for the Church of England Quarterly Review was much more anxious, admitting that the novel was "overwrought although powerfully written," but fearing that the book's religious allegiances were "equivocal" (505).  The novelist Susan Ferrier, however, was irritated by such complaints, telling one correspondent that "I think it a work of great genius and merit, and one that exhibits in a most powerful manner the evils of Romanism, though some are so dim-sighted that they can't or won't see it in that light" (297).  Ferrier also knew the author: Mrs. Mary Murray Gartshore, renowned during her lifetime (and long after) as a brilliant amateur musician.  This appears to have been her only novel, although the hack writer S. W. Fullom, her father's biographer, identified her as a "novellist [sic] and poet" (388) in addition to her better-known musical talents.  

Although one has to agree with Ferrier that Cleveland is clearly an anti-Catholic novel, its execution deviates enough from the usual line that it's easy to see why the CofEQR was puzzled.  The novel mobilizes a number of familiar genre tropes and conventions, including the interfaith marriage plot, the priest as marital "third wheel," and the obligatory flights of theological exposition.  But it just as readily deconstructs or critiques others.  Most significantly, Cleveland upends the conversion novel.  Helen Mortimer, the woman at the novel's center, is a cradle Catholic who converts to Protestantism in order to marry the man she loves above all else, Cecil Milner--only to admit that, in fact, her conversion was a sham.  Nor does Helen ever convert to Protestantism, the efforts of Cecil and her friend Miss Trevelyan not withstanding.  Indeed, much like Elizabeth Hardy's later novel The Confessor, which I discussed a few posts earlier,  Cleveland derides controversial discourse as fundamentally useless (something the Fraser's review also notes): seeking to reclaim his wife, Cecil writes her a letter "full of what he imagined convincing truths" (248), none of which have any impact.  One suspects that the CofEQR was also somewhat baffled by the novel's willingness to mock both those who sneer at  "[t]hese Catholic fellows" [213]) and Protestant women who view Catholic priests through a veil of "sacred romance" (308).  This even-handedness carries over to the rivals for Helen's allegiance, the Catholic priest Cleveland (Helen's older cousin) and Cecil Milner, both of whom are genuinely devout and both of whom have significant character flaws.

Cleveland borrows the form of a conventional romance novel with a love triangle at its center.  Henry Cleveland, one of "the leading stars of the priesthood" (6), passionately loves his much younger cousin Helen, with whom all his "domestic affections" (191) are entwined.  Although Cleveland's love frequently manifests all the overheated symptoms of erotic desire, the novel never even remotely suggests that he consciously yearns to consummate the relationship; instead, he fixates obsessively on their idealized "union," which he believes will be "made perfect and happy in Heaven" (357-58).  The novel thus invokes the possibility of priestly adultery--the possibility always haunting anti-Catholic visions of the confessional--while stripping the concept of overt sexuality.  Cleveland's implacable pursuit of Helen, once he has apparently lost her to her husband, finds its mirror image in Milner's sometimes bad-tempered stubbornness.  Although the novel agrees with Milner's religious convictions, it equally blames him for the "proud anger and cold resentment" (272) that prevent him from reconciling with his wife at a key moment; just as importantly, it points out his blinkered response to his wife's psychological torments (354).  Even at the very end, Milner believes that his wife no longer loved him when she committed suicide, even though the reader knows that Helen committed suicide precisely because she could find no other way to escape her dilemma (386).  Milner is far less self-deluded than Cleveland,  but both men badly misinterpret the complexity and extent of Helen's wild love for Milner.  And Helen herself, much like Jane Eyre, commits the sin of idolatry: Milner is  "all perfect and excellent" (157),  a "dear and distant shrine" (307),  an "adored image" (335).  Nor, despite her occasional bouts of fury, does Helen really manage to understand Cleveland, either.   

The battle over Helen's soul takes place on a field marked by mutual incomprehension, uncontrolled desires, and multiple sins.  The novel further emphasizes these often violent conflicts by recourse to letters, although the contents are usually related only in free indirect discourse.  The letters fail to have the intended effect; they go undelivered; they are misread or read by someone other than the intended recipient; they are contradicted or subverted by other letters.  (And sometimes, the letters are never written at all.)  Communication in this novel proves to be risky business, and misinterpretations--or flat rejections--pile up at an alarming rate.   Between them, Milner and Cleveland completely fail to realize that their mutual struggle for absolute control over Helen produces only "wild confusion--despair--death in her soul" (381), the state of mind in which she kills herself.    In effect, Cleveland injects (however melodramatically) both resistance and confusion into the controversial narrative: the characters are all motivated by irrational or uncontrollable urges that unavoidably inflect their respective faiths, and are further incapable of sympathetically spanning the psychic gaps between male and female or Protestant and Catholic.  The language of religious controversy merely entraps the characters in prisons of their own devising, as they implicitly reject the working of grace in favor of the more immediate pressure of human reasoning.  No-one can convince Helen that Protestantism offers a true path to God, any more than she can convince herself.  Milner is right, to be sure, but even if Cleveland bears most of the novel's blame, Milner's way of being right still contributes to his wife's death.  And, quite possibly, her damnation.