The Heir of Redclyffe was Charlotte M. Yonge’s most popular book and was an instant success when it was published in 1853. It starts slowly, like most Victorian literature, and builds gradually, developing the characters and the story. The main thrust of the novel is the relationship between Guy Morville, the young man who becomes the heir of Redclyffe, and his cousin, Philip, the second in line to the inheritance.

Guy Morville was brought up by his grandfather after the tragic death of both his parents. The Morville’s were an impetuous and violent lot and there was a longstanding feud between Guy and Philip’s ancestors. The story begins with news of the death of Guy’s grandfather. As Guy was only seventeen at the time, he is placed under the guardianship of Mr. Edmonstone, a distant relative and Philip’s uncle. 

The Edmonstones had four children: Charles (an invalid due to a disease of his hip joint), Laura, Amabel (or Amy as she was mostly called) and Charlotte. They welcomed Guy into their home and he was loved by them all. Philip was a regular visitor to the Edmonstones and from the beginning he was patronising towards Guy, provoked him to anger and believed that he was a ‘thorough Morville’ with all their propensity for wildness. Guy battled with his inner demons and conquered them. Philip, conceited and self-righteous, wasn’t aware that he had any and was blind to his own faults.

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Here was the paved path he had trodden in early childhood, holding his mother’s hand, where, at each recurring vacation during his school days, he had walked between his admiring sisters, in the consciousness that he was the pride of his family and of all the parish. Of his family? Did he not remember his return home for the last time before that when he was summoned thither by his father’s death? He had come with a whole freight of prizes, and letters full of praises; and as he stood, in expectation of the expression of delighted satisfaction, his father laid his hand on his trophy, the pile of books, saying, gravely, —’ All this would I give, Philip, for one evidence of humility of mind.’

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‘His right judgement in all things was becoming obscured, so he talked metaphysical jargon instead of plain practical truth, and he thought he was teaching Laura to strengthen her powers of mind instead of giving way to dreams, when he was only leading her to stifle meditation, and thus securing her complete submission to himself.’

I won’t go into detail regarding the plot but it reminded me in places of Dickens’ Dombey and Son where pride was a major theme. In The Heir of Redclyffe, Philip’s ‘pride and malevolence had been the true source of his prejudice and misconceptions.’

This cost him dearly as it did Mr Dombey. With both characters redemption only came after they had caused a great deal of suffering in the lives of others.

Charles was very likeable and provided some light relief. He stood by Guy when Philip brought accusations against his character. He was also perceptive and forthright. He told Philip before Guy came to live with the Edmonstones,

‘Put the feud in your pocket till you can bury it in old Sir Guy’s grave, unless you mean to fight it out with his grandson, which would be more romantic and exciting.’

And of Philip’s influence over Laura, to whom he was secretly attached,  

‘We always knew Laura to be his slave and automaton…’

A family friend said of Charlie,

‘What a quantity of kind, right feeling there is under that odd, dry manner, that strives to appear to love nothing but a joke.’

In both The Clever Woman of the Family and The Heir of Redclyffe, men took on the nursing care of male relatives who were very ill. Alix in the former book and Guy in the latter.

Forgiveness, vulnerability, humility, self-sacrifice…’a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.’ These are some themes conveyed by this novel. And they are probably the reason that Charlotte Yonge’s writing has been unjustly neglected while many of her contemporaries have not. 

It is a travesty that Yonge’s massively popular novel is out of print in 2021. This is due, in part, to the critical condescension Yonge’s work endured for much of the twentieth century. Modern criticism has tended to dismiss Victorian moralizing as compromising literary achievement. As Gavin Budge argues, however, “to assert that expressions of religious commitment are necessarily inimical to a work’s status as art is to make an a priori assumption that the domain of aesthetics necessarily excludes questions of morality.”

Yonge had a lifelong influence on Barbara Pym who reread The Daisy Chain and others throughout her life. Yonge’s hero, Guy Morville, inspired William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory observed,

“If a really good home, such as the home of Alcinous and Arete in the Odyssey or the Rostovs in War and Peace or any of Charlotte M. Yonge’s families, existed today, it would be denounced as bourgeois and every engine of destruction would be levelled against it.”

Abraham Kuyper said of The Heir of Redclyffe that, “This masterpiece was the instrument that broke my smug, rebellious heart”

Sometimes in nursery tales, a naughty child, under the care of a fairy, is chained to an exaggeration of himself and his own faults, and rendered a slave to this hateful self.

This is the third book I’ve read by Charlotte Yonge. The first was a children’s book I read aloud, The Little Duke, which is the story of Richard the Fearless (943-996) the great-grandfather of William the Conqueror. (This book is scheduled in Year 2 at Ambleside Online) The Clever Woman of the Family was another. 

I can highly recommend this author. ❤️