Opening Passage:
Charles Reding was the only son of a clergyman, who was in possession of a valuable benefice in a midland county. His father intended him for orders and sent him at a proper age to a public school. He had long revolved in his mind the respective advantages and disadvantages of public and private education, and had decided in favour of the former. "Seclusion", he said, "is no security for virtue...." (p. 11)
Summary: Charles Reding comes to Oxford, and while a bright, inquisitive mind in his way, is not much different from other students, beyond the fact that he has an unusual irenic temperament that wants, where possible, to give people the benefit of the doubt. He falls in with William Sheffield, entering Oxford at the same time, who is a bit more cynical and sarcastic. Oxford University at the time was a central hub, one might say, in the Church of England, since once of its major social functions was the training of clergy, and religion is a hot topic at the time. The late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century had involved a proliferation of different views of religion in the English Church, and political disputes over Dissenters and Catholics had intensified the importance of religion as a subject, and thus everyone discusses religious matters. At Oxford, Reding comes into contact with some of this chaos. Sheffield, of course, is the sort of person destined to respectability; he thinks making a lot of fuss about religion is usually the sign of a sham, and thus dabbles in the fads but never commits to anything much. Reding meets Bateman, a ritualist Anglo-Catholic whose conception of being Catholic is wearing cassocks and making sure his Anglican church has saint-niches, which remain empty because, of course, he couldn't get away with filling them with statues of saints. He meets White, a brash young man whose Anglo-Catholicism is all big talk that will obviously never come into action. There is Freeborn, the Evangelical who thinks all these catholicizing movements are slipping toward idolatry. There is Vincent, the affable Latitudinarian who never quite opposes anyone, but never quite supports them. There is Carlton, who seems in many ways to represent the most intellectually serious forms of Anglicanism. And so forth. What we see is that there is no obvious doctrinal Anglican cores -- everybody agrees to use the same words, but the primary unity beyond that seems just to be an agreement not to be Roman Catholic.
This situation -- Anglicans being Anglicans and yet not obviously having anything in common beyond being Anglicans -- causes severe problems for Reding, particularly as he comes closer to having to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles for his degree and yet finding few answers and no agreement about how he is supposed to understand them. Charles ill-advised remarks to the effect that at least the Roman Catholics have an official position leads people to suspect him of being in danger of swimming the Tiber. Such suspicions are self-feeding -- every discussion, every question, every puzzlement gives people further reason for it. They start actively trying to prevent his flight to Rome. In vain does Charles point out that he has no intention of becoming Roman Catholic, that he has never talked to a Catholic priest, that he has never studied Catholic doctrine and only knows about it second-hand, that he doesn't understand why anyone leaves the Church of England for the Church of Rome. Everyone is very concerned about his eventual defection, and, ironically, it will be this that will create situations in which he has to make the leap. He is punished for a tendency to Roman Catholicism that he doesn't see himself as having, but it is so consistent that he begins to doubt his own assessment. Perhaps other people are seeing something about himself that he does not?
From the time that Loss and Gain was published, it has been treated as autobiographical and satirical. It is not autobiographical -- if any character in the book is like Newman, it is not Charles but the priest he briefly meets on the train when he is intending to convert. It is an essential part of Charles's story that he is not, unlike Newman, a part of the Oxford Movement; he knows very little about them, beyond respecting the Movement's willingness to take doctrine seriously. Reding's journey has none of the intellectual shifts that Newman's had; Reding, while an intelligent young man, has a conversion that does not at all proceed on intellectual ground. All they have in common, really, is what every convert to Rome would have had at the time: massive loss, as opportunities dry up and relationships rupture, and massive gain.
Calling the book satiricial is better founded. It is not a comic work, but parts are quite funny. Anglo-Catholics come in for some heavy satirizing; Newman knew them well, and his own Romeward interests being devotional, even as an Anglican he didn't always have much patience for those whose Romeward tendencies were mostly ritualistic or scholastic. And the chapter of Charles fending off the many sectaries who, hearing that he is converting to Catholicism, come to try to divert him into their own weird religious varieties, is justly regarded as hilarious by almost everyone. There is also a humorously biting edge to the fact that Charles is pushed into conversion entirely by people who are trying to keep him from being converted. Yet the book is not, I think, primarily satirical in purpose. Rather, it is a character study, a look at what, psychologically, goes into making a radical transformation, and all the loss and gain involved. It is, as its subtitle suggests, 'The Story of a Convert'. That it sees clearly the many absurdities and humorous twists that can attend conversion is just a byproduct of the great art with which it looks at the question.
While a dialogical novel, the work is not a philosophical or theological dialogue; religion is, of course, heavily discussed, but the participants in the discussions are themselves wrestling with questions. Catholic doctrines are not explored at any profound level, and Reding's own conversion is not a conversion by doctrinal arguments. It's a dialogical novel because dialogue displays for us social relations. This is one of the reasons, I think, that the novel is much better as a novel than most novels about conversions; the discussions do not serve a primarily didactic purpose but as a depiction of society and what it means to be someone who, without resentment, malice, or even dislike, nonetheless doesn't fit in it and cannot, however he tries, make himself do so. It is extremely successful at this.
Favorite Passage:
"...I hope you approve of the cassock, Mrs. Reding?"
"It is a very cold dress, sir -- that's my opinion -- when made of silk or bombazeen; and very unbecoming too, when worn by itself."
"Particularly behind", said Charles; "it is quite unshapely.""Oh. I have remedied that", said Bateman; "you have noticed, Miss Reding, I dare say, the Bishop's short cassock. It comes to the knees, and look smuch like a continuation of a waistcoat, the straight-cut coat being worn as usual. Well, Miss Reding, I have adopted the same plan with the long cassock; I put my coat over it."
Mary had difficulty to keep from smiling; Charles laughed out. "Impossible, Bateman", he said; you don't mean you wear your tailed French coat over your long straight cassock reaching to your ankles?"
"Certainly", said Bateman gravely; "I thus consult for warmth and appearance too; and all my parishioners are sure to know me. I think this a great point, Miss Reding: I hear the little boys as I pass say, 'That's the parson'."
"I'll be bound they do", said Charles. (p. 225)
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
*****
John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain, Lipscombe, ed., Ignatius Press (San Francisco: 2012).
