HALL CAINE.
STORY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK, DERIVED FROM CONVERSATIONS.
By Robert Harborough Sherard.
Extreme dignity is the leading characteristic of Thomas Henry Hall Caine as a man, just as extreme conscientiousness is his leading characteristic as a writer. He possesses in a high degree the sense of the responsibility which an author owes to the public and to himself. It is on account of these facts that the story of his uneventful life and brilliant literary career is a highly interesting one. It shows how, by firmness of principle and a high respect of the public and himself, a man of undoubted genius has been enabled to raise himself to a position in the English-speaking worlds to which few men of letters have ever attained—a position which may be compared to that of a vates amongst the Romans, of a prophet in Israel.
Hall Caine, as his double name implies, comes of the mixed Norse and Celtic race which constitutes the population of the Isle of Man. Hall, his mother's name, is Norse, and is common to this day in Iceland, from which the Norsemen came to Manxland. Caine, which means "a fighter with clubs," is Celtic. Hall Caine himself, with his ruddy beard and hair and distinctive features, has inherited rather the physical characteristics of his maternal ancestors, the Norsemen.
BALLAVOLLEY COTTAGE, BALLAUGH, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE HALL CAINE LIVED AS A LITTLE BOY.
He comes of a stock of crofters, or small farmers, who for centuries had supported themselves by tilling the soil and fishing the sea. He is the first of all his line who ever worked his brain for a living. His grandfather, who had a farm of sixty acres in the beautiful parish of Ballaugh, which lies between Peel and Ramsey, was a wastrel, fond of the amusements and dissipations to be found in Douglas, and alienated his small property, so that, at the age of eighteen, his son, Hall Caine's father, was for a living obliged to apprentice himself to a blacksmith at Ramsey. When he had learned his trade he removed, in the hopes of finding more remunerative employment, to Liverpool. Here, however, he found it so hard to support himself as a blacksmith that he set to work to learn the trade of ship's smith—a remunerative one in those days, when Liverpool was the centre of the ship-building trade. He became a skilled worker, and at the time of his marriage was able to command a wage of thirty-six shillings a week, in addition to what he was able to earn by piece work. It was whilst engaged on a piece of work on a ship at Runcorn, in Cheshire, that on May 14, 1853, the child was born—his second son—to whom he gave the names of Thomas Henry Hall. Runcorn can thus claim to be the birthplace of the famous writer, although his birth there was a mere accident, and not more than ten days of his life were spent there.
From a photograph by Barraud, London.
FACSIMILE OF HALL CAINE'S MANUSCRIPT, FROM "THE MANXMAN." AN ADDITION MADE IN REVISING PROOFS.
Hall Caine has no remembrance of the first years which he spent in Liverpool, and his earliest recollections are of life in his grandmother's cottage of Ballavolley, Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, a house set in a wooded plain surrounded by high mountains which glow, here yellow with the gorse, there purple with the heather. In the foreground is the beautiful old church of Ballaugh, in the cemetery of which many generations of Caines lie at rest; and between the old church and the village lies the curragh land, full of wild flowers and musical with the notes of every bird that uplifts its voice to heaven. Far off can be descried, across the sea, the Mull of Galloway. It is in its rare beauty a spot than which, for a poet's childhood, no fitter could be found.
MRS. HALL CAINE.
CHILDHOOD IN A MANX COTTAGE.
The Ballavolley cottage was a typical Manx cottage. On one side of the porch was the parlor, which also served as a dairy, redolent of milk and bright with rare old Derby china. On the other side was the living-room, with its undulating floor of stamped earth and grateless hearthstone in the ingle, to the right and left of which were seats. Here in the ingle-nook the little boy would sit watching his aunts cooking the oaten cake on the griddle, over a fire of turf from the curragh and gorse from the hills, or the bubbling cooking-pot slung on the slowrie. One of his earliest recollections is of his old grandmother, seated on her three-legged stool, bending over the fire, tongs in hand, renewing the fuel of gorse under the griddle. The walls of this room were covered with blue crockery ware, and through the open rafters of the unplastered ceiling could be seen the flooring of the bedrooms above. These were very low dormer rooms, with the bed in the angle where the roof was lowest. One had to crawl into bed and lie just under the whitewashed "scraa" or turf roofing, which smelt deliciously with an odor that at times still haunts the cottage lad in statelier homes.
HALL CAINE'S LIBRARY.
Hall Caine's impressions of his life at Ballavolley are vivid—the old preacher at the church, the drinking-bouts of "jough"-beer by the gallon amongst the villagers, the donkey rides upon the curragh. But what it best pleases him to remember are the times when, seated in the ingle-nook, he used to listen to his grandmother telling fairy stories, as she sat at her black oak spinning-wheel, bending low over the whirling yarn. "Hommybeg"—it was a pet name she had given to him—"Hommybeg," she would say, "I will tell you of the fairies." And the story that he liked best to listen to, though it so frightened him that he would run and hide his face in the folds of the blue Spanish cloak which Manx women have worn since two ships of the Great Armada were wrecked upon the island, was the story of how his grandmother, when a lass, had seen the fairies with her own eyes. That was many years before. She had been out one night to meet her sweetheart, and as she was returning in the moonlight she was overtaken by a multitude of little men, tiny little fellows in velvet coats and cocked hats and pointed shoes, who ran after her, swarmed over her, and clambered up her streaming hair.
GREEBA CASTLE, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE MR. CAINE WROTE MOST OF "THE MANXMAN."
He was a precocious lad, and knew no greater delight than to read. The first book that he remembers reading was a bulky tome on the German Reformation, about Luther and Melancthon, which he had found. He spent weeks over it, and, staggering under its weight, would carry it out into the hayfield, where, truant to the harvest, he would lie behind the stacks and read and read. One night, indeed, his interest in this book led him to break the rules of his thrifty home—where children went to bed when it was dark, so that candles should not be burned—and light the candles and read on about Luther. He was found thus by one of his aunts as, pails in hand, she returned home from milking the cows. Her anger was great. "Candles lit!" she cried. "What's to do? Candles! Wasting candles on reading, on mere reading!" He was beaten and sent to bed, bursting with indignation at such injustice, for he felt that candles were nothing compared to knowledge. He was a bookish boy, wanting in boyishness, and never played games, but spent his time in reading, not boyish books, indeed, but books in which never boy before took interest—histories, theological works, and, in preference, parliamentary speeches of the great orators, which he would afterwards rewrite from memory. At a very early age he showed a great passion for poetry and was a great reader of Shakespeare. His talent for reading passages of Shakespeare aloud was such that at the school at Liverpool, where he was educated, his schoolmaster, George Gill, used to make him read aloud before all the boys. This caused him great nervous agony, he says, and he suffered horribly. He was a favorite pupil, and, in a school where corporal punishment was inflicted with great severity, was never once beaten. He left school at the age of fifteen and was apprenticed by his father to John Murray, architect and land-surveyor. The lad had no special faculties for architecture beyond possessing a fair knowledge of drawing. When only thirteen he drew the map of England which appeared in the first edition of "Gill's Geography." At this time he had shown no bent for authorship beyond making the transcriptions from memory of the speeches he had read, and writing, for a school competition, a "Life of Joseph," which was not even read by the arbitrator, because it was much too long. It is noticeable, however, that on this "Life of Joseph" he had worked with the same conscientiousness which has distinguished his literary activity through all his career. "I read everything on the subject that I could lay my hands upon," he says, "and spent day and night in working at it." To-day, as then, when Hall Caine has a book to write, he reads every book bearing on his theme which he can obtain—"a whole library for each chapter"—and will work at his subject day and night, all-absorbed, wrapped up, concentrated.
PEEL CASTLE, ISLE OF MAN.
John Murray was agent for the Lancashire estates of W.E. Gladstone, and it was in this way that Hall Caine first became known to the statesman, who from the first has been amongst his keenest admirers. One of the first occasions on which he attracted Mr. Gladstone's attention was one day when he was superintending the surveying of Seaforth, Gladstone's estate. Gladstone was surprised to see so small a lad in charge of the chainmen, and began to talk with him. He must have been impressed by the lad's conversation, for he patted his head and told him he would be a fine man yet. Mr. Gladstone has never forgotten this incident. Some time later, John Murray having failed in the meanwhile, an offer was made to Hall Caine, from the Gladstones, of the stewardship of the Seaforth estate at a salary of one hundred and twenty pound a year. "Although the thought of so much wealth," he relates, "overwhelmed me, I did not see in this offer the prospect of any career—indeed this had been pointed out to me—and I determined to continue in the architect's office." He accordingly attached himself as pupil or apprentice to Richard Owens, the architect.
PEEL, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE MR. CAINE FINISHED "THE MANXMAN." THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, IN THE ROW FRONTING ON THE WATER AT THE LEFT OF THE PICTURE, IS THE ONE MR. CAINE OCCUPIED.
FIRST WRITINGS FOR THE PUBLIC.
Hall Caine's first writings for the public were done in the Isle of Man, at the age of sixteen, when he had come over to recruit his health at the house of his uncle, the schoolmaster at Kirk Maughold. At that time the island was divided by a discussion as to the maintenance or abolition of Manx political institutions, and the boy threw himself into this discussion with characteristic ardor. His vehement articles in favor of the maintenance of the political independence, published each week in "Mona's Herald," were full of force. They attracted, however, little notice beyond that of James Teare, Caine's uncle, the great temperance reformer, who admired them justly. He encouraged the boy to write, and told his skeptical relations that if Hall Caine failed as an architect he would certainly be able to make a living with his pen.
A visit to Kirk Maughold will afford to the observer the best insight into Hall Caine's literary temperament. The spirit of the place expounds his spirit; its genius seems to have entered into him. There are seasons when this headland height lies serene and calm, wrapped in such loveliness of light on sea and land that the heart melts for very ecstasy at the beauty of all things around, the glowing hills, the flowers that are everywhere, the sea beyond, the tenderness, the color, the native poetry of it all. There are seasons, too, of strife and hurricane, of titanic forces battling in the air, when vehement and irresistible winds burst forth to make howling havoc on the bleakest heights—so they seem then—that man's foot ever trod. There are times when not one harebell nods its head in the calm air, not one seed falls from the feathered grass, in the tender serenity of a quiet world; and there are times, too, when Nature aroused puts forth her terrible strength, so that man ventures abroad at his great peril, and ropes must be stretched along the roads by which the unwary wanderer may drag his storm-tossed body home. In Hall Caine's work we also find these extremes of tenderness and its calm, of passion and its riot.
On his return to Liverpool, encouraged by what James Teare had said, Hall Caine continued to write. No longer, however, on political questions, but on the subjects with which his profession had familiarized him. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty this boy wrote learned leading articles on building, land-surveying, and architecture for "The Builder." George Godwin, the editor of this leading periodical, could not believe his eyes when he first met his contributor. Hall Caine was then nineteen. "I felt terribly ashamed of being so young," he says, in speaking of this interview.
R.E. MORRISON. R.H.SHERARD. HALL CAINE.
From a photograph taken specially for McCLURE'S MAGAZINE, by George B. Cowen, Ramsey, Isle of Man. Mr. Morrison is an artist who has lately painted a portrait of Mr. Caine.
It was about this time that he returned to the Isle of Man, tired of architecture. His uncle died, and there was no schoolmaster at Kirk Maughold school. So Hall Caine became schoolmaster, and for about six months kept a mixed school on the bleak headland. He is still remembered as a schoolmaster, and last year, when "The Manxman" was appearing in serial publication, his grown-up scholars used to gather at a farm near Kirk Maughold school and listen to the schoolmaster reading the story as each instalment came out.
The six months of his schoolmastership were a period of great activity. It was the time of the Paris Commune, and, a rabid Communist, Hall Caine read Communist and socialistic literature with avidity. He contributed violent propagandist articles to "Mona's Herald," in which three years previously he had preached the virtues of conservatism, and attracted the attention of John Ruskin by his eulogies of Ruskin's work with his recently founded Guild of St. George. His leisure was spent in his workshop, and during this period he not only carved a tombstone for his uncle's grave, but built a house—Phoenix cottage—both of which are still standing and may be seen. It was a happy time, a time of inspiration; and it may be, from the sympathy between the man and the place, that Hall Caine would have stayed on at Kirk Maughold had not a most imperative letter from Richard Owens, which said that it was deplorable that he should be throwing his life away in such occupations, recalled him to Liverpool. To Liverpool accordingly he returned, to work as a draughtsman, and fired withal with a double ambition—for one thing to win fame as a poet, for another to succeed as a dramatist. Already in 1870 he had written a long poem, which was published in 1874 anonymously by an enterprising Liverpool publisher. About this poem George Gilfillan, to whom Hall Caine sent it in 1876, wrote that there was much in it that he admired, that it had the ring of genius, but that in parts it was spoiled by affectations of language which could, however, be remedied. Of the same poem, Rossetti, to whom it was also sent, wrote that it contained passages of genius. As a dramatist, Hall Caine wrote, at this period in his career, a play called "Alton Locke." founded on Kingsley's story. It was shown to Rousby, the actor-manager, who liked "the promise that it showed" and asked Hall Caine to write a play to his order. At that time he looked upon himself as a dramatist, and indeed still hopes to achieve as such—when he shall have tired of the novel as a vehicle and shall have learned, the present object of his closest study, the technicalities of the stage—a success as great as that which has attended his novels. Many of his friends, indeed, hope for even better things from him as a dramatist; and Blackmore, for instance, hardly ever writes to him without repeating that, great as has been his success as a novelist, it will be nothing to his success when he gets possession of the stage.
SIR W.L. DRINKWATER, THE PRESENT FIRST DREMSTER OF THE ISLE OF MAN.
CAINE'S ASSOCIATION WITH ROSSETTI.
Till the age of twenty-four he remained in Liverpool, earning his living in a builder's office, lecturing, starting societies, working as secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and writing for the papers. His lectures on Shakespeare attracted the attention of Lord Houghton, who expressed a desire to meet him. A meeting was arranged at the house of Henry Bright (the H.A.B, of Hawthorne); and the first thing that Lord Houghton, the biographer of Keats, said when Hall Caine came into the room was: "You have the head of Keats." He predicted that the young author would become a great critic. Another of Hall Caine's lectures, delivered during this period, "The Supernatural in Poetry," brought a long letter of eulogy from Matthew Arnold. His lecture on Rossetti won him the friendship of this great man, a correspondence ensued, and when Caine was twenty-five years old, Rossetti wrote and asked him to come up to London to see him. Caine went and was received most cordially.
"He met me on the threshold of his house," he relates, "with both hands outstretched, and drew me into his studio. That night he read me 'The King's Tragedy.'"
During the evening Rossetti asked him to remove to London and invited him to his house; at the same time—it may be to prepare him for their common life—he showed him, to Caine's horror, what a slave he had become to the chloral habit.
BISHOP'S COURT, WHERE DAN MYLREA IN "THE DREMSTER" WAS REARED.
It was not until many months later that Hall Caine determined to accept Rossetti's invitation, and went to share his monastic seclusion in his gloomy London house. In the meanwhile, and in this Rossetti had helped him by correspondence, he had edited for Elliot Stock an anthology of English sonnets, which was published under the title of "Sonnets of Three Centuries." For his work in connection with this volume Hall Caine received no remuneration. Indeed, at this period in his career the earnings of the writer who can to-day command the highest prices in the market, were very small indeed. His average income was two hundred and sixty pounds (thirteen hundred dollars), and of this two hundred pounds was earned as a draughtsman. When he went to live with Rossetti he had about fifty pounds (two hundred and fifty dollars) of money saved, to which he was afterwards able to add a sum of one hundred pounds, which Rossetti insisted on his accepting as his commission on the sale of Rossetti's picture, "Dante's Dream." It may be mentioned, to dispel certain misstatements, that this was the only financial transaction which took place between the two friends. His life in Rossetti's house was the life of a monk, seeing nobody except Burne-Jones (whom, as Ruskin will have it, he resembles closely), going nowhere and doing little. "I used to get up at noon," he says, "and usually spent my afternoon in walking about in the garden. I did not see Rossetti till dinner-time, but from that hour till three or four in the morning we were inseparable." It has been stated that Caine owed much of his success in literature to Rossetti. This is only partly true. His introduction to literary society in London under Rossetti's wing was harmful rather than advantageous to him, for it prejudiced people against him; and his connection with Rossetti, which was that of a spiritual son with a spiritual father, was misrepresented. He was spoken of as Rossetti's secretary, even as Rossetti's valet. On the other hand, so young a man could not but derive benefit from the society of so refined an artist, who had no thought nor ambition outside his art. And, in a practical way, Rossetti also benefited him. When he first came to Rossetti's house he was under an engagement to deliver twenty-four lectures on "Prose Fiction" in Liverpool, and in preparation of these lectures began studying the English novelists.
KIRK MAUGHOLD, WHICH FIGURES IN "THE BONDMAN" AND "THE MANXMAN."
"One day Rossetti suggested that, instead of reading these novels alone, I should read them aloud to him. From that day on, night after night, for months and months, I used to read to him. I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray, and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti. It was terrible labor, this reading for hours night after night, till dawn came and I could drag myself wearily upstairs to bed. But it was a very useful study, and this is indeed the debt which I owe to Rossetti."
Rossetti died on Easter Day, 1882, at the seashore, near Margate, in Hall Caine's arms. It shows the extent of their friendship that, the bungalow being crowded that night, Caine readily offered to sleep in the death-chamber. "It is Rossetti," he said.
HALL CAINE'S FIRST NOVEL.
Hall Caine then returned to London, and whilst continuing to contribute to various papers, and notably to the "Liverpool Mercury," to which he was attached for years, he wrote his "Recollections of Rossetti," which brought him forty pounds (two hundred dollars) and attracted some attention in literary circles, without, however, enhancing his reputation with the general public. This was followed by "Cobwebs of Criticism," the title he gave to a collection of critical essays, originally delivered as lectures. This book did nothing for him in any way. All this while he had been hankering after novel-writing, and, though Rossetti had always urged him to become a dramatist, he had also encouraged him to write novels, advising him to become the novelist of Manxland. "There is a career there," he used to say, "for nothing is known about this land." The two friends had discussed Hall Caine's plot of "The Shadow of a Crime," which Rossetti had found "immensely powerful but unsympathetic," and it was with this novel that Hall Caine began his career as a writer of fiction. He had married in the meanwhile, and with forty pounds (two hundred dollars) in the bank and an assured income of a hundred (five hundred dollars) a year from the "Liverpool Mercury," he went with his wife to live in a small house in the Isle of Wight, to write his book. "I labored over it fearfully," he says, "but not so much as I do now over my books. At that time I only wanted to write a thrilling tale. Now what I want in my novels is a spiritual intent, a problem of life." "The Shadow of a Crime" appeared first in serial form in the "Liverpool Mercury," and was published in book form by Chatto & Windus in 1885. For the book rights Hall Caine received seventy-five pounds (three hundred and seventy-five dollars), which, with the one hundred pounds (five hundred dollars) from the "Liverpool Mercury," is all that he has ever received from a book which is now in its seventeenth edition. "It had a distinguished reception," he says. "Indeed, it was received with a burst of eulogy from the press; but at the time it produced no popular success, and made no difference in my market value."
There is no man living, perhaps, who has more contempt for money than Hall Caine, revealing himself in this also a true artist; yet to exemplify to a confrère the practical value of what he calls the "literary statesmanship" which he has practised throughout his career, he will sometimes show the little book in which are entered the receipts from his various works. No more striking argument in favor of conscientiousness and literary dignity could be found than that afforded by a comparison between the first page of this account book and the last.
LEZAYRE CHURCH, WHERE PETE AND KATE WERE MARRIED IN "THE MANXMAN."
BEATING THE STREETS OF LONDON IN SEARCH OF WORK.
A time of need followed, during which Hall Caine beat the streets of London in search of work. He offered himself as a publisher's reader in various houses, and was roughly turned away. He suffered slights and humiliations; but these only strengthened his resolve. In this respect he reminds one of Zola, whom slights and humiliations only strengthened also; and in this connection it may be mentioned that there hangs in Hall Caine's drawing-room, in Peel, a pen-and-ink portrait which one mistakes for that of Emile Zola, till one is told that it is the picture of Hall Caine.
The reverses, which it now pleases him to remember, in no wise daunted him. There was his wife and "Sunlocks," his little son, to be provided for; and with fine determination he set to work. In the year 1886 he wrote a "Life of Coleridge" and finished his second novel, "A Son of Hagar." On the fly-leaf of his copy of the "Life of Coleridge" are written the words: "N.B—This book was begun October 8, 1886. It was not touched after that date until October 15th or 16th, and was finished down to last two chapters by November 1st. Completed December 4th to 8th—about three weeks in all. H.C." It is an excellent piece of work, but Caine regrets now that he threw away on a book of this kind all his knowledge of his subject. "I could have written the Life of Coleridge," he says.
"A Son of Hagar" produced three hundred pounds (fifteen hundred dollars), and has now achieved an immense success, but its reception at the time was a feeble one. Hall Caine ground his teeth and clenched his fist and said: "I will write one more book; I will put into it all the work that is in me, and if the world still remains indifferent and contemptuous, I will never write another." In the meanwhile he had decided to follow Rossetti's advice, to write a Manx novel; and having thought out the plot of "The Deemster," went to the Isle of Man to write it. It was written in six months, in one of the lodging-houses on the Esplanade at Douglas, in a fever of wounded pride. "I worked over it like a galley-slave; I poured all my memories into it," he says. In the meanwhile he maintained his family by journalism, being now connected with the best papers in London. "The Deemster" was sold for one hundred and fifty pounds (six hundred dollars), the serial rights having produced four hundred pounds (two thousand dollars). He would be glad to-day to purchase the copyright back for one thousand pounds. He had great faith in this book.
"Long after we are both dead," he said to his publisher, when they were discussing terms, "this book will be alive." "I was indifferent to its reception," he relates; "I said, that if the public did not take it, that would only prove its damnable folly," Its reception was immense, and "then began for me something like fame."
THE BEGINNING OF PROSPERITY.
INTERIOR OF "THE COTTAGE BY THE WATER-TROUGH," KIRKNEO, NEAR RAMSEY, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE LIVED "BLACK TOM," THE GRANDFATHER OF PETE, IN "THE MANXMAN."
Offers came in from all sides; the little house in Kent, where he was then living, became the pilgrimage of the publishers. Irving read the book in America, and seeing that there was here material for a splendid play, with himself in the part of the Bishop, hesitated about cabling to the author. In the meanwhile Wilson Barrett had also read the book, and had telegraphed to Kent to ask Hall Caine to come up to London to discuss its dramatization. Hall Caine started, but was forced to leave the train at Derby because a terrible fog rendered travelling impossible. He spent the next ten days in the Isaac Walton Inn, at Dovedale, near Derby, waiting for the fog to lift, and whilst so waiting wrote the first draft of the play, which he entitled "Ben-my-Chree," Barrett was enthusiastic about it, and "Ben-my-Chree" was duly produced for the first time at the Princess Theatre, on May 14, 1888, before a packed house, in which every literary celebrity in London was present. "The reception was enthusiastic; the next day I was a famous man." Notwithstanding its great success on the first night and the splendid eulogies of the press, "Ben-my-Chree" failed to draw in London, and after running for one hundred nights, at a great loss to the management, was withdrawn. It was then taken to the provinces, and was very successful, both there and in America, holding the stage for seven years. It was afterwards reproduced, with some success, in London. This play brought Hall Caine in a sum of one thousand pounds (five thousand dollars), and out of this he bought himself a house in Keswick, where he remained in residence for four years. Having now given up journalism, he devoted himself entirely to fiction and play-writing.
THE ORIGINAL OF KATE IN "THE MANXMAN."
In 1889, he went with his wife to Iceland and spent two months there, for the purpose of studying certain scenes which he wished to introduce into "The Bondman," on which he was then working. Documentation is as much Hall Caine's care in his novels as it is Emile Zola's. "The Bondman," which had been begun in March, 1889, at Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent, a house of sinister memory—for Caine narrowly escaped being murdered there one night—was finished in October, at Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick, and was published by Heinemann in 1890, with a success which is far from being exhausted even to-day. In this year Hall Caine experienced a great disappointment. He had been commissioned by Sir Henry Irving to write a play on "Mahornet," and had written three acts of it, when such an outcry was made in the press against Irving's proposal to put "Mahomet" on the stage, to the certain offence of British Mohammedans, that Sir Henry telegraphed to him to say that the plan could not be carried out. He offered to compensate Hall Caine for his labor. "I refused, however, to accept one penny," says Caine, "and after relieving my feelings by spitting on my antagonists in an angry article in 'The Speaker,' I finished the play." It was accepted by Willard for production in America, but has not yet been played. "This was a great disappointment," says Caine, "and I had little heart for much work in 1890. I did nothing in that year beyond a hasty 'Life of Christ,' which has never been printed. I had read Renan's 'Life of Christ,' and had been deeply impressed by it, and I had said that there was a splendid chance for a 'Life of Christ' as vivid and as personal from the point of belief as Renan's was from the point of unbelief." This book he wrote, but was not satisfied with it, and has refused to publish it, although only last year a firm of publishers offered him three thousand pounds (fifteen thousand dollars) for the manuscript. "No, I was not satisfied, though I had brought to bear on it faculties which I had never used in my novels. It was human, it was most dramatic, but it fell far short of what I had hoped to do, and I put it away in my cupboard. I hope to rewrite it some day."
In 1891 Hall Caine began to work on "The Scapegoat," and in the spring of that year went to Morocco to fit the scenes to his idea. He suffered there from very bad health, from severe neurosthenia. "I was a 'degenerate,' he says, "à la Nordau." No sooner had "The Scapegoat" been published, than the chief rabbi wrote to him to ask him to go to Russia, to write about the persecutions of the Jews in that country, and in 1892 he started on this mission, which he fulfilled entirely at his own expense, declining all the offers of subsidies made to him by the Jewish Committee. He carried with him for protection against the Russian authorities, a letter from Lord Salisbury to H. M.'s Minister at St. Petersburg, to be delivered only in case of need; and as an introduction to the possibly hostile Jewish Communities, a letter in Hebrew to be presented to the rabbis in the various towns. Lord's Salisbury's letter was never used, but the chief rabbi's introduction secured him everywhere a most hospitable reception.
"BLACK TOM" BEFORE "THE COTTAGE BY THE WATER-TROUGH."
"I went through the pale of settlement," he relates, "and saw as much of frontier life amongst the Jews as possible and found them like hunted dogs. I, however, got no further than the frontier towns, for cholera had broken out, numerous deaths took place every day, my own health was getting queer, and, to speak plainly, I was frightened. So we turned our faces back and returned home. On my return to London I delivered a lecture before the Jewish Workmen's Club in the East End, in a hall crammed to suffocation. I shall never forget the enthusiasm of the audience, the tears, the laughter, the applause, the wild embraces to which I was subjected."
This was the only use that Hall Caine ever made of all his experiences of his tour in Russia in 1892, which had lasted many months, for when he returned to Cumberland to write the story which was to be called "The Jew," he found the task impossible. "I worked very hard at it, I turned it over in every direction in my mind, but I felt I could not do it. I wanted the experience of a life; I could not enter into competition in their own field with the great Russian novelists. I found it could not be done."
THE WRITING OF "THE MANXMAN."
In the meanwhile, circumstances had obliged him to give up Castlerigg Cottage in disgust, and he accordingly removed to the Isle of Man, with the determination of fixing his residence there definitely. For the first six months he lived at Greeba Castle, a very pretty but very lonely house, about half-way between Peel and Douglas, on the Douglas road—and it was there that most of "The Manxman" was written.
"I turned my Jewish story into a Manx story, and 'The Jew' became 'The Manxman.' In my original scheme, Philip was to be a Christian, governor of his province in Russia; Pete, Cregeen, and Kate were to be Jews. I thought that the racial difference between the two rivals would afford greater dramatic contrast than the class difference, and it was only reluctantly that I altered the scheme of my story."
Hall Caine, in speaking of the genesis of "The Manxman," may be induced to show his little pocket-diary for 1893. Against each day during the whole of January and part of February are written the words: "The Jew."
"That means," he will explain, "that all those days I was working at my story in my head."
"The Manxman" was finished at the house in Marine Parade in Peel where Hall Caine is now temporarily residing—a large brick house, which was built for a boarding-house and is certainly not the house for an artist. As he has determined to make his home in the island, he is at present hesitating whether to purchase Greeba Castle, or to build himself a house on the Creg Malin headland at Peel, than which no more wondrous site for a poet's home could be found in the Queen's dominions, overlooking the bay, with the rugged pile of Peel Castle, memory haunted, beyond.
He loves the Manx and they love him. At first "society" in the island objected to his disregard of the conventions. Now he is as popular at Government House, or at the Deemster's, as he is in Black Tom's cottage. But his warmest friends are amongst the peasants and fishermen, from one end of the island to the other. "They are such good fellows," he says, "and such excellent subjects for study for my books. They are current coin for me." So he asks them to supper, and visits them in their houses, and has taught himself their language and their strange intonations as they speak.
In June and July of 1894, whilst in London, Hall Caine wrote a dramatic version of "The Manxman" and offered it to Tree, who, however, refused it, as unlikely to appeal to the sympathies of the fashionable audiences of the Haymarket Theatre. In this version Philip was the central figure. The version which has been played with much success both in America and in the provinces, was written by Wilson Barrett, with Pete as the central figure. It was originally produced in Leeds, on August 20, 1894, and has met with a good reception everywhere except in Manchester and New York. The critics in the latter city wrote that it was a disgrace to the book.
For some years past, Hall Caine has devoted himself to literary public affairs. He is Sir Walter Resant's best supporter in his noble efforts to protect authors and to advance their interests. His ability as a public speaker and a politician of letters is great, and in recognition of this he was asked—a most distinguished honor—in November of last year to open the Edinburgh Literary and Philosophical Institution for the winter session, his predecessors having been John Morley and Mr. Goschen. He is at this writing in America on behalf of the Authors' Society, in connection with the Canadian copyright difficulty. He possesses in a marked degree that sense of solidarity amongst men of letters in which most successful authors are so singularly lacking, and the great power with which his world-wide popularity has vested him is used by him rather in the general interest of the craft than to own advantage.
His life in his home in Peel, in the midst of his family—the old parents, the pretty young wife, and the two bonny lads—is noble in its simplicity, a life of high thinking, when, his success and personal popularity being what they are, he has many temptations to worldliness.
He attributes his success in part to the fact that he has always been a great reader of the Bible.
"I think," he says, "that I know my Bible as few literary men know it. There is no book in the world like it, and the finest novels ever written fall far short in interest of the stories it tells. Whatever strong situations I have in my books are not of my creation, but are taken from the Bible. 'The Deemster' is the story of the prodigal son. 'The Bondman' is the story of Esau and Jacob, though in my version sympathy attaches to Esau. 'The Scapegoat' is the story of Eli and his sons, but with Samuel as a little girl. 'The Manxman' is the story of David and Uriah. My new book also comes out of the Bible, from a perfectly startling source."
Hall Caine does not begin his books with a character or group of characters, like Dickens or Scott, nor with a plot, like Wilkie Collins, nor with a scene, like Black, but with an idea, a spiritual intent. In all his books the central motive is always the same. "It is," he says, "the idea of justice, the idea of a Divine Justice, the idea that righteousness always works itself out, that out of hatred and malice comes Love. My theory is that a novel, a piece of imaginative writing, must end with a sense of justice, must leave the impression that justice is inevitable. My theory is also—on the matters which divide novelists into realists and idealists—that the highest form of art is produced by the artist who is so far an idealist that he wants to say something and so far a realist that he copies nature as closely as he can in saying it."
His methods of work are particular to himself. It is difficult for a visitor in Hall Caine's house to find pens or ink. As a matter of fact, his writing is done with a stylograph pen, which he always carries in his pocket.
"I don't think," he says, "that I have sat down to a desk to write for years. I write in my head to begin with, and the actual writing, which is from memory, is done on any scrap of paper that may come to hand; and I always write on my knee. My work is as follows: I first get my idea, my central moral; and this usually takes me a very long time. The incidents come very quickly, for the invention of incidents is a very easy matter to me. I then labor like mad in getting knowledge. I visit the places I propose to describe. I read every book I can get bearing on my subject. It is elaborate, laborious, but very delightful. I then make voluminous notes. Then begins the agony. Each day it besets me, winter or summer, from five in the morning till breakfast time. I awake at five and lie in bed, thinking out the chapter that is to be written that day, composing it word for word. That usually takes me up till seven. From seven till eight I am engaged in mental revision of the chapter. I then get up and write it down from memory, as fast as ever the pen will flow. The rest of the morning I spend in lounging about, thinking, thinking, thinking of my book. For when I am working on a new book I think of nothing else; everything else comes to a standstill. In the afternoon I walk or ride, thinking, thinking. In the evenings, when it is dark, I walk up and down my room constructing my story. It is then that I am happiest. I do not write every day—sometimes I take a long rest, as I am doing at present—and when I do write, I never exceed fifteen hundred words a day. I do not greatly revise the manuscript for serial publication, but I labor greatly over the proofs of the book, making important changes, taking out, putting in, recasting. Thus, after 'The Scapegoat' had passed through four editions and everybody was praising the book, I felt uneasy because I felt I had not done justice to my subject; so I spent two months in rewriting it and had the book reset and brought out again. The public feeling was that the book had not been improved, but I felt that I had lifted it up fifty per cent."
"I am convinced," he continued, "that my system of writing the book in my head first is a good one. It shows me exactly what I want to say. The mental strain is, of course, immense, and that forces you to go straight to your point; for the mind is not strong enough to indulge in flirtations, in excursions at a tangent, as the pen is apt to do."
Hall Caine was accused, when he began writing, of obscurity, of a predilection for tortuous phrases. "I think that now I have almost gone too far in the other direction," he says; "the critics blame me for a neglect of style. But—you remember the story of Gough and his diamond ring—I am determined not to let any diamond ring get between me and my audience. Writing should not get between the reader and the picture. I take a great joy in sheer lucidity, and if any sentence of mine does not at the very first sight express my meaning, I rewrite it. Obscurity of style indicates that the writer is not entirely master of what he has to say."
