“A later letter is written in rhymed couplets. After some four hundred lines in verse, it finishes with a few lines in prose. The poem referred to in previous letters is to be called Geraldine, but cannot be sent as ‘a bookseller fellow needs to see it.’ He had hoped to raise the character of this rhymed effusion by adding some verses on the Days of Minstrelsy, but after keeping it six days he must dispatch it without. He is to deliver a lecture on Hamlet the following month, and the subject is absorbing all his thoughts.
“Soon after this—about the close of 1873 or the beginning of the following year—I was interested to find Caine was proposing to publish a small monthly magazine, and he was good enough to ask me for a contribution. There were, evidently, difficulties in the way of the venture, small as it was. But he put all his usual energy into the enterprise and communicated his enthusiasm to his friends, and in due course the first number of Stray Leaves appeared, with a lithographic portrait of Henry Irving as a frontispiece. It had some modest literary pretensions, though of no very distinctive character, and therefore after prolonged expectation it was not quite surprising to read: ‘Stray Leaves has made no second appearance. It never will.’ But, meanwhile, he has another and larger magazine in hand, and this time, with a view of avoiding some of the difficulties which had beset him on his earlier venture, in announcing The Rambler Magazine he prints on the official paper ‘T. H. H. Caine, Proprietor.’ I was obliged to take an interest in the new magazine—Caine was so buoyantly sanguine of its success. I therefore sent him a poem, and next, and more to the purpose, arranged with a local bookseller to exhibit the poster and sell copies. I also got a favourable review of the first number inserted in the newspaper with which I was connected; and this ought to sell ‘at least three dozen copies,’ he writes. The parcel for our town got unaccountably delayed, but every copy was eventually distributed. Caine had been staying at or near Keswick, and writes his astonishment that the poet Close (a well-known character in those parts) had sold two hundred copies, and was asking for a further hundred. But the letter containing this information has a much more exciting piece of news. He had to-day replied to an inquiry from ‘a man of means (heaps of money)’ concerning ‘the establishment of a critical newspaper in Liverpool.’ He is willing to conduct such a journal for three months if a sufficient guarantee fund is provided, and already seeing the possible success of this fresh candidate for Fame, says, if the project advances, I must return to Liverpool to take a place on his staff.
“There was being published in Liverpool at this time a small weekly journal called The Town Crier, satirising and criticising with more or less good humour the affairs of the town. It is not necessary to enter upon any details as to the establishment of this paper, but I was interested in its existence because Caine had some sort of connection with it. The editor and general factotum was our old schoolfellow William Tirebuck, while Caine wrote for it, especially dramatic notices and reviews, and acted as adviser generally, if I remember rightly. We were all surely young enough to be engaged in such work, but Tirebuck was our junior by a couple of years. I remember visiting Liverpool about this time and calling at the small editorial sanctum out of South Castle Street. I had already written a little for The Town Crier, and was much interested in its career. It was a great time. Everybody was busy preparing for the next day’s issue. The printer’s boy had brought a bundle of galley proofs and was told he must not return without the rest of the copy. There were confidential conferences over correspondence, some of it purporting to divulge certain pieces of municipal jobbery; final consideration of the article which sailed very near the wind in denouncing a town scandal, in which a man of much wealth and no principle was concerned. Everyone was in the highest spirits. Caine had come down in his dinner hour, or had special leave, and when we had settled the affairs of The Town Crier and of the town generally, we went off to a meal, not at all of an elaborate character, I admit, but graced by overflowing good-fellowship and light-hearted wit.
“Meanwhile, the fortunes of The Rambler, notwithstanding that all the copies of the first number were distributed and in some cases further copies called for, were not in a flourishing way. The printer’s bill was a very matter-of-fact document. No amount of generous self-denying enthusiasm could alter its figures. Even reviews favourable and unfavourable, and there was a liberal number of both kinds, did not solve the problem. Caine rightly claimed that the widespread notice taken of The Rambler was some proof of its worth. One journal gave prominent place to the opinion that ‘the contents of The Rambler are bosh—pure, unmitigated bosh,’ the style of the criticism at least indicating the character of the journal. But the ‘bosh’ was not so unmitigated that it could be disregarded. Nevertheless, the financial results were not encouraging. He tried, in answer to a sympathetic inquiry on my part, to let me know how matters stood. He says, ‘The last issue paid (cannot pay more than) (or, rather, didn’t pay at all, or paid on the wrong side) fifty per cent.’ Then feeling that this was not exactly an enlightening statement, he proceeds—‘I am really such a fool at business affairs and so very little acquainted with the technicalities of trade as surely to have made a mess of the last explanation.’ The substance of the explanation was that they had reckoned on a loss, and had received half of what they had calculated their proceeds might be, making the real loss proportionately greater. He does not contemplate giving up; is ‘only disposed to delay the issue of No. 2 in the hope of balancing affairs.’ However, he never troubled any of his friends about the financial difficulties; whatever the losses may have been, he squared them without the aid of his fellow-contributors. The second number did appear, somewhat belated, but that was the end of Caine’s amateur efforts at floating a magazine.
“When I returned to Liverpool in the beginning of 1875, to prepare myself for college, I had an opportunity of renewing my personal intercourse with Caine. It was a very pleasant time to me. We had one or two congenial friends and with them or ourselves alone had a long succession of talks upon the subjects that interested us. I think he generally determined the course of our conversation. Earlier in life he had been greatly under the sway of Coleridge. By this time his tastes had widened and were more varied. He had much to say about Wordsworth. I recall an evening when he was full of the Ode to Immortality, which he quoted at great length—as he could most things he admired—and discussed with great insight and power. But the range of subjects we ventured upon was wide and varied enough to suit all tastes and dispositions. I can by no means recall them all, but I remember such subjects as the writings of Jean Paul, the Aristotelian unities and the modern drama, the nature of Hamlet’s madness, and Shakespearian subjects generally. Curiously enough, we had little to say concerning Tennyson—In Memoriam was the only poem I remember discussing—and even less in regard to Browning, though I had myself a vague conviction that Browning was the greater poet of the two. But we frequently conversed about Rossetti, Swinburne and William Morris. On many evenings when we felt little inclined for literary talks we enjoyed lighter chat and gossip; while, occasionally, we turned to graver subjects and speculated on eternal things with the calmness and confidence which are part of youth’s prerogative. And though we were a kind of peripatetic academy, we were happy enough, and seasoned our more serious mental fare with a liberal share of laughter and fun.
“Apart from the little circle of friends with whom he thus associated—and I recall him most easily during the midsummer months when I spent most of my long vacation at home—I think he spent a solitary life. He was little understood. The majority of the people he met being very dull persons, they could note only his outward peculiarities, and I have no doubt most of them set him down as an eccentric young man. They were struck with his musical voice, his copious diction, his literary style of speech, which I think they generally set down as an affectation. Yet he could, when he chose, make himself interesting to very commonplace people. He knew so many things. He found them interesting in ways they themselves little suspected. Then beside being a remarkable talker he was never disposed to turn the conversation into a monologue. He was a most sympathetic listener.
“For the sake of his health he often spent his week-ends at New Brighton, at the mouth of the Mersey, and for some time had permanent lodgings there. We were all compelled to visit him, for he was ever the most hospitable of friends, and thought no trouble too great to bestow on the comfort of those who were his guests. I was his guest overnight, and specially recall his appearance at that time. He had grown as tall as he is now, and was of spare habit. He wore his hair, which had lost its early golden tinge, slightly longer than is usual. He had a striking face—pale and clean-shaven, a refined expression, ample forehead, and large, bright, intelligent eyes. For a student he walked very erect, wore a close-fitting and fairly long frock-coat, many-buttoned and double-breasted, and was very square-shouldered. He was a man easily distinguished in a crowd.
“In my early days at college I had one special letter from Caine, and with some reference to it my own particular reminiscences of my eminent friend may come to a close. His younger brother John, a very fine young fellow, was at the time dangerously ill. Very soon after he died of consumptive disease. Hall Caine was subject to fits of depression, and this event did not tend to relieve his thoughts. Yet I think the sad event left him with more hope and fortitude. Trial and difficulty always aroused the best in him. His letter, however, is very pathetic and interesting. I gather that I must have written, in reply to an earlier letter, that the stronger the natural affection, the greater the tendency to magnify the danger. He replies that it would not be easy to exaggerate the gravity of his brother’s case, though they are not without hope that rest and nourishing food may do something to alleviate the lung disease. The letter is full of frank disclosures of his thought and feeling. He is preparing himself ‘for the utmost length and disaster.’ But his sad philosophy can only say: ‘The best that can leave us is Life; the worst that can come is Death; of which we may remember that if it be now, it is not to come; if it be not to come, then it is now—the readiness is all.’ My interpretation of his gloomy outlook as being not reality but the creation of his own thought, he examines and analyses, yet without comfort to himself. He feels how small is our power to choose our own thoughts, ‘how entirely men are born to convictions.’ He moralises over a photograph of myself which I had sent him, and sees all my future in my face. And so with himself. It is not because he has chosen to think it so, that to him—
“‘The world is wild, and rough, and steep, and ribbed,