“My Dear Mr Caine,—Your publishers have kindly sent me a copy of The Shadow of a Crime, and I am reading it carefully. Your style does not permit any skipping; no work that does so is of much value. So far as I can yet judge, the book is full of power and true imagination. To the critical gift I have no claim; but I seem to myself to know when I come across genuine matter. And you have also that respect for yourself and your readers which is a sine qua non for the achievement of great work. However, I will not show my own deficiency in that quality by offering premature remarks; only I am eager to express my impressions of pleasure and admiration.
“I hope that your health will soon be restored, and your mind refreshed with total change. I find myself much under par, with long bronchial attack.
“Your second work, A Son of Hagar, will be looked for by me with eager anticipation; but The Shadow of a Crime will hold me for at least a week, in my present state; as I can only read at night, and am bound just now to keep early hours.
“I have not heard a word about Springhaven, whether it goes, or sticks fast; except that an extract from the Whitehall Review of last week has been sent to me.
“With many thanks for your kind words, and all good wishes for your work,—I am, always truly yours,
“R. D. Blackmore.”
A Son of Hagar was completed in 1886, as was also a life of Coleridge which was written in three weeks. The former brought him three hundred pounds; the latter thirty pounds. Coleridge had always been a favourite study of Hall Caine’s; we have seen that as a young man in Liverpool he was particularly attracted towards his work, and the incidents of the great poet’s life had received his careful and unremitting attention. But the series for which it was written was one devoted to brief biographies only, and Mr Caine was unable to make use of the vast store of knowledge which he had so patiently acquired. Still, the biography was one of the best of the series, and though it brought neither fame nor fortune to its author, it undoubtedly did something towards establishing his reputation as an original and thoughtful critic.
A Son of Hagar was written on somewhat the same lines as The Shadow of a Crime; that is to say, there is the same knowledge of the life of the Cumberland people of the “statesman” class, the same intimate acquaintance with Cumberland dialect, and the same partiality for melodrama and, one must acknowledge, improbable incident. Judged by present-day standards, this book achieved what would be called remarkable popular success; but the success was not sufficient to satisfy the consuming ambition of the young novelist. He said to himself, “I will write one more book. I will put into it all the work that is in me, and if the public still remains indifferent, I will never write another.” These words, uttered in the heat of the moment, must be taken cum grano salis; for I feel convinced that if Mr Caine had written ten or a dozen unsuccessful works, he would still have continued faithful to the novel as a means of expressing his own personality and his views of the complex individual and social life as he has found it, not only in history, but in these hot, passionate days of a new century. Yet, the fact remains, that what he chose to consider his limited success did not satisfy him.
I am privileged to give the following letters written by Mr Blackmore to Mr Caine during the year 1887.