“Dear Mr Brown … You must have guessed that I have been constantly prompted by a selfish desire to consult you about my new novel. I am still undecided as to where the scene should be. The difficulty of determining the period is no less serious. … I wish to write a romance in the strict sense of the word and to be as nearly as possible untrammelled by facts of history and the like. Your opinion as to the feasibility of the Isle of Man must have been final with me when I had briefly explained my scheme. I remember that your brother Hugh did something to dissuade me from tackling Manxland in any sort of work. He did not think the readers of novels would find the island at all interesting, and he was sure that the local atmosphere was not such as would attract them. I thought over this a good deal, and decided, I must say, against your brother’s judgment. … In the first place, the island has excellent atmosphere. It has the sea, a fine coast on the west, fine moorland above; it has traditions, folk-talk, folk-lore, a ballad literature, and no end of superstition,—and all these are very much its own. Such were its attractions for any romance writer, and for me it had the further fascination of being in some sort one’s native place, with types of character that had been familiar to me since my earliest years. Moreover, it was unlike the scene in which I had already worked—the dales of Cumberland—and gave me above all one great and new element—the sea. So I decided that even Mudie and his thousands of young ladies might find Manxland an attractive background for a story. … The difficulty is whether the Isle of Man is a possible scene for a real epic. You will judge when I sketch very roughly my plot, which is still in a nebulous condition.
“I wish to open with a picture of an island governed mainly by a depraved nobility, or something equivalent to a privileged class. The great man (the Dooney Mooar, is it?) of that class shall be old, anxious (like King Lear) to give up his share in the government, yet kept to his post by restless energy. He shall have lands and be a Hebrew patriarch as to flocks and herds. His wife is long dead, and the memory of her is the one vein of tenderness in a nature that seems to be as hard as granite. He has two sons and a daughter, the former arrived at man’s estate, the latter just budding into womanhood. Long ago he had a brother who died at war with him, leaving a widow and an infant son. The lad is now five-and-twenty, a reckless scapegrace, beloved by all children and all dogs, the athlete of the island, physically a magnificent creature, but constantly under the ban of the great man, his kinsman. The young man is poor, his father having been impoverished. This young fellow should be the central personage of the novel. His youth is sketched; his scrapes, his disgraces, his dubious triumphs come in quick succession. At length he is a man and only less than an outlaw. He and his mother are neglected by the old nobleman (?) and his sons, but the daughter does not repudiate the kinship. The relations of the cousins must be delicately handled. On his side the affection is cousinly. On her side it is imperceptibly deepening into love. … The daughter of the great man is a noble creature, educated, too, and great of soul…
“Then comes the time when the great man intends to lay aside his state. His sons shall succeed to him. … At this juncture the eldest brother begins to suspect the relations of his sister and cousin. The men meet, quarrel and resolve to fight. … It is an unequal match; it is murder; the brother is backed to the cliff edge and … tumbles into the sea. … Then in an instant the soul of the athlete awakes. He realises what he is, and whither down to that moment his life has tended. In that moment of awakening there is only one thing he can think of doing. He will go to his cousin, the nobleman’s daughter. She is his good angel, etc. He goes, and sees her alone at night. He tells her that he has killed her brother—murdered him—extenuates nothing, etc. … the woman will be hard to do. What is the part?… I hardly know. I think she should drive him from her. But she is his confessor and will not betray him, nevertheless. … The man gives himself up to the law. He is tried on his own confession and condemned to death. The death is to be by hanging, but no man has ever suffered death for crime in that island within memory or record. There is a superstitious dread of hanging. It must not be begun, or where will it end, etc. … The criminal is brought out, and … the curse is pronounced: that no man shall speak to him, that none shall look his way, that none shall give him food, that if he is sick none shall minister to him, that when he dies no man shall bury him. … Then comes a rupture in the state. The people try to cast off the rule of the privileged classes. Bit by bit the outlaw works out his redemption, his slow regeneration, his gradual renewing of the man within. One after one he does the people great services, accepting meantime all his punishment. … At length the regeneration is complete, and the outlaw becomes the saviour of his people, and is received in triumph on the scene of his former disgrace. Love is justified, the cousins are united, the broken old man dies, as is most fit.
“Now, dear Mr Brown, all this is very vague; but I shall be curious to hear how far it would be possible to work some such scheme into the (romantic) history of the Isle of Man. The House of Keys was, I think, a self-elected body down to recent years. If I could get it into the present century even by any ordinary liberties I should be delighted.”
The foregoing is noteworthy not only because it is the first skeleton of The Deemster, but because (as will be seen from Mr Brown’s reply), there were many difficulties opposing the idea of making the Isle of Man the mise-en-scène for the plot, and because these difficulties were most skilfully overcome. These two letters are one of the most convincing proofs with what extraordinary care and patience Mr Caine works.
The following is Mr Brown’s reply.
“Clifton, October 14, 1886.
“My Dear Sir,—Thanks for this admission to the secrets of your workshop. The story is most interesting. … It could not possibly be placed in the Isle of Man, nor timed in the nineteenth century.
“The Isle of Man does not give you the remoteness of the place which you want. Norway might, Kamtschatka might! but the Isle of Man—no.
“Then as to time—