“My Dear Mr Caine,—I thank you heartily for your kind and friendly letter, which was a comfort to me. It has always seemed to me that your turn of mind and power of creation are especially dramatic; and that you will write (if once you take to that form) a very grand and moving play. There is no one who can do that now, so far at least as I can judge; and I shall be proud if I live long enough to see you achieve it.
“For novel-writing you have not yet (according to my small judgment) the sense of proportion and of variety which are needful for pleasant work. I have read with great care your Deemster, and have admired and been stirred by it. But to my mind (which is not at all a critical one) there is not the sliding, and the quiet shifting, and the sense of pause, which are perhaps only the mechanical parts of great work, but help to lift it. I cannot exactly express my meaning, and I have no science to second it; and I know that I cannot do the thing myself, and never attempt it consciously. But it will come to you, with time, and give grace to your excelling power.
“As for myself, of which you ask, there is little to say except that all the spirit is taken out of it. I care for nothing that I do; nor whether I do anything—which for a man who has not been lazy is a dreary change of mood; my shame at such a state of mind is useless to improve it, and I wonder how long it will last. But this, I hope, you will never understand, except as I did—before it came to pass.
“If you care to come down to so dull a place, you will be always welcome, but a line beforehand will help it. Tuesdays are my absent days, and Saturdays rather ‘throng’ with work.—Believe me, ever truly yours,
“R. D. Blackmore.”
“‘Luncheon’—dinner it is to me,—at 2 o’clock daily. Try to come in time for that, and a look-round afterwards.”
CHAPTER VI
HALL CAINE AS A DRAMATIST, SHORT-STORY WRITER, POET AND CRITIC
Hall Caine has written five plays, three of which have been produced. The drama founded on The Eternal City has been played for copyright purposes only. The first of these plays was called Ben-my-Chree and was the dramatised version of The Deemster. I venture to quote from an excellent biographical article by Mr Robert Harborough Sherard in the Windsor Magazine (November 1895): “Irving read the book (The Deemster) 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 dramatisation. 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. Barrett was enthusiastic about it, and Ben-my-Chree was duly produced for the first time at the Princess’s Theatre on May 14 (the dramatist’s birthday), 1888, before a packed house in which every literary celebrity in London was present. It was, however, by no means a great success: for some unaccountable reason, it failed to ‘draw,’ and after running for a hundred nights, it was withdrawn.” Strange to say, it was exceedingly popular in America, and at this moment a company is touring it in the English provinces.