Hall Caine, the Man and the Novelist

by C. Fred Kenyon

Pete charged his pipe out of his waistcoat pocket, and began to dictate: “Dear wife.”

At that Philip gave an involuntary cry.

“Aw, best to begin proper, you know. ‘Dear wife,’” said Pete again.

Philip made a call on his resolution, and put the words down. His hand felt cold; his heart felt frozen to the core. Pete lit up, and walked to and fro as he dictated his letter.

The letter is finished, and Philip in his misery returns to Kate, who persuades him to lead Pete to believe her dead. After doing this, Philip’s moral degradation seems to be complete, and Kate, feeling herself to have been the cause of his ruin, leaves him. To outward appearance he climbs higher and higher in his professional career, while Pete sinks into poverty. Still the two men are friends. The child is ill; between them they nurse it, and Pete begins to see its resemblance to Philip. Little by little the truth comes to him—from the lips of a drunkard, he hears that Kate has been seen in London. Returning to his now poverty-stricken cottage, he finds the wanderer bending over the cradle of her child. In his stupefaction he watches her as she leaves the house to end her misery, only to be rescued and brought face to face with Philip in his office of Deemster. Burning for vengeance, Pete seeks Philip—to meet him as he is borne home unconscious from the courthouse, and the sight wipes out all feelings but those of love and friendship in the great-hearted man. All his thought is for the happiness of Philip and Kate—to restore Philip to health, to resign Kate, to leave the island, after giving up the child that he has tended with so much love. And all that is best in Philip’s nature rises, strengthened by its suffering. As the crown of his brilliant youth, he is offered the Governorship of the island; before the assembled court he refuses it, and quitting the post of honour to which he has already climbed, acknowledges Kate, setting out with her, there among the people that have known them from childhood, to build up a new life on the ruins of the old.

Although the story of The Manxman throbs with sadness, yet the unconscious humour of the minor characters, depicted as they are with tender appreciation, gives to the book a completeness which is perhaps lacking in Hall Caine’s earlier novels. The quaintnesses of Grannie, of Cæsar, of Pete himself, do much to sustain the spirit of optimism, that, rising triumphant in the end, gives to the story its undying beauty. To the hearts of all who read, the Manx people must come closer, the hope of all humanity shine brighter, because of the evident faithfulness of this picture of human life.

The first part of The Manxman was written in Greeba Castle, Isle of Man, where Mr Caine temporarily resided. He afterwards removed to Peel, and did not return to Greeba Castle until it was his own property.

In 1895 he visited America, where he was enthusiastically received. He was fêted, interviewed, bombarded at his hotel, and entertained almost to the point of extinction. It was said in one American journal that the American public had not been so deeply interested by the visit of an English author since the visit of Dickens many years before. He always speaks of his visits to America with the deepest gratitude, for the distinguished attention and overflowing kindness always shown to him. There is no warmer admirer of America and American institutions.

His visit to America was undertaken on behalf of the Authors’ Society, in connection with difficulties that had arisen with regard to Canadian copyright. His mission was highly successful, and on his return to the Isle of Man his greeting was as hearty as that which he had enjoyed in America. He received the following characteristic letter from “T. E. B.”