“Here’s a health to thee, Hall Caine! I suppose you are by this time in Peel, and this most interesting episode in your life attains its close.
“You must be fearfully tired, and I will not weary you with a long letter. I hope Mrs Caine has thoroughly enjoyed the busy, exciting weeks. What you both need now is REST. Take it, and plenty of it! Of course, I long to see you. But I can wait, and only write this to bid you a hearty welcome, and assure you of the great happiness with which I have heard of your return.—Ever yours,
“T. E. Brown.”
“Ramsey, December 13, ’95.”
This seems to me the fitting place in which to insert a hitherto unpublished article written by Mr Hall Caine on hearing of Mr Brown’s death. Mr Caine was on his way to Rome when the news reached him that his friend had died suddenly at Clifton.
Three or four lines in a Paris newspaper, meagre in their details, full of errors, but nevertheless only too obviously authentic, bring me the saddest news that has come my way these many years. I ought to have been prepared for it by the long illness he passed through, by the manifest lessening of his vitality month by month, and even week by week, by the partial eclipse of certain faculties (such as memory) once so vigorous, and above all by his frequent and touching warnings. But the end has come upon me, at least, with startling, terrible and overwhelming suddenness, and it adds something to the pain of this first moment of grief that while the devoted friend and comrade of many years is being taken home I am myself far away from it, confined by a passing indisposition to a little room in a foreign city.
But the splendid soul who has gone from us will have troops of still older friends to stand about his grave. The Isle of Man will be in mourning now for one who loved her and her people with a love that was almost more deep and disinterested than that of any other of her sons. This is no little thing to say, but there is no Manxman or Manxwoman who will question it. Without any material interest in the welfare and prosperity of his native land, with few (alas, how few!) intellectual associates there, parting from the friends and the ways of life when the burden of his work was done, he returned to the Isle of Man because he loved it, because his affections were wrapped up in it, because it was linked with the tenderest memories of childhood and the fondest recollections of youth, because the graves of his kindred were there, and he had heard the mysterious call that comes to a man’s heart from the sire that gave him birth. Five years only were given him in which to indulge this love of home, but how much he got into them! How he spent himself for the people, without a thought of himself, without a suspicion of the difference between them. If only a handful of his countrymen called to him he came. He was at everybody’s service, everybody’s command. Distance was as nothing even to his failing strength, time was as nothing, labour was as nothing, and the penalties he paid he did not count.
The time has been when his friends have thought that the island did not appreciate all this, did not realise it to the full, did not rightly apprehend the sacrifices that were being made, or the generous disproportion of the man and the work, but there can be no question of that kind now. Manxmen and Manxwomen know to-day that the island has lost the greatest man who was ever born to it, the finest brain, the noblest heart, the grandest nature that we can yet call Manx! We do not point to his scholarship, though that was splendid, or to the place he won in life, though it was high and distinguished, or yet to his books, though they were full of the fire of genius, racy of the soil he loved the best. None of these answers entirely to the idea we have of the man we knew and love so well. But the sparkling, brilliant soul, so tender, so strong, so humorous, so easily touched to sympathy, so gloriously gifted, this is the ideal that answers to our recollections of the first Manxman of this or any age.
When I pass from the island’s loss to my own, I must be one of a little group who, though not within the circle of his family, can hardly trust themselves to speak. Sitting here, in this foreign city, while my countrymen, for all I know, are doing the last offices for the truest friend man ever had, I feel how much the island has lost for me in losing him. The little paragraph in Le Figaro fell on me this morning like a thundercloud from a cloudless sky, but more than once or twice or thrice during the past few months the thought has come over me of what the island would be without him. It came to me at the moment before I left home, and the last letter I wrote there was written to him, saying Good-bye and God bless you, and such other words of farewell as one sends to one’s friend on the eve of a long journey. But he has taken the longer journey of the two, and when the time comes to return home and I see our beautiful mountains from the sea, I don’t know what it will be to remember he is there no longer. During the past ten years I have leaned on him as on an elder brother, a wiser, stronger, purer, serener nature, on whom I could rely for solace and counsel and support. I did nothing without consulting him, and took no serious step without his sanction. My stories were told to him first, and he knew all my plans and intentions. If I have done anything that deserves to be remembered it is only myself that can know how much that is good in it is but a reflection from the light of his genius. He was the ablest appreciator, the most enthusiastic admirer, and the most inspiring of critics. To my moods of depression he brought the buoyancy of hope, to my weakness of heart the strength of his spirit, sustaining me amid the despondency of failure, and the no less real penalties of success. It was a familiar thought to me at Greeba that I could take the train to Ramsey four or five times a day, and within an hour I could be with him. And now he is gone, and I can go to him no more.
Mr Caine received the following letter from the late W. E. Gladstone shortly after the publication of The Manxman.