Hall Caine, the Man and the Novelist

by C. Fred Kenyon

“Yes.”

Rossi’s eyes grew moist. He was like another man.

The close of the story is deeply pathetic. David rushes off to save her, and gives himself up in her place. But Parliament acquits him of all guilt, and he is once more a free man. Roma is seized by some terrible internal disease, and it is only a matter of a few weeks before she is overtaken by death. Her last hours are spent with David by her side in peace, quietness and gladness.

I have given but the barest outline of the plot, for it hinges more on the conflict of one character against another, than on the intricacies of coincidence and unlooked-for event, and many of the phases of modern thought and feeling indicated in the different characters are of too subtle and delicate a nature to be dealt with in a short notice. This much may be said: it is a book that should be read. No one can afford to pass it over. It contains some of the most descriptive and dramatic writing of our time, and, quite apart from its literary value, will go down to posterity as one of the most popular achievements of the twentieth century. All careful readers must admit that this is the strongest, the most mature, and yet the most daring novel that Hall Caine has yet written. The strongest, because not only does it deal with individuals, but also with masses of men representing the most conflicting thoughts, feelings and passions of the present day; the most mature, because it contains the expression of his thought on subjects which have compelled his study for more than thirty years; and the most daring, because it introduces the Pope and the Prime Minister of Italy as central characters with complete and indisputable success.

I venture to quote two paragraphs from the Bookman (August 1901) which give, so it seems to me, an extremely lucid account of how Mr Caine fixed on Rome as the scene for his latest story.

“When Mr Hall Caine first decided upon the central idea, he had thought of setting his story in London, or Paris, or New York. He tried all cities and found them impossible. The civil and social conception which is behind the story has its rightful home in the Third Italy. To Mr Hall Caine Rome is typical of the new democracy. According to his observation, the force which in the past century has most vigorously asserted itself is the power of the peoples, wide, liberal, and democratic in contrast with the absolute power of the kings. But over the new power which has destroyed the reality of absolutism, continues the pomp and ostentation of the old rule of things, and not only continues, but daily attempts to gain a new vigour, a resurrection by three systems, in which Mr Hall Caine recognises the re-incarnation of the Philistine against the modern Samson, who stands for the rights of the peoples—imperialism, militarism, and the question of temporal power.

“Rome is the metropolis of the Christian world, not only by reason of its religious connections, but also by reason of its geographical position, its history, its glorious traditions, the fascination of its art, and the mystery of its eternal life which pervades and surrounds it. Rome alone seems to Mr Hall Caine the city worthy, in the dawn of an immense social revolution, to be the heart and soul of humanity, renewing itself in hopes and aspirations now, and promising in the future pacific civil and moral glory.”

Whether or not Mr Caine is right in his supposition that a tremendous social upheaval in Europe is imminent, it is not for me to say; but it is certain that his picture of the working of the antagonistic social forces of the present day in Rome is a truthful one, and that the feverish unrest and disorder of the people has not been brought about by the Italian Government only, but by the Church itself.