“At those moments,” he said, “I am always most dignified. I raise my hat to them and bow and their laughter immediately ceases.”
That I could well believe, for there is something commanding in his personality, something well calculated to quell insolence.
A desultory correspondence and a few casual visits followed during the next three or four years, and when I was in my very early twenties I persuaded Messrs Greening & Company to invite me to write a book on Hall Caine for a popular series (English Writers of To-day, it was called) they were at that time issuing. Mr Caine, upon being approached by me, put no hindrance in my way, but, on the contrary, consented to give me some assistance in the way of providing me with information and a few letters received by him from eminent men. I spent several week-ends at Greeba Castle and found in Mrs Caine, always charming and ideally gifted with tact, a delightful hostess. My book was quickly written. It was a feeble, bombastic and ridiculous performance. A friend of mine (I thought he was an enemy) called it “a prolonged diarrhœa of the emotions.” In this book Hall Caine took a very kindly interest, and he provided me with autograph letters written by Ruskin, Blackmore, T. E. Brown and [120] ]Gladstone to insert in my book. But I was, of course, the sole author of the work, and Mr Caine had nothing to do with it save to put me right on matters of fact and to tone down some of my exuberant and sentimental praise. The silly volume, because of its subject, attracted a good deal of attention, both in this country and in America, though it was not published in the States. The Philadelphia Daily Eagle, for example, on the day the book was published, printed a eulogistic cablegram review of it from London. But, for the most part, my monograph was mercilessly slated. Hall Caine, in addition, was abused for consenting to be the subject of it, and I was abused for having chosen him for my subject. One paper headed its review “Raising Caine.”
The truth is, at this time (1901) Mr Hall Caine, though extraordinarily popular with the public, was not much liked by a certain section of the Press. His success was envied by some, perhaps; his recognition of his own worth was fiercely and almost universally resented; and his almost unconscious habit of advertising himself—though he did not indulge this habit more than most popular novelists—could not be tolerated. Mr Caine used frequently to deplore his only too palpable unpopularity with the Press, and once or twice he asked me to explain it. His own theory was that he had a few powerful enemies who took advantage of every occasion to disseminate lies about him, but who these enemies were he never stated. As a matter of fact, he occasionally said injudicious things to reporters which, in cold print, appeared not only self-satisfied but vainglorious. A long and very well written article by Mr Robert H. Sherard, in (I believe) The Daily Telegraph caused him a good deal of anxiety.
Not often does one find a man of Hall Caine’s very special gifts endowed with the abilities of a financier. He is as quick and as clever at driving a bargain as a [121] ]Lancashire or Yorkshire mill-owner. There have always been and, I suppose, always will be a large percentage of writers who are constitutionally incapable of looking after their own affairs; they can produce, but they cannot sell. Mr Hall Caine does not belong to these. He, more than any man, contributed to the breakdown of the three-volume novel system. It was he who helped to formulate the Canadian Copyright Laws. With the assistance of Major Pond (who in these days remembers the great Major Pond?) he made tens of thousands of dollars by lecturing to the Americans. He had the acumen and the courage to issue one of his longest novels in two volumes at two shillings net each. He was the first eminent novelist to make a practice of publishing his works in the middle of the August holidays—the supposed “dead” season in the publishing world. He has bought farms in the Isle of Man and made them pay. He has had commercial interests in seaside boarding-houses and has shown a bold but wise enterprise in many of his investments. In other words he has, to his honour, continually exhibited abilities that not one artist in a hundred possesses.
. . . . . . . .
I have rarely seen Hall Caine in a light-hearted mood, but I have been with him in more than one hour of black depression.
Vividly do I remember spending a few days at Greeba Castle shortly after the time when the publication of a story of his, that was running serially in a ladies’ paper, was suddenly and dramatically stopped by the editor of that paper on the score of its alleged immorality. The story was about to be produced in book form and, of course, the editor’s action had provided a fine advertisement; this fact, however, did not appear to console the novelist in the least. The most sensitive of men, he was crushed by this very public charge of writing immoral literature.
[122]
]For myself, when he told me all the circumstances, I merely laughed. He glanced at me sideways.
“You are amused?” he asked. “I wonder why.”