Hall Caine's impressions of his life at Ballavolley are vivid—the old preacher at the church, the drinking-bouts of "jough"-beer by the gallon amongst the villagers, the donkey rides upon the curragh. But what it best pleases him to remember are the times when, seated in the ingle-nook, he used to listen to his grandmother telling fairy stories, as she sat at her black oak spinning-wheel, bending low over the whirling yarn. "Hommybeg"—it was a pet name she had given to him—"Hommybeg," she would say, "I will tell you of the fairies." And the story that he liked best to listen to, though it so frightened him that he would run and hide his face in the folds of the blue Spanish cloak which Manx women have worn since two ships of the Great Armada were wrecked upon the island, was the story of how his grandmother, when a lass, had seen the fairies with her own eyes. That was many years before. She had been out one night to meet her sweetheart, and as she was returning in the moonlight she was overtaken by a multitude of little men, tiny little fellows in velvet coats and cocked hats and pointed shoes, who ran after her, swarmed over her, and clambered up her streaming hair.
GREEBA CASTLE, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE MR. CAINE WROTE MOST OF "THE MANXMAN."
He was a precocious lad, and knew no greater delight than to read. The first book that he remembers reading was a bulky tome on the German Reformation, about Luther and Melancthon, which he had found. He spent weeks over it, and, staggering under its weight, would carry it out into the hayfield, where, truant to the harvest, he would lie behind the stacks and read and read. One night, indeed, his interest in this book led him to break the rules of his thrifty home—where children went to bed when it was dark, so that candles should not be burned—and light the candles and read on about Luther. He was found thus by one of his aunts as, pails in hand, she returned home from milking the cows. Her anger was great. "Candles lit!" she cried. "What's to do? Candles! Wasting candles on reading, on mere reading!" He was beaten and sent to bed, bursting with indignation at such injustice, for he felt that candles were nothing compared to knowledge. He was a bookish boy, wanting in boyishness, and never played games, but spent his time in reading, not boyish books, indeed, but books in which never boy before took interest—histories, theological works, and, in preference, parliamentary speeches of the great orators, which he would afterwards rewrite from memory. At a very early age he showed a great passion for poetry and was a great reader of Shakespeare. His talent for reading passages of Shakespeare aloud was such that at the school at Liverpool, where he was educated, his schoolmaster, George Gill, used to make him read aloud before all the boys. This caused him great nervous agony, he says, and he suffered horribly. He was a favorite pupil, and, in a school where corporal punishment was inflicted with great severity, was never once beaten. He left school at the age of fifteen and was apprenticed by his father to John Murray, architect and land-surveyor. The lad had no special faculties for architecture beyond possessing a fair knowledge of drawing. When only thirteen he drew the map of England which appeared in the first edition of "Gill's Geography." At this time he had shown no bent for authorship beyond making the transcriptions from memory of the speeches he had read, and writing, for a school competition, a "Life of Joseph," which was not even read by the arbitrator, because it was much too long. It is noticeable, however, that on this "Life of Joseph" he had worked with the same conscientiousness which has distinguished his literary activity through all his career. "I read everything on the subject that I could lay my hands upon," he says, "and spent day and night in working at it." To-day, as then, when Hall Caine has a book to write, he reads every book bearing on his theme which he can obtain—"a whole library for each chapter"—and will work at his subject day and night, all-absorbed, wrapped up, concentrated.
PEEL CASTLE, ISLE OF MAN.
John Murray was agent for the Lancashire estates of W.E. Gladstone, and it was in this way that Hall Caine first became known to the statesman, who from the first has been amongst his keenest admirers. One of the first occasions on which he attracted Mr. Gladstone's attention was one day when he was superintending the surveying of Seaforth, Gladstone's estate. Gladstone was surprised to see so small a lad in charge of the chainmen, and began to talk with him. He must have been impressed by the lad's conversation, for he patted his head and told him he would be a fine man yet. Mr. Gladstone has never forgotten this incident. Some time later, John Murray having failed in the meanwhile, an offer was made to Hall Caine, from the Gladstones, of the stewardship of the Seaforth estate at a salary of one hundred and twenty pound a year. "Although the thought of so much wealth," he relates, "overwhelmed me, I did not see in this offer the prospect of any career—indeed this had been pointed out to me—and I determined to continue in the architect's office." He accordingly attached himself as pupil or apprentice to Richard Owens, the architect.
