In June and July of 1894, whilst in London, Hall Caine wrote a dramatic version of "The Manxman" and offered it to Tree, who, however, refused it, as unlikely to appeal to the sympathies of the fashionable audiences of the Haymarket Theatre. In this version Philip was the central figure. The version which has been played with much success both in America and in the provinces, was written by Wilson Barrett, with Pete as the central figure. It was originally produced in Leeds, on August 20, 1894, and has met with a good reception everywhere except in Manchester and New York. The critics in the latter city wrote that it was a disgrace to the book.
For some years past, Hall Caine has devoted himself to literary public affairs. He is Sir Walter Resant's best supporter in his noble efforts to protect authors and to advance their interests. His ability as a public speaker and a politician of letters is great, and in recognition of this he was asked—a most distinguished honor—in November of last year to open the Edinburgh Literary and Philosophical Institution for the winter session, his predecessors having been John Morley and Mr. Goschen. He is at this writing in America on behalf of the Authors' Society, in connection with the Canadian copyright difficulty. He possesses in a marked degree that sense of solidarity amongst men of letters in which most successful authors are so singularly lacking, and the great power with which his world-wide popularity has vested him is used by him rather in the general interest of the craft than to own advantage.
His life in his home in Peel, in the midst of his family—the old parents, the pretty young wife, and the two bonny lads—is noble in its simplicity, a life of high thinking, when, his success and personal popularity being what they are, he has many temptations to worldliness.
He attributes his success in part to the fact that he has always been a great reader of the Bible.
"I think," he says, "that I know my Bible as few literary men know it. There is no book in the world like it, and the finest novels ever written fall far short in interest of the stories it tells. Whatever strong situations I have in my books are not of my creation, but are taken from the Bible. 'The Deemster' is the story of the prodigal son. 'The Bondman' is the story of Esau and Jacob, though in my version sympathy attaches to Esau. 'The Scapegoat' is the story of Eli and his sons, but with Samuel as a little girl. 'The Manxman' is the story of David and Uriah. My new book also comes out of the Bible, from a perfectly startling source."
Hall Caine does not begin his books with a character or group of characters, like Dickens or Scott, nor with a plot, like Wilkie Collins, nor with a scene, like Black, but with an idea, a spiritual intent. In all his books the central motive is always the same. "It is," he says, "the idea of justice, the idea of a Divine Justice, the idea that righteousness always works itself out, that out of hatred and malice comes Love. My theory is that a novel, a piece of imaginative writing, must end with a sense of justice, must leave the impression that justice is inevitable. My theory is also—on the matters which divide novelists into realists and idealists—that the highest form of art is produced by the artist who is so far an idealist that he wants to say something and so far a realist that he copies nature as closely as he can in saying it."
His methods of work are particular to himself. It is difficult for a visitor in Hall Caine's house to find pens or ink. As a matter of fact, his writing is done with a stylograph pen, which he always carries in his pocket.
"I don't think," he says, "that I have sat down to a desk to write for years. I write in my head to begin with, and the actual writing, which is from memory, is done on any scrap of paper that may come to hand; and I always write on my knee. My work is as follows: I first get my idea, my central moral; and this usually takes me a very long time. The incidents come very quickly, for the invention of incidents is a very easy matter to me. I then labor like mad in getting knowledge. I visit the places I propose to describe. I read every book I can get bearing on my subject. It is elaborate, laborious, but very delightful. I then make voluminous notes. Then begins the agony. Each day it besets me, winter or summer, from five in the morning till breakfast time. I awake at five and lie in bed, thinking out the chapter that is to be written that day, composing it word for word. That usually takes me up till seven. From seven till eight I am engaged in mental revision of the chapter. I then get up and write it down from memory, as fast as ever the pen will flow. The rest of the morning I spend in lounging about, thinking, thinking, thinking of my book. For when I am working on a new book I think of nothing else; everything else comes to a standstill. In the afternoon I walk or ride, thinking, thinking. In the evenings, when it is dark, I walk up and down my room constructing my story. It is then that I am happiest. I do not write every day—sometimes I take a long rest, as I am doing at present—and when I do write, I never exceed fifteen hundred words a day. I do not greatly revise the manuscript for serial publication, but I labor greatly over the proofs of the book, making important changes, taking out, putting in, recasting. Thus, after 'The Scapegoat' had passed through four editions and everybody was praising the book, I felt uneasy because I felt I had not done justice to my subject; so I spent two months in rewriting it and had the book reset and brought out again. The public feeling was that the book had not been improved, but I felt that I had lifted it up fifty per cent."
"I am convinced," he continued, "that my system of writing the book in my head first is a good one. It shows me exactly what I want to say. The mental strain is, of course, immense, and that forces you to go straight to your point; for the mind is not strong enough to indulge in flirtations, in excursions at a tangent, as the pen is apt to do."
Hall Caine was accused, when he began writing, of obscurity, of a predilection for tortuous phrases. "I think that now I have almost gone too far in the other direction," he says; "the critics blame me for a neglect of style. But—you remember the story of Gough and his diamond ring—I am determined not to let any diamond ring get between me and my audience. Writing should not get between the reader and the picture. I take a great joy in sheer lucidity, and if any sentence of mine does not at the very first sight express my meaning, I rewrite it. Obscurity of style indicates that the writer is not entirely master of what he has to say."