Mr. Hall Caine once took the trouble to explain that he put in three
years of hard work on his novel, _The Christian_, rewriting it many
times and submitting the several and various parts of the work to
experts. One kind of expert he failed to consult—a person having
some knowledge of the English language. Amongst other insupportable
characteristics the very first sentence in the book contains twelve
prepositions and several clashing relatives and concludes with a
sequence of four dactyls! The first sentence is as far as I have gone
into the book, of which I know only that the manuscript was sold for a
considerable fortune and that by many thousands of my fellow-creatures
it is regarded as a distinctly immortaler work than the immortalest
work of the week immediately preceding the date of its publication. Of
Mr. Caine himself I know a little more: for example, that if he were
cast away on an island never before seen by a white man, in a few
months every native would have a brand-new novel and Mr. Caine all the
cowry-shells in the island.
Following a well-established precedent, he was good enough also
to impart the secret of his success as a writer of “best-selling”
books—novels, of course. The secret is genius. That seems simple enough
and easy enough, but I submit that it was known before. Every author
of a popular novel has been entirely conscious of his genius and the
reviewers have known it as well as he. Nevertheless, it is always
pleasing to find a workman who not only does not quarrel with his
tools, but exhibits them with pride and affection, for we know then
that he is a good workman, or—which means much the same thing—gets a
good price for his product. Mr. Caine gets as good a price as any and
is therefore as fit as any to expound his methods to the curious.
For it should be said that Mr. Caine does not hold that genius—even
such genius as his—will produce so great work as his without some
assistance from industry; one must take the trouble to write or dictate
the great thoughts that genius inspires. One can not do this without
some degree of application to the homely task. Indeed, Mr. Caine
explains that he writes his novels twice before he permits us to read
them once. One is glad to know that; it shows that, like the country
editor, whose burning office attracted a large and intelligent class of
spectators, he “strives to please.” He took fourteen months to write
_The Eternal City_. That was most commendable, for with him time is
money, but his patient diligence was equaled by that of a man that I
know, who took fourteen months to read it.
Not only does Mr. Caine work slowly and surely; he advises lesser
mortals to do so. “Write only when in the humor,” he says. This is
good advice to any man, of whatever degree of genius, who is ambitious
to turn out a “best seller,” but better advice would be: Don’t write
at all. There are less fame in that, less profit and less taking of
one’s self seriously; but there must be a feeling of greater security
regarding the next world; for the author of a “best seller” is so
conspicuous a figure in this world that he may be very sure that God
sees him.
“Some people,” says Mr. Caine, meaning some persons, doubtless—he
writes in Bestsellerese—“say that they can work best when they hurry
most, but it is not the case with me, and I feel that inspiration does
not come to the hurried mind so readily as it does when one is able to
ponder deeply and shape one’s thoughts into some truly perfected form.”
That is an impressive picture. One can almost see Mr. Caine, sitting
at his table, head in hand, pondering profoundly on his inspiration
and shaping his thoughts into that truly perfected form demanded by
his exacting market. This really great man, with chestnuts in his
lap, arointing the designing witch of spontaneity who would abstract
them, is a spectacle that will linger long in his own memory. It is
one of the most pleasing revelations of self that can be found in the
literature of how to do it. Probably it will have the distinction of
surviving all Mr. Caine’s other work by as much as six months. If done
into bronze by a competent sculptor it may outlast even Mr. Caine
himself, delighting and instructing an entire generation of Indiana
novelists, the best in the world. Of course it is “on the cards” that
he who has given us this solemn picture of himself in the veritable
act of literary parturition may “whack up” something even better. He
is not so very old, and in the years remaining to him (may they be
many and prosperous) he may produce something so incomparably popular
that even the greatest of his previous work will be, in the luminous
French of John Phoenix, “_frappé parfaitment froid!_” Indeed, Mr.
Caine himself discerns that possibility very clearly. He says: “I do
not believe I have yet produced my best work”—best selling work—“by
any means.” It is to be hoped that he has not: yet it is also to be
regretted that he has had the cruelty to add a new terror to death
by saying so. To one engaged in dying, the thought of what he may be
missing by leaving this vale of tears before Mr. Caine has written his
_Eternalest City_ must generate the wrench and stress of an added pang.
It would have been kinder to make that forecast to his publisher only.
Even _in articulo mortis_ (if he have the bad luck to die first) that
gentleman’s tantalizing vision of an unattainable earthly joy will come
with enough of healing in its wings partly to salve the smart: coupled
with the thought of what he will miss will come the consciousness of
what he will not have to pay for it.
1905.