HALL CAINE
My acquaintance with Hall Caine began in a semi-professional way.
Whilst still a schoolboy, I was commissioned by _Tit-Bits_ to write
a three-column interview with him. I wrote to the novelist for an
interview. Perhaps the rawness of my letter aroused the suspicion that
I was too young to write adequately about him even in a paper of the
standing of _Tit-Bits_; at all events he refused the interview, but
very kindly said that, if I was contemplating a visit to the Isle of
Man, he would be pleased if I would call on and lunch with him as an
unprofessional visitor. At that time, being young and ardent, I was
a young and ardent admirer of his, and I believe I told him so in my
letter that requested the interview.
If I went to him as an admirer I came away from that first visit to
Greeba Castle a worshipper. In those days he was (but he still is!)
an astounding personality. He came into the room quietly and, having
shaken hands and sat down by my side, said: “An exquisite day for your
walk from St John’s.” So impressively was this spoken, and there was
such a fire in his eyes as he said it, such a weight of meaning in his
manner, that I felt as though something secret and wonderful had been
revealed to me. I wanted to say: “How true!” What I did say was: “Yes;
isn’t it?” He asked me a few questions about myself and then spoke
about general matters. He probably said quite trivial, kindly things,
but at the time they were uttered, and for a little while afterwards,
they seemed rich and full of wisdom.
After lunch he showed me the MSS. of some of his books. I remember the
MS. of _The Bondman_. It was written in a small, curiously artistic
handwriting on half sheets of notepaper, which had been pasted on to
much larger sheets handsomely bound. I handled the book as reverently
as the young ladies of early days caressed the pages of the great
Martin Tupper. There were many “blots” in the MS.—many alterations,
excisions and additions, and it was clear, even from a cursory
examination, that Mr Hall Caine was a hard and conscientious worker.
Upon this and other books he left me to browse for an hour whilst he
went to receive other callers—all of them strangers to him—who were
just arriving.
Some of those visitors, as I discovered later, were a rather
extraordinary crew: men and women from Lancashire and Yorkshire: I
mean _absolutely_ from Lancashire and Yorkshire: men and women who had
made a little money and who had unbounded respect for people who had
made a little more: men and women who were sound and good, but not
quite educated and who were either like fish out of water, gasping and
floundering spasmodically, or positively frightfully at their ease. I
recollect a tall and handsome lady who prodded everything with a green
parasol, and two men who, not too furtively, made elaborate efforts to
estimate the amount of the author’s income.
We had tea on a terrace in the grounds and in the evening I was driven
back to St John’s, all the other callers returning to Douglas.
The impression left by Mr Hall Caine’s personality on my mind by that
and many subsequent visits was overwhelming. He was vivid, alive, and
full of smouldering fires; short and vehement; his eyes were large and
bright; his voice beautiful and capable of a thousand inflections—an
actor’s voice; his temperament also an actor’s; his point of view an
actor’s. But he never did act; invariably he was tragically (and, I
must add, sometimes pathetically) sincere. He had humour, but he could
not laugh at himself. His dress was eccentric; he wore a flapping hat,
breeches and a jacket made of thick, everlasting, hand-made cloth. A
big tie bulged and billowed somewhere about his neck. He told me on one
occasion that chars-à-bancs full of trippers from Douglas continually
passed along the Douglas-Peel road and that when the trippers caught a
sight of him they would sometimes hail him with cries of derision and
shouts of laughter.
“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 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 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.
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.”
“Because you are allowing yourself to be made miserable by a most
trivial event.”
“You call it trivial that the whole world should think me a man of
immoral mind?”
“The whole world? Why, the world doesn’t trouble itself about the
matter in the least. Only one man accuses you of immoral writings; that
man is the editor of the paper. What on earth does his opinion matter
to you?”
“But his opinion will be widely read and will be widely believed.”
“Will be believed, you should have added, by people who allow another
man to form their opinions for them. What do _they_ matter?”
He sighed.
“But they _do_ matter,” said he, rather forlornly. “I hate to think of
people out there”—he waved a vague arm in the direction of the kitchen
garden—“thinking evil thoughts and saying evil things of me.”
“‘They say. What do they say? Let them say,’” I quoted.
We paced up and down the terrace, his eyes fixed on the ground. At
length:
“I wonder what you would think of the chapter in question,” he said
musingly. “You have read the story as far as it has been printed. Well,
I will give you the final chapters to read.”
We went to his room and he handed me a few pages of printed copy. I
read them.
“Well?” inquired he, when I had finished.
“It is passionate, it is sexual,” said I, “but to call it immoral is to
call black white.”
“You really believe that?” he asked, a little anxiously.
“I do. I assure you I do.”
But the black cloud of self-distrust and misery would not be
dissipated, and that night, after dinner, we sat over a slow fire,
though it was early in August, and talked long and rather sadly of
Rossetti, of T. E. Brown and of things that had been said by Peel
fishermen.
* * * * *
Another occasion, when I was with the novelist on a day of some
anxiety, is equally clear in my memory. I may say at this point that
Hall Caine was invariably in a condition of some mental strain a few
days before and after the publication of one of his stories. He was a
little apprehensive of the reviewers, and he was always afraid lest the
public should not remain faithful to him. In this connection I remember
him saying to me once: “I can imagine no fate more tragic than for a
novelist at middle age, when he believes his powers to be at their
highest, to lose his hold upon his public.”
He would, I think, deny that he cares what the reviewers may say;
nevertheless, my experience of him tells me that he does care. In his
early life as a novelist he was, perhaps, overpraised; certainly he
but very rarely felt the lash of the critic’s whip. So that when the
critics began to condemn the work of the man they had once praised, he
was not disciplined to bear their condemnation philosophically. Every
taunt wounded him, every thrust went home, every sneer was a stab.
But on the occasion about which I am now writing he was not depressed
so much in anticipation of what the reviewers might say as on account
of the competition of another novel which had been issued a few days
previous to the date fixed for the publication of a new book of his
own. That novel was Lucas Malet’s _The History of Sir Richard Calmady_,
published, if my memory does not betray me, by Messrs Methuen.
The first question he asked me one morning before breakfast was:
“Have you read _Sir Richard Calmady_?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well?” exclaimed he, a little impatiently, “well, what do you think of
it?”
“An amazingly clever performance, but very horrible.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” he cried eagerly. “Horrible! Ghastly! And yet, they
tell me, people are reading it.”
“Partly for that reason, no doubt.”
“But the public, the people, the great reading public—surely they will
not respond to the appeal of a book of that nature?”
“The public, you must remember, has many hearts; it may well give one
to Sir Richard Calmady.”
“But _my_ public?”
“Yes; even your public.”
He brooded a little.
“I am told that Lucas Malet’s publishers believe in the book,” he said,
after a longish pause, “and are prepared to spend a small fortune in
pushing it. And that, of course, means that it will interfere with, and
perhaps seriously injure, the sales of my own story. But it seems to me
that the public—the _real_ public—will never read a novel that has for
its chief attraction a man with no legs.”
I suggested that he should postpone the publication of his book until
the rage for _Sir Richard Calmady_ had died down. But no! This would
not suit him. He must catch the real holiday season at its full tide.
August was the best month in the year, and the first week the best week
in the month, and the fifth day the best day of the week.
Hall Caine always shows great perspicacity in selecting the date of
publication for his books; he will never allow it to synchronise with
any other big event. Moreover, his book must be born to an expectant
world; it must be well advertised beforehand. Unlike other writers,
he does not work hard at a book, finish it and then hand it over to a
publisher to deal with more or less as he thinks fit. In a sense, he is
his own publisher, and as a rule he interests himself in the sale of
a new work of his own, in its distribution, its printing and binding,
etc., as much as the actual publisher himself.
* * * * *
It used to be a popular belief—but Arnold Bennett has done much to
kill it—that an author laughs and cries with the creatures of his
imagination, that he lives and dreams with them, and that when his book
is finished, and the time comes for him to part from them, he does so
with pain that is little short of anguish. So far as most authors are
concerned, this is exactly opposite to the real facts. Before an author
is half-way through his novel he is heartily sick of his characters;
his beautiful heroine is an unmitigated nuisance and his hero an
incredible bore. He is only too thankful to reach the end of the last
chapter and leave his puppets for ever.
But this is not so with Hall Caine. His novels, as you know, do not
err on the side of brevity, and though it is possible you may tire
of his heroine, you may be absolutely certain that her creator never
does. To this novelist the creatures of his imagination are, in one
sense, more real than the material beings around him. He is wholly
dominated by his imagination. His brain is peopled by creatures of his
own fancy. His emotions are engaged on behalf of people who do not
exist. His consciousness is confined to the little world he has created
for himself and he is saturated with and submerged by fancies that his
imagination has bred.
I shall never forget coming across him early one morning in the little
shaded footway that winds among trees in the castle grounds to the main
drive. His eyes were dim, and he had not perfect control of his voice.
“I have been finishing my book,” he said, referring to _The Eternal
City_, “and I wept as I wrote.”
I have been with him on several occasions when he has been finishing
his books, and I have always found him in alternating moods of
exhaustion and emotional excitement. Whatever else may be charged
against him, it cannot with truth be said that he does not put his
whole soul into his work.
* * * * *
As a man he is the most loyal of friends and the most loyal of enemies.
He can hate bitterly. I have heard him eloquent in his hate. I have
heard him hate W. T. Stead and Frank Harris, and nothing could have
exceeded his bitterness. But he does not nurse his hatred, and he is a
man quick to forgive.
I cannot close this chapter without a word concerning his generosity.
By “generosity” I do not mean only that he is free with money, but
that he will give his time, the work of his brain, his advice and even
himself for any good cause and for any man in need. To struggling
authors he is the very soul of generosity. He struggled himself. Born
on a coal barge in Runcorn, largely self-educated, having experienced
the anxiety of straitened means and hope deferred, he has known
intimately the hardships of life, and will do all in his power to
shield others from them. On several occasions I have met people—mostly
young men—who have come to him for help and advice in beginning a
literary career. He is never extravagant in his praise of their work,
but if he finds merit in it he is always warmly encouraging. Years
before I met him face to face, when I was a boy of fourteen, I sent
him a long poem I had written in the Spenserian stanza, and the first
letters I received from him were careful and most helpful criticisms
of this juvenile literary effort. I had written to him as an entire
stranger and without any introduction whatever. In my youth and
egotism I had taken his replies as a matter of course; it was only
later that I recognised the most kindly spirit that prompted a busy and
often harassed man to give his time and energy to a boy whose work can
have had very little to recommend it.