[Illustration: INTERIOR OF "THE COTTAGE BY THE WATER-TROUGH," KIRKNEO,
NEAR RAMSEY, ISLE OF MAN, WHERE LIVED "BLACK TOM," THE GRANDFATHER OF
PETE, IN "THE MANXMAN."]
Offers came in from all sides; the little house in Kent, where he was
then living, became the pilgrimage of the publishers. Irving read the
book in America, and seeing that there was here material for a
splendid play, with himself in the part of the Bishop, hesitated about
cabling to the author. In the meanwhile Wilson Barrett had also read
the book, and had telegraphed to Kent to ask Hall Caine to come up to
London to discuss its dramatization. Hall Caine started, but was
forced to leave the train at Derby because a terrible fog rendered
travelling impossible. He spent the next ten days in the Isaac Walton
Inn, at Dovedale, near Derby, waiting for the fog to lift, and whilst
so waiting wrote the first draft of the play, which he entitled
"Ben-my-Chree," Barrett was enthusiastic about it, and "Ben-my-Chree"
was duly produced for the first time at the Princess Theatre, on May
14, 1888, before a packed house, in which every literary celebrity in
London was present. "The reception was enthusiastic; the next day I
was a famous man." Notwithstanding its great success on the first
night and the splendid eulogies of the press, "Ben-my-Chree" failed to
draw in London, and after running for one hundred nights, at a great
loss to the management, was withdrawn. It was then taken to the
provinces, and was very successful, both there and in America, holding
the stage for seven years. It was afterwards reproduced, with some
success, in London. This play brought Hall Caine in a sum of one
thousand pounds (five thousand dollars), and out of this he bought
himself a house in Keswick, where he remained in residence for four
years. Having now given up journalism, he devoted himself entirely to
fiction and play-writing.
[Illustration: THE ORIGINAL OF KATE IN "THE MANXMAN."]
In 1889, he went with his wife to Iceland and spent two months there,
for the purpose of studying certain scenes which he wished to
introduce into "The Bondman," on which he was then working.
Documentation is as much Hall Caine's care in his novels as it is
Emile Zola's. "The Bondman," which had been begun in March, 1889, at
Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent, a house of sinister memory--for
Caine narrowly escaped being murdered there one night--was finished in
October, at Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick, and was published by
Heinemann in 1890, with a success which is far from being exhausted
even to-day. In this year Hall Caine experienced a great
disappointment. He had been commissioned by Sir Henry Irving to write
a play on "Mahornet," and had written three acts of it, when such an
outcry was made in the press against Irving's proposal to put
"Mahomet" on the stage, to the certain offence of British Mohammedans,
that Sir Henry telegraphed to him to say that the plan could not be
carried out. He offered to compensate Hall Caine for his labor. "I
refused, however, to accept one penny," says Caine, "and after
relieving my feelings by spitting on my antagonists in an angry
article in 'The Speaker,' I finished the play." It was accepted by
Willard for production in America, but has not yet been played. "This
was a great disappointment," says Caine, "and I had little heart for
much work in 1890. I did nothing in that year beyond a hasty 'Life of
Christ,' which has never been printed. I had read Renan's 'Life of
Christ,' and had been deeply impressed by it, and I had said that
there was a splendid chance for a 'Life of Christ' as vivid and as
personal from the point of belief as Renan's was from the point of
unbelief." This book he wrote, but was not satisfied with it, and has
refused to publish it, although only last year a firm of publishers
offered him three thousand pounds (fifteen thousand dollars) for the
manuscript. "No, I was not satisfied, though I had brought to bear on
it faculties which I had never used in my novels. It was human, it was
most dramatic, but it fell far short of what I had hoped to do, and I
put it away in my cupboard. I hope to rewrite it some day."
In 1891 Hall Caine began to work on "The Scapegoat," and in the spring
of that year went to Morocco to fit the scenes to his idea. He
suffered there from very bad health, from severe neurosthenia. "I was
a 'degenerate,' he says, "à la Nordau." No sooner had "The
Scapegoat" been published, than the chief rabbi wrote to him to ask
him to go to Russia, to write about the persecutions of the Jews in
that country, and in 1892 he started on this mission, which he
fulfilled entirely at his own expense, declining all the offers of
subsidies made to him by the Jewish Committee. He carried with him for
protection against the Russian authorities, a letter from Lord
Salisbury to H. M.'s Minister at St. Petersburg, to be delivered only
in case of need; and as an introduction to the possibly hostile Jewish
Communities, a letter in Hebrew to be presented to the rabbis in the
various towns. Lord's Salisbury's letter was never used, but the chief
rabbi's introduction secured him everywhere a most hospitable
reception.
[Illustration: "BLACK TOM" BEFORE "THE COTTAGE BY THE WATER-TROUGH."]
"I went through the pale of settlement," he relates, "and saw as much
of frontier life amongst the Jews as possible and found them like
hunted dogs. I, however, got no further than the frontier towns, for
cholera had broken out, numerous deaths took place every day, my own
health was getting queer, and, to speak plainly, I was frightened. So
we turned our faces back and returned home. On my return to London I
delivered a lecture before the Jewish Workmen's Club in the East End,
in a hall crammed to suffocation. I shall never forget the enthusiasm
of the audience, the tears, the laughter, the applause, the wild
embraces to which I was subjected."
This was the only use that Hall Caine ever made of all his experiences
of his tour in Russia in 1892, which had lasted many months, for when
he returned to Cumberland to write the story which was to be called
"The Jew," he found the task impossible. "I worked very hard at it, I
turned it over in every direction in my mind, but I felt I could not
do it. I wanted the experience of a life; I could not enter into
competition in their own field with the great Russian novelists. I
found it could not be done."