In the meanwhile, circumstances had obliged him to give up Castlerigg
Cottage in disgust, and he accordingly removed to the Isle of Man,
with the determination of fixing his residence there definitely. For
the first six months he lived at Greeba Castle, a very pretty but very
lonely house, about half-way between Peel and Douglas, on the Douglas
road--and it was there that most of "The Manxman" was written.
"I turned my Jewish story into a Manx story, and 'The Jew' became 'The
Manxman.' In my original scheme, Philip was to be a Christian,
governor of his province in Russia; Pete, Cregeen, and Kate were to be
Jews. I thought that the racial difference between the two rivals
would afford greater dramatic contrast than the class difference, and
it was only reluctantly that I altered the scheme of my story."
Hall Caine, in speaking of the genesis of "The Manxman," may be
induced to show his little pocket-diary for 1893. Against each day
during the whole of January and part of February are written the
words: "The Jew."
"That means," he will explain, "that all those days I was working at
my story in my head."
"The Manxman" was finished at the house in Marine Parade in Peel where
Hall Caine is now temporarily residing--a large brick house, which was
built for a boarding-house and is certainly not the house for an
artist. As he has determined to make his home in the island, he is at
present hesitating whether to purchase Greeba Castle, or to build
himself a house on the Creg Malin headland at Peel, than which no more
wondrous site for a poet's home could be found in the Queen's
dominions, overlooking the bay, with the rugged pile of Peel Castle,
memory haunted, beyond.
He loves the Manx and they love him. At first "society" in the island
objected to his disregard of the conventions. Now he is as popular at
Government House, or at the Deemster's, as he is in Black Tom's
cottage. But his warmest friends are amongst the peasants and
fishermen, from one end of the island to the other. "They are such
good fellows," he says, "and such excellent subjects for study for my
books. They are current coin for me." So he asks them to supper, and
visits them in their houses, and has taught himself their language and
their strange intonations as they speak.
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."
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