Hall Caine, the Man and the Novelist. C. Fred Kenyon
the return of a hero to his desolated native land, in defence of which he had been long absent on a distant journey. Although the poem was of considerable length it contained few characters and incidents, but its lines embodied Hall Caine’s ideal of a golden age. When he first turned his thoughts to literature as a profession his inclination would have led him to express his ideas in the form of poetry; in this particular his mind gradually changed. Next to poetry his desire was to become a journalist. During his holiday visits to the Isle of Man he found opportunities of contributing to the island newspapers, and soon his articles were so highly valued that his editor accepted everything that came from his pen. One little peculiarity in those articles was the source of much amusement to his friends in Liverpool. It was the frequent repetition of a pet phrase, ‘these three small islands,’ by which he meant Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man. If he had then been called upon to name them in the order of their importance he would undoubtedly have given the first place to Manxland.”
In connection with these articles mentioned by Mr. Rose, I may say that they were written when their author was sixteen years of age. It has been my privilege to read many of them. They are noticeable for close reasoning and exceptionally wide reading for one so young. They were written in favour of the maintenance of Manx political institutions which, at that time, were threatened with annihilation. They are vehement but reasonable, and in no place does their author overstep the bounds of common-sense.
Again I quote Mr. Rose. “One of Hall Caine’s favourite plans was an intention to write a drama. He had read that in some part of Germany there was a law by virtue of which an inquiry was made immediately after a man’s death into the extent of his possessions; and when it was found that he had evaded payment of any portion of the taxes to which a man of his means was liable, the whole of his property was forfeited to the State. The plot of Hall Caine’s intended drama was to be founded upon a tragic result of this custom. The principal idea of the story was that a wealthy merchant having entrusted to his confidential agent the duty of making the statements required by the law, the agent systematically falsified them, in order that on the death of the principal the agent might become an informer and bring about the forfeiture of the estate. The motive was that the daughter of the merchant, being rendered penniless, might be driven to accept the informer’s proposal of marriage.
“Such was the crude outline of the plot; but it was altered almost every day. He often talked about this project, but never spoke about the words of the play. It was the machinery of the play that he was concerned about, the number of the scenes and their order of succession, with other points of stage management. He wrote so easily that he felt no anxiety about his ability to accomplish the literary part of the design; but he believed that in a dramatic composition, however original and lofty the thoughts it contained, however perfect the expression of them, all would be wasted unless they were woven around a framework of method exactly adapted to meet the conditions of stage representation.
“Although the idea of writing such a play was never carried into effect, it served to show what direction Hall Caine’s thoughts were taking. Many of his contributions to Liverpool newspapers took the form of dramatic criticism. His mind was greatly influenced by the successes achieved by Henry Irving. It will be remembered that for some considerable time before Mr. Irving appeared in the character of Hamlet, his intention to do so was known, and the degree in which his representation of the part would differ from that of other actors was the subject of lively discussion. Hall Caine interested himself deeply in the matter, and contributed many brilliant articles on the subject to various papers. He gave a great deal of attention to the study of Shakespeare’s writings, and his conversation on the subject was very interesting because of the light he was able to throw on the meaning of passages the importance of which would be overlooked by an ordinary reader. I heard him speak at a meeting of a literary society over which he presided for some time and which had enrolled many able men amongst its members. The subject was a reading of scenes from Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar. Some remarks had been made about the conversation of the conspirators which takes place as they stand in the garden of Brutus’s house. In talking together they allude to the dawn which they saw or pretended to see. Hall Caine insisted that the words were full of hidden meaning if properly emphasised by appropriate gesture. He quoted the speech of Casca in Act II., Scene I. ‘Here as I point my sword, the sun arises; … some two months hence, up higher towards the north, he first presents his fire,’ and said it was necessary for the actor to bring out the true significance of the lines by pointing with his sword, first to the house of Cæsar, and then to that of Brutus, indicating the transfer of power to the latter which the conspirator desired to effect.”
This study of Shakespeare—a study close, intimate and unremitting—cannot be insisted on too strongly. Shakespeare and the Bible have from his earliest years been his chief mental food: his thoughts are coloured by the imagery of the Prophets, and his language has gained in terseness, vigour and force from the greatest poet who has ever lived.
I now resume Mr. Pierce’s reminiscences. “He was becoming” (in about the year 1870, when Hall Caine was seventeen years of age) “more and more absorbed in literary studies, and quite early began to make acquaintance with the dramatists—not content, as most of us were, with reading the plays of Shakespeare only among the Elizabethans, but reading extensively and thoughtfully the writings of all the most notable playwrights of that great age. I was early struck by his references to the Jew of Malta. He would quote Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or from a play by Massinger, or Beaumont and Fletcher, or Webster, in a way which showed considerable familiarity with the literature of the time. These facts have more significance for me now than then, as I see in them the growth of his mind, and the evidence of an original impulse towards literary studies. It is difficult to explain how this solitary youth, amidst surroundings by no means suggestive of such studies, should have chosen this way of spending his hours of leisure; and by what instinct, in those early days when university extension lectures were yet unknown, before English literature as an educational subject was popularised, and before the publication of our modern guides and manuals for the help of the blundering tyro, Caine seized at once the salient points of the great subject, divining the place and importance of names not known to the merely well-informed multitude, least of all to youths who had not long left school.
“It was during this period that I began to renew my intimacy with Caine. It was probably due to some kindness on his part. He has a genius for friendship, and is capable of taking immeasurable pains in the service of those to whom he is attached; and he is, or perhaps I should say he was, one of the best and most faithful letter-writers I have ever known. I had left business and was studying Art and Literature in an easy, unmethodical, Bohemian fashion, drawing from the antique during the day, and exploring the poets and essayists in the evening, with desultory violin studies and excursions into Geology and Genesis by way of diversion and variety. Caine was interested in all these things; but he never aspired to sing or play, and made fun of his own drawings, though I believe he was really a skilful architectural draughtsman. He did one thing, one thing only, and he did it better than anyone else.
“Perhaps my knowledge of his mind during these early years is due to the fact that I left Liverpool about the close of 1871 for Carnarvon to take up a press appointment. Caine had no difficulty in communicating his thoughts in writing. I must have written him some account of my whereabouts, or have sent him copies of the newspaper on which I was engaged, or probably have done both things. And so a correspondence, to me most notable, began. Caine was principally responsible for its maintenance; he was the more regular and conscientious writer. His letters were often extraordinary with regard to their length, and more often extraordinary with regard to their contents. But in the most rapid and familiar of them there is a sense of style. He is full of qualifying clauses, inversions, interpolated interrogations, and exclamations, but the grammatical and logical close of each sentence is successfully reached. Still, though often somewhat formidable in length, and graced by literary ingenuities at times, they are letters, nevertheless, and not essays. There is no consciousness that a word in any one of them is ever to be seen by a third person. That they are less casual and simple in style than most letters addressed to familiar friends must be set down to the character of the writer. I remember a somewhat matter-of-fact schoolfellow, himself innocent enough of any refinement of speech or culture of mind, expressing his detestation of Caine because when