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 118were 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 119inflections—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 120gladstone 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 121lancashire 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.
122for 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.
123“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.
124the 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 125advertised 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.
126“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 127and 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.
