Complete works of hall c.., p.707
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 707
“The main point is to take them easily; even as one does the supernatural wisdom of Reviewers.
“With the best wishes for your new story — may the Son be the child of promise! — I am, dear sir, very truly yours, — R. D. BLACKMORE.”
“HALL CAINE, Esq.”
The second letter was written concerning Caine’s Life of Coleridge — interesting for its reference to the first reviews of Lorna Doone.
“TEDDINGTON, May 7, 1887.
“MY DEAR MR CAINE, — I am deeply engaged with your interesting book, and thank you for so kindly sending it. The Son of Hagar has not come this way yet, and I put him vainly upon my book-list. However, it is good not to have one’s pleasures too abundantly — commendat rarior usus.
“Have you ever dealt at all with — , the great ‘organiser’ of Newspaper novels? He has asked me more than once to be distributed in that way; but hitherto I have declined. His terms are fair — so far as I can judge — and he seems a sharp man of business. Writers of higher repute than mine have marched under his standard; but I doubt me whether my ‘politics’ would suit his mighty horde.
“I conclude that you have left the Isle of Man, and hope you are working at a book of the quocunque jeceris stabit. Any work of yours will now command a larger circle than the critics; to whom (like myself) you owe little. If the matter were of more interest, I would print the first notices of Lorna Doone, which they now quote as a standard. I have them somewhere, and a damp bed they are to smother a shy guest in. But you know well enough how these men fumble the keys of an open door.
“I must now be off to my pipes and Coleridge. I am heartily glad to find you — against that far inferior — and, to my mind, prosy fellow — Southey. — With kind regards, I am very truly yours,
“R. D. BLACKMORE.”
“HALL CAINE, Esq.”
Mr Caine has inscribed this note at the head of the following. “This letter was written about A Son of Hagar, which was dedicated to Blackmore. The censorious part of it is very just. — H. C.”
“TEDDINGTON, August 25, 1887.
“MY DEAR MR CAINE, — I would not write again until I had read your book, which I have now done with great care. My opinion is of very little value, but so far as I can distinctly form one, it is nearly as follows. There is any amount of vigour and power, and some real pathos (which is, of course, a part of power), also there are many other merits — strong English style, great knowledge of character, keen observation, and much originality.
“But I think you will improve upon this book vastly, as experience grows. The incidents appear to me to be huddled, without sense of proportion now and then, and there is much strain upon credulity. But I am loth to find fault, knowing that I am not a skilled workman myself.
“We are just leaving home, in the hope — probably a vain one — of doing some good to my helpless hand, whose failure is a great loss to me in every branch of garden work. I think of invading T. Hardy’s land — Swanage or the neighbourhood, almost the only part of the southern coast unknown to me. Further I would gladly go, but my wife cannot bear a long journey, or changes of conveyance. After our return I shall be very glad to see you, though I cannot advise much about Wales. North Wales is, of course, much the more picturesque, and the style of the natives more Cymric; whereas I am chiefly acquainted with the south. The love of truth seems to have been overlooked in the composition of Welsh character. The lower classes do not even resent the charge of lying, and consider it disgraceful mainly as a blot upon their intellect. But I must not be hard upon them, as my mother’s family, though English in the main, possessed many veins of Taffic fluid.
“I hope that you are now in strong health again, after the passing of the solid hot waves. As a fruit-grower, I have suffered bitter woes, some of my trees having shed all their fruit and none having fine crop as they promised. The rain came in earnest last week, but too late, and now we could take as much again. — With all good wishes, I am, truly yours, — R. D. BLACKMORE.”
CHAPTER V. THE DEEMSTER
IT was The Deemster that brought Hall Caine fame. It was written in a mood of dissatisfaction, of disappointment. He felt that he had it in him to write a novel that should be worthy of the world’s respect, and though The Shadow of a Crime and A Son of Hagar were, in no sense, failures, yet they had not met with the success for which the young novelist was so ardently longing. This was to be his first book dealing with Manx life, customs and character, and he wrote it in the island with all the beautiful landscape and the glorious sea for an inspiration.
The plot of the book is founded on the story of the Prodigal Son. It teaches the doctrine of purification by suffering, though by no stretch of the imagination can it be called a “book with a purpose.” Rather is it an imaginative picture of wonderful pathos, and the moral which it enforces is never hinted at; it is revealed in the very atmosphere of the book, in its childlike purity, in its passionate simplicity.
The Prodigal Son is Daniel, son of Gilchrist Mylrea, Bishop of Man. His mother died at his birth, and so during the early years of his young life his father acted as mother, nurse, teacher, playmate and friend. Here is a picture of father and son, with Mona and Ewan, Dan’s cousins and housemates.
Meantime Bishop’s Court was musical with children’s voices, and with the patter of tiny feet that ferreted out every nook and cranny of the old place. There was Ewan, the Deemster’s son, a slight, sensitive boy, who listened to you with head aslant, and with absent looks. There was wee Mona, Ewan’s meek sister, with the big eyes and the quiet ways, who liked to be fondled, and would cry sometimes when no one knew why. And there was Daniel — Danny — Dan, the Bishop’s boy, a braw little rogue, with a slice of the man in him, as broad as he was long, with tousled fair head and face usually smudged, laughing a good deal, and not crying over much, loving a good tug or a delightful bit of a fight, and always feeling high disdain at being kissed. And the Bishop, God bless him! was father and mother both to the motherless brood, though Kerry Quayle was kept as nurse. He would tell a story, or perhaps sing one, while Mona sat on his knee with her pretty head resting on his breast, and Ewan held on to his chair with his shy head hanging on his own shoulder, and his eyes looking out at the window, listening intently in his queer little absent way. And when Dan, in lordly contempt of such doings, would break in on song or story, and tear his way up the back of the chair to the back of the Bishop, Mona would be set on her feet, and the biggest baby of the four there present would slide down on to his hands and knees and creep along the floor with the great little man astride him, and whinny like a horse, or perhaps bark like a dog, and pretend to leap the four-bar gate of the baby’s chair tumbled down on its side. And when Dan would slide from his saddle, and the restless horseman would turn coachman and tug the mane of his steed, and all the Bishop’s long hair would tumble over his face, what shrieks of laughter, what rolling on the ground and tossing up of bare legs! And then when supper-time came, and the porridge would be brought in, and little Mona would begin to whimper because she had to eat it, and Ewan to fret because it was barley porridge and not oaten cake, and Dan to devour his share with silent industry, and then bellow for more than was good for him, what schemes the good Bishop resorted to, what promises he made, what crafty tricks he learned, what an artful old pate his simple head suddenly became! And then, when Kerry came with the tub and the towels, and three little naked bodies had to be bathed, and the Bishop stole away to his unfinished sermon, and little Mona’s wet hands clung to Kerry’s dress, and Ewan, standing bolt upright in the three inches of water, blubbered while he rubbed the sponge over an inch and a half of one cheek, and Dan sat on his haunches in the bottom of the tub splashing the water on every side, and shrieking at every splash; then the fearful commotion would bring the Bishop back from the dusky room upstairs, where the shaded lamp burned on a table that was littered with papers. And at last, when the day’s big battle was done, and night’s bigger battle begun; and three night-dresses were popped over three weary heads that dodged them when they could, the Bishop would carry three sleepless, squealing piggies to bed — Mona at his breast because she was little, Ewan at his back because he was big, and Dan across his shoulders because he could not get to any loftier perch. Presently there would be three little pairs of knees by the crib side, and then three little flaxen polls on the pillow, tumbling and tossing, and with the great dark head of the Bishop shaking gravely at them from over the counterpane, and then a hush broken by a question lisped drowsily, or a baby rhyme that ran a line or two and stopped, and at length the long deep quiet and the silence of sleep, and the Bishop going off on tiptoe to the dusky room with the shaded lamp, and to-morrow’s sermon lying half-written beneath it.
Can you not see them? — the four innocent children playing their games as though they were the whole world. But their happiness was soon cut short. Thorkell Mylrea, the Deemster and the father of Ewan and Mona, and the evil genius of the book, calls at Bishop’s Court, and takes his children away. “Let a father treat his children as the world will treat them when they have nothing but the world for their father,” he says, and henceforth the children’s joy is taken away. But Dan lives on with his father, the Bishop, laughing, playing his pranks, and making of the Court one huge nursery. The years pass, and a friendship like that of David and Jonathan springs up between Dan and Ewan. But Dan is headstrong, wilful and impetuous. He runs almost wild, and his great strength and love of sport lead him into the companionship of good-for-noughts. He quarrels with Ewan, and, in a scene of great beauty and tenderness, a reconciliation is effected. But again they quarrel, and Dan strikes Ewan a terrible blow which has far-reaching consequences. Dan is covered with shame, and feels abased in his very soul. And then, assailed by the most subtle temptation, Dan commits forgery, and Ewan, by now a priest, tells a lie to save him. And so Dan, the noble-hearted, pure-minded soul, sinks deeper and deeper into petty sins. He wastes his substance, idles, drinks — does all that a tortured weak soul will do when it has begun to step on the downward path. The end of it all is that in fair fight Dan kills his cousin, and goes to Mona to tell her of his sin.
“Yes, yes, our Ewan is dead,” he repeated in a murmur that came up from his heart. “The truest friend, the fondest brother, the whitest soul, the dearest, bravest, purest, noblest — O God! O God! dead, dead! Worse, a hundredfold worse — Mona, he is murdered.”
At that she raised herself up, and a bewildered look was in her eyes.
“Murdered? No, that is not possible. He was beloved by all. There is no one who would kill him — there is no one alive with a heart so black.”
“Yes, Mona, but there is,” he said; “there is one man with a heart so black.”
“Who is he?”
“Who! He is the foulest creature on God’s earth. Oh, God in heaven! Why was he born?”
“Who is he?”
He bowed his head where he stood before her, and beads of sweat started from his brow.
“Cursed be the hour when that man was born!” he said in an awful whisper.
Then Mona’s despair came upon her like a torrent and she wept long. In the bitterness of her heart she cried, —
“Cursed indeed, cursed for ever! Dan, Dan, you must kill him — you must kill that man....”
Then Dan said in a heartrending voice, —
“Mona, he did not mean to kill Ewan — they fought — it was all in the heat of blood.”
Once more he tried to avoid her gaze, and once more, pale and immovable, she watched his face.
“Who is he?” she asked, with an awful calmness.
“Mona, turn your face away from me, and I will tell you,” he said.
Then everything swam about her, and her pale lips grew ashy.
“Don’t you know?” he asked in a whisper.
She did not turn her face, and he was compelled to look at her now. His glaring eyes were fixed upon her.
“Don’t you know?” he whispered again, and then in a scarcely audible voice he said, “It was I, Mona.”
The restrained power of this passage is typical of Hall Caine — not one word too much, and yet the man and woman live and breathe before our very eyes.
Mona confesses her love, and Dan leaves her to give himself up to justice. But temptation and hindrances are put in his way. — It seems to be fated that his crime shall go unpunished, unatoned for. At length, overcoming all his weakness, and with a mighty resolve to suffer the penalty of his guilt, Dan gives himself up at the Ramsey courthouse. Then follow weary months of waiting until his trial. Finally he receives his punishment on Tynwald Hill — the ancient mound where, once in each year, the laws of the island are proclaimed to the assembled people. He is sentenced by his own father to lifelong solitude. “Men and women of Man,” cries the Bishop, “the sentence of the court of the barony of the island is, that this man shall be cut off from his people. Henceforth let him have no name among us, nor family, nor kin. From now for ever let no flesh touch his flesh. Let no tongue speak to him. Let no eye look on him. If he should be an-hungered, let none give him meat. When he shall be sick, let none minister to him. When his death shall come, let no man bury him. Alone let him live, alone let him die, and among the beasts of the field let him hide his unburied bones.” And then follows a tear-compelling document written by Dan in his exile, wherein it is shown how he works out his own redemption, and regains his manhood. Eventually he becomes the saviour of his people and dies in Mona’s arms.
Many critics have levelled at Mr Caine a charge of unnecessary sadness in thus allowing his hero to die just at the moment when his regeneration is complete, but to my mind that is the only possible ending. Read in the right spirit the book is not sad; pervading its pages is seen a glorious optimism which not only gives one new faith in humanity, but makes one feel that life itself is a grander and nobler thing than one had ever before imagined. If Dan had had his punishment cancelled, and had married Mona — what a painful piece of bathos it would have been! And yet that is precisely what many critics desired. They seem to imagine that the temporal life is of far more importance than the spiritual. Dan’s life was crowned and his death glorified by his spiritual triumph. During those years of awful loneliness he not only purified his own nature, but exalted his very soul. The Deemster is no melodramatic piece of stage-work; it is a direct human document, a spiritual drama. It is the first work of Hall Caine’s which has indubitably written on every page the word “genius.”
It was published in 1888, and immediately created a sensation. Critics welcomed it on all hands. It was recognised as a powerful and original piece of work, and the new setting for the story added not a little to its attractiveness; for, fully in sympathy with Manxland, its laws, customs and society, Mr Caine had painted a picture of great charm and attraction. Old Kerry, Quilleash, and Hommy-beg were accepted as true portraits of Manx character, with their ingrained superstition, their vanity and their generosity. But the book did not impress the critics only; it was read far and wide by the public, and within a few months the circulation had become enormous. The Deemster was one of the successes of the year, and from the date of its publication the popularity of Hall Caine began.
I am permitted to give here, by the courtesy of Mr A. P. Watt, Mr Wilkie Collins’s literary executor, a letter addressed to Mr Caine by the late novelist. It is only one out of many hundreds received by Hall Caine from all parts of the world, congratulating him on his success, and offering him tributes of thanks.
“90 GLOUCESTER PLACE, “PORTMAN SQUARE, W., “LONDON, March 15, 1888.
“DEAR HALL CAINE, — (Let us drop the formality of ‘Mr’ — and let me set the example because I am the oldest).
“I have waited to thank you for The Deemster, until I could command time enough to read the book without interruptions. Let me add that the chair in which I have enjoyed this pleasure is not the chair of the critic. What I am now writing conveys the impressions of a brother in the art.
“You have written a remarkable work of fiction — a great advance on The Shadow of a Crime (to my mind) — a powerful and pathetic story — the characters vividly conceived, and set in action with a master hand. Within the limits of a letter, I cannot quote a tenth part of the passages which have seized on my interest and admiration. As one example, among many others which I should like to quote, let me mention the chapters that describe the fishermen taking the dead body out to sea in the hope of concealing the murder. The motives assigned to the men and the manner in which they express themselves show a knowledge of human nature which place you among the masters of our craft, and a superiority to temptations to conventional treatment that no words of mine can praise too highly. For a long time past, I have read nothing in contemporary fiction that approaches what you have done here. I have read the chapters twice, and, if I know anything of our art, I am sure of what I say.
“Now let me think of the next book that you will write, and let me own frankly where I see room for improvement in what the painters call, ‘treatment of the subject.’
“When you next take up your pen, will you consider a little whether your tendency to dwell on what is grotesque and violent in human character does not require some discipline? Look again at ‘The Deemster’ and at some of the qualities and modes of thought attributed to ‘Dan.’
“Again — your power as a writer sometimes misleads you, as I think, into forgetting the value of contrast. The grand picture which your story presents of terror and grief wants relief. Individually and collectively, there is variety in the human lot. We are no more continuously wretched than we are continuously happy. Next time, I want more humour, which breaks out so delightfully in old ‘Quilleash.’ More breaks of sunshine in your splendid cloudy sky will be a truer picture of nature — and will certainly enlarge the number of your admiring readers. Look at two of the greatest tragic stories — Hamlet and The Bride of Lammermoor, and see how Shakespeare and Scott take every opportunity of presenting contrasts, and brightening the picture at the right place.
