Complete works of hall c.., p.708
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 708
“I believe you have not — even yet — written your best work. And here you have the proof of my sincerity. Always truly yours, — WILKIE COLLINS.”
The criticism contained in this letter is both sound and just, and though Mr Collins declares that in penning it he was not sitting in the chair of the critic, but in that of the novelist, yet the advice afforded is such as only the most competent critic who united the qualities of the imaginative writer could possibly have given.
Where Mr Caine particularly shows his strength in this novel, to my mind, is in the last part of all — the document written by Dan just before his death. The situation offers so many temptations to write in a falsely pathetic style that one cannot offer too much praise for the admirably firm and manly way in which Mr Caine has written this part of his novel.
I have before me as I write two letters written in October 1886. One is from Mr Hall Caine to the late Thomas Edward Brown (of Fo’c’stle Yarns fame), re the plot and mise-en-scène of what afterwards became The Deemster; and the other is Mr Brown’s reply. The letters are too long to reproduce exactly as they stand, but I give here sufficiently important extracts to show the reader what enormous and seemingly insuperable difficulties Mr Caine had to overcome before even beginning the actual writing of the book that brought him fame. Mr Caine’s letter is dated 3rd October 1886, from Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, London.
“DEAR MR BROWN.... You must have guessed that I have been constantly prompted by a selfish desire to consult you about my new novel. I am still undecided as to where the scene should be. The difficulty of determining the period is no less serious.... I wish to write a romance in the strict sense of the word and to be as nearly as possible untrammelled by facts of history and the like. Your opinion as to the feasibility of the Isle of Man must have been final with me when I had briefly explained my scheme. I remember that your brother Hugh did something to dissuade me from tackling Manxland in any sort of work. He did not think the readers of novels would find the island at all interesting, and he was sure that the local atmosphere was not such as would attract them. I thought over this a good deal, and decided, I must say, against your brother’s judgment.... In the first place, the island has excellent atmosphere. It has the sea, a fine coast on the west, fine moorland above; it has traditions, folk-talk, folk-lore, a ballad literature, and no end of superstition, — and all these are very much its own. Such were its attractions for any romance writer, and for me it had the further fascination of being in some sort one’s native place, with types of character that had been familiar to me since my earliest years. Moreover, it was unlike the scene in which I had already worked — the dales of Cumberland — and gave me above all one great and new element — the sea. So I decided that even Mudie and his thousands of young ladies might find Manxland an attractive background for a story.
.. The difficulty is whether the Isle of Man is a possible scene for a real epic. You will judge when I sketch very roughly my plot, which is still in a nebulous condition.
“I wish to open with a picture of an island governed mainly by a depraved nobility, or something equivalent to a privileged class. The great man (the Dooney Mooar, is it?) of that class shall be old, anxious (like King Lear) to give up his share in the government, yet kept to his post by restless energy. He shall have lands and be a Hebrew patriarch as to flocks and herds. His wife is long dead, and the memory of her is the one vein of tenderness in a nature that seems to be as hard as granite. He has two sons and a daughter, the former arrived at man’s estate, the latter just budding into womanhood. Long ago he had a brother who died at war with him, leaving a widow and an infant son. The lad is now five-and-twenty, a reckless scapegrace, beloved by all children and all dogs, the athlete of the island, physically a magnificent creature, but constantly under the ban of the great man, his kinsman. The young man is poor, his father having been impoverished. This young fellow should be the central personage of the novel. His youth is sketched; his scrapes, his disgraces, his dubious triumphs come in quick succession. At length he is a man and only less than an outlaw. He and his mother are neglected by the old nobleman (?) and his sons, but the daughter does not repudiate the kinship. The relations of the cousins must be delicately handled. On his side the affection is cousinly. On her side it is imperceptibly deepening into love.... The daughter of the great man is a noble creature, educated, too, and great of soul....
“Then comes the time when the great man intends to lay aside his state. His sons shall succeed to him.... At this juncture the eldest brother begins to suspect the relations of his sister and cousin. The men meet, quarrel and resolve to fight.... It is an unequal match; it is murder; the brother is backed to the cliff edge and... tumbles into the sea.... Then in an instant the soul of the athlete awakes. He realises what he is, and whither down to that moment his life has tended. In that moment of awakening there is only one thing he can think of doing. He will go to his cousin, the nobleman’s daughter. She is his good angel, etc. He goes, and sees her alone at night. He tells her that he has killed her brother — murdered him — extenuates nothing, etc.... the woman will be hard to do. What is the part?... I hardly know.
I think she should drive him from her. But she is his confessor and will not betray him, nevertheless.... The man gives himself up to the law. He is tried on his own confession and condemned to death. The death is to be by hanging, but no man has ever suffered death for crime in that island within memory or record. There is a superstitious dread of hanging. It must not be begun, or where will it end, etc.... The criminal is brought out, and... the curse is pronounced: that no man shall speak to him, that none shall look his way, that none shall give him food, that if he is sick none shall minister to him, that when he dies no man shall bury him.... Then comes a rupture in the state. The people try to cast off the rule of the privileged classes. Bit by bit the outlaw works out his redemption, his slow regeneration, his gradual renewing of the man within. One after one he does the people great services, accepting meantime all his punishment.... At length the regeneration is complete, and the outlaw becomes the saviour of his people, and is received in triumph on the scene of his former disgrace. Love is justified, the cousins are united, the broken old man dies, as is most fit.
“Now, dear Mr Brown, all this is very vague; but I shall be curious to hear how far it would be possible to work some such scheme into the (romantic) history of the Isle of Man. The House of Keys was, I think, a self-elected body down to recent years. If I could get it into the present century even by any ordinary liberties I should be delighted.”
The foregoing is noteworthy not only because it is the first skeleton of The Deemster, but because (as will be seen from Mr Brown’s reply), there were many difficulties opposing the idea of making the Isle of Man the mise-en-scène for the plot, and because these difficulties were most skilfully-overcome. These two letters are one of the most convincing proofs with what extraordinary care and patience Mr Caine works. The following is Mr Brown’s reply.
“CLIFTON, October 14, 1886.
“MY DEAR SIR, — Thanks for this admission to the secrets of your workshop. The story is most interesting.... It could not possibly be placed in the Isle of Man, nor timed in the nineteenth century.
“The Isle of Man does not give you the remoteness of the place which you want. Norway might, Kamtschatka might! but the Isle of Man — no.
“Then as to time —
“The history of the Isle of Man since the Revestment (1765!) is not legendary, nor has it been otherwise than very clearly defined since the Reformation. It is an eventless history, but quite ascertained, and rigid within its narrow compass. Its constitution has been singularly unbroken; there is not the faintest hint of any such revolution as you postulate. The House of Keys was cooptative in my own time, and the change to the popular method of election was the merest emigration ‘from the blue bed to the brown.’ The stage is inadequate for your romance; and, moreover, it is quite occupied by the most obstinate fixtures. Your Dooiney (sic) Mooar is less than a fable. Where can you get him in? He is not, I suppose, the Earl of Derby, or the Duke of Athol; but, if he is not, he ought to be, for these gentlemen hold the field, and you can’t get rid of them. It is impossible to conceive the privileged class, or nobles, of whom you speak. The fact is, you would take the Isle of Man as the merest physical basis, and constand upon it a whole system of manners, institutions, a social system, in short, which it never knew. It can’t be done at the distance; it can’t be done at all.
“Now, why not cut away from your socio-politicorevolutionary setting altogether, and rely, as you no doubt desire to do, on the sheer humanities? The Dooiney Mooar need not be a Lear, but he might be an old Manx gentleman; and, instead of resigning a seigniory, he might resign his landed estate. Such a person, and grouped around him nearly all the rest of your story, you could place about the year 1800. The Duke of Athol held a sort of court in those days: he brought over with him to the island a choice assortment of shwash-bucklers, led captains and miscellaneous blackguards. There are some fierce stories about these fellows. Duelling was in vogue.
“It was a very corrupt society, and no doubt greatly demoralised the native population.... Bishop Wilson (1710) was an ‘epoch-making’ personage. The Church and State question was then prominent. He was a complicated man, or at anyrate, a composite one. Never was man more beloved, never was there a serener saint, never a more brutal tyrant. But why seek this sort of person in the Isle of Man? Think of Laud and his tremendous stage. Has anyone ever ‘done’ him, and the robin coming into his study, and ‘all to that’? But yours is a romance? not an unconditional romance though, I suppose?...
“But your fiction is splendid; the incidents are quite magnificent, and, from what I can see, the possibilities of character are highly promising.... It must not be thrown away; it is strong and vital; but the Isle of Man sinks beneath it. And besides the inadequacy of the stage there is the fact of its being preoccupied with social and historical furniture that will in no way fit with your invented properties.
“For my part, I think the interest attaching to the ‘transition period’ idea is adscititious, and rather vapid. And as for an epic — just write the words, ‘A Manx Epic and behold the totally impossible at once!
“If you cling to this form, however, take it out to the red men, and let the scene be the Alleghanies, temp, cirdter 1730. I hope I have made my meaning clear. The story is good, but its setting is impossible. Drop the latter, but stick to the former. If you do, you can retain the Isle of Man as the scene of your action.... Most truly yours, — T. E. BROWN.”
He hopes he “has made his meaning clear.” Only too terribly clear! Almost every point necessary to the proper development of the plot was promptly knocked on the head; the vital links in the chain were broken, the structural backbone of the romance was destroyed. Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have given up the idea in despair; but not Hall Caine. He seized on the hint of Bishop Wilson — the “epoch - making” personage; he altered this part of the plot, and developed that; he substituted one character for another, and introduced new dramatis personoe; — in a word, he not only recast the plot, but made it historically convincing, and this in the very face of the warnings and obstacles raised by one of the most erudite scholars the Isle of Man has yet produced. This, of course, involved immense labour, but it was done, and done successfully. Even Mr Brown himself had to acknowledge this. As Mr Caine has written me: “When the book was written there was no such sympathetic reader as T. E. B.”
Another eminent writer who generously acknowledged the power and beauty of The Deemster was the late R. D. Blackmore, who wrote the following letter immediately after reading Mr Caine’s book.
“TEDDINGTON, April 3, 1888.
“MY DEAR MR CAINE, — I thank you heartily for your kind and friendly letter, which was a comfort to me. It has always seemed to me that your turn of mind and power of creation are especially dramatic; and that you will write (if once you take to that form) a very grand and moving play. There is no one who can do that now, so far at least as I can judge; and I shall be proud if I live long enough to see you achieve it.
“For novel-writing you have not yet (according to my small judgment) the sense of proportion and of variety which are needful for pleasant work. I have read with great care your Deemster, and have admired and been stirred by it. But to my mind (which is not at all a critical one) there is not the sliding, and the quiet shifting, and the sense of pause, which are perhaps only the mechanical parts of great work, but help to lift it. I cannot exactly express my meaning, and I have no science to second it; and I know that I cannot do the thing myself, and never attempt it consciously. But it will come to you, with time, and give grace to your excelling power.
“As for myself, of which you ask, there is little to say except that all the spirit is taken out of it. I care for nothing that I do; nor whether I do anything — which for a man who has not been lazy is a dreary change of mood; my shame at such a state of mind is useless to improve it, and I wonder how long it will last. But this, I hope, you will never understand, except as I did — before it came to pass.
“If you care to come down to so dull a place, you will be always welcome, but a line beforehand will help it. Tuesdays are my absent days, and Saturdays rather ‘throng’ with work. — Believe me, ever truly yours, “R. D. BLACKMORE.
“‘Luncheon’ — dinner it is to me, — at 2 o’clock daily. Try to come in time for that, and a look-round afterwards.”
CHAPTER VI. HALL CAINE AS A DRAMATIST, SHORT-STORY WRITER, POET AND CRITIC
HALL CAINE has written five plays, three of which have been produced. The drama founded on The Eternal City has been played for copyright purposes only. The first of these plays was called Ben-my-Chree and was the dramatised version of The Deemster. I venture to quote from an excellent biographical article by Mr Robert Harborough Sherard in the Windsor Magazine (November 1895): “Irving read the book (The Deemster) 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 dramatisation. 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. Barrett was enthusiastic about it, and Ben-my-Chree was duly produced for the first time at the Princess’s Theatre on May 14 (the dramatist’s birthday), 1888, before a packed house in which every literary celebrity in London was present. It was, however, by no means a great success: for some unaccountable reason, it failed to ‘draw,’ and after running for a hundred nights, it was withdrawn.” Strange to say, it was exceedingly popular in America, and at this moment a company is touring it in the English provinces.
His next drama, The Manxman, was also produced by Mr Wilson Barrett in Leeds on August 20, 1894. It was successful everywhere “except in Manchester and New York.” I do not quite understand Mr Caine’s statement that The Manxman was not a success in Manchester, for I myself remember climbing up on to the top row of the gallery at the Theatre Royal (or was it the Prince’s?) because there was no room anywhere else. On that occasion the theatre was crowded, and the reception enthusiastic in every way. Perhaps it was a “return visit” that I witnessed, and the Manchester public had had time to gather its wits and become appreciative.
His third play, The Christian, was produced first in Albany, New York, and afterwards in Liverpool. In this play the dramatist’s sister, Miss Lily Hall Caine, took the part of Polly Love, and afterwards, when the play was taken on tour, the part of Glory Quayle. This play is still running, and meets with enthusiastic applause wherever it goes. It has been performed in England and the United States more than two thousand times.
In passing any criticism on Mr Caine’s plays, it must at the very outset be confessed that he has not yet done himself justice. For my own part, I have not much faith in the dramatised versions of novels. A plot that lends itself to treatment in the form of a novel is very rarely suitable for production as a drama; and until Hall Caine is inspired with the plot of a drama that is at once cohesive and compact, it seems to me he will never produce anything worthy of the powers which he undoubtedly possesses. Some regard to the unities of Time and Place is necessary before a drama can be considered seriously as a work of art, and it must be acknowledged that Mr Caine pays very little attention to the technique of dramaturgy. I do not for one moment deny that his plays are full of strong and dramatic situations, that the dialogue is natural, easy and telling, and that they are exceedingly well constructed from a “popular” standard; but as contributions to dramatic literature they cannot be seriously considered. Mr Caine himself would, I feel sure, be the first to agree with me in all this. I know that he does not consider his dramatic work to be on anything like the same plane as his novel-writing. It is rather a matter of surprise that a writer gifted with so well-developed a dramatic sense should have been comparatively unsuccessful in his plays; but, so far as one can judge, it seems probable that this is due to the fact that he has only attempted plays based on novels. When he shall have developed a plot which obviously lends itself to stage treatment and no other kind of treatment, he may be expected to write a drama which shall take the same position in dramatic literature that his novels have attained in the world of fiction.
