Hall Caine
Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine , usually known as Hall Caine, was a British novelist, dramatist, short
story writer, poet and critic of the late 19th and early 20th century. Caine's popularity during his lifetime was unprecedented. He wrote 15 novels on subjects of adultery, divorce, domestic violence, illegitimacy, infanticide, religious bigotry and women's rights, became an international literary celebrity, and sold a total of ten million books. Caine was the most highly paid novelist of his day. The Eternal City is the first novel to have sold over a million copies worldwide. In addition to his books, Caine is the author of more than a dozen plays and was one of the most commercially successful dramatists of his time; many were West End and Broadway productions. Caine adapted seven of his novels for the stage. He collaborated with leading actors and managers, including Wilson Barrett, Viola Allen, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Louis Napoleon Parker, Mrs Patrick Campbell, George Alexander, and Arthur Collins. Most of Caine's novels were adapted into silent black and white films. A. E. Coleby's 1923 18,454 feet, nineteen-reel film The Prodigal Son became the longest commercially made British film. Alfred Hitchcock's 1929 film The Manxman, is Hitchcock's last silent film.
Born in Runcorn to a Manx father and Cumbrian mother, Caine was raised in Liverpool. After spending four years in school, Caine was trained as an architectural draughtsman. While growing up he spent childhood holidays with relatives in the Isle of Man. At seventeen he spent a year there as schoolmaster in Maughold. Afterwards he returned to Liverpool and began a career in journalism, becoming a leader-writer on the Liverpool Mercury. As a lecturer and theatre critic he developed a circle of eminent literary friends by whom he was influenced. Caine moved to London at Dante Gabriel Rossetti's suggestion and lived with the poet, acting as secretary and companion during the last years of Rossetti's life. Following the publication of his Recollections of Rossetti in 1882 Caine began his career as a writer spanning four decades.
Caine established his residency in the Isle of Man in 1895, where he sat from 1901 to 1908 in the Manx House of Keys, the lower house of its legislature. Caine was elected President of the Manx National Reform League in 1903 and chair of the Keys' Committee that prepared the 1907 petition for constitutional reform. In 1929
Caine was granted the Freedom of the Borough of Douglas, Isle of Man. Caine visited Russia in 1892 on behalf of the persecuted Jews. In 1895 Caine travelled in the United States and Canada, where he represented the Society of Authors conducting successful negotiations and obtaining important international copyright concessions from the Dominion Parliament.
During the Great War Caine wrote many patriotic articles and edited King Albert's Book, the proceeds of which went to help Belgian refugees. In 1917, Caine was created an Officer of the Order of Leopold by King Albert I of Belgium. Caine cancelled many literary contracts in America to devote all his time and energy to the British war effort. On the recommendation of the Prime Minister Lloyd George for services as an Allied propagandist in the United States, King George V made him a Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1918 and a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1922. Aged 78 Caine died in his home at Greeba Castle on the Isle of Man.
Early life and influences
Early days
Thomas Henry Hall Caine was born on 14 May 1853 at 29 Bridgewater Street, Runcorn, Cheshire, England, the eldest of six children of John Caine and his wife Sarah Caine. Sarah was born in Whitehaven, Cumberland, and descended from an old Quaker family of Ralph Halls, china manufacturer. After living for many years in Cumberland the Hall family moved to Liverpool where Sarah, a seamstress, met and married John. As her husband was a member of the Anglican Church and not a Quaker she lost her connection with the Society of Friends. Throughout her life she retained the Quaker simplicity of life and dress. John Caine, a blacksmith, came from the Isle of Man. In the absence of work he emigrated to Liverpool, where he trained as a shipsmith. At the time of Caine's birth, he was working temporarily in Runcorn docks. Within a few months the family were back in Liverpool, where Caine spent his childhood and youth. They rented rooms at 14 Rhyl Street, Toxteth, convenient for Liverpool Docks and within a small Manx expat community. By 1858 they had moved to number 21. Early in 1862 they moved to 5 Brougham Street where Caine attended Windsor Street Wesleyan School, and in January 1865 the family moved round the corner to 2 Coburg Street.During his childhood Caine was occasionally sent to stay with his grandmother, Isabella, and uncle, William, a butcher-farmer, in their thatched cottage at Ballaugh on the Isle of Man. His grandmother nicknamed him 'Hommy-Beg', Manx for 'Little Tommy'. The island has a long history of folklore and superstition, passed from generation to generation. Continuing this tradition Grandmother Caine passed on her knowledge of local myths and legends to her grandson, telling him countless stories of fairies, witches, witch-doctors and the evil eye while they were sat by the fire.
When Caine was nine he lost two of his young sisters within a year. Five year old Sarah developed hydrocephaly after a fever. Fourteen month old Emma died in convulsions brought on by whooping cough she caught from him and his brother John. Caine was to be sent to the Isle of Man to recover from his illness and grief. He was put on a boat to Ramsey by his father, with a label pinned on his coat and assurances that his uncle would meet him. A fierce storm occurred preventing the ferry from reaching land. Caine was rescued by a large rowing boat. He later drew on this experience when writing the scene in The Bondman in which Stephen Orry is cast ashore there. Another sister, Lily Hall Caine, made it to adulthood and became a prominent stage actress. Lily died June 1, 1914.
The Caine family belonged to the Baptist Church in Myrtle Street, Liverpool, presided over by the charismatic Hugh Stowell Brown, a Manxman and brother of poet Thomas Edward Brown. Brown's public lectures and work among the poor made him a household name in Liverpool. Caine participated in the literary and debating society Brown had established. While Caine was very young he became well known and highly regarded by the people of south Liverpool. There he was in great demand as a speaker, having the ability to engage an audience from his first word. Through studying the works of the Lake School of Poets, and the best writers of the eighteenth century, Caine combined this knowledge with his own ideas of perfection, and went on to develop his level of eloquence to oratory.
From the age of ten Caine was educated at Hope Street Unitarian Higher Grade School in Caledonia Street, Liverpool, becoming head boy in his last year there. Prior to this he attended St. James's School and for several years afterwards continued his education attending evening classes at Queen's College, Liverpool Institute. He spent many hours on his own avidly reading books, notably at Liverpool's Free Library. Caine also experienced what he described as the 'scribbling itch' for writing. He produced essays, poems, novels and overview histories with little thought of them being published.
In common with all 19th century towns Liverpool was unsanitary. In 1832 there had been a cholera epidemic. As panic and fear of this new and misunderstood disease spread, eight major riots had broken out on the streets along with several smaller uprisings. In 1849 a second epidemic occurred. When Caine was thirteen the third outbreak of cholera occurred in July 1866. Memories of that time were to stay with him, the deaths, the large volume of funerals and prayer meetings in open spaces that were happening all around him.
Apprentice and schoolmaster
At fifteen, after leaving school, he was apprenticed to John Murray, an architect and surveyor in Lord Street, Liverpool. Murray was a distant relative of William Ewart Gladstone. On 10 December 1868, the day of the general election when Gladstone was to be elected as Prime Minister, Caine was running to offices in Union Court, belonging to Gladstone's brother, with telegrams announcing the results of the contests all over the country. Caine was breaking the news of great majorities before Gladstone had time to open his telegrams. Caine was to meet Gladstone on another occasion when he was on Gladstone's estate at Seaforth House. The surveyor-in-chief had not appeared one morning and a fifteen year old Caine took his place. Caine had left a lasting impression on Gladstone, as two years later Caine had a letter from Gladstone's brother saying the Prime Minister wished to appoint him steward of the Lancashire Gladstone estates. Caine declined the offer.Caine's maternal grandparents had lived with the rest of his family while they were growing up in Liverpool. His grandfather, Ralph Hall, died in January 1870, when Caine was seventeen. In the same year of his life Caine was reunited with William Tirebuck, a friend from his school days, when the business of their masters brought them together. United in their interest in literature, they made a juvenile attempt to establish a monthly manuscript magazine, assisted by Tirebuck's sister. Tirebuck was editor, printer, publisher and postman; Caine was principal author. One of the magazine's contributors inherited a small fortune which he invested. About ten thousand copies were printed, followed by a delayed issue no.2. After this venture Tirebuck returned to his position as junior clerk in a merchant's office.
Suffering from what he described as "the first hint of one of the nervous attacks which even then beset me", and later as "the first serious manifestation of the nervous attacks which have pursued me through my life", Caine quit his job with Murray and, arriving unannounced, went to live with his uncle and aunt, James and Catherine Teare in Maughold on the Isle of Man.
Teare was the local schoolmaster, and as Caine was to learn, ill with tuberculosis. Caine became his assistant teaching in the schoolhouse. Finding their accommodation in part of the schoolhouse was crowded Caine camped in a nearby tholtan, a half-ruined cottage. Using his stonemason skills, taught to him by his grandfather Hall, he restored and lived in the cottage. On the stone lintel above the door he carved the name Phoenix Cottage and the date 8 January 1871.
Encouraged by Teare, after he had written to reassure Caine's parents that he might one day be able to make a living as a writer, Caine wrote anonymous articles for a local newspaper on a wide range of religious and economic questions.
John Ruskin had started his Guild of St George and began expressing his ideas in his new monthly series, Fors Clavigera, written as a result of his feelings regarding the acute poverty and misery in Great Britain at the time. Rumours of undergraduates, following Ruskin's ideas, digging the ground outside Oxford, reached Caine. He was inspired by Ruskin to begin writing denunciations of the social system and of the accepted interpretation of the Christian faith. Caine was to become 'an eager pupil and admirer' of Ruskin. He later became a frequent visitor to Ruskin's Coniston home, Brantwood.
Following the death of James Teare in December 1871, Caine carved a headstone for the grave. After officially taking his place as schoolmaster, he also performed the extra unpaid services his uncle had provided, "such as the making of wills for farmers round about, the drafting of agreement and leases, the writing of messages to banks protesting against crushing interest, and occasionally the inditing of love letters for young farm hands to their girls in service on farms that were far away". Later he drew on this material to use in his writing.
In March 1872, he had a letter from Murray his master, the architect, which said "Why are you wasting your life over there? Come back to your proper work at once." Caine was on his way back to Liverpool within a week.