HALL CAINE ON HALL CAINING

M

R. HALL CAINE once took the trouble to explain that he put in three years of hard work on his novel, The Christian, rewriting it many times and submitting the several and various parts of the work to experts. One kind of expert he failed to consult a person having some knowledge of the English language. Amongst other insupportable characteristics the very first sentence in the book contains twelve prepositions and several clashing relatives and concludes with a sequence of four dactyls! The first sentence is as far as I have gone into the book, of which I know only that the manuscript was sold for a considerable fortune and that by many thousands of my fellow-creatures it is regarded as a distinctly immortaler work than the immortalest work of the week immediately preceding the date of its publication. Of Mr. Caine himself I know a little more: for example, that if he were cast away on an island

never before seen by a white man, in a few months every native would have a brand-new novel and Mr. Caine all the cowry-shells in the island.

Following a well-established precedent, he was good enough also to impart the secret of his success as a writer of "best-selling" books -novels, of course. The secret is genius That seems simple enough and easy enough, but I submit that it was known before. Every author of a popular novel has been entirely conscious of his genius and the reviewers have known it as well as he. Nevertheless, it is always pleasing to find a workman who not only does not quarrel with his tools, but exhibits them with pride and affection, for we know then that he is a good workman, or-which means much the same thing -gets a good price for his product. Mr. Caine gets as good a price as any and is therefore as fit as any to expound his methods to the curious.

For it should be said that Mr. Caine does not hold that genius-even such genius as his -will produce so great work as his without some assistance from industry; one must take the trouble to write or dictate the great thoughts that genius inspires. One can not

do this without some degree of application to the homely task. Indeed, Mr. Caine explains that he writes his novels twice before he permits us to read them once. One is glad to know that; it shows that, like the country editor, whose burning office attracted a large and intelligent class of spectators, he "strives to please." He took fourteen months to write The Eternal City. That was most commendable, for with him time is money, but his patient diligence was equaled by that of a man that I know, who took fourteen months to read it.

Not only does Mr. Caine work slowly and surely; he advises lesser mortals to do so. "Write only when in the humor," he says. This is good advice to any man, of whatever degree of genius, who is ambitious to turn out a "best seller," but better advice would be: Don't write at all. There are less fame in that, less profit and less taking of one's self seriously; but there must be a feeling of greater security regarding the next world; for the author of a "best seller" is so conspicuous a figure in this world that he may be very sure that God sees him.

"Some people," says Mr. Caine, meaning some persons, doubtless-he writes in Best

sellerese "say that they can work best when they hurry most, but it is not the case with me, and I feel that inspiration does not come to the hurried mind so readily as it does when one is able to ponder deeply and shape one's thoughts into some truly perfected form."

That is an impressive picture. One can almost see Mr. Caine, sitting at his table, head in hand, pondering profoundly on his inspiration and shaping his thoughts into that truly perfected form demanded by his exacting market. This really great man, with chestnuts in his lap, arointing the designing witch of spontaneity who would abstract them, is a spectacle that will linger long in his own memory. It is one of the most pleasing revelations of self that can be found in the literature of how to do it. Probably it will have the distinction of surviving all Mr. Caine's other work by as much as six months. If done into bronze by a competent sculptor it may outlast even Mr. Caine himself, delighting and instructing an entire generation of Indiana novelists, the best in the world. Of course it is "on the cards" that he who has given us this solemn picture of himself in the veritable act of literary parturition may "whack up" something even better.

He is not so very old, and in the years re

maining to him (may they be many and prosperous) he may produce something so incomparably popular that even the greatest of his previous work will be, in the luminous French of John Phoenix, "frappé parfaitment froid!" Indeed, Mr. Caine himself discerns that possibility very clearly. He says: "I do not believe I have yet produced my best work"-best selling work—“by any means." It is to be hoped that he has not: yet it is also to be regretted that he has had the cruelty to add a new terror to death by saying so. To one engaged in dying, the thought of what he may be missing by leaving this vale of tears before Mr. Caine has written his Eternalest City must generate the wrench and stress of an added pang. It would have been kinder to make that forecast to his publisher only. Even in articulo mortis (if he have the bad luck to die first) that gentleman's tantalizing vision of an unattainable earthly joy will come with enough of healing in its wings partly to salve the smart: coupled with the thought of what he will miss will come the consciousness of what he will not have to pay for it. 1905.