“I should drive myself mad again in a week if I thought of such things.—I am doing botany and geology—and you, who are able for it, must fight with rogues and fools. I will be no more plagued by them.—Ever truly yours,
“I wrote first page on reading your printed report before reading your letter.
“MY DEAR SIR,—I am entirely hopeless of any good whatever against these devilish modern powers and passions—my words choke me if I try to speak.
“I know nothing of Liverpool—and what can I say there—but that it has first to look after its poor—and the churches will take care of themselves.
The second letter, dated 27th December 1879, reads:—
“MY DEAR SIR,—A bad fit of weariness,—not to say worse—kept me from fulfilling my promise. The paper you were good enough to send me is safe, but I fear left at Herne Hill—it can be got at if you require it.
“I am sincerely glad and grateful for all you tell me of your proposed work.—Most truly yours,
Ruskin, however, was not the only famous writer who had his eye on the young man working away in Liverpool. Already Matthew Arnold and Lord Houghton had made friendly and encouraging advances—the former writing him a long letter of praise concerning an essay of Caine’s which had come into his hands, and the latter asking Henry Bright (the H. A. B. of Hawthorne) to arrange an interview between himself and the rising young _littérateur_. These marks of distinct encouragement from eminent and well-loved men were a source of keen pleasure to Hall Caine; they not only gave him confidence in his own powers, amid many discouraging circumstances, but made him feel that his strenuous labour was not being done in vain.
In the year 1878 an event of the greatest importance to Hall Caine’s future life happened; he became acquainted with the poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Little did the eager young student of literature imagine, when he first heard the name of one of the most subtle and alluring poets of the last century, that his life would one day be joined with his. Rossetti was to exercise an influence on his future the full extent of which cannot even now be estimated. In his fascinating _Recollections of Rossetti_ Mr Caine tells, with a certain amount of detail, the story of his friendship with the poet. The story is a deeply interesting one, and in some respects without precedent in Literature. Their friendship was an honourable affair to both of them—more especially to the younger man, who not only gave up many months of his early youth when, maybe, he would have preferred to have been battling with a still unconquered world, but also sacrificed much of his peace of mind in his endeavour to make happy the last hours of Rossetti’s troubled life. On the other hand, what he lost in health of body and mind, he gained in intellectual stimulus; for Rossetti had a mind richly stored with poetic and artistic lore, and the strangely beautiful dreams and phantasmagoria that flitted through his brain undoubtedly did a great deal towards stirring up the imagination of the future novelist, and inciting him to further achievement. As I think of the poet and his enthusiast talking for many hours together in Chelsea; as I think of them afterwards in their loneliness in the Vale of St John; and as I ponder over those last tragic days together at Birchington, I see many examples of sacrifice on the part of Hall Caine, and many, many bitter hours when the poet, forced by what seemed almost a power outside himself, gave way to the accursed drug which killed him. A weak, febrile mind would have given way under the strain of constant companionship with Rossetti during the last months of his life; but Hall Caine had more than this to weigh down his vigorous young intellect. For several weeks he had the sole responsibility of the poet’s life on his shoulders, and it even became necessary for him to regulate the doses of chloral which was Life and Death to the diseased man with whom he lived; and many were the extremities to which he was put in order to hide the fatal drug from his friend. The story of their friendship, quite apart from its own intrinsic interest, is essential to any honest attempt to understand the development of the novelist’s mind.