VI

In 1894 Hall Caine wrote a poem called The Demon Lover, in which he found material for a play. He made a scenario, which he told rather than read to Irving after supper in the Beefsteak Room on St. Valentine’s day of the next year, 1895. Irving was much impressed by it but thought that the part would of necessity be too young for him—he was then fifty-six. He asked Caine again to try the “Flying Dutchman.”

In the June of next year 1896 we were in Manchester in the course of a tour. Hall Caine came over from the Isle of Man to stay with me, bringing with him the scenario of a play on the “Flying Dutchman” and also the scenario of a new play which he had just completed, Home, Sweet Home. He read, or rather told, me the latter with the MS. open before him. He never, however, turned the pages. The next forenoon we went by previous arrangement to Irving’s rooms at the Queen’s Hotel. There he read—or told from his script—the scenario of his play on the “Flying Dutchman.” We discussed it then, and afterwards during a carriage drive. Irving asked Caine if he could not make the character of Vanderdecken more sympathetic and less brutal at the start. Caine having promised to go into this and see what he could do, then told the story of Home, Sweet Home. Irving feared from the description that the play would not do for him. In Act I. the character was too young; in Act II. too rough; and in Act III. too tall. For his objection in the last case he gave a reason, enlightening in the matter of stagecraft:

“There is no general sympathy on the stage for tall old men!”

Finally Caine told us the story of his coming novel, which was afterwards called The Christian. He knew it in his own mind by the tentative title which he used, “Glory and John Storm.”