The Bondman (novel)

Background

In his autobiography, Hall Caine claimed that he identified the key thematic base for the novel as early as 1883, when he first began to consider fiction writing. However, it was not be until many years later and after a number of other novels that he would take up the story. Caine claimed that the novel was based on the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau, although this has been questioned by his modern biographer as a later attempt to deflect the charge of questionable moral bases to his novels.

Caine was greatly interested in Iceland because of its connections to the Isle of Man through a shared Norse heritage and because of the Norse sagas which he admired greatly. Caine was particularly impressed by his friend William Morris’ four-volume translation from the Icelandic of the Saga of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Nibelungs, published in 1876.

Caine began work on The Bondman in March 1889, at Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent. He finished the novel in October of the same year at his new home of Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick.

The Book of Stephen Orry

An Icelandic fisherman, Stephen Orry, bears two sons, one to the governor's daughter in Reykjavík, another to the lowest of women on the Isle of Man. The Iceland-born son, Jason "the Red", is brought up in poverty and is left with his mother's dying wish for him to seek vengeance on his father who had brought them to that position. The Manx-born son, Michael "Sunlocks", is brought up by the Deputy Governor of the Isle of Man, alongside his daughter, Greeba, as Stephen could not support him or keep him from bad influences. When Michael is 19, Stephen returns and sends him to Iceland to make good his wrong to his wife there. As Michael sets sail from the Isle of Man, Jason arrives on a boat from Iceland. After surviving shipwreck in Ramsey bay, Jason is called upon to save Stephen Orry from his own boating accident off Maughold Head. However, Stephen dies of his injuries, but not before Jason comes to recognise him as his father and achieves a reconciliation.

The Book of Michael Sunlocks

Jason remains on the island and falls in love with Greeba. After four years without word from Michael, Greeba consents to marry Jason. However, when she then receives a letter from Michael, she goes to marry him in Iceland, where he has risen to become governor of the country newly independent of Danish rule.

Jason returns to Iceland, learns of Michael, his role in Greeba's departure and his being his half brother, and so resolves to kill him. However, Greeba learns of his plan and has him arrested. Upon learning this, Michael looks to make good his father's wrong and so sends to have Jason released.

Michael is then thrown into doubt by lies told to him in a vain attempt at blackmail by Greeba's avaricious brothers. Believing that Greeba loved Jason and had only come to him for his wealth and position, he resigns from his post in government. However, before this can come into effect, Danish soldiers storm the meeting, arrest the ministers and claim Iceland again as under Danish rule.

The Book of Red Jason

Michael Sunlocks is sent to work in the sulphur mines penal colony. Here he grows into friendship with Red Jason, as each is unaware of the identity of the other. Jason comes to increasingly protect Michael from cruel treatment by the Danish authorities, until he is forced to carry out an escape to save Michael from certain death through the dangerous work assigned to them. However, although Jason gains his freedom, Michael is again imprisoned, this time on Grimsey, a small island off the north coast of Iceland. Although officially still a 'bondman' (a "prisoner-slave"), Michael is now blind from the exertion of the work at the mines, and so he is left in the care of a priest. Greeba joins the household as a maid, but remains unknown to Michael by keeping silent when in his presence. This she does to demonstrate that she cares little for her position but is fully devoted to him, thus proving the inverse of Michael's suspicions.

After two and a half years, the Danish authorities grow nervous of Michael and so send to have him executed. Jason, however, who has returned to Iceland after some years away, hears of this plan and so races to Grimsey ahead of the Danish soldiers. Here he orchestrates Michael's escape with Greeba, by his stepping in as bondman in Michael's place. The next day Jason is shot by the Danish soldiers and he dies satisfied knowing that Michael is with Greeba safely sailing home to the Isle of Man.

Publishing

The book was serialised in the Isle of Man Times and other regional UK newspapers between June and November 1889. In August 1889 Caine visited Iceland for the first time. In this, his first trip abroad with his wife, he set sail from Leith on the SS Magnetic via Bergen and the Faroe Islands. On the first leg of the trip he and his wife were overcome by seasickness but an onboard doctor curiously prescribed them opium, which successfully cured them. They stayed for two weeks in Iceland, including a visit to the sitting at Þingvellir. During his trip, Caine kept notes on things to add local colour to the Icelandic section of the book. These he generally kept in a disorderly manner, mostly on old envelopes and the backs of letters.

As was usual for Caine, he sent the first proofs of the novel to a friend for comment, this time to Robert Leighton, who he had met for the first time earlier that year. When Leighton returned the proofs on 7 November 1889, he congratulated Caine on the novel, commenting that it was "for all classes of readers. It is so grand that the highest intellect will be elevated by it. It is so simple that our shepherd boy out here might read it and be thrilled by every line of it." However, he also suggested significant changes to the historical references of the novel, which were glaringly inaccurate at that stage and which Leighton thought exposed Caine to the charge of taking "improbable liberties with circumstance." Caine took the recommendations on board and made alterations to the text, as well as acknowledging in a preface some of the other compromises of history to fiction that he did not alter in the text.

Caine's previous three novels had been published by Chatto & Windus, but after the success of The Deemster Caine was determined to have a different form of contract to receive royalties and retain the copyright. He discussed the contract with Chatto & Windus throughout November 1889 but on 6 December Andrew Chatto amicably wrote to refuse the terms, stating that the sales of The Deemster, although great, did not justify the contract and the substantial advance that Caine was asking for. Caine then turned to Heinemann, which was seeking the novel to lead the launch of the new publishing company. Caine had been introduced to Wolcott Balestier, the business partner of William Heinemann, not long before by his friend, Bram Stoker. Because Heinemann were willing to outbid Chatto & Windus, and include Caine's retention of the copyright, Caine moved to Heinemann.

The novel was published in a three-volume edition at the end of January 1890. The single-volume edition appeared in October of the same year.

Reception

Upon the book's release, it was "an immediate and spectacular success, launching both the author and the new firm into orbit." It was translated into eleven languages and was continuously in print until the 1920s.

Interestingly, the novel proved to be such a happy success for Heinemann that they honoured it by choosing 'Sunlocks, London' as their telegraph address, in reference to one of the novel's main characters. This remained the address for the company until telegrams were superseded by faxes.

The novel also proved to be very well received by the press and leading public figures of the day. Gladstone, then the Prime Minister, responded to the copy of the novel that Heinemann had sent on Caine's request, saying that, “The Bondman is a work of which I recognise the freshness, vigour and sustained interest no less than its integrity of aim." Leo Tolstoy read the book "with deep interest." The Times reviewed the book saying that, "It is impossible to deny originality and rude power to this saga, impossible not to admire its forceful directness, and the colossal grandeur of its lead characters." Caine's biographer in 1901 wrote that the critics "proclaimed it as one of the masterpieces of the century", describing the book as:

“one of the most powerful novels ever written, great by reason of its strength of thought and directness of utterance. And yet, here and there in its pages, are passages of wonderful softness, tender pictures of the consolation of childhood — little Sunlocks, little Greeba, and the little child Michael. This is what we grow to look for in Hall Caine, the tenderness and the tragedy of humanity. They form the strength of his novels, and it is they that will make them live through the ages, based as they are on truths and passions that are old as the world is old.”

Although the Manx public would prove to be as doubtful of Caine’s depiction of their island as they were of The Deemster, the Manx National Poet, T. E. Brown, was sufficiently impressed by the novel to write a review of it for The Scots Observer. In a personal letter to Hall Caine in February 1890 he wrote of the book:

“I am reading it again with fresh interest and admiration. Nor is it otherwise than pleasant to me to find in your story some trail of what I must suppose is old inveterate Manxness. [...] your book floats forth to certain success, a magnificent craft, fit for deep waters and the large horizon. Good luck to her!”

The sensation of the book's success set in motion the media obsession with Caine and his work that would remain with him for the rest of his life. This included some amount of unauthorised, inaccurate or inauthentic pieces, such as the knowing publishing of images of Hall Caine's brother and son under the pretence that they were of Caine himself in his youth.

Today, however, the book has been out of print for decades, as has the rest of Caine's work. Against the backdrop of the rest of Caine's novels, his modern biographer has rated this novel as of questionable quality, saying that "The book is hopelessly sentimental and melodramatic and not his best work, despite its enormous success when published."

Adaptations

Following the success of his co-authored adaptation of The Deemster for the stage, under the title Ben-my-Chree, Caine set about adapting The Bondman into a play. However, his initial stage version of the story was intimidating for producers as it required a large cast and very difficult sets. Wilson Barrett had received permission to produce the play in 1890, but he could not raise the large funds that the production required. The first performance of this version of the play was given in a copyright performance in Bolton one afternoon in November 1892, without scenery and with the cast reading their lines.

The official premier of the later and final version of the play, entitled The Bondman Play, came on Friday 21 September 1906, in Drury Lane in a production by Arthur Collins. By this time, investment in the production was easier to arrange because many other plays by Caine had been successfully produced and an audience was effectively guaranteed for anything written by him. This version of the play had changed significantly from the story of novel, most notably through a shift of location from Iceland to Sicily and with an ending that avoided the death of Red Jason. The change of location was inspired by Caine's interest in Mount Etna, which he had explode in the final scene of the play. Caine visited Sicily in 1906 to be sure of the local flavour of the play.

The production caused a stir at its first performance, primarily because of its having real cows being milked on stage and specially trained sheep. A report in The New York Times paraphrases the reaction of the St James' Gazette: "the cow-milking business is a kind of shoddy realism that mocks at serious drama and belittles the players, the audience, and the poor defenceless cow."

The cast was led by Mrs Patrick Campbell in the role of Greeba, with other roles being taken by Henry Ainley, Henry Neville, Fred Grove and Lionel Brough. It was in this play that Hall Caine's son, Derwent Caine, made his stage debut. Although he was listed simply as "Mr Derwent" in the programme notes to avoid undue attention because of his father, the press eventually revealed his true identity, but by that time he had already left the cast to prepare for his role in another of Hall Caine's plays, The Christian.

The Bondman Play was poorly received by the critics, but it was highly successful with the public and it received a long West End run. Like the novel, the play was translated into a number of languages, including Japanese, by which it was produced in Japan in 1917.

There were two film versions of the story. The first was directed by Edgar Lewis in 1916 with William Farnum as Stephen Orry and Jason, and Dorothy Bernard as Greeba. The film is particularly notable because Max Steiner composed his first ever film score for the showing of the film in New York City. The second film version was released in 1929, directed by Herbert Wilcox and starring Norman Kerry as Jason and Donald Macardle as Michael.

Locations

Historical Background

Quotations

Trivia

“After The Bondman, I chanced on an old Manxman in Kirk Maughold, who told me that he had known the place all his life, and he remembered Adam Fairbrother and the six big lazy brothers, and the girl Greeba, and the mill at Port-e-Vullin (for it was “himself that felled it”), but he was “plagued mortal” to fix Jason, the Icelander, and he couldn’t meet with anyone in the parish who remembered anything about him.”