In 1889, he went with his wife to Iceland and spent two months there, for the purpose of studying certain scenes which he wished to introduce into "The Bondman," on which he was then working. Documentation is as much Hall Caine's care in his novels as it is Emile Zola's. "The Bondman," which had been begun in March, 1889, at Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent, a house of sinister memory--for Caine narrowly escaped being murdered there one night--was finished in October, at Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick, and was published by Heinemann in 1890, with a success which is far from being exhausted even to-day. In this year Hall Caine experienced a great disappointment. He had been commissioned by Sir Henry Irving to write a play on "Mahornet," and had written three acts of it, when such an outcry was made in the press against Irving's proposal to put "Mahomet" on the stage, to the certain offence of British Mohammedans, that Sir Henry telegraphed to him to say that the plan could not be carried out. He offered to compensate Hall Caine for his labor. "I refused, however, to accept one penny," says Caine, "and after relieving my feelings by spitting on my antagonists in an angry article in 'The Speaker,' I finished the play." It was accepted by Willard for production in America, but has not yet been played. "This was a great disappointment," says Caine, "and I had little heart for much work in 1890. I did nothing in that year beyond a hasty 'Life of Christ,' which has never been printed. I had read Renan's 'Life of Christ,' and had been deeply impressed by it, and I had said that there was a splendid chance for a 'Life of Christ' as vivid and as personal from the point of belief as Renan's was from the point of unbelief." This book he wrote, but was not satisfied with it, and has refused to publish it, although only last year a firm of publishers offered him three thousand pounds (fifteen thousand dollars) for the manuscript. "No, I was not satisfied, though I had brought to bear on it faculties which I had never used in my novels. It was human, it was most dramatic, but it fell far short of what I had hoped to do, and I put it away in my cupboard. I hope to rewrite it some day."