p:j }^!^}y^^sny_QFm^ Carolina BOOK CARD Please keep this card in book pocket V s? 1 1 1 in F r - ^^ z^ IL^^ h-^ c K u (1 ^ Cl i:- IU-° »~< k ^ —fc. ,_ 11 5 i..::^ li : ^ tjc: 1 1 - a: I ? Ql I il S en ::? THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA ENDOWED BY THE DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETIES o o UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 00045110262 \J: ^-^- >\.-'..A-a.A.'^^- This book is due at the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY on the last date stamped under "Date Due." If not on hold it may be renewed by bringing it to the library. DATE n^^T DUE ^^^ DATE DUE ^^^ '\Qi 6 ^ i^ 'tSf form No. 513 RUDYARD KIPLING Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/rudyardkiplingliOOhopk THE GREATEST SHORT-STORY WRITER OF THE DAY Rudyard Kipling and some of his most famous creations {From a paintiii^^ hy CyRUS Cuneo) RUDYARD KIPLING A LITERARY APPRECIATION /^/?'^S57 R. THURSTON HOPKINS LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL HAMILTON, KENT &" CO. LTD. Copyright First published 1 91 5 SiMPKiN, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd. PREFACE When a man has read once, or twice, or three times, through Rudyard Kipling's books, he will probably dip into them here and there at intervals. By so doing he gradually makes his own notebook on this author ; but it may be that he will yet find place for another man's " Kipling commonplace book," even if it has no preten- sion to completeness or authority. The following pages are intended to furnish a popular guide to the attitude and writings of Rudyard Kipling. My original purpose when the book was first discussed with my publisher was to have confined the pages to a brief outline of the author's works. But I had not been engaged long on the book before it dawned upon me that in speaking of any one of the author's books it is always necessary to say a good deal about the author as a man. When a man is recognized as our first story-teller and at the same time as a poet who has appealed to every kind of English- man, from the illiterate pioneer to those who represent the finest culture of our country, he becomes a heritage of the people, and we are entitled to gather together as much information about his life and ideas as may be possible. This task has not been easy, for Rudyard Kipling has written of all he has seen during his residence or travels in five continents. He has absorbed India. Man and beast, native and white, have been touched upon with his unmatched picturesque style. Count- less poems, criticisms, and articles dealing with his works have been published in every corner of the world, so I can hardly hope to have included anything like a PREFACE comprehensive list of them in this volume. Hovt^ever, for the convenience of students and searchers I have compiled a selection of criticisms and reviews of Kipling's works which have appeared during the last twenty years, also a list of portraits and drawings of the author which will be found at the end of this book. It will be long ere the final opinions on Kipling can be collected. Of late years he has started to restrict output, but the works he has given to the public show clearly he is not a man of yesterday or to-day alone — ^he is also a man of the days to be. Kipling is a second-rate genius, which is putting him about as high up as possible, for the reader must remember that there never has been a first-rate genius this side of the '' great divide." A first-rate genius is always a dead one. The man with the scythe is the only fellow who can grant the superior degree. Since 1886 he has been writing with an un- approachable power of intense visualisation of all he has seen : In extended observation of the ways and works of man From the Four Mile Radius roughly to the -plains oj Hindustan^ and, naturally, he cannot always write well ; but if the good things he has put forth were collected in one volume it would form a book twice the size of the good writings of Charles Lamb. But there is so much envy and mean- ness among the living, that Kipling will not be fairly rated until he has been dead fifty years, and I do not suppose that he is at all anxious to compete for his final degree just yet. Kipling does not pretend to be a saint ; he is perfectly natural, as any really sensible man must be, and his advice is : ^tand to your work and he wise — certain of sword and -pen. Who are neither children nor gods hut men in a world of men ! But you and I do not have to decide whether this man is right or wrong. Time, the old gipsy man, takes that vi PREFACE task out of our hands, and he has in the past cultivated a habit of reversing the judgment of the lower courts of contemporaneity. There has, perhaps, been something of a slackening of public interest in Rudyard Kipling's w^ork in the past few years. But it has been declared that the sons of the literary fops who have been turning their sweet fawn-like eyes towards the works of Oscar Wilde and Ernest Dowson will be rediscovering him in twenty years' time. However, the production of the " Service Edition " of his works by Messrs. Mac- millan and Co. Ltd. and Messrs. Methuen and Co. Ltd. has met with so ready an appreciation, that it augurs well for a revival of his fame. I believe, in fact, that the renewed interest in Kipling is even now well on its way. The author has deserved well of his country — firstly for those strong true tales which have made India a real place to dwellers in our " tight, little island." This was in itself an imperial conquest. Marion Crawford and other novelists had told us that there was such a land as India. Mr. Anstey humorously explained the workings of the Hindoo mind, and Phil Robinson gave us a book of Eastern beasts and birds, but it was Kipling who took the soil of India and moulded it into a thousand gleaming sentences ; he was the first to give the stay-at-home a picture of the real India. I must especially thank those people — many absolute strangers — ^who have taken such interest in this book and so courteously written, mentioning numerous points and offering suggestions. It is with pleasure that I acknow- ledge my indebtedness to Mr. Wilfrid Ward, the author of " Poets on the Isis," for permitting me to quote " Stalky's School Song." Sir Owen Seaman has kindly revised " A Verdict Against the Evidence," which he wrote for the Londoner in 1900, and given me leave to print it here. I also desire to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. W. Monro Anderson and Mr. William Heinemann for allowing me to quote from " Rhymes of a Rouseabout." vii PREFACE The portraits and drawings of Rudyard Kipling reproduced in this book are hy E. T. Reed, B. Irvine Bately, Hon. John ColHer, and Cvrus Cuneo. I must tender my thanks to the editor of the Illustrated London News for permitting me to use the drawing by Mr. Cuneo, of which he holds the copyright. I am indebted for numerous facts and data to the back issues of T.P.V Weekly, especially the arresting articles on Rudyard Kipling by Mr. Holbrook Jackson. A notice on a performance of The Light that Failed, at San Francisco, which appeared in the Argonaut (January 9, 1915) is here reprinted with the consent of the writer, Josephine Hart Phelps. Mr. T. E. Elwell, of West Derby, liverpool, has generously allowed me to use his unique collection of Kiplingiana, which has yielded additional information. Much information, which is almost entirely the result of original research, is contained in an article by Adrian Margaux in the Captain (April 1907), and to this I am indebted for the outline of my chapter dealing with Kipling's schooldays. Mr. Francis Stopford, editor of Land and Water, has generously given permission for the reproduction of his exceedingly interesting remarks on Rudyard Kipling as a Seer and a Dreamer. To the kindness of the editor of the Bookman is due the article on " Mr. Kipling's Schoolmasters and Schoolboys," by T. E. Page, Master at Charterhouse. I am also indebted to Mr. Ernest Newman for liberty to draw upon his paper on Kipling's stories which appeared in the Free Review, December 1893. R. THURSTON HOPKINS. November 191 5. vni CONTENTS CHAPTER I BIOGRAPHICAL PAGE John Lockwood Kipling : Kipling, Champion diver : Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire : Kipling's editor at Lahore : Robert Barr, Kipling, and the Idler : A cover design for the Idler : Bloemfontein and the Friend 17 CHAPTER II KIPLING AT SCHOOL The United Services' College Magazine : Kipling's School poems : The author's first Empire verses : Kipling and the college Literary Society: His opinions on the use of alcohol : Tennyson's " Defence of Lucknow " : Bret Harte's *' Concepcion de Arguello " Kipling's short-sightedness a handicap in athletic competitions Not a favourite v^rith other boys : A visit to the old school *' Hints on Schoolboy Etiquette," by Kipling 27 CHAPTER III PERSONALITY The Vicomte d'Humieres : An American critic on Kipling : Kipling's natural love of Biblical language : The Bible and " Recessional " : A Pall Mall Gazette burlesque : " The Ballad of the King's Jest " 37 CHAPTER IV SOME ANECDOTES A perverse view of Kipling : " When the Rudyards cease from Kip- ling " : S. S. McClure : Kipling's idea of the mark of genius : McClure and " Kim " : J. M. Barrie's story of Kipling : Kipling IX CONTENTS and a Suffragist : The Sydney Bookfellow and a tiger yarn : Impressions of Kipling in Paine's Biography of Mark Twain : Twain's pun : First meeting between Twain and Kipling : A letter from Twain : Mark Twain and the Boers : Kipling's " Bell Buoy " praised by Twain : The Ascot Cup : Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain in robes of scarlet at Oxford : Practical joke by Kipling : Kipling and American publisher : Zangwill and the Pall Mall Magazine ; Autograph hunters : The vanishing cheques : Brander Matthews in American Outlook : The Liver-pool Echo : A disappointed admirer : A Rottingdean landlord and a Kipling autograph letter : " Dingley, the Famous Writer " : An excellent skit on Rudyard Kipling 45 CHAPTER V *' THE BRUSHWOOD BOY " AND " THEY » Easy and contemptuous style : "The Cruise of the Cachalot" American Bookman : Outline of " The Brushwood Boy " " They " : Letters on " They " : " The Disturber of Traffic ' Kipling's representation of mental moods : Moonshine in " At the End of the Passage " : " The Finest Story in the World " : Kipling a fallen idol : The Bellman of Minneapolis takes Kipling to task : Americans refuse to forgive Kipling for not dying in New York 6i CHAPTER VI " FROM SEA TO SEA " The struggles of genius in quest of bread and cheese : The morbid side of Kipling : Chicago and its " vermilion hall " : The Review of the Week and " From Sea to Sea " : Holbrook Jackson on Kipling : The shirker and the loafer : Kipling's desire to preach : " The Benefactors " in the National Review 79 CHAPTER VII " KIM " A brief outline of " Kim " : Sir Edwin Arnold's interpretation of the fifth book of the " Bhagavad-Gita " : Kim's prototype : Sir Francis Younghusband on the Tibetans : The ways of the Indian Secret Service 91 CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII THE CHARGE OF BRUTALITY PAGE The charge of brutality : A selection of letters from I.P.'s Weekly : The Light that Failed, : A strange plea for the tragic ending : Maisie and Bessie : Physical suffering in literature : " The Vam- pire " : A reply by Felicia Blake : T. W. H. Crosland's parody 109 CHAPTER IX OMAR KHAYYAM AND KIPLING Paul Elmer More and his " Shelburne Essays " : Omar and Kipling : Kipling formulates a portable wisdom for the Anglo-Saxon people : The dominant chord of the English race : Experience teaches : Verses from the Bulletin : Omar Khayyam Club : Colonel John Hay : William Archer and New York mechanic 121 CHAPTER X TALES OF HORROR AND TERROR The occult world : " The House Surgeon " : An outline of the story : " The Return of Imray " : " Bertram and Bimi " : " The Mark of the Beast" 131 CHAPTER XI KIPLING'S SPEECHES Kipling as a platform lecturer : Kipling dinner at the Grand Hotel given by Anglo-African Writers' Club : Frankfort Moore : Royal Academy Banquet, 1906 : Banquet of the Royal Literary Fund, 1908 : Address on doctors : Kipling on airmen : Brighton Mayoral banquet : The principle of hereditary government defended : Lecture before the Royal Geographical Society : Douglas Newton's " War " : National Service League caravan at Bur- wash : Speech at Mansion House on recruiting bands : " Depart- mental Ditties " written to music : " The Lincolnshire Poacher " : Sir Henry Newbolt's poem " The Toy Band " : Israel Zangwill : Sir F. Bridge recalls exploit of the Royal Irish : The incident upon which " The Toy Band " was founded : Kipling's address xi CONTENTS PACE at the McGill University : Kipling refuses payment for the " Recessional " : " Some Aspects of Travel" : Love of energy : " Boots " : Pressure-lines : The Times' s editorial article on aspects of travel : Smells in their relation to the traveller : The qualities of a leader of men 143 CHAPTER XII THE ROMANCE OF SEA LIFE Anglo-Saxon people and their love of the sea : The fascination of ships : Ruskin's " Harbours of England " : The romance of modern sea life : Swinburne : Kipling as a chantey-man : Lord Arnaldos and the phantom sailor : A literary dispute the inspiration of " The Rhyme of the Three Captains " : Hardy, Besant, and Black : Paul Jones : Sir Walter Besant and Robert Buchanan : A controversy in the Contemforary Review : Kipling's militarism 161 CHAPTER XIII THE LIGHT THAT FAILED The Light that Failed : A happy or sad ending ? : A notice of the play from the Argonaut 173 CHAPTER XIV ANIMAL STORIES Kipling's animal stories : Cats : J. Lockwood Kipling on cats : " How the Leopard got his Spots " : Alexandre Dumas pere and his pet : Jerome K. Jerome : The Spectator on " Pussy cat " : " The Crab that played with the Sea " : Wolf-reared children : Wolf boy at Mission House of Agra : " Old Man Kangaroo " : Curious facts about the kangaroo : Kipling's imitators : The Review oj the Week and Dr. Doyle's animal stories : " An Affront to Ganesha " : The origin of Ganesha : Kipling's symbol of good luck 181 CHAPTER XV POETRY Kipling an expander of our language : " The Seven Seas " and a verse from " Omar " : A yearning for wonderful words : A song of the guns : " The Academy " quoted : George Moore's remarks on xii b CONTENTS PAGE Kipling : Pierre Loti : The Puritan strain in Kipling : The strenuous life as a cure-all : Carlyle re-vitalized : A " Banjo Bard " : " The Anchor Song " : Dana's " Sailing Manual " : A sea chantey : " The Ballad of the Clampherdown " : The song of the exiles : " The Gipsy Trail " : " The White Man's Burden " : A reply by Mr. George Lynch : " Departmental Ditties " : " Mary, Pity Women ! " : A corrective note on the poem : The liar's defence : Veiled arrogance in "Recessional" : " Pagett, M.P." : " An Unqualified Pilot " 201 CHAPTER XVI SUSSEX A gift of literary humanity : Imitation " style " : " The Conversion of St. Wilfrid " : Pen pictures of the Downs : Kipling's house near Burwash : The " gentlemen " : A worthy Sussex parson : The bell-ringers of Burwash : G. K. Chesterton's taunt against Kipling : Kipling an infatuated admirer of rural England : An habitation enforced 229 CHAPTER XVII " STALKY AND CO." " Stalky and Co." : The literature of school life : Books which in- fluenced Kipling as a boy : Kipling's old master, Cormell Price : The Review of the Week on " Stalky " 241 CHAPTER XVIII SOLDIER POEMS The hot-bed of slang : The irony and gaiety of the British soldier : The making of a soul : Henley and the sword : " The Five Nations " : The Westminster Gazette and Kipling's poetry : Poems of the South African War : " The New Army in Train- ing " : Our Saxon ancestors compared with the British soldier of our own times 249 CHAPTER XIX KIPLING'S CULTURED DELIGHT IN ODOUR The soul of Sussex : The spirit of reverence and wonder : George Borrow : The spirit of the English country-side : Kipling and the sense of smell : Kipling's passion for dogs : " Garm — a Hostage " 267 xiii CONTENTS CHAPTER XX THE CULT OF " MANDALAY " PAGE A noticeable difference between the soldiers of " Barrack Room Ballads " and those of " The Five Nations " : " Mandalay " : The legion of lost ones : The virtue and harm of strong drink : John Collins and Dean Aldrich sing in praise of good wine : A parody of " Mandalay " : Lord Brassey's " Voyages and Travels " : " Hathis a pilin' teak " : Literature and music-hall clap-trap : " Tipperary " : Lafcadio Hearn's craving for the East not far removed from the soldier's longings in " Mandalay " 283 APPENDICES: L List of Portraits and Cartoons of the Author 299 n. Magazine Articles dealing with Rudyard Kipling and HIS Work 304 111. Burlesques, Parodies, and Extracts from various Con- temporary Sources 316 INDEX 351 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS RuDYARD Kipling From a 'painting by Cyrus Cuneo Britannia a la Beardsley From a drawing by E. T . Reed Ready-made coats (of Arms) Ajter E. T. Reed Kipling's House at Rottingdean RuDYARD Kipling From a painting by The Hon. John Collier RuDYARD Kipling From a drawing by B. Irvine Bately " Batemans," Rudyard Kipling's House at Burwash From an original etching by W . Monk Rudyard Kipling recites The Chantey oj the Nations Seeking a Poet Laureate Ajter Hy. Mayer Frontisfiece Facing page 6 45 58 69 173 234 322 324 INTRODUCTION Towards the end of the eighties, Macmillan^s Magazine printed a series of short stories, which were signed by a new and somewhat uncommon name, now familiar wherever the English tongue is spoken. The first of these was a story with a Rabelaisian tang, entitled " The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney." We have all read the side-splitting pranks of Mulvaney, who stole a palanquin into which he was afterwards bundled while he was in his cups, and carried to Benares with the Queens of India to take part in a great festival. This story and the famous ballad of " East and West " appeared in the same number, and it was obvious to many people that '' Yussuf " (the signature over which the poem appeared) and Rudyard Kipling, the writer of the adventures of Mulvaney, were one and the same. The second tale was " The Head of the District," and then people began to talk. The critics cried the new writer's merits or faults from the housetops, the demands for back numbers of Macmillan^s Magazine grew louder and more insistent at the bookshops, and within a few months, all literary London was buying up little paper- covered books from the London agents of Rudyard Kipling's Indian publishers. These were what came to be known as the Allahabad Books, or, more correctly, the Indian Railway Library Series, which were printed by A. H. Wheeler & Co. of Allahabad in 1888. For a year or so after this, Rudyard Kipling carried the English public by storm and became the most powerful factor in English literature. His vitality, welling up in 3 RUDYARD KIPLING an unbroken stream throughout a period of thirty years or so, has passed over into twenty-five volumes of verse and prose, each of which is stamped with the hall-mark of genius. At all events, Kipling has to-day a distinction all his own, a chimney corner all to himself, by virtue of his possessing that personal charm of lettered bonhomie^ which, when he burst in upon the public, seemed lost to literature, as it was at that time practised. Kipling walked brusquely into the smug presence of respect- ability, and deftly pulled a handful of straw out of the dummy ; but of course that did not constitute his greatness. It was a world largely composed of would-be literary dandies, and superior persons, into which the young writer entered. Everywhere he found the imitation " style," the pose point of view, the smart, cynical, sophisticated attitude. Besides these literary fops with sweet fawn-like eyes, there were, to be sure, a few men of sterling worth, but they were not voicing any original ideas. That brilliant failure, Oscar Wilde, echoed Flanbert and Huysmans. Dowson stumbled into the tracks of Baudelaire. W. B. Yeats lived in a fairyland of his own, and distilled the pure essence of Celtic folklore. The really great men could have been counted up very quickly: sucli names as Meredith, Morris, Stevenson, Swinburne, Tennyson, Hardy, spring instantly to mind. But the whole trouble with art and literature at this time was that they were anaemic. They were deficient in red-blood corpuscles. This was true of literature ; it was true of music, painting, sculpture, the drama — all the arts. The whole trend of the period was artificial. But few will deny that the period has added some im- portant milestones to the great road of English art and letters. It produced " The Sphinx," " Salome," and "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," with the wonderful lines : 4 INTRODUCTION Tet each man kills the thing he loves. By each let this be heard, Some do it with a hitter look. Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss. The brave man with a sword ! It produced the flawless little poem " The Land of the Heart's Desire," by Yeats, " A Masque of Dead Florentines," by Maurice Hewlett, the poems of Lionel Johnson, the lyrics of Arthur Symons, and Sir Richard Burton's magnificent version of The Kasidah, which stands alone, " a giant monolith upreared beneath the hoary stars upon the eternal Plain of Ages." Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause ; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws. All other Life is living Death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell, A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel-bell. On the other hand, it also produced as one of its most typical artists Aubrey Beardsley, whose designs and so-called illustrations to " Salome " were soaked in sin and unbridled suggestiveness. It was this kind of " art " that first prepared a way for Kipling. The thinking man could UDt persuade himself that all was well with an age that had such a petty and pallid taste in art and letters. Readers may remember that, during the time the Yellow Book was attracting much attention with Beards- ley's sinful women, and fat leering rakes, that breezy and cheerful old weekly. Punchy was actively engaged in making game of the posturing of the ^Esthetes. We have all felt the charm of Walter Pater and Wilde, and we have all recognized the masterful touch of Beardsley, but when Rudyard Kipling replaced their pallid world of garish limelight with the good honests unlight, it was quite a welcome change. There were moments in S RUDYARD KIPLING the reign of the ^Esthetes, when it seemed as though the old genial English humour was a thing of the past. But all the time the editor and staff of Punch struggled bravely against the swift tide of the New Voluptuousness. It is to the credit of this journal, that its general tone remained unaltered during the period when research among the refuse of the French Decadents was such a popular vogue. Punch proved that in things dull and nasty there is often much laughter, or, at least, a smile. The comic aspect of the Tellow Book craze is revealed in the drawing, " Britannia a la Beardsley," which appeared in PuncFs Almanack for 1895. But the zenith of the deadly and morbid in literature was reached when Oscar Wilde published his famous story, " The Picture of Dorian Gray." * This book left the reader with such an uncomfortable impression, that he was compelled to ask whether the book stood within the pale of reasonable subject-matter in literature. There was a vein of freakishness running through the story, which rendered it displeasing to the healthy mind. There was a dwelling on every form of luxury, indulgence, and abnormal sin, which seemed extremely nauseous. The author insisted so much on the morbid and the bizarre in this child of his brain, that he totally neglected the finer spirit. *' The Picture of Dorian Gray " first appeared on June 20, 1890, in Lipplncotfs Monthly Magazine, and its publication created a great sensation. A few months afterwards Lippincott's offered a very different fare to its readers. In January 1891 they published the famous " Light that Failed " number of their magazine. Thus Kipling, sword in hand, entered the tired and degenerate literary world ; resolved on forcibly crushing his pallid and anaemic brothers with their petty toys and grimacing symbols, out of which all true life had faded. Kipling was violent, English of the English, and full of the old unruly fires of our Saxon ancestors ; he was the sworn * Published by Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Ltd. Price is. net. 6 BRITANNIA A LA BEARDSLEY (By our ' ' Yellow " Decadent) Reproduced by special permission of the proprietors of"' Punch " From Drawing by E. T. Reed INTRODUCTION enemy of the sentimental. So little in evidence is the sentimental in ^' The Light that Failed " that some of the critics pronounced the story as " brutal." Certainly it would be difficult to find such a unique collection of disagreeable people in one book. The woman who looks after Dick and Maisie in the opening chapters is a shrew, Maisie is a dull and selfish girl, and Dick Heldar often allows his vehemence to degenerate into violence. Even Maisie remarked with a shudder, that Heldar's work seemed to " smell of tobacco and blood." But the point we are concerned with here is Kipling's entry into the literary world, so we must revert to the charge of brutality presently. Above all, Kipling wrote with an almost physical exuberance of strength about the big things of life. His graphic power enabled us to realize the life led by real men, from a book. His pages were filled with the language used by soldiers. New England fishermen, men of the navy, gentlemen rovers, Canadian troopers, Australians, and all the members of that vast *' legion " that never was " listed." The picturesque oaths of Tommy Atkins starred his early poetry, and they looked very alluring in the cold and matter-of-fact printed page. Such matter caught the eye of the men of the workshop and factory, and it was not unpleasing to the ears of these men to be told that they were the Chosen people of the Lord. It was a new thing to hear a poet hymning a cab-driver, or an illiterate pioneer. Thus Kipling marks in a measure, the beginning of a new era, since his success in introducing the private soldier, with his simple philosophy and complex personality, did much to broaden the popular taste, and made people bolder, and more independent in their literary likes and dislikes. The age needed such a man. So sweeping was Kipling's triumph, that even among those people who professed nothing but contempt for everything but the most abstruse in verse, it was permitted to 7 RUDYARD KIPLING fearlessly extol the ringing doggerel of the Bard of Empire. Kipling possesses the Rabelaisian spirit, and this has also helped to give him his vogue. In every age when art has a strong accent, when it displays vigour, inventive power, originality, you can trace part of it back to the Rabelaisian spirit. The world has always been ready to welcome the strong man. It will even welcome a poor poet of the barrack-room or lower-deck, if he has a lusty air, or to use a gruff Saxon phrase, if he has '' guts." The only real aristocracy is the aristocracy of character. Kipling possessed a lusty air, a cocksureness, and certain traces of brutality — the echo of the Berserker rage, in fact — which with his genius quickly gathered about him a world-wide public. And here one must refer to a dominant figure in the world of literature who encouraged and inspired Kipling. This was William Ernest Henley, editor of the Scots Observer, which afterwards became the National Observer, and migrated to London. Henley has deserved well of his country — firstly by his poems, and secondly because he was broad-minded enough to be able to appreciate work so widely separate as that offered by Meredith, Hardy, and Kipling. To glance down a list of those whom he welcomed to the pages of his paper, is almost to reckon up a group of the most famous writers of his time. Stevenson printed his fine and fiery outburst in defence of Father Damien in these columns. When Harfer'^s objected to a certain part of " Tess of the D'Urbervilles," it appeared in the National Observer. This was the scene in which Tess and Alec ride together at night. When Kipling, failing to find an appreciative editor for his soldier poems, sent Henley " Danny Deever," some verses descriptive of the degradation and hanging of a British Tommy, he received word back that the 8 INTRODUCTION editor would take as much of '' that sort of stuff " as he could get. I think I am not far out in saying that few papers at that time would have looked twice at the '' Barrack Room Ballads." However, they all appeared in Henley's paper, also '' The Flag of England," that fine piece of invective, " Cleared," on the finding of the Parnell Commission ; also a singular poem, " The Blind Bug," which Kipling later touched up and used as memorial verses in the honour of Mr. Wolcott Balestier. Henley distributed eulogy or abuse liberally, and from the first he laughed at and attacked in turn the strained and fantastic work of Wilde and the Esthetes. He wrote a scathing editorial review on " The Ballad of Reading Gaol," in the Outlook, on March 5, 1898, which I think was his last attack on Wilde. This attack was perhaps rather petty ; it seemed too much like hitting a man when he was down. Writing to Leonard Smithers, regarding this review, Wilde said : " I don't think I should answer Henley. I think it would be quite vulgar. What does it matter ? He made his scrofula into vers libres, and is furious because I have made a sonnet out of ' skilly.' He is simply jealous." This sorrowful effort at humour strikes a note distinctly different from the delightful and witty humour of " The Importance of Being Earnest." Towards the end of his career Wilde saw that the aesthetic movement was as cold and dead as those black granite sphinxes at the Louvre, which had cast spells over him in his youth. He knew that the public would not tolerate another " Dorian Gray," and we may well assume that in his last poem he was greatly influenced by the style of Kipling. " The Ballad of Reading Gaol " is an entirely different piece of work from any he had produced previously. The whole spirit of this ballad lies in its crude realism, and Kiplingesque robustness. The bookworm, on reading Kipling's letters to the Pioneer on Japan (afterwards published in " From Sea to 9 RUDYARD KIPLING Sea "), will note the influence of Lafcadio Hearn. Yet in spite of small borrowings here and there, how inviolate Kipling keeps his own characteristics and power ! Another influence on his prose, and one for which we have his own word, is that of his literary brother, Loti. It must have been rather the stimulus of contrast than that of similarity that he found here. Kipling's literary judgments are as capricious and biased as his political views. A mental gipsy, he has tarried in many and various camping grounds. But he has never tarried over long, and when the fancy has prompted him he has moved on never to return again. Browning, Swinburne, Hearn, Rossetti, Lindsay Gordon, and many older writers abode with him for a season. Then there is the greatest influence of all — the Bible ; but plagiarism in that quarter is a virtue. On the whole it must be admitted that Kipling has moved more people throughout the Empire than any other living poet. I think he is more himself in verse than in prose ; his touch seems surer, and his style is at its best and has greater individuality and dignity. When you have cast aside from his verse all jingoism and thin thoughts — and it is difficult to do this, for all his ideas are clothed in gorgeous language — a vivid sense of power and rare imaginative qualities remain. We expect people to disagree over his extreme Tory views, but leaving all political opinion out of the question, most people will be ready to admit that Rudyard Kipling can write poetry when he likes. Of course arguments as to whether certain lines are true poetry or not, generally end in a literary brawl. Wordsworth could find no higher praise for a Keats poem than to call it " a pretty piece of barbarism." And all poets from Homer to Horace, from Catullus to Omar, from Shakespeare to Byron, from Burns to Poe, have been equally complimentary about each other. Poe's verse was challenged, and his creden- tials were grudgingly inspected by those who represented 10 INTRODUCTION the finest culture of his own country. Everything new is regarded with suspicion and dislike by the public, and often by the leading critics as well. Wordsworth and Coleridge were derided. Shelley, believed in by Byron and Peacock, was regarded as a pariah of literature. Keats staggered and reeled under the whips of the Scotch reviewers, but he made his answer. That answer is '' St Agnes' Eve." Rossetti and Morris were attacked from all sides. Such are the caprices of fate in the lives of many of the '' accursed race of poets ! " Kipling, however, from the first enjoyed an Empire- wide recognition, which flowed in with such force that it swept before it all the barriers of hostile criticism. The critic who had climbed to the housetop to heap coals of fire on the '' Indian Drummer's " head, found himself without an audience, and had to gracefully slide down the waterspout. It was whispered about the market-place that Kipling was receiving large sums of money for his verse. That a poet should expect to make a living by writing poetry was a comic notion. People refused to believe that such a miracle could be performed in these matter-of-fact times. It had been looked upon as a dreadful trade — like looking for English gold in London gutters. That the people know exactly what they want, and that they do not want verse (save in exceptional cases), is one of the everyday texts of the publishing world. In fact, Mr. T. W. H. Crosland's famous parody of Kipling's " Tommy " sums up with delightful humour the attitude of the publisher to the poet : / went into a publisher's as woeful as a hearse. The publisher he ups and says, " fVhy will you chaps write verse P " The girl behind the Remington she tittered fit to die. I outs into the street again and to myself says I : " O ifs verses this, and verses that, and writing 'em is wrong ; But it's ' special type and vellum ' when you hit on something strong, II RUDYARD KIPLING Tou hit on something strongs my hoys, you hit on something strong, O it's ' signed large paper copies,'' when you hit on something strong. " We ain't no ^eavenly Miltons, nor we ain!t no idiots too. But plodding men with Jam' lies, and a pile to make, like you ; And all the time you see us down-at-heel and looking weak. We're a-casting oj our bread iipon the waters, so to speak : " For it's verses this, and verses that, and things run pretty rough. But there's Albert Gate in verses if you only write the stuff, If you only write the stuff, my boys, if you only write the stuff, O it's yachts and rows of houses if you only write the stuff." Yes, certainly Kipling had " hit on something strong," and his rise to the heights of popularity was as sudden as that of Byron. The " boom " which followed can only be compared in its area, length of duration, and significance to that of a famous forerunner, Charles Dickens. It cannot be denied that Kipling wrought a change in the literary spirit of the age. In one of his later novels, " The Whirlpool," the late George Gissing said of the new school : It's the voice of the reaction. Millions of men, natural men, revolting against the softness and sweetness of civilization — men all over the world, hardly knowing what they want, and what they don't want. But Gissing was wrong when he remarked that they did not know what they wanted — they knew, but it was something with which this writer had little sympathy. The revolt against the aesthetic movement was not a revolt against " the softness and sweetness of civiliza- tion." It was a blow at the sickly fancies of those artists and writers who drank absinthe in the Cheshire Cheese, and strove to shock a sturdy public with the Tellow Book and ^he Savoy, They revolted less against the mild and gentle life than against the unwholesome and effeminate life. The sound ideas underlying the revolt 12 INTRODUCTION are set out by Rudyard Kipling in " The Light that Failed," and wrought into the fabric of his great romance " Kim " — which is a story, realistic in form and yet romantic in spirit. There are brief and exquisite prose sketches in " Kim " which remind the reader, strangely enough, of Oscar Wilde. A healthier Wilde, with a broader vision and an outlook more clearly English, might have written a great Indian romance like " Kim." But reserve is necessary to great artistic expression, and this Wilde lacked. It is reserve that wins, not bombast ; for soul is greater than sound. That is why the spiritual quietude of " Kim " will outlive the brazen " go " and lively colour of the greater part of Kipling's work. Many of his tales are too snappish, too knowing, and too violent to afford any lasting pleasure to the human soul. The victories of violence are transient. Kipling is certainly one of the least monotonous of writers. He is ever experimenting in new styles and subjects ; and, in addition to winning a high place in the literature of the half-exotic Indian romance, he has obtained an incontestable pre-eminence as a short story- teller and expert in modern life on land and sea. As I have noted before, a similar subtlety of method and a certain delicacy of touch, not wholly unlike the poetic style of Lafcadio Hearn, mark his best work. In other respects he recalls Pierre Loti to our minds. Both Kipling and Lafcadio Hearn are keen observers, distinguished from the minor novelists of the same group by the abundance and vividness of picturesque detail with which they describe strange people and lands. But how different are the characters in Hearn's tales when compared to those of Kipling ! The two v^iters exhibit equal imaginative power in revealing the glamour of the East in its opposite aspects. Kipling employs realistic means in poetic effects when describing the pageantry of Oriental life. But Hearn uses rhythmic phrases and ornate diction even in dramatic situations, 13 RUDYARD KIPLING and he discovers many of the spiritual forces of Eastern life which Kipling has missed. For Hearn, art was the soul of all things ; in fact he was suffering from a certain mental hysteria which craved perfection in art. We are told that he devoted all his days and years to the pursuit of the beautiful, and he quoted Kipling to accentuate this point : One minute'* s work to thee denied Stands all Eternit'fs ofence — According to Hearn nothing was less important than worldly success, to work for pelf was nefarious, and Fame was a will-o'-the-wisp that led one on to ruin and corruption. He accepted as a fact that when a man owns more money than he can use, it owns him. Kipling and Hearn, however, did not exhaust the fairyland of Oriental mysticism, and the field has been again opened up by two other writers with more intimate and varied knowledge of India. The first is F. W. Bain, professor of political economy at Poona, who has intro- duced us to the Sancho Panza of the Hindoo drama in " A Digit of the Moon," and the other is Rabindranath Tagore, the famous Indian poet. There must be in truth some influence of enchantment in the atmosphere of India. How else can one explain how Mr. Bain has been carried away from the cheerless land of cold science to the abode of the fairy. So I say to Mr. Bain, in the phrase of one of the kings of literature, '' What are you doing in that galley ? " Your place is not with those gloomy people who fret and fume over the laws of mere pelf. It was not from them you drew the inspiration that enabled you to write the Indian version of " As You Like It " — that charming and dramatic romance " A Heifer of the Dawn." Yes, I repeat with Moliere, " What are you doing in that galley ? " Readers of Tagore will recognize in his poems the influence of Kabir, the poet and mystic of the fifteenth H INTRODUCTION century, who is mentioned in some beautiful verses — " The Song of Kabir "—in " The Second Jungle Book." But Tagore is not an imitator, for he has made a new trackway in the fields of Indian literature ; however, as Kabir was the disciple of Ramananda, so is Tagore the disciple of Kabir. Both see the world through God, both see God through the world ; both believe that their God is the hot Indian air in their nostrils, and the good earth underfoot. Every idea that Tagore has expressed, is an ardent plea to his people to return to *' the mystical religion of love " which makes its appear- ance in all races of mankind at certain periods of spiritual discipline. It should be pointed out that this " religion of love " is far removed from that doctrine of love which we of the twentieth century claim for ourselves. It is such a strong and deep identification of the man with God, and vivid apprehension of God in all the works of nature, that it would offend the moral sense of Western people. Like much of the work of Richard JefferieS it would be looked upon as very *' pagan." To few people and but seldom is it given to feel so utterly alone with God and nature as it has been given to Rabindranath Tagore. In a wonderful poem — a translation of Kabir — ^Tagore tells of the pantheism of the hills and the sea. It might almost pass for a song of human love : The shadows of evening fall thick and deep, and the darkness of love envelops the body and the mind. Open the window to the west, and be lost in the sky of love ; Drink the sweet honey that steeps the petals of the lotus of the heart. Receive the waves in your body : what splendour is in the region of the sea / Hark ! the sounds of conches and bells are rising. Kabir says : *' O brother, behold I the Lord is in this vessel of my body ! " Not one of the least obligations the world of English letters owes to India is Tagore's versions of the " Songs of Kabir " with all their fire and sonorous music. I do not hesitate to affirm that Tagore has reached a certain impassioned splendour of lyrical genius to which Rudyard IS RUDYARD KIPLING Kipling can never hope to reach. In " Kim," and certain of his poems, Kipling sees all India somewhat superficially, in black and white. His vision is physically- wonderful, spiritually hasty and arrogant. He blows upon one instrument. But when we come to the poems and plays of Tagore, we find a poet who conducts a wonderful orchestra and deals with the adventures of the soul — sometimes the artless adventure in which the soul is a child playing with the sand, and sometimes in the last and greatest quest in which the soul searches after the Spirit of Truth. i6 CHAPTER I BIOGRAPHICAL John LDckwood Kipling : Kipling, Champion diver : Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire : Kipling's editor at Lahore : Robert Barr, Kipling, and the Idler : A cover design for the Idler : Bloemfontein and the Friend. Whoever lives true life will love true love, I learnt to love that England. Hills, vales, woods, netted in a silver mist. Farms, granges, doubled up among the hills ; And cattle grazing in the watered vales. And cottage-chimneys smoking from the woods. And cottage-gardens smelling everywhere. Confused with smell of orchards. " See,^^ I said, " And see ! is God not with us on the earth ? And shall we put Him down by aught we do ? Who says there* s nothing for the poor and vile Save poverty and wickedness ? behold ! " And ankle-deep in English grass I leaped And clapped my hands, and called all very fair. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING From Aurora Leigh (Book I). CHAPTER I BIOGRAPHICAL Before entering upon this slight study, I think it necessary to recall certain biographical stages that are indispensable to a clear survey of Kipling's literary development. Born at Bombay on December 30, 1865, of English parents, he spent the first few years of his life in that city, and this earliest environment must have stamped itself on the supersensitive child for life. The multitudinous, many-coloured East, filled his soul with a wonder that is still stirring mightily within the man of fifty. In connexion with his strongly Oriental leanings, it is interesting to note that his father, John Lockwood Kipling, CLE., was a great authority on the mythological sculpture of the temples of the Central provinces of India, and the author of a powerful and lucid work on Indian animal life, " Beast and Man in India " (Mac- millan and Co., 1891). Attention also must be called to a book of " Verses by a Mother and Daughter " (Elkin Mathews, 1902), which was written by Kipling's mother and sister. John Lockwood Kipling, one of the pioneers of art education under Government auspices in India, died in 191 1, aged seventy-four. He was the eldest son of the Reverend Joseph Kipling of the Wesleyan ministry ; and in 1865 he married Alice, daughter of the distinguished Wesleyan preacher — the late Rev. George B. Macdonald. He was appointed architectural sculptor at the Bombay School of Art in the year of his marriage, and also acted as the Bombay correspondent of the Pioneer of Allahabad. 19 RUDYARD KIPLING Upon the creation of the Mayo School of Art at Lahore in 1875, he was appointed Principal and Curator of the Central Museum, and filled both posts with singular success. He was created a CLE. in 1886, and retired from the service in 1893. According to the testimony of Mr. Holker, a Lancashire cotton weaver, who had mills at Dharwal, near Lahore, Kipling's father was a very great Oriental scholar. When he visited the Kiplings at Lahore, he was much impressed by the wonderful collection of curios and artistic wonders with which every room simply teemed. He wrote : " The Kipling family were delightful people, all clever and artistic in their tastes, and the kindest and most gracious family I have ever known." Three different nationalities have gone to make up Rudyard Kipling's complicated nature. On the mother's side, Scotland and Ireland ; on the father's, England ; though four hundred years back the Kiplings came from Holland. As a child he learnt to speak Hindustani, and his immersion in the myths and creeds of a strange people accounted for his unquenchable love of the " ghostly style," combined with an almost equal love of the " horrible " in literature. In 1 871 Kipling, with a younger sister, was in England under the care of an elderly relative in Southsea. During his stay at Southsea he is generally believed to have tasted of much bitterness, and it seems likely that he was not unmindful of his own case when he wrote the opening chapters of " The Light that Failed," in which two Anglo-Indian children are more or less oppressed in spirit by the repressive creed of a Puritanical woman who is looking after them. A few years later, after a visit to Paris with his father, he was entered at the United Service College at Westward Ho, North Devon (1878). In " Stalky and Co." he has presented a lively and minute sketch of the vigorous life he spent at the College (i 878-1 882). 20 BIOGRAPHICAL To T.P.^s Weekly we owe the following story of his schooldays : Lovers of *' Stalky and Co." will remember the description of the school at Westward Ho, with its background of *' rabbit woods " and glorious vista of seascape. It was the writer's fortune recently to spend a delightful fortnight at Bideford, some three miles distant from the school, and in many a walk to travel over the scenes immortalized in that book. A favouring planet brought me into conversation with an old rural postman, now pensioned off. Questioned as to the Westward Ho school, he was at once agog with memories. Yes, many a time had he met the boys coming along the cliff-walk from Appledore on their way to the renowned tuck shop on " Bidevoor promenade," and he had enjoyed, and suffered from, many of their pranks, with a description of which he favoured his listener. When a suitable occasion offered, I questioned him more definitely about Kipling, and at once he gave me an account of an incident so entirely in keeping with one's idea of the author that it was impossible to doubt it for a minute. . It appears that Beckwith, the aquatic expert, came to Westward Ho to give an exhibition from the pier, which was crowded with the usual summer sightseers and a fair sprinkling of boys from the school. After some evolutions in the water the swimmer commenced a series of diving performances, and it was after a sensational dive from the top of the pier that the spectators were amazed to see a chubby, " stocky " boy run to the edge of the pier and repeat the dive with all the mannerisms of the expert. Inquiry elicited the fact that the boy was named Kipling, and it is by this incident more than any other that the Bideford people remember the now famous author. It may interest many people to know that the school buildings still stand as before, although they are now used as a hotel and boarding-house. One hopes, however, that all traces of the dead cat placed under the floor of the superciliously refined dormitory have been expunged. An interesting observation that Rudyard Kipling derived his first name from Rudyard Lake, not far from Stoke, in Staffordshire, has been spread broadcast in English and American papers. And in a sketch of Kipling's life, written by Professor Charles Eliot Norton and published in the Windsor Magazine for December 1899, it is stated that Kipling's parents " named their firstborn child after the pretty lake on the borders of which their acquaintance had begun." This biographical RUDYARD KIPLING sketch was written for a popular American edition of Kipling's works, and it is rather curious that this state- ment should be allowed by Kipling in this case to stand, and yet be categorically denied by him a few years later. Kipling's disclaimer came as a surprise, the original story being so circumstantial. But in a letter to a provincial journal he stated that it was all a beautiful dream and not a " pretty whim " of his aunt. Lady Burne-Jones, who, when her sister, Mrs. Lockwood Kipling, wrote from India announcing the birth of a son, asked that he might be called Rudyard. This repudiation of the story by the famous author was a heavy blow to a society which proposed to develop the lake as a holiday resort for Kipling pilgrims. Once again one is constrained to ask, " How do these pretty legends gain such prominence in the papers ? " At the age of seventeen Kipling returned to India, and through the influence of his father took up a post on the staff of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette, When he was in his twenty-second year he became assistant editor of the Pioneer at Allahabad, and remained in this post from 1887 to 1889. Thus it will be noticed that many of his best short stories were written when he was in his teens, and certain characters in them have since become world famous, notably Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd. The King's Dragoon Guards and many other famous regiments then quartered at Rawal Pindi must have passed the headquarters of the Civil and Military Gazette on their way to the Delhi manoeuvres of 1885, and no doubt young Kipling, with his perpetual interest in the spectacle of life, seized upon many ideas for stories and poems from these surroundings. His clear vision, and the energy massed in a torrent sweeping all before it, is manifested in " Plain Tales from the Hills," published in Calcutta, 1888. Of these forty short stories, twenty- eight made their first appearance in the Civil and Military BIOGRAPHICAL Gazette, As early as 1886 his name was well known in India. Mr. E. K. Robinson, who was formerly Kipling's editor at Lahore, contributed to McClure^s Magazine (July 1896) an interesting paper giving his reminiscences of his famous assistant. The friendship dated back for ten years, and when he first met Kipling he was not particularly impressed by his appearance, but he draws attention to the fact that he was even then a brilliant conversationalist. Mr. Robinson says that he conversed in a somewhat jerky manner, and his movements were rather sudden and eccentric ; this, added to a stoop acquired through much bending over the office desk, did not give one a very favourable impression. But those who worked with him had noticed his sterling traits, and were impressed by a light which flashed behind the spectacles. It was a light that was suggestive of a good deal of power and sterling character. He was an untiring worker, and slaved industriously at the drudgery of the newspaper work without protest. There was one peculiarity of Kipling's work which I really must mention, namely, the amount of ink he used to throw about. In the heat of summer, white cotton trousers and a thin vest constituted his office attire, and by the day's end he was spotted all over like a Dalmatian dog. He had a habit of dipping his pen frequently and deep into the inkpot, and as all his movements were abrupt, almost jerky, the ink used to fly. When he darted into my room, as he used to do about one thing or another in con- nexion with the contents of the paper a dozen times in the morning, I had to shout to him to " stand off " ; otherwise, as I knew by experience, the abrupt halt he would make and the flourish with which he placed the proof in his hand before me, would send the penful of ink — he always had a. full pen in his hand — flying over me. Driving, or sometimes walking, home to breakfast in his light attire plentifully besprinkled with ink, his spectacled face peeping out under an enormous mushroom-shaped pith hat, Kipling was a quaint-looking object. In 1889 Kipling was sent to England by the Pioneer, to which he promised to contribute his impressions of travel. He touched Japan, San Francisco, and New 23 RUDYARD KIPLING York on his way to the mother-country, and his experi- ence may be read in " Letters of Marque " and " From Sea to Sea." In the autumn of this your we find him established in London, where he pubhshed '' Barrack Room Ballads " a year or so later, of which the Times remarked : " Unmistakable genius rings in every line." Robert Barr, writing in the Idler for May 1909, gives a sidelight on Rudyard Kipling, the young journalist, fighting for position in the London crowd. Kipling then lived in three rooms on the second floor, at the corner of Villiers Street and the Thames Embank- ment ; and here it was to him that Robert Barr divulged his plans for a new magazine. The young author took to the idea at once, and with that prompt energy which characterized him, he produced pens and paper and started to sketch out a cover for the magazine. We know that Kipling can produce very creditable black and white sketches when he likes. Readers of " Just So Stories " do not need to be told that he is an artist of quite an uncommon order. Although his father was an art master by profession, he is said to be quite without any training in this work. " He liked doing things his own way," writes one who knew him at school, " and if he wanted to make a hill square, and cover it with vermilion grass, he would do it." A sketch of " A Tiger's Head," by Kipling, published in the Strand Magazine^ shows that he could at times observe convention and nature at the same time. Kipling's sketch for Robert Barr's magazine repre- sented a statue, the real face of which wore a tragic expression, while the mask which the statue held up grinned humorously at the public. Kipling at that time had been burning the midnight oil and generally over- working himself. On his table he had graved the words : " Oft was I weary when I toiled at thee " — the motto which the galley-slave carved on his oar. He told Mr. Barr that as he " worked late, a phantom of himself 24 BIOGRAPHICAL had formed the disquieting habit of sitting down opposite him at the desk of weariness," and this he " regarded as a sign to knock off." . Kipling refused the editorship of the Idler^ but he contributed the following articles and stories to their journal : " My First Book," " My Sunday at Home," '' Primum Tempus," " The Legs of Sister Ursula," " The Ship that Found Herself," and " The Story of Ung." Robert Barr had a Kipling sea-story in view when he started the series of " Tales of our Coast." They were to start off with Clark Russell and end up with Kipling. Harold Frederic contributed a most striking Irish sea sketch, and " There is Sorrow on the Sea " came from Parker's pen. Eric Mackay wrote a poem to introduce the series which was illustrated by Frank Brangwyn. The third story, " The Roll Call of the Reef," was by " Q." Kipling's story did not arrive in time, but it appeared during the same year, and was illustrated by T. Walter Wilson. Kipling's connexion with this most cosmopolitan magazine must have been a very valuable experience, for a galaxy of budding talent had gathered around its ideal editor, Jerome K. Jerome. In the Idler such writers as W. W. Jacobs, Anthony Hope, Zangwill, and W. L. Alden, the great American humorist, received welcome admission long before the other journals looked upon their work as " valuable copy." A long voyage to South Africa, Australia, Ceylon, and New Zealand took up most of his time in 1891, and when he returned he met Wolcott Balestier, a young American author belonging to a family well known in the literary circles of New York. At the same time he became acquainted with Balestier's sister, Caroline, whom he married in 1892. During the years 1 892-1 896 the young couple made their home at Bratleboro, Vt., U.S.A., which gave Kipling the chance to gather the information about the New England fishermen, which he uses in " Captains Courageous." " Many Inventions," the 25 RUDYARD KIPLING " Jungle Books," and certain poems in " The Seven Seas " were also written or planned there. / In 1896 Kipling again came to England, and he settled at Rottingdean in 1898. He went on a cruise with the navy in the home waters in 1897, and again in 1898, giving his notes on the trips in '' A Fleet in Being," which appeared in the Morning Post, In 1900 he was with his beloved troops in South Africa, and was present with Bennet Burleigh on March 29, during the fight at Karree Siding. He also acted as an associate editor of the Friend, a Bloemfontein journal edited by the war correspondents with Lord Roberts' troops. He wrote for this paper " King Log and King Stork " (March 24, 1900), " The Elephant and the Lark's Nest " (March 26, 1900), " The Persuasive Pom-Pom," " Vain Horses," and other items. " A Song of the White Man," which Julian Ralph states in '' War's Brighter Side " * was written to be read at a dinner in Canada, appeared in the issue of April 2, 1900. Of the later incidents of Kipling's career there is little need to write ; they have been brought before the notice of the public by the Press of England and America with unfailing regularity. * Published in 1901 (Pearson). 26 CHAPTER II KIPLING AT SCHOOL The United Services^ College Magazine : Kipling's school poems : The author's first Empire verses : Kipling and the college Literary Society : His opinions on the use of alcohol : Tennyson's " Defence of Lucknow " : Bret Harte's " Concepcion de Arguello " : Kipling's short-sightedness a handicap in athletic competitions : Not a favourite with other boys : A visit to the old school : " Hints on Schoolboy Etiquette," by Kipling. / would say that a boy is a savage, hut I do not care to give o^ence to fond parents. To educate him in the line of his preferences, as the race has been educated, seems to me the only sensible way. How would the New Forest answer for a University of Empire, with Rudyard Kipling, Eustace Miles, Sandow, Lieutenant Miiller, Baden-Powelly Hilaire Belloc, Sir Pratap Singh, and a mixture of men of these types for a faculty ? The woods and God^s great out-of-doors would give balance and ballast, good digestion, and sweet sleep at night. This life in the open would be better for the young than stuffy dormitories and still more stufy class-rooms, where much precious time is wasted in listening to stuffy lectures about things that are foreign to life. CHAPTER II KIPLING AT SCHOOL No part of a famous man's career has quite the same fascination as the days of his youth and obscurity, when he is groping blindly towards the brilliant future which, although he probably does not dream of it, awaits him ; and, in the case of Rudyard Kipling, this period of eclipse is all the more interesting as he has presented part of it to the public in his vividly boyish series of stories, " Stalky and Co." A perusal of this volume leaves no doubt in the mind of the reader that Master Gigadibs, the sportive Beetle, with his gig-lamps and a craving to write a '' simply lovely poem," is a picture of the author during his days at the now famous West Country school. A writer's best stories are always in part autobiographical. In " The Light that Failed " we cannot help assuming that Dick Heldar is reconstructed from Kipling's inner consciousness, and in " Stalky and Co." and " Kim " we find the texture of the author's mind and the labyrinth of his heart manifested with the exactness of an analyst. Beetle, the Bard in " Stalky and Co.," with his bright, clean touch and the clever schoolboy's wit, is always and ever Rudyard Kipling, the Bard of Empire. How much of this book is autobiography, and how much is drawn from the limpid springs of the writer's imagination, give rise to a somewhat perplexing question. Some light on this matter is to be gained from the columns of the United Services^ College Magazine^ which was issued during the years that the Three Incompre- 29 RUDYARD KIPLING hensibles waged war with the " Ancients of the College,'* which was from 1878 to 1882. A set of this immature little magazine realized the sum of ^i^^o at a London auction-room some years ago. And I am told that this set and another one in the library of the College — which now has been transplanted to Harpenden, in Hertford- shire — are the only two known. However, much that is disguised in " Stalky and Co.", may be cleared up by examining the pages of the College Magazine. In the first place, it is not as difficult to keep company with Stalky and his boy companions after a perusal of the little volumes, for although we all admire Kipling's story in a measure it is rather hard to agree with some of the proceedings of Stalky, Beetle, and McTurk. It must be admitted that these youths followed a code of ethics not always consistent with the honour of self-respecting English schoolboys, and that they were not specially inspired by any of that esprit de corfs^ and sense of responsibility, which is such a dominant note in most of Kipling's work. But impressions produced by the brutality and heartlessness of Stalky and his friends, are somewhat toned down by the more refined and happy atmosphere of the author's Alma Mater, as reflected in the school journal. In the book. Master Gigadibs seems to be only happy when baiting his master, or acting as lampooner for his Uncle Stalky. But we find many snatches of verse from his pen in the pages of the magazine which are surcharged with humour and bon- homie. In the book we read of the wild antics in a pantomime played by Stalky and other boys ; in the magazine, we find that the performance was really quite a creditable rendering of The Rivals, in which Kipling acted the part of Sir Anthony. Beetle seems to waste a good deal of time in retreat in his lair in the furze bushes, waiting for the cat that walked once too often by himself, to twine like a giddy honeysuckle above the heads of those who had incurred the wrath of the heroic trio. 30 KIPLING AT SCHOOL But we read nothing in the book about the time he spent whilst forming the College Literary and Debating Society. The Beetle was its founder and also the first secretary. I should add that the Natural History Society, which was treated with such contempt by Stalky and Co., and referred to as " The Bughunters," received the liberal assistance of the magazine during the years 1 881-2, which covers the period of Kipling's editorship. The " old rag," or the Swillingford Patriot as Stalky had christened it, received but scant attention in the book. It is mentioned in the last chapter, in which Beetle goes to Randall's printing office accom- panied by his confreres to correct proofs. The printing office of the magazine can still be seen under the name of Wilson and Sons in Mill Street, and Mr. Raven Hill, who made a special study of the local colour of the district, devoted a full-page drawing to Beetle at work on the proofs in the little loft behind the shop. Beneath this drawing were quoted the words : " He saw himself already controlling the Times.^^ Raven Hill's illus- trations to " Stalky and Co." in the Windsor Magazine in 1899 should be in the hands of all true Kiplingites ; to cut them out of the story in book form was a great mistake, and it is to be hoped that in a future edition they will be reproduced. It is, of course, the fact, that Kipling edited six numbers of the school magazine that has given them their fancy price. The first effort from his pen made its appearance in the issue of June 30, 1881, under the title of "A Devonshire Legend," and I make no doubt that two other articles came from the same pen, " Life in the Corridor " and " Concerning Swaggers." It will be recalled that the college corridor is mentioned several times in '* Stalky and Co." Some of the efforts are headed " By Rxxxxt Bxxxxxxg," and it will be noticed that Kipling has closely modelled several of his early poems on Browning, but as Mr. 31 RUDYARD KIPLING Adrian Margaux remarked in an article in the Captain,* " the subjects would hardly have commended themselves to the Browning Society." I must not fail, however, to draw attention to " The Jampot," which is delightfully droll. It tells of a fight by two boys for a pot of jam, which was smashed to shivers during the contest : But neither of us shared The dainty — Thafs your plea F Well, neither of us cared, I answer . . . Let me see How have your trousers fared ? The young Kipling thus delivered himself on a college edict prohibiting the use of stoves for cooking in the studies : The cup is devoid of its cofee, The spoon of its sugary load, The tablecloth guiltless of tofee. And sorrow has seized our abode. Our tasks they are as dry as the sea-sands. Our throats they are drier than these. No cocoa has moistened our weasands. We taste not of Teas. On the occasion of the last attempt on the life of Queen Victoria, Kipling contributed a poem entitled "Ave Imperatrix " to the magazine (March 1882). This is the first example of that end-of-the-nineteenth- century Imperialism to which he has given full and final expression : '^uch greeting as should come from those Whose fathers faced the Sepoy hordes. Or served you in the Russian snows. And, dying, left their sons their swords. And all are bred to do your will By land and sea — wherever -flies The flag, to fight and follow still And work your Empire^ s destinies. * " Famous Men at School," by Adrian Margaux (the Captain). 32 KIPLING AT SCHOOL There are some interesting notes on the " Literary Society " which was founded in 1881 by Kipling in the college chronicle. They throw many sidelights on the school life. The first meeting was called to consider the proposition : " that a classical is superior to a mathe- matical education." Kipling spoke in the negative. The next time that his name is mentioned we read that he was in favour of a resolution which affirmed the " Advance of the Russians in Central Asia to be hostile to the British Power." Another notice records that Kipling moved a vote of censure against Mr. Gladstone's Government. This '' vote " was carried by a sweeping majority, but it is rather astonishing to find that Beresford — the veritable " Uncle Stalky " of the Stalky Book — was one of the opposing speakers. We can imagine Beetle's glance of cold scorn when he met the eye of the " Stalky one " who, no doubt, took up that attitude to annoy " Master Gigadibs." Kipling's last speech was in support of a resolution '' that total absti- nence is better than the moderate use of alcohol." But the teetotalers were defeated in the end. I do not think that Kipling is a total abstainer, and certainly his writings have not commended temperance, but after seeing two young men drug two girls with drink at an American concert hall, and lead them reeling home, he became converted to Prohibition. Of this painful scene he has written : Then, recanting previous opinions, I became a Prohibitionist. Better it is that a man should go without his beer in public places, and content himself with swearing at the narrow-mindedness of the majority ; better it is to poison the inside with very vile temperance drinks, and to buy lager furtively at back doors, than to bring temptation to the lips of young fools such as the four I had seen. I understand now why the preachers rage against drink. I have said, " There is no harm in it taken moderately " ; and yet my own demand for beer helped directly to send these two girls reeling down the dark street to— God alone knows what end. If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth taking a little trouble to come at — such trouble as a man will undergo to compass his own desires. It is not good c 33 RUDYARD KIPLING that we should let it lie before the eyes of children, and I have been a fool in writing to the contrary. The quality of that fine fooling in *' Stalky and Co." is not shown in Kipling's early taste in reading. He read Tennyson's " Defence of Lucknow " before the Society on one occasion, and later on in the term it is recorded he contributed to a meeting a recital of Bret Harte's '' Concepcion de Arguello." At this time one must remember that our hero was but sixteen, and the choice of the latter poem to read before a school society, throws a very interesting sidelight on the boy that is not to be gained in " Stalky and Co." It will be recalled that Harte's poem tells of a Spanish girl who waited forty years for a foreign lover only to learn, in the end, that he had been killed on a journey to Russia a few weeks after the betrothal. The only honour which Kipling received at Westward Ho was the first prize for English literature. There is reason to suppose that he substituted Browning, Dumas, and Scott, for the more learned men who prepared books for the sole purpose of confounding boys ; from the fact that he did not distinguish himself in scholarship. Stevenson's essay, " A Defence of Idlers," shows how no time is actually lost, not even that which is idled away with a book. But this is a point that is very hard to explain to ambitious parents. However, Kipling's con- tributions to the college chronicle plainly showed that he meant to pass a hawser to literature, and take it in tow. It was about this time that some of his verses appeared in a local paper, and no doubt he felt like Stevenson when he sold his first essay, '' one of the most popular and successful writers in Great Britain." Kipling did not shine in the athletic field, and it is certain that he used to bank on his physical weakness when cricket was to be evaded. Only once does his name appear in the athletic competitions, and that is 34 KIPLING AT SCHOOL an entry for a quarter of a mile flat race, and in this he was one of the last "home." Of course his short- sightedness was a great handicap to him in all out of door sports, but eye-trouble did not prevent him becoming one of the best swimmers in the college, which was somewhat of an achievement at Westward Ho, where all the boys were keen swimmers. If the testimony of " Foxy," the old drill-sergeant, can be relied upon, it seems that Kipling was not a favourite with the other boys. This ex-soldier was in the service of the college up to a few years ago, and he described Kipling, Beresford, andDunsterville (the " terrible three " of " Stalky and Co.") in most vivid terms. He was the victim of many pranks which are recorded in the book, and it is said that he was not very gratified with his position in English literature. If Kipling did not find himself popular with his schoolfellows, it is only natural to find that he entered into an alliance with Stalky and McTurk. The other two boys in the Triple Alliance were officers' sons, and now hold commissions themselves. The last visit paid by Kipling to his old school was in 1894. On July 25 of that year he journeyed to Westward Ho, in order to take part in a farewell presentation to Mr. Price, on his resignation after twenty years' headmastership. He made a short speech on this occasion, from which he evidently built up the poetical dedication to " Stalky and Co." which was published five years after this visit. It is said that " Stalky and Co." was written with the idea of giving the college a " leg up " ; however, a few years after Kipling's visit it was transferred to the neighbourhood of London. The school-building still remains, and has been converted into an hotel. So when you walk along the cliffs, you need not trouble to look for college boys making their way from Appledore to invade the famous tuck-shop on " Bidevoor Pro- menade." In a letter which during Easter 1898 he wrote to the 35 RUDYARD KIPLING editors of a schoolboys' paper, Kipling showed that there was still plenty of the fun and twaddle of the Westward Ho days left in him. It is so characteristic of Kipling, the precocious Indian child, and Kipling as he is now, that I quote it intact : To the Editors, School Budget : Gentlemen, — I am in receipt of your letter of no date, together with copy of School Budget, Feb. 14, and you seem to be in possession of all the cheek that is in the least likely to do you any good in this world or the next. And, furthermore, you have omitted to specify where your journal is printed and in what county of England Horsmonden is situated. But, on the other hand, and notwithstanding, I very much approve of your " Hints on Schoolboy Etiquette," and have taken the liberty of sending you a few more as following : 1. If you have any doubts about a quantity, cough. In three cases out of five this will save you being asked to " say it again." 2. The two most useful boys in a form are : (a) the master's favourite pro tern. ; {b) his pet aversion. With a little judicious management {a) can keep him talking through the first part of the construe, and {b) can take up the running for the rest of the time. N.B. — ^A syndicate should arrange to do (^'s) impots, in return for this service. 3. A confirmed guesser is worth his weight in gold on a Monday morning. 4. Never shirk a master out of bounds ; pass him with an abstracted eye, and, at the same time, pull out a letter and study it earnestly. He may think it is a commission for some one else. 5. When pursued by the native farmer, always take to the nearest plough- land. Men stick in furrows that boys can run over. 6. If it is necessary to take other people's apples, do it on a Sunday. You then put them inside your topper, which is better than trying to button them into a tight " Eton." You will find this advice worth enormous sums of money, but I shall be obliged with a cheque or postal order for sixpence at your convenience, if the contribution should be found to fill more than one page. Faithfully yours. RuDYARD Kipling. Capetown, Easter Monday, '98. 36 CHAPTER III PERSONALITY The Vicomte d'Humieres : An American critic on Kipling : Kipling's natural love of Biblical language : The Bible and " Reces- sional " : A Pall Mall Gazette burlesque : " The Ballad of the King's Jest." He who influences the thought of his times, influences %ll the times that follow. He has made his impress on eternity. CHAPTER III PERSONALITY The personality of Rudyard Kipling is a factor that counts for much. There are flaws in his finest works ; there are certain defects in his genius. With all his display of power there are strange lapses and weaknesses. But such defects are not fatal, and the thirst of the true Kiplingite is never slaked. Considering how marvel- lously wide his range in verse and prose is, it is little short of a miracle that he has met with no serious reverses ; he knows nothing of retreat or failure. The critics for the last few years seem to have been unanimous in denouncing him — ^which fact, of course, recommends him to us. Let the critics take courage, they may outwit oblivion yet, even though they do nothing but croak and catcall at some one who is hitching his wagon to a star. It is in this manner that immortals are made. Nothing in all the range of Kipling's work is so marked by fine feeling as " Barrack Room Ballads " — nothing deals with more tangible people. Here he has put forth his best, his very best ; and the richness of his general information about Tommy and his ways, is constantly astonishing people. In the lore of the man-at-arms, Kipling is the wisest man of the day. Wisdom is the distilled essence of intuition, corroborated by experience. This is the secret of Kipling's strength — ^he went to study the life of the Tommy, not because it offered money and a new field, but because it honestly interested him. For years he has helped the soldier to fight his battles, until 39 RUDYARD KIPLING at last he can take him by the hand as a comrade, not as a lay-figure. Kipling has a sense of humour. Humour is a lifebuoy, and saves you from drowning when you jump off a cliff into a sea of sermons. An author (or poet) who cannot laugh, is apt to explode — ^he is very dangerous. I am certain that Kipling is a man with a " very young laugh." I can imagine him seated at his writing- table beneath that portrait of Burne-Jones, writing such a tale as "The Bonds of Discipline," which tells of a succession of uproarious orgies culminating in a mock court-martial. I can hear that boyish laugh as he writes ; I can hear him chuckle at his own witticisms or those of others. The Vicomte d'Humieres has told us of Kipling's boyish laugh ; he has also told us a little about his personal appearance, but this was about 1905. He speaks of the author's frank and open expression ; of his eyes full of sympathy and gaiety, eager to reflect life and all that it holds for tinker or king ; of the hair cropped in the fashion of the Tommy. And his nose ! It is the nose of the seeker after knowledge. It was Albrecht Durer who said of Erasmus : " With this nose he success- fully hunted down everything but heresy." To under- stand what Kipling has hunted down with his nose one must travel the world over. One thing is certain : Kipling does not attach himself to any particular creed or party. He evidently thinks that to belong to any party is to be owned by it. Kipling's soul revolts at life in a groove. He dislikes typical men — their ways of life, their sophistry, their stupidity. He likes to be free of all party restrictions, so that he can study in his own sweet way — when at school he was distinguished from other boys by his independence. At the little country printing works he learned his case, worked the ink-balls, and manipulated the cropper. He knows the craft of the book from the leaded type to 40 PERSONALITY the printed page. This has a distinct bearing on his literary style. His language is easy, fluid, suggestive. His paragraphs throw a purple shadow, and are pregnant with meaning beyond what the textbook supplies. This is one part genius and two parts experience. When Kipling was assistant editor of the Pioneer (i 887-1 889), his intense interest in life and great curiosity, no doubt prompted him to ask his chief to send him forth into the world to acquire special knowledge for that paper. The chief volunteered him for a pilgrimage, no doubt in the same spirit as Artemus Ward volunteered all his wife's relations for the purposes of war. And thus began the travels of Kipling, special correspondent to the whole bloomin' British Empire. He, no doubt, looked back with just a little twitch of the heartstrings towards the strange little newspaper office where he had spent some arduous but profitable years. Then the particular corner of Empire where he " lay awake at nights, plotting and scheming to write something that should take with the British Public " faded from view. It was the happiest moment he had ever known. The world lay beyond. You will find many of the tales of these wanderings in the two volumes " From Sea to Sea." Herein are to be read his fierce affections and his amazing dislikes. And so Kipling fared forth to fame and fortune. An American critic, Arthur Bartlett Maurice,* has summed up Kipling's attitude to the wit, brains, folly, and brawn of the world in a few words : A young genius looked out upon the world, beheld there laughter and tears, folly and wisdom, and considerable wickedness of a healthy sort. The wickedness roused no anger in him. There was no disposition to howl stale moralities, his mission was not that of a social regenerator, his work betrayed no maudlin indignation. When he wrote about the decep- tion of a husband he treated all three parties in the affair with perfect * Kipling's " Verse People," the Bookman (America), March 1889. Reprinted in the same magazine January 191 1. 41 RUDYARD KIPLING and impartial good humour. His attitude was that of detachment, his metier to watch the comedy and tragedy of it all as one watches a play. And after having been very much amused and a little bored, he sat down to his writing-table with the conviction that We are very slightly changed From the semi-apes that ranged Indians prehistoric clay. There are times when he seems almost to resent the fact that human nature shows so little originality in its weaknesses. The world wags on merrily and busily, new forces are constantly springing up as if out of the ground, the hand of man is growing more cunning and his brain more active, only his heart can invent no new sin. " Jack " Barrett jobbed off to Quetta in September to die there, attempting two men's work, Mrs. Barrett mourning him " five lively months at most " ; Potiphar Gubbins, C.E., hoisting himself to social prominence and highly paid posts as the complaisant husband of an attractive wife — these are the oldest of pitiable human stories. Through the verses which tell of these people there rings a note of half-humorous protest at the monotonous sameness of life. For the purely narrative ditties he has more relish. A general officer, riding with his staff, takes down a heliograph message between husband and wife and finds himself alluded to as " that most immoral man." A young lieutenant wishing to break an engagement in a gentlemanly manner develops appalling epileptic fits with the assistance of Pears' Shaving Sticks. What an honest, wholesome love of fun ! What animal spirits ! He can see the amazement on the general's " shaven gill," and chuckle with Sleary over some especially artistic and alarming seizure. Above all he delights as Tear by year in pious patience vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits. Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary^ s fits. One thinks of him as roaring with laughter whilst he writes of the astonish- ment and discomfiture of these people, as the " good Dumas " used to roar with laughter at the humorous observations of his characters. In " Departmental Ditties " we have Kipling the entertainer ;|in his short stories of Indian life he is the necromancer, but in " Barrack Room Ballads " we have Kipling the familiar friend. Kipling is not slow in taking what he wants ; he frankly admits his indebtedness to the work of other 42 PERSONALITY men in " When 'Omer Smote 'Is Bloomin' Lyre." He makes no apologies — but takes all that he needs as his divine right. And, of course, he justifies himself in taking what he needs, with the thought that he gives it all back to us with interest added. Kipling shows a natural love of Biblical language, and it is worth while to observe how he repeatedly goes to Holy Writ for sonorous expressions. In his beautiful domestic poem on Sussex the phrase " The lot has fallen to me " recalls Psalm xvi, 7 (Prayer Book version) : " The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground : yea, I have a goodly heritage." Again in the same poem we find in Stanza I, " And see that it is good," an echo, of course, from Genesis i, 31 : " And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Take the sixth stanza of '' Pharaoh and the Sergeant," and we read " 'Tween a cloud o' dust and fire " — which can be compared with Exodus xiii, 21. The following references will show that Kipling was deeply indebted to the Authorized Version in " Recessional " : " Then beware lest thou forget " (Deuteronomy vi, 12). " The thunder of the captains, and the shouting " (Job xxxix, 25), " The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise " (Psalm li, 17). " For a thousand years in Thy sight are but yesterday " (Psalm xc, 4). " The Gentiles, which have not the law " (Romans ii, 14). In " The Nursing Sister " is another instance to this point. Kipling has written " Our little maids that have no breasts " — which is to be found in the Song of Songs, viii, 8 : '' We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts." It is, of course, an unnecessary and tedious labour to compare minutely Kipling's work with the Bible, but one or two more comparisons may be interesting. " M' Andrew's Hymn," which I think reflects the 43 RUDYARD KIPLING author's ideas on life more than any other poem, seems to have been written with a fine carelessness. Kipling writes as the fancy takes him, and it is difficult to imagine that he ever corrects or prunes his prodigal luxuriance. This poem contains much from the by-ways of the Bible : " Better the sight of eyes that see than wanderin' o' desire " {see Eccle- siastes, vi, 9) and — " The Mornin' Stars " (Job, xxxviii, 7). " When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Here is a weird scrap of burlesque published in the Pall Mall Gazette^ which rather hints at Kipling's fondness for biblical quotation. Dr. Parker had made a statement in the Idler declaring that " Kipling was related to his wife ; though he did not know it " : He knows the slang of Silver Street, the horrors of Lahore, And how the man-seal breasts the waves that buffet Labrador . . . He knows each -fine gradation Hwixt the General and the sub., The terms employed by Atkins when they fling him from a fub.. He knows an Ekka ponfs points, the leper'' s drear abode. The seamy side of Simla, the flaring Mile End Road ; He knows the DeviVs tone to souls too pitiful to damn. He knows the taste of every regimental mess in " cham " ; He knows enough to annotate the Bible verse by verse. And how to draw the shekels from the British public^ s purse In reading the " Ballad of the King's Jest " it will be noticed that Kipling has imitated the cadences and mannerisms of Whittier's " Barbara Frietchie." Perhaps, also, there is a hint of a debt to Ernest Seton-Thompson's method of dealing with animal stories in his Jungle Books. In these cases, Kipling, of course, takes no more than a writer's privilege : he borrows twenty-one shillings'-worth of silver, and pays us back with a bright golden guinea. 44 ♦ i \l['/ Reproduced by special permission of the proprietors of" Punch " READY-MADE COATS-(OF-ARMS) ; OR, GIVING 'EM FITS ! Lord K-pl-ng, of Mandelay. Arms : Quarterly; ist, a review laudatory richly deserved quite proper; 2nd, an heraldic jungle-bok rampant under several deodars or mem-sahibs or words to that effect ; 3rd, a lordly elephint a pilin' teak ; 4th, an argotnautical vessel (in verse) in full sale, classed Ai at Lloyds, charged with a cargo of technicalities all warranted genuine. Crest : On a charger argent the head of a publisher urgent. Supporters: Dexter, a Tommy Atkins in all his glory arrayed proper by a plain tailor from the hills ; sinister, a first-class fighting-man or fuzzy wuzzy of the Soudan, regardant 5 able on a British square charged with an 61an effront^e. (H. E. Howe after E. T. Rked) CHAPTER IV SOME ANECDOTES A perverse view of Kipling : " When the Rudyards cease from Kipling " : S. S. McClure : Kipling's idea of the mark of genius : McClure and " Kim " : J. M. Barrie's story of Kipling : Kipling and a Suffragist : The Sydney Bookfellozv and a tiger yarn : Impressions of Kipling in Paine's Biography of Mark Twain : Twain's pun : First meeting between Twain and Kipling : A letter from Twain : Mark Twain and the Boers : Kipling's " Bell Buoy " praised by Twain : The Ascot Cup : Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain in robes of scarlet at Oxford : Practical joke by Kipling : Kipling and American publisher ; Zangwill and the Pall Mall Magazine : Auto- graph hunters : The vanishing cheques : Brander Matthews in American Outlook : The Liverpool Echo : A disappointed admirer : A Rottingdean landlord and a Kipling autograph letter : " Dingley, the Famous Writer " : An excellent skit on Rudyard Kipling. O comic Spirit, hovering overhead. With sage's brows and finely tempered smile. From whose bowed lips a silvery laugh is sped At pedantry, stupidity and guile — So visioned by that sage on whom you bent Always a look of perfect sympathy. Whose laugh, like yours, was never idly spent — Look, Spirit, sometimes fellowly on me ! Letson Taylor. CHAPTER IV SOME ANECDOTES It is natural that there should have been a feeling of resentment on the part of some of the old school of literary men, when a young author like Kipling attracted so much attention. And when Kipling turned his back upon the reporter or interviewer, and refused to give them free material from which to serve up a paragraph or so of wishy-washy gossip, he was instantly branded as a peevish prig. This perverse view of Kipling was en- dorsed by the gossip of a section of the American Press at one time, and such remarks as the following, taken from the Papyrus, February 191 1, are fairly frequent even now : There was nothing to his (Kipling's) talk — not a hint of the magic that lies across so many pages, or is condensed into so many of the aptest and most striking epithets in literature. Pompous, self-conceited, snobbish, self-conscious, priggish, banal, peevish and fractious, without a visible ray of the redeeming kindliness of genius, or even a hint of his thaumaturgic mental power — this is what they told me of the man who has taught us all so much about men and women — who may be said to have added a new chapter to the Book of the Heart. Here also is a characteristic rhyme which was freely bandied about among a certain section of London literary men : fFill there never come a season Which shall rid us from the curse Of a -prose which knows no reason And an unmelodious verse ; 47 RUDYARD KIPLING When the world shall cease to wonder At the genius of an Ass, And a hoy's eccentric blunder Shall not bring success to 'pass ; When mankind shall be delivered From the clash of magazines. And the inkstand shall be shivered Into countless smithereens ; When there stands a muzzled stripling. Mute, beside a muzzled bore ; When the Rudyards cease from Kipling And the Haggards Ride no more P Mr. S. S. McClure (founder of McClure's Magazine) says that he always found Kipling courteous and cordial. He also relates how, when he met Kipling in London, the famous author reminded him that at a previous meeting in America he " had talked McClure^s Magazine to him for eight solid hours." And Kipling suffered the " shop " of the enthusiastic publisher without protest ! He only remarked " McClure, your business is dealing in brain futures." It is stated from a quarter which should be well informed, that Kipling is a tolerant, appreciative novel- reader, and has a great enthusiasm for " shilling shockers." He has a large respect for Guy Boothby's books, which cannot be placed far above the average pot-boiler. Kipling once asked McClure whether he had ever read " David Harum." The publisher replied : " No. He's dead." Kipling was tickled by the astute American's outlook on literature, and said : " That's right, McClure. The mark of genius is to eliminate the unnecessary." It is interesting to learn that Kipling received 25,000 dollars for the rights of " Kim " when it was serialized in McClure^s Magazine, although when the author stopped at New York on his way to England, a few years before, he was unable to find a publisher at any price. 48 SOME ANECDOTES He submitted all his wonderful range of early work to Harper Bros, of New York, who rejected the whole parcel. It is said that the young author was so indignant that he tried no other American publisher. After he returned to London, he wrote " The Light that Failed,'* and Lippincotts paid him 800 dollars for this story, which was afterwards syndicated by McClure. It is to be expected that Kipling should have American leanings ; one of these is his craze for magazines. Magazine reading is a mania in the States. I am at this point reminded of the story of how Kipling raided Mr. J. M. Barrie's stock of magazines at Waterloo Station. Mr. Barrie was hastening from the bookstall laden with papers ; a good many sixpenny ones among them, he dolefully relates, when, in rushing round a corner, he fell into the arms of Kipling, equally in a tearing hurry. They turned on each other with scowling faces, then smiled in recognition, and asked each other whither he went. Then Kipling exclaiming, " Lucky beggar, you've got papers ! " seized the bundle from Barrie, flung him some money and rushed away. " But you did not stoop to pick up his dirty halfpence, did you ? " queried one of Mr. Barrie's hearers, amusedly. " Didn't I though ! " returned Barrie ; and added ruefully, " but he hadn't flung me half enough." Stories about Rudyard Kipling are very numerous, but I fear that he has not even a bowing acquaintance with the anecdotes which pass the rounds of the newspapers. Certain of them can be run down to other well-known authors of the past twenty years, but it would be impossible to straighten out the tangle with any accuracy. This Kipling story comes to us via a Pittsburg paper. It is to the effect that at some anti-suffrage dinner — time and place conveniently omitted ! — ^he said, " Have not the women got enough ? In addition to all their other privileges, why should they have the vote ? I was talking to a suffragist the other day," he continued, D 49 RUDYARD KIPLING " and she said, ' Why should a woman take a man's name when she marries him ? ' Why," answered Kipling, " should she take everything else he's got ? " I am indebted to the Bookjellow (Sydney) for the following very pleasing anecdote : Ever hear Kipling tell his tiger yarn ? It was at a small station on one of the Indian railways. There was a stationmaster there and a porter. The latter was told not to act without instructions from the former, or, failing that, from the head office. A man-eater broke away from the jungle, attacked the station, seized the stationmaster, and began to make mince- meat of him. The porter remembered orders. Going to the telegraph, he wired to headquarters : " Tiger on platform, eating station-master. Please wire instructions." The ready wit of Kipling is illustrated in the following. " Don't you think it strange," a lady is supposed to have said to him, " that sugar is the only word in the English language where an ' s ' and a * u ' come together and are pronounced * sh ' ? " " Sure ! " Kipling is alleged to have said. Kipling's genius, if rot his tastes, was always admired by Mark Twain. His impressions of Kipling which are given in Paine's Biography * of the famous American writer clearly indicate this. It was Twain, it will be remembered, who paid a special tribute to Kipling at the Authors' Club (London) in 1899. The anxiety and sympathy of the entire American nation had just followed Kipling through a most dangerous illness at New York City, which Mark Twain declared had done much to bring England and America close together. He told the members of the Authors' Club that he had been engaged in the compiling of an epoch-making pun, and had brought it there to lay at their feet, " not to ask for their indulgence, but for their applause." It was this : Since England and America have been joined in Kipling, may they not be severed in Twain. * " Mark Twain : A Biography," vol. ii, p. 880. (Harper & Bros., 1912.) 50 SOME ANECDOTES We are informed that hundreds of puns had been made on the author's pen-name, but this was probably his first and only attempt. At the Savage Club, too, Twain recalled old times, and his first London visit twenty-seven years before : In those days you could have carried Kipling around in a lunch-basket ; now he fills the world. I was young and foolish then, now I am old and foolisher. It was in the summer of 1889 that the first meeting between Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling took place. At that time Kipling was only known to an Anglo-Indian public, and had just started on a world tour for the Pioneer^ writing impressions of his travel home to that journal. He journeyed to Elmira especially to see Mark Twain. It seems that Twain was not at Quarry Farm when he called, but Mrs. Crane and Susy Clemens asked him in, and he took a seat on the veranda and talked with them some time — that talk which Mark Twain told us might be likened to footprints, so strong and definite was the impression left on the memory. He spent a couple of hours with me, and at the end of that time I had surprised him as much as he had surprised me — and the honours were easy. I believed that he knew more than any person I had met before, and I knew that he knew that I knew less than any person he had met before — though he did not sa y it, and I was not expecting that he would. . . He is a stranger to me, but he is a most remarkable man — and I am the other one. Between us we cover all knowledge ; he knows all that can be known, and I know the rest. Mark Twain also has remarked that Kipling has enjoyed a unique distinction, " that of being the only living person not head of a nation whose voice is heard around the world the moment it drops a remark ; the only such voice in existence that does not go by slow ship and rail, but always travels first class — by cable." It was not until a year after Kipling's visit to Elmira SI RUDYARD KIPLING that Twain identified him with the author of " Plain Tales," through a copy of the London World which had a sketch of Kipling in it, and a mention that he had travelled in the United States. Kipling has, of course, left an account of this visit in his '' Letters of Travel." In a letter to Kipling which Twain wrote from Vancouver, when he was on his way around the world in 1895, he refers to their meeting at Elmira : It is reported that you are about to visit India. This has moved me to journey to that far country in order that I may unload from my conscience fldebt long due to you. Years ago you came from India to Elmira to visit me. It has always been my purpose to return that visit and that great compliment some day. I shall arrive next January, and you must be ready. I shall come riding my ayah with his tusks adorned with silver bells and ribbons, and escorted by a troop of native howdahs richly clad and mounted upon a herd of wild bungalows ; and you must be on hand with a few bottles of ghee, for I shall be thirsty. During the last South African War, Mark Twain's sympathies were always with the Boers. He had explained that his head was with the British, but his heart must remain with the Boers, who were fighting for their homes. Twain saw that the only thing for him to do was to remain silent, in spite of a " voice " which urged him to enter his protest in the Press. But in spite of this, Mark Twain cherished no hostility against Kipling, who held very different opinions on the great question. " I am not fond of all poetry," Twain remarked, *' but there's something in Kipling that appeals to me. I guess he's just about my level." He also once declared when he was at Florence, that he hoped Fate would bring Kipling there : " I would rather see him than any other man." Kipling, too, held a very high opinion of Mark Twain's genius, as the following extract from a letter written to 52 SOME ANECDOTES the well-known American publisher, Mr. Frank Double- day, clearly indicates : I love to think of the great and godlike Clemens. He is the biggest man you have on your side of the water by a d sight — Cervantes was a relation of his. In a letter to Mr. Doubleday written almost the same time (1903), we learn that Mark Twain gloried in the riotous strength and superabundant vigour of Kipling's verse. He read '' The Bell Buoy " over and over again — " my custom with Kipling's work " — and also remarked that a " bell buoy is a deeply impressive fellow being." Many a night at sea he had heard him call, sometimes in his pathetic and melancholy way, and sometimes with his strenuous and urgent note until he got his meaning — now he had the words ! He hoped some day " to hear the poem chanted or sung — with the bell buoy breaking out in the distance." We may not detail all the incidents regarding the linking up of Kipling and Twain ; even this path leads to monotony in the end. We may only mention that on June 26, 1907, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain and many other distinguished citizens assembled at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, to receive degrees. A perfect storm of applause greeted Mark Twain when he appeared clad in his robe of scarlet ; and the Oxford undergraduates wanted to know where he had hidden the Ascot Cup. A reference, of course, to Mark Twain's speech to the Pilgrims at the Savoy Hotel (June 25, 1907), in which he had mentioned how, on the day of his arrival in England, he had been pained by a newspaper placard which read : " Mark Twain Arrives : Ascot Cup Stolen." Rudyard Kipling was also a supreme favourite ; but it was Twain who was singled out for most of the yells and cheering of the undergraduates. After the ceremony of conferring the degrees ; Mark Twain, Lord Curzon, 53 RUDYARD KIPLING and Kipling, viewed the Oxford pageant from a box, and it was here that a folded slip of paper, on the outside of which " Not True " was written, was passed up to them. The paper opened read : East is East and West is West, And never the Twain shall meet, Kipling is remembered by his old neighbours in the Punjab as a man who was brimful of boisterous spirits, who laughed and joked the lifelong day. He was fond of practical joking. On one occasion he amused himself the whole evening, by showing the natives of Dharwal all the grotesque monsters on a set of magic lantern slides, illustrating Jack the Giant Killer, as authentic portraits of the Russian people, whose activity beyond Herat was then causing considerable alarm in Anglo- Indian circles. An American publisher who secured a story from Kipling, was a teetotaler to the verge of fanaticism, and looking through the story he was shocked to come upon a passage where the hero was served with a glass of sherry. He wrote to Kipling, pointing out the moral harm that might result from reading of such a depraved person, and requested him to substi- tute some non-intoxicating beverage for the harmful sherry. " Oh, all right," Kipling replied, " make it a glass of ' Blank's ' Baby Food. I see he advertises largely in your magazine." Of course he has no way of protecting himself from being forcibly made sponsor for anecdotes in the papers ; and the reader is cautioned against accepting as authentic any of those which appear in this chapter. Here is " an uncopyrighted anecdote " which passed the rounds of the American Press at the time when one could not pick up a paper without reading some story regarding Kipling : 54 SOME ANECDOTES Once when Rudyard Kipling was a boy he ran out on the yard-arm of a ship. " Mr. Kipling," called a scared sailor, " your boy is on the yard arm, and if he lets go he'll drown." " Ah," responded Mr. Kipling with a yawn, " but he won't let go." This incident also happened to Jim Fiske, Horace Walpole, Napoleon, Dick Turpin, Julius Caesar and the poet Byron. Every popular author has to face the autograph hunters, and during his last year of residence in America, Kipling was assailed on all sides by this particular breed of pesterer. He cofifided to Zangwill that he sent out two hundred circulars during this period, to the '' admir- ing crew who ranked him before Shakespeare," proposing that they should send him a donation for a charity in return for his signature.* Kipling continued, " then the floodgates — not of heaven — were opened." For weeks abuse rained in upon him, and "thief" seems to have been the mildest rebuke he received. At Vermont Kipling paid all his household bills by cheque. Many of these cheques were very small, and the shrewd Yankee tradesmen soon discovered that autograph hunters would pay much over face value for them, so quite a number did not turn up at the bank for payment. One shopkeeper obliged his " autograph " clients with a duplicate memorandum of the account. For example : a bill against Kipling for five pounds of cheese, accom- panied by an autograph cheque was a souvenir that commanded a good price. The consequence was, that when Kipling sent his bank book to be balanced, it invariably showed more to his credit than there should have been on its return. He was unable to account for the discrepancy, until one day he saw one of his cheques given for a case of bottled beer framed and hanging in a Boston book-shop. The first thing he did, when he returned to his home, was to burn his cheque book. * Pall Mall Magazine y September 1895. 55 RUDYARD KIPLING After that he insisted on paying his household bills in coin of the realm. Here is a story related by Brander Matthews in the American Outlook (January 14, 191 1) : Once when I was chatting with Rudyard Kipling about the principles of literary art, I chanced to tell him that I had pointed out to a class of college students the various masters of story-telling in whose footsteps he had trod, and by whose examples he had obviously profited. He smiled pleasantly and drawled out, " Why give it away ? Why not let them think it was just genius ? " The Liverpool Echo printed the following amusing experience : Kipling was staying in the hills in Simla, where all the lovely Anglo- Indian ladies reside in summer when it is too hot for them to endure the climate in the plains. One morning the lady at whose house he was a guest introduced him to a young and fair " grass widow." As the couple chatted amicably together whilst walking through the hills, Kipling remarked, " I suppose you can't help thinking of that poor husband of yours grilling down there ? " The lady gave him an odd look, he thought, and he realized why when he afterwards learnt that she was not a " grass widow " but a widow indeed. Here is a story which appeared in Tes or No (January 18, 1908), but it has been told of many celebrated people ; however, I give it for what it is worth : A young lady admirer of Kipling on meeting the famous writer was rather disappointed. " You 1 " she cried. " You — you are Rudyard Kipling." R. K. felt rather embarrassed, but managed to modestly murmur, " Yes." '' But I thought," she said, " I thought you were — oh, how shall I say it ? — something quite, quite different ! " " Oh, I am," responded Rudyard in a very confidential tone, " I am, madam ! Only, you see, this is my day off ! " When Kipling lived at Rottingdean, in the old house which faces the vicarage, he was annoyed by the driver of the local 'bus, who often pointed his whip when he encountered the poet, and announced in a 56 SOME ANECDOTES stentorian voice to his human freight : " Here we have Mr. Kipling, the soldier-poet." Kipling suffered this in silence, but things came to a crisis when the Jehu came into collision with his favourite tree, doing much damage to it. He wrote at once a vigorous letter of complaint to the 'bus owner who was landlord of the "White Horse Inn." Boniface laid the letter before the select company of his bar parlour, who, one and all advised calm indifference. Also, a man with an eye to the main chance, offered the landlord ten shillings in cash for the autograph letter. Both cash and advice were accepted. A second and stronger letter followed, and Boniface carried the auto- graph to a bookseller and demanded a pound for it, since the violence of the letter was quite double strength. The bookseller eagerly snapped it up, and the merry landlord warmed to the game, dreaming of more missives. But next day Kipling entered briskly and very wrathful. " Why don't I answer your letter, sir ? Why, I was hoping you'd send me a fresh one every day. They pay a deal better than 'bus driving." It is not surprising that an author such as Kipling, the greatest in his own particular art that the world of English letters has seen, should figure as the hero of a novel. But few are acquainted with this book which was crowned in 1906 by the Goncourt Academy. It was written by Jerome and Jean Tharaud, and entitled " Dingley, the Famous Writer." The book is an attack on British Imperialism, and a critic in Le Figaro claims that Dingley, the hero, is no other than Mr. Kipling. " Dingley," says this critic, condensing the plot, " is a genius and an immensely popular novelist. He has glorified English empire and colonialism. He has understood and delineated Oriental as well as Occidental character ; he has made the past live, and has interpreted ancient civilization to modern. In short, he has known success, fame, and glory." 57 RUDYARD KIPLING None the less, Dingley is dissatisfied. Dominated by the glamour of empire, he wishes to achieve in action something beyond mere writing : An accidental scene witnessed by him on the street decides his course. The British Empire, at that moment, is held in check and defied in South Africa by a mere handful of audacious and insolent Boers. The pride of England is wounded and humiliated, and all patriots are disheartened. Dingley happens to see how a recruiting sergeant secures two or three volunteers for the campaign after filling them with gin and extorting binding promises from them. These drunken, lazy, good-for-nothing vagrants, Dingley says to himself, when they recover self-control and find themselves in her Majesty's uniform, will be transformed into men, into soldiers of empire. The virtues and heroism of war will make noble creatures of them. What a fine subject for a book on war for empire ! The first few chapters of the new book are written at once in feverish haste, but Dingley determines to embark for South Africa and see the war for himself. His wife, a gentle, noble woman of French extraction, urges him to stay in England and take a more philosophical view of war, which degrades and brutalizes some, even if it elevates others. On the way out some of the seamy side of militarism is forced upon Dingley, but he ignores it, and imme- diately on arrival joins a detachment of troops which is in pursuit of a Boer commando. In the meantime, Mrs. Dingley forms at Cape Town a sincere friendship with a loyal Boer family, named Du Toit, whose eldest son, Lucas, however, has taken up arms against the British. Nothing further is known about Lucas, and his family fear that he has been taken prisoner. " Archie, son of his father, goes out at night to see an executed Boer rebel, and returns with a fever that threatens to be fatal. Dingley is hurriedly sent for, and the letter reaches him at a distance. The road is not safe, the fields are barren, deserted, and the badly dug graves of soldiers are on every hand. Dingley chances to fall into the hands of Lucas Du Toit, who, however, shows every kindness to the Imperialist and Boer-hating Englishman, thus heaping coals of fire upon his head. Dingley arrives too late ; his boy is dead." 58 ' M \ -i^^^i^ = o - .S 5 SOME ANECDOTES Shortly after this Lucas is captured, and although Dingley can save him from death, he refuses to help the rebel who had once been kind to him. The striking line and phrases in Kipling's verse have, as it may be expected, attracted many parodists ; and some years ago the papers were full of burlesques and skits on his work. Many readers will remember a little volume styled " All Expenses Paid " (Constable and Co., 1895) which contained some excellent parody and caricature of the poetry and style of the great ones in the literary world. The outline of this skit is as follows. A certain butcher of unusual aspirations and immense fortune devoted ten thousand pounds to taking a select party of minor poets to Parnassus. Messrs. Richard Le Gallienne and W. B. Yeats arranged the outing, and the company included Rudyard Kipling, William Watson, Arthur Symons and Francis Thompson ; and in truth all " stars " of the accursed race of poets who worshipped at the Bodley Head. How they started out and fore- gathered at the foot of Parnassus, is all chronicled with a refreshing irreverence towards the minor bards. Ascend- ing the resort of the Muses, they were led by Mercury before an inspiring gathering of the mighty dead, with Shakespeare in the chair, and Wordsworth, Shelley, and Chaucer well in the front. Adorned with a garland of crocuses, attired in robes of pure white, and seated on an ass similarly decorated and attired, they were led in order of merit before the master whose work was held to have most influenced their own. The limited circulation of the poets and poetesses continued without any notable incident till it came to the turn of Rudyard Kipling to go on tour, for the friend of Tommy Atkins declared in an undertone that he was tired of the whole mummery, that the beastly crocuses got in his eyes, that he felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to misbehave himself in some way or another. Happily he was prevailed upon to be pacific, but no expostulation from his chief would induce him to wear an ecstatic cast of countenance, though an expression of pleasure flitted over his face 59 RUDYARD KIPLING when the donkey stopped in front of Chaucer. And now the two extremes of English poetry confronted each other ! Before the Everlasting could speak Apollo sang with an army accent the verses here following : Pve criticized some mortals in my time, An^ some of ^em was great arC some was not ; There was some as couldn't jingle worth a dime. There was ^Omer, Billiam Shakespeare, Walter Scott : But for knockin* slang an^ potry into one. For futtin' pepper on our old emotions. It's certain sure you easy take the Bun, An* you play the Comb an* Paper with our notions I So ^ere^s to you, Lippy-Kippy,from the far United States, Where the white man spends the dollar and the Nigger wipes the plates ; ToiCve got your share d* crocuses, an' if the colour suits, YoiCre welcome^ Lippy-Kippy, you can bet your bloomin'' boots ! While these verses were being recited by Apollo in his best Cockney manner, the changes that swept over the face of Chaucer were rapid, but unforbidding. Before the song commenced he had seemed to be upon the point of engaging the Laureate of Pipeclay in conversation, but at its termination he buried his face in his purple mantle. Muttering to himself that the immortal was a " bigoted old buffer," Rudyard Kipling stirred the beast he bestrode into a continuation of his walk by the simple expedient of kicking his ribs. 60 CHAPTER V "THE BRUSHWOOD BOY" AND "THEY" " . Easy and contemptuous style : " The Cruise of the Cachalot American Bookman : Outline of "The Brushwood Boy " : " They " ; Letters on "They " : " The Disturber of the Traffic" : Kipling's representation of mental moods : Moonshine in " At the End of the Passage " : " The Finest Story in the World " : Kipling a fallen idol : The Bellman of Minneapolis takes Kipling to task : Americans refuse to forgive Kipling for not dying in New York. There was an old, belief that in the embers Of all things their primordial form exists y A7id cunning alchemists Could re-create the rose with all its members From its own ashes, but without the bloom^ Without the lost -perfume. CHAPTER V " THE BRUSHWOOD BOY " AND " THEY " In estimating Kipling's genius and his influence, one must take stock of the gear and equipment with which he started out into the triumphant sunlight of public favour. His imperialism is a thing apart ; it has no bearing on his pure literary gifts : moreover fame came to him on the tide of popularity which greeted " The Story of the Gadsbys." This book may be said to mark the turning-point in his career. And I am inclined to think that one of the chief secrets of Kipling's power and success is to be found in the now famous Envoi to that unpretentious little book ; it is the last line with its almost brutal frankness that holds the secret : " He travels the fastest who travels alone." As the theme of the story was marriage with its inevitable peck of cares, the line has been looked upon as a somewhat rough and ready warning, half serious and half mocking, to those about to consider the institution which is declared by St. Paul " to be honourable among all men." Was it a note of warning pure and simple, or should we look upon it as a stepping-stone that one must mount to sum up the man and his creed ? We must never lose sight of the fact that Kipling's style is always easy and con- temptuous ; it might be likened to a torpedo-boat, cutting her way through a North Sea gale by the mere force of her screw-propellers. The Kipling we know of ever travels alone. It was so 63 RUDYARD KIPLING in his early days in India, it is more so now. Like almost all Anglo-Saxon writers, Kipling has a message and is more or less a moralist. He believes in a life of vigorous action as a cure-all. " Stand to your work and be wise — certain of sword and pen," reads one of his well-known lines. That is Kipling all over. He has no sympathy with the man who is not certain about himself, or the man who cannot travel alone. To Mr. F. T. Bullen who asked him to contribute an introduction to " The Cruise of the Cachalot " he once wrote : Some rather interesting experiences have taught me that the best way of making a man hate me for life is to meddle in any way with his work ... If the book is good, it will go, and if not, nothing will make it stir . . . All the men who want to stick a knife into me would stick it into you as soon as they saw my name prefacing your book. Bitter experience has taught me that that kind of thing doesn't pay — which was only another way of saying " He travels the fastest who travels alone." The first thing that strikes one about him is his complete independence. This rather surly attitude on the part of an author who was not flaming amazement on us, who was. not blazing a trail in literature, would almost be an impertinence. But Kipling's gross, im- placable creed breaks through our perplexity ; we are carried breathless over all his paganism by the very way in which he ruthlessly breaks all the laws and traditions of the art of letters. He is the old gipsy man of litera- ture ; he knows no laws ; what he wants he simply takes ; and if you don't like his methods and were so bold as to tell him so, he would most certainly tell you " lump them." He is not considering you or anyone else ; he does not care a fig for your *' college educations " — for the most part " colleges are places where the pebbles are polished and the diamonds are dimmed." He is only considering how to get to the goal he has marked out — to be master of the elastic, elusive, and delightful English 64 ''THE BRUSHWOOD BOY" language. He is following in the tracks of the muzzy- Scotsman, the shopkeeping pamphleteer, the gaoled tinker, the German Jew and the French thief — all searchers after the essential word. He is a prince, a vagabond, a highwayman or what you choose to call him, but you cannot afford to ignore him. The American Bookman comments on the barrack- yard "Attention ! d your eyes'' style with which Kipling girds on his literary harness : " I will write what I please. I will not alter a line. If it please me to do so I will refer to her Gracious Majesty — bless her ! — as the little fat widow of Windsor, and fill the mouth of Mulvaney with filth and oaths. I will not * meet people.' If I am on ship-board and prefer passing my time in the smoking-room drinking Scotch whiskey I will do so. I will not truckle to old women or fawn upon fools. Here is my work. You may take it or leave it. Oest a 'prendre ou a laisser ! I am playing off my own bat. I am travelling alone — always alone." This attitude is of vital interest as being in a measure the keynote of his work. It has another interest. People have invited and received personal rebuffs and gone away crying : ' Snob ! Cad ! ' Snob ! Of course, he is a snob ! So, madame or monsieur, is any great man who does not hang gaping and breathless upon your twaddle ; who does not accede gaily to your request that he send you an autograph collection of his works ; who does not undertake to find a publisher for your own or your daughter's manuscript. A snob ! Certainly. With all his fire and his energy, his wilful heathenism (bravely blatant in that wonderful series of children's short stories beginning with " Just-So Stories " and ending with " Puck of Pook's Hill " and " Rewards and Fairies "), his boyish enthusiasm for effective force, his periodical fits of political fanaticism, and his lyric delight in sound, smell and colour, and all the gear that goes with the far-flung battle-lines of our Empire, Rudyard Kipling eludes us. Even in his gorgeous and mighty songs of our soldiers there is often something shadowy and intangible. And I suppose there is not a shadow of a doubt that he means there should be. He seems to be a compound of a Benedictine Monk, a Crusader, and a Buccaneer. E 65 RUDYARD KIPLING A good example of Kipling's curious mixture of severe and yet sensitive art is the study in dreams entitled " The Brushwood Boy." It is probable that everybody who is at all a constant dreamer has had at least one experience of an event, or a sequence of circumstances which have come to his mind in sleep, being subsequently realized in the material world. But, after all, if one reflects, this is not at all remarkable ; it would be stranger still if this fulfilment did not occasionally happen, since our dreams are as a rule concerned with people whom we know and places with which we are familiar when we return from the " City of Sleep." Kipling in his " Brushwood Boy " has grasped this fact, and in his hero, George Cottar, we have a study at once penetrating and charming. We follow his progress from nursery days to the period immediately before his marriage, in a series of fantastic dreams which range side by side with his everyday life. These dreams are always connected with the Brushwood Girl. In the first place, a princess from an old illustrated edition of Grimm is seized upon as the girl of his dreams, but after a visit to Oxford, where he comes into direct contact with the real Brushwood Girl at a performance of " Pepper's Ghost," he " shamelessly " discards the princess from the fairy story, and either consciously, or subconsciously instals the " little girl dressed all in black." He has dazzling adventures at home and in the Far East with the dream girl, and, interwoven with his early days in the Indian Army, Kipling has given us the incom- municable stuff from which dreams are made, the ghost-whispers which come out of the darkness, and return again to the darkness. But one dream with variations comes intermittently to George Cottar for twenty years or so, and each time the Brushwood Girl appears to grow more real. As the dream continues to recur, the power of reality becomes so contagious and overpowering that the 66 "THE BRUSHWOOD BOY" reader is forced to conclude that the physical attraction which the dream-girl wields over George Cottar warns him away from all other women. When Cottar returns to England on furlough, he finds the Brushwood Girl of his dreams in Miriam Lacy. Everybody who is familiar with Kipling's writings will put this story in a favourable place ; besides being a wonderful excursion into the realms of fantasy, it is sealed with his seal, and is eloquent with his gospel. Here we have for a hero the author's ideal of manhood : the clean-living, decisive, headlong, headstrong English- man : and in a background of silence and poetry lurks the Brushwood Girl, singing in our ears the haunting refrain of the " City of Sleep." In " They," one of the most wonderful of Kipling's short stories, he has treated a most fascinating subject : the souls of dead children. To judge from " Wireless " and " The House Surgeon," Kipling is rapidly becoming a kind of prose Browning. The idea of the story is explained in the versified prologue " The Return of the Children," little mites who found Heaven too large and cold for their immature souls, and who could not find any joy in the harps and crowns, nor " the cherubs' dove-winged races." Eventually release is obtained through " Mary the Mother," and they return to earth. Such ghosts could not return to their parents, for ordinary people would not perceive them, and if they did, they would be too terrified at their reappearance in astral bodies to receive and cherish them once more. It is natural that " They " should be attracted by the blind woman. Her empty spinster life, her great love for children, and the wonderful second sight with which all blind people are blessed, are things which have taught this mystical woman to understand ; so God sends the souls of dead children who wanted to come homeward, to her. 167 RUDYARD KIPLING I cannot do better than quote two letters which appeared in ^,P.^s Weekly * regarding this story, which is certainly very abstruse. The Blind Woman is one of the most mystical characters in Kipling's tales, far more so than " The Brushwood Boy " or Miriam. H.G. writes : I think the key to this story is to be found in the little poem *' The Return of the Children," which precedes it. This seems to suggest that the children were not dream-children, but, to use a very expressive term, " revenants," i.e. little child-ghosts who, feeling lonely and unhappy amid the splendours of heaven, had been graciously permitted to return in spirit to the earth they had left and to the earthly joys so dear to them — childish fun and play, and human love and sympathy. They were attracted to the blind lady's home by her great love of children and her passionate longing for their society. Moreover, this beautiful, secluded, old-world place was a veritable earthly paradise for children. There are various incidents in the story which seem to discredit the idea that these little beings were dream-children, for one thing the fact that they were visible to others besides the dreamer herself. Her visitor had caught glimpses of them before he met her at all, and they were so real to him that it was not until his third visit that he discovered that they were not creatures of flesh and blood. It was the little girl's caress that revealed the truth to him in a flash. The " little brushing kiss " on the palm of his hand was, as he tells us, " a fragment of the mute code devised very long ago " — a love-token from a long-lost little daughter. In a moment of joy and sorrow intermingled he realized what these children were, and the " woman who could see the naked soul " at once became aware that he understood at last. Here is another view of the story : The children are not " dream-children " but little ghosts. Anyone who has lost a child may meet its little spirit in the blind woman's house. She, childless but a lover of children, is permitted to feel and hear them near her, and she is surprised when she finds that her visitor can see them. She knows then that he has a right to come to her house. If they are not ghosts, how is it that the poor woman who loses a child while the visitor is in the blind woman's house can afterwards see and hear the children ? Her own is among them. Or, if they are merely dream-children, what is the explanation of the fear felt by the man who is rude to the blind woman * February 6, 1914. t Photo by\ [Hy. Dixon &■ Son RUDYARD KIPLING By the Hon. John Collier "THE BRUSHWOOD BOY" over some question of rent, and who refuses to enter the house ? If I remember right (I have not the book near me), at the end of the story a little child's ghost kisses the visitor, and he recognizes it for one he has lost. If this explanation is not the true one, and the empty fancy that " They " are dream-children born of the blind woman's dreams is correct, I shall feel as if the story had lost all its charm. It is, anyhow, so slight and diaphanous that interpretations seem only to shatter it. The outline of the story is simply this : A man who has lost a very dearly loved little one, for whom he is always fretting, during a motor-car run discovers a weather-worn Elizabethan house at the end of a side way track, which at first appeared to lead to nowhere in particular. Here he meets the owner of the House Beautiful, a childless woman who has gathered about her the souls of dead children. The garden seems to be haunted by many vague, little melancholy things, and the stranger only dimly com- prehending that he is tampering with some of the hidden laws of nature, tries to allure these spirit children. Moreover — a most pitiful twilight scene — the man finds his own dead child. Then he knows that he must not ever return again, for the blood-bond would only tend to break the communion between the blind woman and " They." It was only through her perfect and unhuman love that the Lost Children were permitted to return. A brilliant little survey of " They " from the aspect of a symbolist appeared in a New York paper shortly after the story was published in Scribners^ Magazine (August 1904). I cannot refrain from quoting this in full: The last of the Rosicrucians was sitting in his favourite corner of the library, reading the latest scientific news, when I broke in on his seclusion. " Have you read ' They ' ? " I asked. " I have." " What do you think of it ? " " It is the most wonderful story Rudyard Kipling has ever written — the most elemental and the most artistic." " But what does it mean ? " 69 RUDYARD KIPLING " It means as much or as little as you have the capacity to understand. Moreover, judging from explanations I have heard, it is a test of the purity of your thought." " Don't be Delphic," I protested. " Remember that this is New York in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, if your knowledge of Trismegistus or Albertus Magnus can help you to explain ' They,' I'll try to listen patiently." " But you must tell me where your difficulty lies. To me the little tale is wonderfully simple." " But what is it all about ? " " If I explain," said the Rosicrucian, " will you promise not to quote Byron and ask me to explain my explanation ? " I gave the necessary pledge, and our club mystic proceeded to expound the mystery. " Like all tales dealing with elemental emotions, * They ' is capable of as many interpretations as it has readers. For his text the poet — in this story he is more the poet than the author — has once more gone to the confessions of Agur, the son of Jakeh. Of the * three things that are never satisfied, yea four things ' that say * it is not enough,' he has chosen two, the grave and the childless woman. You who know the world know that on one hand it is full of mourners for children who went down to untimely graves and on the other with lonely women who mourn with Jephthah's daughter because they are not mothers in Israel." " Then ' They ' are the souls of dead children ? " I asked. " Exactly. And the mother-love of a childless woman has gathered them about her. To make this possible the poet has drawn on his won- derful knowledge of mysticism to build a phantasy in which he rights an eternal wrong — in which he makes the victims of the grave satisfy the yearnings of the childless." " But what is the meaning of all that talk about colours and ' the Egg Itself ' ? " " My son," said the mystic benignly, " if you have never seen the colours or the Egg you could no more understand an explanation of them than you could understand the properties of a fourth dimension or the functions of a sixth sense. Suffice it to say that the colours and the Egg belong to the most esoteric mysteries of Oriental philosophy and that those who have knowledge of them have met at the sources of life. Only by ascribing to his hero and heroine this knowledge could the poet give them the intimacy that made the story possible." " But what is the story ? " " It is this. A man who has lost a dearly loved child for which he is ever mourning stumbles on the home of a childless woman whose house 70 "THE BRUSHWOOD BOY" is haunted by the souls of children. While only partly understanding, he tries to make friends with the children, and the one that finally comes to him is his own lost child* Then he understands and knows that he must come no more to the House Beautiful. Neither may he continue to mourn, for the one he has lost is playing an unguessed part in the scheme of things and is happy and making another happy. The story is one of solace for the mourning." " But all that is pure superstition," I protested. " Quite true ; and is not the world as full of superstition to-day as ever it was ? In taking a bit of superstition and giving it an up-to-date setting Kipling has once more shown his wonderful knowledge of life. He knows that the man gifted to see visions can see them from a motor-car as readily as from a hermit's cell, and he knows that the most exact scientific knowledge can be found cheek by jowl with the most dreamy mediae valism. If the heroine of the story avoided having iron on her hearth lest the little spirit should not come to her, you can still find thousands in rural England who use iron to fend them from spirits. You may remember that Grant Allen made striking use of this superstition in his little story of * The Round Tower.' Taken as a whole the story is one of exquisite mysticism in an aggressively up-to-date setting." " But what is the use of it all ? " " A sufficient answer should be that it is beautiful ; but if you seek for more you must ask of those who mourn little children or yearn for them." This closed our interview, and as I passed out to the smoking-room I remembered that the poet is himself a mourner and that perhaps the kiss on the hand given by the spirit-child might have been part of a secret code like that of the story — but this is passing the decent bounds of analytical criticism. Kipling has studied his children as he has studied his sailormen, his animals, his soldiers. One of the most beautiful of all his child studies is the " Story of Muhammad Din," and it reflects the author's genuine love of the little ones. In this pathetic sketch we are introduced to the very small son of Imam Din, the writer's " Khitmatgar." The child requests the loan of a polo ball from the narrator, which leads to a friendship which is carried on with great formality on both sides. The man looks forward to meeting his solemn little friend, and when the child sickens and dies he is greatly grieved, and would have given much to have avoided 71 RUDYARD KIPLING the parents carrying the frail little body to the burying- ground. There are few of us who can follow Muhammad Din to the grave (" respectfully, and at a distance, that we may not intrude,") and not feel a little as though some- thing were tugging at our heartstrings the while. Have we not all at some time understood the magic of those little hands that fashion houses from the dust, and gardens from dead flowers ? The loss of such a little one is a bitter thing in life, and Kipling has said himself : " People say that that kind of wound heals. It doesn't. It only skins over." At first blush one would not think to discover in Kip- ling's stories a certain suggestion of womanly tenderness. But there is an exquisitely delicate subcurrent which is suggestive of the feminine soul in all his child-sketches. There are few living authors who could write anything to equal " Baa, Baa, Black sheep," " His Majesty the King," or " They." He who seeks to disparage or laugh at such work reveals a stratum of very coarse moral clay in his cosmos. Only women [Kipling says] understand children properly ; but if a mere man keeps very quiet and humbles himself properly, and refrains from talking down to his superiors, the children will sometimes be good to him and let him see what they think about the world. The following lines which have not been published before deserve a place in this chapter. They were written in a copy of " Just-So Stories," which Kipling presented to a little friend : When skies are grey instead, of blue. With clouds which come to dishearten. And things go wrong as they sometimes do In lifers little kindergarten. Pray, my child, don't weep or wail, And don't, don't take to tippling, But cheer your soul with a little tale By neighbour Rudyard Kipling. 72 "THE BRUSHWOOD BOY" II What shall be said of " The Disturber of Traffic ? " It is alarming indeed suddenly to chance upon this story after reading the poem " To the True Romance," which stands as a prelude to " Many Inventions." In this awful story a man in a lighthouse, who begins to see streaks in the water, goes mad, and conceives the notion that the streaks are due to shipping traffic in the straits. He determines to lead off the ships in another direction, and with the aid of buoys and red lights, he conveys the impression that the channel is not navigable. Kipling's mental process, one is bound to confess, seems to run at its best in the abnormal. In some tales his antics are as wild as the devil's ; he dances through the pages like a mad magician. His best work has been done in moments of cerebral stimulation that do not come to more soberly constructed men. He is clever in the exposition of the gruesome — " The Mark of the Beast " is possibly one of the most ghastly death-dance tales in our literature. If Oscar Wilde had written it (but I am afraid he could not), it would have been paraded as the limit of the " ghastly artistic." " The Mark of the Beast " and that other ugly story, " At the End of the Passage," were written before Kipling was out of his teens. But Kipling is cleverest of all in his exposition of madness.* He has the grip and the power in the psychology of insanity that he lacks in the psychology of the sane. One can see this by the flashes of insanity in " The Man who Would be King " or " The Madness of Private Ortheris." No one can deny the brilliancy of his vivid representation of mental moods ; whether you want it or not, you have the full horror of these moods * See interesting article by Ernest Newman in the Free Review, December i, 1893. 73 RUDYARD KIPLING impressed upon you as with hot irons. Witness this passage from " The Light that Failed " — '' The mind was quickened and the revolving thoughts ground against each other, as millstones grind when there is no corn between." Note, too, the roving craze or madness working for ever on the overburdened brain of the leading character in this novel. Often his work contains a good deal of hasty, dogmatic impressionism, but his literary power seems to pull him through in the end. For even in such a tale as " At the End of the Passage " there is a good deal of pure moon- shine. Perhaps, however, it is ill work quarrelling with a man for now and then flying in the face of facts when he thinks the pulse of the reader may be quickened by subterfuge. The gist of the tale lies in the fact that a camera is applied to the eyes of a dead man lying in a dark rooniy with the astonishing result of getting a picture of the corpse's retina. The image on the retina is so horrible that the photographer destroys the negative, and refuses to speak about it. It has been hinted that phantoms of the brain hurried the man to his death, but even if the netlike expansion of the optic nerve retained any impressions after death, it would need special preparations in the way of lighting to gain any sort of picture with a camera. It is much more likely that the photographer saw that his efforts had been without any result, and to evade ridicule smashed the blank plate under his heel. There is admirable art in " The Finest Story in the World." Note the delicate manner in handling this tale so that the figure of the poor, queer bank-clerk — Oh, that accursed race of bank clerks ! — always hovers between the squalor of a Brixton public-house and the land of tumultuous dreams ; the story always wavers in the suggestive. The psychological solution of the brilliancy of Kipling's work in this direction is that he is subject to moments 74 "THE BRUSHWOOD BOY" of intense cerebral activity, during which he is gifted with a certain psychic comprehension of mental phases. There has been some difference of opinion as whether Kipling's later work sustains his reputation. He would be a bold critic who would try to answer that question off-hand and with sure judgment. But it is certain that Kipling is no longer the idol that he was. The turning- point in his popularity was, I think, reached when he fell upon the " flannelled fool " and " muddied oaf " and scourged them with the heat of his rhetoric. Because he, like Gallio, " cared for none of these things," and spoke with scorn of those dullards, who never even play either game, his protest was called an " insult to national sport." A sport that largely consists of smoking cheap cigarettes and consuming whiskey and soda needed the virile censure which Kipling hurled at it. Then again, he had dared in rather rough and blustering language to tell the people who came " of the blood " a few bare truths about their military and naval inefficiency. It was after these things that the Kipling " bloomings " lost their first bloom. Even the Americans who were so very sharply bitten by " Kipling fever " at one time are now joining in the chorus of censure. The following passage from the Bellman (Minneapolis, September 12, 1 914) cannot be accepted as an impartial judgment, but it does show that Kipling is no longer elevated to the rank of a demi-god in the United States : " MR. KIPLING'S FEEBLE EFFORT " During the discussion in Canada regarding reciprocity with the United States, which ended in the vote to reject the friendly trade overtures made by this country, Rudyard Kipling did not endear himself to the American people by his officious and contemptuous attack upon them. His appeal to the Canadians, in which he spoke of their neighbours as tricky aliens with whom closer trade relations would assuredly lead to contamination and disloyalty, was the talk of a bitter partisan, who, while anxious to sell his wares to Americans and very glad to derive the profit therefrom, was unwilling to give the same privilege to the Canadian farmer. 75 RUDYARD KIPLING Now, when Britain needs the goodwill of the United States, men like Kipling and H. G. Wells, who also has written scathingly and unjustly of America, are anxious to appear exceedingly friendly and cordial. Those Americans who are not possessed of short memories much prefer to receive assurances of British regard from sources less open to suspicion of insincerity than these, and there are a sufficient number of them, uncontaminated by previous displays of ill-mannered prejudice, to preserve intact the tradi- tional good feeling between the two countries, which is undoubtedly genuine. In the present emergency, therefore, it would be better if Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling, and H. G. Wells confined their attempts to influence public opinion to their own countrymen. While Mr. Kipling's war poem, " For All We Have and Are," is not, of course, addressed to the American people, yet, being published and copyrighted in America, it is presumably supposed to exert some influence upon sentiment in this country. If such presumption be justified, it is fair to say that it will fail of its intention. The poem, if it can be called such, is a most lamentable fall from the sustained spiritual level of the inspired " Recessional," which is worthy to rank with Kipling's best work. It might be imagined that, under stress of England's present solemn and great emergency, a poet might rise to sublime heights in verse that would stir and uplift the very soul of the world. But this example is Kipling at his worst ; a mediocre produc- tion, containing no thought that reaches above the commonplace, and set to an easy, jog-trot, jingling metre that would admirably suit one of Mother Goose's famous melodies. though all we made defart, The old commandments stand. In patience keep your heart ; In strength lift up your hand. Any fourth-rate poet, any really good verbal plumber, can write yards of such verses, and would feel adequately rewarded by seeing his production printed in the poet's corner of the village newspaper* ^here was a crooked man. Who went a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence Against a crooked stile, — is equally good poetry. Evidently the occasion is too great for Mr. Kipling's somewhat winded Pegasus to overtake, and it remains for some English poet of lesser reputation to sound the true uplifting note of British inspiration in this hour of solemn national import. 76 "THE BRUSHWOOD BOY'' Although the writer of the above article is somewhat blinded hy wrath and prejudice, it is, nevertheless, interesting to see how Kipling's latest poem was regarded in America. I think that the Press of England and America are agreed that Kipling's " For All we Have and Are " is probably the poorest poem ever written by a man of genius. It might have been written by Tennyson in one of his most stupid moods. Kipling has frequently attacked the United States. In San Francisco his name is anathema, and they still discuss his visit to the city and the sweeping misstate- ments regarding Californian life and customs he gave to the world in " From Sea to Sea." A well-known American professor once remarked that Kipling was born in India, came to his promise in America, and lost himself in England. On the other hand Kipling has declared that Americans have never forgiven him for not dying in New York ; and all their adverse criticism is the aftermath of his one mistake in life. 77 CHAPTER VI "FROM SEA TO SEA" The struggles of genius in quest of bread and cheese : The morbid side of Kipling : Chicago and its " vermilion hall " : The Review of the Week and " From Sea to Sea " : Holbrook Jackson on Kipling : The shirker and the loafer : Kipling's desire to preach : " The Benefactors " in the ISIational Review. i Not skilly nor books, but life itself is the foundation of all education. CHAPTER VI " FROM SEA TO SEA " The struggles and artifices of genius in quest of its bread and cheese are frequently a somewhat affecting spectacle ; and we may well understand Kipling's reluctance to issue his old newspaper work in volume form. But in 1900 he decided on this course in order to check the enterprise of the thievish publishers who roved the high seas of literature in search of loot. It was an evil day that forced Kipling who had written ballads salt with the brine of the sea, and stories salt with immortal tears, to turn up the files of old Indian papers to present a dish made of pepper, mustard, and vinegar, to a critical public. It was good fortune that sent him to see the cities and learn the temper of many people in his early days, but it was bad luck to be forced to publish the impressions of youth many years afterwards. The frantic grabbing for the saleable " goods," the task always before him of turning these impressions into readable matter at so much a column for English people in India, deprives this work of much of the author's magic. Of course the compulsion of having to serve up " chunks of life " without much reflection was not without its advantages ; it kept the raw material in his mind, and gave him a great store to draw on and work up into the finished product of such volumes as " Kim " or " The Seven Seas." In the two volumes comprising " From Sea to Sea," which might be called " Kipling's Odyssey," there is the realism of the penny dreadful as well as the reflections F 81 RUDYARD KIPLING of an elegant writer, with all the airs and graces of prose at his command. At times Kipling seems to take a fiendish delight in morbid, bizarre and repulsive detail. The interview with the undertaker at Omaha, in which Kipling dwells upon the mysteries of embalming the dead, is fitter for the columns of the Police Budget than a noteworthy- volume of travel. The general impression produced after reading these nightmare notes is one of disgust, and it reads no better for being garnished with a vulgar and flashy scholarship. Again, take the description of pig-sticking and the shambles of Chicago : the mixture is worse than medicinal, and cannot be taken without a grimace. He leads us through the slums of the City of Dreadful Night in company of the Calcutta police, and shows us a herd of fighting, drinking swine running down a steep place to their doom. The material in this chapter impresses the reader with one idea : that it is a terrible thing to be a journalist ; how it must warp the soul of a man to bring to every petty adventure the journalistic eye, ever bent upon the business aspect of them ; what a distorted vision of all things must in the end abide with him. What shall be said of Kipling's sketch of how he struck Chicago, and the description of how the cattle are killed in that city ? It is alarming, indeed, suddenly to chance upon such a plutonian nightmare, and I defy the lord of dreams to send any more ghastly death-dance to haunt our mortal sleep. Kipling as the painter of such blood scenes owes his success to the fact that, while we had at that time thrust personal physical warfare almost out of our own lives, there was still enough primitive hellishness in us to leave us fascinated with the recitals of torture. How far cattle-slaughter is a legitimate subject for art, and how far a writer may go in his dependence 82 "FROM SEA TO SEA'' upon that ineradicable instinct which makes suffering interesting to us, are questions not easily to be answered with precision ; but there can be no question that Kipling carries the passion too far. He does not even try to soothe the tiger-instinct in us that makes us read the noisome detail of this chapter with interest. He introduces no feeling of pity ; the soul of the reader is seared and there is nothing to heal. He seems to delight in the mere portrayal of the suffering of the cattle. Take as one or two examples out of many, his description of how the pigs are suspended by their legs on a kind of overhead railway of death, while " a red man with a knife " jauntily slits their throats, and the blood afterwards falls like heavy tropical rain. Or the flippant way he speaks of how the terrified animals " shrieked and called on their mothers " when they caught sight of the big kitchen sink that was blood red. Interested as we are in the descriptions, we feel that our humanity is being debased. Every noisome detail is drawn out and emphasized : " the pig men were spattered with blood, the cow butchers were bathed in it. . . . The blood ran in muttering gutters . . . and the stench of it in the nostrils bred fear." The introduction of the " embodiment of the city of Chicago " in the form of a woman in this " vermilion hall " is a bizarre experiment. We are told that women came sometimes to see this ghastly spectacle, and Kipling describes an encounter with a young woman with scarlet lips and the " attire of a harlot " (to use the words of the author of the Proverbs) who looked upon these things with hard, bold eyes and was not ashamed. Part of a review of " From Sea to Sea " which appeared in the Review of the Week (March 24, 1900) is here quoted that the reader may judge the prevalent attitude of the Press on the publication of these volumes : To read these two volumes on end is very like taking a great overdose of a narcotic or a stimulant which we have accustomed ourselves to take 83 RUDYARD KIPLING without harm in small doses. We are used to taking our newspaper poison in small doses ; it may, like tobacco, divert our attention from the uneasiness of digesting our breakfast ; it may serve to prevent the pangs of thinking during an enforced respite, on a railway journey for example, from work or play. Here are two volumes of newspaper articles, " bright," " smart," " snappy," and " brainy " newspaper articles, in a lump ; and the effect of taking them in a lump is as though a man should smoke forty cigars or drink forty cups of tea at a sitting. We advise our readers to be content with two or three of them at a time. Mr. Kipling was, indeed, the very paragon of journalists : not one of his cleverest pupils, not the late G. W. Steevens, nor Mr. Winston Churchill can come near him in the art of serving up a raw impression of the outwardness of things, and decking out a guess at their inwardness with every circumstance of plausibility. The volumes are full of descriptions laboured to the fullest limits of the cheap picturesque ; the flights of cheapness, in cheap, fine writing, rise to the very ceiling ; and when Mr. Kipling wishes to be emphatic — and, alas ! he wishes it often — he uses the word " hell " in the manliest way : we have never before come upon it so often except in a tract. But for all the glaring defects in these two volumes, Mr. Kipling is a great man, and they are relieved by many good things, by many things finely observed. For the beginning of Mr. Kipling's " Odyssey " we care very little ; the " Letters of Marque," as he calls them, deal with his wanderings in Raj- putana. They are full of information of the kind which clogs the mind with details of very little value ; and the best of it is the appreciative account of the manner in which Englishmen devote their lives to native States, and the good work they do, and occasional information about native customs. There are many descriptions of scenery, of cities living and dead, and of palaces ; they are, for the most part, like ohe another, and one suffers the boredom of the sightseer. At this stage in his wanderings, too, he writes of what he sees with the journalistic straining of the note in the rhetorical effort to impress almost continuous racking of the language for the striking word. We grow very tired, too, of the details of his journeys, and of the frequent thin humour with which they are told. " From Sea to Sea," written two years later, shows a great advance. Mr. Kipling had got a firmer grip on things, and a greater power of handling them. The faults of the journalist are fewer, and the good things are more numerous. Possibly, too, the new things that he saw impressed him more deeply than the things of India, to which he was used, and the reflec- tions which he gives of his impressions are therefore more vivid. His wanderings in Burmah, the Straits Settlements, are genuinely interesting in small doses — and the horror and loathing with which Canton and its inhabitants inspired him read entirely genuine and impressive. His account 84 "FROM SEA TO SEA" of Japan, again, is very good reading ; and we feel that he probably drew from his stay in that country more profit than from all the rest of his wanderings. When Mr. Kipling tells us of America he grows indeed delightful. That Americans will find him delightful we have very little hope ; we think it a good thing that he is in South Africa far from his Vermont home, and we fancy that the West of that great continent will not be trodden by him for some time. Coming from Anglo-Indian society, in which manners have not perished, and fresh from the dignity of the East, he found the customs of the average Western American disgusting. He sets forth, and falls foul of their spitting, shooting and drinking, their conceit, self- assertiveness and casualness, with all the vigour of an entirely honest and admirable indignation. He tells us little that we have not heard before, but he drives it home with amazing force. His disquisition on the first and last principles of American politics drives many more nails into the coffin of that ruinous sophism, imported from France and worked up in Manchester, that the masses are the people ; and his conclusions are summed up in the words : " Scores of men have told me with no false pride that they would as soon concern themselves with the public affairs of the city or State as rake muck." His description of the persons who do concern themselves with these public affairs is as trenchant as it is lucid. He shows an extraordinary ability for pumping people, or rather, for turning on the tap and letting the American empty himself ; man after man comes to him and lays bare, almost with ostentation, the moral nakedness of the land ; and he even extracts from the female typewriter her honest feeling about the work which emancipates her from dependence on man and makes her a free woman : " Yes, I don't care. I hate it — I hate it — I hate it, and you needn't look so ! " The Ethiopian in the process of changing his skin impresses him no more than the popular preacher ; he finds him the Ethio- pian still, a savage, the huhshi, the woolly one. At a popular church in Chicago he chanced upon " a revelation of barbarism complete," a preacher who " exploited " his God " very much as a newspaper reporter would exploit a foreign potentate " ; with " a voice of silver and with imagery borrowed from the auction-room, he built up for his hearers a heaven on the lines of Palmer House (but with all the gilding real gold and all the plate-glass diamond), and set in the centre of it a loud-voiced, argumen- tative, and very shrewd creation that he called God," a veritable apotheosis of the business man ; and he sums up this business religion : " Yet that man, with his brutal gold and silver idols, his hand-in-pocket, cigar-in- mouth, and hat-on-the-back style of dealing with the sacred vessels, would count himself spiritually quite competent to send a mission to convert the Indians." 8s RUDYARD KIPLING Vigorously as he denounces their faults, he praises their virtues with an even greater vigour. Their patriotism above everything seems to have touched him. " They believe in their land and its future, and its honour and its glory, and they are not ashamed to say so. From the largest to the least runs this same proud, passionate conviction, to which I take off my hat and for which I love them." Perhaps some of the remarks in the above review are not very original ; it is very hard to say anything original about genius, and still harder to say anything original about such a many-sided man as Kipling. But these sidelights on the man, culled from the Press, will convince many readers that he certainly is a variation from the ordinary type, and variation often implies excess of psychic comprehension. It is to such men that we owe the inspiring spectacle of human individuality ; it is not for commonplace people like ourselves to rush in, or break the fetters of convention ; we leave that to such sturdy specimens of individuality as Rudyard Kipling. As Kipling once remarked, the average Englishman has a tendency to drop into a certain groove and stop there without thinking about the desirability of getting out. " There exists," he says, " an England which, ruined by excess of comfort, has gone to sleep and, because it snores loudly, believes that it is thinking." If there is one kind of person whom we ought to reverence and admire more than any other, it is the man with an excess of organic force, who comes to point out that things are not what they seem, and that the soul of a nation is too vast and too many-sided to be cramped for ever in the fetters of convention. If I have succeeded in carrying the honest reader with me thus far, he will surely be kind enough to come a little further in my company, and to accept without further argument, that Kipling, the invincibly contrariwise, is also in his own way to be admired as an independent effusion of nature. That Kipling is a genius nobody needs to be told, and even his most vehement detractors will not dispute him 86 "FROM SEA TO SEA" the title. Unfortunately for himself he has pushed his genius very hard in the political world, and at times he becomes so obviously forced that one feels a momentary annoyance at him. These, hov^ever, are rare moments ; and when he means to make real magic he succeeds nine times out of ten. One cannot mistake the passionate conviction in his writings — conviction at a white heat of emotion. It is not necessary to agree with Kipling's point of view — though it is now the predominant one in the Empire — to recognize the intensity of feeling which pours itself into his appeals to the British race. As Holbrook Jackson has remarked : There is nothing blatant or shoddy about such aspirations, and the poet is equally conscious that such an Empire as ours has not been brought into being without error : Tea, though we sinned, — and, our rulers went from righteousness. Deep in all dishonour though we stained our garment's hem. Oh, he ye not dismayed ; Though we stumbled and we strayed, We were led by evil counsellors — the Lord shall deal with them. Much of Kipling's verse and prose is devoted to a passionate protest ; frankly, fearlessly denouncing the shirker and the loafer ; and the rich loafer he despises more than the poor loafer. Kipling looks upon any man who withholds his service from the Empire as a loafer ; he is a loafer. Nothing more can be said of him, and nothing worse ! An Arabic proverb from his " New Army in Training " expresses his point of view of the shufflers who have failed to lend their strong arms in the Great Adventure in France and Belgium : To excuse oneself to oneself is human ; but to excuse oneself to one's children is hell. Like Pitt and Disraeli, Kipling sometimes has felt despair as to his country's habit of muddling through. 87 RUDYARD KIPLING In these fits of hopelessness he forgot all about art and literature, and turned his attention to' preaching. He felt that he must preach. His eagerness to weld all parties into a definite British idealism received rude checks, but the jeers of the mob did not weaken his convictions. Somewhere in the soul of every man, however unecclesiastical his inclinations may be, there is hidden a surreptitious desire to preach to his fellow creatures. The temptation to fall upon the shirker and the excuse-maker, and scourge them with the heat of his rhetoric, become irresistible. The tendency to preach had always been with Kipling : we find it in " Depart- mental Ditties " ; in the passionate protest of his poem " Cleared," and the note of the homilist became marked in the " Jungle Books." Kipling's sermons were forged white hot on the anvil of conviction, and they were immediate and vital in their appeal. To be sure, con- viction does not make poetry ; neither alone does passion ; but the union of the two with a great theme to inspire them ought to produce something high and fine, and one is not at a loss to find this conjunction in Kipling's work. There is a phrase used by Kipling in another connexion which might well be applied to his Muse. It is " A watertight, fireproof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time lock, steel face Imperial mind " — nothing extenuating, nothing ashamed of its beliefs, of which the chief is that " at the last great fight of all. Our House will stand together and the pillars will not fall." Yet he is always conscious of the tragic bill we have had to foot for our Empire. This mind that has at once so much common sense, and so deep a sense of honesty, knows full well the tragic cost paid by our conquering race : If blood he the price of admiralty y If blood be the price of admiralty , Lord God, we ha^ paid it in ! 88 "FROM SEA TO SEA" In the above lines there is nothing soothing. We feel the pathos of such sacrifice, but Kipling goes further, and in his jubilant song he teaches us to feel the grandeur of it. Who could suggest an approved alteration in arrangement or diction in that noblest of poems " A Song of the English " ? What music, pathos, majesty, and triumph ! What solemn dignity of recitative ! As Holbrook Jackson has v^ritten : In spite of his austerity and his undoubted sense of responsibility, patriotism for him is but a new way of spelling romance. Imperialism is the great adventure, the Empire a new Avalon. ... Yet Kipling sometimes offends against taste by his sv^aggering and yelling. In his attempts to be impressive he is occasionally distressing. It is because he is v^eighted with a mission, and the missionary and the poet are sometimes inclined to alternate instead of uniting. When he is preaching about coal strikes, v^e can only v^ait v^ith more or less patience till his vast imagination glows with thoughts of the new romance or the " new army." And yet there are Kiplingites who would defend even such stuff as " The Benefactors," which appeared in the National Review (July 191 2). The paper opens with two stanzas which declare that all power, whether tyrant or mob, which suffers from swelled head, ends by destroying its own job, while man, whose mere necessities sweep all things from his path, is foolish enough to shiver at the decrees of these inflated and evanescent powers. Then comes the sketch. The scene is laid, with a sort of grotesque attempt at the low buffoonery of the dramshop, in Hades, and the narrative continually harps upon the hoary, not to say mouldy, pleasantries about burning coal and stoking up the fires. A succession of characters is intro- duced. A man with a shadow of a rudimentary tail recalls how he was the strongest of the primitive community, and hit and bit the rest until they did what he wanted. Then some one found he could throw a stone, and killed him. Next the stone-thrower tells how he became chief, until some one discovered the bow and arrow, and his day was over. He was circumvented by one who invented armour. The man in armour was in his turn overthrown by the discoverer of gunpowder. Then a Pope laments 89 RUDYARD KIPLING that the discovery of the printing-press upset his power. Then enters what Kipling apparently wishes to be regarded as the leader of the coal- miners' strike. Evidently Kipling has never met any of the leaders of the coal-miners of this country, from the Right Hon. Thomas Burt to Vernon Hartshorn. Having no knowledge of their character or speech, he brings out of his repository of puppets one of the vulgarest Cockneys that even his imagination can invent. He represents this creature as glorying in having done what none of his predecessors had done — brought the whole com- munity to its knees by starving or freezing them into submission. Even before he has finished his boasting he finds himself beset by the children who had been starved to death in the strike, the men that had been driven to suicide, the girls who had been ruined, and so on. Then, in keeping with Kipling's idea of humour, there enters his Satanic Majesty, " clothed in coolest white ducks, with white-covered yachting cap and creamy-white pipe-clayed shoes, so that he looked not unlike Captain Kettle." Then he informs the blustering " honest Pete " (the miners' leader) that the strike has taught men to do without coal. The community " didn't like dying, so they rooted, and coal and steam went pungo, Pete." The same sable intelligence declares that the old prophecy is fulfilled that " democracy came in with steam and will go out with it." The effusion ends by the devil bidding Pete hustle into " that starboard bunker." " There are at present 280 million tons of coal in Great Britain alone, for which no one except ourselves has any use." 90 CHAPTER VII . " KIM " A brief outline of " Kim " : Sir Edwin Arnold's interpretation of the fifth book of the " Bhagavad-Gita "" : Kim's prototype : Sir Francis Younghusband on the Tibetans : The ways of the Indian Secret Service. When a man who wishes to reform the world takes it in handy I perceive that there will he no end to it. spiritual vessels are not fashioned in the world. Whoever makes destroys, zvhoever grasps loses. CHAPTER VII " KIM " The publication of " Kim " marks in every way the finest and fullest output of Kipling's maturity. In point of expression and thought it is, perhaps, a greater achievement than the " Jungle Books." " Captains Courageous," "The Light that Failed," and "The Naulakha " cannot be mentioned in the same breath. Kipling had at this time reached the zenith of his fame. In 1889 he v^as famous. In 1892 he flung, with lavish generosity, the treasures of his genius into the lap of the reader of " Barrack Room Ballads." After that the world continued to gasp at Kipling for some years. He had absorbed India. Wherever the English speech was spoken or read, his poems and stories had taken a high place. There was not a hill-post in India nor a town in England where there was not a coterie to whom Rudyard Kipling was a familiar friend and a bond of union. In America he had also an equal following, in many regions and conditions. Yet his complete novels had fallen a little flat when compared with his short stories. Some spiteful critics put the question, " Can Kipling hold his own as a novel writer ? " They asked why his short stories were so much more satisfactory in the way of art and why he could not master the architectonics of the novel. " The Light that Failed " had been labelled in some quarters " The Book that Failed " ; " The Naulakha," it had been pointed out, contained all the baser forms of journalese, and " Captains Courageous " had met with pointed 93 RUDYARD KIPLING and definite criticism, not only from the fishermen of Gloucester, Mass., but from literary men. It was hinted that the preacher who wrote the " Recessional," the author of the wonderful " Jungle Books," the dreamer of dreams with a genius for guessing the true meanings of them, could not produce a great novel. That he was unable to combine things seen and could not give a long story that inevitable continuity and vital rotundity which turns a succession of episodes into the " Whole of Life." But such reproaches were soon wiped out, for Kipling deliberately accepted the challenge of the cavillers. He answered his critics with a courteous and alluring document. The answer is " Kim," and I fancy that Kipling could not have made a better one. It is not easy to determine whether the record of the Secret Service of India be fact or fiction, history or parable, fairy tale or sermon. But it must be admitted that it is a subject eminently suited to the author's talent ; he has lavished on it his best workmanship, and was no doubt greatly aided by his father, Mr. Lockwood Kipling. The characters taking part in the " Great Game " are drawn with a careful and loving pen. The Babu, Hurree Chunder, is a marvel, though Kipling, with his instinct for heightening the effect of this portrait, has made his contrasts a little forced ; the Babu requires sub-tones and sidelights on his delightful personality. But the Lama is the most benign and lovable figure in the book ; into this character the author has poured the depths of his sympathy. The Afghan horse-dealer, Lurgan, " The Healer of Sick Pearls," and '' The Woman of Shamlegh," who is said to be Lispeth of " Plain Tales from the Hills," are, too, all characters to whom we are sorry to say good-bye when the book is finished. Kimball O'Hara — commonly called Kim — is an orphan, the offspring of an Irish soldier who died of opium and drink. The child is stranded and alone in India, and his only friend is Mahbub AH, a hard-grained blustering 94 "KIM" horse-dealer, who places great trust in him. His only inheritance seems to be his birth certificate sewn into a leather amulet case, with the legend of an Indian woman who had lived with his father, that one day in his life a red bull on a green field, a colonel, and nine hundred " first-class devils " will be revealed to him. In the magic circle in which the players of " The Game " move, the horse-dealer is known as C.25, LB., trusted secret agent of the Indian Government. The story opens with the meeting of Kim with a Tibetan Lama, who is making a sacred journey through India in the hope of discovering the source of the " River of the Arrow," which washes away all taint and speckle of sin. We can almost see the saintly old Lama as the author sketches him. See ! There he goes ! A gentle old fellow in long habit of dingy cloth not unlike horse- blanketing, his rosary, that has clicked millions of times to Om mane fadme om, clutched in those long, stiff, yellow fingers, his eyes half-closed beneath the grotesque horn-rimmed spectacles, and turned up at the corners " like slits of onyx." Everybody will endorse the horse- coper's brief appraisement of Red Hat at the end of the book : *' I am not altogether of thy faith . . . but I can still, as the saying is, see holiness beyond the legs of a horse. ... I call thee a good man — a very good man." The Lama drew the boy to him partly by bands of love, and partly because the child had never seen any- thing like the yellow and wrinkled old man before. A seeker after that place where fell the Arrow " walking in humility, as an old man, wise and temperate, illumining knowledge with brilliant insight," the Lama appealed to the veritable imp's better nature. With that spon- taneous flow of pity inherent in Irish blood, Kim decides to shield and support the friendless old man. They take the road together, Kim begging food with skill and much cunning, and the holy man bestowing his wisdom with lavish generosity on all and sundry 95 RUDYARD KIPLING whom they meet. As they wander in leisurely fashion, Mahbub Ali makes use of Kim to carry to Umballa a closely folded tissue paper. When he has delivered the note to Colonel Creighton, the head of the service, he hides outside the house, and, by a judicious use of his eyes and ears, discovers that the message is a call to arms for the purpose of putting down a rising in the north. Kim was no ordinary boy, and after mixing with the Faquirs in Lahore city for thirteen years he understood this information might prove to be of great value to him. The Lama and Kim resume their journey, and the latter soon turns his information to good account. Kim copied the bearing and manner of the clever Faquirs, and went about prophesying a great war with guns and redcoats. He gave the exact number of troops which were to be used, as he had heard it when he hid at the house of Colonel Creighton. In India, where every rascally soothsayer and juggler is worshipped as a god, Kim is looked upon as a being from the " other world." When his prophecy turns out to be true and the troops are sent north, Kim's name is common bazaar-talk. He is regarded as a priest of the gods. Kim is eventually thrown across the path of his father's old regiment. He sees the " red bull on a green field," which is the regimental badge, and he is filled with curiosity. The regiment claims him, and he is sent to be educated. Kim proves to be a difficult subject, and the chaplains first of all herd the little " Friend of the Stars " with the drummer-boys for his instruction. But the Lama — who is a learned doctor of a lamassery, and also a man with means — offers to pay the expenses of his chela that he may go to one of the best schools. In any case the regimental school would not have held the untamable Kim. So he is sent to St. Xavier's College, a great Roman Catholic seat of learning. As the boy goes he meets the Lama in Lucknow, and a most touch- ing parting takes place. The old man is sad and very 96 " K rM " weary . . . the glamour of his pilgrimage seems to have vanished for the moment. He turns to his wonderful little chela and mutters : " Dost thou love me ? Then go, or my heart cracks. ... I will come again. Surely I will come again. . . ." The boy passes into the college, and the " Gates of Learning " shut with a clang. Colonel Creighton and Mahbub — the two doughty players of the " Great Game " — have been keeping an eye on Kim, and decided that he is suited in every way to become a player in the Game. The boy is therefore sent from St. Xavier's to the house of Lurgan to receive instruction. Here he is taught to judge a man's character by his talk and manners, to scientifically observe and memorize all things about him, and to scoff at all kinds of danger. Lurgan possesses an amazing knowledge of the sorcery of the East, and Kipling uses him as a medium to display to the reader a method of magic that has been employed in India from a remote period. The scene in which a native vessel full of water is shattered into a thousand pieces, and afterwards built up to its original form without showing a blemish, is a fascinating fragment of writing. For the solution of this mysterious occurrence one must dip into the secrets of crystal gazing. Kim hurls the jug, and it is dashed into many pieces. There is no doubt about this ; it is really broken. Immediately after the crash Lurgan bids Kim look at it, or rather, at the largest piece, which lay, with water in its curve, in the sunlight. The boy gazes intently, while the man uses hypnotic influence in order to detract his mind from the surrounding impres- sions of the external world. " Look ! It is coming into shape," says Lurgan. It is simply a matter of crystal vision ; Kim is crystal- gazing, only the usual glass sphere or polished crystal is replaced by the sparkle of water in the fragment of earthenware. The subconscious contents of the boy's G 97 RUDYARD KIPLING brain are now in action, and are producing day-dreams or hallucinations. " Look ! It is coming into shape," insists Lurgan. The object that Kim has centred his thoughts upon has disappeared, and he is lost in darkness ; he will now see anything that Lurgan orders him to see. Historically, crystal-gazing is one of the most ancient branches of magic. We have only to go to the British Museum to glean an idea of how widely it has been practised. The seers of ancient Greece and Rome used crystals, the mirror, or an inky pool of still water. The uncanny art has been, and in some cases still is, practised in Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, China, and Japan. It survives among the natives of Australia and Madagascar, and in the sixteenth century many exponents were to be found in England and the Continent, who, we are told, " were neither charlatans nor fools, but learned men of note." The famous Doctor Dee (1527-1608) was a notable adherent to this branch of sorcery, and his " shew-stone " is still to be seen at the British Museum. Kim is thoroughly tested, and gains the praise of one of the cleverest of the secret service men, Babu Hurree Chunder Mookerjee. As an apprentice in the Intelli- gence Department, Kim rejoins the Lama, and is allowed to go with the holy man upon his quest for the river that sprang from the arrow of Gaudama. Finally Kim helps Hurree Chunder to trick and put to flight two Russian spies. It chanced that the wheel of fate had brought the Babu into the regions across the huddled mountains of the Sewalik range, where Kim and the Lama had wandered. Here, by accident or perhaps design, the Babu met with two foreigners — a Russian and a Frenchman — surveying the territory and occupied in a mysterious political plot. Hurree Chunder offered his services to them, and at the same time adroitly cursed the British and all their ways. It did not take R.17 of the Ethnological Survey 98 "KIM" long to find certain treasonable papers in their camp. But how would it be possible to break up the spies' camp without help ? The appearance of Kim with the Lama at this point helped him out of the difficulty. The Russian officer rudely demanded the chart of the wheel which the Lama had been explaining to them. Of course the old man would have no more thought of parting with his " Wheel of Things " to a chance-met wayfarer than an archbishop would have thought of pawning " the holy vessels of a cathedral." Besides, the Lama was an abbot and a wealthy one too. He courteously declined to give up his wheel, but said that if he found that the Sahib was a true seeker and of " good understanding " he would draw him another. But the demand came : " He wishes it now — for money." The Lama simply folded up the wheel, and the Russian, failing to see that he was not dealing with a begging mendicant, drew out some rupees and snatched at the " Written Word," which tore in two with his action. The Lama's hand went down to his heavy metal pen- case — ever the holy man's weapon of defence — but before he could defend himself he received a blow in the face. The Irish blood in Kim boiled at the insult offered to the holy man, and he rushed in upon the Russian, bearing him down with blows. In the end the foreigners, helped and guided by the courteous and unfaithful Babu, were hustled out of the hill-country by the wrathful coolies, who were also eager to exact vengeance for the affront to the Lama. In the fracas, they left behind, or were robbed of, all the property which they possessed. Kim lost little time in sorting this over, taking over all the maps and treasonable correspondence as an official of the Indian Survey Department, but their 99 RUDYARD KIPLING camp chattels and private property he contemptuously threw down a precipice. The Lama is much distressed to think that he has been the cause of violence, and sadly retraces his steps to India. The excessive strain which falls on Kim in ministering to the sick Lama almost breaks his health, but both at length reach friendly shelter. After many journeys, the old Lama ends his search for the River of the Arrow in a manner in which tears and merriment are equally forced upon the reader. As the end approaches he is much perplexed, and even the wonderful spectacles given to him by the curator of the Wonder House do not enable him to find his river. But a canal (which to his imperfect vision seems to be the river of the quest), attracts him, and he manages to fall into it, only being rescued with much difficulty by Hurree Babu. The darkness and shadows fall around the saintly yellow man, and he is bound by illusions. The parting scenes between him and his chela are full of pathos, and the beautiful prose in which Kipling has framed the scene has almost the conviction of fine poetry. " Thou hast never stept a hair-breadth from the way of obedience. Child, I have lived on thy strength, as an old tree lives on the lime of a new wall," says the Red Lama. " Thou leanest on me in the body," replies Kim, " but I lean on thee for some other things. Dost know it ? " Yes, we may be certain that the Lama knew. He may not have guessed the many parts he had uncon- sciously acted in the Great Game. But the reader will notice that his last thoughts were for his faithful chela. As his soul drifted towards the deliverance from the " Wheel of Things " he had said : " I shall have safe- guarded him through the years." Then with a smile the saintly Lama crossed those 100 "KIM" hands, which were like carved ivory, and the River of the Arrow gushed forth at his feet. He had arrived at that stage in which his soul was free from every vestige of delusion and malevolence. Such a man returns no more to this world. His warfare is accomplished, his salvation won. In the abundant literature of the Buddhist movement, whether in the genuine suttas of the Tripitaka or the ancient tales of China and Thibet, many stories may be traced in which it is told how holy men have attained to the highest in this life. Here is an example to be found in " Maha para bibbana Sutta " : And from immediately after his ordination the venerable Subhadda remained alone and separate, earnest, zealous, and resolved. And ere long he attained to that supreme goal — ^Nirvana, the higher life — for the sake of which men go out from all and every household gain and comfort, to become homeless wanderers ; yea, that supreme goal did he himself, and while yet in this visible world, bring himself to the knowledge of, and continue to realize and see face to face. And he became conscious that birth was at an end, that the higher life had been fulfilled, that all that should be done had been accomplished, and that after this present life (to which he had attained) there would be none beyond it. Again, the effect of the breaking of those chains which bound the Lama to the illusory life, is told in Sir Edwin Arnold's beautiful interpretation of the fifth book of the *' Bhagavad-Gita " : But for whom that darkness of the soul is chased by light, splendid and clear shines manifest the truth as if a Sun of Wisdom sprang to shed its beams at dawn. Him meditating still, him seeking, with him blended, stayed on him, the souls illuminated take that road which has no turning back — their sins flung off by strength of faith. Who will may have this light ; who hath it sees. He had found his river — yes — but why ? Because he believed in it ; because he was true to it ; because he waited for it, and recognized it when it came. " Kim " is a song of life and hope, but it is a prayer of the maturer lOI RUDYARD KIPLING spirit : " Lord forgive our transgressions ; punish us for foolishness, and preserve our dreams ! " Kim, the hero of our story, remains behind, and, as he is so very young v^hen the book ends, it is to be hoped that we shall one day meet him again in a new volume of adventure. The rakish Mahbub has had little chance as yet to seriously try his hand on the boy, and Father Victor may be also waiting to instruct him. Of all the characters in the book the Lama is best. He embodies all those excellent qualities that make the truly lovable man — reverence, gentleness, pity, and resignation. In the sanctuary of the old Lama's heart, there is the flower of pity which shimmers eternally. To few people, and but seldom, is it given to feel the ecstasy of being utterly alone with the sun and earth as it was given to the Lama. Richard Jefferies, in that wonderful prose poem " The Story of My Heart," tells of the joy that is more permanent than our errors and more sure than our illusions — the joy of the sense of utter loneliness, when the earth held him, and pressed him, and spoke to him, and he felt an emotion that was as if his whole life were poured out in a prayer. Of the Lama, Mr. Cyril Falls has written in his study of Kipling (Martin Seeker) : " He is no knight of God setting forth to attack wrong, no valiant soldier leading the battle against the legions of Evil. But the holiness of Madame de Guyon and of Fenelon, the doctrines of Quietism, which were in effect those of some of the most venerated saints of the Catholic Church, and notably of Saint Teresa, are not very far from him." If the reader is interested in religious movements, or in the evolution of a soul — an Irish soul at that ! — brought into contact with Christianity, Hinduism, Islamism, Buddhism, and the mysterious harmonies of nature, he will find ample food for reflection in this volume. The arguments which take place between Bennett, the Puritan chaplain, and Father Victor, are full of quiet humour and suggestion. 102 "KIM" Men who live in the lonely outposts of the Empire, where the petty intolerances of this country are unknown, will appreciate the remark that " whenever the Church of England dealt with a human problem she was very likely to call in the Church of Rome." Kim has his prototype. Before Kimball O'Hara comes Tim Doolan. According to the editor of a Darjeeling newspaper called the Pall Mall, Kipling's boy hero is no other than the son of an Irish soldier, Doolan, who, during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, eloped with a beautiful Tibetan girl. A wing of a British regiment had been stationed at the sunless heights of Seneshall, a peak of the Himalayas, not far from Darjeeling, and one morning Sergeant Doolan was missing. He had crossed the frontier with the native girl to live with her people. No man ever met the soldier again, but after twenty years had passed, the Indian police arrested in Dar- jeeling market-place a strange boy with very fair com- plexion, blue eyes, and light hair, on a charge of murder. Papers sewn up in a leather case of Tibetan workmanship were found suspended from his neck. The British authorities found that they established the boy's origin and identity — ^he was the son of the missing Sergeant Doolan. The boy spoke only in the tongue of the Tibetan, and, like Kipling's Kim, looked upon the papers in the case as a charm. His father's service rifle and part of his equipment were found in Doolan's hut afterwards. The poor half-caste boy's amulet, however, did not save him, for he was executed for murder. The story is well known in India, and it may be quite possible that Kipling created Kim from that scant material. Sir Francis Younghusband says that the Tibetans, though they have such a reputation for seclusiveness, are not by nature unsociable. The courageous Japanese traveller Kawaguchi, himself a Buddhist, who lived in the Sera Monastery at Tibet, says that they were originally a people highly hospitable to strangers. This 103 RUDYARD KIPLING more natural sentiment was, he remarks, weakened by dread that Buddhism would be destroyed and replaced by Christianity with the influx of foreigners. The Tibetans also feared that the British sought their gold- mines, and were prejudiced against us on account of our subjugation of India. The Government of China, probably prompted by some secret policy, warned the Tibetans not to open their gates to the British. But we must remember that the Chinese have often rendered great services to the Tibetans in repelling their foes, and in 1792 a Chinese officer made a wonderful forced march with his troops over many lofty passes to expel the Gurkha invasion. Mr. Edmund Candler, in his famous book " The Unveiling of Lhasa," says that the Lamas appeared to him to be gross and sottish, and few could be compared to Kipling's gentle old Lama in " Kim." " Most of them," he says, *' showed cruelty and cunning in their features, some were almost simian in appearance, and looked as if they could not harbour a thought that was not animal or sensual. They waddled in their walk, and their right arms, exposed from the shoulder, looked soft and flabby, as if they had never done an honest day's work in their lives." Sir Francis Younghusband, in a vivid description of the Jo Khang Temple,* has pointed out that dirt is excessively prevalent within this building, and the smell of putrid butter used in the services is very offensive. The candlesticks, vases, and ceremonial utensils, are of solid gold and of beautiful design. The original temple was built about a.d. 650, but has been added to from time to time, and now stands a confused pile without symmetry, " and devoid of any single complete archi- * " India and Tibet : A History of the relations which have subsisted between the two countries from the time of Warren Hastings to 1910 ; with a particular account of the Mission to Lhasa of 1904." (John Murray, London, 1910.) 10^ "KIM" tectural idea." The stone pavements have been worn by the feet of innumerable pilgrims, who for a thousand years have wandered from far-oif lands to prostrate themselves before the benign and peaceful Buddha. Here, in the far recesses, the profound booming of great drums, the chanting of the monks, the blare of trumpets, the clash of cymbals, and the long rolling of lighter drums with masterly rhythm, break in upon the audience. Sir Francis Younghusband says that it was not until he came to see the people at a service in this grotesque cathedral, that he found the true inner spirit of the Tibetans, or at least the source from which they drew that spirit. It appears that the monks express all moods of joy and sadness in their deep rhythmic droning of chants, and the throbbing and growling of drums. By the drum the Tibetan hypnotizes his audience and himself. The Ngpak-pas, or miracle workers, the descendants of the Lamas who made magic, are supposed to possess hereditary secrets and are held in great awe. Sir Francis Younghusband pointed out that the Tibetans showed such practical faith in the efficacy of the charms of these miracle- workers, that they rushed right up to the rifles of our troops, believing that our bullets could do them no harm. Of all the Tibetans Sir Francis Young- husband met, the Ti Rimpoche — Chief Doctor of Divinity and Metaphysics — more nearly approached Kipling's Lama in " Kim " than any other. He was full of kindliness, and presented each of the English officers with an image of Buddha, remarking that when- ever he looked upon an image of Buddha he thought only of peace, and that he hoped that whenever they looked upon it they would think kindly of Tibet. Kipling has traced the ways of the Secret Service romantically in " Kim," but, as it will be noticed in the following facts,* there is little need to add any imagina- * I have drawn these details from the Pall Mall, December 1903. 105 RUDYARD KIPLING tive embellishment to the sober records of that branch of the Indian Survey Department. The Service v^as organized, far away back in the sixties, by Colonel Montgomerie, who had himself done admirable work as a surveyor of the Himalayas. How to survey the " back of beyond " was his problem. He solved it by training natives who could be sent where white men would certainly be suspected, and would probably meet with a swift death. He enlisted the " players " in his " game," and taught them what it was good for them to know about the Secret Service, but was careful not to teach them too much. They were taught — as Kim was — to make a route survey by taking bearings with a compass and pacing the distance, and to take meridian altitudes with a sextant to determine altitudes. But they were not taught to reduce their observations, nor supplied with astronomical tables, for fear lest they should " fake " fictitious work. When trained they were sent forth secretly, in suitable disguises, abandoning their names, and one may almost say their individualities, being known thenceforward only by mysterious initials, num- bers, and symbolic designations. Some of the names we find in the records are " Pundit A," " K.P.," " Number Nine," " The Mirza," and the like. The first Govern- ment spy went to Yarkand by the Karakoram, and died on his return journey. The Secret Service of India looked upon the circumstances under which their servant Muhammad-i-hamid died as very suspicious. Their second recruit was a Pathan, who, unhappily for the Government, had a private quarrel of many years stand- ing in that part to which he had been despatched. He diverged to wipe all old scores off the slate, and his career was cut short with a dagger. His papers were returned to the British Government with the compli- ments of the Akhunt of Swat. " Pundit B " made a start for Lhasa, but lost nerve and turned back. The first success was " Pundit A." 1 06 '^ K I M " " Pundit A," when his identity was allowed to be disclosed, turned out to be a Bhutiya subject of the Government. He had become a headmaster of a Government vernacular school when the players of the Great Game claimed him. After being trained as an explorer and serving in the Department of the Great Trigonometrical Survey for many years, he was sent forth secretly to Lhasa in company with Pundit B. But Pundit B turned back and left the dogged Pundit A to enter the mystic city alone. He stayed at Lhasa from January lo to April 21 in the year 1866. It was from the information of this secret agent that the Government of India formed rough maps of this city. In 1874 this same agent made a still more adven- turous journey. His instructions were to set out from Leh, cross the vast lacustrine plateau of Tibet to Lhasa, and thence make his way down into Assam. He entered Lhasa, but the surly attitude of the people warned him that he was in danger, so he only stayed there a few hours. On this journey Pundit A made many notable geo- graphical discoveries, traversing 1200 miles of unknown land, taking 276 astronomical observations for latitude, and 497 for elevation, on his way. He also traced the unknown parts of the course of the Brahmapootra, which proved the existence of the vast snowy range of the Northern Himalaya, and ascertaining the existence of many lakes and waterways. So we find a humble player in the Great Game far back in 1874, who can be ranked with Sven Hedin as a traveller. On his retire- ment the Government granted him a village with his pension. Another Secret Service agent was known as "The Almighty One." Captain Harman, R.E., unearthed him, and set him to ascertain if the Tsang-po of Central Tibet was or was not continuous with the Brahmapootra. After encountering every kind of misfortune and hard- 107 RUDYARD KIPLING ship in following the Lower Tsang-po, he came almost in sight of the Assam plains. Here he tried to com- municate with his friends lower down the river, accord- ing to arrangements with Captain Harman, by casting marked logs into the water. But the five hundred logs, each bearing the sign of the Secret Service, floated unheeded down the tide. Captain Harman had perished of frostbite caught among the snows of Kanchenjunga, and no one was looking out for the signal of " The Almighty One." lo8 CHAPTER VIII THE CHARGE OF BRUTALITY The charge of brutality : A selection of letters from T. P.V Weekly : " The Light that Failed " : A strange plea for the tragic ending : Maisie and Bessie : Physical suffering in literature : " The Vam- pire " : A reply by Felicia Blake : T. W. H. Crosland's parody. Tou sure have got things going now and Pm with you. There may be a few classics in the world that are good — tha-Cs so — and there may he some writers who can come a skilful twist on history : hut for the real essence, the pure heart of life — the roses and wine of the pen — the pulse-quickener — the appeal to the soul of honest, liberal, human humanity, you are the rouge d^or souffle fromage. (Rev.) Frank Ashton. CHAPTER VIII THE CHARGE OF BRUTALITY There is a side to Kipling's literary expression which perhaps offends or irritates the more sensitive folk, and that is manifested in " Brugglesmith," a story in which the adventures of an outrageously intoxicated boiler- maker from Greenock, are sketched in exceedingly lively language. It is in such cases as this, that the charge of brutality has been hurled at him. But is it justified ? If we were to measure genius by the conventional rules of twentieth-century respectability, how many would survive the ordeal ? Each century has its literary vagabonds, its Defoe, its Fielding, and its Borrow. Great art is always virile, and we could well spare many volumes of rectitude, but never one page of lusty Rabelaisian spirit. One critic has pointed out that we who applaud the obese and drunken figure of Falstaff can afford to laugh at the vagaries of the Scottish engineer. Great artists have always been virile and wholesome. It would seem that Kipling loves all that tends to expand his emotions, and that his art is merely the expression of his joy in expansive life. His humour sparkles with you in " Their Lawful Occasions," a story which invites the world at large " to buy a 'am and see life." It flaunts itself magnificently in " Stalky and Co." It laughs with you in the mirth of Mulvaney, just as it beckons you from the poems of the very human Tommy we meet in " The Five Nations." It has been said that Kipling is not essentially a III RUDYARD KIPLING woman's writer. I do not think that he appeals very strongly to the mass of his reading countrywomen. Certainly the women who do appreciate him do so because their minds are more than ordinarily sturdy and subtle, and they have the power of taking their souls on a pilgrimage into the world and thoughts of the virile, fighting, spendthrift, practical-idealist who is Kipling's hero and deity. In Mr. Monkshood's monograph on Kipling there is the following statement : "I have never met a woman who was a Kiplingite, and I should not have believed it if I had. The writings of Kipling do not appeal to women." This is a strongly worded statement, and it was challenged in T.P.'j Weekly * by many women admirers of Kipling. A selection of the letters which appeared in this journal may be of peculiar interest at the present time. One lady writes : Mr. Kipling's vehemence is perhaps shocking to the gentle type of woman who is built for quiet home-life ; but to the many women who know their limitations and have no wish to overstep them, yet feeling an intellectual glory in the wider activities of masculinity, Kipling is a source of true delight. There is no better tonic after a long day than a dip into " Many Inventions " or " The Day's Work." Of the Kipling of " The Brushwood Boy " and the " Just-so Stories " there is no need to speak, since every woman, however gentle, must appreciate their tender fancies. Here the writer rather pleads for than asserts Kipling's appeal to woman, singling out those of his writings which are less sturdy and virile than the rest. Why are they appreciated ? For their " tender fancies." One cannot altogether overlook the significance of the excep- tion of the stormily magnificent sea-songs in the " Seven Seas " and all the author's barrack-room balladry. Another correspondent thinks that he is deficient in that special perception that is required to understand the feminine soul : * " Friday Notes," T. P.'j Weekly, August 28", 1903, September 4, 1903, and September 1 1, 1903. 112 THE CHARGE OF BRUTALITY Kipling's female characters are rather Irritating, because, like many another clever man, when he talks about women he is talking of what he does not understand ; but his loyal English gentlemen, who would scorn a dirty action, yet are in no way " superior persons," his very human Tommies whose only faults are generous ones, the whole spirit of vigour and freshness, of large tolerance for human frailties, of simple matter-of- fact devotion to duty, which pervades his works, backed by the glamour which he can throw over commonplaces, appeal very largely to a woman's imagination, even if her heart be not thereby reached. Kipling attributes to his Oriental leanings his aversion to dealing with women " outside her house in fiction properly so-called." He says : " She is delightful in real life ; but one has seen a little too much of her in literature. . . . There are so many other subjects." This statement is very true, and plainly shows why he does not interest us so much in love affairs. I have selected this passage from another letter, to illustrate the fact that Kipling's lack of the sentimental sometimes attracts the feminine mind : I confidently contradict the assertion that no woman is a Kiplingite. His work appeals to healthy-minded women precisely because his men characters are true, honest and manly, with no mawkishness or sentimen- tality about them ; and to me, personally, one great attraction of his writing is the absence of " the eternally feminine element," though, when he likes, Kipling can draw an attractive woman, e.g. William the Conqueror in "The Day's Work" No one could accuse him of being a sentimentalist, in fact he is the sworn enemy of that class of sentimental " tosh " under which the cheap bookstalls for ever groan. This is a saving grace with Kipling, even when he fails most desperately. We can forgive him for the inelegant " Absent-minded Beggar " and his fanatical denunciations of political opponents. We can pass over such verbal nonsense as " We know the hells prepared for them that serve not home " as we pass over similar nonsense in George Borrow's books. We will even allow him to inform us that it was not Saul, but David, who H 113 RUDYARD KIPLING went to look for donkeys and found a kingdom. We will overlook all his brutality and crudeness ; all his ^' thin thoughts clothed in the gorgeous language of Hosea," but we will never overlook mawkishness and sentimentality. Of the women who do appreciate Kipling, I find that the majority associate their enthusiasm for his works with the reading of " The Light that Failed," and I think that this conclusion is strengthened by the further letters of appreciation which are given below. Kipling made a concession to the public which always demands the gentle path before the path of thorns, when he gave " The Light That Failed " a happy ending on its appearance as a serial. But on the flyleaf of the volume we read " This is the true story of ' The Light That Failed ' as it was originally conceived by the writer." " Put me in the front of the firing line " is Dick's request in the last chapter, and as we read the last lines we learn that a " kindly bullet " had passed through his head. I have heard it remarked that a happy ending renders the story artistically unsound, and that one might just . as well request a happy ending to Romeo and Juliet, but I have never heard the following plea for a tragic ending put forth before : To my mind, the most fascinating character in fiction is R. K.'s Dick in " The Light that Failed." I have never felt such a genuine affection for any other fictional hero as I do for him, and I sat and cried terribly at Daly's last February as poor old Dick groped and stumbled about in his helpless blindness. I like the book ending (Dick had a bullet through his brain in the edition I read) better than the stage ending, because I don't think Maisie half good enough. Here is another passage from a lady reader who enjoys both the pathos and humour of Kipling : rather an exception among his feminine admirers : In my spare time (I am a telegraphist, and 'tis limited) I have read much and of many kinds, and I can say, without hesitation, that as a novel- v^^riter, next to Dickens, I like Kipling. I like his style for its vivid strength 114 THE CHARGE OF BRUTALITY and humour — humour not refined and delicate, perhaps, but strong and natural. A woman's sense of humour may not be as keen as a man's, but my sense of humour is keen enough to appreciate Mulvaney, and I believe many of my sisters could say the same. And, again, one need not go further than " The Light that Failed " for pathos. Women can appreciate pathos, and have a keener sense of it than men. Kipling's characterization of women is less convincing than his characterization of men, and nothing could show more clearly his attempts to remedy this fault, and the inevitable check that it has put upon him, than the open avowal of failure implied by getting Maisie out of the way with such brusqueness, in the middle of " The Light that Failed." Maisie is the type of woman that Kipling would have the greatest difficulty in portraying ; you see, she was so cultured and regular, and after Kipling had got her fixed, and with great difficulty had dragged her to the middle of his story, he had nothing more to say about her ; he had to effect an exchange and fall back on Bessie, who is more or less barbaric. The charge of brutality is often brought against Kipling. How far is it justified ? Mulvaney 's narration of the fight in Silver's Theatre, which exercises such a fascination over one, has been described as brutal. We have been told that such a scene only transcribes the lust for blood and personal revenge, which we have tried to thrust towards the background in the evolution of our industrial civilization. Some go so far as to say that Kipling owes his success in literature to the fact that, while we have put personal physical warfare almost entirely out of our own lives, there is still enough primi- tive hellishness in us to leave us fascinated with the recital of torture. Of course it is impossible to say how far an artist may be allowed to probe into the realms of human suffering ; a certain ineradicable instinct which makes suffering interesting to us, demands it in art. And, somehow, suffering always brings the best out in man. We grow through the three fundamental principles of IIS RUDYARD KIPLING human existence — suffering, thinking, doing. But Kipling's description of men in physical suffering — more especially in action or personal conflict — forms a genuine individual note in literature. The true poet would try to palliate many of the horrible scenes which are reproduced in " Barrack Room Ballads." But Kipling is too wise to be wholly a poet, and yet too surely a poet to be implacably wise. If Kipling is barbaric, he is also genuine ; he disarms criticism. Take for example " Snarleyow," some verses in which a Tommy describes how a driver in the R.H.A., seeing his brother struck by a shell and in great agony, judged it best to take the horses, gun, and limber over the poor fellow in order to end his suffering. I have heard this described as " simply the impressionism of the shambles of the prize-ring," or " a product of an emotion so barbaric as to delight in the mere portrayal of suffering for its own sake — simply the lust of the barbarian for blood." But Kipling has made a fight against the valuation of art — that is to say, in his case, poetry or prose — for the mere perfection of its technique alone. The rather ridiculous phrase " Art for Art's sake ! " has had its day. After reading a poem or story we only ask one thing, though, perhaps, in many forms. Does it give us a new possession by making us aware of some- thing we possess ? Is it a piece of conscious life, extracted with care from the soul of things, a piece of knowing carried out by the artist, which we are allowed to share ? Has it given us an increased consciousness of life ? We do not ask if the work of an artist is barbaric or beautiful. We ask him for life, which is above all technique, all criticism and all imagination. A poem that provoked a great deal of adverse criticism is " The Vampire," and most probably Kipling for this reason was prompted to refrain from including it in any of his books of verse. The poem was specially written for the author's cousin, Philip Burne-Jones,as an elucida- ii6 » THE CHARGE OF BRUTALITY tion of his picture exhibited at the New Gallery in 1897. The painting depicts a man stretched on a bed with death written on every line of his face. The " Vampire," a woman with a cold and hard expression, has taken up a position by his side. She is stylishly clothed, and apparently is not at all distressed by his passing. The verses have been extensively parodied, and several clever retaliations have been written by the fair sex. I give one of them from the pen of Felicia Blake : A Fool there was, and she lowered her pride^ {Even as you and /,) To a hunch oj conceit in a masculine hide. We saw the faults that could not be denied ; But the Fool saw only his manly side — {Even as you and I). Oh, the love she laid on her own heart's grave. With the care of her own head and hand. Belongs to the man who did not know — {And now she knows that he never could know). And did not understand. A Fool there was, and her best she gave — {Even as you and I) Of noble thoughts, of gay and grave — {And all was accepted as due to the knave) But the Fool would never her folly save {Even as you and /). Oh, the stabs she hid, which the Lord forbid Had ever been really -planned. She took from the man who didn't know why — {And now she knows he could never know why) And did not understand. The Fool was loved when the game was new {Even as you and I). And when it was flayed she took our cue — {Plodding along as most of us do) Trying to keep his faults from view {Even as you and I). 117 RUDYARD KIPLING But it isn't the ache of the heart, or its break. That stings like a white-hot brand. Ifs the learning to know that she raised a God, And bent her head to kiss the rod. For the on^ who could not understand. A worthy instance of a parody which wittily imitates Kipling's style without servilely following the original poem, is T. W. H. Crosland's " The Public." * Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste, And the work of our head and hand Belong to the Public that doesn't read verse (And, probably, never will learn to read verse) Which it does not understand ! A fool there was and his youth he spent (Even as you and I !) Concocting rhymes that were excellent {If the Public had only perceived what he meant) But the Public can't help its natural bent {No more than you and I J) Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost And the beautiful things we planned Belong to the Public that doesn't buy verse (And has made up its mind it will never buy verse) Which it cannot understand ! " The Vampire " excited quite a war between the poets. Mr. James Douglas disputes Kipling's all-em- bracing conception that the man is the everlasting fool, and the woman is the everlasting vampire. " That is," he says, " only our boyish way of looking at things. Being an incurable boy, it is also Kipling's way. It does not occur to him or to us that the song could be rewritten thus : A fool there was and she made her prayer — Even as you or I — To a beast in his den or a brute in his lair. * " Other People's Wings," by T. W. H. Crosland. At the Sign of the Unicorn, 1899. 118 THE CHARGE OF BRUTALITY We called him the clod who didnH care, But the fool, she called him her hero fair, Even as you or I. The tables are turned, you see. The Vampire is a man, and the fool is a woman. But, you may say, there are no male vampires. Vampires are always women, just as angels are always men. But why are vampires always women ? Well, the explanation is very simple. Art has been dominated by the male point of view ever since the first saga was sung, or the first epic was recited, or the first statue was chiselled, or the first painting was painted. We all take our theory of life from art. As a rule we take it from novels. Although women write novels, they still write from the male point of view. They have hardly begun to fight their way towards a readjustment of values. 119 I CHAPTER IX OMAR KHAYYAM AND KIPLING Paul Elmer More and his " Shelburne Essays " : Omar and Kipling : Kipling formulates a portable wisdom for the Anglo- Saxon people : The dominant chord of the English race : Experience teaches : Verses from the Bulletin : Omar Khayyam Club : Colonel John Hay : William Archer and New York mechanic. Shakespeare was neither supremely wise nor good — he was simply a healthy man to whom j ate supplied Bought Thou and Jug in right proportion, — also a disposition to work. Elbert Hubbard. CHAPTER IX OMAR KHAYYAM and KIPLING Paul Elmer More, in his delightful Shelburne Essays, mentions a story that was current in Fleet Street not long ago, of a rash editor who made a wager with a friend, that no paragraph dealing with Rudyard Kipling or FitzGerald, should appear in his journal during a stated period. And, of course, it is needless to state that he lost his bet on the appearance of the next issue. Mr. More also takes the opportunity to point out what an endless stream of gossip found its way into the Press about these two writers, who were so opposed to each other in style and aim. It is one of those inexplicable curiosities in the tastes of the public. None of our poets, not even Byron, ever enjoyed the limelight of the Press and the popularity that came to Kipling when he was quite a young man. The fame of the reincarnation of Omar, which was also world-wide, was of a different calibre, and it came long after the " Suffolk dreamer " had fallen into his last sleep. However, in both cases a kind of miracle has been worked ; that is to say that the almost impassable gulf between the cultured few and the uncultured many, has been successfully navigated by both these poets. Wherever the English speech is spoken or read, the poems of Kipling have taken their place both with the scholarly and the illiterate, and his speech has become, as it were, " the plain words " of our people. The cause of Kipling's popularity is not difficult to determine. The Anglo-Saxon people, with their restless and strenuous ways, had been waiting for the poet who 123 RUDYARD KIPLING could formulate their experiences and needs, by supplying them with a kind of portable wisdom — short, sharp, pithy maxims which they could remember, or better still, which they could not forget. They had already started to express open discontent with the poet who used a pen as if it were a fence post, and who put the hero so far off amid the dust and smoke of the ages that he was lost to view. They demanded a man who could in the quickest and most effective way feed them with maxims, short, brief and musical. At this point, Rudyard Kipling, with no desire to deprive any other poet of his daily bread, introduced himself. He wrote for the ear of the Englishman whose spiritual force is stronger than his senses, for Kipling knew that the Anglo-Saxon cannot appreciate sensual pleasures and superfluous emotions as the Southern people can. The public saw beyond doubt that the new poet was a consummate literary stylist, and the man in the street started to repeat his maxims in his daily conversation or in writing, just as the educated use the Bible or Shakespeare for symbol. All English authors quote or refer to Kipling. Some admire him, others are loftily critical ; most of them are a little jealous ; and a few use him as a horrible example of the mad militarist. But since his arguments on military organization and efficiency are now unanswer- able, the latter may be dismissed. Kipling has stood trial by newspaper and has been convicted — as all great authors have — of being a poseur, a pedant, a learned sleight-of-hand man, and a bag-of-books. But personal vilification has been popular since Balaam talked scandal with his ms-d-ms. There is little mystery about Kipling ; even his ghost stories are devoid of mystery. Other poets have, like the Egyptians, guarded their mysteries with zealous dread, but Kipling knew that wisdom cannot be corralled with shadowy idealism and fettered in jargon. Know- ledge is one thing — palaver is another. Kipling is simple 124 OMAR KHAYYAM and KIPLING in his demands, but few poets have a clearer sense of patriotic responsibility. In a single line he has expressed his golden rule : '' Keep ye the Law — be swift in all obedience." In his essay on Kipling and FitzGerald, Mr. More has enumerated certain Anglo-Saxon poets who, before Kipling, had missed the dominant chord of the English race and character, and so remained more or less cut off from the people. For instance he remarks, " Tennyson lapsed in his latter days into a vein of pantheistic mysticism," " Browning was obscure," and '' Matthew Arnold chose for himself a region of sublimated doubt and faith, interesting enough to Oxford, but incom- prehensible to the larger public," which means when it is all summed up that these poets at times were a little too gaseous for the average Anglo-Saxon. Their truths were furnished with frills, and it has been remarked that nothing disturbs the Philistine so much as a hotchpot of simple truth and mysticism. Style and thought, emotion, interest, melody and picture are, of course, only factors in Kipling's work. The total is force. In the last resort literature must be judged, like everything else, by the force it develops, the quantity of latent energy which it makes active. Omar's bread and wine and verses may be stowed away on the shelf, each awaiting its mood. But Kipling will not abide until after the afternoon siesta. He bids you to be up and about the family business — to take hold of the " Wings o' the Morning." Kipling's trumpet drives an unknown multitude of pioneers of the Empire over the sea in the faith of little children " that their sons may follow after by the bones on the way." Omar, drowsy with life's mingled wine, bids the weary traveller bask in the sun, and make the most of what they yet may spend ; his world is fantastic — one of song and sun and summertide. The " whisper and the vision " of Omar and his unapproachable translator 125 RUDYARD KIPLING turns the mind upside down. But what is its force ? What active energy does it disengage ? What is its effect ? But the scale inevitably adjusts itself. Kipling has that virility that has helped to seal the pact that exists between the old grey mother and the " Sons of the Blood," and he speaks after the manner of the Anglo-Saxon *' in straight flung words and few," while FitzGerald and Omar give us a slender volume of precious workmanship and transcendent enchantment. Omar sang to a half barbarous province ; FitzGerald to the world, and Kipling sang to the British Empire. Before the sheep can follow safely, the shepherd must know the path. Experience teaches ; but only one's own experience. Before Kipling became the Laureate of Empire he had to earn it, and this fact accounts for the heartening, bracing cheerfulness in the spirit of his verse, which acts as a tonic to the jaded and weary. Who can read " The Wishing Caps " from " Kim " without feeling reinvigorated ? Here the poet shows that the only human way of having a good time is to " live like a man " and let luck look after the rest. It is a song of the Anglo-Saxon spiritual force which decides that the body must take its chance in the face of danger — Whence the refrain, " If I've no care for fortune, fortune must follow me still." To understand life one must get emotions, impressions, sensations — the most varied and the most intense that the brain and body can get. It the Western version of the Prodigal Son, Kipling shows that it is useless to urge the duty of self-renunciation to men who have never known what the pleasures and pitfalls of life are. Leo Tolstoy — whom Kipling thought was so delightfully oriental — spent his life engaged in regenerating a people who seemed to know little of laughter, learning, passion or regret — a people who had never understood the meaning of crime or virtue. Of course it is our privilege to hearken to the Russian Fakir's appeal for a life that labours long and is kind, the life 126 OMAR KHAYYAM and KIPLING that gives much and demands little. But we must remember that the people whom he preached to had not the advantage that he had of drawing upon the storehouse of unregenerate youth for elderly morals. Before a man can learn that violence is transient and hate consumes itself, he must go out into the world like the Prodigal Son and learn all about the " common touch." That is nature's way. I recall some verses which appeared in the Bulletin of Sydney, which tells the whole story condensed in a few lines : The world was made when a man was horn. He must taste for himself the forbidden springs. He can never take warning from old-fashioned things. He must fight as a hoy ; he must drink as a youth. He must kiss, he must love ; he must swear to the truth Of the friend of his soul. He must laugh to scorn The hint of deceit in a woman's eyes That are clear as the wells of Paradise. And so he goes on till the world grows old ; Till his tongue has grown cautious, his heart has grown cold ; Till the smile leaves his mouth and the ring leaves his laugh. And he shirks the hright headache you ask him to quaf. He grows formal with men, and with women -polite. And distrustful of both when thefre out of his sight. One must read that wonderful bit of philosophy called " If " to understand Kipling's ideas on the blessed- ness of the meek. It is at such a poem that the reader is inclined to pause and ask himself : What life do you lead ? How many of your acts are done to please yourself ? Kipling gives us new maxims. A time for nothing and nothing in its time — never die before you are ready. Or, in other words, the pleasure in life consists in always being and doing the unexpected, in refraining from the expected. We need Kipling to lead the new crusade against the fetish of custom which has left its chain-galls and whip-marks about the loins of our people, just as much as we needed FitzGerald to take up 127 RUDYARD KIPLING the forgotten and amazing stanzas of Omar and sing them anew. But Omar's stanzas announce the surrender of the spiritual forces to the senses — to sensual pleasures and superfluous emotions. It may be the " accumulated refinement of ages of art," but still it is the creed of despair — " of calm disillusion and jocund despair," as the Hon. John Hay told the members of the Omar Khayyam Club.* There could not be any other two poets so opposite as Kipling and FitzGerald. Kipling is the implacable enemy of disillusion and doubt, and it is a curious thing that fate should draw and twist his thread of destiny with that of the " Suffolk dreamer " in a fellowship of Anglo-Saxon renown. The pessimistic note is not often heard in Kipling ; there are some rather gloomy feelings of growing age, some pathetic sentiment concerning old men with their querulous selfishness and their pitiable pretences that they are not so old as they look, in a poem in " The Five Nations " under the title of " The Old Men," but as a rule Kipling moves along the wonted lines of riotous strength and physical courage. He seems to be high-spirited about all things, and he has a peculiar quality of humour which makes him unique. Some people call it " low " humour, but the elemental in Humour, Nature, Man or Art, always shocks the Middle Class. Kipling describes three degrees of bliss, three savers of souls in " The Jester," and the lowest place but the highest praise is given to him " who has saved a soul by a jest and a brother's soul in sport . . . there do the Angels resort." Kipling is always at ease in his own company, and there * At a dinner of the Omar Khayyam Club in London (December 8, 1897) Colonel John Hay, who had been introduced by Mr. Henry Norman as " soldier, diplomatist, scholar, poet and Omarian," delivered an address in praise of FitzGerald and Omar. It is published in book form by Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Maine, U.S.A. 128 OMAR KHAYYAM AND KIPLING is no written or unwritten literary law that he has not violated, but every time he comes out triumphant with his " I know a trick worth two of yours," and thus he has won the affection of both the scholarly and the illiterate. Mr. William Archer, in his " American Jot- tings," supplies a ready illustration of the attitude of a New York mechanic towards Kipling. When the poet was taken dangerously ill on his American tour, Mr. Archer was accosted by a conductor of a car as follows : " I s'pose you've heard that Kipling has been very ill ? . . . He's pulling through, though. . . . He don't follow no beaten tracks. He cuts a road for himself every time, right through ; an' a mighty good road, too ! . . . He ought to be the next Poet Laureate." 129 CHAPTER X TALES OF HORROR AND TERROR The occult world : "The House Surgeon" : An outline of the story : " The Return of Imray " : " Bertram and Bimi " : " The Mark of the Beast." Millions of sfiriuml creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleefT Paradise Lost. CHAPTER X TALES OF HORROR AND TERROR To most of us there is a curious fascination in the occult world. Of course not one man in a million has the courage to admit that he believes in ghosts. It takes more than an average valour to confess to a belief in the supernatural, in fact we are more inclined to ** believe and tremble " as the devils of the Scriptures did, without admitting the authority of their belief. It is rather an ancient saying that every other man you meet has a friend who has seen a ghost, but you never meet the man who has actually seen a ghost for himself. Rudyard Kipling, wise man that he is, absolutely evades any out-and-out declaration of a personal belief in ghosts. Though one has an idea that Kipling is half-convinced that there is something in spiritualism, it is very difficult to find any evidence in his works to support this impres- sion. One even recognizes the sly truth in George Moore's " avowal " that Kipling has ever at the back of his head the little triumph of " I know a trick worth two of that." Of course a mere glance at such a story as ** The House Surgeon " will convince the most callous and the most casual that he has what cannot be acquired by any trick on earth — the grip on human life. There are no ghosts in Kipling's ghost stories, and this is a very refreshing discovery. We grow a little tired of the " Christmas Annual " blood-stained spectre with accusing eye, and that inexorably-fixed digit point- ing on to doom. Kipling can v^ite the fascinating tale of terror as well as any writer, but he seems to be able 133 RUDYARD KIPLING to get the authentic shudder without falling back on Jekyll and Hyde trimmings or Edgar Allan Poe flavour- ings. The fact is, he has seen that hysterical exaggera- tions are as unconvincing as barefaced falsehoods. Thus it v^ill be noticed that the " ghost " in " The House Surgeon " is no more or less than a sinister influence which seems to attack the nerves of those who come in conflict with it. It is as well to give a brief synopsis of this story, since the silence, atmosphere, and depth of it are a great contrast to the heedlessness and vehemence that are so usual in his work. The narrator of the story is asked to spend the week-end at the house of a retired fur merchant, M'Leod by name. Holmescroft, a large two-storied, low, creeper-covered residence, was not exactly haunted, but intermittent waves of an intolerable oppression swept over the whole household, which consisted of the owner, his wife, who is a Greek lady, and the daughter, Miss Thea M'Leod. The sinister influence which seemed to induce depression and even appalling terror was not a new development of neurasthenia or the latest thing in nerve degeneracy, for from the first moment after the narrator had been conducted to his room at Holmescroft, he felt a terrible depression, and quite inexplicably his heart sank. There was an odour of perfumed soap which made the room rather close, and in an attempt to open the window to let in some air, the narrator came very near to falling out. With a wonderful witchery of words, Kipling makes us realize the possi- bility and truth of the story, and we live in a world of fantastic terrors. The unseen terror first of all starts with a little " grey shadow " which seems to float at an immense distance in the background of the brain. Then Kipling tells of a gloom and darkness which grows swiftly and envelops the narrator, finally terminating in a spasm of extreme dread. The description which follows of an " amazed and angry soul " dropping gulf 134 TALES OF HORROR AND TERROR by gulf into the great darkness, is really a marvellous piece of work. Here again we notice that Kipling has the grasp, and the continuity, and the completeness in the psychology of the abnormal, which he often lacks in the psychology of the normal. He is always clever in the vivid delineation of strife in mental moods ; some of his phrases in this story are ideal masterpieces of psycho- logical analysis — witness this : "I dwelt on this specula- tion precisely as a man torments a raging tooth with his tongue . . . once more I heard my brain, which knew what would recur, telegraph to every quarter for help, release or diversion." Note, too, the fine description of the terror working in the mind of the narrator after the sinister wave of darkness had passed over him. After the heat and oppression of his mental strife, he felt that his soul " cowered at the bottom of unclimbable pits." We may forget the pity and the laughter in Kipling's stories, but the horror will be remembered. We do not easily forget the terrors of Jean Valjean wandering in the sewers of Paris, nor Carter's ride in the night, nor the loathsome details of the man afflicted with madness in " The Mark of the Beast." But to return to the outline of the story. The narrator makes a compact with the M'Leod, owner of the house, to follow up the trouble, and if possible lay the ghost. Kipling's characterization of M^Leod is rather blurred, and this character's constant use of the lingo of Cockayne is needlessly jarring, especially when it is mingled with cunningly ordered words which ring with unmistakable genius. We are rather tempted to imagine that M'Leod with his eternal " ain't it ? " would frighten any self- respecting ghost out of his wits. This rather reminds us of Oscar Wilde's story, " The Canterville Ghost," in which an American buys an old English house with a ghost three centuries old, and gives the said ghost so many painful American experiences that the poor thing dies from moral shock. 135 RUDYARD KIPLING Baxter, the solicitor for the Misses Moultrie, from whom M'Leod purchased the house, is approached, and we are introduced to a man who at first appears to be narrow-souled and joyless, and one suspects that he had tasted of much bitterness. But later on we learn that he is a man with splendid qualities. Being a cousin of the Misses Moultrie, the narrator is able to extract from him that one of the sisters had met her death through a fall from one of the windows of Holmescroft, and that the two living sisters had con- stantly brooded over the affair, which they looked upon as a case of suicide and consequently a family disgrace. Their minds being concentrated upon the house, and particularly the room from which the sister had dashed to her death, the M'Leods had felt the presence of the constant application of their thoughts. This, with the spirit of poor dead Aggie forlornly wandering about trying to explain that her death-fall from the window was a pure accident, had caused the house to be cursed with " blasting gusts of depression." The narrator is able to explain to the living sisters that their sister had without doubt fallen from the window in attempting to open it to get some air, and added that he had nearly met the same fate at that very window at Holmescroft. The story concludes with an account of a visit to Holmescroft by the Misses Moultrie, during which they become convinced that they had misjudged poor dead Aggie. Henceforth they would be able to think about her without shame or sorrow. Thus peace is restored, and the great shadow is lifted from the shoulders of the M'Leod family. This story was originally published in Harfer's Maga- zine in two parts during September and October 1909, with illustrations by F. Walter Taylor. It is reprinted in " Actions and Reactions," and is concluded with some very beautiful verses entitled " The Rabbi's Song," in which Kipling explains his idea of how " the darkness of 136 TALES OF HORROR AND TERROR a mind," be it of the living or the dead, may perplex and cast shadows over an habitation. It will be noticed, if we care to study the opening words of Kipling's stories, how, over and over again, he strikes into the heart of things right away. Consider, for example, the power of the first few lines of " The Return of Imray." With a few wonderful touches of the pen he " works up " the whole situation, and at the same time grips the attention of the reader : " Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no con- ceivable motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career, he chose to disappear from the world — which is to say, the little Indian station where he lived." There we have the essence of the story, and after glancing at the title, which assures us that Imray certainly will return, we are forced to read on to the end. I do not think there is a better example of Kipling's power in holding the reader's attention than this narrative. It is a story of that magic which comes to us from across the " borderland " — from the " dead " as we say. It tells of the disappearance of Imray, whose bungalow is taken by Strickland, of the " Police," a few months afterwards. Strickland, " who knows as much of natives of India as is good for any man," seems to be gifted with a genius for inferring the unknown from the known, and it is not long before he comes to the conclusion that Imray is not so far away as some people would imagine. The policeman's dog, Tietzens, refuses to sleep within the new bungalow, and the narrator of the tale, who has been staying with Strickland, felt that some one was trying to call him by name during the night : some one haunted the house by day and by night — " a fluttering, whispering, bolt-fumbling, lurking, loitering Someone." In the end, Imray's body is found by Strickland in the space above the ceiling-cloth of the bungalow, where he had ascended to poke out some snakes. With that instinct for heightening the effect of a 137 RUDYARD KIPLING story, Kipling causes Imray's body to shoot down upon the table just after dinner, but then the author has explained that " unpleasantnesses arrived " to Strickland, " as do dinners to ordinary people." Bahadur Khan, a servant, confesses to the murder of Imray, w^hom he said had bev^itched his child. The simplicity of Bahadur Khan's defence of his action is exquisite : " He said he v^as a handsome child and patted him on the head, wherefore my child died. Wherefore I killed Imray Sahib in the twilight." Every touch in this story gives just the very message it was intended it should, and by a deft arrangement of the very simplest elements, Kipling leaves a magic which is above that of " Spirits " — the magic of the artist. Everything which is morbid seems to attract Kipling in proportion to its morbidity. In some of his stories he seems to have little sense of what is decent, or, indeed, perhaps it would be more correct to say he has a passion for what is not. " Bertram and Bimi " is probably the most loathsome story he has given out from his pen, and only rendered endurable by the obvious fact that it is surcharged with Kipling's astonishing cleverness. In this story a German — Hans Breitmann — ^relates how Bertram, a French naturalist, who has specialized in apes, tamed an orang-outang named Bimi, who lived with him like any human being. The animal has been so indulged and petted by the Frenchman that when he tells Breitmann that he is going to marry a pretty half- caste French girl, the latter advises him to kill the marvellous ape, who might be dangerous if jealous. Bertram makes game about his friend's notion. After marriage he neglects the animal,which in a fit of jealousy bursts through the ceiling of a room in which the half- caste girl has locked herself, and tears her limb from limb. This seems quite gruesome enough, but Kipling, continuing in this strain, " sets the gilded roof on the horror " by describing how Bimbi sits at the same 138 TALES OF HORROR AND TERROR dinner-table as Breitmann and Bertram, with hair on his hands, " all black and thick with — with what had dried on his hands." Bertram then gave the ape sweetened wine and water till he was stupefied, after which he killed the beast with his hands, and subsequently- succumbed to wounds himself. Breitmann returns after a walk to find the ape dead and his friend above him. Breitmann *' laughed little and low," and seemed quite content. " Why in the world didn't you help Bertram instead of letting him be killed ? " Hans was asked. And he replied, " It was not nice even to mineself dat I should live after I haf seen dat room wid der hole in the thatch, and Bertram, he was her husband." The Spectator called this story " detestable," and another critic said it was " a symptom of unruly imagina- tion." But the truth is there is little imagination to speak of in " Bertram and Bimi," and if one did not know that it came from Kipling's pen we might say it was a symptom of unstrung nerves. The fact is that this is not a tale of an imaginative genius or a disordered brain, but simply a story by a very clever man, who loves making people's flesh creep. Possibly the homicidal ape in " The Murders in the Rue Morgue " suggested Bimi, and there certainly are traces of Poe's thoroughly unhealthy and crapulous genius throughout the whole story. But it does not lend itself to inspiring topics in criticism. But Poe was not standing at his elbow when he wrote " The Mark of the Beast." This was written by Rudyard Kipling himself, by that man who looked at life with huge and perilous curiosity, who has given to most un-English thoughts a splendidly English dress ; who has just missed being one of the greatest poets ; who has just missed being a mystic. The Spectator remarked that this story was '' matchless in horror and terror." These words may seem rather extravagant, 139 RUDYARD KIPLING but after reading this story we are bound to admit that Kipling's power in the blood-curdling narrative is undeniable. Perhaps it is unwholesome and unnatural, and the symptom of unruly fancies, but it is a master- piece of vivid description. It is Kipling's way of presenting the story rather than the tale itself that makes the flesh creep. Even those who are simply bored by his more or less fevered revelling in the loathsome details of a man stricken with hydro- phobia, can appreciate the subtlety and firmness with which he pursues the thread of the story. Here is the outline of it. A reveller in company with Strickland of the Police and the narrator, returning from some place of entertainment, slips away from his companions and enters the temple of Hanumann, the Monkey-god, where he affronts the keeper of effigy by grinding the burning butt of his cigar into its forehead. " Mark of the B-beasht ! I made it. Ishn't it fine ? " he says. Instantly the people of the temple are roused to frenzy, and things look very threatening for Fleet, who, muddled with drink, is sprawling on the floor of the temple. A Silver Man without loin-cloth, " a leper as white as snow," springs towards the Sahib, throws his arms about him and nuzzles his faceless head upon his breast. After this the crowd opened before the intruders, and they return in peace. Strickland looks upon the sudden calming of the people as a bad sign. " They should have mauled us," he remarked. Next morning Fleet discovers a mark like the rosette on the hide of a leopard on his breast. He demands chops — bloody chops — for his breakfast, and devours them with all the mannerisms of an animal. When he goes to the stables to inspect the horses the animals are at once seized with a frenzy of fear — " they reared and screamed, and nearly tore up the pickets ; they sweated and shivered and lathered, and were distraught with fear." 140 TALES OF HORROR AND TERROR Strickland discovers that the animals fear Fleet, for when he returns to the stable alone there is no sign of any commotion. Subsequently the fear, on the part of animals whilst in Fleet's presence, is again indicated, for his pony will not allow him to come near. Strickland and the narrator leave him to sleep while they exercise their horses. On their return the animals again become restive when they approach the house. Their fear is not prompted by imagination, for there is something dreadful grovelling in the bushes — something with green eyes. Of course it is Fleet, or, rather, the thing that once was Fleet. They drag him back to the house, and he at once returns to his room, where they hear him moving about and howling like a wolf. Strickland and the narrator listening from outside the room, furnishes Kipling with the chance to bring his vivid imagination into play. Kipling can concentrate not merely his own mind, but also the minds of his readers. Most men have that instinct that prompts fear ; for it is the one instinct that passes to us from our ancestors — the instinct of life-preservation itself. But over and above this instinct some men have imagination — ^graphic, intense imagination. That is what Kipling seeks to waken first of all, and then he builds upon it, adding and adding to it until he creates a grand structure of horror. " People write and talk lightly of blood running cold, and hair standing up," he writes. " Both sensa- tions are too horrible to be trifled with." " My heart stopped as though a knife had been driven through it." Somewhere across the fields and the dusk. Fleet's howl is answered by another howl. And Kipling remarks : " That set the gilded roof on the horror." They wait no longer, but rush into Fleet's room, and are just in time to keep him from crawling out of the window to answer the call of the " Thing " out in the dusk. They bind him with the leather punkah-ropes, and he snarls at them like a wolf. A doctor is called in 141 RDDYARD KIPLING and certifies that the man is dying from rabies. Nothing can save him : the doctor can only pronounce that he is dying fast : without can be heard a mewing like the mewing of the she-otter. This mewing seems to goad Fleet to fresh paroxysms of madness, and his strength begins to desert him. Foam issues from his mouth after each fresh attack. The tell-tale mewing of the " Thing " outside leads Strickland and his friend to lie in wait by the door. After a terrible struggle they catch the Silver Man, who is dragged into the room where Fleet is dying. The latter twists and doubles up as if he has been poisoned with strychnine. They bind the leper, and Strickland remarks : " Now we will ask him to cure the case." The barrels of a gun are thrust into the fire to heat, and after a few minutes Strickland seizes them with a towel wrapped round his hand. Kipling says that what followed is not to be printed. However, the Silver Man is forced to remove his evil spell, and Fleet falls asleep. The leper is then allowed to go. This seems to be the weakest part of the story, since Kipling has ascribed to the Silver Man certain occult powers : once free, he would not fail to use them upon Fleet again. The leper should have been shot. When Fleet wakes next morning he has no recollection of his doings since he " mixed his drinks last night." The intervening day is lost to him. But when he came down into the dining-room he sniffed, and remarked to Strickland: " Hon id doggy smell . . . you should really keep those terriers of yours in better order." 142 I CHAPTER XI KIPLING'S SPEECHES Kipling as a platform lecturer : Kipling dinner at the Grand Hotel given by Anglo-African Writers' Club : Frankfort Moore : Royal Academy Banquet, 1906 : Banquet of the Royal Literary Fund, 1908 : Address on doctors : Kipling on airmen : Brighton Mayoral banquet : The principle of hereditary government defended : Lecture before the Royal Geographical Society : Douglas Newton's " War " : National Service League caravan at Burwash : Speech at Mansion House on recruiting bands : " Departmental Ditties " written to music : " The Lincolnshire Poacher " : Sir Henry Newbolt's poem " The Toy Band " : Israel Zangwill : Sir F. Bridge recalls exploit of the Royal Irish : The incident upon which " The Toy Band " was founded : Kipling's address at the McGill University : Kipling refuses payment for the " Reces- sional " : " Some Aspects of Travel " : Love of energy : " Boots " : Pressure-lines : The limes'' s editorial article on aspects of travel : Smells in their relation to the traveller : The qualities of a leader of men. ^he Mintage of Wisdom is to know that rest is rusty afid that Real Life lies in Love, Laughter, and Work. CHAPTER XI KIPLING'S SPEECHES On a few occasions Rudyard Kipling has appeared on the platform as a lecturer ; and I think it is generally admitted that he is a fairly effective speaker. He must be a very busy man, and probably he gets little time to study the mysteries of rhetoric. In private life, he is a fluent and versatile talker, when in the mood, and even on the platform his English has always sparkled with a certain witchery of words. But when he faces a strange audience he labours under a very marked hesitancy and slowness. One of the chief qualities which dominate the situation on the public platform is " cheek," and this Kipling lacks. However, he has a soft, musical voice, a quick ear and quick eye, and a large vocabulary. Mr. Andrew Lang said some years ago that Kipling was " more at home in an Afghan pass than in the Strand." Certainly the stealthy way in which the Bard of Empire usually creeps to the back of the platform and " takes cover " gives this statement a good deal of colour. We also think of Kipling's answer to the editor of the Cantab (a magazine published by Cambridge under- graduates), who requested him to send his photograph to be published in their paper : I have not one by me at present, but when I find one I will send it, but not for publication, because my beauty is such that it fades like a flower if you expose it, K I4S RUDYARD KIPLING It would be hard to exaggerate the stir which the newspapers have made over the speeches of Kipling. He was unfailing copy for the reporter, and if they could but get a few words of an after-dinner speech made by him, they would magnify and print them with heavy headlines. Sometimes they have printed opinions that were invented for him. If he let fall a few common- places, they were multiplied into a column or so after the manner of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Everywhere reporters were waiting for him, to ask his opinion on politics, or polygamy, or the navy ; on the war in Africa or anything important or unimportant, exciting or inane. And if Kipling had eaten all the public dinners that were offered, he would not have lived long to enjoy his honours. The earliest speech which I can trace is of great interest. The report quoted below is from the London Review, May 21, 1898, and it is worth while to compare Rudyard Kipling's remarks on the Boers of the Transvaal and Krugerism in this speech with his poem " The Old Issue " in " The Five Nations " : The dinner given on Monday night at the Grand Hotel to Mr. Rudyard Kipling by the Anglo-African Writers' Club was a most interesting func- tion. In addition to the chairman, Mr. Rider Haggard, the company included some of the most distinguished of South African administrators. Sir Henry Bulmer, Sir Marshal Clarke, Sir W. Robinson, Sir Walter Peace, the Mayor of Durban, Mr. Frankfort Moore, Mr. J. J. Millais, and many other notabilities were present, but, unfortunately, Mr. Cecil Rhodes was compelled to send a telegram to the chairman to apologize for his inability to accept the invitation of the club. The three speakers who referred particularly to the Transvaal and its future took different, though scarcely divergent, views of the question. Mr. Rider Haggard adopted the high Imperialistic tone in his speech, which was tactful and enthusiastic. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, whose American inflexion surprised a good many people, was colloquial and modest in referring to his own views as " the disconnected maunderings of a casual traveller." He summed up the situation very aptly: the humiliation of the white man — the man of means with the restless and resistless energy of the Anglo-Saxon, and the exultation of the Boer. The policy of Great Britain just now is to lie still and wait until the 146 KIPLING'S SPEECHES psychological moment for action comes. That moment was defined by Mr. Kipling in his jaunty and colloquial style. The Boers of the Transvaal " consider themselves our masters and our bosses ; that is what they believe in the Transvaal to this day. We have allowed them to put back the clock throughout the whole of South Africa, and make a festering sore, whose influence for evil, if the sore were wiped out to-morrow, would last for ten years. It would not be desirable, I think, to claim our rights by force. But when I was there it seemed to me that, misled by various offers of Continental help, it was just possible that they might rise and cause trouble. Then, gentlemen, would be the time to clean the whole thing out. We cannot do it now. It is not fair. We are the elder brother. But sooner or later, if they are unwise enough to take encouragement from some Continental shindy — then will be the time to scoop them out." This opinion was received with loud cheers. Mr. Frankfort Moore, who pro- posed the health of the chairman, made some of the " points " of the practised after-dinner speaker, causing a good deal of merriment by the suggestion that most people gained their knowledge of South Africa through the medium of prospectuses " and other forms of imaginative literature." He concluded by expressing the opinion that the Trans- vaal would as certainly become a British colony as Cuba would become the property of " another Power than that which holds it to-day." Sir Marshal Clarke made a soldierlike speech, and the Mayor of Durban a singularly happy one. The atmosphere of the banquet-room at the Grand Hotel was highly charged with patriotic enthusiasm, which was certainly not dissipated by the singing of " Drake's Drum " and " Mandalay." In May 1906 at the Royal Academy Banquet he made a reply to the toast of Literature on The Magic of Necessary Words ; a year later he appeared at the Annual Dinner of the Artists' Benevolent Fund, and delivered an interesting speech on fate's vagaries with the artist, quoting Solomon : " Nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all." The British Weekly of January 9, 1908, contains a report of Kipling's speech to the students of McGill University, on the influence of a man who does not desire money. Presiding at the banquet of the Royal Literary Fund on May 21, 1908, he spoke of the drawbacks of the life of an author. At the Middlesex Hospital he delivered an address on doctors and their privileges (October i, 147 RUDYARD KIPLING 1908),* and he presided at the Cecil Club's Dinner to Lord Charles Beresford in London on July 13, 1910, where he alluded to various matters concerning the Navy. On October 25, 1910, Kipling addressed a conference at Folkestone which met to discuss the safety of air- men, a subject which he later touched upon in an article in the Car of July 27, 1910, where he suggested air-inflated protection suits for our aviators. As a guest of Councillor Thomas Stanford, at a Brighton Mayoral Banquet (November 9, 1910), he delivered a speech in which he defended the principle of hereditary government. Kipling gave a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society at the Queen's Hall on " Some Aspects of Travel " (February 17, 1914). In opening this address he employed the unconventional formula, " Gentlemen and Ladies." That he did this deliberately was clear, for he did not alter the sequence after the laughter that greeted the departure. The lecture was largely psycho- logical. Kipling sought to illustrate a certain mental state of the pioneer which I have touched upon in another part of this book. When the National Service League Caravan paid a visit to Burwash (September 25, 191 3), Kipling took the chair at the meeting and made an eloquent speech on the terrors of invasion. This speech is the central idea of Mr. W. Douglas Newton's "War" (Methuen, 1914), and it is used in this book as an introductory note. At a meeting at the Mansion House over which the Lord Mayor presided (January 27, 191 5) Rudyard Kipling asked the people of London to help to provide bands, which would inspire civilians to join the Army, and also aid troops on the march. In the course of this speech, which sparkled with characteristic phrases, Kipling said : " The battalions were born, quite rightly, * This address has been published under the title " Doctors " (Macmillan) and is sold for the benefit of the Middlesex Hospital, 148 KIPLING'S SPEECHES in silence, but that is no reason why they should continue to walk in silence for the rest of their lives " ; and, " No one, not even the adjutant, can say for certain where the soul of the battalion lives, but the expression of that soul is most often found in the band." He confessed himself a '' barbarian " in things musical, and there came from the audience loud whispered protests. Had certain people recalled *' The Song of the Banjo " and " The Lovers' Litany " ? " The Song of the Banjo " immediately calls to mind the words of Kipling's editor at Lahore : The efforts of the native police-band in the public gardens at Lahore to discourse English music to a sparse gathering of native nurses and infants would awaken, as we passed, some rhythm with accompanying words in his mind, and he would be obviously ill at ease because he could not get within reach of pen and ink. Whether Kipling would ever have been much of a musician I cannot say ; but I know that all the poems he wrote during the years we worked together — many of the " Departmental Ditties," for instance — ^were written not only to music, but as music. Only the other day in Vermont I heard him read, or rather intone, some of his unpublished Barrack-room Ballads to original tunes, which were infinitely preferable to the commonplace melodies to which his published ballads have been unworthily set — ^with the exception, perhaps, of " Mandalay." When he had got a tune into his head, the words and rhyme came as readily as when a singer vamps his own banjo accompaniment. Kipling has a gift of making anything he touches upon, particularly soldiers, good listening matter ; and so, when he uttered the magic words " I remember in India," the people bent forward eagerly with the hope of gaining an inedited passage or so from " Plain Tales from the Hills." Kipling recalled how at a cholera camp in India (perhaps that camp which he so vividly describes in " Only a Subaltern " *), where the men were depressed and fretful, the band of the Lincolns struck up that rousing old tune " The Lincolnshire Poacher " in order to dispel the gloom. All melancholy vanished when * The sixth story in " Under the Deodars." 149 RUDYARD KIPLING the weary soldiers heard their regimental march, for it was only another way of taking their memory back to England and the East Coast, where they had been prone to wander in the moonlight. Kipling also referred to Sir Henry Newbolt's poem, in which the poet describes how a squadron of war-worn troopers were led to renewed effort by the strains of a penny whistle, and a child's toy drum taken from a looted shop in a French town : " Hey, but here's a toy shop, here's a drum Jar me. Penny whistles too to 'play the tune ! Half a thousand dead men soon shall hear and see We're a hand^"* said the weary big Dragoon. " Rubadub, Rubadub, wake and take the road again, Wheedle, deedle, deedle dee. Come, boys, come. Tou that mean to fight it out, wake and take your load again, Fall in. Fall in, Follow the fife and drum. Mr. Israel Zangwill, who also spoke at this meeting, invented this revised version of Kipling's " Tommy " : —But it's " Thank you, Mr. Kipling,'^ When the bands begin to play. He also submitted an epigram : Music as an ally is worth at least another Balkan State. Sir Frederick Bridge, the organist of Westminster Abbey, recalled the exploit of the Royal Irish, who, after a terrific fight with a company of police one night, left for the Crimea next day singing, " Cheer, boys, cheer ; no more of nights of sorrow." He also confessed that " he was sick to death of classical music," and much preferred " Tipperary," " '95," and " Rory O'Moore." Kipling's speech at the '' Recruiting Bands " meeting made one realize how the routine of a soldier's life is sweetened with music — " melody for the mind, and rhythm for the body." We, who in former years had been indifferent to the more serious purpose of a regi- 150 KIPLING'S SPEECHES mental band, began to understand that soldiers require music to interpret and glorify their thoughts and moods. The band can no longer be counted as part of a somewhat out-of-date ceremonial in the training of a soldier — it has become a necessity. It must be there to express the emotions that are beyond speech. " The Beautiful Poem, by Sir Henry Newbolt," which Kipling referred to was published in the Tzw^i (Decem- ber i6> 1914) and is entitled " The Toy Band," * and is founded on an episode in the great retreat from Mons. II The address delivered by Rudyard Kipling before the students of McGill University at Montreal is worthy of preservation as a classic for young men. For whole- someness of spirit, serenity of vision, and practicability of advice, it is not to be matched in the whole of Kipling's writings. The theme of this discourse touches upon the influence of the man who does not desire money. Most men who have added to the literature which treats of the acquisition of wealth with contempt have been failures in real life, and very often actual burdens upon society. In such cases we are apt to read their works with an interest which is mingled with pity. But to Rudyard Kipling belongs the proud achievement of having succeeded as a man of business as well as a man of letters. In fact he has written in late years so copiously and has engaged himself in publishing controversies of such a kind, that there are people who accuse him of taking a view of literature which seems mercenary. • The incident upon which this poem was written took place outside the town of St. Quentin during the terrible — yet magnificent — retreat from Mons. Five hundred weary stragglers were induced to wake and take the road again, when some toy drums were secured to " lift their feet." " The Weary Big Dragoon " of this poem is said to be Major Bridges, nephew of the present Poet Laureate. 151 RUDYARD KIPLING This is a somewhat unfair charge, and it must be pointed out that Kipling's books are not among those novels that sell by hundreds of thousands. Besides, a large income does not necessarily imply that a man is mercenary. The " Recessional," which is looked upon as the poetic climax of his career, certainly was not written with any motives of gain. The journal in which it was published sent in return a cheque for a very large sum to the author. Kipling returned this cheque and informed the editor that he could not take money for a poem on such a subject. ..." It was written from other motives," he explained. He did not wish to traffic and barter over his patriotism. So when Kipling told the youths at McGill's that " money dominates everybody except the man who does not want money," he was by no means preaching sentiments which he had not tested and practised himself. It can safely be said that no contemporary man of letters has contributed so many phrases to the vocabulary of the man in the street, a fact that in itself proves how fully the author understands the " common touch." In this address to the McGill University is crystallized what may be regarded as the modern spirit of chivalry, and in every line of it we find a striking phrase. Could anything be simpler than the language of this passage, yet could anything be more intense ? Sooner or later you will see some man to whom the idea of wealth, as mere wealth, does not appeal, whom the methods of amassing that wealth do not interest, and who will not accept money if you offer it to him at a certain price . . . But be sure that whenever or wherever you meet him, as soon as it comes to a direct issue between you, his little finger will be thicker than your loins. You will go in fear of him ; he will not go in fear of you. You will do what he wants ; he will not do what you want. You will find that you have no weapon in your armoury with which you can attack him ; no argument with which you can appeal to him. Whatever you gain, he will gain more. Then Kipling goes on to emphasize the doctrine of 152 KIPLING'S SPEECHES loyalty — ^loyalty to one's self. The love of work for work's sake ; the love of work which is a blending of the heart, hand, and brain can never quite go out of fashion. But the man who is carried away from all that is noble in a mad rush for wealth, is not a true craftsman. He may succeed in every venture at the market-place ; he may acquire enormous wealth, but in the end, when all is summed up, he can only be looked upon or written of as " a smart man." " And that is " (so Kipling told the students of McGill's) " one of the most terrible calamities that can overtake a sane, civilized white man to-day." In spite of the extravagant language of this statement, it is inspiring. Only use one hand to procure wealth ; keep your right for the " proper work in life," for Kipling says, " If you employ both arms in that game you will be in danger of stooping ; in danger also of losing your soul." There is also a passage in which the author points out that youth can be a time of great " depression, des- pondencies, doubts and waverings." There is a certain darkness into which the soul of youth is likely to drift — " a horror of desolation and abandonment — which always seems worse because this depression appears to be unique, peculiar, and original in ourselves and in- communicable to others. We must fight this ogre tooth and nail, says Kipling, and if the black cloud will not lift, we must take comfort in the fact that " there are no liars like our own sensations." The cure which he prescribes for this " most real of the hells," which man is sometimes compelled to live in, is to enter into the sorrows or, preferably, the joys of some other man. To bear a stranger's grief ; to under- stand another's loss and calamity ; to drink the hemlock with the outcast and the wayfarer, is to begin to fully understand that " there are no liars like our own sensa- tions." 153 RUDYARD KIPLING To quote from this delightful address is to completely ruin it, so those who are interested must look it up in the British Weekly or Ladies^ Home Journal (America) for March 1908. Ill Have you ever started out on an unknown trail ? Have you ever said good-bye to friends feeling you had naught to bind your heart-strings, and started out on that blind track where naught greets you but space and skyline as the last outpost of civilization fades, leaving your restless eager feet tramping unparcelled lands from dawn to the " live blackness of a starlight night ? " Have you smelt the smell of piled-up deals when they are loading Pacific-coast lumber ? Have you heard ship cables fret and creak, and ropes stir and sigh, or have you squatted on the dock bollards and listened to the fellows singing the old randy-dandy deep-sea tunes, as they paint and chip off the deep-sea rust a-swinging over the side of their vessels ? Have you wandered in strange Eastern cities, and peered into wonder-houses where carved ivory gods and robes of purple dye are sold ? Do you know where to buy wonderful lucid china cups all scriptured round with winged serpents ? Have you ever felt and exulted in the feeling that now, for the first time, your life is in your own hands, and you are captain of your own soul ? Have you spent nights in the lonely cabin, with a faint and oily lamp swinging above your head during a long wintry passage round Cape Horn ? Have you felt what it is to be a man, my son ? If such has been your experience, you must read Kipling's lecture before the Royal Geographical Society on " Some Aspects of Travel." You will thrill as you read it. Kipling informed his audience on this occasion, that he had noticed that what travellers told the public in print was one thing, and what they told their friends by word of mouth was another ; he therefore had tried to deal 154 KIPLING'S SPEECHES with some of the more intimate and personal, though they might be trivial, aspects of travel. Lord Curzon, in introducing the lecturer, said that great travellers had sometimes — perhaps rather more frequently than vs^as generally supposed — been great men of letters, and the writings of some of the most famous travellers in the world, from Herodotus down to Kinglake and Doughty in our own times, had also been masterpieces of literature. That evening they were to have presented the inverse phenomenon, and a great man of letters, one of the foremost whom our race had produced, was to show that he, too, had tasted the joys, understood the romance, and penetrated the secrets of travel. The address was meant rather for the explorer and the pioneer than for the commonplace traveller ; but he talked of many things of the deepest interest to all who have sailed or marched, and, like Kipling's " Tommy," have hugged themselves in sheer intoxication with the love of life and adventure : Gawd bless the world ! Whatever she hath done — Except when awful long — Vve found it good. So write, before I die, ^E liked it alW^ Love of energy is the axis of Kipling's mind, and /this speech was his soul's confession. Even as you read his words seem almost transparent, fading into a visible picture before you ; ghosts of the scenes described. You can see the man in the saddle and the mariner at the wheel, and you can feel the salt wind blowing in the master's word- workings. He tells us of pressure-lines, those somewhat indefinable ghosts or mental pictures which haunt the traveller who is under the strain of continuous and exhausting move- ment. Kipling has before unfolded this state of mind in that daring experiment in rhythm, " Boots." The half delirious Tommy on the march in the South African 155 RUDYARD KIPLING War struggling on doggedly in a world where he sees nothing but " Boots — boots — boots — boots, moving up and down again." To the leader of an expedition, or the head of a scientific survey, the lines may appear as a ribbon of road unrolling behind them, or a straight bar across the vision which constantly draws nearer. There is also another good example of this phenomenon in Kipling's story of the Goorkhas who came to mount guard at the lying-in-state of King Edward VII. It was found necessary to leave one Goorkha to take all his comrades' guards, one after the other, till they returned from their pilgrimage to Windsor Castle. He endured the terrific strain of the countless thousands of feet — *' the most terrible feet of the multitude " — for many hours. With eyes abased he saw nothing but the river of feet. When the man came off his guard his eyeballs " worked like weavers' shuttles " as he counted thousands of phantom feet. These images were what Kipling calls pressure-lines. The Times in an editorial article added to Kipling's examples the feelings which almost invariably overtake the conventional wanderer : It is a sense of utter weariness, the gradual growth of indifference to externals, a consciousness of blurred impressions, an unwillingness to see more. There are no definite pressure-lines, perhaps, but there is the kind of mental exhaustion which would develop in a man who tried to look successively at all the pictures in the Louvre on a single day. Why un- travelled doctors should so constantly recommend tired elderly gentlemen to go round the world is an abiding puzzle to those who have done the thing. Except in ardent and receptive youth, the world should be taken piecemeal, and not at one swift swoop. Mr. Kipling thinks the time is near at hand when men will literally soar and swoop round the world in one long flight. If that is so, we venture to predict that on their return they will only have very vague new conceptions of the terrestial globe. Except for the thrilling memory of their rush through the upper air, their notions of the world will very much resemble the mind-pictures of imaginary travel, the pleasures of which Mr. Kipling rightly extolled. Like Stevenson, most men " can voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment." Mr. Kipling has made the interesting experiment of asking men who had not IS6 KIPLING'S SPEECHES been there what picture or diagram the words " He went down to the Cape " summoned to their minds. We are surprised that the answers did not include a vision of a flat-topped mountain crowned with a wisp of white cloud. Many who have been to the Antipodes will not endorse his mental shorthand of the run to Australia. For them it is a zigzag of five, not three, and the lines run : London — Gibraltar ; Gibraltar — ^Port Said ; Port Said — ^Aden ; Aden — Colombo ; Colombo — Fremantle. The call at Colombo is a vivid and welcome stage. There is one definite image which lives in the minds of some of those who have made the long, stormy midwinter passage by the northerly route across the Pacific. It is like sailing uneasily along the rim of the earth. One of other matters commented on in this lecture is that of the various smells in their relation to the pioneer and traveller. This is an old and favourite topic with Kipling, and how enchantingly does he discourse on the smells — those smells that mean everything to the dis- tressed traveller. Above all other smells, he says, those of burning wood and melting grease must be placed first, for they are of universal appeal ; they call up to the mind the magical camp-fire and the cooking of the evening meal. Among other odours he mentions the smell of camel — pure camel, one whiff of which is all, all Arabia ; the smell of rotten eggs at Hitt, on the Eu- phrates, where Noah got the pitch for the ark, and the flavour of drying fish in Burma. He has also said that the smell of the Himalayas ever calls a man back. " Smells are surer than lights or sounds," * sings a trooper of the N.S.W. contingent engaged in the Boer War as his native land flashes into remembrance with the scent of wattle. And does not his time-expired soldier recall the " spicy garlic smells " of Burma ? The ^imes supplements Kipling's list of smells in the following forcible passage : But surely there are other smells, less material in their appeal, which almost come within the range of his definition ? One is the first chill smell of mountains, especially when the heights are reached towards sunset or * " Lichtenberg " verses in " The Five Nations." 157 RUDYARD KIPLING after dark. Another is the odour of a forest, of which it has been said that " of all the smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the sweetest and the most fortifying." Both awake in mankind dim, unconscious memories of primeval life, when the race had not sheltered itself beneath roofs and behind shutters. But the smells of travel are indeed innumerable. The voyager gets his first real whiff of the East when he lands at Aden, and drives along a dusty road to the bazaar within the Crater. It lingers in his nostrils for evermore. On the coast of Burma and down the Straits the air is redolent of rotten fish and over-ripe fruit. Tropical jungles leave keen, olfactory memories of decaying vegetation. The smell of Chinese villages is like nothing else in the world, but the odd thing is that to the true traveller it soon ceases to be disagreeable. There is one smell which is unique. To encounter it, one must be steaming through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb on a hot, still night in July or August — one of those nights when it is impossible to stay below and the deck is strewn with sleeping forms. Towards dawn, as one is tossing restlessly from side to side, one is aware of a strange, dank odour arising from the scummy waters. It suggests a stagnant duck-pond, but in reality the ship is passing through the lees of a mighty ocean, swept into one small corner. All along the coast of Southern Arabia, where few ships go, the same smell is met in lesser degree. Wreckage is carried thither, and the trunks of trees and immense masses of weeds ; and often may be seen strange fish leaping from the oily surface, or a spouting whale or two, or a turtle floating asleep, for the deserted backwash of the southern seas swarms with marine life. The day of adventure is not past yet, but Kipling somewhat mournfully speaks of the time of the coming mastery of the air. Then we shall have reached the golden age of travel, when a journey to the Pole will be a day's excursion with " neither sweat nor suffering." It is a question whether he is quite right in supposing that we shall then be freed from the " checks that have hitherto conditioned all our travels." New conditions will evolve new dangers and discomforts, and the very adventurous spirit which filled the old pioneer will be needed just as much when leaping and flying mechanical dragons shall have abolished terrestrial space. The Times comments on Kipling's prophecy as follows : Will travel, for instance, be less of a trial or a discipline to the temper when we can all soar upwards and forsake muddy roads and the grit and IS8 « KIPLING'S SPEECHES dust of railways and the discomforts of the sea ? Mountaineers know very well the splenetic irritability which often assails them when the tree- line is passed ; and we seem to have heard that airmen do not always find that a flight in the empyrean produces in them a holy calm. Mr. Kipling recognizes that the earth is shrinking actually and in imagination, that we are cutting down the world conception of time and space, and that " the new machines are outstripping mankind " ; but his robust optimism leads him to hope that when humanity can get its breath all will be well again. Kipling also referred to the choice of companions. What qualities must a leader of men have ? He partly answered the question in this way : A man had been asked why he invariably followed a well-known man into the most uncomfortable situations ; he had replied : " All the years I have known So-and-So, I've never known him to say whether he was cold or hot, wet or dry, sick or well, but I've never known him forget a man who was. Besides that indefinable quality which compels men to follow him, the leader must have, says Kipling, self- reliance, self-sacrifice, loyalty, a robust view of moral obligations ; and a not too keen instinct for visualizing the dangers by the way. He must live alone and inside himself. Every leader must be something of a visionary, a man who is neither pure dreamer nor plain doer. A being whose eyes are unwaveringly focused on the in- finite and yet clearly sees what lies at his feet. 159 CHAPTER XII THE ROMANCE OF SEA LIFE Anglo-Saxon people and their love of the sea : The fascination of ships : Ruskin's " Harbours of England " : The romance of modern sea life : Swinburne : Kipling as a chantey-man : Lord Arnaldos and the phantom sailor : A literary dispute as the inspiration of " The Rhyme of the Three Captains " : Hardy, Besant, and Black : Paul Jones : Sir Walter Besant and Robert Buchanan : A controversy in the Contemporary Review : Kipling's militarism. r The sea drives truth into a man like salt. A coward cannot long pretend to be brave at sea, nor a fool to be wise, nor a frig to be a good companion ; and any venture connected with the sea is full of venture, and can pretend to be nothing more. HiLAiRE Belloc. CHAPTER XII THE ROMANCE OF SEA LIFE Everybody, I imagine, in these islands loves the sea, though it only be something to look at from the security of the sunny beach ; but the really intimate lover of the sea cannot think of it v^ithout an instant vision of ships and those vi^ho do their business on the great vi^aters. To him ships and the sea are one and indivisible ; his imagination ever sees the ghost of some ship v^ith tav^ny yards he used to know. He smells the tar and hears the faint and distant sound of a shadov^ watch a-hauling. But this perception can seldom be acquired; it is a growth having root in youth. The child whose eyes opened within sight of the sea, and who grew up with its majestic influence, has in his heart for ever something of its mystery and wonder. I have met some people for whom ships and the sea have the same fascination as did horses for the sporting fellow in the elegant white hat whom David Copperfield encountered on the Canterbury mail coach. They were to that gentleman " wittles and drink . . . lodging, wife and children, reading, writing and 'rithmetic, snuff, tobacker and sleep." Of course the fascination of ships may some- times come to people who are not sea rovers, as in the case of such a man as Ruskin. Ruskin caught a true glimpse of the great vision of the sea, his " Harbours of England " must be regarded as a noble seafaring book. How far distant was he from the bluff seaman in oilies at the wheel ? Who can say ? But he saw the magic of the waters as few men ever see them, and presented 163 RUDYARD KIPLING it to us in printed page as hardly any man can ever hope to do again. To him ships and boats in their vast succession and continuity — as they have passed down the ages — appeared as a pageant, a spectacle, v^herein every curve and bend is not only a marvel in itself, but the embodiment of a v^^hole magic plexus of secret influences, ideas, traditions, and revolts. The little undecked sea- boat v^as to him the utmost of human achievement, the perfection adaptation of means to ends. The boat's bov^, he has told us, is " naively perfect." The man v^^ho made it knew not he was making anything beautiful as he bent its planks into those mysterious, ever-changing curves. It grows under his hand into the image of a sea-shell ; the seal, as it were, of the flowing of the great tides and streams of ocean stamped on its delicate rounding. He leaves it, when all is done, without a boast. It is simple work, but it will keep out water. And every plank thenceforward is a Fate, and has men's lives wreathed in the knots of it, as the clothyard shaft has their deaths in its plumes. . . . The nails that fasten together the planks are the rivets of the fellowship of the world. Their iron does more than draw lightning out of heaven ; it leads love round the earth. Ruskin has pointed out that it is a curious thing that few great painters have taken the trouble to inform themselves accurately in the drawing of ships ; but an accurate drawing in detail of a ship would not come up to the artistic demands ; with the artist the spirit of the thing is everything. I heard on one occasion some one say in answer to Ruskin's criticism, " It would be about as absurd for a painter to put in all the details of a ship as for a poet to describe them all." But literature was only waiting for a man who was clever enough to take all the terms and technicalities of sea lingo and weld it into poetry without appearing absurd. And it was Rudyard Kipling who stepped into the arena. He came to show us that there is as much poetry and romance to 164 THE ROMANCE OF SEA LIFE be woven into the speech and detail of modern sea life as there was in the days when the wooden walls of England sailed under Drake and Nelson. The ship has for Kipling an endless fascination, and particularly from the scientific and modern machine- made age point of view. No doubt it was some while before Kipling found the magic of getting heart-throbs out of a steamship's propeller, but he knew that some one had to start on it, for English poets could not go on writing poems about the wooden walls of England without limit. So he gave us new randy-dandy deep-sea songs such as '' M' Andrews' Hymn," " The Destroyers," and " The Rhyme of the Three Sealers." And we must make our acknowledgment of the call of the sea — the seven seas — with which every line of his poetry is instinct. Sometimes, Kipling seems to write of the sea with an almost contemptuous knowledge of the sheer pictorial qualities of woods which no other living verse-maker possesses. Take " The Sea and the Hills," in which he gives us a wonderful marine picture : " Who hath desired the sea ? — the immense and contemptuous surges ? " How many paintings of great artists pass through our minds in helpless competition with the " star-stabbing " hexameters of this poem ? Again, take " White Horses," which might have been written as a literary commentary on one of Watts' pictures. In his verses of the sea Kipling, like Swinburne, takes up the modern attitude. It is remarkable to find that neither the Greeks nor Romans, nor our own Elizabethan writers, expressed any lucid perceptions of the mystery and grandeur of the sea, though in Shakespeare we can trace a few references to it that show power and genius. It has been stated that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had little imaginative sense of the great waters, though some fine objective songs of the sea have been handed down from those periods. It was the revival of i6s RUDYARD KIPLING the purely romantic in poetry in the nineteenth century that produced certain writers who have made the sea a living thing, and two of the greatest of these are Rudyard Kipling and Swinburne. They see with different eyes, but both are inspired by almost the same spirit. Take this passage from Swinburne's " By the North Sea " : The wastes of the wild sea inarches Where the borderers are matched in their might, Bleak fens that the sun's weight parches. Dense waves that reject his light, Change under the change-coloured arches Of changeless morning and night. Here it will be noticed is the same sad undertone which finds expression in so much of Kipling's sea poetry. Kipling does not often sing of the sea in a swaggering Jingo vein, in fact his constant association of the sea with death is a dominant note. Something wonderful in its grim awfulness is the " price of ad- miralty " which has to be paid by casting " our best to the weed's unrest, to the shark and the sheering gull." His eye pierces the ocean depths where our English dead sleep down in the dark, in the utter dark, '' where the blind white sea snakes are." Perhaps the most typical of all his sea pieces is that in which he sings how seven men took the Bolivar, a coffin screw-steamer carrying a shifting cargo of rails from Sunderland to Bilbao. It is a remarkable descrip- tion of the heroic exertions of rough men inspired by no heroic faith, but purely prompted by the dogged, headstrong, rebellious spirit which makes the British sailormen the finest fighting material in the world. Such men are characteristic heroes of Kipling and he tells with gusto how they shepherded the crazy steamer, '' leaking like a lobster-pot, steering like a dray," safely back home : Just a pack 6* rotten plates puttied up with tar, In we came, arC time enough, ''cross Bilbao Bar ; i66 THE ROMANCE OF SEA LIFE Overloaded, undermanned, meant to founder, we Euchred God Almighty'' s storm, bluffed the Eternal Sea ! To the Seven Seas themselves Kipling has made but scant reference. They are alluded to in two of his poems, but are not named in any. In the *' Neolithic Age " he tells us that the '' vi^orld is wondrous large,- — seven seas from marge to marge," that it holds an extra- ordinary assortment of men, and that the '' wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu, and the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban." The sea to Kipling is at once a symbol of beauty, of fate, and of doom. It is immutable, and yet for ever changing, giving delight to men one moment and snatching at their lives the next moment. And yet Kipling bears no bitterness to the wide waters which are for ever hunger- ing after the best of our breed, and in " The Flowers " he enjoins those whose homes are set round the Seven Seas to learn to love and understand all the passing moods which are reflected in them ; to accept her ravenous cruelty, sublime inscrutableness, and incon- sistency without protest. In his passion for the sea Kipling is the essentially national modern poet, and it is right fitting that the Laureate of the British Race should also be the Laureate of the Wide Waters. Next to Kipling comes Swinburne, who in moods of despon- dency always turned to the sea, which was saluted by him in splendid verse : A land that is thirstier than r%dn, A sea that is hungrier than death. Heaped hills that a tree never grew in. Wide sands where the sea draws breath ; All solace is here for the spirit That ever Jor ever may be. For the soul of thy son to inherit. My mother, my sea. Mr. W. B. Whare, master mariner, in a preface to " Ships and Sea Songs," tells us that Kipling would have 167 RUDYARD KIPLING made a splendid chantey-man. In " Frankie's Trade " the refrain : " A-hoy O ! To me O ! " is a reflection of the true sea chantey. And in the " Wet Litany " we have the new spirit in sea verse. Whenever I think of the sea songs and chanties, there come into my mind some verses about Lord Arnaldos who, while out hunting, heard a phantom sailor singing one of those queer old tunes that all seamen sing when the world is young. It was one of those songs which carry the imagination to enchanted islands, and the Lord Arnaldos spoke to the phantom sea voice asking him what manner of ditty he chanted. Here is the last verse : " Tell me for God's sake, sailor. What song may that song be F " The sailor spake in answer. And answer thus made he : " / only tell my song to those Who sail away with meP That is the secret and Kipling has realized it ; he has sailed away with the sailor upon desperate voyages, and has acquired the mystery, the wonder, and the song of the sea. Hilaire Belloc has told us that the " sea drives truth into a man like salt," and I might add to this and say that Kipling's marine verses are salted with the salt of truth. They are saturated with philosophy, and of course they are rather chameleonic, but he does not allow art to oust truth. His craftsmanship is based on one pellucid conviction : ^ure the wisest plan is to live [and to write"} like a man. And luck may look after the rest. It is certainly no mere chance that the especial poet and glorifier of the men who go down to the sea to work ships should even conduct his literary disputes in slang of the sailor. It is perhaps not generally known that 1 68 THE ROMANCE OF SEA LIFE " The Rhyme of the Three Captains " is a protest against the losses English authors suffer at the hands of American publishers. Whilst a controversy was taking place in the pages of the AthencBum in 1890 over the wiles of American publishers regarding the publica- tion of the work of English authors, Kipling wrote and complained that a certain American house had some years before printed some of his stories in book form without asking his permission, or paying him any royalties on the issue of the volumes. The defence of this firm was that the stories had been bought from Kipling's representative. But Kipling explained that the serial rights of these stories did not carry with them the leave to publish them in a volume, and in his letter to the Athenceum^ he pointed out that the source of the trouble did not lie with this or that particular " picaroon " across the water. " The high sea of literature was unprotected," and authors had to run the risk of being robbed. He remarked that if this firm had not plundered him, some other publisher would have done so, but complained that " a pretentiously moral pirate " caused him to waste time and money, whereas the real Paul Jones he would have disregarded in the first place. In a week or so another contribution to the controversy appeared above the signatures of three literary giants : Walter Besant, William Black, and Thomas Hardy. It was a testimony to the effect that the firm alluded to by a certain author (Kipling) had a good reputation and had always treated the foreign author justly, in spite of the indefensible omissions of the American law in the protection of the works of English writers. " The Rhyme of the Three Captains " was Rudyard Kipling's somewhat acrid reply to these gentlemen, who are set forth in the poem as " Lord of the Wessex Coast " (Hardy), " Master of the Thames " (Besant), " Admiral of the North " (Black). Again in line 88 of this poem is an example of Kipling's 169 RUDYARD KIPLING banter : *' The bezant is hard, ay, and black," is, of course, a shameless pun on the names of the three great writers — Besant, Hardy, and Black. Also in line 77, '' Chaplain of the Fleet " is an echo of Besant's well- known novel. This poem deals with an exploit of the famous Paul Jones whose body was discovered some years ago, after a six-years search, by the American Ambassador to France, in the old St. Louis Cemetery in Paris. In many English papers the usual epithet " pirate " was applied to him once more ; but he was much more than that ; indeed, strictly, he was never a pirate at all. It is true that he was born a British subject, so that when he fought against England he was technically a traitor. But he always fought honourably, and was the founder of the American navy. The fight between his old ship, the Bonne Homme Richard^ and the fine British man-of- war, the Serapis, in which Paul Jones won, is one of the finest fights on record. He was a man who had the fighting passion in his blood ; no odds could make him afraid ; he went into battle like a boy going to the wicket. It is a curious thing that Sir Walter Besant should a ^ few years later take up the cudgels in defence of the literature and morals of Kipling. During a controversy conducted in the Contemporary Review * in 1900, Mr. Robert Buchanan attacked Kipling and protested against the abuse of talent by pandering to the fury of the hour, and Sir Walter Besant complained that literary men should attack one another, while in all other pro- fessions etiquette prevented criticism. To which Mr. Buchanan replied : In the medical profession, for example, there is, I believe, a professional etiquette which forbids one practitioner, on being called in to a patient who is dying through the ignorance and malpractice of another practitioner, apprising those concerned of such ignorance and malpractice ! An etiquette * February. 170 THE ROMANCE OF SEA LIFE of the same sort, according to Sir Walter, forbids a man of letters avowing his detestation of a Hooliganism which, he believes, is not merely causing the death of one sick individual, but is sowing the whole world broadcast with butchered and martyred men. Having justified criticism thus, Robert Buchanan then says some very severe things about Sir Walter Besant : Since Sir Walter Besant has chosen to express his honest admiration of Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, and to cite chapter and verse from a great Poet in support of his case and that of a Church which is now crying havoc to the War-wolves, let me show the hopelessness of any agreement between us by frankly answering him to this effect — that I take my stand on the belief that there is no worse evil than War, and that all the talk of its power to purify a nation or an individual is the veriest and foulest Cant. Two blacks never yet made a white, nor any two wrongs a right, and disguise the truth under what phrases we may. War is simply Murder with another name. That is my belief, and if that belief is false, every word which I have written concerning Mr. Kipling is false as well. Under one condition only is the slaying of our fellow men justifiable, or at least pardonable — the condition of righteous Self-defence. Our good Sir Walter, so full of anxiety for his fellow craftsmen, so shocked and shamed when one of those craftsmen protests against homicidal mania and Jingo patriotism in another, can contemplate with serenity the bloody holocaust of suffering martyred thousands ; snugly seated in his office chair, reeling out Literature at so much per thousand words, can assure his readers that the processes of Plunder and Slaughter are glorious and ultimately puri- fying ; can glibly quote from a poem of which Tennyson lived long enough to be ashamed, but which is still among the few blots on a noble reputation ; can talk of the " potency of War," " the ennobling of a People by War " ; nay, can utter the usual banalities about " noble aims " in connexion with a crusade baser even, if that is possible, than the mad Crimean crusade which once deluged Europe with innocent blood ! The question of talent did not enter into the matter at all. Mr. Buchanan's censure was directed against Kipling's militarism. He said : The question of Mr. Kipling's genius, of my base motives, my mis- appreciation, really does not count in the discussion. What counts is the Carnage to which every Weathercock of a scribbler is pointing, and the brutality which is expressing itself daily and hourly, not only in mere words but in deeds which have made the name of England execrated all over the 171 RUDYARD KIPLING civilized globe. Sir Walter Besant avers that I have no right to speak of these things, because they concern the prestige and the pocket of one who, with a Publisher on each side of him (like the Bishop on each side of Richard in the play), lately cried aloud for and obtained the sympathy of two Continents. I say that I have every right to speak of these things, because they concern the honour and the prosperity, nay, the very existence of these two Continents, and the happiness of every humane and peace-loving citizen who dwells therein. I 172 I RUDYARD KIPLING [From a Drawing by B. Irvine Bately) The Viscomte Robert d'Humieres in his study of the English and their ways, "Through Isle and Empire," gives a thumb-nail picture of Kipling which gives one a clear idea of his personal appearance. It is the best description of the famous novelist that has been written ; " He does not look more than thirty. Nicholson's print makes him seem older than he is. Collier's portrait alone gives the frank, open, and youthful expression of the original. His eyes in particular hold the attention behind the immovable glasses, full of light, sym- pathy, and gaiety, thirsting to reflect life in all its forms. The chestnut hair is cut straight over the forehead. The thick-set, lather plump figure possesses a singular agility with none of the somewhat wooden gestures of the average Englishman." CHAPTER XIII "THE LIGHT THAT FAILED" The Light that Failed " : A happy or sad ending ? : A notice of the play from the Argonaut. O, may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence : live In -pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self. In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge merCs search To vaster issues. CHAPTER XIII " THE LIGHT THAT FAILED " " Weep for the dead, for his light has failed, weep but a little for the dead, for he is at rest." The grand old words of Ecclesiasticus are ever in my mind when I think of Kipling's Dick Heldar. Who would not weep over the extinction of a career set in a promise so golden, in an accomplishment so rare and splendid ? Sad enough thought that Kipling put him at rest ; still — he rests. " The Light that Failed " approaches more nearly to the stereotyped novel than any other of the author's works, and the following is a brief outline of the story. Dick Heldar and Maisie, both Anglo-Indian children, are left in the care of a Mrs. Jennett, a woman with pronounced Puritanical ideas, whose over-scrupulous rules drive her charges into all sorts of trifling trans- gressions. Both take up art, and Dick in the course of time goes to the Soudan as a war correspondent, where an Arab's spear cuts open his forehead. On his return to England he becomes famous, but eye trouble develops owing to the spear wound. Maisie, meanwhile, has taken her profession very seriously, and persistently checks Dick's offers of help and turns down his proposal of marriage. " Maisie is not heartless, but just self-absorbed, ambitious, indivi- dualistic and firmly convinced that life holds rich rewards awaiting the development of her powers as an artist, the powers which the love-stricken Dick, secure in the 175 RUDYARD KIPLING instinct of genius, knows only too well bears the stamp of mediocrity." Maisie conceives an idea for a great picture which is to be called " Melancholia," but being unable to develop the impression, Heldar paints the picture to show what can be done with the idea. Before the picture is finished the light begins to fail, and the artist races against blindness to finish the masterpiece. His model — Bessie, a barbaric child of the streets — destroys the painting with turpentine after Dick's sight has failed. The English and American editions of the novel run parallel up to this point. In the American version Torpenhow, Dick's friend, who knows that Dick is in love with Maisie, seeks her out in a French art colony, brings her back to England, and we are left to suppose that the fair adherent of art will marry the afflicted friend of her childhood. " This ending is not fathered by the author at all, but is sired by the easy sentimentality of the novel-reading, theatre-going public whose sensibilities are too delicate to look upon the self-willed and obsessed Maisie who — in the English edition — comes back with Torpenhow and shrinks from the responsibility of becoming the wife of a blind man." In the version in which the ending is driven to a logical conclusion, Maisie drops out of the story, and Heldar bluffing his way out to Egypt is shot in a skirmish. A dramatic version of this novel was produced in London at the Royalty Theatre, and revived at the Lyric Theatre in 1903. Forbes-Robertson played the part of Dick Heldar, and Maisie was created by Miss Gertrude Elliot. I should like to quote here a notice of this play which appeared in the Argonaut when Forbes-Robertson paid a visit with his company to the Cort Theatre, San Francisco, in January 191 5. It gives pretty clearly the outline of the play and the attitude of the average critic 176 "THE LIGHT THAT FAILED" towards the story as it stands with the unconvincing and happy ending : Stumbling in late to a performance last Friday evening of " The Light that Failed," we found ourselves assisting at a very crucial interview between Dick Heldar and Maisie, in which that fair adherent of art turned down Dick's proposal of marriage. We are getting more used, since Kipling first wrote his book, to the cool-hearted young thing who refuses to melt into a man's arms upon no matter how warmly couched an invitation offered her to be his, but somehow Laura Cowie seemed to fit with peculiar felicity into the character of Maisie — of Kipling's Maisie, I mean — not the Maisie of later acts, who is not fathered by Kipling at all, but is a bastard being, sired by the easy sentimentality of the theatre-going public, whose sensi- bilities are too tender to allow a tragic theme to intrude in modern drama and work out to its logical conclusion. It is curious how they differentiate in this respect between ancient or mediaeval drama and that of our time. In the former death and sorrow are allowable. In the latter all tears must be wiped away and all sorrows assuaged. So Dick's tragedy never develops to its final conclusion any more than Maisie's character fulfils itself. But this interview was Kipling's own, and I felt as I listened to the pleading of the thin, worn man, over whose head seemed hovering the shadow of impending calamity, " This is the most live and palpitating thing I have seen these people do yet." For it seemed so much fuller of intimate human feeling than the intellectual self-communions of Hamlet, the lofty spiri- tuality of " The Passer-by," or the historically enshrined satire of Caesar. It was one of those moments in a play that stamps itself on the memory. Maisie was so dazzlingly young, so youthfully self-confident, and as fresh and flawless as an opening bud. It seemed natural that this worn and anxious man should plead humbly for the boon of her young love, and it was only when he spoke of their having been children together that the first false note was struck. The disparity was too obvious, in regarding that young bud of humanity. She was like a cream-coloured tropical flower, with her smooth, warm pallor and her full crimson lips. For the young lady affects the vampire, red-lipped pallor that came in vogue a season or so ago, and which is strikingly effective in contrast against her rich dusky hair. She struck the right note for Maisie, who wasn't heartless, but just self-absorbed, ambitious, individualistic, and firmly convinced that life held rich rewards awaiting the development of her art — the art which poor Dick, secure in the instinct of genius, knew only too well bore the stamp of mediocrity, Forbes-Robertson in his modern dress, and with a crest of wavy locks over his brow lending a modicum of youth to his refined features, and with his quick, light movements, was in appearance easily acceptable as Dick M 177 RUDYARD KIPLING Heldar, if it were not for the necessity of that unfortunate allusion which established himself and Maisie as contemporaries. No matter how willingly we work that Pegasus, our imagination, common sense rejected the idea. But as Dick Heldar, the artist struggling against almost overwhelming odds to finish his masterpiece, and as the devoted friend of Torpenhow, guarding him from Bessie, the pretty guttersnipe who schemes to have the tall war correspondent held back from the front so that he may take her like a stray London cat into the shelter of his warm hearthstone and his warmer heart, the London actor is great enough to be simple, natural, and pathetic. Even with the perverted and illogical twist that has been given it to bring about a happy ending the play is very sad — partly, I think, because, aside from the doom that really falls on Dick, we feel, as we should in the first two acts, the shadow of impending tragedy. It is artistically fit that we should in this kind of play, and when the twist comes with its falsely happy ending we remember the calamity of the ruined picture, with its presage of more to follow, and those who wish the play to be, dramatically, an approximately faithful reproduction of the book instinc- tively reject the false ending. In fact, they are liable to regard it as a sort of indictment of their intelligence. For how could self-absorbed Maisie, so unwarmed by the tender glow of her lover's manly passion, how could she ever be to him the self-sacrificing companion whose devotion would, in some degree, make up to him for his lack ? Kipling himself, if I remember aright, shadowed forth the intimation that Dick's life might have emerged from its tragic cloud if he had loved " the red-haired girl ! " instead of Maisie. Of course, all notable books suffer from being dramatized. That is, there are abruptnesses, unnatural condensations, loose ends, and so forth. The Bessie episode of the ruined picture, which in the book follows a procession of minor events, is a climax to the act in which Bessie first makes her appearance. Those sordid qualities in human nature which in the book impelled Bessie and Beeton to neglect their charge do not in the necessarily limited area of a play appear, and that most striking denouement which follows upon Dick's realization that life holds no further promise for him is, naturally, utterly unknown, or at least, so we assume, to all those auditors who have never read the book. The European War, with its elimination of the war correspondent, has had the effect of making the book, in one respect, seem old-fashioned, for the war has brought a new epoch of thoughts and opinions in which the whole world shares. The war correspondents, so called, of 1914 have been almost universally made sick at heart, for, being only allowed to trail in the wake of destructive armies, and over battlefields vacated of all except the dead, they know the whole horrible, hideous tragedy of war, and they 178 "THE LIGHT THAT FAILED" have made us Americans know it, too. Thus the explosion of joy by the war correspondents of the play when they learned that war had broken out in the Balkans fell on very coldly responsive ears. During the Balkan War the American public was only half interested. Now " Balkans " has become a household word. The delight of those men at the call to arms seemed almost heartless, and the fine, manly, soldierly spirit which it was supposed to express could not naturally be responded to by us, with our new and painful wisdom. The play is supposed to be permeated with the atmosphere of youth — the youth of eager soldiers ; of Dick, ardent and ambitious in his love ; of Bessie, hungering for the wine of life ; and of Maisie and her friend, ven- turing into the art world, so lavish in promises and denials. But in the present representation there is too great a suggestion of maturity in all except Maisie and Bessie, for Mary Sumner is suitably equipped with youth, temperament, and technic. It is, however, a very interesting performance — more so, I think, to some of the present generation than is that of any of the four plays represented. Perhaps because of the greater sense of intimacy with emotions and ambitions of modern life. " Hamlet," however, remains the great attraction, for the public recognizes that few players are sufficiently endowed to resurrect the melancholy prince ; and as for " Caesar and Cleo- patra," this has been our first, last, and only chance to hear Shaw's amusing historical satire. The above notice is from the pen of Josephine Hart Phelps, and made its appearance in the Argonaut on January 9, 191 5. 179 CHAPTER XIV ANIMAL STORIES Kipling's animal stories : Cats : J. Lockwood Kipling on cats : *' How the Leopard got his Spots " : Alexandre Dumas pere and his pet : Jerome K. Jerome : The Spectator on " Pussy cat " " The Crab that played with the Sea " : Wolf-reared children Wolf-boy at Mission House of Agra : " Old Man Kangaroo " Curious facts about the kangaroo : Kipling's imitators : The Review of the Week and Dr. Doyle's animal stories : " An Affront to Ganesha " : The origin of Ganesha : Kipling's symbol of good luck. / think I could turn and live with animals, they are so -placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things. Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. Walt Whitman. CHAPTER XIV ANIMAL STORIES Any attempt at detailed criticism of the wonderful sketches of animal life in the " Jungle Books," and a host of short stories concerned with nature myths from many sources and various races, would be beyond the scope of this volume. But this survey would certainly be incomplete without a few notes on a variety of matters which appear to bear upon Kipling's animal stories. For the convenience of students and searchers, the title of a few books from which I have gleaned my notes are given in the footnotes. The countless little phrases Kipling uses in these fables show his point of view — ^his attitude to the world. They do not come to one in solid chunks of inconsequential description, but in innocent-looking little passages hidden in the practical wisdom of the animal. " The Cat that walked by Himself " in " Just So Stories " is a fine study. Cats are always interesting, because nobody has yet understood how much affection they are capable of feeling for their human possessors, but in this story the author has certainly put forth a very faithful study. It is an old subject, but remarkably well treated in spite of Kipling's fun and twaddle, entertaining or not, according to the disposition of the reader. The story opens with Man and Woman living together in a cave. To them came in turn Wild Dog, Wild Horse, and Wild Cow, who in exchange for food make compacts with the cave-dwellers to become respectively First Friend, First Servant, and Giver of Good Food. The 183 RUDYARD KIPLING cat, however, is not to be attracted so easily ; he is curious about the humans in the cave, but declares he will always " walk by himself." The warm milk and a right to sit by the fire is a constant attraction, but his independence will not let him barter his freedom for comfort. The cat despises the dog who will lick the foot that kicks him : for straightforward, level-headed reasoning go to puss. The dog thinks a powerful lot of mere man — there never was such a clever thing as a man, in a dog's opinion ; and he takes good care to bark it to everybody he meets. Naturally enough the Cave Man thought that the dog was a most intellectual animal, and being deluded by his winning manners and the promise to " hunt through the day and guard this cave by the night," he allowed Wild Dog the right to make the cave his home. The Cat was always creeping around the cave eavesdropping, which is a way they have, and when he heard the dog surrender his body and soul for a few roasted mutton bones. Wild Cat looked towards the dog with an expression of disgust on his face that would have made a travelling actor feel ashamed of himself. The cat, you see, had his own opinion about Man and Woman as he has ever since had about all humans. He does not say much, but you can learn enough from his manner to make you glad he can't talk to you. The consequence is that humans put down pussy as an animal without intelligence. Even Kipling is very scathing about the cat, and suggests that he is really incapable of any true affection towards man. When a cat rubs against its master's legs and walks sideways, mews and appears to be transported with joy, it is " only pretend," says Kipling. After all these signs of affection pussy will run out the front door and stay out till the morning light, without another thought to the household ; but the dog " snores at my feet all night, and he is my Firstest Friend." All painfully true, of course. Best Beloved, but pussy has many good and ster- 184 ANIMAL STORIES ling traits. We must not allow our prejudice to override our judgment. For level-headed reasoning give me cats ; you can't fool a cat with soft words the same as you can a dog. Pussy is admired by learned men the world over because of his independence and the secrecy of his ways. Again, cats like all scholars are yearners after the silence of the " wild wet woods," and have no fear of the darkness ; if they had not been too proud to bear the yoke, iEolus would have taken them for his couriers in the night. Richelieu, Joachim du Bellay, Tasso, Chateaubriand, Maupassant, Baudelaire and Dumas pere all adored cats. In fact, nearly all great men have enter- tained a very great respect for cats. But to return to Kipling's story of the " Cat that Walked." The Wild Cat, after the other wild animals had sold themselves to bondage, walked up to the cave to reconnoitre, and he saw the cheery glow of the Cave Woman's fire, and he smelt the smell of warm milk. When the woman looked out of the cave she asked the " Wild Thing " out of the wood what he was doing on her doorstep, and told him to go away. But the crafty pussy assumed an aspect of chastened sorrow, and begged of the woman to give him the chance to show what a wise creature he was. The woman agrees to let the cat share the cave, fire and milk, if she three times praises him. Pussy easily wins the first and second word of praise by soothing the baby, and the third by killing a mouse. From that day till the hour he died the Wild Cat of the Woods was allowed to drink warm milk three times a day, sit by the fire in a drunken stupor all day, and wander about the wild wet woods all night. If you watch any cat closely, you will see that from time to time he will turn deliberately round and laugh at you. He is chuckling in remembrance of the joke of jokes in the cat world ; you can almost read Kipling's words on the lips : Still I am the cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to me. 185 RUDYARD KIPLING Generations of devoted cat-lovers in Europe have not been able quite to overcome the tendency of the pussy to run v^ild. J. Lockwood Kipling says that many a gamekeeper will tell you of cats v^hich, during the day, are models of saintly propriety, and at night are " just prow^ling tigers." It v^ill be noticed that cats, tigers, leopards, zebras, and giraffes are protectively coloured. Their whole organization is a perfected mechanism for catching and killing living prey by a sudden pounce from a point of vantage. With a few exceptions the background of the coat is a shade of yellow or grey, lightened by black markings forming spots, patches or stripes which render them less conspicuous when creeping along the branch of a tree, or crouching to spring upon their prey. Kipling deals with the old subject of the protective colouring of animals in " How the Leopard got his Spots " (" Just So Stories "). A leopard of a greyish yellowish colour, and an Ethiopian, not then black, discover that they are daily experiencing more difficulty in catching their dinners and teas. They find that the " game has gone into other spots " ; in other words, the animals they have been in the habit of hunting have grown so much like their surroundings that it is impossible to track them down. Thus a giraffe standing in a clump of acacias is practically invisible at a little distance owing to his blotchy coat, which resembles shadows and sunlight streaming through the leaves. Or, take the deer always either spotted with white, the effect of which also resembles that of the sunlight falling in patches, or uniformly dark to accord with the dense forests or jungle which they inhabit. Of course the yellowish coloured leopard and the Ethiopian can easily be evaded by the other animals because they remain different from their surroundings, so they accordingly proceed to make a little adjustment in their appearances. The Ethiopian blackens his skin, i86 ANIMAL STORIES and, while the colour is still wet, he puts his fingers on it, and then transfers the impressions to the leopard. " They then went ahunting and lived happily ever afterward," as Kipling says. The colouring of an animal may be also distinctive. The hindquarters of monkeys and certain herbivora are most conspicuously coloured, and this is the reason : both these classes of animals are apt to dash off suddenly through the dense foliage, and their striking colouring enables any stragglers to keep them in view. Seemingly Kipling took the idea of the cat story from his father's book on Indian animals.* Lockwood Kipling sums up the attitude of the cat in a few lines somewhat piquantly. " No creature is more independent than the cat. Its more complete domestication in the West is in reality merely due to its love of warmth. For the sake of comfort it will tolerate humanity and blink amiably at the fireside, but a serene selfishness is the basis of the cat character." But with all his independent, languid, dilettante ways the cat really does feel affection for humans. Alexandre Dumas pere told a very interesting story of a very worthy cat he possessed. While living in the Rue de L'Ouest in Paris he had a cat called Mysouff . Every morning when Dumas went to the office the cat would follow him as far as the Rue Sainte-Honore ; farther than that he would not go. Every evening Dumas returned at five o'clock, and every evening would find Mysouff sitting waiting for him in the Rue de Vaugirard. The moment the cat saw his master coming he would rub against the side of the wall with joy and walk sideways, with his back arched, along the road. When once their own street was reached, moreover, he would jump up against Dumas' legs exactly like a dog would have done, and continue this until within a few steps of the house, when he made a wild dash to the door. The most curious part of the story, however, is what follows. If by any chance Dumas was dining in town and did not return home at five as usual, • " Beast and Man in India " (Macmillan and Co., 1891), chap, xii, " Of Cats." 187 RUDYARD KIPLING it was quite useless to open the front door or call " Mysouff, Mysouff ! " — the cat would sleep on calmly and not stir. Perhaps one of the best examples of the cat's placid bearing and plain common sense has been noted by Jerome K. Jerome : * Now, have you ever noticed a dog at the end of a chain, trying to kill a cat as is sitting washing her face three-quarters of an inch out of his reach ? Of course you have. Well, who's got the sense out of those two ? The cat knows that it ain't in the nature of steel chains to stretch. The dog, who ought, you'd think, to know a durned sight more about 'em than she does, is sure they will if you only bark loud enough. Of course the cat provides immediate inspiration for nursery rhymes. In an article on this subject in the Spectator (November 20, 1909), a writer offers this note on " Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been ? " which seems to bear out Kipling's outlook on the feline world : The cat, haughty of mien and dainty of person, stalks in at the door with a serene indifference, a superb carriage of head and tail, which suggests royalty at once. Where has the cat been ? To the very hub of things, surely ; to walk apart with princes ; to bring back the air of the palace to the humdrum farm. Yet the cat, for all her queenliness, must be sent about her business ; she is reminded that her sole real achievement at the palace was the terrifying of a mouse. She must be put in her place ; indeed, she must be put into the well. Methods with the cat are direct ; there are more elaborate treatments of less familiar creatures. The frog, like the cat, has an air ; the frog is a gay fellow who comes to a bad end. There is a rakish humanity about the frog ; he has hands and feet, and he can be set walking upright, and he has a yellow waistcoat and tight green trousers and a rolling eye ; he is sent on his voyage wooing, and the duck or the crow finishes him. " The Crab that Played with the Sea " is founded on the Filipius folk-story which tells of the King Crab that lives at the bottom of the ocean in a big hole. The crab * The Idler magazine, October 1892, " Novel Notes." Illustrations by Louis Wain. In this article Mr. Jerome has brought together many anecdotes of cats. 188 ANIMAL STORIES is larger than a hundred buffaloes, and once every day and night it comes up to the surface, looking like a large island. When it reaches a smooth beach it crawls up to land, and thus causes the waters to pour down into the hole, and the tide to fall low on all the islands. When it gets tired of the shore and retires down into its hole, the waters rush out, and the tide rises. The story of Pau Amma * — the king-crab — ranges from Singapore to Torres Straits. The hole he lives in is called Pusat Tasek. From the story of Romulus and Remus to Kipling's Mowgli legends of wolf-reared children have been common in all nations. But the original of Kipling's character may have been the wolf-boy discovered by an American lady, who saw him at the age of twenty, at the English Church Mission, Agra, in 1875. This lady described the strange wolf-boy in a book of travels, which was privately printed some years ago. At the age of eight he had been rescued from a wolf's den. He had been seen crawling about on all fours in the company of a she-wolf. In the early days of his captivity he howled like a wolf, would eat only raw meat, and con- tinued to move about on his hands and feet. It took years of infinite patience on the part of his manager to teach him the few words he was able to articulate when Mrs. Frances saw him. At that time he still made his wants known mainly by gestures and ejaculations, and his lower jaw was constantly moving. He had a wild look still, but was not " disagreeably ugly," had become " quite tame," and appeared to the American lady " kindly disposed." In the ninth volume of the Journal of the Anthrofo- logical Institutes there are also some notes on the subject of a man with wolf-like characteristics. Mr. V. Ball, of the Indian Geological Survey, says that * " Malay Magic," by W. W. Skeat, should be consulted for an account of Pau Amma. 189 RUDYARD KIPLING this man smelt food when it was offered to him before he would decide whether to eat it or not, and hid any portion of it left over under the straw on which he slept. He could not speak, but made signs, grunted, and generally behaved like a wolf. The sixth of the " Just So Stories " is a tale about Old Man Kangaroo. He is called Boomer, has legs of about equal size, and is discontented and quite inordi- nately vain. His pride urges him to go to the gods and petition them to make him different from all other animals. The Big God Nqong complies and sets Yellow Dog Ding to chase Boomer into the heart of Australia, by which time the kangaroo's hind legs had grown so large that he was different from all other animals. A Boomer is the same as an Old Man Kangaroo — ^he is the biggest kind of that class of animal. The Dingo is the wild dog of Australia. They are generally, if not always, of a yellow colour. Some curious facts about Old Man Kangaroo were contributed to the Times, September 15, 191 3. The animal, we are told, uses its tail as a sort of rudder when travelling fast. It also rests on it, as on the third leg of a tripod, when it sits up and reaches to its full height. It is also stated that the kangaroo does not use its tail to aid its leaping powers ; but it often retards them in wet weather, when this ponderous appendage becomes soaked and acts as a drag. While the kangaroo's real weapon is its hind foot, with the enormously developed fourth toe and its great hoof- life nail, it is said to use its fore-arms for clutching an enemy and holding it where it can give it one of the kicking blows with its hind foot which almost cut a dog in half. More unpleasant still is the trick with which it is credited of taking refuge, when pursued, in a pool or water-hole, when any enemy which approaches, man or dog, is seized and thrust under water to be drowned. 190 ANIMAL STORIES It may be as much as eight months before the young kangaroo — or " Joey " as it is called — though moving in and out of it long before that, leaves the pouch altogether to shift for itself. They are becoming less numerous now. They seem to have insatiable appetites, and w^ith their sharp front teeth they nibble vegetation down to the very roots. The kangaroos and the white man, with his crops, his flocks, and his herds, cannot co-exist, so the colonist kills the animals in every way that he can. They are shot and ridden down with hounds, and still occasionally in some parts driven, in grand battues, between narrowing lines of fences into stockades, where they are slaughtered, the " old men " being generally shot first, and then the less formidable of the mob beaten to death with clubs. Those who have seen it say that it is not a pleasant sight. With the exception of the " old men," kangaroos are generally defenceless as well as timid creatures ; and they are more easily killed, perhaps, than any other animal of size except man and some of the apes. Of their gentleness no one who has watched them in the Zoo needs to be convinced ; and not long ago in Regent's Park a peahen found them such friendly and comfortable companions that she deserted her own relations and took up permanent quarters in the kangaroo paddock. Kipling's imitators in the animal story field are legion, and many of them have received the impetus from his books which has established their names prominently in the world of letters. Take for example " The Call of the Wild," by Jack London, a book inspired by the " Jungle Book " ; another work, not so well known, in which the author has adopted Kipling's phraseology and style is Dr. Doyle's Indian book, " The Taming of the Jungle." * A reviewer in the Review of the Week pointed * " The Taming of the Jungle," Constable, 1899. 191 RUDYARD KIPLING out the resemblance of two of Dr. Doyle's stories to Kipling's " The Mark of the Beast " and " The Tomb of His Ancestors " and hinted at plagiarism, but the author's refutation of this charge dispelled all suspicions. The following extract from this reply is rather interesting: {Extracts from a letter by Dr. C. W. Doyle) Your letter was accompanied by a copy of an English publication (the Review of the Week), in which is a " slashing " attack on my Indian book. The charge of plagiarism with regard to my tiger story, " How Nandha was Avenged," falls to the ground from the fact that my story was written in April 1881 and Mr. Kipling's great and wonderful story, " The Tomb of his Ancestors," first appeared in McClure^s in December 1897. The mesmeric influence of the great carnivora is a matter of universal knowledge, and was known long before you and I were born. In his book of travels in Africa, Dr. Livingstone mentions the matter in telling of the crushing of his arm by a lion. In Mr. Kipling's " The Mark of the Beast," and in my " Affront to Gannesha," a mark is put by a priest on a Faringi for an insult to his god. Indian folklore abounds with such stories, and Mr. Kipling must have heard many such stories from his mother's ayah when he was a child, as I did from mine. It is the priests in their various orders, and the priests alone, who are supposed to have occult powers ; so I had to introduce a priest into my story. I should have no difficulty in proving to any reasonable person that my little book was finished and typewritten before the end of July 1897. I still have some of the original manuscript in my possession, with dates referring to the time of the finishing of the stories. Mr. Older, managing director of the S.F. Bulletin, was here in the summer of 1897 ; he was so struck with the stories that he asked to have a selection of them, which he sent on the 9th of July of that year to Harfer's. Mr. Carrington, at that time editor of the Santa Cruz. Press and now on the staff of the 5.^. Examiner, was good enough to read the stories as I finished them, and made some valuable suggestions, which I adopted before the stories were written. There must be a score of people in Santa Cruz to whom I read the little book as I wrote it, and who have been sufficiently interested in it to look forward to its publication with impatience, and who could not have forgotten the time when the book was read to them. Since writing the above sentence I have received a newspaper from my brother in India. It was published at Mussoorie, where I went to school, and, by a strange coincidence, the only story it comments upon in my book is " An Affront to Gannesha." The Clements of that story was my sister's 192 ANIMAL STORIES godfather. All the names mentioned in that story are the real names of well-known people. Clement's death took place much as I have told it. All these statements are corroborated by the Mafasaliie of Mussoorie, a paper of whose existence I was not even aware. Clements died in 1869, when Mr. Kipling was four years old. I think I have said enough to clear myself of the charge of plagiarism. " An Affront to Ganesha " is clothed in ideas culled from the Hindu myths and sculptures dealing with Ganesha, the wise god who is invoked at the beginning of all enterprises. The popular version of the origin of Ganesha is given in " Beast and Man in India." Parbati, the wife of the great Lord Shiva, after taking a bath rubbed some tiny pellets oif her skin, and amused herself by moulding them into the form of a child, which, through some uncanny Eastern magic, takes life unto itself. The Lord Shiva, returning from a visit to a far country, is enraged to find his wife with the child, and in a fit of rage cut off its head. The Parbati tearfully explained the facts of the case to her Lord Shiva, who was filled with remorse for acting in such a hasty manner. Catching sight of an elephant standing near, he cut off its head and grafted it on the headless baby. '' Now, that's all right ! " he remarked. " I ordain that in every enterprise Ganesha's name shall be the first called upon." That is why the elephants' head grew on the godling's body. His effigy is placed over most Hindu doorways, and his mystic sign (familiarly spoken of in the West as the svastika) is graved on the first page of Hindu account books and ledgers. The medallion stamped in gold on the covers of Kipling's volumes, serves as a twofold symbol of good luck, for it is a representation of the elephant-headed Ganesha and the Svastika. The Svastika is supposed to represent the sun In its journey through the heavens ; it is the cross fylfot of western heraldry, the hermetic cross of freemasonry, and the mystic cross of North American Indians. N 193 RUDYARD KIPLING Mr. Lockwood Kipling has written that, although Ganesha may appear nothing more than a grotesque image to the Western people, he grows in interest as one becomes familiar with his quaint character and person. He possesses the jovial and cheery humour that is im- memorially associated with fat men, and has been compared with Nick Bottom and Falstaff, so that it is rather difficult to connect Ganesha wi^h Dr. Doyle's story, in which an Englishman, after having angered the elephant-headed god, meets with a tragic end. The country-side stories about Ganesha picture him as a friendly soul, always willing to help those in trouble, and his gaily painted effigy in a household was a certain charm against all misfortune. In the '' Jungle Book" we have beast stories pure and simple, and animal stories in which the human element enters as well ; and I think that Kipling's power is displayed to the best advantage in the latter. The three first stories, " Mowgli's Brothers," " Kaa's Hunting," and " Tiger, Tiger ! " were apparently a development from " In the Rukh " — the delightful jungle sketch which to my mind is the best in " Many Inventions." In this story the author tells the reader of Mowgli's marriage, and how the little brown baby born to him is found playing with a wolf. I think it is true to say that most of the jungle stories are allegorical, and charged with Imperial ideals. For instance, there is the story of a mongoose Rikki-Tikki- Tavi, which is presumably written with a purpose. Here you find Kipling's infinite sympathy with the animal (or man) who can do the real fighting. Rikki-Tikki kills three snakes in succession and thereby saves the life of his protector. Rikki-Tikki represents the energetic and honourable English youth, ready at all times to defend the Empire from its enemies. Chuchundra, tne musk- rat, is the indifferent and selfish slacker who is waiting to be asked to help. Kipling tells us that " Chuchundra 194 ANIMAL STORIES is a broken-hearted little beast " that whimpers and cheeps all the night. He is for ever trying to make up his mind to run into the middle of the room, but he never gets there. When Rikki-Tikki informs Chuchundra that he is out to kill a cobra the musk-rat becomes more sorrov^ful than ever and he cries till the tears roll down his whiskers. " Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes," he sobbed. But Rikki knew that Atlas could never have carried the world had he fixed his thought on the magnitude of the job. Each of the stories is capped by a sermon in verse, and one of the best poems is " Darjies' Chaunt," which is sung in honour of Rikki-Tikki after his battle with the cobras. The Swinburne influence is easily identifiable with this piece, in which the only difference from the noted metre of " Atalanta " is the poet's use of uniform trochee instead of the alternating iambus. The ''Jungle Book" can be thoroughly recommended as a class-book in natural history. It is unlikely, of course, that this advice will be taken, as it takes a long time to make schoolmasters or those who have the selection of young people's schoolbooks step aside from the old and familar tracks. Such a thing as making a schoolbook attractive is not thought of, and if it ever has been, was certainly regarded as foolishness. Kipling's animal studies are the antithesis of the old school natural history stories, which always seem to lack inventiveness and suggestiveness. But perhaps if the ''Jungle Books" received the dubious distinction of being annotated for the use of schools, they would lose all the charm that they have previously held for children. Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Milton, in doses of fifty lines or so, have been crammed down the schoolboy's throat with such astonishing regularity, that there can be little wonder in such names becoming absolutely repulsive to the young student. This system was probably born of inertia on the part of the teacher. He did his duty — 195 RUDYARD KIPLING and nothing more. The system provided certain fines as a punishment for failure to memorize lessons, whereby ten lines of Shakespeare for " failure to attend prayers," and " ten more for failure to memorize other lines," often places the dull boy in a state of hopeless bankruptcy. To work and evolve in an environment of such utter despair is impossible to certain temperaments under this scheme. The successful boy must become callous and indifferent, and the boy of gentle habits and slight physical force must sink into mental nothingness, and perhaps disease and death. Thomas Arnold, master of Rugby, once said, " My sympathies go out to inferiority. ... I once chided a pupil, a little, pale, stupid boy — undersized and seemingly half sick — for not being able to recite his very simple lesson. He looked up at me and said with a touch of spirit, ' Sir, why do you get angry with me ? Do you not know I am doing the best I can ? ' " A clergyman present laughed, and asked the kindly Arnold how he punished the child for his impudence. Arnold replied, " I did not punish him — ^he had properly punished me. I begged his pardon." The weakling often needs encouragement before discipline. The immature soul of the child must be enticed, not suppressed. As an example of Kipling's insight into the natures of animals, or, at any rate, his assumption of it, we must read his account of the " Monkey People." Before I read the " Jungle Book " I had supposed the monkey possessed intelligence of a high order and was quite capable of being, if not civilized exactly, tamed to man's service. Natives always say that baboons and monkeys can talk, but are afraid to do so within human hearing lest they should be captured and made to work. But Kipling speaks of the " Monkey People " in terms of complete scorn, and when Mowgli talks with the Bandar-log his friends, Baloo and Bagheera, become very angry with 196 ANIMAL STORIES him. " Listen, man-cub," says the Bear to Mowgli. " They have no law. They are outcasts. Their way is not our way. They have no remembrance. They boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter, and all is forgotten." It must be said that Kipling's description of the " Monkey People " seems to be an attempt to expose and ridicule a certain class of English political life. It is a parable much in the same style as " The Mother Hive " in " Actions and Reactions," which is a violent attack on the ideas which are indifferently called " Liberal," " Advanced," and " Progressive." Here is a brief outline of the story of the bees. The stock of the hive is old and overcrowded, and the wax-moth has laid her eggs everywhere, spreading ruin and decay and disease all over the hive, and heretical doctrine amongst the workers. Where bees are too thick for the comb there must be sickness or parasites, and after that chaos. An order is given to make pillars at the entrance to keep out the Death's Head moth. But the idea of a Death's Header making an attack upon the hive is viewed as an impossibility by the indifferent and lazy dwellers in the hive. The downy, day-old bees twiddle their thumbs, cough, and ask, " Is not the building of pillars a waste of wax ? " " Do you mean to say that if we trust the Death's Head he will attack us without warning ? " " Are not pillars un-English and provocative ? " So in the end the hive becomes full of wax-moths and '' od- dities," who hold " enquiries " and chatter about the joy of working amidst the " merry, merry blossoms " — and forget all about the welfare and defence of the hive. Then comes the bee-master, and when he sees that corruption and muddle are rife, he takes the hive and casts it into the fire. In vivid intuition and skill in portraiture this sketch can only be compared with Maeterlinck's " Life of the Bee," both alike animated 197 RUDYARD KIPLING with the same sympathy, and, perhaps, presenting the same symbolic significance. As I have already suggested, " In the Rukh " is the stem from which all the other Mowgli stories ultimately flowered. These stories are not directly the outcome of such sketches as " The Walking Delegate " and " The Maltese Cat," although his pre-eminence in that literary model may have helped Kipling to find his final pattern. " In the Rukh " has now been transferred to its proper place at the end of the book in which the adventures of Mowgli are given. After having set before us the impressions that Mowgli and his brothers of the jungle, the wolves, made upon two white men in the Department of Woods, Kipling evidently realized that he had only touched the outer fringe of his subject. He saw how rich it was in its possibilities. The idea urged him to go back to a source nearer the fountain head, and tell of Mowgli's babyhood and jungle education without falling back upon the white man's civilization for balance and ballast to his narrative. There is invention in the early story, and a little imagination. But as Kipling brooded over the outline of it after the story had been given to the world, the true imagination with all its power came to him, and with breathless speed and wonder the jungle and all its inhabitants were flashed before the author's vision. That is the true vision, which transcends mere invention with all its multiplied tricks of the trade. It was revealed to Kipling that the jungle people were governed by laws just as surely as a bank, a hotel, or an Empire is governed by them. It is this portrayal of the beasts of the forest subject to a relentless code which explains why the narrative of Mowgli's career fills the reader with a sense of its completeness. Kipling said once, " When I found the Law of the Jungle the rest was easy ! " But the sage of the Jungle is never tedious. His insight, wit, and humour, have bestowed a freshness and gaiety 198 ANIMAL STORIES upon the adventures of Mowgli which becomes contagious to the reader. It is the author's mental attitude reflected in Mowgli that animates the whole book. Everybody partakes of it. When the man-cub gets melancholia, the jungle has it and the reader also — the whole world becomes tinted with ultramarine. Kipling is the sworn enemy of the sentimental, but this does not stand in the way of a very human tenderness, which is manifested in many vivid and pathetic little pictures underlying the alert, joyous and breathless life of the Jungle. ''Eh ? " said Carlyle, when he was reading Tennyson's " Re- venge ; " " Eh ? but he has the grip of it ! " The grip of Mowgli is still irresistible, and perhaps the best proof of this is the popularity of the " Jungle Book " all over the world. It is this book which appeals most to our French friends. The troubles and trials of the man-cub, especially his piteous fate during the spring running, when the whole animal world is pervaded by the im- pulses of love, and the little human boy is left desolate and alone and is impelled to seek out Messua, the woman who has claimed him as a son, is, as a French critic described it, " one of the most beautiful passages ever written by a man of letters." 199 I CHAPTER XV POETRY Kipling an expander of our language : " The Seven Seas " and a verse from " Omar " : A yearning for wonderful words ; A song of the guns : " The Academy " quoted : George Moore's remarks on Kipling : Pierre Loti : The Puritan strain in Kipling : The strenuous life as a cure-all : Carlyle re-vitalized : A " Banjo Bard " : *' The Anchor Song " : Dana's " Sailing Manual " : A sea chantey : " The Ballad of the Clampherdown " : The song of the exiles : " The Gipsy Trail " : " The White Man's Burden " : A reply by Mr. George Lynch : " Departmental Ditties " : " Mary, Pity Women ! " : A corrective note on the poem : The liar's defence : Veiled arrogance in " Recessional " : *' Pagett, M.P." : " An Unqualified Pilot." Fear not that your life shall come to an end^ but rather fear that it may never have a beginning. Hubbard. CHAPTER XV POETRY Any writing man who knows the difficulties of the craft will agree with me when I say that Kipling can be compared with Shakespeare and even with Chaucer in regard to the wonderful range of words he uses. He certainly is an expander of our language. The selection of Indian and African words in his poems ; the language of the barrack-room ; the rough-and-tumble talk of the New England fishermen ; the professional slang in such a story as " With the Night Mail," and the jargon of men who rove the seven seas, have added a riot of new force and colour to our language. Again, we have all the phrases of the Indian jungle and swamp life in his collection of animal stories. He has cast into his works queer words and phrases, which have in time come floating back in the everyday speech of the people. Two of his best known phrases are the " Five Nations " and the " Seven Seas." The former phrase is a collective term for the nations which rallied to the Empire's call during the South African War : England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. On this occasion Kipling was obliged to leave India out in the cold (not without a certain regret I make sure), but he has given us the story, " A Sahibs' War," * in which Um Singh, a trooper of the 141st Punjab Cavalry, presents the Boer War from the Indian point of view. When " The Seven Seas " was published, people were somewhat puzzled as to the meaning of this title. * The third story In " Traffics and Discoveries." 203 RUDYARD KIPLING The inspiration for it has been discovered in " Omar." The phrase occurs in Fitzgerald's translation, the third edition, forty-seventh quatrain : When you and I behind the veil are fassed, Oh, hut the long, long while the world shall last ! Which of our coming and de-parting heeds As the seven seas should heed a pebble cast. Kipling, in answer to an editorial request in T.P.^s Weekly, has put the question of the meaning of the name of his book to rest once and for all. He has given his verdict as follows : The Seven Seas are : North Atlantic. South Atlantic. North Pacific. South Pacific. Arctic Ocean. Antarctic Ocean. Indian Ocean. Which Seven Seas include all the lesser ones. Scrupulous choice and consideration of words is one of the elements that make for greatness in Kipling's books. Every story, every line he writes, is wrought out with great labour. Do not think for a moment that those wonderful combinations of words, each conveying a different and subtle shade of meaning with which he stars that mystical tale " They," flow from his pen without delay or trouble. Those who have tried to learn the magic of words will tell you there is only one way of learning — you have only to be very fond of writing a phrase, a verse or a story over and over again. Does not even the conjurer tell you the same thing ? A young man asked the poet Baudelaire how he could learn the magic of writing. " It depends," answered the poet, " on whether you really enjoy reading the dic- tionary." So it is of no use longing to be a Magician 204 POETRY of the Printed Word without longing to work. Kipling, one feels certain, has brought into his work that spirit which we in England always prize so highly — a capacity for sticking to the guns. One might go on writing indefinitely on Kipling's yearning for and use of strange and wonderful words, as one after another his stories recur to the mind. One cannot forget certain of his phrases, they dwell indelibly with us. " A well-dark winding staircase " in the " City of Dreadful Night " brings the required shudder ; " a great rose-grown gate in a red wall " brings to the mind the garden that every man remembers, though he may have forgotten many things. Kipling also finds the Bible a very fertile hunting-ground for phrases, and the harmonious mode of speech peculiar to the work of the Hebrew writers may be often traced in his works. In his " School Song " — " Let us now praise famous men " — he has paraphrased lines of that extraordinary and beautiful chapter of Ecclesiasticus. Under whatever inspiration Kipling happens to be writing, he never fails to find not merely the right word, but the most vivid form in which that word can be enshrined. When I read of those mammoth guns that Krupps had supplied to Germany for the siege of Paris, one of Kipling's lines written long ago haunts my memory : Blind — dumb — broad — breached — beggars o' battering-guns. There you have it. These are the real guns, drawn by a train of forty horses and vomiting forth an avalanche of destruction. They are the very guns which you who have imagination and discernment can see are just as they must appear to every war-stained weary Tommy in the trenches. The French soldier may turn his mind to Victor Hugo's demon carronade, but Kipling gives us the typically English description. But to return to the magic of words. I read some time ago an open letter to Kipling published in the 205 RUDYARD KIPLING Academy ^"^ in which the author's skill in sowing his works throughout with flashes of ten-word descriptions is set forth. I take the liberty of quoting a few lines of this interesting letter : Of the many writers whose works are more or less familiar to me you are firmly fixed in my mind as the Generalissimo at whose command the whole of the various Vocabulary Corps will move, be they the Guards of Noblest English or the Infantry of Sterling Slang — the Kitcheners or the Mulvaneys of the language. I might go further. For all your Songs of the English you are capable of turning English to a purpose which suggests that you could, if need be, take charge of a cosmopolitan rabble of Verbiage. I shall never forget the effect of the first reading of one line in " The Files." The Sub-Editor makes a pun which is about the most daring that has ever found immortality outside the pages of Punch. In case you do not remember this little excursus into the field of the innocently atrocious double entente (which in these days might almost be accepted as a tribute to the entente cordiale)^ I venture to quote these lines from " The Files," written by the author of " Pay, Pay, Pay ! " and " The Recessional " : Warn all future Robert Brownings and Carlyles, It will interest them to haunt among the files. Where uninvited, a-cold. Lie the crowded years oj old In that Kensal-Green of greatness called the files — {In our newspaPere-la-Chaise, the office files). Where the dead men lay them down Meekly sure of long renown, And above them sere and swift. Packs the daily deepening drift Of the all-recording, all-efacing files — The obliterative, automatic files. In an essay devoted to yourself on " the handling of words " — the phrase reminds one still of the part of Generalissimo — Miss Vernon Lee once took you to task, very gently and appreciatively, on account of the tense in a passage selected at random from that masterpiece of East-cum-West fiction, " Kim." If disposed to quarrel with your syntax, she nevertheless gave you credit for commanding attention by methods which she likened to the conjurer's trick. NewspaPere-la-Chaise is the conjurer's trick in • " Letters to Certain Eminent Authors," the Academy, No. 2192, May 9, 1914. 206 POETRY excelsis : it might appropriately be the burial-ground of a literary reputa- tion. Tom Hood never perpetrated a more astonishing verbal contortion. What chance have words of rebellion v^^hen they can be made to perform such antics by a mere wave of the Kipling baton ? English writers from time to time have tried to catch Kipling tripping in various v^ays. Some have attacked his use of the English language, some have questioned the correctness of the detail in his military and naval stories, but it must be admitted that in all his voluminous and varied v^ritings there are few mistakes. When the " Recessional " appeared, loud was the outcry raised over the line " The tumult and the shouting dies." Certain censorious people pointed out that the verb should be made plural in this case. But as a matter of fact Kipling was right, and of course refused to change it. The figure of speech known as "' hen- diadys " covers the author's action in making the verb singular. " Tumult and shouting " is a phrase repre- senting one idea and agrees with the definition of " hendiadys," which is the use of two words connected by a copulative conjunction to express a single complex idea. A correspondent writing to a well-known literary journal on the vexed question of the verb and its subject says : - Rudyard Kipling, if he sins at all in this respect, sins in good company. I think those who pose as critics and authorities upon grammar would do well to acquaint themselves with the text-books upon these matters. The use of the singular verb after two or more sub- stantives forming the subject, when these substantives are to be taken either as forming one idea, or, for the purpose of intensification, as a separate repetition of each before the verb — an intention which the reader grasps with his mind's eye, so to speak — is a practice sanctioned by most grammatical authorities ; and was furthermore consecrated by the use of many illustrious 207 RUDYARD KIPLING writers, ages before Rudyard Kipling was born. Here are some examples : Reproach and everlasting shame Sits mocking on our flumes. Shakespeare. All torment^ trouble, wonder, and amazement Inhabits here. Shakespeare. ^here is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honour for his valour and death for his ambition. Shakespeare. The mind and sprit remains Invincible. Milton. Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear Compels me to disturb your season due. Milton. Her heart, her mind, her love, is his alone. Cowley. Therein consists the force, and use, and nature of language. Berkeley. Kipling has many stylistic mannerisms, and at certain times he is inclined to overstrain the use of the hyphen. Lexicographers have not given any hard and fast rules with regard to the correct use of this sign, but certainly many of Kipling's compounds are unnecessary trans- gressions, and he can have no excuse for such examples as " rapidly-filling," " perfectly-tempered," " carefully- watched," " shaved-head." Now and again we get long- drawn hyphen flashes. Kipling may have acquired this kind of colloquialism in the United States, where it has become an irritating habit with the journalist. Listen to the following mannerisms : " You're-only-a-little-girl " sort of flirtation ; " We took it easy that gun-practice. We did it in a com- 208 POETRY plimentary ' Jenny-have-another-cup-of-tea ' style " ; " painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your- head set of impostors." In " Just So Stories " Kipling perhaps reached the very limit of linguistic recklessness and plays ducks and drakes with word-formation. But enough of this ! The object of this chapter was neither to indulge in a stylistic-philological study of the author's works nor in a list of his errors. It was to try and discover Kipling's wonderland of words. The instruction one derives from any single volume of Kipling is incalculable. One of Stevenson's heroes said of Whitaker that he acquired more information from the volume than he would be able to make use of in a life- time. That is how I felt after reading " Kim." Kipling's enthusiasm for the pageant of modern industrialism has always been clear to the reader. As a boy, he was known to be more inquisitive about the tradesman or the mechanic than his schoolfellows. There are several passages in " Stalky and Co." which throw a sidelight on his predilection for professional terms. He loves to wallow in the technicalities of any trade or calling. To bear myself out, if the reader turns to " Stalky and Co." he will find that one of Kipling's schoolfellows chaffs him for being so '' filthy technical," and upon another occasion, when Beetle (Kipling) is assisted by Stalky and McTurk in the setting up of the Swillingford Patriot, he is requested not to be "so beastly professional " in his directions to the "Staff." Certain of his works are starred with racy Americanisms. One might almost pick out the works which came from his pen during his long stay in his wife's native country. I think that period covered from August 1892 to Sep- tember 1896. And the books which were written during this sojourn are characteristic of the American dialect ; you find it in " Captains Courageous," " .007," " A Walking Delegate," " Many Inventions," and most particularly in the " Jungle Books." " My speech is o 209 RUDYARD KIPLING clean and single, I talk of common things," he has written in some verses on Canada : that is exactly what he has done, and he has done it in such a thorough- going way that the speech of common things threatens to become involved, especially when he goes to the Anglo-Indian, Cockney, Yorkshire, Irish, Scotch, Afri- cander, Sussex and American dialects for word-forage. In an article in the Pall Mall Magazine which appeared in 1904, Mr. George Moore pays a good deal of attention to Kipling's prose works. With that acute and analytic intelligence which seems to be common to all Irish writers, he has endeavoured to tear from Kipling the secrets that most assuredly underlie the eclat of his literary progress. Mr. Moore remarks that in the 'eighties none knew what world Kipling was going to reveal. That world had now become a known quantity, and he does not think that such words as " noble " and " beautiful " could be applied to it. After groping among Kipling's writings he suggests such adjectives as " rough," " harsh," and " coarse-grained." He utterly refuses to be dazzled by those qualities of strength, coarseness, and of lavish eloquence, such as we have always associated with our most essentially democratic poet. Mr. Moore takes " Kim," and as he reads he finds more and more amiss with it. He says that at first the reader may be fascinated by " Kim " because he has been so well observed and so sedulously imitated : The Lama we can see as if he were before us — an old man in his long habit and his rosary ; we hear his continuous mumbling ; but very soon we perceive that Kim and the Lama are fixed — we have not read thirty pages before we see that those two will be the same at the end of the book as they were in the beginning. None the less this critic sees clearly that Kipling is a master of words, and grants him a facile command of language. But he is careful to note that it is only an expression of riotous strength and superabundant animal 210 POETRY vigour, combined with a keen eye for all the coloured details of life. Mr. Moore points out that none since the Elizabethans have written with such command over the language : Others have written more beautifully, but no one that I can call to mind at this moment has written so copiously. Shelley and Wordsworth, Landor and Pater, wrote with part of the language ; but who else, except Whitman, has written with the whole language since the Elizabethans ? " The flannelled fool at the wicket, the muddied oaf at the goal," is wonderful language. He writes with the eye that appreciates all that the eye can see, but of the heart he knows nothing, for the heart cannot be observed ; his characters are therefore external, and they are stationary. Now it appears to the reader of the above passage that Mr. Moore voices the opinion that Kipling's work is extremely consistent from first to last ; that the excep- tional brilliancy of his impression painting with which he burst forth so suddenly upon a jaded literary world is preserved faithfully in his later volumes ; but, at the same time, he does not seem to have progressed in the deeper thoughts on human life. I think that many critics will be minded to dissent strongly from Mr. Moore when he says Kipling " knows nothing of the heart." There is certainly little ground to support this hypothesis, if some of the author's late stories be care- fully studied ; that the peculiarly ingenious novelties of Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd should be misunder- stood by Mr. Moore is, I suppose, quite natural ; but when he has nothing to say about the deep insight of " Without Benefit of Clergy," " Wee Willie Winkie," and " Little Tobrah," one is forced to protest. Again, take the story '' They " ; here Kipling's almost faultless artistic instinct enters, and we find in it a wonderful perception of the heart of a child ; like the '' Story of My Heart " by Jefferies, it is an autobiography of the soul. Later, Mr. Moore makes a comparison between a certain inner coldness and hardness he finds in much of Kipling's work with the manner of Pierre Loti : 211 RUDYARD KIPLING One writer blows his pipe on the hill-side, the other blares like a military- band ; all brass and reed instruments are included in this band, Mr. Kipling's prose goes to a marching rhythm, the trumpet's blare and the fife's shriek ; there is the bass clarionet and the great brass tuba that emits a sound like the earth quaking fathoms deep or the cook shovelling coal in the coal-cellar. The band is playing variations : but variations on what theme ? The theme will appear presently . . . Listen ! There is the theme, the shoddy tune of the average man — " I know a trick worth two of that." In this phrase of Dick Heldar, " I know a trick worth two of that," Mr. Moore finds not only the condensed representation of " The Light that Failed," but the epitome and quintessence of Kipling's creed. The critic who searches may find, it is true, reflections of this phrase in Kipling ; but it is the " trick " that gives one the grip on life and a renewed determination to play the game through. Kipling's style has often been likened to that of Pierre Loti. Still, it must be admitted that the work of the former is wider in its scope, and more varied in its characteristics than that of the French author. Kipling's tales of Indian life, for instance, exhibit a superabundance of genuine invention which is totally lacking in the stories of Pierre Loti. While Loti, as a young naval officer on foreign service, was content to write the love stories of yellow and tawny native Cyprians in a more natural and piquant manner than his predecessors had done, Kipling was making a determined protest against all such outworn literary conventions. In Loti's stories of his amorous adventures in Turkey, Tahiti, Senegal, and Japan, there is, to be sure, a freshness of style and a certain triteness of expression which one might connect with the creator of Mulvaney, but apart from that, the monotony of plot and sentiment is in striking contrast with Kipling's glorious field of imaginative power. Kipling has always objected to the interviewer. But Dr. Kellner, author of the " History of English Litera- 212 POETRY ture in the Victorian Era," was permitted to visit him in 1898. He summed up his impressions of his visit to Rottingdean in the memorable phrase, "" To-day I have seen happiness face to face." Authentic descriptions of the inner side of Rudyard Kipling and his home are so scarce that I venture to draw upon Dr. Kellner's inter- view. The work-room is of surprising simplicity : the north wall is covered with books half its height, over the door hangs a portrait of Burne- Jones (Mr. Kipling's uncle), to the right near the window stands a plain table — ■ not a writing-table — on which lie a couple of pages containing verses. No works of art, no conveniences, no knick-knacks, the unadorned room simple and earnest like a Puritan chapel. Dr. Kellner remarks that the old Puritan strain in Kipling probably aided him to keep a cool head in his hour of triumph. " I am very distrustful against fame," said Kipling, " very distrustful against praise." It is a pity that this self-critical and distrustful attitude has not been strong in the minds of many other great men — Oscar Wilde, for example. " You know the fate of eighteenth-century English literature, how many ' im- mortal ' poets that prolific time brought forth, and yet how much of this ' immortal ' poetry still lives in our time ? To name only one — who reads Pope nowadays t I often run over these volumes " (here he pointed to the " Edition de Luxe " of his own works) " and think to myself how much of that which is printed on such beautiful paper ought never to have seen the light. How much was written for mere love of gain, how often has the knee been bowed in the house of Rimmon ? " (a favourite expression of Kipling's). The conversation of Kipling reflects his spontaneity buoyancy of success, love of outdoor life, and exuberant good health. He understands as few writers have ever done the secret of balance in his work — the balance of the serious with the humorous, the pathetic with the merry, of work with rest. 213 RUDYARD KIPLING He knows that ideas do not always come when one sits down at his desk and cudgels one's brains, and most of the work that he turns out under pressure of this kind finds its way to the wastepaper basket, from which " Recessional " (as it has been printed) was rescued. So he puts himself in a receptive mood, and digs in the garden, and lo, the ideas surge through him : 7he cure for this ill is not to sit still. Or frowst with a hook hy the -fire ; But to take a large hoe and a shovel also. And dig till you gently perspire Rest is rust ; the mintage of wisdom is to know that real life lies in laughter and work. Kipling is devoted to his garden, is fond of fishing, and I came across a report in an American paper that he could handle a plough and drive a straight furrow with the best of ploughmen. He was an ardent admirer of Cecil Rhodes. He knew him personally, and has remarked that " Rhodes was greater than his work." Kipling is not in favour of the annexation of one white nation by another. " It is the greatest crime that a politician can commit. Don't annex white men," he remarked. " What about black men ? " he was asked. '' I am against slavery," was the answer, " if only for the reason that the white man becomes demoralized by slavery." The Review of Reviews, April 1 899, remarked that the " influence of Kipling on politics is something like that of Carlyle." Both are preachers of the doctrine of the drill sergeant ; one worshipped Frederick the Great, the other Sergeant What'sname, '' who drilled a black man white and made a mummy fight." Certainly Kipling, like Carlyle, believes in work and the strenuous life as a cure-all. His verse pulses and throbs with the gospel of work, and he has written much which one might regard 214 POETRY as Carlyle re-vitalized. Take the following paragraph from Carlyle : For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works. In idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, is in communication with Nature ; the real desire to get Work done with itself leads one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations, which are truth. These lines almost define the aspiration of Kipling's muse. Work has been saluted by him in the splendid verse v^hich ends : Each for the joy of the workings and each in his separate star. Shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God oj Things as They Are. " Kipling's God is the God of the Old Norse Sea Kings, the fighting God, the Lord of the Hosts of Cromv^ell, a terribly real and aw^ful Deity, w^ho, never- theless, can sympathize v^ith a first-rate fighting man, and will in the end see that justice is done," writes a critic in the Review of Reviews. There are mingled elements in Kipling's blood, but there is more of the Puritan strain than anything else. Those who have known the man do not doubt it, and to my mind at least, his genius yields the strongest proof of it in " Recessional," in which he strikes with an unerring hand the lyre of the Hebrew bard. Man is unto himself a mystery : by ways strange and undreamed of, across the opposing currents of a lifetime, the soul of a race wins back to its own. Kipling remains Methodist in soul, spite of his years in India, spite of his immersion in the great sea of Imperialism, spite even of the profane language of the barrack-room. Oh yes, the pendulum always swings back and the immemorial claims of race and blood strive within him for reassertion : God oj our fathers, known oj old . . .he with us yet. The " Song of the English " is as direct, as simple and 2IS RUDYARD KIPLING as forceful as " Recessional." Our duty is to hold the faith our fathers sealed and to keep the law of our Imperial mission. Kipling's modern saint gets into the game and plays it. The man who endeavours to keep himself " unspotted from the world " he looks upon as a rogue and a coward. The more we understand life, the better shall we comprehend death is the decision always arrived at by Kipling. Critics have dubbed him the " Banjo Bard " with contempt. But after reading " The Song of the Banjo," one begins to realize that this epithet loses all its intended sting. Here is a rare song, illuminated throughout by flashes of heroic life, sealed by the personality of the Anglo-Saxon, and all credit goes to the splendiferous adventurer who can hammer such haunting music out of the democratic banjo. How all the intolerable hindrances and disappointments of the pioneer flash to the mind in the line : / have told the naked stars the Grief oj Man. In some respects the " Song of the Banjo " reminds the reader of the spasmodic conversations of Mr. Jingle in " Pickwick " — sudden spurts of thought and fancy and description, with a '' pilly- willy- winky-popp " for breath pause, and then on again with the " war drum of the white man round the world." Some of the less aspiring ballads have an excellent go about them. Let us take one example from " Puck of Pooks Hill," called " The Smuggler's Song " ; this poem is worthy of Robert Louis Stevenson. It is not easy to determine the value of such poems as " If— " and " The Thousandth Man." Whatever may be their faults — and they seem to contain many — as pure poetry, they are charged with a note of materialistic realism, and urge the high doctrine of loyalty, which appeals at once to the everyday sentiments of the average man. Had Kipling been more of an idealist he would 216 POETRY have soared too high over the heads of the people ; but he knew that one cannot carry soldiers, sailors, colonizers, and codfishers w^ith one in these tov^ering flights with Pegasus. That section of Kipling's verse which deals with nature and outdoor life must be placed in a division by itself. Some of the poems in which he sings of the '' go fever " reminds one of the exquisitely phrased pagan glorification of mere existence of Borrow's " Lavengro " : Life is sweet, brother . . . There's night and day, brother, both sweet things : sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things ; there's likewise the wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother ; who would wish to die ? Mr. J. De Lancey Ferguson, of Columbia University, said that so far as the love of out-of-doors was made a subject of poetry by Kipling's predecessors, it was seldom more than a repeated desire to follow the baying hounds, or to sport with Amaryllis in the shade. He pointed out that none of the poets ever mentioned what he would do if it were cold or wet, or if the sea were really rough. But Kipling has changed all this, for he hunts on new trails. He has hymned the ship engineer and the locomotive driver. He has sung of the sailor's love of the sea, of the pleasure in the bucking, beam sea roll of a coffin screw-steamer with her loadline over her hatch, and a shifting cargo of rails. He has sung of the " ram-you-dam-you liner with a brace of bucking screws," of sealers fighting to the death in a fog, of the cattle-boat men who made a contract with God, and of the wholly unauthorized horde of " Gentle- men Rovers " — the legion of the lost ones, the cohort of the damned. " The Anchor Song " is an ambitious attempt to force sea terms and words of command to accommodate themselves to the uses of verse. It will be noticed that the instructions given by a master of a sailing vessel in getting his ship off to sea are arranged in their exact 217 RUDYARD KIPLING order in this poem. It should be pointed out that some of the words of command which Kipling uses here are now rapidly passing out of use. It is interesting to note that " The Anchor Song " follows closely the instructions given in Dana's Sailing Manual for getting a boat away. Many of Kipling's sea verses are written on the true chantey model. The refrain " A-hoy O ! To me O ! " in " Frankie's Trade " is to be found in many sailor songs. Some of these chanteys are based on fragments of topical song adapted by the musical seaman ; some go back through the centuries till we find parallels to their tunes in the glorious sea days of the great Elizabeth. They often bear with them a rich legacy of nautical memories, and no doubt Kipling has realized that the indispensable kernel of the true sea song is to be found in these quaint chanteys. I give the following remarkably mournful song, with a long dragging chorus, to show how closely Kipling has modelled some of his new ballads on the chantey. It is likely that this one has lifted the sail of many a clipper of the sixties : Solo. Tommy's gone, what shall I do ? Chorus. Hurrah^ Hilo. Solo. Tommy's gone, what shall I do F Chorus. Tom's gone to Hilo. Solo. To Liverfool^jthat noted school. To Liverpool, that noted school. Tommy's gone to Quebec town. Tommy'' s gone to Quebec town. There's Pretty Sail and Jenny Brown, There's Pretty Sail and Jenny Brown, A -dancing on that stony ground, A-dancing on that stony ground, Tommys gone to Baltimore, A-rolling on the sandy floor. Tommy's gone to Mobille Bay, To roll down cotton all the day, 2l8 POETRY He*s gone away to Dixie's Land, Where there's roses red and violets blue. Up aloft that yard must go, I thought I heard the skipper say, That he would put her through to-day. Shake her up and let her go. Stretch her leech and shew her clew. One pull more and that will do. Chorus. Hurrah, Hilo. Solo. One pull more and that will do. Chorus. Tom^s gone to Hilo. Belay! " The Ballad of the Clampherdown " was one of the poems that first exhibited Kipling just as much a poet of the sailor as the soldier. Perhaps the technical terms are rather bewildering, and a brief explanation of some of them may be of interest to the reader : Stays. Wire ropes which uphold the masts and funnels of the battleship. " Make it so." The expression of assent used by a naval officer to a subordinate. Ram. The Ram is a part of the machinery of the gun. It is used for ramming the projectile and charge home. When Kipling published this poem the ram was worked by steam, and it is quite possible that the turret would be filled with steam if this part of the gear should get out of order. The ram is now hydraulic. Hotchkiss. Quick-firing machine gun. Nordenjelt. Quick-firing machine gun. Runners. These are steel rails on which the gun is moved. Thresher. The fox-shark that often attacks the whale. " Lie dozen." The A.B. is told to lie down on account of the terrific shock that may occur by the force of contact when the ships collide. The Waist. The centre part of a ship. The fascination of this ballad was, that no one at the time it was written, was able entirely to realize what the conditions would be like in a heavy action fought with modern ships. They know now at any rate ! The turret of a modern battleship has been greatly altered since the days of the Clamfherdown. Of course the 219 RUDYARD KIPLING reader knows that the turret is the flat-topped structure containing the steel rooms which protect the guns and their mountings on a battleship. The British Dread- noughts carry two thirteen-inch guns in the fore and after turrets. Each gun and gun crew is contained in a little semicircular chamber lit by a blaze of electric light. The gunlayer stands with his eye to the telescope of the sighting apparatus, with a hand on a wheel which adjusts the gun. Two men stand by the breech and another is at the control of the ram. Behind the gun stands the commander of the turret. By a touch of a lever the breech swings open and the ram darts into the breach like a tongue of flame, and immediately shoots back again. Then it is known that all is clear. The lift brings up the huge projectile weighing nearly half a ton,- and two charges of cordite, which it thrusts on to a stage in line with the open breech. The ram again flashes out and pushes the projectile home, after which the lift brings the two hundred and fifty pounds of cordite into line, which is also in its turn rammed into the gaping maw of the gun. A quick turn of a small wheel and the breech-block slips back sighingly and closes with a click. " The left gun is ready, sir." A voice gives the range, and in answer to various levers and wheels the gun or the turret swings about as if they were toys. All is silent now. Silence is a comparative term, for it is never quite quiet at sea, and after a second or so you distinguish confusedly the hiss and sigh of the rushing water in the hydraulic press which controls the movement of turret and gun. When the sights are reported " on " the word that is to hurl a thousand pounds of death at the rate of a thousand or so yards a second is waited for. " Fire ! " The gun-layer pulls the trigger and the projectile is launched on its mission of shattering damnation. The breech block again swings open and the burning fragments of the charge are cleared out by a sharp air-blast and afterwards the ram darts 220 POETRY in and mops it clean. The gun is now ready for another cycle of the same operations. There are ten of these steel rooms on the modern battleship, which are contained in five turrets, and they are all linked up by telephones and speaking tubes with the " brain " in the belted waist, where the captain and gunnery officer can play upon the whole fighting machine as a man may play upon the clarionet. At a word the crackling quick-firing guns on the " tops " can be played or the light twelve-pounders introduced into the devilish orchestra. At the pressing of a button, vast organs will peal forth above the small chattering guns great chords of death — the chords of the terrible thirteen-inch guns. We find another aspect of the poet's verse in " Christ- mas in India." Besides the songs of the " Go-fever " and " Wanderlust," he has given us the song of homesickness, and it is a wonderful expression of those war-weary exiles who wait in " heavy harness on fluttered folk and wild." Say what you will of the roughness and selfish- ness of men, at the last they long for companionship and the fellowship of our kind. We are like lost children, and when alone and the darkness gathers, we long for the close relationship of those brothers and sisters we left behind us in our childhood and long for the magic touch of those gentle arms that once rocked us to sleep. These are the thoughts of the exile which burn like irons. " The Gipsy Trail," an uncollected poem which appeared in the Century of December 1892, partakes of the nature of the " open-air " or George Borrow chant. It is a distinct departure from his habitual style : Out of the dark of the Gorgio camp, Out of the grime and the grey, {Morning waits at the end of the world), Gipsy, come away / " The White Man's Burden," like many other phrases from Kipling's pen, is already one of the stock references 221 RUDYARD KIPLING of writers and speakers. Plays, short stories, pictures and novels have been written with it as a text. It is this power of coining striking phrases that causes even his doggerel to pass thoroughly into everyday life. Poetry does not always require wisdom of the intellect and scholarliness to be great. Burns, Blake, Keats, Poe, Whitman show how a lack of scholarship is often com- pensated by an intuitive wisdom of heart and emotion. " The White Man's Burden " is a song of Imperialism which is not to be confused with the flaunty Jingoism of the music-halls. Kipling has put the Imperialist doctrine on the right basis, and in this poem he passionately and seriously formulates the only true moral basis of Empire. It was this poem which more than any other did so much to hearten the Americans to attempt the preliminary conquest of a silent, sullen people, " half devil and half child." The toil, fatigue, and bloodshed which were the preliminaries of taking up the white man's burden in the Philippines, almost disheartened the people of the United States. But they had to learn that such sacrifices are imposed upon all who would tread the path of Empire. Whatever may be said concerning the methods of the States in shouldering these burdens, we as a nation have played our part. Our share of those silent, sullen people amounts to four hundred millions, while the other white nations of the world wage " the savage wars of peace " with only a hundred millions. Thus it will be seen that each white man under British rule is responsible for seven black or copper-coloured men. The old Puritan spirit breathes in every line of " The White Man's Burden." As the Infinite Drill-Sergeant who is above all Princes and Kings is the guide of the White Man, so must the White Man be the Providence of the Black People. Needless to say these verses have provoked many parodies and replies, in which the poetasters never fail to inform the public how we have robbed the " sullen people." One, which was published 222 POETRY in Concord and from the pen of Mr. George Lynch, is certainly not lacking in fervour : Bear we the Black MarCs burden I The stealing oj our lands ^ Driven backwards, always backwards, E^ en from our desert sands ; Tou bring us your own -poison. Fire liquor that you sell. While your Missions and your Bibles threaten your White Man's hell. Still more emphatic is the fourth stanza, which ends with the couplet : Tou cheat us for your profit, Tou damn us for your gain. A certain section of the people have been inclined to sneer at Kipling as the poet of the music-hall. One might as well declare that Mozart was a composer for the barrel-organ. But true genius cannot be vulgarized. " Our Viceroy Resigns " * in " Departmental Ditties " seems to have been written under the immediate and insistent influence of Browning. Kipling employs the Browning metres, the Browning involutions, and the Browning abruptnesses. This poem contains a clever cameo portrait of Lord Roberts which is said to have vexed the great soldier. • Lord Lansdowne took the place of Lord Dufferin as Viceroy of India in 1888. Lady Dufferin, in "Our Viceregal Life in India," says that on the Sunday after the arrival of the new Viceroy " D. shut himself up with Lord Lansdowne and talked to him four hours without stopping." Lord Dufferin was made Ambassador at Rome after he returned from India ; hence the line " I go back to Rome and leisure." It was his boast that during his tenure of office he had annexed a " country twice the size of France " (Burma) and thus checked the encroachment of the Russians. " A grim lay reader with a taste for coins, and faith in sin most men with- hold from God," of course, refers to Sir T. C. Hope. It is interesting now to observe how accurately Kipling foresaw that the then Sir Frederick Roberts would win his way to the Lords by way of " Frontier Roads." 223 RUDYARD KIPLING I think it must be granted that the " Barrack Room Ballads " are an honest and singularly successful attempt to explain Tommy Atkins, as Kipling tells us, both" for our pleasure and our pain." Critics from time to time have attacked Kipling very bitterly for his descriptions of the Tommy ; they have quibbled and v^rangled over the Kiplingesque coarseness of the slang and held up their hands in shocked amazement because the poet dares to give some barrack-room reflections about v^omen. It is true that the soldier, v^ho like Jack has a girl in every port, is not strong on monogamy. In " The Ladies " he says, " I've 'ad my picking o' sweet'earts and four o' the lot was prime," and the epitome of the poem is given in the line, " the more you have knov^n the others, the less will you settle to one." In " Mary, Pity Women ! " Kipling has attempted to show something of the misery and burning shame felt by the soldier's abandoned mistress. But it is to be regretted that Kipling should hint that it is quite in order that the women should suffer and the men go free. Lord Kitchener's parting message to the Ex- peditionary Force struck the right corrective note in this respect. Even the pity for the unfortunate is grudged, and Kipling seems to try and cover up the tracks of the transgressor with world-weary cynicism : " What's the good," " What's the use," &c. Whafs the good o' pleadirC when the mother that bore you, [Mary, fity women /) knew it all before you. mm*** What's the good o' frayin' for ^he Wrath to strike Hm (Mary, pity women I) when the rest are like ^im. There you have in Kipling's own words Kipling's own idea of men. We sincerely hope that the " rest " are not at all like the ruffian in " Mary, Pity Women ! " Let us stamp out such barbarous conceptions. " Stamp it out ! " Justice cries it. Art echoes it. The qualities 224 POETRY of a mother are the heritage of her sons. To have a strong and truthful race of men who are afraid of no man, and of whom no woman need be afraid, we must evolve a race of mothers who are not burdened by those who " shove " all they solemnly promise behind them. The good pride and sporting spirit of the true Tommy, it is certain, will urge him to make it a point of honour to reject any idea that the weaker vessel must be always thrust to the wall. As to Tommy's language. It is rather free, often very profane, and I am certain quite a meaningless practice in the barrack-room. But swearing is, as the good Bishop Lightfoot once remarked, with some men a mere matter from the lips outward. Kipling hides nothing, glosses nothing. He sounds a deep note of the horror of war in the ballad addressed to the young British soldier. When you are wounded and left to die on the open plains of Afghanistan, and women prowl about to " cut up " what remains : Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains^ Alt' go to your Gawd like a soldier, So-oldier of the Queen I Violation of the truth in the barrack-room is regarded as rather an accomplishment, and at the risk of incurring the wrath of the whole British cavalry^ — God bless 'em ! — I will state that the ancient expression '' To lie like a trooper " is not without justification. I recall a certain trooper at Aldershot who was accused of being rather fond of straining the truth defending himself as follows ; Gentlemen, you call me a liar. What is a liar ? One who tells the truth about something that never happened ; hence a soldier, a poet or Arctic explorer. A liar is simply a man who reasons far ahead of his time ; a seer. As all combinations of facts must occur in endless time, the liar, no matter how absurd his statement, is uttering a truth, because he is stating a fact that has occurred or will occur at some future date. Thus when you condemn "me as a man who utters a falsehood, strictly speaking, you are wrong. As the oyster is merely pearl in the process of evolving, so a liar is an observer born out of his time. I am merely a victim of a divine prank. ? 225 RUDYARD KIPLING In one of the worst of Kipling's poems, that entitled " Kitchener's School " we learn that " Allah created the English mad — the maddest of all mad things," but all the same the " English obey the Judge and say that the law is good." That is Kipling all over, especially in regard to keeping the law. " The head and the hoof and the haunch and the hump of the law is — Obey ! " This is the note of the drill-sergeant which breathes in every line of his verse and prose. Sergeant What'sname who drilled a black man white, and taught a mummy how to handle a rifle, is ever the right-hand man in Kipling's temple of fame. It is the same note which McAndrew's engines droned and chanted : Law, Order, Duty an' Restraint, Obedience, Discipline. In " Soldiers Three " he has done his best to revive the dying faith in blind barrack-room submission to authority, and we at once feel that these soldiers are merely " puppet-like puppets," They are merely three of the most perfect products of a sound drill book training. They can hardly be described as elaborate portraits because they all come from the same mould. It is true that Kipling has expressed in his early poetry and prose a human type, a type that is known wherever the British soldier is known. But the soldier of to-day has left our friends of " Barrack- Room Ballads " far back in the distance. The men in the trenches of France are more thoughtful than the rough-and-ready, domin- eering, but far from ignoble type Kipling found in India at the end of the last century. This sturdy but awkward warrior furnished Kipling with an ideal, and he produced from it the utmost emotional value which a common- place ideal can give. But Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd have all had their day, and the almost ever-present coarseness which the author mistook for vigour needed a check. All great writers have a natural delight in coarseness, but in 226 POETRY " Soldiers Three " Kipling gave us just a little too much of it. I cannot find a single private soldier in Kipling's writings who is not illiterate. This is a mistake. There were to be sure thousands of Tommies in 1885 who mishandled their Queen's English, but there were many who could write well and think well too. Thomas Hardy, David Christie Murray, Archibald Forbes, have all been common or garden Tommies in their time. So " Soldiers Three " only gives us a certain type of soldier, doubtless a faithful portrait of that type, but he has not attempted an accurate description of the various men in the average regiment. Kipling's Deity is the terrible and real " Jehovah of the Thunders," who can sympathize with men who can put up a good fight, or sing a roistering barrack song. There is perhaps a suggestion of arrogance in his writings ; an idea that we are the Lord's chosen people and that He has " smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth." Observe the veiled arrogance in certain lines of " Recessional," in which he hints that our battleline is no small affair but a *' far-flung " array, which is quali- fied to control the destiny of half the universe. Mark, too, his naive admiration for the greatness of Empire in one of his happiest lines in which he speaks of '' Do- minion over palm and pine." The last three words carry the reader's mind in instantaneous sweep across our territories from Canada to Ceylon. Now and again Kipling sounds a whimsical note. He has unfolded in a most startling fashion the wondering amazement of the Hindoo brought face to face with the Western religion and '' The Man of Sorrows " : . . . What Gods are these Tou bid me 'please ? The Three in One, the One in Three P Not so ! To my own gods I go. It may he they shall give me greater ease Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities. 227 RUDYARD KIPLING "Pagett, M.P.'' in "Departmental Ditties" is one of the most successful Anglo-Indian poems. It has been mentioned in a quarter that should be well informed, that the late Mr. W. S. Caine, M.D., was the original of Kipling's character. Mr. Caine was, however, only one of a number of M.P.s who '' did " India and wrote books about their travels, and certainly his book on India was far from being the worst of its kind. The thing that seems to annoy the Anglo-Indian, is that a man who is merely a tourist should dare to pose as an authority on subjects any one of which might well occupy a lifetime and leave the learner diffident at the end. The behaviour of the native-born American, who spends a few weeks in England with a guide-book, and then goes home to write a book on London life, is excusable beside that of the " travelled idiots " who profess to have mastered in a four months visit all the religious and political problems presented by India. Anglo-Indians have ever been known to inveigh against Kipling for immaturity of judgment ; the Englishman of Calcutta attacked the story " An Unqualified Pilot " * when it appeared, remarking that the author had very evidently primed himself by reading the article on the Hugli in Hunter^ s Gazetteer, * This story has not been included in any English edition of the author's worlds. It was printed in the Windsor Magazine, February 1895. ^28 CHAPTER XVI SUSSEX A gift of literary humanity : Imitation " style " : " The Con- version of St. Wilfrid " : Pen-pictures of the Downs : Kipling's house near Burwash : The " gentlemen " : A worthy Sussex parson : The bell-ringers of Burwash : G. K. Chesterton's taunt against Kipling : Kipling an infatuated admirer of rural England : An habitation enforced. ^ I O/), bury me not in a churchyard, mound. But lay me in my garden ground ; From loving dust, it needs must be That flowers will spring more fair to see. And Christ will know, in my last sleep, For Him I still the garden keep. Gretchen Warren. CHAPTER XVI SUSSEX RuDYARD Kipling has a gift of literary humanity, a geniality of nature, a talent for companionship, a reassur- ing point of view, a charm of wise and witty and tender utterance, and a generally broad-shouldered, warm, and deep-hearted way with him which is an oasis in the great waste of present-day smartness and cynicism. In " Puck of Pook's Hill," and " Rewards and Fairies," he has picked out time-weathered men of action for the beef and brawn of his literary pabulum ; Napoleon, St. Wilfrid, Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards Duke of Wellington), Queen Elizabeth, Nicholas Culpeper, Drake, these and suchlike are the people for him. It is in their company that he prefers to seek his adventures, as it is in the homelier, broadcast aspects and happenings of life that he finds his satisfactions and the eternal meanings. To the recording of these various adventures, which may well be styled a true epic of the English people, Kipling brings a style of uncommon naturalness and personal charm. He does not, thank Heaven, write English as if it were a dead language, nor, on the other hand, does he write it like an advertising man. To write like a human being ! If you look around the realms of the present-day republic of letters you will be surprised to see how little writing is being done in that way. Everywhere the imitation " style," the pose point of view, the smart, cynical, sophisticated attitude. In an age of would-be literary dandies and superior persons one is fathomlessly grateful for Kipling's occasional 231 RUDYARD KIPLING tavern or coffee-house manner, his Rabelaisian tang, and his frank way of telling us everything. We are glad to find that the gentle-hearted and simple Eddi, who preached the word to a yoke-weary bullock and a marsh donkey, holds an honoured position in Kipling's affections, and to turn the pages of " The Conversion of St. Wilfrid " is to breathe the air of a more spacious and friendly world. It is as though we had dropped into the Church of Little Barnabas,* to have a friendly chat with the good Wilfrid. In one place, Kipling humorously describes how Puck wickedly persuaded Wilfrid to narrate the story of his fight with the Saxons on the Sussex coast — a story which the man of peace had endeavoured to put behind him. But when the fire of his youth revived for a few moments a sudden thick burr came into the old man's voice : " I was bringing over a few things for my old church at York, and some of the natives laid hands on them, and — and I'm afraid I lost my temper. . . . Eh, but I must ha' been a silly lad." In such human touches these stories abound, and they make no little of Kipling's charm. " The Conversion of St. Wilfrid " is a sketch of a well-known phase in the life of the Archbishop Wilfrid. In the seventh century the kingdom of the South Saxons was to a great extent cut off from neighbouring English kingdoms by the tract of marshy land at the east and west, and even the north, by the forest of the Weald. The sloping beaches of the coast also attracted sea adventurers, who harassed and plundered their people, so it was natural that Paganism should have been retained longer in Sussex than in other kingdoms. These people, in whose veins flowed the restless blood of the Vikings, * At the Etchingham end of the village of Burwash stands a church dedicated to another saint, but the reader will have no difficulty in con- necting it with the church so often referred to as St. Barnabas by Rudyard Kipling. 232 SUSSEX looked upon any unlucky ship driven ashore on their coast as theirs by right, and when Wilfrid's ship was driven ashore while he was sailing home from France, the South Saxons swooped down to loot any gear that might be cast up by the sea. One of the Saxons skilled in magic began to practise his black-art on Wilfrid and his ship with a view to hasten their destruction, but a well-flung stone from one of the Archbishop's crew killed him. Maddened by the sight of their leader's death, they plunged into the surf and engaged Wilfrid's men, who gradually retreated to the ship. The tide rising before its accustomed time floated the ship, and thus enabled Wilfrid and his retainers to make off. It was twenty years later that Wilfrid returned to the South Saxons as a missionary during a period of famine. Rain had not fallen for three years, but Wilfrid taught the people to fish with an angle-hook and thus relieve much distress. In return for this many of the people offered to keep faith with the Christian God. During the day on which the Saxons were baptized into the Church the rain fell in a deluge, and the great famine came to an end. It is said that St. Wilfrid founded a monastery at Selsey, on. a part of the land now claimed by the sea. Kipling tells us how Wilfrid made friends with a pagan chief, Meon, in these parts, and introduces Eddius, the Kentish choirmaster (and later, biographer) of Wilfrid, to say nothing of an old seal of high intelli- gence. Eddi abhorred Padda (the seal), but was con- verted to a great respect after the animal had rescued Meon, Wilfrid, and himself from the sea. Wilfrid tells quaintly in one part of the story how Eddi made a little cross in holy water on the wet muzzle of the seal, and was rewarded by the caresses of the faithful Padda — another little human touch that endears the old Kentish chaplain to us all. Wilfrid taught Meon much, and in turn the Arch- bishop learnt from the pagan chief to face the 233 RUDYARD KIPLING world in a broad-shouldered, warm, and deep-hearted way. The wonderful charm of Sussex colours much of Kipling's later work. There are wonderful pen-pictures of the Downs in " The Knife and the Naked Chalk " (" Rewards and Fairies ")• In " Hal o' the Draft " he gives us a description of the south-country foundries, where all the guns used in the Tudor navy were forged, and in Puck's Song he sings the history of Sussex. The scenes of "They," "Below the Mill Dam," "An Habitation Enforced," and many of the stories in " Rewards and Fairies " and " Puck of Pook's Hill " are also laid in this county. Kipling has also made Sussex his very own in one of the most beautiful poems written on an English county, and his verses in " The Five Nations " are proof enough of his ardent affection for this part of England. Kipling's house is called " Batemans," and it has stood some hundreds of years in a little hollow near the village of Burwash, mid a thinly settled and wooded district. Over the doorway a date stone proclaims that the building was raised in the year 1634. When visitors call upon him at this delightful old house in the heart of Sussex, they are always taken to see his " Free Trade Garden." None but the keenest Tariff Reformer would appreciate the name at first sight. On looking round, however, one sees that the old style garden paths are all paved with disused mill stones, relics of those golden days when the miller ground the corn and wheat-growing was one of the staple in- dustries of the country. You will learn in the " Smuggler's Song " all about the gentlemen who must have often passed " Batemans " in their trapesings with good liquor between the coast and the capital. In those days every one sided with the smugglers, both on the coast and inland ; and it is said that a certain worthy parson being somewhat uneasy 234 I SUSSEX about his right to retain a cask of brandy which with many others had been hidden in his own church tower, was somewhat consoled by one of the gentlemen, who pinned the following text to it : Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry. Proverbs vi. 30. A Burwash woman has told us that as a child, after saying her prayers, she was often packed to bed early with the strict injunction : " Now mind if the gentle- men come along, don't you look out of the window." To look at a smuggler when he was engaged in the great game, was strictly against true Sussex tradition. People had to turn towards the wall when they passed by, so that they could truthfully declare that, as they had not seen the gentlemen, it was impossible to identify them. Another native of Burwash has recorded that his grand- father's family, which consisted of fourteen sons, were all " brought up to be smugglers." The late Mr. Cocker Egerton of Burwash also related a good story of a Sussex parson who feigned illness all one Sunday in order to keep his church closed on a cargo of contraband which had been hurriedly lodged in the pews to evade the revenue men. It has been said that the true crest of the Sussex Men is a pig couchant, with the motto " I wunt be druv," and we have all heard of the following couplet : Tou may push and you may shuv But Pm if ril he druv. Mr. E. V. Lucas, in his book on Sussex, has told us how the bellringers of Burwash refused to ring the bells when George IV, then Prince of Wales, passed through that village on his return from a visit to Sir John Lade at Etchingham. The independent and stubborn inhabi- tants, when asked for a reason, declared that the bells had clashed most riotously when the First Gentleman in 23s RUDYARD KIPLING Europe had passed that way before, and not even a little ale had been served out to them, and that they did not mean to toil again for nothing. In his book " Heretics," G. K. Chesterton levelled a taunt against Kipling, to the effect that he only wor- shipped England because she was powerful, not because she was English. This reproach is unfair and misleading. It makes Kipling simply an admirer of power like Nietzsche, instead of a worshipper of that very different thing, power wielded after the manner of the Anglo- Saxon people. It is misleading to say that Kipling feels nothing and knows nothing of our Empire beyond its strength in guns and bayonets. It is true that there is a general lack of emotion and a rather imperious call to stern business principles in his work, but I think that his aim is to do the right thing apart from gain or supremacy. However mistaken, however much he has " been led by evil counsellors," there is still the same restless and strenuous striving after good. It is curious to note how Mr. Chesterton tries to drum into our heads that Kipling is only attracted to write about the army because it is a marvellous organization, and that Private Ortheris is no more beloved to him than a private of the German army. We can only excuse Mr. Chesterton on the ground that his remarks were written some years ago. Of course there can be no doubt that Kipling's soldier stories have been a labour of love. Mere books have not circumscribed his activities on behalf of Tommy Atkins. The South African War discovered him not only in the firing-line with his friends, but visiting them in the reeking enteric camps at Bloemfontein, or writing letters home for wounded soldiers. Chesterton, there- fore, is not justified in gravely rebuking him with the following words : " That which he admires in the Brit- ish army he would find more apparent in the German army ... he admires England, but he does not love her." The campaign in France and Belgium has done 236 SUSSEX much to disprove Mr. Chesterton's statement — that there is little to choose between the British Tommy and any other soldier. We are too near to German bar- barism to talk lightly of any such comparison. It must no longer be possible to say that " the literary geography of Kipling would be everywhere save where the distinguished writer's forbears dwelt," as William Sharp has remarked, or that '' he lacks altogether the faculty of attaching himself to any cause or community finally and tragically," as Mr. Chesterton has informed us. Both of these remarks are singularly inaccurate. We now know that the author has finally and irrevocably attached himself to a certain part of England. No ! Kipling may have once been called '' The Man from Nowhere," but he cannot be regarded as the Man without a Country, for the lot has fallen to him in " a fair ground — Yea, Sussex by the Sea." Kipling's worship of England is of a distinctly ritualistic type, and dispels at once Mr. Chesterton's conflicting remarks that he is " naturally a cosmopolitan," and that he displays a lack of patriotism. Such verse as the author has given in his beautiful tribute to Sussex in " The Five Nations " is more than love for England, it rises to passion. The verses are wreathed with Sussex incense and starred with Sussex tapers. There is a little-known letter written by Kipling to a motoring friend, which shows the author to be an infatuated admirer of rural England : To me it is a land of stupefying marvels and mysteries ; and a day in the car in an English county is a day in some fairy museum where all the exhibits are alive and real and yet none the less delightfully mixed up with books. For instance, in six hours I can go from the land of the *' Ingoldsby Legends " by way of the Norman Conquest and the Baron's War into Richard Jefferies' country, and so through the Regency, one of Arthur Young's less known tours, and " Celia's Arbour," into Gilbert White's territory. On a morning I have seen the Assizes, javelin-men and all, come into a cathedral town ; by noon I was skirting a new-built convent for expelled French nuns ; before sundown I was watching the Channel Fleet off Selsea Bill, and after dark I nearly broke a fox's back on a Roman 237 RUDYARD KIPLING road. You who were born and bred in the land naturally take such trifles for granted, but to me it is still miraculous that if I want petrol in a hurry I must either pass the place where Sir John Lade lived or the garden where Jack Cade was killed. In Africa one has only to put the miles under and go on ; but in England the dead, twelve coffin deep, clutch hold of my wheels at every turn, till I sometimes wonder that the very road does not bleed. That'll the real joy of motoring — the exploration of my amazing England. Yes, I still think that England holds a very foremost position in Kipling's affections. The little details in country life and in nature attract Kipling surprisingly, and we find in his " An Habitation Enforced " how George Chapin, American multi-millionaire, feels the call of the Old Country. Chapin, an overworked and broken-down American, and his wife Sophie are the principal characters. The doctors have just informed him that his nervous complaint will end in a speedy death unless he stops work at once. At the moment when he is stricken down with this malady of the soul, his career had just reached the culminating moment when he was going to break up all opposition, and rule the greater part of America with the iron hand. Thus, by the interception of the divine janitor, he is cheated of his plunder. The doctors' command must be obeyed, and Chapin and his wife set out for Europe. They can find no rest for their souls on the Continent ; not even the enchanted gardens of Italy can hold them, and the millionaire still yearns for the traffic and barter of the market-place. They see everything that is to be seen ; they go everywhere at the bidding of guide-books and fellow-travellers ; only at last in England, in a village in the southern counties, do they attain that peace of the soul which all along they have been seeking. So the millionaire, who has been accustomed to the boldest operations on money markets of the world, is bewitched by the Old Country. He becomes a simple English country gentleman, loving the 238 SUSSEX slow and quaint workings of the village mind. And here, in the quiet old world, all the good things of life which the bustling new world denied them, came to their aid — ^health, rest, and parentage. " They have returned as strangers : they shall remain as sons." Indeed, the old house which they have purchased has an eternal allure- ment, for it seems that, led by a star of accident, they had found the very estate that was once owned by their forbears. As I have hinted, a son is born to them, and thus does an old rustic lecture the sometime financier on the distinction between the temporary and the enduring. It is a discussion over the building of a bridge across a brook in the Gale Anstey Woods. Chapin is in favour of the New York slapdash way with a few pine planks, but the old farmer remarks : " You can put up larch and make a temp'ry job ; and by the time the young master's married, it'll have to be done again. Now, I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed. You put 'em in, an' it's off your mind for good an' all. T'other way . . . he'll no sooner be married . . . 'ave it all to do again." Mr. I. S. Cobb, in the New Tork Evening Post^ tells how Kipling takes a great pleasure in the trivial little objects and customs of rustic life — those simple things that are best of all. " On a walk after lunch, Mr. Cobb remarked the number and the tameness of the pheasants, and the little English robins. " Ah ! you know birds," said Kipling. " I don't know birds so well, though I'm fond of them. I wish you would stay until after dinner," he went on, " I'd like you to hear a nightingale that comes every evening to our garden. I know all the popular illusions about the nightingale ; but the truth is, he's a blackguard with a gift of music in his throat that he can't control — a noisy swashbuckling blackguard of the garden. He 239 RUDYARD KIPLING comes here at night and he proceeds to abuse all his enemies for all he's worth. It's feathered profanity in a disguise of harmony, and he gets so worked up over it, that he finally ends in an inarticulate gurgle." On a walk in the garden they came upon a mason adjusting a grape-vine trellis in a concrete block about five feet below the surface of the ground. " Do you see how substantially he's doing that ? " said Kipling. " That should be interesting to an American, who is used to seeing things done in a hurry. But here in Sussex they build for the ages. Once I asked a man why he ploughed so deeply, and I asked this mason why he went as far as five feet down for his concrete foundation when two feet or three feet would do, and they both made the same answer — a phrase that I have learned since is commonly in use in Sussex, like an adage or motto. * We do it this way,' they said, ' for the honour of the land.' I thought that had a fine sound — a deference to the soil that nourished them, like a son patting his mother's cheek." 240 CHAPTER XVII "STALKY AND CO." '' Stalky and Co." : The literature of school life : Books which influenced Kipling as a hoy : Kipling's old master, Cormell Price : The Review of the Week on " Stalky." T / would give much to recall my feelings when I had slept with one eye open in order to get up at cock-crow to see the Circus pitch its tents on Bilhrow'^s field, a space big enough j or a Roman hippodrome. But of this I am sure, that romance has never spread a scene of such enchantment before my eyes. Oh, the heart-stirring excitement when the canvasmen — those extra-blasphemous navigators of the circensian ocean — raised the great centre-pole of the Main Tent ! It might have been done with less noise and swearing, perhaps, but would it have impressed me half so much ? How cheerful the sight of them messing in the open air, while an immensely fat and good-natured black cook roasted huge steaks over a cunning camp fire / How I longed to get away from the tyranny of tasks and to be a part of that life, so free and careless, yet full of adventure it seemed ; and how I envied the boy who, from time to time, ran away with the Circus ! What became of that hero of one'^s early admiration seems, by the way, as profound a mystery as the ordinary failure of the head boy in school to take all the prizes in after life. I know for sure, at any rate, that he never got to own the Circus, and I suspect he paid dearly for his romantic yearnings. But as a boy, I would have enthusiastically swapped any future whatever for hi> chance. Michael Monahan. CHAPTER XVII " STALKY AND CO." The Maiden Aunt who is in search of a nice book for a little boy with a shining face, a boy with irreproachable manners and tidy ways, had better not put " Stalky and Co." on her list. For the adventures of the Schoolboys Three are not such as give joy to the timid guardians of youth, while the heroes themselves are young rapscallions of the deepest dye. It is true that Stalky, McTurk, and Beetle have made a casual acquaintance with some of the great masters of English literature, but a slight knowledge of " Fors Clavigera " and " Men and Women " seems only to have served as an aifected gloss to the combined characteristics of the terrible trio whose deep- revolving councils swayed all, from the head master to the study-fag, at those " twelve bleak houses by the shore." There were many who objected to the book, and pointed out that young Goths who smoke, swear, shoot cats, chivy the fags, and jape with the house masters were not worthy to grace the literature of school life. The book makes no claim to be a minute study of all the various classes of young male animals which are to be met with in our public schools. It is simply a short series of episodes, all of which were crowded into the last two years of Kipling's schooldays at that tough seminary of practical Imperialism — a cross between a public school and a convict settlement, from which nothing soft emerged. Some finicky persons would, indeed, hold " Stalky and Co." to be a " gross and 243 RUDYARD KIPLING absolute travesty of facts," but the truth is these boys are quite true to life, and I have been told that some of the amazing practical jokes which Uncle Stalky and his retainers carried out were too wicked for type, and.iwere for this reason kept out of the book. The college, indeed, seems to have been organized for the purpose of giving Stalky and Co. the utmost room and merge for their pranks. There is no limit to their impudence, just as there seems to be no boundary to their slang. The order and good government of the college they reduce to chaos, to the masters they bring headache and heartbreak. It is natural for us to look back on the school stories of the past with a certain tenderness and regretful admira- tion. A golden haze envelops those departed books of our youth, and even through the sickly sentiment of " Eric," upon which Kipling has bestowed much ridicule, many happy reminiscences of childhood brightly gleam. Nevertheless, after reading " Tom Brown's Schooldavs," "The Human Boy," "The Hill," and all the other literature of school life, we are bound to confess that there was room for " Stalky and Co." It must be evident at once that some, at least, of the success of the " Stalky " group of studies is due to Kipling's brilliancy of insight into the barbaric and abnormal state of mind. It is the uncivilized type of boy, so to speak, that he handles best. The boys at Westward Ho were " quite exceptional boys," was the verdict of one critic. It may be noted, too, that the school was entirely different to all other institutions of that kind on account of the apparent lack of discipline. In any other school the power of Kipling's trio would have been swiftly and painfully crushed. For the first time in the history of the school story has a writer ventured to make his hero sneer at cricket and football, and yet we all know that fifty per cent, of any school hold the same views on the national sport as McTurk. My own experience at a county grammar 244 "STALKY AND CO." school and a public school prompts me to make this statement. Kipling knows this, and he knows, too, why many boys profess an enthusiasm for cricket which is far from their hearts. McTurk's explanation of their un- J. popularity with some of the masters throws much light on one side of the question : " If we attended the matches and yelled ' well hit, sir,' an' stood on one leg an' grinned every time Heify said, ' So ho, my sons, is it thus ? ' and said, ' Yes, sir,' and ' No, sir,' an' ' O, sir,' an' ' Please, sir,' like a lot of filthy fa-ags, Heffy 'ud think no end of us." Whilst controlling the college paper it was the Beetle's good fortune to become more intimate with the head master than other boys ; he was allowed the run of the worthy principal's library, which was stocked with note- worthy books : there Beetle found a fat armchair, a silver inkstand, and unlimited pens and paper. There were scores and scores of ancient dramatists ; there were Hakluyt, his voyages ; French translations of Muscovite authors called Pushkin and Lermontoff ; little tales of a heady and bewildering nature, interspersed with unusual songs — Peacock was that writer's name ; there was Borrow's " Lavengro " ; an odd theme, purporting to be a translation of something, called a " Rubaiyat," which the head said was a poem not yet come to its own ; there were hundreds of volumes of verse — Crashaw ; Dryden ; Alexander Smith ; L.E.L. ; Lydia Sigourney ; Fletcher's " Purple Island " ; Donne ; Marlowe's " Faust " ; and — this made McTurk (to whom Beetle conveyed it) sheer drunk for three days — Ossian ; " The Earthly Paradise " ; " Atalanta in Caly- don " ; and Rossetti — to name only a few. The interest and encouragement which the head took in the College Chronicle and its youthful editor must have greatly influenced Kipling as a boy, and the dedica- tion of " Stalky and Co." to him is one of the finest poems we have from Kipling's pen. " The Head," who tried 24s RUDYARD KIPLING to teach his unruly crowd of boys common sense (" Truth and God's own common sense"), which Kipling believed was more than knowledge, could not have been but gratified with this tribute, coming as it did after many days. It may be freely granted that if ever there lived three boys who were the embodiment of the resourceful and cheerful Anglo-Saxon spirit, they are to be met arm-in- arm in " Stalky and Co." Stalky became in due course a colonel of Sikhs, McTurk entered the Indian Telegraph Service, and the sportive Beetle, with his gig-lamps, sailed out to India and fame. " The Head," who for twenty years had been busy laying broad the foundations of a truly Imperial educa- tion, had kindliness and wise insight enough to know that a boy may be in every mischievous scrape that takes place in the school, and yet remain pure and wholesome, and withal lovable. Anybody who can discern between the lines of " Stalky and Co." is well aware that the real hero of the book is " The Head " himself. Readers will bear in mind that Kipling's old master, Cormell Price, died in 1910, at the age of seventy-four. Mr. E. H. Blakeney, of King's School, Ely, in an appreciative notice of him has this to say : Patient, brave, wise, with a keen insight into the simplicities as well as the complexities of a boy's nature, Cormell Price was an exemplary head master. No one better realized that than his boys. But he was also a great deal more. As the close personal friend of William Morris, the poet, and Edward Burne-Jones, the painter, he might be expected to possess a literary and artistic side which, in the bustle of a teacher's time, is only too apt to become disused. And indeed his literary instinct was rarely at fault. I remember very well being present (more than twenty years ago) at one of the fortnightly debates at the old " Coll." — as it was affectionately dubbed — ^when the " Head " gave as his contribution to the evening's proceedings, a reading from a slim paper-covered volume which was, I suspect, unknown to any of his audience. He prefaced the reading by remarking, " I think you boys will be interested in this story I am going to read ; it is by one of your own schoolfellows, whom some of you here 246 "STALKY AND CO." will, of course, remember. I venture to prophesy for him a distinguished place among our best writers. Perhaps you guess to whom I refer. It is young Kipling." Some brief sketch of Cormell Price's life work, with extracts from his admirable letters, may yet be published. Then it will be seen that among the head masters of our day Cormell Price holds a high and honoured place. " Stalky and Co." has formed the bone of contention in many valiant battles in the reviews and magazines. One critic objected to the slang, another looked upon it as a poisonous book, while yet another hailed it as the best school story ever written. The following enthu- siastic notice is from the Review of the Week, a journal which had an ephemeral existence in the nineties. Under the heading of " Schoolboys Three," on November ii, 1899, it ha3ed " Beetle," the inimitable, in these words: This is a book for men ; a joyous book. It is pure, unadulterated boy. Not the prim boy that comes up for the first prizes, the book-fag who carries about with him, like a tin halo, the smiling approval of the Autho- rities. But it is the boy as boys know him ; a roystering, unlicked young cub. There is your " Tom Brown " boy and your " Eric " boy, but in " Uncle Stalky " you have the essential boy, the boy that boys worship and grown men remember with mirthful affection. Stalky is a rich inven- tion. He suffers a little, perhaps, from the fact that his inventor has had close acquaintance with Mr. Terence Mulvaney and other picturesque adventurers. The language of Stalky and his affluent resourcefulness — closely imitated by the worshipping company — take heightened colour when seen across the years that the locusts have eaten. But when all due allowance is made for the devotee turned biographer, we accept Stalky thankfully. We accept him at his own estimate — ^he is a great man. Uncle Stalky. He belongs to the berserk breed that has widened the bounds of the British Empire and keeps them wide. From the Maiden Aunt point of view Stalky is a dreadful, dreadful boy ; from the schoolmaster point of view he is a rascally young rebel. But that does not exhaust the estimate. From the point of view of an Empire whose rough work has to be put through by ready-witted men. Stalky is of sterling value. He is, in the world of school and the world beyond the school, a genuine hero, and our boys, despite their careful aunts, will find him out. So we pass Stalky up to the top of his class. Kipling is one of those authors who has never con- 247 RUDYARD KIPLING descended either to the sentimental or the passing literary fashion. He sits aloof with his severe Muse, communing highly on " the sacredness, the imperative- ness, to each man, of his own day's work." So when he wrote " Stalky and Co." he let the angelic type of boy go hang, and gave us the delightfully human young animal who is inclined to play the " giddy garden goat " in his spare time, and to work like a nigger at the right moment. 248 CHAPTER XVIII SOLDIER POEMS The hot-bed of slang : The Irony and gaiety of the British soldier : The making of a soul : Henley and the sword : " The Five Nations": The Westminster Gazette and Kipling's poetry : Poems of the South African War : " The New Army in Training " : Our Saxon ancestors compared with the British soldier of our own times. " / will go where I am wanted, where there's room for one or two, And the men are none too many for the work there is to do ; Where the standing line wears thinner and the drop-ping dead lie thick ; And the enemies oj England, they shall see me and he sickP A. E. HOUSMAN. CHAPTER XVIII SOLDIER POEMS An ex-soldier sorrowfully admitted the other day to a County Court judge that money is very scarce just now, and that for many weeks he had been reduced to meals composed of " slingers." Now the worthy judge was naturally puzzled over the meaning of this word and pressed the man for an explanation. The ex-soldier quoted a line from Kipling's " Birds of Prey March " in which the word is used, and then informed the judge that " slingers " were army bread rolls dipped in tea to make them more tasty when jam, butter or meat was not to be had. Mr. Ralph Durand, in his '' Handbook to the Poetry of Kipling," supplies the following deriva- tion of the word gleaned from a gunner in the R.H.A. : It's like this : at the canteen, when a man as can't sing gets up to sing the men takes and slings " slingers " at him. Kipling's writings are for ever throwing into view these inside words — words, that is to say, that belong to corners of life more or less exclusive. One of the fascinations of slang words is that they are, so to speak, skeleton keys with which one can unlock unaccustomed doors. A man who would take the trouble to acquaint himself with the origin and history of all the slang in " Barrack Room Ballads " and " The Seven Seas " would soon be possessed of much curious information. It is in- evitable that the world of the fighting man, who puts up his caravan at remote spots all over the world, should be a hot-bed of slang. The soldiers' slang falls into many 251 RUDYARD KIPLING divisions. There are Hindustani words which have been embraced hy the Tommy, such as " Loot," which of course means plunder ; there is the Afrikander slang which gives the word " Ikona " (pronounced * Aikorner ") having quite a variety of meanings from a simple " No " or " No you don't, my lad " in Kitchen- Kafhr to the soldier's perversion of it, in which he uses it to denote a thief. It was also a nickname given to the M.I. during the South African War, about which Kipling has written in "The Five Nations." Sometimes we find Dutch- Afrikander words in use, an example of which is " Trek," meaning " draw." The word was used by the Boer driver to his oxen when he wished them to start, and Tommy Atkins uses the word in a general way when he speaks of " getting along " or travelling. The curious word " Footsack " used by soldiers and meaning " go away " is also Afrikander slang. The service man's almost childish love of novelty ; his clear vision and his bright, clean touch have given the army many new words ; thus his nickname for a Maxim automatic quick-firer throwing a one-pound shell is now adopted by the Government, and the gun is officially known as a " pom-pom." The name arose from the noise of the report : pompompompom. The gun was first used by the Boers against our troops in South Africa in 1899. Many of the expressions are alive with the irony and gaiety of the British soldier, and we find Thomas Atkins speaks of the men who signed on for " home service only " in the great war of 1914 as M.O.F.B. which stands for Mother's Own Fireside Boys. The unfair way in which the D.S.O. was said to have been distributed in the South African War led the Tommy to suggest that it was awarded to Dukes' Sons Only, and owing to a misunderstanding about a gold watch (looted) which mysteriously vanished out of a soldier's tunic while he was in hospital, the aforesaid 252 SOLDIER POEMS soldier rendered the magic letters R.A.M.C. as Rob All My Comrades — a taunt which is, of course, entirely erroneous and unjust. Doubtless our soldiers have made mistakes and in- dividuals may have disgraced themselves, but I contend that anybody v^ho knows anything about the average Tommy would stoutly deny the charges of brutality bi ought by Miss Emily Hobhouse and others during the South African War. It is the fashion of the British public to talk largely and smugly of " thin red lines of heroes " and yet at the same time look upon Tommy as a pampered fellov/ with rather criminal instincts, who must be lashed into subordination. Kipling has always girdled scornfully and indignantly against this kind of folly and blindness. Of course there is an essential savagery in war that must always be, but the following description of Tommy (from " A Soldier's Diary " by Sergeant M. C. Jackson) may be quoted in his defence — if it be needed after the glory of Mons, Cambrai and Ypres : I went down to the farm for water. There were two women and several girls there, and for a wonder no officers, staff or otherwise, at the house, There was a crowd of men from every branch of the column, and the women seemed to be in difficulties, there was such a crowd. Seeing I was a corporal, one of them asked me to keep them quiet and she would sell them stuff. So I fell them in, and each man was served in his turn till she couldn't spare any more, when they dispersed quietly. I doubt if in any army of the Continent one corporal could keep order among men from every regiment of a column, in an enemy's farmyard, with plenty of fowls, etc., running about — half-starved men, too, and they had to pay a good price. . . . Next day my company went out with orders to clear the two farms H., which we did pretty thoroughly ; they were simply bursting with grain and all sorts of produce, and pigs and poultry in hundreds. We wetted all the grain, burnt the forage, and killed the live stock, leaving merely enough for the family. The women couldn't quite make out Tommy, I think. A soldier, hot and grimy from burning their best haystack, and bloody with the blood of the old frou's pet minorcas and anconas, would go up to the back door without a trace of ill-feeling and ask very civilly for a glass of milk. 253 RUDYARD KIPLING What ? The man who wrote this was a soldier of the British forces in South Africa and, of course, would be favourable, I hear the reader say. Then, perhaps, you would like a word or two from a Man of Iron and a bitter foe — General Viljoen : The " Tommy " who draws a very poor daily pay, for which he has to perform a tremendous lot of work, is, if not the most capable fighter, the most willing in all circumstances to oifer himself as a sacrifice at the altar of duty, or of what he considers his duty to his country. As regards his fortitude, I must repeat what I have already said — that he is a courageous, willing, and faithful warrior, and that it is to his fidelity and patriotism that the British Army may attribute its success. The British soldier passes through a great process of regeneration in war time, and all men — the black sheep as well — rise out of their sloth and selfishness. We have seen the pale London-bred Tommy turning into a man of power and endurance after a few months in South Africa. He finds a new world full of wonder and magnificence, and this point of view finds expression in Kipling's song of the returning soldier, who tells of the feelings that seem to crowd in upon him. He has seen death in all its horrible forms ; a thousand men struck to earth at Magersfontein ; the shell-swept death-trap of Spion Kop or the reeking enteric camps of Ladysmith — these have all taught him things. It is a sensation — an intoxication to be felt, not to be described, but Kipling has done his best to describe it. The bewildered Tommy has met men from all parts of the Empire, from the New Zealand and Australian Commonwealth, from Canada, India and Africa. He did not dream that the soul of Britain was so great and that the red little, dead little army of which he formed a part was so small. It staggered him, but the flame of understanding burnt brighter and brighter until at last the glory of it came to him : — not pride. Nor yet conceit, but on the ^ole 254 f SOLDIER POEMS (If such a term may he applied). The makirC of a bloomiti' soul. As I Stood on Waterloo Station watching a batch of war-worn, wounded soldiers just returned from the trenches at Flanders, I thought of those wonderful lines by Kipling ; they had walked through the fiery furnace and I saw in their faces that look that only comes to men who have been cleansed of all that is mean and ignoble. It has been said that they who rose by the sword perished by the sword. Yet it must be remembered that they who did not rise by the sword did not rise at all. It is the weak and decadent who fall by the sword. So the sword, as Henley has said, sifts the slag from the metal : The Sword Singing— Driving the darkness, Even as the banners And spears of the Morning ; Sifting the nations, The Slag from the metal. The waste and the weak From the fit and the strong ; Fighting the brute, The abyssmal Fecundity ; Checking the gross Multitudinous blunders. The groping, the purblind Excesses in service Of the Womb universal, The absolute drudge. The Empire now understands the brotherhood based upon the English Bible, the English language, and the great pillar of English literature. They understand the spirit behind the people and the great-hearted loyalty of India and all our great brotherhood. It is a spirit very far apart from flag-flapping and blatant jingoism. Kipling was profoundly convinced of the coming of 25s RUDYARD KIPLING the giant struggle which has proved only too real, and for some years he has stumped the country in a literary manner, preaching to ears, most of them unwilling to receive it, the doctrine of universal military service and the call of Empire. Mr. Holbrook Jackson has explained more clearly than any other critic Kipling's creed : I remember Richard Le Gallienne, in his very able study, thought Kipling's Imperialism the result of shoddy, if not shady, inspiration. And more recently G. K. Chesterton levelled against Kipling the clever and mis- leading argument that he worshipped England because she was powerful not because she was English. The argument is misleading because it makes Kipling a mere worshipper of power (like Nietzsche) instead of a worshipper of that very different thing, power wielded after the manner of the English. He would love England, I imagine, in any case, but it is a poor lover who would be downhearted at the beloved one's increase in strength and beauty. Kipling is proud of the Empire, and he would consolidate it. But neither pride nor the desire to protect the subject of pride convicts a man of jingoism — else were we all in a bad way on one ground or another. There is a dominant note in all Kipling's work which is summed up in the line " I saw nought common on Thy earth." He presents to us a new renaissance of wonder — but he is wise enough to combine his vision, not only with the particularly cultured classes but with those who have no special consciousness of their own very true importance. Thus he has put a certain stern philo- sophy into the mouth of the soldier who was supposed, in our imperfect knowledge of him, to be an ignorant fellow who spent most of his days brawling and drinking. The minutely detailed pictures of the new Service Man in '' The Five Nations " contain many flashes of grim pathos and naughty wisdom, and in such songs as " Chant- Pagan " and " Lichtenberg " there are lines in which that elusive something which is the soul of the soldier is captured and reproduced. How good in " The Re- turn " is the meditation of the returned " Service Man," no longer in Kipling's work Tommy Atkins, be it re- membered. He went out to Africa a mere child and 256 SOLDIER POEMS he has come back a man. After all, the ill-luck that sent him travelling to meet the Boer was the best possible good fortune ; it brought him into contact with a race of men who taught him " the size and meaning of the game " of war. Kipling's poem, which describes our late enemy under the common name of " Piet," illustrates the sort of affection which springs up between combatants worthy of each other's steel. The Boers seemed to be the very race with whom the service man's temperament jumped, and when the troops returned to England they spoke enthusiastically of the man who '' does not lose his rifle an' who does not lose 'is seat." Never has the soul of the true wanderer found more complete expression than in the wonderful " Chant- Pagan." * A telling instance of that reverence and wonder, is to be found in the lines which tell of the trooper's forty-mile ride, with only the stars for his mark, and only the night for his friend, and of " the silence, the shine an' the size of the 'igh, inexpressible skies. Mystery and wonder are lurking in these verses — it is the authentic thrill of the soul in the presence of a vastness which cannot be understood. Kipling is master of a certain kind of verse in which he makes the dialectic hero speak for him, it is not ordinary soldier slang, but it has a strange air of reality, every word seems imbued with personality, fused into a consistent whole by the fire of genius. Without Kipling's genius, it would merely be like the slang and doggerel song of the East End music-hall. The Westminster Gazette rebuked Kipling for his calculated literary barbarisms in the " Chant-Pagan," " Pharaoh and the Sergeant," and other poems in " The Five Nations" ; it is pointed out that certain lines are * The original meaning of the Latin paganus was a " villager," but it was afterwards applied to the irregular soldier who was enrolled for tem- porary service. R 257 RUDYARD KIPLING admirable in the literary sense, but they make no pre- tence at being Tommy language, and, in vulgar phrase, '' give the show away." " Mr. Atkins, we are quite sure, does not talk of ' the silence, the shine, and the size, of the 'igh inexpressible skies,' and, when we get into this vein, the omission of the aspirate becomes suddenly absurd. The sensation produced is as though Mr. Stephen Phillips were to print an edition of Ulysses without the h's." But I am afraid, the Westminster Gazette are on the wrong track, when they put down certain literary phrases used by the soldier as false notes. No one can tell what Tommy is going to say the next moment ; he has an amazingly varied selection of quotations gathered from all the corners of the globe, and his letters, which have been written from the trenches in Flanders and published in the press, show that he is rather a master in the art of the ugly, forcible, yet picturesque description. His letters are vivid, vital, keen as a sword's thrust, and, above all, splendidly masculine. The soldier is as full of wonder as a child, and each village in France and Belgium is a new outlook upon life for him. The soldier is the only critic who could fitly judge Kipling's dialect poems, and it is most likely that the so-called literary expressions, which are said to be so oddly out of character, would pass muster with him while the '' slang " might be questioned here and there. We must remember that Mulvaney, when asked by Kipling what he kens of Polonius, answered : " All that Shakespeare ever wrote, an' a dale more than the gallery shouted," and that Ortheris often quoted from Macaulay's poems. The public does not know the Tommy. We must no longer count our army in guns and sabres, but in souls. The service man of " The Five Nations " was rather a revelation to us, and when Kipling introduced him to us we were rather inclined to cavil. We did not under- stand his personality or that he had " two separate sides 258 SOLDIER POEMS to his head " until we sent two hundred thousand men just like him to the continental trenches, and then he simply staggered us. We did not dream of such valour, in fact, some people, until that point, had not discovered that the Tommy even possessed a soul. When one of the keenest literary men in London admits that it was only this war that put him in complete sympathy with Kipling's soldiers, it shows that people are looking up their " Barrack Room Ballads " and " The Five Nations " afresh, and are preparing to welcome " 'orse, foot, and guns " in all the splendour of their manhood, as they have never thought to welcome them before. Of all the poems the South African War has inspired, perhaps the ditty called " M. I.," which humorously illustrates the work of the mounted infantry, shows Kipling's close acquaintanceship with the Tommy more clearly than any other. There is, however, a false note in one verse. Kipling is unjust in saying that No. 3's (horse holders) have an easy time and are generally braggarts. Any soldier will tell you that this is the most trying job that can be given to any man. Think of a troop leaving their horses with a few men under the shelter of a kopje, where they are unable to see but yet can hear their comrades taking part in an engagement. It is difficult to understand the courage and self-control that is required to play the waiting game ; and if the men in the firing-line are by any chance outflanked or captured you will soon get a " notice " in the shape of a volley or two from some unknown point. The horse- holder is handicapped with three and sometimes more horses, besides being denied the relief to his feelings of shooting back at his foe. Personal fear lessens before a task which occupies all the attention, but sitting idle on a horse, having time to listen and think — to imagine things, too ! — requires courage. Kipling's South African poems do not introduce us to the new Tommy Atkins. In all of these verses there 259 RUDYARD KIPLING is the same touch of gloom and sadness that we find in the Indian soldier stories. There are no soldiers, for instance, in " The Five Nations " at all comparable with the men of our Expeditionary Force in France. There is no hint of sadness or despondency in their letters home ; you hear of them cracking jokes, boyishly guying each other and singing songs as they lie in the trenches with shells screaming close over their heads. But the men of the South African War, according to Kipling, were inclined to be melancholy and reflective. The soldier in " Chant-Pagan " is after all a very sad fellow, and when he returns to England he finds that it is too small and stale — " somethin' gone small with the lot " — and resolves to trek South again. " The Half-Ballad of Waterval " gives us a still keener note of depression — the depression of men who feel the burning shame of surrender and captivity. " Boots " is not at all lively with its ramblings of a half-delirious Tommy. But still I have met all Rudyard Kipling's soldiers out of " The Five Nations " in one barrack-room at Aldershot during the days of the last South African War. But I do not think it would be quite so easy to find them now, for the customs and habits of the army have changed wonderfully since then. The Boer taught our soldier-man many valuable lessons, and the army which returned from South Africa was not the same " red little, dead little Army " which had arrived. It had added to those qualities, which are peculiarly its own, all the natural military virtues of the excellent Dutch farmer. The meditation of the trooper in " M. I." who had been in Africa for a year illustrates this : / wish myself could talk to myself as I left Hm a year ago. I could tell Hm a lot that would save him a lot on the things that V ought to know ! And again in " The Return " we find Tommy moralizing as to the wonderful effects that have been wrought in 260 SOLDIER POEMS his mind by his South African experience : '' I started as an average kid, I finished as a thinking man." Many and various have been the attempts to portray the British Tommy, but few writers have met with any great measure of success. Perhaps the soldiers in Kipling's South African poems are the best of all soldier creations up to the present time ; while Terence Mulvaney, not so seriously intended, has become a household name. Emanuel Pyecroft * — a second-class petty officer — is a most entertaining character and is the only really counter- part of the man in the trench in Flanders written before the war. But up to the time of the South African War verses, Kipling had not created the new Tommy Atkins, who is the maddest, merriest fellow the world has ever seen, but he seems to have been endeavouring to dig out his main characteristics in " Traffics and Dis- coveries." It is interesting to examine the soldier in Kipling's stories and verse from 1886 to 191 5. Some people think that his greatest success was achieved in his revelation of the Tommy in India in '' Soldiers Three." But, in spite of the high spirits and cheery optimism of Mulvaney and his comrades, there is something which dims the funny side of these sketches. There is a certain strain and fret in such a story as " Love-o'-Women " that one can never forget, and the oppression that reigns over that grim tale " In the Matter of a Private " seems beyond mere words. Why is it that the Indian soldier tales are surcharged with an intolerable gloom ? Many writers have called attention to this fact, but no one has yet linked together any chain of comment which helps us to understand why the cloud of sadness lingers in the memory and excludes the comic spirit w^hich is just around the corner. Mr. Edmund Gosse has noticed * Pyecroft is introduced in " The Bonds of Discipline," and appears also in '^ Their Lawful Occasions," which are to be found in " Traffics and Discoveries " (1904). 261 RUDYARD KIPLING the melancholy which lurks in his early work. He says : On the whole, however, the impression left by Mr. Kipling's military stories is one of melancholy. Tommy Atkins, whom the author knows so well and sympathizes with so truly, is a solitary being in India. In all these tales I am conscious of the barracks as of an island in a desolate ocean of sand. All around is the infinite waste of India, obscure, monotonous, immense, inhabited by black men and pariah dogs, Pathans and green parrots, kites and crocodiles, and long solitudes of high grass. The island in this sea is a little collection of young men, sent out from the remoteness of England to serve " the Widder," and to help to preserve for her the rich and barbarous Empire of the East. This microcosm of the barracks has its own laws, its own morals, its own range of emotional sentiment. What these are the new writer has not told us, for that would be a long story, but he has shown us what he himself has divined. He has held the door open for a moment, and has revealed to us a set of very human creations. One thing, at least, the biographer of Mulvaney and Ortheris has no diffi- culty in persuading us, namely, that God in His wisdom has made the heart of the British soldier, that there are limits to this dazzling new talent, the eclat of which had almost lifted us off our critical feet. When we consider that Kipling's first book appeared when he was only eighteen and most of the soldier tales appeared before he was twenty-six, we are forced to the conclusion that he was rather pessimistic as a young man ; he seems to have passed through this stage of pessimism by stages until he has arrived at the optimism of some of his later works. It is as a rule the reverse, for the cruelty of fate is more likely to become apparent to people as they grow older. Why did Kipling start by writing such dreadful stories ? In " The New Army in Training," published ini9i 5, we find that the Kipling of the " Plain Tales from the Hills," the creator of " Mulvaney " has gone from us. We have probably had the last of those soldier stories, which touched something that lies deep in the Anglo-Saxon blood. But it is impossible to introduce Mulvaney. The only thing to be done is to take down " Soldiers Three " from his bookcase and learn how Private Stanley Ortheris 262 SOLDIER POEMS differs from the new material of Kitchener's Army. In this book Kipling has described the New Army in general terms, not in the terms of his own creations, as in his earlier soldier tales. But it is perhaps too much to expect, even from Kipling, portraits equal to those of the past, in these articles which were written in the hurry-scurry of a motor-car dash among the new armies* What he has done, is to talk to men here and there and make them talk to him, afterwards serving up his general impressions. They are effective and picturesque im- pressions, but now and again the vigorousness seems to degenerate for a moment into hustle. He gives us the impression that his motor-car is always waiting for him ; the throbbing and growling of the engine comes to us between the fire and spirit of his lines. How strange is the spell of war, how it blends the merry and the sad ! Certainly there is a plaintive note which seems to lurk in these sketches. Or is it imagination colouring Kipling's little book with old memories ? He certainly recalls old memories in the article on the Canadians, in which he tells us that he met a good many of the old South African crowd ; and that men who had painted Cape Town pink were now grave non-commissioned officers worth their disciplined weights in gold. Whilst reading this article I was constrained to look up those verses in " The Five Nations " which tell of a detachment of English soldiers at Cape Town saying good-bye to a mixed lot of Colonials. These men who had " doubled out " to South Africa from all parts of the Empire — from Eastern and Western Canada, New Zealand, New South Wales and Ceylon find '' the world's no bigger than a kraal." Just as they had mingled their blood in the South with the blood of the English Tommy and Volunteer, they have " rolled up " again to mingle it with ours in the trenches of France. Canada sent a contingent to South Africa, but Kipling points out that she has sent us an army — " horse, foot, guns, 263 RUDYARD KIPLING engineers, and all details " — this time, and he points out, taking their strength at thirty three thousand and the Dominion's population at eight millions, the camp is Canada on the scale of one to two hundred and forty — " an entire nation unrolled across a few square miles." Again Kipling makes us understand the intense willingness of Kitchener's Army — their concentration on their work *' with a passion to learn as passionately as they are taught." An old soldier, who was watching the zealous regiments at drill, remarked that they were different to the soldiers of his young days : " They ain't doin' it to be done with it and get off. They're doin' it because — because they want to do it." Writers of army stories in the future will do well to study " The New Army in Training," and the letters written home by the men in the trenches. In these documents we shall learn many things about the customs and habits of the " new soldier." I am afraid that many well-meaning writers of soldier stories do not take the trouble to search these letters, which are packed with semi-cynical, humorous remarks on himself. Before this great war we only had a hazy idea of Tommy Atkins, mainly formed on the literature of the South African campaign. But in this war we have had a splendid opportunity to study the soldier's point of view and attitude to the war from his letters, which have taken the place of the more expert, and often exaggerated, accounts of the war correspondent. Mr. St. John Adcock, in " In the Firing Line," has been inspired to make a selection from the best of these letters from the front, and this little book should be in the hands of all who wish to get close to the mystery of Tommy Atkins. In the pages of this work the reader will scrape acquain- tance with private soldiers whose names are not Ortheris or Mulvaney. If we examine these documents we shall find that the average Tommy does not drop his aitches, nor use that strange kind of military grammai invented 264 SOLDIER POEMS by Kipling in " Soldiers Three." The general attitude of the soldier, gathered from his own writings, is that of a businesslike gaiety. The first idea that comes to him and his only object is to '' see the thing through," and then to return to his own people. Meanwhile he jokes — jokes at himself — at his officers — at the Germans — at the blood and mud and slime of the trenches — at everything. The awful instruments which hurl death do not awe him ; he stands in the trenches and jokes about the Krupps' machine that is moved up to batter him. This is the Joyous Joust . . . the Great Adventure. What a grand spirit in which to go fighting ! A spirit which is Homeric and mediaeval. Of course Kipling's " The New Army in Training " does not touch upon the British soldier — I refer in this case to the traditional service man — the regular, who is as distinct in temperament as he is in origin from a soldier of Kitchener's Army, or a Territorial. The regular possesses certain qualities which are peculiarly his own. The ways and works of the Tommy are inscrutable. His character is so charged with paradoxical byways that it is most difficult to analyse it tersely. In the days of our Saxon ancestors, it seems, the chief qualities of the suc- cessful soldier were great physical strength and a most violent temper — the Berserker rage, in fact — but the service man of to-day does not believe in the ancestral anger and rage. There is little excitement about him as he goes into action, and he realizes that gaiety and cheerfulness are more valuable than violent anger. The time to beware of the British soldier is when he grows polite. 265 I I CHAPTER XIX KIPLING'S CULTURED DELIGHT IN ODOUR The soul of Sussex : The spirit of reverence and wonder : George Borrow : The spirit of the English country-side : Kipling and the sense of smell : Kipling's passion for dogs : " Garm — A Hostage " People run abroad in quest of adventures^ and traverse Spain or Portugal on mule or on horseback ; zuhereas there are ten times more adventures to be met with in England than in Spain , Port^igal, or stupid Germa7iy to boot. George Borrow. CHAPTER XIX KIPLING'S CULTURED DELIGHT IN ODOUR One of Rudyard Kipling's most distinctive achievements — and perhaps his greatest service to his generation — is that, better than any w^riter of the day v^ith the exception of Mr. Belloc, he has seized and set out in arresting and vivid v^ords the character of England. Read " Puck's Song," and you will next time you visit them look on the South Dov^ns v^ith new eyes ; but read, too, all the contents of " Rewards and Fairies," and " Puck of Pook's Hill," and you will agree that he has captured the very soul of every nook and corner of Sussex. His beautiful domestic poem on our Southern Sea-Kingdom has been well known for many years now. There is a finish and an exact beauty about its lines which argue loving care, and merely as a model of the musical and elusive English language it would be difficult to find a modern parallel, even in Tennyson or Swinburne. Mystery and wonder are here, the authentic thrill of the soul in the presence of " the wooded, dim blue goodness of the Weald." No tender-hearted garden crowns^ No bosomed woods adorn Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs, But gnarled and withered thorn — Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim, And through the gaps revealed Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim Blue goodness oj the Weald, 269 RUDYARD KIPLING The same spirit of reverence and wonder is to be found in the work of George Borrow. This writer, indeed, resembles Rudyard Kipling in many respects. It will be recalled that the strongest ingredients in the nature of Borrow were wonder and reverence, combined with a practical wisdom that taught him how to use his fists as well as his brain. A telling instance of this spirit is to be found in Borrow's impression of Stonehenge : I stood still for a moment, and then, turning off the road, advanced slowly towards it over the sward ; as I drew nearer, I perceived that the objects which had attracted my curiosity, and which formed a kind of circle, were not trees, but immense, upright stones. A thrill pervaded my system ; just before me were two, the mightiest of the whole, tall as the stems of proud oaks, supporting on their tops a huge transverse stone, and forming a wonderful doorway. I knew now where I was, and, laying down my stick and bundle, and taking off my hat, I advanced slowly, and cast myself — it was folly perhaps, but I could not help what I did — cast myself, with my face on the dewy earth, in the middle of the portal of giants, beneath the transverse stone. The spirit of Stonehenge was strong upon me ! Kipling's love for England is enriched and aided by his intimate knowledge of her past, in this lies his pre- dominance over Borrow, Richard Jefferies, and even over William Morris. Borrow was filled with the spirit of the English country-side, but in all his works one cannot find any trace in which he quite grasped the spirit of the Birth of England. It is the same with Morris and Jefferies ; both of these great writers either ignored or hated a great part of the civilization which the Anglo- Saxon people have built up. But to Kipling the earth from the backyard of a London slum dwelling and the oak woods in Sussex, from " whence they hewed the keels that rolled to Trafalgar," are equally full of memories. When Kipling visits the historic towns of his native land it is not merely the ancient buildings or the stories of the past that possess him, but the soul of the place, 270 KIPLING'S DELIGHT IN ODOUR which is a subtle mixture of both. All his records of places and travel are touched upon in his own way, and it is easy to understand that to certain temperaments his way would be almost an offence, for no man has stronger prejudices, and no man was ever more frank in the expression of them. But there is common ground in Kipling on which all may meet, the common ground of human nature and delight in natural things. The saintly old Lama in " Kim," with all his friends, the famous trinity, Privates Mulvaney, Learoyd, and Ortheris, the Brushwood Boy — all these people, and many others, are treasured in the house of memory as personal posses- sions. The story of " Garm — a Hostage " is a classic in the way of dog stories. And in sharp contrast with this story we have his bitter remarks on the feline in " The Cat that Walked by Himself," which is enough to prove the author's aversion to this sly and stealthy member of the genus Fdis. The morbid side of Kipling's work and character can be traced in his " horror tales," " The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," *' Bertram and Bimi," " At the End of the Passage," and " The Mark of the Beast." The last story, which tells of a man who is bewitched by a leper and becomes the victim of a hideous form of hydrophobia, is said by the Spectator to be " matchless in horror and terror." Much has been made of Rudyard Kipling's faculty of observation. It is said that his success is due to his enormous initiative, and to the fact that he visualizes more vividly than almost any other writer. He sees in a flash. As you read his poems you can see, you can hear the characters moving about. Take those stirring verses in " The Song of the Banjo." One is not apt to attribute the sense of poetic impression to this much- maligned musical instrument. One is rather apt to link it with that merry old soul. Uncle Bones, and the south- east coast, but Kipling uses its tumpa — tumpa — tumpa — 271 RUDYARD KIPLING tumpty — tump to call up pictures in the haze of the imagination with extraordinary effect. One verse comes back to me — its atmosphere at any rate, and the lines about the " silence of the camp before the fight." This verse made the mental strain that men suffer w^hen amidst lurking dangers more real to me than any other poem I have read. One can almost hear the plaintive tv^ang of the banjo explaining that " ten to one was always fair " to men who fully understand that unless the "Patently Impossible" happens, the dawn will find them cold and dead. One thing that strikes me in reading Kipling is his astonishingly keen sense of smell. I have read nearly every study and book dealing with Kipling which has been written in the English tongue, and I have noticed that they one and all pass over this most important fact. I think that this keen olfactory sense in the author must certainly be considered in estimating his powers in the art of story-telling. I am perfectly aware that it is against all the canons and laws of the literary profession to launch upon a discussion about the human nose in its relation to the art of writing. The reason why this subject is taboo while so many other less savoury subjects are permitted is rather difficult to determine. I once read that some sainted anchorite declared the use of the nose to be dangerous to the soul, and from thence forward it was looked upon as a moral depravity to use this organ with any freedom. Most people, however, have ceased to look upon smelling as a sin, but from the scullery to the drawing-room it is looked upon as a decidedly indelicate subject. But since Kipling has shown such a lively and wholesome curiosity about smells I am minded to cast convention to the winds and probe into the matter. It seems to me that much of the beauty and gripping power of Kipling's verse and prose is missed by ordinary people like ourselves, who just sit and read books without 272 KIPLING'S DELIGHT IN ODOUR ever first having lived books. This statement deserves and needs a little fuller explanation. In the first place it is as well to point out that Kipling's readers are not confined to the mere literary world; they are not confined to the mere novel-reading public, in fact his books travel to parts where the literary man and the novel-reader very seldom penetrate. You will find his books in Canadian railway bunk-houses, barrack-room lockers, tramp steamers, and mixed with the cooking pots and pails of the miner and pioneer. What is it in Kipling's work which appeals to such a wide and varied public ? By what magic does Kipling bewitch the literary man with fastidious senses, the uncritical novel- reader, or the illiterate soldier with ease ? It is difficult to answer such questions, but beyond a doubt Kipling has made use of certain " tricks " to capture all classes of readers. He has moved the emotions and imagination of some people with rhythm ; others he has enticed with certain qualities of strength and coarseness, as displayed in the ugly story " The Mark of the Beast " ; he catches the ear of the soldier with his ribaldry and humour. For those who are not attracted by his humour or his horror, he paints wonderful word pictures of India and its native life. Those wonderful chapters in " Kim " are only so many gorgeous pictures, cunningly con- structed to attract the eyes of the reader. Kipling is determined to let no class of reader escape his attention — ^he fishes with a net of the finest mesh. If neither touch nor hearing nor sight moves his reader he fills his nostrils with odours to stir up old memories. In " Kim " you can smell — ^how gloriously does he talk of smells — those smells that mean everything to the questing man ! Above all other smells Kipling ranks the smells of the camp fire, and of melting fat, which call up (how vividly !) the cooking of the evening meal and the steaming billy. With a puff of dung-fed camp-smoke and a whiff of burnt cordite, he can transport the soldier, in a second, s 273 RUDYARD KIPLING from Alclershot to the sixteen-year-old battlefields of South Africa. These flashes of memory aided by smell are wonderful. Through smell we achieve a sense of the past ; the secret members of the mind are roused to life and memory. In South Africa the scent of the wattle awakes in the New South Wales trooper memories of his native land. '' Smells are surer than sights or sounds . . . they whisper old man come back," he sings. In this poem, " Lichtenberg " C'The Five Nations "), Kipling has gone out of the way to appeal to the olfactory sense of the reader. Again, does not the time-expired soldier in " Mandalay " recall all the burnished East by those " spicy garlic smells " of Burma ? Other odours men- tioned by Kipling are the smell of camel — pure camel, one whiff of which is all Arabia ; " the smell of rotten eggs at Hitt, on the Euphrates, where Noah got the pitch for the Ark " ; the flavour of drying fish in Burma, and " the smell of the Barracks " which every soldier knows. Of course there are other smells less material in their appeal, which almost come within the range of this short note. One is the first chill smell of the mountains, especially when one reaches the heights towards sunset or in the night. To gain knowledge of this experience the reader must turn to the wanderings of Kim and the Lama in the huddled mountains of the Sewalik range. Another is the odour of the forest or the jungle, which is to be gained from the ^' Jungle Books." It has been said that " of all the smells in the world, the smell of many trees is the sweetest and the most fortifying." It calls up in mankind dim unconscious memories of primeval life, when men were not pillowed and propped out of all possibility of leading a free and open life. The smells of travel are indeed innumerable. I have quoted in another chapter of this volume an article from the Times which gives some unique odours, which, once encountered, linger in the voyager's nostrils for evermore. 274 KIPLING'S DELIGHT IN ODOUR Read through '' Kim " again, and you will find that Kipling knows the odours of India as a man knows the woman he loves. The chapter in which Kim and the Lama fall in with the shuffling procession on the Grand Trunk, is a perfect study in the super-refinement of the five senses, particularly vision and smell. Kipling's feeling for the East is filled out and made richer by his cultured delight in odour. His aesthetic appreciation of landscape, colour and odour are so subtly and in- timately blended that the picture he gives you of a place is quite remarkably vivid and concrete. What, for instance, could be more striking than this passage from " Kim " : " Then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue, across the face of the country, and bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of the wood-smoke and cattle, and the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes." The reader will note too, that Mr. Lurgan's shop had the smell of " all the temples of all the East " and that a " whifi of musk, a puff of sandalwood, and, a breath of sickly jessamine-oil " caught Kim's opened nostrils and made him forget that he was a Sahib. Kipling has also noted that the smell of the " yellow Chinese paper " on which the Lama traced the Great Wheel with all " the heavens, hells, and chances of human life " was like nothing else in the world. But the greatest smells of all are the " delicious earth smells " which are best after rain. " Mother Earth," says Kipling " holds the seed of all life." I remember now (as one remembers little things at such times) that, when I first read Rudyard Kipling's articles on his visit to the French lines * in the Daily Telegraph, there came to me the odour of long-forgotten camp smells, and the memory of comrades' voices that startled over the long lapse of years. For keen and * " France at War," by Rudyard Kipling. Daily Telegraph, September 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, 1915. 275 RUDYARD KIPLING intimate understanding of those odours through which men achieve flashes of the past, where shall we look for Kipling's equal ? What highways and byways of memory has he not opened up for us with a few happy strokes ! He pitches his tent, lights his camp fire (you can smell it burning), and invites the reader to smoke a pipe with him over the cheerful blaze. The passage in " France at War " which displays how subtly and intimately Kipling has blended his aesthetic appreciation of odour and a wonderful knowledge of the soldier is too long to quote in full, but I must call attention to the following lines : The day closed (after an amazing interlude in the chateau of a dream, which was all glassy ponds, stately trees, and vistas of white and gold saloons. The proprietor was somebody's chauffeur at the Front, and we drank to his excellent health) at a little village in a twilight full of the petrol of many cars and the wholesome -flavour of healthy troop. There is no better guide to camp than one's own thoughtful nose ; and though I poked mine every- where, in no place then or later did it strike that vile betraying taint of underfed, unclean men. And the same with the horses. Can any man who has once lived the life of a soldier be deaf to the force of these lines ? Some phrases possess an intense slice of youth and vehemence : try " the wholesome flavour of healthy troops," think it, pronounce it, and you will see in the flash of those words tens of thousands of bronzed soldiers marching. Above the steady champing of the marching feet, you will hear the insolent throbbing and staccato detonations of the drums, and you will smell the odours of the camp : the burning of wood, the cooking of the evening meal, and the fortifying smell of well-cared-for horses. Yes, Kipling can still handle English words with that contemptuous ease and terseness which appeals to the unpolished soldier, as well as to the bookman in his study. His pictures are sudden, swift, overwhelming. Take his description of life in the trenches on the mountainside in " France at War." What an admirable glimpse of a 276 KIPLING'S DELIGHT IN ODOUR nation embattled on a hill. These articles are be- sprinkled with such striking patches as : " The light, the colour, the smell of wood-smoke, pine-needles, wet earth, and warm mule were all Himalayan." " The rtien were at dinner, and a good smell of food filled the trench. This was the first smell I had encountered in my long travels uphill — a mixed, entirely wholesome flavour of stew, leather, earth, and rifle-oil." Kipling has a few words to say on the famous French 75 : " Her merits are French — logic, directness, simplcity, and the supreme gift of ' occasionality.' " " She is equal to everything on the spur of the moment." A Commandant informed Kipling that the gun had been improved upon and modernized by inventors, gunners and men skilled in mechanics until it had become " an assembly of variations and arrangements." " That, of course," said Kipling, '' is all that Shakespeare ever got out of the alphabet. The French artillery make their own guns as he made his plays. It is just as simple as that." When Kipling walks through the dust-heaps of crumbled houses in Rheims, it is not merely the abomina- tions committed on the cathedral by the Huns, the historic memories, the hundred and one odours or the resolute faces of the women and men he meets that possess him, but the spirit of Rheims, which is a subtle compound of all these things. The reason why Kipling's notes on men and cities are so intense, is that they are the reaction or certain physical impressions of a per- sonality, in which accurate knowledge, strong convictions, and the capacity for deep emotion are very intimately interfused. The result is that his records not only deal with a certain aspect of the scene — they also deal with the impressions produced on the entire personality of the writer. It is surely an admirable feature in Kipling's articles on France that he should have used his unique literary gifts for the purpose of comforting the French people. He reminds them that such an historic edifice RUDYARD KIPLING as Rheims Cathedral, has a soul which all the high ex- plosives and incendiary shells that were ever manufactured could not kill. When he paid a visit to Rheims where glorious windows have been reduced to glass dust, gargoyles smashed, and statues, spires and walls tumbled, Kipling said, " Wherever one looks at the tortured site there is mutilation and defilement, and yet it had never more of a soul than it has to-day." Kipling in his fine poem " France " which was printed in the Morning Post, June 24, 191 3, seems to have caught the very spirit of the " New France." Here is a good example of one of the poet's literary forecasts. Kipling foresaw the British Empire with the help of the Gaul striving together in a contest against " new Keels afloat, and new hosts on land." Vividly is the scene brought home to the reader of the constant shadow of war which has been lurking in every Frenchman's heart since 1870: Now we watch the new years sha-pe, wondering if they hold Fiercer lightnings in their heart than we launched of old. Now we hear new voices rise, question, boast or gird. As we raged [remember est thou P) when our crowds zvere stirred. Again there comes to us through the poet's dream a message of harmony between nations '' who swept each other's coast, sacked each other's home " and we read of the English and the Gaul standing " in linked and steadfast guard," thinking only of the wrath to come : Yoked in knowledge and remorse nozo we come to rest. Laughing at old villainies that Time has turned to jest ; Pardoning old necessity no pardon can efface — That undying sin we shared in Rouen market-place. Recent events have proved that France was conscious of the underlying goodness in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and that she felt that the nation which had met her in open and honest battle from the days of Crecy and Poictiers would in the day of Armageddon stand by her 278 KIPLING'S DELIGHT IN ODOUR side. France was equally conscious that such an alliance would triumph over treachery and evil. How often it occurs to us that there is something half physical in the reading of Kipling's books ; it brings to one the same tingling sensation that is to be experienced in walking in the wind and rain. It is a breathless speed and wonder. It does not feel like any deliberate process of settling down to read a book page by page. There is so much freedom in the pages, like the freedom of youth : abandon, audacity, shuddering and horror, splendours and mirth. We feel, when we have once entered into the spirit of such a book as'' Kim,' 'expanded, powerful, infinitely alive. We draw deep breaths of the diamond air with the Lama, and the smells of all India rush to our nostrils. It is Kipling's adoration of colour, smell, and action, that accounts for this ; and we do not realize how cunningly the author appeals to the reader's olfactory sense. In spite of all our neglect of the theory of smell, in regard to life and literature, the nose is always active. This must be true, else it would not aid our memory and warn us of danger. Here is a subject for which few people feel any curiosity, and yet, consider what illuminating researches are available in regard to it. Owing to our apathy about this subject few people are aware that taste is a very limited sense which only responds to " sweet," " sour," and a few plain nerve- reactions. Often we wrongly credit to taste the action of the olfactory sense. For instance, it is the odour of food that we take pleasure in while we are eating ; it is the bouquet of good wine before the taste that is desired — we often confuse the taste and the smell. Thus it is very difficult to distinguish between what we think is the taste of cinnamon, and that of cloves, if the nose is held. We are sorely in need of research in regard to the pheno- menon of smell. However, the fact is, that most of the investigation in this direction has been left to animals. Ordinary citizens, even as you and I, remain more ignorant 279 RUDYARD KIPLING than a dog about it, for it seems that we work from the complex to the simple, and the obvious is the last thing we know. We are so exquisite that we politely deny that there even is such a thing as an individual odour to ourselves and our friends. The student of the dog will tell you that this animal always uses the olfactory organs to confirm his vision. We have all seen a dog make a long and searching nose investigation of his master on meeting him ; he is using his keenly sensitive sense of smell to make certain that it is not somebody y^^j^ like his master. But Kipling has seen that he could not afford to scorn the consideration of this sense. It is remarkable how intimate he has made some of his work with the aid of it. Perhaps, some day, a writer with the vision will arise and arrange all the facts of the sense of smell in real order, and so, suddenly, we shall take one more great step in advance on the great road of life and literature. But we do not seem within measurable distance of the time when this will be accomplished. Ellwood Hendric, writing on the olfactory sense in the Atlantic Monthly^ says : * Sir William Ramsay, whose ever-young enthusiasm leads him into so many of the secret gardens of Nature, has found a relation between odour and molecular weight, and J. B. Haycroft has pointed out what appears to be a cousinship of odours that accords with the periodic law ; another notes that odorous substances seem to be readily oxidized, and Tyndall showed that many odorous vapours have a considerable power of absorbing heat. Some work has been done in German, French, and Italian labora- tories to discover the nature of the phenomenon of smell, but very little that is definite has been brought out ; only here and there a few facts ; and nobody seems to want to know them. And yet the scientific possibilities are very fascinating, even if they are bewildering. For instance, it appears that the sensitive region of either nostril is provided with a great number of olfactory nerve-cells embedded * " The Sense of SmeW,'' Atlantic Monthly,March. 1913. To this lucid and searching study of the phenomenon of smell I am indebted for numerous facts in this chapter. 280 KIPLING'S DELIGHT IN ODOUR in the epithelium. The olfactory cells are also connected by nerves which extend to the brain. Well, what happens when we smell anything ? The olfactory nerve-cells are surrounded by a liquid. What is the nature of that liquid ? Do the particles which we assume to be the cause of olfactory phenomena dissolve in it .? If they do — and here we pray thee, oh, great Arrhenius, come help us ! — does dissociation take place, and are there smell ions ? That is, do fractions of the molecules of those bodies that give odour dissociate themselves from the rest and ride in an electric stream to the nerves ? What do they do when they get there ? Of the unsolved problems in regard to the olfactory sense we have enough and to spare. I need not fill these pages with such questions, but it is difficult to understand and explain how a dog can recognize certain emotions through his nose. In " Garm — A Hostage," hy Kipling, the reader learns a great deal about the " power of the dog," and it is noticeable that the author believes the animal capable of determining fear, good-will, and anger with his highly developed olfactory organs. How the dog is able to recognize these emotions with the nose becomes clearer when we learn that certain rare and subtle odours are created by nerve-reactions : Now we know that nerve-reactions have at least a chemical accompani- ment. Metabolism is often inhibited, the whole digestive process is frequently upset, and there is a fair possibility that the sweat glands arc so modified by emotions that their processes are indicative of emotional reactions. The trained nose might recognize this. If we could cn]y advance along this line until we could recognize anger and fear, and possibly even deceit, consider in what measure life would be augmented ! To return to Kipling's story " Garm — A Hostage." This is a discerning study of a dog — a dog that a soldier in a burst of gratitude to a friend, gives away, and finds that he has given away the better part of his life. In one of Doctor Bradley's works he says : " I can remember in Shakespeare scarcely any sign of fondness for an animal. He did not care for dogs, as Homer did ; he even disliked them, as Goethe did. There is no reference, I believe, to the fidelity of the dog in the whole of his works. To 281 RUDYARD KIPLING all that he loved most in men he was blind in dogs. And, then we call him universal ! " In this particular point, at any rate, Kipling transcends the greatest of all writers, for his passion for the dog knows no restraint. I am afraid that " Garm," the hero of this story, is a dog of impossible virtue and intelligence. This wonderful bull-terrier yields a splendid example of Kipling's method. His enthusiasm for " Garm " leads him to a wonderful, sympathetic caricature which is quite outside the pale of probability. But at the same time he winds his way into the reader's affections, for no one has written so utterly and unreservedly of the mysterious links which bind dog and man in friendship as Rudyard Kipling has. The whole situation of the story of " Garm " is summed up in a poignantly moving poem : Buy a pup and your money will buy Love unflinching that cannot lie — Perfect passion and zvor ship fed By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. 282 CHAPTER XX THE CULT OF "MANDALAY" A noticeable difference between the soldiers of " Barrack Room Ballads " and those of " The Five Nations " : " Mandalay " : The legion of lost ones : The virtue and harm of strong drink : John Collins and Dean Aldrich sing in praise of good wine : A parody of " Mandalay " : Lord Brassey's " Voyages and Travels " : " Hathis a pilin' teak " : Literature and music-hall clap-trap ; " Tipperary " : Lafcadio Hearn's craving for the East not far removed from the soldier's longings in " Mandalay." And when your -prayers complete the day, Darling, your little tiny hands Were also made, I think, to fray For fne?i that lose their fairylands. HiLAiRE Belloc CHAPTER XX THE CULT OF "MANDALAY" There is one very noticeable difference between the soldiers of " Barrack- Room Ballads " and those of " The Five Nations." Private Mulvaney and his friends at frequent intervals celebrated the juice of the grape as a source of good cheer, joy and inspiration. They believed, and elegantly hinted, that the total abstainer could not rise above mediocrity as a first-class fighting man. Was there a mere water drinker among that company of men celebrated in the " Taking of Lungtungpen," when Mulvaney and his friends stripped themselves to the pink, swam a river, and fell upon the village with the strength of demi-gods. Turn over the pages of " Barrack Room Ballads " and see if you can find any traces of the unco guid or the wearers of phylacteries. You will read of Tommy in cells with a sore head and a dry tongue after a " thundering drunk " and a fight with a corporal, also abundant references to the wine-cup. But Kipling is equally conscious of the evils of liquor and warns the young soldier to steer clear of the '' grog-sellers' huts " where they sell " Fixed Bay'nets that rots out your guts." Nor is the poet less conscious of the dangers of going on the " shout " when the cholera comes — " the sickness gets in as the liquor dies out " he reminds the '"arf-made recruit." In "Troopin'" we find the note of '' Merry England " which we all hope will sound for ever in worship of healthy and robust things : Trooping troopin', give another cheer— ''Ere's to English women an'' a quart of English beer. 285 RUDYARD KIPLING This note is in direct contradistinction to the ex- pressions of feeling in " Mandalay," in which the time- expired man in England hankers for the old Moulmein Pagoda, and likens it unto the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The great legion of lost ones and disgraced gentlemen has inspired many lines of Kipling's verse. In " Gentle- men-Rankers," for instance, we have the picture of the man of position who has drawn on the Bank of Futurity by giving way to drink, gambling and bad company. It is an old story and dozens of men in the army can tell you all about it. The man who goes the pace and goes it " blind," often finds his way to the barrack-room, where most transgressions of the past are waived if he can ride a horse, and do the work of a good soldier. But after lights out, when the " drunken comrade mutters, and the great guard-lantern gutters," the gentleman-ranker loses the calm mastery of his feelings, and his brain throws vivid pictures of the past on the " aching white-washed ceiling." This is the inevitable torment of the outcast. In the past there has been a little too much dwelling upon the " glorious drunk " as the accepted thing in barrack-room life. All ages have seen discussions over the virtue or harm of strong drinks, and the discussions have invariably ended in song and laughter — which, after all, is a splendid antidote. Songs and robust laughter are two of the best things in the world and one may rely upon the fact that those forces — good ale for preference — which move one to song and laughter, are not of necessity evil. But it must be understood that this is no excuse for drunkenness. No true lover of good ale is a drunkard, because he knows that such drinking is but drugging, and that excess leads to the Golgotha of delirium and death. From time antedating written records, poets have celebrated wine as a source of good cheer, health and inspiration. Of temperance in its true meaning of 286 THE CULT OF ''MANDALAY" moderate use and enjoyment, John Collins has sung charmingly : In the days of my youth Pve been frequently told, That the best of good things are despised when thefre old^ Yet I own Pm so lost in the modes of this life, As to "prize an old friend, and to love an old wife ; And the first of etijoyments, thro^ life has been mine, To regale an old friend with a flask of old wine. I cannot resist adding the famous lines by Dean Aldrich which represent a point of view which is the outcome of wide knowledge, a point of view which this robust old soul held with unmistakable sincerity and con- viction : If all he true that I do thifik, There are five reasons we should drink ; Good ivine — a friend — or being dry — Or lest we should be by and by — Or any other reason why. Some say that wine is the servant of the devil. This is the theme of the weakling and the vulgar. It is not true. Wine, laughter, and song, are sound and human things and you may depend upon it that wherever healthy men foregather they will clink their glasses in token of all that goes with good comradeship. But, mind you, the true lover of the cup does not get drunk ; he knows only too well that the sot and the drunkard are shut out from the companionship of all honest men. I further suggest that the drunkard is a coward, who only drinks to lull his senses or to forget his responsibilities. According to Kipling's early soldier poems Tommy, under the Indian sun, is a high-spirited creature, usually arrogant and brassy. He has an educated taste for strong drink, an eye for " the girls," and is strong on loot and practical jokes. For the civilian he has an immense and far-reaching contempt. Back in his native land he becomes forlorn ; the English rain and the muddy pavements sap his strength ; he slinks meekly out of 287 RUDYARD KIPLING theatres and " public 'ouses " feeling conscious that he is closely watched by the stay-at-home lack-spirits and kill-joys. He grows mopey and homesick for the spacious freedom of the East, with its sunshine and its bewitching '' tinkly " temple bells. This at least is the impression of Tommy that is to be gleaned from Kipling's " Mandalay." It seems to be the old story, written in the Cockney vernacular, of that Eden which all mortals lose at some time or other, and hanker after for the rest of their days. When we come to look through '' The Five Nations " we find that not one of the " Service Songs " is associated with the immemorial charm of the cup. No one would care to detract from the glories of the past, or to scorn Mulvaney * and his convivial comrades, some of whom died for us, unknown and unremembered, but on com- paring these two volumes which cover the period from 1888 to 1903, we behold an improvement in the private soldier's manner and outlook on life which is surprising. Kipling's soldiers in " The Five Nations " no longer divorce old barren reason and take the daughter of the vine to spouse. They have become more thoughtful and display powers and abilities which are not found in the soldiers of the past. Life teaches them that there * Readers may remember that a person answering to the description of Mulvaney, but bearing the name of William MacManus, was reported to be living in San Francisco some years ago. He is said to have called Kipling "a plucky, inquisitive little fellow in the civil service, who passed his bottle around among us privates, and then got us to tell the yarns of the barrack- room." The American press made much ado over this statement, and Kipling was asked to give his judgment as to the veracity of the claim, of Private MacManus. The following reply was made by Kipling : " Naulakha, Brattleboro', Vt. "7««^I4, '95 " Dear Sir, — In reply to your letter of the nth instant, I can only say that I know nothing of the Private McManus mentioned in the cutting you forward. " At the same time, I should be loth to interfere with a fellow-rcmancer's 288 THE CULT OF "MANDALAY" is more joy in work and achievement than in the wild and careless cry of the soldier in " Mandalay " who longs for the serene spots east of Suez where the de- calogue is unknown, and there is unlimited scope for " raising " and slaking a thirst. Some years ago a poet with a Burmese name, Moung Win, sent to the Pioneer of Allahabad his own impressions of " Mandalay," as contrasted with Kipling's. It looks as if the magic words " East o' Suez " are not quite so full of allurement for the Tommy as Kipling would have us believe. I quote a verse or two of the parody, which, by the way, is headed : " From T. Atkins, Mandalay " : They talks a lot of Burmah, and they talks oj Mandalay, And to folks who ^averCt bin there, it's a decent 'place, they say ; But Pve done three years in Burmah, andl ve lived in Mandalay, And thank Gawd and all the -prophets that I ^averCt got to stay . On the road from Mandalay, Which ainH arf the place they say. Where those bloomin' big mosquitoes tear And tease you night and day. On the road from Mandalay, Where the gentle cobras play. From the place where ftyin^ fishes Don't exist — as some folk say ! trade, and if there be such a person as Private McManus, and if he believes himself to be the original of Terence Mulvaney, and can tell tales to back his claim, we will allow that he is a good enough Mulvaney for the Pacific Slope, and wait developments. " At the same time, I confess, his seems to me rather a daring game to play, for Terence alone of living men knows the answer to the question, * How did Dearsley come by the palanquin f ' It is not one of the questions that agitate the civilized world, but for my own satisfaction I would give a good deal to have it answered. If Private McManus can answer it without evasions or reservations, he will prove that he has some small right to be regarded as Mulvaney's successor. Mulvaney he cannot be. There is but one Terence, and he has never set foot in America, and never will. " Yours sincerely, " RuDYARD Kipling." T 289 RUDYARD KIPLING When yer cheeks become like cold boiled fork An* enteric* s runnin* free, The cry for " East o' Suez " Somehow dorCt appeal to me ; An* Pd give yer Thebaw's treasure — If I *ad it in my *and — For a fenny ride on a *bus, outside, With an *ousemaid down the Strand. On the road from Mandalay Where we cursed the livelong day. Where the rain comes down like thunder When the *eavens feels that way. On the road from Mandalay BurnirC shine, then sodden grey, *Bout the dawn there seems some blunder. For there ain*t no bloomin* bay / ***** Tes, ifs all a bloomin* sell. Rubies, loot, and girls as well. And if you* re bound for Burmah, don*t you swaller all they tell. Lawd, what do they understand Of this Gawd-forsaken land — When at times it blows that *eavy That it -fills yer up with sand ; Out they jumps upon the strand. Stops a day and *ears the band. Then they* re o^ again to-morrow With their note-books in their *and. And we stay to *ear the Dead March Practised daily by that band. On the road from Mandalay, Which ain*t arf the place they say, Thank the Lawd and all the prophets that Pm off— at last away — On the road from Mandalay Spicy smells an* all — good day ; For Pve wrote and told my Polly that Pm comin* *ome to stay. How is it that Kipling's little Burma maiden could sit " looking lazy at the sea ? " Lord Brassey says in his 290 THE CULT OF "MANDALAY" " Voyages and Travels " that the navigation from the sea to Moulmein by the Salwen is far more difficult than the passage up to Rangoon. However it is a consolation to find that the hathis were to be seen a " pilin' teak " when he arrived there : The elephants lift, roll, and push the logs of timber to any part of the yard. They pile it up into stacks high above their heads, seizing one end of a log with their trunk, placing it on a pile of timber, and then taking the other end of the log and pushing it forward, finally placing it on their heads and sending it into its place. They work undisturbed, amid the buzz of circular saws and machinery, where it would seem almost impossible for animals of such proportions to escape destruction. They carry their intelligence to the point of most rigidly enforcing the rights of labcvr. Nothing will persuade an elephant to do a stroke of work after he has heard the workman's dinner-bell during the hour of midday rest, to which he rightly considers himself entitled. Their docility and intelligence are fully on a level with that of the human workman, with whose efforts their own are combined. No less than two thousand elephants were fcimerly in the yard of the Bombay and Burmah Company. Stesm machinery is now rapidly superseding elephants. Much extravagant praise has been bestowed upon " Mandalay." Mr. Cyril Falls, in his critical study of Kipling, says that " no poem in English written in the last five-and-twenty years is known so widely, has so taken hold upon the imaginations of English-speaking people." I am not inclined to think this statement would bear investigation. Stevenson's exquisite " Epitaph," with its popularly accepted opening line " under the wide and starry sky " is quite as famous. Sir A. Conan Doyle's " Song of the Bow," " England, My England," by Henley, and " Drake's Drum," by Henry Newbolt may all be mentioned as poems of wide popularity fit to compare with " Mandalay." And the " Ballad of Reading Gaol " has been more extensively quoted in the press of England and America. But when Mr. Falls claims that the line : AtC the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ^crost the Bay ! 291 RUDYARD KIPLING " is the greatest and most inspired line in contemporary poetry " he astonishes and perplexes me. We are all prepared to admit that Kipling can at times write real poetry and that he has rare imaginative qualities, but it is difficult to believe that a single line with such ugly colloquialisms as " outer " and " 'crost " would be accepted as poetry at all. '' Mandalay " is inspired doggerel, not poetry. It is, indeed, surprising that Mr. Falls should deliberately ignore many lines of greater beauty in Kipling's wide range of verse. Take, for instance, the oft quoted lines : One stone the more swings into place In that dread Temple of Thy worth. It is enough, that through Thy Grace, I saw nought common on Thy Earth, — The highest vision and deepest word of Rudyard Kipling are not to be found in '' Mandalay " but in such poems as " L'Envoi " of the ballads and the very beautiful lines in " The Recall." His ballads abound with lines of compelling beauty, such as " We have ridden the low moon out of the sky, our hoofs drum up the dawn." Mr. Frederick Niven once remarked that if you mentionKipling to the man who reads, he will, ten to one, spout with gusto the story of a Cockney soldier's cheek on the road to Mandalay. Or again, if you speak about Kipling to the young man who reads nothing but the morning papers he will fire off at you, " O, it's Tommy this and Tommy that " which is invariably followed up by a song about " Tommy, Tommy Atkins, you're a good 'un, heart and hand," which shows that he is unable to distinguish the difference between literature and music-hall clap-trap. A man with any critical faculty would not dream of mentioning these two songs in the same breath. It is much the same thing over again with the youth who gets up and sings " Mandalay " at the smoking concert. It generally leads him to such 292 THE CULT OF "MANDALAY" sentimental gush as " Meet me to-night in Dreamland." Of course we must remember that songs are not always made by the poet or the musician ; they are often made by the people who sing them. We have an instance of this in " Tipperary " which was certainly created by Tommy. For this reason it is foolish to speak con- temptuously of music-hall songs. Some of these ditties transmit to the uncultured many what the red rose of Ploughman Burns or Wordsworth's hoard of golden daffodils transmit to the cultured few. By the cus- tomary method, " Tipperary " would have flourished for a few weeks and then we should have heard no more of it. It would have passed to that abode of misery which is stored with forgotten popular songs. To hear it being played on a hurdy-gurdy six months after its " fall " would have irritated one. But the soldier has charged this song with the drum taps of his heart ; he has done for it what the poet or musician with all the secrets of rhythm at their command could not have done ; he has bestowed upon those foolish words the spirit of heroic deeds. For countless numbers of our citizens those trivial lines of " Tipperary " will read like passages from a road-book of the four days' battle near Mons. What a flood of association streams out of this tune. It is as eloquent to the soldier as the faces of familiar friends — aye, no few of them faces cold and white that had finished with all. The words will thrill the returned service man through with an indescribable imaginative ecstasy: as Justin McCarthy sang of old Omar's song, the soldier can say " My youth lies buried in thy verses." " Tipperary " is by this time full of old memories for those who marched out to war to its strains ; it brings back to them the sputtering and stuttering of the Maxims, the blaring of bugles, the blood and the slime of the trenches. Thus such a war song as this one — a song that grows out of Tommy's elusive soul — is the best song of all. 293 RUDYARD KIPLING I am afraid that I have meandered and loitered un- necessarily whilst trying to trace the evolution of " Tipperary," but it has provided me with such a jolly peg on which to hang an argument. And that argument is that a song must either be charged with the genius of the poet or the spirit of the people before it can be looked upon as great. This brings us back to " Mandalay" and its position in the works of Rudyard Kipling. In the first place it could not be called a great poem — the beauty of some images in it cannot make one forget the note of the banjo ; it is none the less an ash-heap that a few diamonds glitter in it. It is not a great song if it be compared to such as " The Minstrel Boy," and it is scarcely fair to Kipling to contrast one of his barrack- room ditties with such a classic effort. And yet no one can read this tale of a soldier's longing for the " things durable and invisible " without perceiving that, in spite of its uncouth words and occasional arbitrariness of rhythm, it must for ever rest between the impassable barriers of true poetry and clever doggerel. It is a most unsatisfactory position in which to leave little Supi- yaw-lat and her soldier lover, I must admit, but there is no other way out of the difficulty. In reading " Mandalay " we are struck, first of all, with the remarkable break in Kipling's customary expression of feeling, a break which reveals his Oriental leanings, and the deep impression that the barbaric and natural life of India has made on him. Kipling would be most indignant if, when criticizing his work, some one should call him a " Decadent." Certainly in " Man- dalay " he sails extremely close to the wind. The school of French writers who have been regarded as " De- cadents " and who have, without doubt, exercised some influence on him, were infected with a strange partiality for coloured women, alien ideas, and exotic oddness. It is, of course, the primitive impulses in the " Tommy," which drive him to crave for the savage splendour and 294 THE CULT OF "MANDALAY" paganism of the East, but his fancy for the Burmese woman is a different matter. He declares as boldly as ever Baudelaire has in the past, his preference for the Oriental woman. The Chelsea housemaid holds no fascination over him, and he rails against all civilization. In these characteristics our " Tommy " seems to be in accord with that quixotic genius Lafcadio Hearn, whose love-affairs with Creoles and Orientals, and certain lapses from conventional standards, must place him with the " Decadents." The English soldier's craving for the sunshine and the East is not far removed from Lafcadio Hearn's lifelong pilgrimage towards the unattainable. " Mandalay " is only Hearn's creed transmuted into the language of Ratcliff Road. Here is a passage from one of Hearn's letters which is an exact expression of the soldier's feelings : " You are improving yourself out of the natural world. I want to get back amongst the monkeys and the parrots, under a violet sky and an eternally lilac and lukewarm sea — where clothing is superfluous. . . . Civilization is a hideous thing. Blessed is savagery ! " This is the same old story of the lost Eden over which all mortals spend a great deal of time dreaming. It is not often that Kipling turns aside from the path of masculine forcefulness to bemoan the fact that life becomes more complex and artificial each year. It is true that in a burst of enthusiasm in the " Song of the Cities," he thinks of Rangoon not as rich in trade but as rich in " silk-clad lovers," but it is seldom that such sentiment finds its way into his work. For the most part we move along the wonted lines of riotous strength and excessive animal vigour. 29s APPENDICES I A LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS, CARICA- TURES, AND VARIOUS DRAWINGS OF RUDYARD KIPLING ACADEMY, December 9, 1899. A caricature entitled "The Poet's Goose-Step." BOOKMAN, August 191 1. " Rudyard Kipling takes a blooming day aht on the blasted 'eath with Britannia, his gurl." From " Poets' Corner," by Max Beerbohm. BOOKMAN, January 1903. A painting by Hon. John Collier. I am indebted to the Hon. John Collier for the information that he has painted two portraits of Kipling. The first was exhi- bited at the New Gallery in 1891, a head and shoulders in white jacket. The second was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1 90 1, and represents the author standing before a fireplace in a blue serge suit. BYSTANDER, August 3, 1904. The author in Indian costume. By S. Spurrier. BYSTANDER, July 6, 1910. Black-and-white drawing. CAPTAIN, April 1907. Photo, Reginald Haines. Incorporated in an article on Rudyard Kipling at school. Photographs of the United Services College, the College Museum, the house in Earl's Court Road where " The Light that Failed " was written, and the printing works at Bideford at which the college magazine was produced are also given in this article. A device which includes a quill pen, inkpot, and drawing of the author forms a colophon to this article. 299 APPENDIX I CJSSELVS MAGAZINE, January 1901. Photo of Kipling on cover, which announces that " Kim " commences in this part. CASSELrS MAGAZINE, May 1903. Sketch of the author as Minister for India. CASSELL'S MAGAZINE, January 1908. Black-and-white drawing of Kipling. This number contains " A Deal in Cotton." CENTURT MAGAZINE, October 1891. Photo by Elliott and Fry included with article by Edmund Gosse. DAILY MAIL, January 28, 191 5. Photo of Kipling at the Mansion House. Taken whilst the author was speaking at a meeting to further the formation of bands as aids to recruiting. See also the Sketch and Daily Mirror for the same date. DAILY SKETCH, September 5, 1914. A caricature of the author by " Tom Titt." GLASGOW HERALD, September 4, 1915. Black-and-white drawing of Rudyard Kipling by " Duncan." Mr. Kipling's series of articles descriptive of his visit to the French lines appeared in the columns of this paper. GOOD WORDS, Is bister & Co., April 1899. Rudyard Kipling, with portrait, Neil Munro. GREAT THOUGHTS, January 19, 1907. A photo by Reginald Haines. IDLER MAGAZINE, December 1892. A portrait in line- work by George Hutchinson. IDLER MAGAZINE, December 1892. "My First Book," by Rudyard Kipling. Sketch of Kipling consulting the newspaper files. IDLER, June 1893. A sketch of Rudyard Kipling lighting his pipe, by Scott Rankin in his series "People I Have Met." Matches are scattered about the floor and the words " The Light that Failed " appear beneath the drawing. 300 APPENDIX I ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, October 8, 1910. A painting by Cyrus Cuneo depicting the author seated in the midst of characters out of his own books. LONDON OPINION, September 1904. Kipling as caricatured by Joseph Simpson. This is certainly the best known ** tin type " of the author. By a slight drawing out of the author's Titan features, a deepening of the conspicuous dimple in his chin, a liberal enlargement of the mighty jaw-bone, Mr. Simpson produces a daring picture of the author without any grotesque " hard knocks." LONDON MJGJZINE,OctohtT 1907. "Men of the Moment," pictured by Joseph Simpson. A bold print of the author, blue, grey, and black. LONDON MAGAZINE, March 1912. Cover design print of Kipling by Joseph Simpson. MORNING LEADER, August 2, 1906. A caricature of the author, in which he is seen playing the bones to Balfour's banjo. MUNSErS MAGAZINE, January 1905. "The Elephant weeps at the Pyecroft Stories." Black-and-white drawing of Kipling with elephant weeping over his shoulder. ONLOOKER, December 21, 1907. Kipling, with one foot on a pile of his books, is playing a banjo. The Nobel Prize is thrust in his pocket. By W. P. Starmer. PALL MALL MAGAZINE, September 1895. Drawing of Kipling telling Zangwill an amusing narrative of his fight with autograph-hunters. PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, January 1900. Note the portrait of the author by Cecil Aldin on p. 47. PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, June 1907. Rudyard Kipling as a " Muddied Oaf." By Tom Browne. Originally published in the Sheffield Telegraph. 301 APPENDIX I PUNCH, December i8, 1907. Kipling, clad in armour, kneeling at the feet of a lady in classical robes, from whom he is receiving a wreath of laurel. The artist is Bernard Partridge, and the drawing commemorates the award to the author of the Nobel Prize for literature. PUNCH'S ALMANACK, 1901. "Mr. Punch's Aviary of Celebrities." PUNCH'S ALMANACK, 1914. Cartoon by Bernard Partridge. Lord Kitchener and Rudyard Kipling singing a duet. PUNCH, June 25, 1902. Mr. Rudyard Kipling recites " The Chantey of the Nations." RE FIE W OF REVIEWS, June 1892. " On the Brain— Rudyard Kipling." Sketch by Phil May (from Pick-Me-Up). REVIEW OF REVIEWS, November 14, 1891. Small sketch of Kipling. REVIEW OF REVIEWS, April 15, 1899. A caricature from New Tork Herald representing Kipling making an effort to acknowledge the thousands of congratulations showered upon him after his recovery from a very serious illness. REVIEW OF REVIEWS, April 15, 1899. " The Latest Sketch of Rudyard Kipling." A full-page drawing from an etching by William Strang from life. Reproduced from the New Tork Herald, SKETCH, December 13, 1904. A caricature by H. M. Bateman. It is entitled " The Obsession of the Book Reviewer," and depicts Kipling, Shaw, Hall Caine, and others belabouring a reviewer with their pens and pencils. SPHERE, August 2, 191 3. Photo of the author seated in massive carved oak chair. STRAND MAGAZINE (American), February 1915. Cartoon by Hy. Mayer. T.P.'S WEEKLT, November 12, 1909. A print by Joseph Simpson. 302 APPENDIX I T.P.^S WEEKLT, December 19, 1914. A print in black-and- white with soldiers in the background. This number contains an article on the author by Holbrook Jackson entitled " The Prophetic Kipling." 1,P:S WEEKLT, December 5, 1913. Rudyard Kipling by " Tom Titt." 71 f -BITS, May 7, 1910. A drawing at the head of an article entitled " Rudyard Kipling as a Reporter." VANITY FAIR, 1894. Full-length portrait cartoon by " Spy." Three toy soldiers in corner of portrait. BOOKMAN, January 1903. Portrait of the author in profile seated before his manuscript with pen in hand. From the painting by Sir Philip Burne-Jones. 303 II A LIST OF MAGAZINE ARTICLES DEALING WITH RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORK ACADEMT. February 4, 1899. Three stanzas addressed by Rudyard Kipling to an officer in the U.S.A. Navy. Not collected but is printed in " Mansfield's Kipling Pocket Book," which can be seen at the British Museum. December 30, 1899 : " Confessional." May 27, 1899 • " Kipling Limited " ; a skit. March 11, 1899 : " The Unknown Kipling." October 14, 1899 • Review of " Stalky and Co." October 21, 1899 : "Brother Joe"; humorous verses on Kipling. October 21, 1 899 : " Boy, Only Boy " ; an examination of " Stalky and Co." November 25, 1899 : a note on the sale of some early editions of Kipling's works. October 15, 22, 29, 1904 : Letters on Kipling's "They." October 24,1903: "A Literary Pro- genitress of Kipling." October 3, 1903 : Review of "The Five Nations." October 11, 1902: "Nursery Nonsense — for Parents." May 9, 1914 : Letters to certain eminent Authors. ANGLO-SAXON REVIEW, December 1900. "The Poetry of the South African Campaign," by Arthur Waugh. ARGONAUT, August 16, 1897. An American railroad man finds fault with various parts of Kipling's story of the locomo- tives : " Mr. Kipling is a keen observer, and writes pretty good American for an outsider ; but if he had spent a night in a roundhouse with his ears open he would never have used 304 APPENDIX II ' loco ' for locomotive, or have omitted the familiar ' engine ' altogether ; he would not have said * bogie ' when he meant * truck ' ; he would not have allowed a parlour-car to be hitched to a suburban commuter's train * ahead of the caboose ' ; he would not have made his engines speak of themselves as * Americans ' (in the sense of pattern), or painted his hero pea-green with a red * buffer-bar.' " Further, no American writer would use as a simile for brilliancy ' a fireman's helmet in a street parade,' as few of his countrymen have ever seen a fireman in a metallic head- covering such as is worn in London. " I suppose it's all right to strengthen a situation by omitting the guard-rail from an eight-foot bridge — it gives a pleasant, breezy, western, get-there-or-bust, nigger-on-the-safety- valve movement ; and maybe it's good fiction to bring about the catastrophe with a hundred-pound piglet who * rolled right under the pilot ' and thereby caused his * bogies ' to lift ; but on plain, everyday railroads there is a guard-rail at every open culvert, and even the illustrations to Mr. Kipling's story admit cow-catchers." ART JOURNAL, March 1909. " In Kipling's Country," by Lewis Lusk, pp. 65-71 and pp. 111-116. Many illustrations by W. Monk, R.E. They include "Village of Burwash," " Batemans, Kipling's House," " View near Brightling," "Pevensey Castle— The Gate of England," " Beachy Head," and " Battle Abbey." BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. November 1891. The writer of an article on Kipling in this issue " exhausts himself in eulogy, and then proposes that Kipling should be decorated with the Star of India." BOOK-BUTER, March 1899. Scribner ; 15 cents. " Steven- son, Kipling, and Anglo-Saxon Imperialism," by E. H. Mullin. BOOKMAN (American), January 1899. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York ; 25 cents. " Kipling's Women," by A. B. Maurice. BOOKMAN, October 1891. " The Work of Rudyard Kipling." V 30s APPENDIX II BOOKMAN, January 1903. " Rudyard Kipling," by Wilfred Whitten. BOOKMAN, August 1892. Review of "The Naulahka." BOOKMAN, November 1902. Revievi^ of "Just So Stories," by G. K. Chesterton. BOOK MONTHLT, November 1903. Estimate of Kipling's verse suggested by " The Five Nations." BOOK MONTHLY, January 191 3. Criticism of Kipling's verse by Sir Henry Newbolt. BOOKMAN (American), May 1897. A criticism of " Captains Courageous " by a correspondent who writes from the very spot where Kipling made his studies for the novel. BOOKMAN (American), March 1899. " Kipling's Verse People," by Arthur B. Maurice. Also " Kipling's India " in the March, April, and May issues for 1914. BRITISH EMPIRE REVIEW (the organ of the British Empire League), November 1900. " The Young Queen," by Rudyard Kipling. A plate, "The Young Queen," is inserted between pp. 98 and 99. BRITISH WEEKLY, July 20, 191 1. Note on "History of England " by Fletcher and Kipling. BRITISH WEEKLY, February 22, 1912. An interpretation of " The Rhyme of the Three Captains " ; in the Notes by " A Man of Kent." CAPTAIN, April 1907. " Famous Men at School : Rudyard Kipling," Adrian Margaux. Illustrations. Much information almost entirely the result of original research. CATHOLIC TIMES, April 12, 1912. " Mr. Kipling Corrected : an Answer in Verse to the author's six verses in the Morning Post encouraging the Orangemen in their anti-Home Rule campaign." 306 APPENDIX II CENTURT MAGAZINE, October 1891. Appreciative analysis of Kipling's genius by Edmund Gosse. With portrait. In the issue of this magazine for July 1899 there is an article by Henry Rutgers Marshall on " Rudyard Kipling and Racial Instinct." CENTURT MAGAZINE, January 1909. "A Lost Kipling Poem." April 1909: "The Foreloper." Complete version of Kipling's verses. Six lines of this poem were printed in the Daily Telegraph of January I, 1909. They were used as a preface to the well-known essay on " The Influence of the Frontier on History," by Professor Frederick Jackson Turner. Kipling, in answer to a request to clear up the mystery of how and where the complete version appeared, replied that he could not remember " when or where they were published or what the rest of the poem is." Fourteen lines of it are pub- lished in the April Century (1909), beginning — The gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break in fire. And the last line is : Till on his last won wilderness an empire^ s bulwarks stand. COLLIER'S (American), December 2, 191 1. "The Variation of the Species : an Answer to Rudyard Kipling." By Amelie Rives (Princess Troubetzkoy). COLLIER'S WEEKLY, March 14, 1908. Editorial Bulletin giving dates of publication and titles of the " Letters to the Family," by Kipling, as follows : March 14, " The Eldest Sister." March 21, "The Relatives at Work." March 28, " Testing the Eldest Sister's Strength." April 4, " Newspapers and Democracy." April 11, "The Rule of the Servant." April 18, "The Town that was Born Lucky." April 25, " The Wonderful Years to Be." May 2, " Democracy : the Enemy of the Empire." The articles appeared in the Morning Post between March 12 and April 30, and in the Vancouver World about the same date. CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, March 1891. "Rudyard Kipling," by J. M. Barrie. APPENDIX II COSMOPOLHAN MAGAZINE, March 1893. "Cervantes, Zola, Kipling and Co," by Brander Mathews. CUNARD DAILY BULLETIN, September 9, 1912. "The Misquotations of Kipling," by L. A. Thornbury. CURRENT LITERATURE (American), October 1904. " Things and the Man," verses by Kipling. Not in any edition of his poems. CURRENT LITERATURE (American), December 191 1. Contains reply made by Sydney Low in the Standard to Kip- ling's " Female of the Species." The historical accuracy of the poem is disputed by a Roman Catholic periodical. It is pointed out that there were no " early " Jesuits among the Choctaws, and among the Hurons the Jesuits were defended time and again by the squaws. " Could Kipling call up the spirit of De Breberf or of Chaumonot from the vasty deep, he would hear how a heroic squaw had defended them for weeks in her cabin at the risk of her own life from a blood- thirsty mob of the other sex that was raging outside. Jogues also, who was slain by the cousins of the Hurons, would have told with gratitude how, again and again, the squaws wept over his bleeding wounds and tried in their helpless way to give him relief." DAILT TELEGRAPH, November 19, 1914. " Lord Roberts," by Rudyard Kipling. DAILT TELEGRAPH, September 6, 1915. " France at War," by Rudyard Kipling. The first of a series of articles dealing with the French Army at the front. DIAL (Chicago), May 16, 1899. "The Kipling Hysteria," by Henry Austin. DORSET TEAR-BOOK, 1915. Parody of " Fuzzy- Wuzzy," by Newman Flower. EAST AND THE WEST, April 1903. "Anglo-Indian Novelists." 308 APPENDIX II EMPIRE REVIEW, November 1901. Review of " Kim," by W. Lee -Warner. ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE, vol. xxx, 1903-4. " Kipling and the Children," by A. D. Cameron. ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE, December 1903, and January 1904. " Rudyard Kipling," by F. York Powell. Contains bibliography. EUREKA (the Favourite Publishing Co.), May 1898. ''The Fampire and its Painter," by Charles Gar vice. This article gives a vast amount of information about Mr. Philip Burne- Jones, his picture of The Fampire, and the verses which Rudyard Kipling wrote upon it. EFERTMAN, June 5, 1914. Article on Kipling by Francis Gribble. FORTNIGHTLY REFIEW, November 1891. One of the first serious studies of Kipling as a writer. The article is by Francis Adams. FORTNIGHTLY REFIEW, February 1901. Kipling's satirical sketch of the delays and troubles which befall passengers on a certain south coast railway appeared in this number. FORUM (New York), September 1913. "The Poetry of Rudyard Kipling," by J. de Lancey Ferguson. FORUM, September 1909. " Critical Survey of the Work of Kipling," by W. L. Phelps. FREE REFIEW, December i, 1893. "Mr. Kipling's Stories," by Ernest Newman. GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL (The Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore, S.W.), April 1914. Price 2S. " Some Aspects of Travel," by Rudyard Kipling. Full report of lecture, together with speech by Viscount Bryce after the paper. GREAT THOUGHTS, November 1913, " Kipling's England." 309 APPENDIX II GREAT THOUGHTS, August 15, 22, 1914. " Rudyard Kipling as a Poet," by the Editor. Also see article by J. P. Blake in issue for March 1896. IDLER, August 1898. "Note on Kipling's Soldier-Stories." IDLER, December 1892. "My First Book," by Rudyard Kipling. Illustrations by A. S. Boyd and G. Hutchinson. ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, October 1910 to January 191 1. Illustrations by Edward J. Detmold for "The Second Jungle Book." INDEPENDENT (American), December 28, 1911. "Kipling's Psychology," by Marion C. Smith. A reply in four stanzas to Kipling's " The Female of the Species." JUDGE (American), February 17, 1912. "The Poets." Seven stanzas by Carolyn Wells, with compliments to Mr. Kipling. LESLIE'S WEEKLY, November 30, 191 1. "The Wisdom of the Male : a Study in Natural History." Verses in reply to " The Female of the Species." LONDON MAGAZINE. "Rudyard Kipling; His Mark: How the Famous Author corrects his Work." Illustrated with facsimiles of revised proofs of his Indian Stories. LONDON MAGAZINE, October 1907. " Men of Moment : Rudyard Kipling." LONDONER, May 19, 1900. Review of " Rudyard Kipling : A Criticism," by Richard Le Gallienne, from the pen of Sir Owen Seaman. This review, with a few changes by Sir Owen Seaman, is given in another part of the volume. LITERARY DIGEST (American), December 10, 1910. A note on Kipling's speech at Brighton, November 9, 1 910, in which Mr. Chesterton's remarks on it in the Illustrated London News are reprinted. LITERARY DIGEST (American), July 24, 1915. " Kipling Tells Why Britons Should Fight." 310 APPENDIX II LHERART WORLD, December 13, 1895. "The Genius of Kipling." July 13, 1894 : The Kipling- Johnston Dinner. June 15, 1894: Mr. Kipling's "Jungle Book." McCLURE'S MAGAZINE, July 1896. "Reminiscences of Kipling," by E. Kay Robinson. Copiously illustrated with portraits of Kipling and views of Lahore. McCLURE'S MAGAZINE, June 1902. "Cecil Rhodes," by Rudyard Kipling. Footnote : " This poem was read at the burial of Mr. Rhodes in the Matoppos, April 10, 1902." McCLURE'S MAGAZINE, February 1899; 10 cents. "The White Man's Burden." Poem by Rudyard Kipling. MONTH (Longman), January 1900. "The Cult of Kipling," by C. D. Plater. MONTHLT REVIEW, February 1903. "An Essay on Criti- cism." A clever poem which rebuked the poet pleasantly for divers literary indiscretions. Unsigned. Written by Sir Henry Newbolt, then Editor of the Monthly Review. MORNING POST, June 24, 1913. "France," by Rudyard Kipling. MUNSErS MAGAZINE, August 1906. " The Story of the Short Story," by Brander Matthews. NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, March 14, 1915. " Things and the Man," by Rudyard Kipling. NEWNES' ILLUSTRATED, July 10, 1915. "Human Beings versus Huns." NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, February 1914. (London : Wm. Heinemann.) " Rudyard Kipling seen through Hindu Eyes," by A. R. Sarath-Roy. Also "The Later Work of Rudyard Kipling," by Brian Hooker, in the same review dated May 1911. NOTES AND QUERIES, January 4, 1902. Contains a long list of American editions of Rudyard Kipling's works. 3" APPENDIX II OUTLOOK (American), May 1911. "Jungle Nights." Sug- gested by Kipling's " Jungle Stories." By Paul Bransom. Illustrations in colour after the style of the Detmold designs for the " Jungle Book." OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE REVIEW, January 1912. " Three Jingle Makers." PALL MALL MAGAZINE, July 1904. " Kipling and Loti," by George Moore, PAPYRUS, February 191 1. " Style and the Man," by Michael Monahan. This magazine is now published as the Phosnix at South Norwalk, in the State of Connecticut, U.S.A. PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, November 1896. Contains Kip- ling's famous poem " The 'Eathen," with six full-page illus- trations by Georges Montbard ; also editorial note on " Cap- tains Courageous." PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, January 1898. " Major J. B. Pond and his Association with Great Men." Contains reduced fac- simile of letter to Major Pond from Kipling and " one original hardwood verse " which the author inscribed in the major's autograph-book. PEARSON'S WEEKLT, September 16, 1909. " Cuckoo Song," by Rudyard Kipling. POETRY REVIEW, April 1912. (London: St. Catherine Press.) " Modern English Poetry : Robert Bridges, Rudyard Kipling, W. B. Yeats, and others." PUBLIC SCHOOL MAGAZINE, November 1899. Special article on United Services College, Westward Ho. QUARTERLY REVIEW, July 1908. " The Romance of the Outlands." Contains careful examination of the work of Kipling and Pierre Loti. A careful and temperate discussion on Rudyard Kipling's tales will be found in the Quarterly Review for July 1892. 312 APPENDIX II REGIMENT, December 26, 191 4. Attack on Kipling's articles in the Daily Telegraph on " The New Army in Training." There is also a burlesque on a Kipling descriptive article in this issue. Kipling wrote five stanzas, which were entitled " The Bugler," for the Regiment issued on October 25, 1902. REVIEW DE PARIS, April and March 1899. " Rudyard Kipling," by A. Chevrillon. REVIEW OF REVIEWS, April i, 1899. " Rudyard Kipling : the Banjo-Bard of Empire." This article contains a vast amount of information. The frontispiece is from an etching by Strang. The illustrations include a portrait of the house occupied by Kipling at Lahore, the author's house near Brattle- boro', " The Elms " at Rottingdean, a caricature from the New Tork Herald, and a facsimile of cover of Kipling's first book. SATURDAT REVIEW, June 1899. "The Case of Mr. Kip- ling." SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, October 1907. "The Point of View." Note on Kipling's "They." SPHERE, January 25, 1902. W. E. Henley on Mr. Kipling and the " Muddied Oafs." STRAND MAGAZINE, June 1900. Facsimile of a letter written by Kipling for a wounded soldier. STUDIO, July 1900. Contains " Recessional," illuminated by E. M. Underwood. T. P:S weekly, December 10, 1914. "The Prophetic Kipling," by Holbrook Jackson. A portrait -sketch of Kipling in black and white by Rex Osborne is used as a cover design in this issue. There is also a print of Kipling by Joseph Simpson in T, P.'s Weekly for November 12, 1909. T. P:S weekly, December 12, 1902. "The Portraiture of Place," by Lockwood Kipling. August 3, 1906 : A note on the story "They." November 21, 1914 : "Kipling APPENDIX II Explained." January 7, 1910 : " Mr. Kipling : Where does he Stand ? " October 22, 1909 : Review of " Actions and Reactions." November 12, 1909 : Note on Kipling. July 28, 191 1 : "The Cradle of Time," by Reginald R. Buckley. October 14, 1910 : "Puck of Sussex." November 25, 1910 : Note on Kipling and Tory Democracy. December 30, 1910 : "The Admirable Klipling," by Frederick Niven. November 28, 1902 : " More Kiplings." TIMES, February 18, 1914. " Mr. Kipling on Travel." T/T BITS, May 7, 1910. " Rudyard Kipling as a Reporter." By one of his old colleagues on the San Francisco Chronicle. WEEKLT TELEGRAPH, February i, 1913. "An Unknown Chapter in Mr. Rudyard Kipling's Life." WINDSOR MAGAZINE, December 1899. A Biographical Sketch by Charles Norton. Tf^ OMAN'S SIGNAL, March 24, 1894. Article by Alice Law on " Kipling's Heroines," in which the writer has fallen foul of Maisie. A correspondent has written to the same journal in defence of Maisie : " I have always considered [her] rather unjustly condemned by the public. She told Dick frankly she could not love him, that although she liked having him to wait on her and serve her by criticising her art, she could never give him what he wanted, and that he had better go away from her. He persisted in offering his devotion on these terms. Yet because he happened to go blind, Maisie is condemned because she did not do what would be splendid sacrifice in a woman who loved; entirely give up her career and liberty to wait on him. Would anybody expect a man to give up his career and marry a woman he didn't care for because she went blind ? I trow not." Most readers of " The Light that Failed " have felt much the same as this correspondent with regard to the way Maisie " turned down " Dick when the great darkness settled on his life. If we, however, question our lady friends about this 314 APPENDIX II matter, we are, in nine cases out of ten, informed that Maisie was a " beast " to forsake him. Of course, the ideal woman to a woman is the self-sacrificing one. The centuries have handed down such noble examples of woman's sublime abnega- tion that we have come to look upon self-sacrifice as her first duty. WORLD'S WORK, December 1912. "Across India with * Kim,' " by Edgar Allen Forbes. The parts dealing with the re- puted birthplace of Kipling in Bombay are particularly interest- ing. There are sixteen photos taken in tracing the footsteps of Kim and the Lama in their search for the River of the Arrow. The following are the illustrations : " Little friend of all the World," "The Amritzar Girl," "Native Water Carrier," " Mahbut Ali," " Dawn in India," " The Te-rain at Umballa," " Jullundes Friends," " R. 17," " Station where F. 23 escaped in the guise of a Saddhu," " Kim's Playmates and a Juggler," "A Bazaar Letter-Writer," "The Birthplace of Kipling," "The Palace of Lights, Lucknow," "Reputed Birthplace of Kipling in Bombay," " The Wheel of Things," " The Temple of a Tirthankers." The World's Work for 191 3 also printed an article entitled " Rudyard Kipling — Apostle to the Pessimists " (unsigned). 315 Ill BURLESQUES, PARODIES, AND EXTRACTS FROM VARIOUS CONTEMPORARY SOURCES I. A VERDICT AGAINST THE EVIDENCE To the Londoner, May 19, 1900, Sir Owen Seaman contributed the following review of Richard Le Gallienne's book on Rudyard Kipling : There is said to be a passage in one of Mr. Le Gallienne's works where a lurid contrast is drawn between two types of literary genius. One, the embodied soul of piquant sentiment and femi- nine fascination, is pictured with a pallid face so framed in sable locks that it recalls a pine wood permeated by the moon ; this is understood to be a portrait of the author himself, taken from the mirror. The other, a youth of brutal vigour, robust to coarseness, intolerably male, is supposed to stand for Mr. Rudyard Kipling — the comparison to be regarded as unfavourable to the latter. If it is admissible to assume that the project of the present appreciation had already been conceived by Mr. Le Gallienne at the time when he composed the above illustration, one may remark on the admirable candour with which he advertised his personal prejudices. But we are reminded that in this same virtue of candour, whenever popular curiosity has cried aloud for satisfaction as to the author's person, whether the outside or the interior, Mr. Le Gallienne has always been open-handed with the British Public. It results from this cause, among others, that the reviewer of this new book is liable to approach his task with 316 APPENDIX III something of Mr. Le Gallienne's own taint of prejudice ; but as against the critic rather than his victim. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any capable writer less qualified by taste or experience, or habit of thought, for the labour he has undertaken. There is, of course, no question here of professional jealousy. Mr. Kipling is in no sense his rival ; and, though he were, Mr. Le Gallienne has more than once proved himself a generous critic. It is a case of essential incompatibility of temperament. A certain com- munity of feeling may perhaps be traced in the sense of humour common to both, a quality for which Mr. Le Gallienne may not have received proper credit ; and, indeed, with him it is receptive rather than creative. He must also have found something con- genial in Mr. Kipling's occasional want of reticence in his treat- ment of women. In this connexion it is significant that our critic extends an admiration, spared from much better work, to the "delightful frankness" of "The Ladies," to "Mary, Pity Women," and to "The Mary Gloster," with special notice of the passage about the baronite's pluralism, with its " Thank Gawd, I can pay for my fancies ! " The " passion," again, of "Mandalay," and, in particular, the petticoat verse, commends itself irresistibly to the author of " The Quest of the Golden Girl." It makes him " unspeakably glad." One would have expected that, at least in his review of the poems, the critic's judgment, notable or not, would have reached us in a literary form worthy of permanence. Yet, if we except a passably eloquent conclusion (of which the matter leaves us uncon- vinced), it is slipshod, uneven work, little better than the average of reviews written against time ; and, even so, it is silent on the last year of Mr. Kipling's work. It was hardly worth while to say anything at all, in book form, about Mr. Kipling's poetry if he was going to omit so much. Take three examples in poems of widely different styles : " The First Chantey," so fresh in its imagination, so concentrated in its strength ; " Ford o' Kabul River,' with that haunting sadness in the insistent beat of its refrain ; and " The Flowers," a lyric marred by something of obscurity, but singular among all Mr. Kipling's songs for its quality of pure sweetness. Not one of these is so much as men- 317 APPENDIX III tioned by the critic ! One other poem I will name — " The Last Suttee." If I consulted the opinion of the best artificer in this kind that I happen to know — ^Mr. Henry Newbolt — I am confident that for its wealth of sound and dignity of language, for its adapta- tion of form to matter, for firmness of technique and economy of strength, he would count it among the noblest of English ballads. Yet by Mr. Le Gallienne it is thrown aside on a rubbish- heap with the batch of poems that are pronounced to be " all commonplace, dull, or bad." On the other hand, there is reason in the charge brought by him against that popular poem, " Reces- sional." He passes over its technical defects, so easy of assault ; he might, too, have detected a suspicion of insincerity in Mr. Kipling's sudden volte-face, his renunciation, on his country's behalf, of an attitude which he had himself inspired, or at least encouraged. But the critic confines his attack to those Hebraic methods by which the poet, here and elsewhere, arrogates to the British nation a monopoly of Divine patronage. Personally, I have always felt that the pride which a people may take in the possession of naval strength is a very venial fault compared with the unctuous assurance of a nation that regards itself, at this time of day, as the Chosen of the Lord. Still, Mr. Le Gallienne is clearly wrong in alluding to the " Christian terminology " of this poem. It is the language of the Old, not the New, Covenant that Mr. Kipling adopts. In his summing-up — ^for Mr. Le Gallienne is judge as well as counsel for the prosecution (and, for that matter, prisoner at the bar too, if he only knew it) — ^the critic declares Mr. Kipling to be a " master of captivating sing-song," and, again, " The Burns of the music-hall song." These are, in fact, the titles applied to the poet by the author of that idyllic phrase, " an armful of girl." It appears that Mr. Kipling has only written a " total of twelve non-dialect lines," the word dialect being meant to imply " not necessarily dialect of speech, but at least dialect of mood, dialect of mind." The fatal consequence of this defect, according to the critic's judgment, must be that " in the high calm zone of poetry, where a word lasts for a thousand years . . . where Homer sings immortally of war, though it was never given 318 APPENDIX III to his poor blind eyes to dote on a gun-cotton gun " (whatever that should be) " or a submarine boat . . . Mr. Kipling will be only too glad to be admitted as an Academy student." Mr. Le Gallienne should have known that even the ordinary reader of to-day is not innocent enough to be frighted by this harmless, palpable bogey. And his scholarship is at fault if he has not learned that the amalgam known as Homer sang with the express and single desire of pleasing its living audience, and to that end employed the dialect of the day. As for dialect of mood or mind, it was not an age of specialized erudition, nor even of wider differences in the sphere of ignorance. " When 'Omer smote his bloomin' lyre," he made Romance out of such material as came within his vague cognizance ; and of this material the implements of war — ^the shield, the spear, the arrow — ^must have offered the least possible difficulties to his mental grasp. If he had been alive to-day he would have made Romance, as Mr. Kipling certainly has made it, out of screw-guns and armour-plates and triple-expansion engines, and given himself a great deal of trouble in the process. The present war-fever has fostered a somewhat unreasoning enthusiasm for Mr. Kipling at his second best ; and though Mr. Le Gallienne is scarcely more reasonable on the other side, there is danger lest his criticism should derive an inflated import- ance from the accident of circumstance, and so encourage that tendency to revolt from popular opinion which is among the infirmities of moderately noble minds. 319 APPENDIX III II. REPLY TO KIPLING'S 'ISLANDERS" The following poem appeared in " Rhymes of a Rouseabout," by W. Monro Anderson : REPLY TO KIPLING'S " ISLANDERS " Lord of the loud-lunged legions, Prince of the purple press, Are we but pigmy people Lost in the wilderness, That we of the younger nations Should call back our fighting men At the blast of your tin war-trumpet, Or the scrawl of your scathing pen ? We of the younger nations, We are no sickly spawn, Spoilt little lambs of the Empire On whom the elders fawn. Willing and free we sought it. Out of the range and plain, Freely, unbribed, undriven. As we would seek again. Safe in your inky dug-out, Flinging your gibes about — What do you know of England Or the quest that brought us out ? We of the younger nations. Reared on the range and plain. Scornful, out of the battle, Hurl you the lie again. Lord of the loud-lunged legions. Scribe of a jaundiced age. We of the younger nations Have read from a brighter page ; 320 APPENDIX III Have learnt of the old-time captains How their stirring deeds were done ; How on the fields of Eton The great war games were won. So when the war-worn horseman Comes to his own again, Back to the fen and moorland, Back to the rolling plain. Grudge him not hound nor hunter, The gun nor the well-kept turf. Bidding him strut the pavement Like some war-belted serf : Bidding him rule the people By aping the foreign cur. Whose market-place is silenced By the clink of the bully's spur. III. STALKY'S SCHOOL-SONG The following Kipling parody appeared in " Sa Muse S'Amuse," by Wilfrid Blair : (A hitherto unrecovered par-ergon of the egregious Beetle.) We are Children, we are Gods, we are Ossifers and Gents, And the others they can never understand, Bein' specially created to be sat upon and slated By the Lord's Own Chosen Band. Savin' us, mankind are rotters in their deeds and their intents (Make a note o' that, ye Lepers, make a note !) With their " Yes, sir ! " and their " No, sir ! " and their " Please, sir ! " and their " Oh, sir ! "— • Fids I fids I Do ye hear me gloat F So we rot the abject burblers in a manner most sublime. And if anyone disturbs our rest. Oh, we promptly up and bait him seriatim et frivatim Till it's thumbs down ! — actum est ! X 321 APPENDIX III Does a master run athwart us, we can scrag him every time — Metagrobolize — ^impale the giddy goat. Having nothin' up his sleeve, he will be made to cry " Capivi / " — Fids / fids ! Do ye hear me gloat P Does one preach to us of cricket ? We administer reproof By abolishing the flopshus cad. Does one hint that we are squiffy ? We will rend him in a jiffy, Pure-souled, high-minded lad ! We are marvellous tacticians, and we proudly keep aloof, We are blowed if we will paddle in your boat. Oh, my most beloved 'earers, it is 'ware all interferers ! — Fids ! fids I Do ye hear me gloat P We are learnin', O my brothers, to pursue our giddy jape With the Alien and the Folk Beyond the Pale ; In the sultry land of Goshen we shall put away emotion And entrap our foes — full tale 1 From Vancouver to Kooringa, from Kamskatga to the Cape (For Men bulk larger bein' more remote). Ye shall hear the talky-talky of your dear old Uncle Stalky — Fids / fids I Ye shall hear me gloat ! IV. KIPLING RECITES THE CHANTEY OF THE NATIONS (From Punchy June 25, 1902) Great Britain Sons of the Blood, which is twice as thick as water is, Lock, stock and barrel of the Race that rules the Sea ! Ye have left your occupation At the Mother's invitation, Left the ice-floe, and the swamp and the jungly mango-tree ! I am the Bard, it is I that make the Catalogues, I that give the Oracles that otherwise were dumb ; 322 O H < ' w h - O ^ c/2 ^ < Q D APPENDIX III I am Kipling, Pm the Voice, Fm the Chosen People's Choice, I'm the Words and Music also, I'm the Drummer and the Drum. What I have said I have said, and pretty often too. Hinting of the heritage that goes v^^ith British birth ; But to-night it might be pleasant To address the Nations present Who are not as yet embodied in the Lordliest Thing on Earth. France Thus saith the Voice to the genial Boulevardiers : " Welcome, gallant neighbours, I've a word to say to you ; Could ye get your gutter Press Just to lie a little less. Ye might soon forget Fashoda, and the shock of Waterloo." Austria Thus saith the Voice to the braves of Francis-Joseph Land, Dwellers by the Danube in the home of cakes and bock ; " Ye have shown us what to waltz to, But ye have your little faults too, And ye sold us Hungary chargers, five-and-forty pounds a crock." Italy Thus saith the Voice to the men of V. Emmanuel : " Te are not fair-weather friends, ye stick through storm and rain ; Ye have lent our land the Duse, And we could not well refuse a Debt of honour, so we sent you our Corelli and our Caine." Germany Thus saith the Voice to the Teutons of the Fatherland, " Hail ! Kaiser's men, out of Berlin on the Spree ; If your students thirst for knowledge By a course at Oxford College They might learn to know us better and behave more cousinly." APPENDIX III Russia Thus saith the Voice, " Ye have seen us, O ye Muscovites, Seen our Thameski Prospect and the City paved w^ith Tin : Ye have marked the friendly air We adopt towards the Bear, Will ye veil in turn the Tartar underneath your velvet skin ? " Japan Thus saith the Voice to the w^earers of Chrysanthemums : " East is West and West is East, for now the twain are one ; We are white and ye are yellow. Ye are young and we are mellow, Yet we'll hold the Seas together for the Lion and the Sun." V. A BATTLE OF THE BARDS (On the vexed question of the right to be the Poet Laureate) There has been much discussion as to whether Kipling should have been made our Poet Laureate. The discussion seems rather futile, because there is no need to bestow the butt of wine upon the poet who is Laureate of the Empire. The following poem, from the pen of Wilfrid Blair, deals with the question in a few good-natured and humorous verses : Mr. William Watson : Sirs, we are met to-day in high cabal. In calamipotence and laurelled pride, To ask a question which I trust we shall Unchangeably decide : Who is most fit and skilled to utter wide The official odes that seem inseparate From moments when our kings are coronate. Our legions warring, or our freedom sold ? Me, an adept, and fashioned bard-like, me Before whose minstrelsy a; c <" -U= o 1) 13 in , ^ T3 dJ (A, -E •r-i O nj O) CN >^S '^ O W ISO-- 2 ^ W5 -^ h O c3 OJ „ W b/j O '^ cl > 1^ O -"^ "O 1- o S APPENDIX III King Edward's coronation splendours rolled With (roughly) this same metrical effect, High on the noon of potence you behold. And now the bays, which hover o'er the shelf Of minor poets, sink on one elect, I certainly expect To be the bard myself. Mr. RuDYARD Kipling : Me that 'ave writ what I've writ — Me that 'ave 'it 'oom I've 'it — Ain't I the bloke 'oo should write The bloomin' old stuff you require. With every one gettin' their whack, An' Atkins' opinions chucked in, An' pattin' the Race on the back, An' praisin' the Colonies' might — Go it, the Sons of the Blood ! — An' makin' the Nations perspire — Me with me tumult and din — Me the original Rudd — Me that 'as 'old of the knack — Me ? I have sung you songs of Empire, I have sung you songs of Lust, I have cursed the Little Englander no end, I have sung of gallant Tommies going large upon the bust — Have ye ever muttered, " Save us from our friend ! " ? By the bulk of my ambitions, by my manifold editions. Ye know that I'm the beggar for the place. I can write a string of verses full of prayers and praise and curses, And my readers think that they be of the Race. Mr. Henry Newbolt : I stand by " Clifton Chapel," I stand by " Waggon Hill," I wrote " The King of England " with what may be of skill, I set your pulses throbbing with rhythm strange and rare When in your ears I chanted " The Fighting Temeraire." 32s APPENDIX III conscientious fighters, whom every conflict helps, A Muse of blood and slaughter befits the Lion's whelps ; Yet as ye fight forget not the man who marks the score. The man who bids you cherish the saving grace of gore. My fame's in " Clifton Chapel," my fame's in " Waggon Hill," 1 fancy I can manage a " King of England " still ; Think how I filled your pulses with rhythm strange and rare When in your ears I chanted " The Fighting Temeraire." Mr. Alfred Noyes : Scrapes and skirmishes, rhymes and ballads, on roads to Mandalay, Gilding over with Jingo themes the jaunts of Thomas A. ; Sheets of slang and reams of rhetoric, written in Barrack-Room ways. Oh, Mr. Asquith is never the man to bind your brows with bays ! Or is it a paladin silver-pure, and singing with golden lilt. That cries a creed from the clash of swords and keeps his hand on the hilt, With a " bright Medusa " to boast about and a Temeraire to voice. And " Admirals All " to glorify — is it you will be Asquith's choice ? My rhythm runs in a jewelled whirl and my words are a rainbow dream. My Muse outbursts from my swooning lips to build a loftier theme ; Richer than radium, purer than pearls, in a shattering pomp of light. And the luscious alliteration leaps in the radiant verse I write. Mr. John Masefield : Oh, my tunes are new tunes, and my rhythm's free As the slatting sails, t'gallant sails, of a ship at sea. I've heaved convention overboard, along with the soft pap. And I sling the damns about the deck, I'm the devil of a chap. 326 APPENDIX III But don't you go and mistake me. I'm nuts on high romance, And there's treasure trove in the gold guts of common circum- stance. It's oh for Bredon, beautiful ladies, and jingling portagues. Pilgrim fever of questing life in fo'c'stles or stews. Sort of ballad measure beating down the sea-ways, Taking green the surges as her head she butts. With a litter of galleons, Road-dust and sunsets — That's me, so stand clear, you closhy puts ! * * * * * Mr. AsQUiTH (loq.) : Being no poet, but a Balliol man Of the early seventies, I disdain to scan The names of all the rhymesters in Who^s Who. Bridges of Corpus is the man — he'll do ! My own coeval ! Let us not forget Balliol and Corpus where they make you sweat. If he's a Liberal still, the bargain's struck. — Oh, and he too writes poetry ! What luck ! The Public : But who is Bridges ? All the other Poets : Bridges ! Hear the mob ! Our poet — far too good for such a job ! 327 APPENDIX III VI. OUR NEW ARMIES IN TRAINING The following burlesque appeared in the Regiment on December 26, 1914 : WONDERFUL DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLE, BY RUDYARD KIPLING Caution / — ^This article must not be confused with Mr. Rudyard Kipling's descriptions of the New Armies now appearing in the Daily Telegraph. One had known the place for years, as a picturesque mansion, standing alone in a peaceful park — not one of those quarrelsome parks given to unseemly behaviour, but a peaceful park, a park of serene aspect and blameless character. There were oaks (which, doubtless, had once been acorns) and a field of green pasture standing freshly out from the vermilion or blue pastures of the country-side, while birds flitted among the trees, and worms gambolled gracefully on the carriage drive. * « * Editor : But what has all this got to do with the New Armies ? Author : Wait and see. I always start like that. * # # Amid these appalling scenes of bloodshed — I beg your pardon : of course, I have not come to the bloody scenes yet. We had better start this paragraph again : Here, in a single night, as if by the touch of a magician's wand, tents started up, and the thunder of hoofs and wheels — and the lightnings of soldiers' language — shook the canopy of heaven. My car was halted by a sentry, who, being satisfied that he was actually addressing none other than Mr. Kudyard Ripling strove to conquer his natural embarrassment. " So there are troops here, are there ? " said I. " Yes, sir," said he. " And when do they go out to drill ? " said I. 328 APPENDIX III " At seven o'clock every morning," said he. " In this dreadful weather ? " said I. " Not half ! " said he. * * * [Note. — ^The Press Bureau, while objecting very strongly to this dialogue, regret they are unable to prohibit its publication.] * * # I passed on, much impressed by the significant remarks of this fine fellow, and inspected the cookhouse where the men's meals were being cooked. (This, however, need cause no surprise, as cookhouses are usually so employed.) The fire was smoking and the glowing embers threw out heat, and the cook was cooking. How these dramatic incidents burn themselves into the brain of the skilled observer ! One thought of the kitchen range at home, and the saucepans, kettles, and frying-pans .... I am not ashamed to confess that a suspicious moisture sprang to my eyes when the cook began to peel the onions. The cook (who, by the way, had been a sanitary inspector in civil life) lifted the lid of a stewpan, sniffed critically, and walked quickly out into the open air. " The rain, sir, is very refreshing," he said to me. " Yes, indeed," said I. " And what time will the men be back to dinner ? " "About twelve o'clock, sir," said he. " Brave fellows ! " said I, with a backward glance at the stew, and passed onwards to yet more enthralling scenes. * * * Editor : Anything less enthralling I have never read. When are you going to start telling us about "Training the New Armies " ? That's what I want to know. Author : Hush ! You really must not ask such rude ques- tions. * # # I was fortunate enough to see the men come in from their drill in the soaking rain. All of them were wet, I noticed, but they APPENDIX III were in the best of spirits. I did not hear one single word of complaint — and I envied their fortitude ! For wet weather affects me sadly — it always seems to aggravate my chronic deafness. As I walked back to my waiting car, I saw a pheasant strut across the drive. A cow was browsing in an adjoining field, and a frog hopped sullenly through the saturated grass. The rain was still falling . . . falling . . . falling. Such is war ! Next week I shall continue these observations. Editor : Only over my dead body VII. MUSICAL SETTINGS " The Absent -Minded Beggar." Music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Mr. Gerard F. Cobb has set the words of many of Kipling's " Barrack-Room Ballads " to music, and the following can be obtained from Messrs. Chas. Sheard and Co. : " Mandalay," " The Young British Soldier," " Route Marchin'," " Soldier, Soldier," " Fuzzy-Wuzzy," " Troopin'," " Ford o' Kabul River," " Danny Deever," " Shillin'-a-day," " CeUs," " Belts," " Widow's Party," " Screw Guns," " Gunga Din," " Oonts," and " Snarleyow." Sir Frederick Bridge has set the " Song of the English " to music for baritone, solo, chorus, and orchestra (Novello, is.). " Tommy," by Mary Carmichael, "On the Road to Mandalay," by Walter Hedgcock, and "The Widow of Windsor," by Gordon Suther- land, are published by Sheard, 196 Shaftesbury Avenue. "The Mandalay Waltz " was composed by Berwicke Beverley. " The Recessional " has been set to music by A. Berridge and can be found in " Garrett Horder's Worship Song." Macmillan and Co. issue a book of songs from " Just So Stories," with music by Edward German ; and from the same volume the verses beginning " I've never sailed the Amazon " have been published by Novello and Co. under the title of " Rolling down to Rio." Chappell and Co. publish " The Hymn Before Action " ; Florence Ayl- APPENDIX III ward's music to the " Tree Song " from " Puck of Pook's Hill " ; " The Lost Legion," by Ward-Higgs ; the haunting and beautiful " Love Story of Har Dyal," with music by Batten ; Tour's "Mother o' Mine" and " Our Lady of the Snows." "The Mother Seal's Song," "Night Song in the Jungle," "Tiger, Tiger," " Road Song of the Bandar Log," and " The Song of Toomai," all composed by Dora Bright, are issued by Elkin and Co. Sheard and Co. have published a new series of Kipling's songs with music by W. Ward-Higgs which include " Soldier and Sailor Too ! " " Bill 'Awkins," " Follow Me 'Ome," and " The Widow's Party." VIII. A NOTED MUSIC CRITIC ON KIPLING To 7he Free Review, December i, 1893, Ernest Newman con- tributed a notable paper, under the title of " Mr. Kipling's Stories." From Mr. Newman's acrid survey the following selections are taken : The same fatal facility that shows itself in some of Mr. Kipling's verses appears in his prose work in that volubility of tongue that can fill pages with the records of the conversations of men, and yet simply leave us with the impression that men never do talk in this way. They are flaying at talking, playing at thinking, playing at living. Take, for instance, the conversations of the War Correspondents in " The Light that Failed," and ask yourself if these men are anything but puppets dressed up to articulate certain glib phrases. They are all palpably posing ; all palpably striving to appear deuced fine fellows. Are War Correspondents perpetually posing in this manner in private life ? Or, for another instance, take the club-room conversation of the officers in " The Story of the Gadsbys." Here, be it remembered, Mr. Kipling is drawing the portraits of men of whom he may be supposed to have an intimate knowledge. Yet, allowing for the difference in the surroundings, they simply talk like the War Correspondents. Do " officers and gentlemen " conduct themselves like a lot of APPENDIX III city clerks playing the 'Arry ? Do they fire off aimless witticisms in this way ? Do they allude to their having dined with a superior officer as having " mangled garbage '' at his table ? What is Mr. Kipling doing but turning out characters as a joiner might turn out wooden images, all made to the same pattern, and each as lifeless as the others ? As soon as he leaves the sensational and the abnormal he tends to become fatuous. His men pose too palpably to permit of our taking them at his estimate or at their own ; their factitious simulation of the rake-hellish is too un- convincing. And his women offend by the same vice of staginess. While the men play at being fine, the women flay at being naughty, and they impress us v^dth the idea that they are actually naughty just about as much as the men impress us with the idea that they are actually fine fellows. Mrs. Hauksbee is as unnatural as Torpenhow and the Nilghai and Captain Gadsby. . . . His apparent breadth of receptivity is delusive ; because in the final literary product of his experiences we discover that he has looked at all things from very much the same point of view. The inevitable result is that while he dazzles us at first by the exhibition of an intelligence that seems to play with equal ease over many departments of life and nature, we find in the end that we have simply been deluded by the same inner consciousness masquerading under many outer forms. For while Mr. Kipling appears to understand so many things, in reality — ^it must be said candidly — he understands very few. His abnormal cleverness in seizing upon externals and reproducing them cannot hinder us from ultimately recognizing that he has only dealt in externalities. He has travelled much, has seen many men and many lands, and his plastic sensibility has made him peculiarly receptive of what he has seen and heard ; but each story he writes is simply a new avatar of his original self, simply a new incarnation of a very narrow stock of ideas in a very wide stock of sensations and ex- periences. Whatever he does — the description of a fight in India, of an army upon the march, of men living in the woods among the beasts, of the interior of a Hindu courtesan's house — has a con- vincing air that, in the absence on our own part of direct knowledge of the things he is describing, makes us hold his description to be APPENDIX III solid and true. It is only when he attempts to deal with matters and characters that are within the range of our own experience that we detect his superficiality. . . . No genuine artist could have given such an ending to such a story as " On Greenhow Hill " as Mr. Kipling has given it — an ending of gratuitous brutality. It is simply the instinct of the irresponsible savage, who has so little rational self-control as to go down before the impulse to soil or smash the very piece of work he has just built up. And if anyone desires to realize thoroughly how impotent is Mr. Kipling to deal artistically with a psycho- logical problem of man's soul and woman's, to see how he makes brutality take the place of art, and cynicism the place of wisdom, let him compare such a story as " A Wayside Comedy " with the handling of a somewhat similar situation in Mr. Stevenson's " Providence and the Guitar." It is just the difference between the barbarian and the artist. It goes without saying that with an intelligence of this kind we must not look for depth or breadth of human outlook. Prob- ably few people could have seen so much of the world as Mr, Kipling has done to such small advantage. His observations on men and manners are nowhere very wise, and in many places are absolutely foolish. In this respect we must remember that what seems to be fairly veracious work on his part — such as the description of native manners and ways of thought — may be so only because of our own ignorance of these things. We have seen him to be egregiously astray in his pseudo-artistic treatment of men and scenes we are familiar with ; and the question is in- evitably suggested. Have we any guarantee that in the treatment of matters removed from our own experience Mr. Kipling has been intrinsically any more veracious ? And allowing for the fact that his own mental processes are abnormal rather than anything else, it is just probable that had we had the same actual experiences as he, we should pronounce his insight into these to be no deeper than his insight into the life we know. Few men of intelligence, we are compelled to think, could have seen so much of life as Mr. Kipling and yet learned so little wisdom. For if we may judge from his books, the impressions of his life 333 APPENDIX III seem to have run mainly to creating in him an egregious form of Jingoism, and to stimulating him to hatred of Ireland and of Russia. It may be noted, too, how consciously or unconsciously, his literary method in the treatment of a type he does not like becomes as disingenuous as his antipathy is irrational. He will contrive to rouse your anti-Russian feeling, for instance — ^if you have any — by the dexterous process of sketching one Russian officer who is not exactly a model of humane ethics, and making him serve as a pseudo-typical member of his race ; setting up in con- trast to him, of course, English officers who are supposed to be the incarnation of all the manly virtues.* And this he will do in a story so clever in itself, that almost in spite of yourself you are gulled into accepting the special pleading. In a similar manner the extremely clever little sketch, " Namgay Doola " — one of the neatest pieces of work Mr. Kipling has done — becomes absurd through its grotesque assumption of ethnological wisdom. IX. MR. KIPLING'S SCHOOLMASTERS AND SCHOOLBOYS (I) By T. E. page, master AT CHARTERHOUSE This review of " Stalky and Co." is reprinted from ^he Bookman, November 1899. T he heroes of this book are three boys, McTurk, Stalky, and Beetle, the last of whom represents Mr. Kipling himself, and the story describes their exploits at a " College " of some two hundred boys, the other characters being chiefly masters connected with the place. When introduced to the reader Stalky and his two friends have been about four or five years at school and possess con- siderable influence. But they are at war with the masters, despise the prefects, and sneer at all school games. They lead a life apart, and " gloat " over their triumphs in secret. " Je vais gloater,'*^ The Man*Who Was." a 334 APPENDIX III says Beetle after one performance, " ^e vais gloater tout le blessed afternoon." "This is much too good," remarks McTurk after another, " to tell all the other brutes in the Coll. They'd never understand. They play cricket, and say, ' Yes, sir,' and ' Oh, sir,' and ' No, sir.' " Instead of playing cricket the three lads smoke in a hut hidden among furze-bushes, from which they are hunted by a sergeant who " wears tennis -shoes and carries binoculars " to assist him in the pursuit of evil-doers. Then they move their pipes and themselves to a romantic eyrie among the cliffs on the seashore, from which " they could hear young jackdaws squawking on the ledges," and from which Stalky was enabled " with great de- liberation " — ^these are the author's own graphic words — " to spit on to the back of a young rabbit sunning himself far down." Such enthusiasts, indeed, are they for the forbidden luxury of smoking that we are treated to a further account of their tramping through the rain to a spot where they could sit down " among water-logged clods on a rust-coloured harrow," in order to consume a cheroot in partnership and be sick in common. " Je cat, tu cat, it cat. Nous cations I " is the observation of McTurk as he "hands up his contribution " (p. i6i), although elsewhere the speaker is said to be an admirer of the style of Ruskin and given to binding up " odd numbers of Fors Clavigera " in spare moments. This taste for surreptitious tobacco is strictly congruous with the other activities of this remarkable trio. The third chapter (pp. 64-99) i^ ^^^7 accurately headed " An Unsavoury Interlude," and relates with a rich wealth of detail how they introduce a dead cat underneath the floor of a large dormitory in the adjoining boarding-house. Mr. Kipling handles this theme with masterly power, and I can recall no place in literature in which evil smells are discussed with such admirable and appreciative skill. It is a shame to mutilate a passage which must become a locus classicus to all students of the malodorous, but a single quotation may illus- trate its vivacity. "When she begins to fume," says Stalky, referring to the cat, "she'll whisper to 'em in their dreams. Then she'll whiff. Golly, how she'll whiff ! Oblige me by 335 APPENDIX III thinkin' of it for two minutes." The subject, indeed, rises above the power of prose, and Beetle indicates that he will enshrine it in a Ballad. " ' Keep clear of anything coarse, then,' said Stalky. * I shouldn't like to be coarse on this happy occasion.' * Not for wo-orlds,' replies Beetle. ' What rhymes to " stenches,''^ some one ? ' " (p. 88). The italics are not Mr. Kipling's, but he must have credit for understanding what particular rhyme he thus subtly suggests. In the fifth chapter the heroes appear as "Moral Reformers," or, in their own jargon, as " moral suasers," and execute justice on two bullies by trussing them for a suggested cockfight, and then, when they are quite helpless, administering the following tortures, viz. (i) "Head-knuckles," (2) "Brush-drill," (3) "the Key," (4) " Corkscrews," (5) " Rocking to sleep," and (6) " the Ag Ag " ; after which they singe off one whisker, administer " cracks " with a " cricket-stump on the curved latter-end " (p. 152) of their weeping victims, and finally compel them to sing a comic song. The effects of this treatment are apparently to promote virtue, and when the School Chaplain and the Headmaster — a. remarkable man who " sends a boy spinning into the waste-paper basket " and then gives him " eight cuts, welters " — discuss a complaint which is sent them by a widowed mother on the subject they " wink " at one another like " Augurs," and agree to dis- miss it. The behaviour of Stalky and Co. cannot, however, be said to improve in consequence of the "Augurs winking," and the crowning exploit of their last term is one of the most remarkable in fiction. In order to revenge themselves on a weak prefect, who has reported them to the Sixth Form for impertinence, they bribe a girl to kiss the timid lad at a shop door, and then turn upon their accuser and judges with a general charge of impropriety. " It — ^it isn't," says Beetle, addressing the court, " so much the cynical immorality of the biznai, as the blatant indecency of it, that's so awful. As far as we can see, it's impossible for us to go into Bideford without runnin' up against some prefect's unwhole- some amours." The Sixth are dumb-foundered by such language, beg the three young blackguards to hush the whole affair up, 336 APPENDIX III and Beetle, after lecturing them severely, in the end agrees that " for the honour of the school they will keep their mouths shut as to these — ah — obscenities," after which Stalky and Co. retire to their study and laugh until they are " too weak to move." It is not the questionable tone of this story — for that might be paralleled — ^which renders it unique, but its extravagant im- possibility. There is not a boy in England who does not know that Beetle's harangue could not conceivably have been uttered, and that, if it had been, there is no human probability that he would have survived to tell the tale. A writer of stories for the young should either write about subjects which they do not understand or else refrain from relating palpable absurdities. Space forbids me to dwell, as I might wish, on the gross carica- tures which Mr. Kipling presents not only of boys, but of masters. The headmaster takes " his after-dinner cheroot " to a prefect's study and, after " a cock of one wise eyebrow," addresses the boys present as " Luxurious infants," while he drops into a " big half- couch " ; and, on another occasion, informs his pupils that " he can connive at immorality, but cannot stand impudence." As for the assistant masters, they merely take the place of the police- man in a pantomime, on whom Tomfool plays his tricks in order to set the pit in a roar. But then, as the School Chaplain assures us, we should " never forget that a master is not a man." It may be so ; but, as it happens, Mr. Kipling has accidentally drawn one of them as a human being and a gentleman. Mr. Prout, who is wittily called "Hoofer," "Hoophah," " Heify," and " Heffelinga," because of the size of his feet, is the unhappy house-master of. Stalky and Co. He is a foolish but " sensitive " man ; his hobby is " the honour of his house," and he is " sincerely devoted to gaining the esteem of his charges." As such he be- comes a chief target for ridicule. Mr. Kipling's three heroes make songs upon him and mock him as " Popularity Prout " ; they exult in making his house, as they euphemistically put it, " a happy little house " ; they outrage him in every form and fashion ; they had discovered his " weak point," and, to quote Mr. Kipling's own powerful phrase, "they knew well how to flick him on the raw." Y 337 APPENDIX III It is needless to add anything to such a statement. A spice of devilry in boys is often not altogether a bad sign, but deliberate malignancy is wholly vile, and, in spite of Mr. Kipling, experience shows that boys who set themselves to " flick " a weak but kindly master " on the raw " are very rarely the boys who turn out brave officers or distinguished men. Happily too they are very rare in public schools. If Mr. Kipling's own experiences were indeed such as he depicts, he would wisely have left them to a kind oblivion. On the other hand, as a record of ordinary school life, his book, apart from other defects, is a gross and absolute travesty of facts. (II) By ARTHUR H. WALKER, B.A., HEADMASTER'S ASSISTANT, UNITED SERVICES COLLEGE, WEST- WARD HO ! The publication of a book such as Mr. Kipling's " Stalky and Co." must necessarily be of the greatest interest to all the scholastic profession, and especially to those who are now engaged in teaching at Mr. Kipling's old school at Westward Ho ! But it is hardly fair to raise the direct question of the truth or falsity of the pictures drawn in the book. Apart from the necessary predomi- nance of " the imaginative element " in an avowed work of fiction, the point of view presented is that of a boy. To expect, therefore, an accurate view of the relations between master and boy, or between master and master, is to expect the impossible. As Mr. Kipling expresses it elsewhere, by the mouth of one of his most famous creations, " Too much bloomin' background in front ! " only in this case the position is reversed. The background is obscured by the foreground. In other words, Mr. Kipling has remembered, more or less accurately, various events of his school- days, and, intentionally or unintentionally, has sacrificed per- spective and therefore truth. Still, as has been already pointed out, truth, fer se, should not be made the criterion of a work of art. To imagine that the character of the average schoolboy or the average schoolmaster can be in any degree gauged by this book is of course absurd. There are no " Stalkys " — ^if there were they 338 APPENDIX III would be as abhorrent in real life as they are amusing in fiction ; there are no " Kings." It has been said that " Stalky and Co." would be a dangerous book to put into the hands of a schoolboy. Dangerous for the boy — yes ! He would find that his teachers are not Kings or Prouts or Hartopps, nor he himself successful as a rival of Stalky or Beetle. It is possible that he might suffer grievously ! In fine, to criticize Mr. Kapling's book as a picture of school life is to approach it from entirely the wrong standpoint. To pro- nounce on its merits as a purely literary effort may be left to others ; the schoolmaster will, for the most part, decline to regard it as in any way affecting him or his work. It is outside his pro- vince, and foreign to all his experience. X. BRITAIN'S LIVING SEER The following article is reprinted from " Land and Water " of August 21, 191 5. It is from the pen of Francis Stopford, the editor of that journal, who has kindly permitted me to make use of it here. Kipling would have won fame under any circumstances, but he never would have become the Laureate of Empire, so ac- claimed by all men Overseas and by all who have toiled and suffered Overseas, were it not for the golden lessons which were taught to him under his father's roof -tree. The miraculous survival of the Jewish Nation through all the centuries is attributed in no small degree to the Fifth Com- mandment, " which is the first commandment with promise " ; but we are apt to overlook that the first great Christian writer, himself a Jew by birth and upbringing, St. Paul, while com- mending this commandment, added a corollary to it : Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. And ye fathers provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So the Christian ideal of home is one where the parent is both honoured and honouring, and the child is both obedient and gladly 339 APPENDIX III and spontaneously renders obedience. But in that " we are neither children nor gods, but men in a world of men," this idea can never be approached unless there is freedom and also trust between the two generations and unless the parent is prepared to practise that abnegation of self which it is human nature for him to preach to the young and is willing to let a double portion of his spirit be upon the sons without waiting for the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. It was in such a home that Kipling spent his latter boyhood and early manhood. In his Preface to " Life's Handicap " he mentions that " a few (of these tales), but these are the very best, my father gave me." The italics are ours. And in the opening chapter of " Kim " he has sketched, with that delicate sympathy and reverence which only deep affection can inform, his father as the Curator of the Wonder House — ^his father, the late Mr. Lockwood Kiphng, who in his day had the reputation of knowing more about India than any living European. And his love for his mother, " the wittiest woman in India," and her love for him, have followed the poet to dizzier heights, to blacker depths than ever he foresaw when he penned his touching " Mother o' Mine." Her love has kept his head steady and his feet straight amid the giddy peaks of fame ; her tears have washed the sting and poison from the wounds which loss and disappointment deal ; her prayers have made him whole, so that in his prime he can compress for the advantage of his own son all that life has contained for him — ^its goodness and its great- ness, its ills and its littleness — ^into that one noble poem " If." In that Lahore household, where, as we may gather from the Jungle Books, the Law prevailed, the spirit of which was Obey, the Seer, while hardly more than a boy, saw the vision of his Race and dreamed his dream of Empire, which, as was only reasonable, was after the fashion of his home. He had been enabled to put forth his full strength in the orderly and honourable freedom of his father's house, and he held that should be the rule of the Empire. He had been permitted to perfect his individuality under the guidance and kindly wisdom of his elders, without rough rebuke or rude interference, and so he maintained it was possible for the Younger Nations to do. His dedication of 340 APPENDIX III " Soldiers Three," one of his earliest books, which was published in India when his literary reputation, at least out there, was secure, ends in this address to his mother : The long bazaar will f raise, but thou — Heart of my heart — have I done well P And in his poem, " The Young Queen," written on the inaugura- tion of the Commonwealth of Australia (it should be read in its entirety ; it is too long to quote here), the Young Queen answers the Old Queen, her Mother : "It shall be the crown of Our crowning to hold Our crown for a gift." He, the young son, had willingly and gladly laid at his mother's feet the " rude figures of a rough -hewn race," careless of other praise, so long as she approved, and he believed the same sentiment dominated Aus- tralia's respect for England and voiced it. J Nation spoke to a Nation, A Queen sent word to a Throne, " Daughter am I in my mother's house But mistress in my own.^'' Again, the same home idea, but this time it is Canada. And so through all his writings his faith in the love and strength of the home is undimmed, yet he never loses sight of the everlasting verity, which is true equally of individuals and nations, of house- holds and empires, that sentiment and self-interest are the woof and warp of human life. If not interwoven, the threads are fluttered and torn by every wind that blows ; but let the shuttle be plied with an honest hand and lo ! a texture which withstands the roughest weather. It were an easy thing, were the space available, to quote the many sayings of Rudyard Kipling that have been fulfilled in these later days. Can any critic who sneered at " The Islanders " a dozen years ago read it through at this hour without remorse ? Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your leaden seas, Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down at ease ; Till ye said of Strife, " What is it ? " of the Sword, " It is far from our ken " ; Till ye made a sfort of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armed men. APPENDIX III Perhaps even more remarkable and more apposite is " The King's Task," a ballad that is published in " Traffics and Discoveries " ; it should be read in full ; Our pride was before the battle : our sloth ere we lifted a spar. But now we are purged of that fever — cleansed by the letting of blood, Something leaner of body — something keener of mood. Then there is that noble epitaph on General Joubert, which was written during the South African War, and which contains these prophetic lines : Later shall rise a people, sane and great. Forged in strong -fires, by equal war made one ; Telling old battles over without hate — Not least his name shall pass from sire to son. The Dreamer has never been, and never will be, a favourite with his brethren. He comes to his triumph either through the long processes of years when he himself is gathered to his fathers or else through heroic trials which test his words in strong fires. Thereupon he disappears if his dreams do not come true. But with Rudyard Kipling they have come true, terribly true, splen- didly true in this day of Armageddon. His conception of the Empire as one house, where the head is honoured and honours, and the children full grown, free to go their own ways, are glad to return with the gift — " Love without promise or fee " — ^is the right conception. It has withstood the onset ; the pillars have not fallen. It will endure. The new Word, " Let us be One," that aforetimes ran " whispering o'er the waste of the ultimate slime," and at which our enemies mocked and jeered, now rises full -voiced to the dome of heaven, carried to the very Throne itself by the Sons of the Blood who have surrendered their own lives for the life and honour of that England whom they call Mother. Kipling to-day enters into his kingdom, and we can salute him best in his own words : Drawbridge let fall, ifs the Lord of us all, The Dreamer whose dreams come true. 342 APPENDIX III XI. KIPLING AND THE SENSE OF PERSONAL IDENTITY There is a passage in " Kim " which relates how the little hero of this tale meets with his first experience of utter loneliness. We read of the boy's contemplation of the fascinating question of personal identity, and the thousand doubts and fears that spring instant to the clamour of his cry, " Who is Kim — Kim — Kim ? " The awful dread attacks Kim while he is seated in a noisy railway waiting-room. For a few intense moments all else in the world fades to impotence, and as each murderous second ticks, he feels that he is getting nearer to the solution of the tremendous puzzle — " Who is Kim P " At last, just as he thinks he is about to solve the problem, all powers of reason desert the child, and he finds himself suddenly wrenched back in the flesh. Somebody had disturbed him, probably a passenger when moving from the seat. Kipling tells us that Kim stood up dazed for the moment, " pressing his hands before his eyes and shaking his head." A Hindu holy man had been observing the spellbound child as he wrestled for peace with the demons of distress. Perchance the holy man as a child had repeated his own name over and over again in the same way, until the fear numbed itself, and left him outdone and faint, for Kipling has told us that this practice of throwing the mind into a kind of maze by the repetition of a name, is a feature of the Oriental soul. A little further on in the chapter, Kipling tells the reader that this power is possessed by many Asiatics and a few Europeans. I have in my possession a letter from one of those few Europeans who describes how in his child- hood he often became aware of an oppressive feeling which terrified him. He writes : " When the spell was upon me my body seemed to be decreasing, to be sinking under the pressure of the tempestuous fight between mind and body, to be falling down, down, down," and yet " I was still above, gazing, wondering, open-eyed, open-mouthed, as it were." This feeling is described in " Kenelm Chillingby " when Kenelm asks his mother if she is ever " overcome " by a sense of her own identity, and when this 343 APPENDIX III mental sensation comes the subject feels that he is being crowded round by many moving " ?'s " which never seem to grow distinct. Lord Tennyson was possessed of the same faculty, and the author of " Kim " is also one of the " few Europeans " who has experienced the same sensation. The following letter, which has never been in print before, is exceedingly interesting. I have it on the high authority of a gentleman who, after reading " Kim," wrote to Kipling on the subject of personal identity and received this reply on both sides of a grey correspondence card : I have not come across any medical explanation of it, but it may perhaps be due to the natural ferment of body and mind in youth and early manhood. You will notice in your own child that the sutures of the skull close up and harden as it grows older. Similarly (I merely suggest this) our personal identity, which is derived from our ancestors, may at first be a mass of impersonal and general ideas common to all our race, but, gradually, as our own experiences wake and develop us as individuals we may shed the bundle of general impressions and settle down to our more limited selves. I don't know whether I have made myself at all clear, but even as the embryo in the womb goes through all stages of development from the egg to the human being, so our minds may pass through similar stages of mental development. August lo, 1909. XII. BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM During the last few years there has been much talk about the decadence of Kipling. It is true that the tremendous excitement that once his poems and stories aroused, is a thing of the past, and that the " KipHng craze " passed away at the beginning of the century. But at the same time it must be pointed out that the two questions, " Is Kipling as popular as ever ? " and " Is his work as good ? " are not the same, and have, as we all know, no logical connection. New authors drive out the writers of yester- year because they bring new ideas and methods, not because they bring better work. Kipling still has a wide range of sincere admirers, and if his public has dwindled, it is because he has been 344 APPENDIX III SO extensively read. A journal recently asked its readers to name their favourite living poets. Kipling headed the list with 22,630 votes. His nearest competitor received 5598 votes, and only three others received more than a thousand. In any case, the overv^helming majority for Kipling in this referendum is indisputable, and it shows that among people who are so far interested in literature as to take the trouble to register their preference Kipling can still hold his own. The fairest way to determine Kipling's position to-day, is to compare him with his contemporaries. In 1890, the English publishing houses placed a thousand works of fiction before the public, besides the famous "Plain Tales from the Hills." How many of those volumes have stood the test of a few years ? Let us look at a list of the "best sellers" in 1890. William Black's "Stand-Fast Craig- Royston," Besant's "Amorel of Lyonesse," Hall Caine's "Bond- man," Maarten Maarten's "The Sin of Joost Aveling," William Morris's "News from Nowhere," Haggard and Lang's "The World's Desire," and Edwin Arnold's "Phra the Phoenician." It is impossible to compare the present popularity or circulation of any of these volumes with " Plain Tales from the Hills." In spite of the fact that the public calls most for recent books and decidedly prefers novels to short stories, the " Plain Tales " still maintains a position in every book-shop and public library. Has the verse of Rudyard Kipling declined in the public favour ? "The Seven Seas" was published in 1896. The same year I find the following books of verse were looked upon as the cream of the publisher's lists : Swinburne's " The Tale of Baden," William Watson's "Purple East," Alfred Austin's "England's Darling," Stephen Phillips's " Christ in Hades," and Fiona Macleod's " From the Hills of Dawn." How many lines can you quote from these volumes ? What is their value when compared to a single volume which contains "McAndrew's Hymn," "The Song of the English," "The Last Chantey," "The Eathan " and " L'Envoi " ? In any case, a revival of the Kipling cult is unmistakable to-day. 345 APPENDIX III Here is a list of books that have been published in the last few months : " Rudyard Kipling." By John Palmer. (Nisbet.) " Rudyard Kipling." By R. T. Hopkins. (Digby, Long and Co.) "Rudyard Kipling: A Critical Study." By Cyril Falls. {Martin Seeker.) " A Handbook to the Poetry of Rudyard Kipling." By Ralph Durand. (Hodder and Stoughton.) " Essays by Hubert." By Hubert Bland. (Max Goschen.) Contains an essay on the Decadence of Rudyard Kipling. And scarcely a week passes without an article on Kipling in some form or another reaching the public. The publication by the Daily telegraph, Liverpool Daily Post, Glasgow Herald, New Tork Sun, and many other famous newspapers of Kipling's " France at War " is a potent influence in reviving interest in his work. The earliest book written on Kipling is by G. F. Monkshood — " Rudyard Kipling : The Man and his Work " (Greening, 1899). Mr. Monkshood with all his good intentions is without skill as a critic ; he likes Kipling's works very much, and finds great pleasure in saying so. Unhappily, there his authority ends. Shorter books on Kipling are that by W. Roberton entitled " The Kipling Guide Book " (The Holland Book Co., Birmingham, 1899), and that by Will M. Clemens published by Morang of Toronto and called " A Ken of Kipling," and the " Kipling Note Book," published in New York by M. F. Mansfield and A. Wessels which bears no printed date, but is stamped by the British Museum June 26, 1900. " Collectanea," a volume of reprinted verses containing "The Explanation," "Mandalay," " Recessional," " The Rhyme of the Three Captains," and " The Vampire," was published by Mansfield, New York, in 1898. In 1900 " A Kipling Primer," by F. L. Knowles (Chatto), made its appearance. This contains a bibliography of articles relating to Kipling and gives a hundred magazine references from 1 891 to 1900. Richard Le Gallienne's " Rudyard Kipling : A Criticism," (John Lane) is a dispassionate study of the author's outlook, but it comes from the pen of a writer who is unfitted by taste or 346 APPENDIX III experience for such a task. " The Literary World," May i8, 1900, printed the following review on this volume : Delivered as a popular lecture, Mr. Le Gallienne's three chapters would no doubt score a success. Regarded as criticism they rank somewhat on a level with Mr. Robert Buchanan's recent article, "The Voice of the Hooligan," which so roused the ire of Sir Walter Besant. Not that Mr. Le Gallienne condemns utterly or fails to see any merit in Mr. Kipling ; he only damns persistently with faint praise. Of " Departmental Ditties " he remarks that, " from a literary, or any serious, point of view, they are hardly more important than Mr. Kipling's first sailor hat." What, we wonder, would be Mr. Kipling's opinion of the importance of Mr. Le Gallienne's criticism ? Out of " Barrack Room Ballads " there are " per- haps not more than seven that one cares about reading again." "The * Other Verses ' are mainly interesting as showing what Mr. Kipling cannot do." " Tomlinson," which so many swear by, does not please our critic, or at least " once having been introduced to him, we have no further desire to read his letter of introduction." It is curious to find that Mr. Le Gallienne considers " Mary, Pity Women," in " The Seven Seas," " supreme beyond the others " in that volume, and that he has nothing but praise for " The Shut-eye Sentry," " The Ladies," " The Men that Fought at Minden," and " Soldier and Sailor Too." Mr. Le Gallienne's likes and dislikes — chiefly the latter — are with similar frankness expressed with regard to many of the prose works, and he sums up his judgment in the words : " As a writer Mr. Kipling is a delight ; as an influence he is a danger." That may be a good judgment or not, but one wonders rather that Mr. Le Gallienne should dare to write as follows : " It is Mr. Kipling and his followers who are the true end-of-the-century decadents, for it would seem to be their aim to begin the twentieth century by throwing behind them all that the nineteenth century has won." Mr. Le Gallienne writes smartly, but with exaggeration. We cannot accept him as an impartial critic, the character in which he is here posing. Mr. John Lane's bibliography at the end of the volume strikes us as being of more lasting service than the earlier criticism. " Word-Formation in Kipling : A Stylistic-Philological Study," by W. Leeb-Lundberg (W. Heffer and Sons, Cambridge, 1909) is an ingenious excursion into the mysteries of stylistic philology, and contains an outline of Kipling's books and interesting notes on the author's general characteristics. George Routledge and Sons publish a " Kipling Dictionary," by W. Arthur Young, 347 APPENDIX III which gives all the characters and scenes in the stories and poems of Kipling from 1886 up to 191 1. Vicomte Robert D'Humieres in his " Through Isle and Empire " gives an interesting account of a visit to Kipling at Rottingdean, and also prints in this volume a prefatory letter by Kipling. " Playthings and Parodies," by Barry Pain (Cassell, 1896) contains imitations of Rudyard Kipling's style. References to Kipling will be found in " The New Machiavelli," by H. G. Wells, "A Christmas Garland," by Max Beerbohm (Heinemann), "The Red Pagan," by A. G. Stephens (The Bulletin Co., Sydney), " War's Brighter Side," by Julian Ralph (C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd., 1901), "Provincial Letters and other Papers" (Smith, Elder and Co., 1906), "The Egregious English," by Angus McNeil (Grant Richards, 1903), "The Novel-Reader's Handbook," by William Roberton (Holland Company, 1899), "English Litera- ture : Modern," by G. H. Mair (Williams and Norgate), " Essays in Little," by Andrew Lang (Henry, 1891), " Questions at Issue," by Edmund Gosse (Heinemann, 1893), Paul Elmer More's " Shelburne Essays," second series (1905), " Books and Playbooks," by Brander Mathews (Osgood, 1895), "Essays on Modern Novelists," by W. L. Phelps (1910), " Guesses at Truths," by David Christie Murray (Hurst and Blackett, 1908). " The Empire and the Century " (John Murray) contains " The Heritage," a poem by Kipling which has not been collected in any of his volumes. "The Bibelot " (Mosher, Portland, Maine, 1897), Vol. Ill, reprints " Letters of Marque," selections from a suppressed book by Kipling. "Poets on the Isis," by Wilfred Blair, contains the following parodies : " Butler An' Ousemaid, Too," " L'Envoyaging," and "The Ballad of Age and Youth." Many good parodies of Kipling may be found in T. W. H. Cros- land's " Five Notions " (Grant Richards, 1903). " The Eighteen- Nineties," by Holbrook Jackson, contains a lengthy chapter on Kipling. (This book is published by Mitchell Kennerley in New York and by Grant Richards in London.) Mr. Holbrook Jackson's study of Rudyard Kipling is well rounded and complete, and is a valuable addition to the bulky catalogue of Kiplingiana. A. C. Benson deals with " Stalky and Co." in " The Upton Letters." APPENDIX III A. G. Gardiner has written a short sketch on Kipling (very partisan, naturally) in "Prophets, Priests, and Kings," and in the paper on " February " in Quiller-Couch's " From a Cornish Window " there is a valuable judgment on Kipling's ideals as expressed in his imperial and political poems. INDEX INDEX Academy, The, 206 Adcock, St. John, 264 " Affront to Ganesha," 192 Aldrich, Dean, 287 " All Expenses Paid," 59 Allen, Grant, 71 " Anchor Song, The," 217-218 Anglo-African Writers' Club, 146 Argonaut y The (American), 179 Artists' Benevolent Fund, 147 Athenaeum, The, 169 " Ave Imperatrix," 32 Bain, F. W., 14 Balestier, Caroline, 25 Balestier, Wolcott, 25 " Ballad of Reading Gaol," 4, 5 "Ballad of the Bolivar, The," 166 " Bailed oi the Clamphndozon,rhe,'' 219 « Ballad of the King's Jest," 44 Bandar-Log (Monkey People), 196 " Banjo Bard," 216 Barr, Robert, 24 " Barrack Room Ballads," 39, 285 Baudelaire, 204, 295 " Batemans," 234 Beardsley, Aubrey, 5, 6 " Beast and Man in India," 187 Bees, 197 " Beetle," 209 " Bell Buoy, The," 53 Bellman, The, 75 " Benefactors, The," 89 Beresford, Lord Charles, 148 " Bertram and Bimi," 138 Besant, Walter, 169, 170, 171 Biblical language, 43 Bilbao, 166 " Birds of Prey March," 251 Black, William, 169 " Black Man's Burden, The,' Blair, Wilfrid, 324 Blake, Felicia, 117 " Blind Bug, The," 9 Boer War, 157 " Bolivar," 166 " Bonds of Discipline," 40 22' Boots, 155 Borrow, George, 270 Bradley, Doctor, 281 Bratleboro, 25 Breitmann, Hans, 138 Bridge, Sir F., 150 Bridges, Major, 151 British Weekly, The, 147 " Brugglesmith," 11 1 " Brushwood Boy, The," 66 Brutality, III, 115, 116 Buchanan, Robert, 170, 171 Buddha, 105 Bulletin, The (Sydney), 127 Burne- Jones, Lady, 22 Burne- Jones, Philip, 116 Burleigh, Bennet, 26 Burton, Sir Richard, 5 Burwash, 234-235 353 INDEX Cade, Jack, 238 Candler, Edmund, 104 Cantab, The, 145 " Canterville Ghost, The," 135 " Captains Courageous," 215 Car, The, 148 Carlyle, Thomas, 214, 215 "Cat that Walked by Himself, The," 183 Cecil Club's Dinner, 148 " Chant-Pagan," 256, 260 Chapin, George, 238 " Chaplain of the Fleet," 170 Chesterton, G. K., 236-237 Chicago, 82, 83, 85 Children, Kipling's love for, 71, 72 " Christmas in India," 221 " City of Sleep, The," 6j Civil and Military Gazette, The, 22 Cobb, I. S., 239 Collins, John, 287 Contemporary Review, 170 " Conversion of St. Wilfrid, The," 232 " Copperfield, David," 163 Cottar, George, 66 " Crab that Played with the Sea, The," 188 Crosland, T. W. H., 11 Daily Telegraph, 275 " Danny Deever," 8 " Digit of the Moon, A," 14 Din, Muhammad, 72 " Dingley, the Famous Writer," 57 " Doctors," 148 Dogs, Kipling's love for, 282 Douglas, James, 118, Doyle, Dr. C. W., 192 Dumas, Alexandre, 187 Durand, Mr. Ralph, 251 Eddi, 233 354 Elliot, Gertrude, 176 Etchingham, 232 Falls, Cyril, 102, 291 Ferguson, J. De Lancey, 217 " Files, The," 206 " Finest Story in the World, The," .74 FitzGerald, Edward, 204 " Five Nations, The," 146, 260, 263, 274 " For All We Have and Are," 76 Forbes-Robertson, 176 " France " (Verses), 278 " France at War," 275-277 Free Review, 73, 331 Free Trade, Kipling and, 234 Friend, The (Bloemfontein), 26 Ganesha, 193 " Garm — a Hostage," 271, 281-282 " Gentlemen Rankers, The," 286 " Gipsy Trail, The," 221 Gissing, George, 12 Gosse, Edmund, 261 " Habitation Enforced, An," 238 "Half-Ballad of Waterval, The," 260 Hanumann, 140 Hardy, Thomas, 169, 227 Harman, Captain, 107 Harper's Magazine, 8, 136 Hay, Colonel John, 128 Hearn, Lafcadio, 13, 295 " Heifer of the Dawn, A," 14 Heldar, Dick, 7, 212 Hendric, EUwood, 280 Henley, William Ernest, 8, 255 Holmescroft, 136 " House Surgeon, The," 134-137 " How the Leopard got his Spots," 186 INDEX Idler, The, i88 "If ,"127 " Islanders," reply to Kipling's, 320 " Islanders, The," 341 " In the Firing Line," 264 " Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney, The," 3 Jackson, Holbrook, 89, 256, 313 Jackson, Sergeant M. C, 253 Jefferies, Richard, 15, 270 Jewish Nation, 339 Jingoism, 255 Jo Khang Temple, 104 Jones, Paul, 170 Joubert, General, 342 " Jungle Book," 194-197 Kabir, 14 Kellner, Dr., 212-213 Khan, Bahadur, 138 Khayyam, Omar, 123-129, 204 " Kim," 13, 93-108, 210, 273, 275, 343 Kipling, John, Lockwood, 19, 340 Kipling, Rev. Joseph, 19 Ladies' Home Journal (American), 154 Land and Water, 339 Lang, Andrew, 145 Le Gallienne, Richard, 316 " Lichtenberg," 157, 256 " Life's Handicap," 340 " Light that Failed, The," 175-179 " Lincolnshire Poacher, The," 149 Lippincotfs Monthly Magazine, 6 London Review, The, 146 Loti, Pierre, 211, 212 Lucas, E. v., 235 Lurgan Sahib, 97, 275 " M. L," 259 Macdonald, Rev. George B., 19 McClure's Magazine, 23 " Madness of Private Ortheris, The," 73 Maisie, 176 Malay Magic, 189 " Mandalay," 274 "Mark of the Beast, The," 139, 192 " Mary Gloster, The," 317 " Mary, Pity Women ! " 224 Matthews, Brander, 56 Matthews, Elkin, 19 McGill University, 147, 151 McTurk, 209 Messua, 199 Methodist strain in Kipling, 215 Middlesex Hospital, 147 Monkshood, G. F., 112 Moore, Frankfort, 147 Moore, George, 210-21 1 More, Paul Elmer, 123 Mosher, Thomas B., 128 " Mother Hive, The," 197 Mowgli, 189, 194, 198, 199 Mozart, 223 Mulvaney, Terence, 258, 262, 285, 288 note " Murders in the Rue Morgue, The," 139 Musical Settings, 330 National Observer, 8 National Review, 89 National Service League, 148 " New Army in Training, The," 87, 262, 328 New South Wales Trooper, 157 Newbolt, Sir Henry, 150, 325 Newman, Ernest, 73, 331 Newton, W. Douglas, 148 Ngpak-pas, The, 105 Niven, Frederick, 292 Northern Himalaya, 107 Norton, Professor Charles Eliot, 21 355 INDEX Noyes, Alfred, 326 Nursery rhymes, 18 " Old Issue, The," 146 " Old Man Kangaroo," 190 " Only a Subaltern," 149 " Other People's Wings," 118 Outlook^ The, 9 Page, T. E. (Master at Charter- house), 334 Pall Mall Magazine, 55 Parnell Commission, 9 Parodies of Kipling's Verse, 320, 322, 325 Pau Amma, 189 Personal Identity, Kipling and, 343 Phelps, Josephine Hart, 179 " Picture of Dorian Gray, The," 6 Pioneer, The (Allahabad), 9, 19, 289 Price, Cormell, 246 Protective colouring, 186 " Puck of Pook's Hill, 231, 269 Punch, 5, 6, 322 " Purple Island," Fletcher's, 245 Pusat Tasek, 189 Pyecroft, Emanuel, 261 " Quest of the Golden Girl, The," 317 " Rabbi's Song, The," 136 Ramsay, Sir William, 280 Rangoon, 295 " Recessional, The," 207, 227 Recruiting Bands, 150 Regiment, The, 328 " Return, The," 260 " Return of Imray, The," 137 " Return of the Children, The," 67 Review of Reviews, 214 356 Review of the Week, 83, 247 " Rewards and Fairies," 231, 269 Rheims, Kipling's visit to, 277 Rhodes, Cecil, 214 " Rhyme of the Three Captains, The," 169 Robinson, E. K., 23 Romulus, 189 " Round Tower, The," 71 Royal Academy Banquet, 147 Royal Geographical Society, 148, 154 Ruskin, 163 St. Barnabas, Church of, 232 Salome, 5 Savoy, The, 12 Schoolboys, Kipling's, 334 Scots Observer, 8 Scribners' Magazine, 69 " Sea and the Hills, The," 165 Seaman, Sir Owen, 316 Sea Chantey, 218 Secret Service, The (Indian), 105 Seer, Kipling as a, 339 Seven Seas, meaning of, 204 Sewalik Range, 274 Smell, Kipling's sense of, 273-281 " Smuggler's Song," 234 " Snarleyow," 116 " Soldiers Three," 261 " Some Aspects of Travel," 154 " Song of Kabir, The," 15 " Song of the Banjo, The," 149 " Song of the Cities," 295 " Song of the White Man, A," 26 Sorcery, 97 Spectator, The, 139, 188 " Stalky & Co.," 243-248 " Stalky's School-Song," 321 Stevenson, R. L,, 156, 209 Stonehenge, 270 Stopford, Francis, 339 INDEX " Story of Muhammad Din, The," 71 Sussex, 240 " Sussex " (Verses), 269 Svastika, 193 Swinburne, A. C, 166, 269 Tagore, Rabindranath, 14, 15 " Taking o£ Lungtungpen, The," 285 " Taming of the Jungle, The," 191 Taylor, F. Walter, 136 Tharaud, Jerome and Jean, 57 " They," 6j, 68, 69, 70, 71 Ti Rimpoche, The, 105 T^imes, The, 151, 157, 158 "Tipperary," 150, 293 Tommy, 155 Torpenhow, 176-178 "Toy Band, The," 151 " Traffics and Discoveries," 261 Trigonometrical Survey of India, 107 " Troopin'," 285 Tsang-po, The, 107 Tw^ain, Mark, 50-54 " Unqualified Pilot, An," 228 United Services College, 338 " Vampire, The," 116-119 Vermont, U.S.A., 55 Viljoen, General, 254 Walker, Arthur H., 338 Wanderlust, 221 " War," 148 " War's Brighter Side," 26 Weald (Sussex), 269 Westminster Gazette, 257 Wheeler & Co., A. H., 3 " Whirlpool, The," 12 " White Man's Burden, The," 222 Wilde, Oscar, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 73, 135,213 Wilfrid, 233 Windsor Magazine, 21, 228 Wordsvi^orth, 10 Yeats, W. B., 4, 5 Yellow Book, The, 5 Younghusband, Sir Francis, 104 Zangwill, Israel, 55, 150 SiMPKiN, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent «5^ Co. Ltd. i fi lit ,i 1 1 ''jjiii.t J