Rudyard Kipling; an attempt at appreciation

RuDYARD Kipling

AN ATTEMPT AT APPRECIATION

G. F. MONKSHOOD

(W. J. CLARKE)

LONDON
GREENING & CO.

CECIL COURT, CHARING CROSS ROAD, W.C.
1899

\.All rights reserved]

r

PLYMOUTH

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON

PRINTERS

2)e5icateD

(with permission)
TO

THE HON. SIR AUCKLAND COLVIN

K.C.M.G., K.C.S.I., CLE.
LATE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF THE

NORTH-WEST PROVINCES OF INDIA
AND CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF OUDH

{^til? i

PREFACE

Mr. Kipling having been approached as
to whether he would care to honour this
book by a prefacial ''note," has (after kindly-
reading through a special copy) written to
the author a characteristic letter — "One
view of the Question " — saying : —

" I have read your type-written book with a
good deal of interest, and I confess that I greatly
admire your enthusiasm. But does it not seem
to you that a work of this kind would be best
published after the subject were dead?

" There are so many ways in which a living man
can fall from grace that, were I you, I should be
afraid to put so much enthusiasm into the abiding-
ness of print until I was very sure of my man. . .

" Please do not think for a moment that I do
not value your enthusiasm ; but considering things
from the point of view of the public, to whom

viii PREFACE

after all your book must go, is there enough to
them in anything that Mr. Kipling has written
to justify one whole book about him ? "

To this, only one answer could be, and
has been, made. And a simple stone-
squarer stands wondering at the humility
of a ''master builder" who, having passed
through all the mysteries of his craft, has
sat for years on the right hand of success.

I have been greatly helped, with sugges-
tions and doings for the better writing of
this book, by Mr. George Gamble, author
of ''A Farrago of Folly," etc. Such help
has been of particular value in the setting
forth of the two first chapters ; also in the
obtaining of scarce Kiplingana. For this,
and for many aids not recorded, I here
thank Mr. Gamble.

CONTENTS

Preface

PAGE

vii

The Man Himself

II

The Poetry Books

6i

The Indian Library

104

The Other Stories

143

Some Early Criticisms

189

By Way of Epilogue

197

List of Books

227

Scheme of Stories.

. 230

KiPLINGANA

235

Envoy

. 237

;;fci. (2<yylj£ ^^^o:^ d^^^^

RUDYARD KIPLING

THE MAN HIMSELF

"Who is Rudyard Kipling?"

— Old Saying.

Rudyard Kipling — the man from nowhere
and everywhere — was born at Bombay, on
December the thirtieth in 1865.

He is the son of John Lockwood Kipling,
CLE. : who has filled the posts of Archi-
tectural Sculptor, Bombay School of Art,
1865-1875 ; Principal, Mayo School of Art;
Curator, Central Museum (both at Lahore),
1875-1893; and who is well k own as the
author and illustrator of " Beast and Man in
India," and as designer of the drawings in
the two ''Jungle Books" and on the covers
of the ''Rupee Books"; and who has been

II

12 RUDYARD KIPLING

described as a genial, artistic, generous,
literary cynic ; and whose son has written,
in the Preface to " Life's Handicap," that of
those tales '' a few, but these are the very
best, my father gave me." Also, Rudyard
Kipling is the son of his mother : who has
been described as a woman of sprightly,
sometimes caustic, wit ; and to whom her
son addressed those noble stanzas that are
on the forepage of "The Light that Failed"
— after having made her the dedicatee of
'' Plain Tales from the Hills," under the de-
signation of "The Wittiest Woman in India."
This is well known. But it may not be
quite so well known that Rudyard Kipling's
sister, Alice (now Mrs. Fleming), has written*
two novels — ''The Heart of a Maid" and
''A Pinchbeck Goddess"; nor that a bust of
herself, executed by the father — although a
perfect resemblance — has been mistaken for
one of Mary Anderson : which is not unlike
a real compliment. In addition, his mother's
two sisters had the happy discernment to
marry, the one, Sir Edward Poynter, the

THE MAN HIMSELF 13

other, Sir Edward Burne Jones. Where-
fore, it may be seen that Rudyard Kipling
is not precisely an oasis in a desert.

While upon the subject of relationship,
one must not overlook a certain reference
to his connection with Dr. Parker. When
the statement that is quoted below was first
made, the " Pall Mall Gazette " (at that
time, with the exception of the " National
Observer," quite the wittiest paper alive)
published these random rhymes : —

POOR MR. KIPLING:
Or, the Limitations of Knowledge.

" Kipling is a relation of my wife's ; though he does not know
it." — Dr. Parker : in interview in " Idler."

The secrets of the sea are his, the mysteries of Ind,
He knows minutely every way in which mankind has

sinned ;
He has by heart the hghtships 'twixt the Goodwins and

the Cape,
The language of the elephant, the ethics of the ape ;
He knows the slang of Silver Street, the horrors of

Lahore,
And how the man-seal breasts the waves that buffet

Labrador ;

14 RUDYARD KIPLING

He knows Samoan Stevenson, he knows the Yankee

Twain,
The value of Theosophy, of cheek, and Mr. Caine ;
He knows each fine gradation 'twixt the General and the

sub.,
The terms employed by Atkins when they sling him from

a pub. ;
He knows an Ekka pony's points, the leper's drear

abode,
The seamy side of Simla, the flaring Mile End-road ;
He knows the Devil's 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.
But, varied though his knowledge is, it has its limitation,
Alas, he doesn't know he 's Dr. Parker's wife's relation !

In the early days of Rudyard Kipling's
entrance into the world of English Writers
of To-Day it was often implied and avowed
that he was writing under a pseudonym : a
fanciful mistake arising probably from the
fact that there is a Rudyard in Stafford and
a Kipling in Yorkshire : when the noting
querist encounters some such 'scrap,' his
seduction is swift and sufficing. That there
is property in a name — especially to a literary

THE MAN HIMSELF 15

man — is an unfaltering truth that should
pass into a proverb ; our hero being cited
as an excellent example thereof. But rich
and rare though the name may be, another
Kipling dwelled in the land long and long
ago. His name franks him to notice :
Doctor Thomas Kipling, Dean of Peter-
borough. This whilom wonder of the
Church has been accorded a niche in a
collection of re-told travesties : he was a
pedantic theologian, no less rated for ignor-
ance than for bigotry ; his mighty opus was
the publication in fac-sim. of the "Codex
Bezae " ; he committed so many solecisms
that a * Kiplingism ' was long an expres-
sion for a Latin blunder. Parenthetically,
blunder is scarcely the word associated in
these days with a ' Kiplingism.' However,
suffice it that interest is attached to even
the least-worthy of the now famous name :
for he was satirised by Richard Porson !
And — just for the sake of the 'snippist' —
a few slight matters may be mentioned
concerning our subject's Christian appella-

i6 RUDYARD KIPLING

tion. There is a Rudyard of no mean note
in Browning's ''Strafford"; and in Siborne's
capital book on "Waterloo" a Major Rudyard
holds a good place. And last, there is a
Lake Rudyard: beside whose "placid"
waters the father and mother of Mr.
Kipling are alleged (by imaginative news-
paper women) to have plighted their troth ;
and to have christened their son with its
name in remembrance thereof

To leave fancies and to come to facts,
let it be recollected that Mr. Kipling is a
man somewhat below the medium height,
but of rather sturdy build. He is dark,
and blue-eyed, and possessed of a once-
sallow Anglo- Indian complexion that has
now been tanned by sun-rays of east and
west and north and south, and by winds
that have blown from every point of the
compass. His face— or rather, his portraits
and photographs— all know well. Everybody
is aware of those gold-rimmed spectacles
with the "split-sights"; and of that rugged,
more than ragged, moustache : which a girl

THE MAN HIMSELF 17

has described as being so fearsome a thing
that " you would have to Hke the owner
very much to let him kiss you." And every-
body is aware of that large close-cropped
head, and of those kindly smiling humorous
eyes, and of that resolute jaw and square
chin with the cleaving dimple, and of that
rather low but extremely broad forehead :
a formation that phrenologists tell us is
indicative of the most complete powers of
Intuition.

As a young man, Mr. Kipling is alleged
to have had a pronounced stoop — through
much bending over writing tables ; and to
have been noticeable for his jerky speech
and abrupt movements, and for his shyness
and avoidance of the company of strangers.
Also, he is said to have been remarkable
for a certain sensitiveness, and for an ever-
flowing delightful humour. In short — even
apart from his early-developed genius — he
seems to have been, if not a very alluring
youth, at least a youth most interesting and
likable.
B

i8 RUDYARD KIPLING

And he was as industrious as talented.
The story may not be perfectly true, but it
is highly characteristic — that he carved upon
his desk the words : " Oft was I weary when
I toiled at thee." This is a sentence men-
tioned by Longfellow as having been found
rudely cut into an oar — an oar supposed to
have once belonged to a galley-slave.

However, the life of Mr. Kipling had
best be taken in due rotation. Not that
there is a great deal with which the public
are concerned — except "land-travel and sea-
faring, boots and chest and staff and scrip."
Especially scrip !

At the age of five, he came over from
India and dwelled in Southsea. Thence
he went to the United Services College at
Westward Ho! — not far from Bideford,
Devonshire. While there, he edited a school
paper, and contributed to a North Devon
journal ; the first money he ever received
for his literary wares coming from '' The
World " in payment for a sonnet. It would
appear that he declined to be entered at an

THE MAN HIMSELF 19

English university : the wisdom of which
decision, after - events have fully justified :
it is difficult to figure to oneself the future
poet of Imperialism, the future energetic
world-encircler, lounging along the ''High"
o' afternoons, or pencilling early erotic poems
in a punt on the Cherwell. However — !
At the age of sixteen — when some boys have
not long thrown away their tops — Master
Kipling was back in India, and engaged
on the staff of ''The Civil and Military
Gazette " at Lahore : where he was com-
pelled to toil under a man that is said to
have appreciated his talents very little, and
to have kept him on work that was for the
most part rather uncongenial. A while be-
fore that, he had written some "Schoolboy
Lyrics " ; and at the age of eighteen he
produced a tiny volume of parodies called
"Echoes": all now nearly vanished. Later,
he became special correspondent to *' The
Pioneer " of Allahabad : which is a good-
class daily newspaper, in the first flight of
Indian journalism ; devoting especial care to

20 RUDYARD KIPLING

military matters, and circulating — among the
official classes, aristocracy, nobility — through-
out the country.

Day by day, in the two journals with
which Rudyard Kipling was associated, ap-
peared certain "Plain Tales" and ''Depart-
mental Ditties." But it seems that the
editors of both papers (with that " dulness
of blinded sight" of which w^e have Scrip-
tural knowledge) preferred to obtain from
their talented contributor matter-of-fact
leaders and paragraphs, rather than his fine
and rare imaginative work ; only using that
as a favour, and regarding its production
as mere eccentricity.

In 1885, Rudyard Kipling, conjointly with
his father and mother and sister, produced
a little book entitled ''The Quartette";
his contribution being that supremely start-
ling story " The Strange Ride of Morrowbie
Jukes." In 1886, "Departmental Ditties"
were published in book form ; In 1888,
a like dignity was accorded to " Plain Tales
from the Hills": both volumes were read.

THE MAN HIMSELF 21

In 1889, one by one — sudden and brilliant
as rockets — burst forth the "Rupee Books";
in 1889, the name of Rudyard Kipling was
known — as are the words used In house-
holds— from Cashmere to Colombo, from
Calcutta to Bombay; In 1889, the people of
England began to ask : " Who is Rudyard
Kipling — and why ? What has he done —
and how ? Where shall we learn — and
when?" In 1890, they knew. In 1890,
other people knew that there had appeared
''Letters of Marque" and ''The City of
Dreadful Night": two "Rupee Books" of
journalistic sketches, which the author, soon
afterwards, deemed sufficiently Immature to
be suppressed. In 1891, appeared "The
Light that Failed " ; and a few half-baked
people in surprised cities ran up and down
whimpering that the thing must be called
" The Book that Failed " : which was a
silliness. That silliness Rudyard Kipling
answered, in the same year, with " Life's
Handicap."

Long previously he had left India and

22 RUDYARD KIPLING

set out upon some travels ; going by way
of China and Japan to America. There he
saw things ; and wrote of them : in the
^'Detroit Free Press." His articles were
afterwards paid the unremunerative com-
pliment of an American pirate-edition : in
which was used Robert Louis Stevenson's
eerie tale, "The Bottle Imp" — to pad out
the volume !

San Francisco was the city he dealt with
first. The reporters — inquisitive as ubi-
quitous— appeared to have annoyed him.
He says that it was precisely like talking to
a child — a very rude child : every sentence
was begun with " Wael, noaw, tell us some-
thing about India." Also, the hideous voices
disturbed him. He declared the Americans'
accent to be some queer snort of delight that
a just Providence had fixed in their nostrils
because they pirated books from across the
water. . . . Concerning that piracy, it may
be remembered that a certain New York
firm declined his ''Plain Tales"; but that
later, when the book had become famous,

THE MAN HIMSELF 23

they published a stolen edition and sent the
author — ten guineas : which were returned.
. . V . The Bunco-steerer, and his failure to
steer Rudyard Kipling, makes most amusing
reading. As for the girls, he says, about
them, things good but qualified. . . . ''Sweet
and comely are the maidens of Devonshire ;
delicate and of gracious seeming those who
live in the pleasant places of London ; fas-
cinating, for all their demureness, the damsels
of France — clinging closely to their mothers,
and with large eyes wondering at the wicked
world ; excellent, in her own place and to
those who understand her, is the Anglo-Indian
'spin.' in her second season: but the girls
of America are above and beyond them all.
They are clever ; they can talk — yea, it is
said that they think! Certainly they have
an appearance of so doing : which is de-
lightfully deceptive." . . . But he rather
objected to their ruling the house. He •
pointed out that he came to see the fathers ; j
the fathers answered that, if that were his /
desire, he must call at the office : he said he'

24 RUDYARD KIPLING

would. In this same article, the American
negro, and brag and bombast at a public
dinner, are alike treated with that staccato
virility and vivid shrewdness that vv^e now
know as the "Kipling manner/'

From San Francisco he travelled to Port-
land, and did some salmon - fishing ; from
Pordand he travelled to the Yellowstone
Geyser, and did some sight-seeing. After
that, he went to Salt Lake City : whence
he wrote of the Mormons, and of that arch-
impostor and v/holesale libertine Brigham
Young — once of Utah ; now, possibly, with
God. Next, he visited Chicago: to which city
he objected — as does everybody — even those
who live there — barring the Jews and other
people of easy virtue. Also, he objected to
the plush fittings and drawing-room orna-
mentations that he sav/ in a certain church,
and to the preacher that praised God as
being above all an excellent man of business.
And his description of the cattle-killing is
vivid as flame in the darkness, and shocking
as blood in the sunlight.

THE MAN HIMSELF 25

He concluded this particular set of journal-
istic letters at Buffalo : where he discoursed
of America's comparative immunity from in-
vasion and of the defenceless condition of
her sea-coast ; ending with this striking-
sentence : " No man catches a snake by
the tail — because it may sting ; but you can
build a fire round a snake that will make it
squirm."

Before the year 1891 was over, he was in
England ; dodging interviewers of celebrities
and hunters of social lions, and communing
only with relations and a few choice spirits.

On January the eighteenth in 1892, he
was quietly married to Miss Carolyn Starr
Balestier. Her brother, some time previously,
had helped him to write ''The Naulahka";
and, not lone before the weddino-, had died
—in the very spring and promise of life.
But, as his collaborateur said of him, Wolcott
Balestier was a man " who had done his
work and held his peace, and had no fear to
die."

In the April of 1892 (memorable time!)

26 RUDYARD KIPLING

*' Barrack- Room Ballads" were offered to
the public as a book — a real live book ; and
in the July, ''The Naulahka," which had
run through the " Century Magazine," was
published volume-wise.

But long before that, Mr. and Mrs. Kipling
had started on a voyage round the world.
They appear to have gone first to New
York. At any rate, a letter of description
that by the unresting author was contributed
to "The Times" of April 13th, 1892, shows
them to have passed that way. It was fine
weather. Somebody told him that, if he
wanted real weather, he should go North.
He went. Soon he was " Within sight of
Monadnock." His power of word-painting
is exhibited in this letter to the full ; and he
concludes with his usual ''trick" of first
finding the ^^//usual and of then commenting
upon it in an unusual manner. A friend
said to him: "All my snow-shoe tracks are
gone ; but when that snow melts, a week
hence, or a month hence, they '11 all come
up again and show where I 've been." And

THE MAN HIMSELF 27

Rudyard Kipling Immediately imagines a
murder being committed, and snow falling
on the footsteps of the fugitive, and the
path that Cain took becoming revealed,
weeks after, by the melting of the uppermost
snow right to the end of the trail.

By July the travellers were In Yokohama.
** Great is the smell of the East!" writes
Rudyard Kipling. '' Railways, telegraphs,
docks and gunboats cannot banish it ; and
It will endure till the railways are dead. He
who has not smelt that smell has not lived."
In this same letter there is a delightful
Japanese baby : who, being Oriental, makes
no protest when Its father prevents It from
being drowned.

It was an intention of Rudyard Kipling's
to have visited Robert Louis Stevenson
at Samoa. What a glorious confabulation
would have been there! But the failure of
the Oriental Bank interfered most potently
with his plans; and lost him, among other
things, all sight and touch of that lovable
genius : who greatly admired his younger

28 RUDYARD KIPLING

fellow-craftsman's work, and, in "The Ebb
Tide," actually praised him by the sincerest
form of flattery.

Before November was past, the world-
encirclers had voyaged from Yokohama
across the North Pacific to Vancouver and
travelled by the C.P.R. to Montreal. From
there the great Imperialist wrote: "We
do possess an Empire .... an Empire
that is 7iot bounded by election - returns
on the North and Eastbourne-riots on the
South."

Then he v/ent on to treat of a township
boom, and to say: "Cortes is not dead,
nor Drake, and Sir Philip Sidney dies
every few months — if you know where to
look. The adventurers and captains cour-
ageous of old have only changed their
dress a little and altered their employments
to suit the world in which they move.
Meantime, this earth of ours — we hold a
fair slice of it, so far — is full of wonders
and miracles and mysteries and marvels ;
and, in default of being in the heart of

THE MAN HIMSELF 29

great deeds, it Is good to go up and down
seeing and hearing tell of them all."

And now (at the end of 1892) Mr.
Kipling pitched his tent about four miles
from Brattleboro', Vermont. There, near
the abode of his wife's uncle, he had a
house built. It was called "The Crow's
Nest"— by the newspapers. But Mr. Kip-
ling laughingly denied that appellation —
without vouchsafing the true name. How-
ever, there was born his first child, a girl,
christened Josephine.

In 1893, "Many Inventions" appeared;
and in 1894, ''The Jungle Book." By that
time, Mr. Kipling Vv^as in England ; staying
at Tisbury, Wiltshire : where, in an inter-
view (or rather, a friendly chat) with a "Pall
Mall Gazette" writer, he spoke of having
visited Bermuda; and smilingly answered
a question concerning that most sickening
of subjects, " The New Woman," by saying
that "those people are shouting for a cause
that 's already v/on : a w^oman to-day can do
exactly what her body and soul will let her."

30 RUDYARD KIPLING

In 1895, was published "The Second
Jungle Book," and in 1896 (Nov. 5th) rolled
forth "The Seven vSeas." May their waters
never subside !

In 1897, "Captains Courageous" appeared
in book form, after having run serially in
"Pearson's Magazine." In 1898 (January)
Mr. Kipling and his family steamed by the
" Dunvegan Castle'' to Cape Town. After-
wards, he went north as far as Bulawayo.
By the summer, he was back in London :
where he made a speech : which made
* copy ': which made ' talk.' By the autumn,
he was on a man-o'-war ; watching the naval
manoeuvres along the south-west coast of
Ireland. By the winter, he was reposing
at Rottingdean, four miles from Brighton ;
and the public were laying aside "The
Day's Work" to look at "A Fleet in Being."
And by the February of 1899, the world-
famous author and his wife and children
were on board the "Majestic" — steaming at
nineteen knots an hour straight for New
York and pain and sorrow.

THE MAN HIMSELF 31

Of Mr. Kipling's heartache, it is not my
(nor your) business to speak — at any length.
We — you and I — must merely leave our
cards, with a few straight simple words of
condolement and regret ; and then — go away.
Not always is a writer's heart to be judged
by his brain ; but, in Mr. Kipling's case, the
author is the man. And they that have
read the first paragraph of the third portion
of "Without Benefit of Clergy," will realize
what, to the sincere soul that conceived
those touching words, the loss of a child
must truly mean. As proof that Mr. Kipling
can be sensitive and sympathetic in life as
well as in literature, the following reprint
is given from the '* Daily Chronicle " :
'''M. A. P.' publishes a letter from Mr.
Rudyard Kipling, which is especially in-
teresting in view of the author's recent
bereavement. It appears that the little son
of a gifted writer, whom Mr. Kipling had
aided in gaining the ear of the public when
all seemed against him, died on the very day
when the long struggle was over, and his

32 RUDYARD KIPLING

father's first book was published. Mr. Kip-
ling promptly wrote a long letter to the
sorrow-stricken father, from which 'M.A. P.'
is permitted to quote the following passage :

"'As to the matter which you have done me
the honour to tell me, I can only sympathise most
deeply and sorrowfully. People say that that
kind of wound heals. It doesn't. It only skins
over ; but there is at least some black consolation
to be got from the old and bitter thought that the
boy is safe from the chances of the after-years. I
don't know that that helps, unless you happen to
know some man who is under deeper sorrow than
yours — a man, say, who has watched the child of
his begetting go body and soul to the devil, and
feels that he is responsible. But it is the mother
who bore him who suffers most when the young
life goes out.'"

Of Mr. Kipling's illness, one 7nay speak.
Two nations have watched, by proxy,
beside the sick-bed of the man that has
so endeared himself to all Anglo-Saxon
hearts ; and knov.dedge of his fight with
Death is property of the public. Discus-
sion' of his health is a penalty peculiar

THE MAN HIMSELF 33

to his position — a penalty that he must
pay/

title, does not belong to himself, as do you
and I ; he Is part of the Country — as is a
great sailor, a great soldier, a great scientist,
a great statesman. And, although there is
rnuch monstrous cant babbled about the
sorrow and suffering felt by the Public when
a famous man departs this life, it is Indis-
putable that, had Rudyard Kipling died, the
hearts of millions of men would have ached
with an agony of loss.

Those are big words ; but they concern
a big thing. There are thousands that do
write ; there are dozens that can write : but
there Is only one Rudyard Kipling.

Even if his later stories have not pleased
his spoilt readers quite so well as did his
earlier ones, they are still awaited with all
the old avidity. And so — like little children
sitting at the feet of their father — we ask
for more ; and by the aid of love and science
and the stricken man's unquenchable spirit,
we shall get more. And we shall be de-
c

34 RUDYARD KIPLING

lighted ; and we shall be enthralled ; and we
shall be grateful.

Why has the late supreme tribute of
anxiety and sympathy been paid to merely
a practitioner of the craft of the writer ?
The answer springs to the tongue. Because
of his anxiety and sympathy, for and with,
the well-being and struggles of the men that
build the British Empire. Certainly they do
It for promotion and pay : we know that ;
and so does Rudyard Kipling. But they
do it so supremely well that the matter is
exalted to something finer than mere social
and monetary consideration. And that is
what Rudyard Kipling has seen ; and that
is what Rudyard Kipling has described ; and
that is what Rudyard Kipling has believed,
besung, belauded. In return, the men of the
Empire have belauded Rudyard Kipling.
For they have looked upon his work ; and
lo, they have seen that that also is good !

''Patriotism," growled Johnson, ''is the
last refuge of a scoundrel." But we all
know of whom that was said, and under

THE MAN HIMSELF 35

what conditions ; and so we all judge accord-
ingly. Non-patriotism is the first blunder of
a fool. If a man does not stand up for and
fight about his own country, he will pay in
the long run a heavy penalty for that thing
that is worse than a crime. Nothinof leads
so swiftly and so surely to racial bankruptcy
as does indifference to the doings of the
native land. And as such indifference —
which so often results in self-detraction — is
largely the outcome of sheer ignorance,
Rudyard Kipling was perfectly justified in
asking: ''What should they know of England
who only England know.'* "

He set out to teach them. He first dis-
covered India ; then, he found Canada, South
Africa, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand and
the thousand and one pieces of land sur-
rounded by water that make up the Greater
British Isles. The Empire was a map ;
Rudyard Kipling made it a fact. The
British Possessions were marked in red —
plebeian red; Rudyard Kipling painted them
purple — imperial purple.

o

6 RUDYARD KIPLING

And so he is not only a patriot himself,
he is the cause of patriotism in others. He
is an articulate man, and has told us what
we only knew; he has brought it to our
notice till we have realised it. He has
expressed what you and I have merely felt.
But (and there is as much virtue in "but"
as in *'if") some there were who did not
feel at all. Them he has taught what to
feel — what they have a right to feel.

Listen to others ! Emerson's " English
Traits " are packed with encouragement
and commendation : '' I find the English-
man to be him of all men who stands
firmest in his shoes." . . . ''They are
bound to see their measure carried, and
will stick to it through ages of defeat." . . .
"He sticks to his traditions and usages ;
and, so help him God, he will force his
island by-laws down the throats of great
countries." ... " They are good at storm-
ing redoubts, at boarding frigates, at dying
in the last ditch, or any desperate service
which has daylight and honour in it ; but

THE MAN HIMSELF 37

not, I think, at enduring the rack, or any
passive obedience — Hke jumping off a castle-
roof at the word of a czar." ..." The
stabiHty of England is the security of the
modern world." . . . And so on, and so on.
Even two French writers recently, and
separately, glorified the perfidious English ;
and this, at the expense of their own
nation. And many and many a year ago,
in a kingdom by the sea, a Spanish
chronicler, writing of some English archers
that were fighting side by side with his
fellow-countrymen, set down words to the
effect that — these men magnified their chief-
tain, the Lord Scales, beyond the highest
of the Spanish grandees ; that they were not
good companions in the camp, but were fine
fellows in the field ; and that they went
into battle slowly, and persisted obstinately,
seeming never to know when they were
beaten.

It is precisely this element of strength
that Rudyard Kipling has treated so in-
sistendy and so well ; it is precisely this

38 RUDYARD KIPLING

element of strensfth that he has brous^ht
home to a " sheltered people's " business
and bosoms — strength of body, heart, brain,
soul — strength that makes the English race
— makes it what it is. Consequently, apart
from his merits as a teller of tales and a
singer of songs, Rudyard Kipling possesses
other values. He is a Friend, a Force, a
Future : he has praised us to a greater self-
reliance ; he has inspired us to efforts yet
more potent ; he has pisgah- sighted us to
lands of our desire. But (to return to the
Friend) he has also warned us — warned us
against an overweening confidence. And,
long before he wrote " Recessional," he had
reminded us that we are "neither children
nor gods, but men — in a world of men."

That last word brings me to women.
I have never met a woman that was a
Kiplingite ; and I should not have believed
it if I had. The writings of Rudyard
Kipling do not appeal to women : perhaps,
because they are not intended so to do.
In the first place, he does not think that

THE MAN HIMSELF 39

gynarchy Is a greatly good form of govern-
ment, does not believe that Woman Is
the salt of the earth (however much She
may be the sugar), does not avow Her
superiority over that brutal despot, man —
with a small 'm.' In the second place, he
does not know that women made the British
Empire for men to enjoy, does not know
that women build bridges, design docks,
invent Ironclads ; but he does know that,
despite the fact that women can find fault
with the pattern of the buttons on the
carriage-paddings, it took some nasty, help-
less, silly men to scheme out and produce
the rather useful locomotive. In the third
place, he does not write of adulterous en-
tanglements prettily, does not powder the
nude or perfume the noisome, does not glorify
the places where " the half-drunk lean over
the half-dressed," does not exhibit a study
of sex-repression labelled religious fervour,
does not re-crucify Christ in order to enu-
merate the drops of sweat and blood upon
*' His muscles": all of w^hlch most women

40 RUDYARD KIPLING

like, and soifie women 'adore.' In the fourth,
fifth, sixth place, Rudyard Kipling writes
for men. Yet, after all, he has written a
thing called '' The Story of the Gadsbys,"
and another thing called "Without Benefit
of Clergy"; and, in his piece of ''rhymed
journalism," "An Imperial Rescript," he has
voiced well a certain desire and deed general
to civilised man : " We will work for our-
selves and a woman for ever and ever,
Amen ! "

Still, this brings us to one of his limita-
tions. Has he any limitations } Oh, yes !

As a matter of truth, it is quite a difficult
thing to depict women faithfully, and yet
interestingly. Few have done it ; and
women themselves least of all. George
Eliot is perhaps among the best of the
feminine novelists (Balzac is probably chief
among the masculine) that have performed
this feat of combination. Concerning their
women, the two giants, Thackeray and
Dickens — if one excepts their naggers, im-
beciles, grotesques, shrews, sharpers, schemers

THE MAN HIMSELF 41

— wrote mostly of dolls and an^mics. And
what of the revolting daughters and shriek-
ing sisterhood of our day ? They are libels ;
and by their own sex. George Meredith
and Thomas Hardy are, without doubt, the
most faithful yet interesting delineators of
women in the present. And even they
endow them — the one, with an amazing wit
that is all his own; the other, with an as-
tounding caprice that is too dramatic to be
wholly life-like.
/But to return to Rudyard Kipling! It
is a truth that he has not given us a
woman well - observed, sweet, pleasant,
human, strongly-weak, and, above all, dis-
tinctly feminine. ("William the Conqueror"
quite deserves her masculine name, and is
only one of the author's men be-petticoated.)
But because he has not, is scarcely to say
that he can not. I have known certain
critics to weep and cry and fail to wipe
their collective eye in regard of Robert
Louis Stevenson's supposed inability to
write a woman — till they read about two

42 RUDYARD KIPLING

people named Barbara and Catrlona. And
something similar to that is what I trust
may yet happen in the case of another
author.

Rudyard Kipling has small veneration.
That is as it should be. There is much,
very much, in this our world to love and
enjoy and admire, but there is very little
to venerate ; and so Rudyard Kipling has
seen, and so Rudyard Kipling has inferred :
which is why the smug ones of that vast
nation of hypocrites, the British, going softly
under the stars, have not only objected to
his inferences, but have denounced them as
being either over-statements or downright
lies. In the early days (by those self-same
smug ones) he was often numbered among
the mighty army of know-all-and-know-
nothings, often accused of ascertain intoler-
able cocksureness, often branded with the
crime of being young ; and this last not at
all in the sense that Littimer inferred that
David Copperfield was young. Those
charges were made through Rudyard

THE MAN HIMSELF 43

Kipling's own fault : they were the out-
come of a serious omission on his part.
He should have begged, borrowed or stolen
a grey wig — better still, a white one. Then
would he have been hailed as a seer and
a sage ; then would he not have been called
a phenomenal infant, a terrible child, a
clever but impertinent boy. But there!
We now hear little of that sort of elderly
envy — born mostly of matured Incompetence.
And why should we.^ Youth is told that
it does not know everything — which is
right ; but it is told so In a manner that
implies that it knows nothing — which is
wrong. Because wisdom and information
are to be measured only by years, is why
William Pitt was made Prime Minister of
England at the age of twenty-four^

Undoubtedly ^udyard Kipling, once upon
a time, occasionally wrote a domineering,
I ' ve-told-you-so-and - you-needn't -attempt-to-
deny- it -for -you -can't -get -round -it sort of
style ; undoubtedly Rudyard Kipling, even
now, occasionally " writes at the top of his

44 RUDYARD KIPLING

voice." But he has a reason. Thomas
Carlyle — who was scarcely a fool — long
since saw, and demonstrated, that if any-
body wishes to be heard above the rest
(like Corney Grain's choir-boy) it is neces-
sary to shout the loudest. And (this by
the way) has Rudyard Kipling ever been
confuted ?

It is not to be denied that before his
Spring he garnered Autumn's grain, that he
saw the sunset ere men saw the day, that
he was too wise in that he should not know :
this, if only because he himself has poetic-
ally but personally said as much. And it is
also not to be denied that the old head upon
his young shoulders was hardly always well
poised, was hardly always truly balanced.
But if he did not see life quite steadily, if he
did not see life quite whole, at least, even in
his earliest days, he imitated Keats' Isabella,
and ''did not stamp or rave."

He is English. He has blood and bone,
bowels and brains : which give him force,
power, compassion, genius — all controlled, all

THE MAN HIMSELF 45

healthy. He has neither the hysteria of the
Celt nor the neurosis of the Norman. He is
Saxon to the marrow. He is pre-eminently
wholesome and unconventionally sane.

It would appear (his affectionate depiction
of Mulvaney notwithstanding) that Rudyard
Kipling is rarely dazzled by the undeniable
virtues of the Sons of Erin Into not seeing
their equally undeniable vices : he omits to
forget, as example, that Ireland has never
long wanted for a native Judas. Still, he is
aware that the '' disthressful counthry " has
had troubles — troubles often in no way
merited ; and so he sympathises. As for
the Scotch, them he duly admires and
respects. But the Inmost heart of him goes
overwhelmingly out to the English. Them
he loves. It Is a rooted opinion of his —
never expressed but often inferred — that the
arising of the Englishman is the finest thing
that has happened in all the world ; and
there are records not a few, set down in
printed books of History, that rather go to
warrant his belief.

46 RUDYARD KIPLING

Concerning an alleged defect. He Is not
academical. And that Is the rock upon
which so many of his critics — friendly or
otherwise — have split and foundered. It
has been asserted — and with truth — that
(to keep to his prose) he has no style ;
that he has no majesty, no complexity, no
balance, no rhythm. Therefore, because a
man does not write like De Quincey, or
Pater, or Macaulay, or Stevenson, he cannot
write at all ! But If an author's manner fits
his matter, surely that Is a supreme feat of
style. And who, with any knowledge of
their subject, can truthfully deny Rudyard
Kipling's achievement of that feat ?

Because he Is not academical is why he
has not been treated academically in the
following chapters : which are left to speak
for themselves.

It is reported that James Anthony Froude
once said of Rudyard Kipling words to the
effect that he was very smart — particularly
in his verses ; but that he (Froude) should
think that he (Kipling) had had no real

THE MAN HIMSELF 47

education. Now, this Is amusing when one
remembers that Froude's gilded and be-
spattered idol, Thomas Carlyle, had little
Latin and less Greek; and it is more amus-
ing still when one remembers that, with the
exceptions of Defoe and Balzac, no novelist
of any time exhibits such a vast knowledge
as does Rudyard Kipling of the circum-
stances of life among different ranks and
conditions of men, of the various ways in
which they earn their living or squander
their existence, of the patter of their pas-
times, the slang of their sports, the techni-
calities of their trades, of the thousand and
one manners in which they speak, move,
feel, think, live, and have their being.

Though not a great scholar, Rudyard
Kipling is a great artist. He has been
labelled as the " English Maupassant."
This is the finest compliment ever paid to
— Maupassant : one third of whose work is
unmitigated filth ; another third, all out of
proportion ; a last third, the product of a
supreme talent. Rudyard Kipling's work is

/

48 RUDYARD KIPLING

sometimes brutal, but never base ; some-
times unduly compressed, but never unduly
contorted ; and it is the result of an obser-
vation and insight more faithful and keen
than was possessed by even the great writer
that wrote " Bel Ami."

Rudyard Kipling's ' secret ' is very simple :
he puts an 'idea' into every sentence. He
suggests more than describes ; he infers
more than tells ; he insinuates more than
declares. He Is often boisterous, and he
has no repose ; but, although he may irritate,
he will not bore. Never, never does he
commit the sin — unpardonable in a novelist
or poet — of being dull.

Judging him as a teller of tales, the hats
of Rudyard Kipling's fellow-craftsmen fly off
at the mere sound of his name. Of course
he has had failures ; but these are few and
comparative, and are largely the result of
his being an Innovator and an experimental-
ist. At his best, he is among the greatest.
He is a master of plot and narrative, de-
scription and dialogue ; he is a master of

THE MAN HIMSELF 49

surprise and contrast, suspense and con-
clusion. He Is astoundingly fresh : almost
beyond all other men, he can supply the
anciently-modern hunger for a new thing.
He is supremely original : which makes it
quite difficult to phrase him comparatively :
here is not a case of " Heine writing with
the pen of Charles Dickens"; nor one of
Shakespeare dabbling with the inkstands
of women. He Is never guilty of using
stereotype ; he keeps the fingers of the
smartest comp. perpetually a-flutter for

janusual combinations of letters and words.

(fiis vocabulary is like Sam Weller's know-
ledge of London^ extensive and peculiar ;
also it Is strikingly appropriate and wonder-
fully informed. He has a great gift of
adjective, and a greater gift of verb. He
can phrase and differentiate every kind of
movement, and most outward expressions
of emotion, with astonishing freshness and
fidelity — two things that In combination are \
rare. He has mastered the short sentence."!
Which, sometimes, has mastered him. Be-

D

50 RUDYARD KIPLING

hold, you have an example! To put a full
stop where another sign of punctuation
should be, is neither brilliant nor correct ;
it is merely smart and tricky. As for his
paragraphs, he now and then forgets that
a paragraph is not a heap but a structure :
which lack of form, combined with their
plenitude of brevity, partly accounts for
their lack of dignity. But because he does
not use the long-winded methods of our
earlier writers, preferring his own breathless
ways, is scarcely to prove himself in- the
wrong. Although Stevenson contrived to
effect a splendid compromise, we must not
blame Rudyard Kipling for omitting to be
the man that wrote ''The Master of Ballan-
trae" and " Virginibus Puerisque" — to name
nothing else. On the contrary, we must hug
to our bosoms the " Rupee Books " and one
or two other things, and thank our gods for
them. And when ''the youngest critic has
died," and the eldest has been superannuated,
or scorned, there will still be others to
repeat — as I have done — that Rudyard

THE MAN HIMSELF 51

Kipling's manner fitted perfectly his matter : -^
which as a feat of style is rather like
success.

He is not often a wit: that is to say he
does not deal in paradox and epigram. (But he
IS a humorist : that is to say, he can write
farces and comic songs.^'^ Those he does to
perfection. Comedy, however, true comedy,
is rarely on his palette : which is too much
occupied with the primaries to leave any
room for those delicate half-tints that go to
the -painting of manners — such manners as
go to the making of comedy. Still, let it be
remembered that Rudyard KipHng is, first
and last and all the time, an Ironist — a great
Ironist.

As for his pathos, it is always as obvious ,,
to the reader as to the author ; but it is
never, never obviously stated. He does not
squeeze the sponge. However, few writers
of our day can so unerringly bring to the
throat the lump that brings the groan : this,
by that very abstention referred to in the
previous sentence, and by a steady deter-

52 RUDYARD KIPLING

mination to refrain always from any kind
of Bleat.

Studying his power of exhibiting char-
acter, one discovers that his range is nar-
row. What he does treat, he treats well;
what he does know, he knows perfectly. But
his sympathies and observations are directed
in so circumscribed a manner that he draws
from but two or three models only. The
majority of his heroes are all alike. They
are ironical, brusque, and abrupt ; they are
strong, masterful, and limited ; they love
work more than song, work more than wine,
work more than woman. Now and again
the ecstasy of conviction is upon their author,
and then he extols their brute-force virtues
with an insistence that comes near to being
tiresome. But although not wholly lovable,
they are wholly admirable ; and they stand — -
adroit, alert, alive — always flat upon their feet,
firm-planted as the men that they are. And
should you ever want a friend, take care
to select him from some such men as these :
for to do you a service he would storm.

THE MAN HIMSELF 53

single-handed, the red-hot gates of Hell. . . .
As for Rudyard Kipling's women, viewed
beside his men they seem conventional. One
or two of them are of the stage stagey. I
could name actresses who would impersonate
such women more than well : because they
have played like parts so often. But those
that are not artificial make good reading, and
are always interesting ; and three or four of
them are supremely desirable. . . . Rudyard
Kipling's children (those in the books) are
the best that have been born (in print) for
years and years. Of course, some of his
boys are merely pocket-editions of his men ;
but others (including the girls) are children
from the soles of their pink feet to the top
of their curly heads. And even if your
Philoprogenitiveness be only average, either
you swear that these most lovable little ones
are nearly as good as your own, or you pray
to Heaven that soon you will be blest with
— say one man-child and one girl-child to
place beside them.

Let it be clearly understood that most of

54 RUDYARD KIPLING

the above statements are mainly tentative.
Rudyard Kipling is still in solution — fortu-
nately ; and so cannot yet be crystallised.
But — to keep to his power of exhibiting
character, especially masculine character — I
venture to submit that he will not greatly
change. In the first place, he often finds
it difficult to escape from himself; in the
second, he is often self-revealing in his pre-
sentments : which latter assertion is, of the
former, a repetition made deliberately. -lt_is_
/,- sometimes _stated^ that Rudyard Kipling is
among those that are entirely impersonal in
their art. This is wrong. Time and again,
the writer jumps through the paper ; time
and again, the hand is the hand of Esau but
the voice is the voice of Jacob. For proof,
read Rudyard Kipling's works, and then
rejoice that such is so.

Who are the writers that have influenced
Rudyard Kipling? Several. Who are the
writers that Rudyard Kipling has influenced ?
Scores. As Baudelaire said of Balzac's
characters, he is '' loaded to the muzzle with

THE MAN HIMSELF 55

will"; and, as Henry James said of Balzac
himself, in the years to come, it will be seen
that " he passed that way, and that he had
incomparable power." [The writers that have
influenced Rudyard Kipling are, chiefly,
William Ernest Henley, James Thomson,
Bret Harte, Macaulay, Defoe, Dickens, the
compilers of the Biblo-^nd Rudyard Kipling.
William Ernest Henley ''showed him the
way to promotion and pay " and helped
him to chant "The English Flag" and
"A Song of the English"; James Thomson
brought home to him the awesome things
that exist in "The City of Dreadful Night";
Bret Harte drew his attention to the literary
picturesqueness of vagabonds ; Macaulay
flashed the spark that fired his genius for
proper names ; Defoe taught him the trick
of using minute details and exact terminology
to gain verisimilitude ; Dickens inspired him
to sympathise with the lowly, and to see the
humour that dwells in small things ; the
compilers of the Bible gave him a large
share of his diction, and showed him the

56 RUDYARD KIPLING

value of a cunning simplicity ; and Rudyard
Kipling gave him his irony of the under-
statement, his flash-light powers, his crafts-
manship, his industry, invention, insight,
and ability to make a dream come true
and a lie seem something else.

Listen to Robert Louis Stevenson! ''There
is a lot of the living devil in Kipling. It is
his quick-beating pulse that gives him a
position very much apart. Even with his
love of journalistic effect, there is a tide of
life in It all."

Precisely! "A tide of life in it all"!
'' There — that is the secret. Go to sleep.
You will wake, and remember, and under-
stand." You will understand that this man
— who Is alleged to be unequal to making a
sustained effort, who because he does not
commit a poem of twenty thousand lines, or
a novel of a quarter of a million words, is
told that he is good only as one capable of
dashing things off, things as short-lived as
soon-made — you will understand that this
man can paint pictures of Life seen by flashes

THE MAN HIMSELF 57

of intuition, can sing songs of Life timed by-
beatings of the heart, can make things that
will live as long as the language because
they deal again and again with Life, and
once more Life !
\ Despite certain statements to the contrary
— despite their seeming sincerity^ — I still
believe that the quick publication of his early
books of verse, written when quite a boy,
indicates that Rudyard Kipling even then
possessed the superlative idea so necessary
for success and greatness : The Determination
To Emerge. He seems from the very first
to have resolved to express himself — no
matter how or when or where.

''They shall hear me ; they shall know me;
they shall acknowledge that I am I ! When
this dominant thought has once come to a
man, he cannot look back : there are no
returning steps. He must go on — forward,
forward, forward : unhasting, perhaps, but
certainly unresting. Peace of mind he may
know never ; but he will know success and
fame ; and he will stamp his personality upon

58 RUDYARD KIPLING

his fellows. . . . "Yes?" can be asked.
" And when he has won to that which he
wants, what is it worth ? " Well — that is for
him to decide. At all events, he will not be
as those of whom it is written :

" They toil through many years ; then, on a day,
They die not — for their Hfe was death — but cease,
And round their narrow lips the mould falls close."

Of course, it must not be forgotten that
the fairies presiding at the birth of Rudyard
Kipling were as generous as they were
gracious. His "good -luck" has been
enormous. First, to be endowed with his
especial early-blossoming gifts ; then, to be
led by the hand of that self-same dowering
Chance to comparatively unknown places
among comparatively unknown peoples (and
such places and such peoples !) was fine
fortune supreme. Of course, it was not un-
exceptional. Other writers have had much
the same sort of opportunities ; other writers
have performed much the same sort of
seizures. And there is this to be considered:

THE MAN HIMSELF 59

Rudyard Kipling would have written well
and strikingly about whatever men and
things existed in whatever hole and corner
of the globe he himself chanced to be placed.
Nevertheless, I repeat that his '' good-luck "
has been enormous : if only because he was
so fortunate as not to be driven to eat out
his heart in some utterly unapposite office, or
some utterly uncongenial workshop ; if only
because Poverty did not scar and maim
him before his life's work began — before he
found his right groove ; and if only because
he won to fame and fortune in the days of
his youth — in the days Vv'hen such things
have a value complete as untainted. How-
ever, of that said "good-luck" he has taken
all possible advantage ; and this not merely
to gain his own ends, but to inspire and plea-
sure a vast majority of his fellow country-
men.

Rudyard Kipling's fight for Emergence,
though soon ended — speaking by almanac
— was soon begun, and lasted many toil-
some years. Even unto tlus day his gospel

6o RUDYARD KIPLING

of work is practised by Its preacher — prac-
tised without pause and without palter. And
not one of his many rewards Is undeserved.
Therefore, let us honour the name of Rud-
yard Kipling. Then, let us humbly petition
that he give us more and more and more :
not from the West — others can do that ;
but from the East, the all-enchanting East!^
And peradventure the over-mastering glam-
our of the early days will be ours again ;
and when we have once more glorified the
man that consolidated the British Empire
In song, we shall bless anew the man that
told us "Plain Tales from the Hills" and
gave us the " Rupee Books " and sang us
the " Barrack- Room Ballads," and songs of
our sea.

THE POETRY BOOKS

If I have longer stood the battle's brunt,
If I have longer waited for the light,
Shall I not have a greater need than those
Who calmly slept them thro' the long dark fight ?

Was it for naught I worked those years of dole,
Weaving a web of sorrow for my soul ?
Was it for naught I fought with discontent
Day, week, month, year ; until the tale was spent ?

— Nightshades.

A FEW there are who assert that Rudyard
^TCipling cannot write poetry at all. Such
assertion is not a mistake ; it is a falsehood
— a falsehood born of malice and envy, or of
ignorance and apathy, or a mere love of the
conventional. True he sometimes becomes
journalistic, true he occasionally indulges in
slang, true he actually makes chief use of
*' story and character."^

6i

62 RUDYARD KIPLING

It is muttered, in certain quarters, that
Rudyard Kipling is a mere tapper of drums,
a mere agitator of cornets. His Muse, it is
avowed, hath her abode only in the barrack-
room and the dockyard, only in the port and
the camp. That is to say, only in the places
where sojourn those uncultured persons that
guard us while we sleep, only in the places
where live and die those valiant hearts whose
owners so well police the British Empire :
in order that you and I may assert, in
very truth, that " Fair is our lot, O goodly
is our heritaore ! "

Quite interesting would it be to learn what
the average Professor of Poetics really thinks
of Rudyard Kipling as a National Balladist.
But there ! People do say that the average
Professor of Poetics lives merely to lament
the "undue ardour that characterises the
sonnet-sequences of Shakespeare." ... In
the eyes of the literary academician, poetry
must of necessity rhyme, kiss and bliss and
dove and love ; must of necessity treat
mainly of birds and bees and butterflies, of

THE POETRY BOOKS 63

songs and souls and stars. . . . As to form
— well, Rudyard Kipling has not yet written
a ''Hades of an Epic," nor an "Ode on
Threading a Darning Needle " ; and it is
devoutly to be hoped that he w^ill not now
even attempt to try. Also, it is devoutly to
be hoped that he will not now even essay to
walk in the pleasant paths of that garden
where nestle the song-birds — really admir-
able and fine — that trill so tunefully among
the clipped hedges and dwarfed trees ; and
that fly so freely amid the trammels of fore-
regulated rhymes and pre-numbered verses.
Let others — good men and true, wearing
their self-placed shackles with ease and
dexterity — let those be rondolists and son-
neteers, let those be makers of triolets and
quatrains : they can manage such matters so
much better than could Rudyard Kipling :
who, in turn, can perform feats that to
them would be not at all difficult but
only impossible. And his achievements
— the obvious retort notwithstanding — are
things of joy and glory.

64 RUDYARD KIPLING

Let us consider them. The majority of
those that have read the Poetry Books of
Rudyard Kipling will thus have pleasure
of recognition ; the majority of the others,
delight of introduction.

" Schoolboy Lyrics," as their name may
perhaps imply, were first of his poems ; and
were printed, for private circulation only,
when the author was but sixteen. They
are possessed of the flow and force of
right words that mark so strongly his later
work ; but, as might be expected, the trail
of a boyish decadence is over all. How-
ever, the ''cynicism" is in no wise silly;
and among these youthful outpourings are
things, not a few, worthy of a grown man.
The most memorable — the most memorable
to me — deals with a dual scheme of Creation.
The poet theorises that every time the Lord
created a living thing, the Devil created its
travesty or parody. Thus, when God made
man, Satan made the anthropoid ape ; and
so on.

" Echoes " I can say very little about. It

THE POETRY BOOKS 65

happens to be the one printed book of
Rudyard Kipling's that I have not possessed,
or perused. The volume is remarkably
scarce. A copy was sold not long ago for
over thirty-three pounds. It was published
at Lahore in the writer's eighteenth year.
By Kiplingites, "Echoes" is understood to
be a bookling of poetic parodies.

"Departmental Ditties" were the subject
of Mr. Kipling's *' Idler" article (''My
first book") in 1892. Their history is
narrated with many picturesque and witty
touches. It was really the firstling of his
flock, and he was rightly proud of it.

Figure to yourself:

" A sort of a book, a lean oblong docket, wire-
stitched, to imitate a D.O. Government envelope,
printed on one side only, bound in brown paper,
and secured with red tape. It was addressed to
all heads of departments and all Government
officials, and among a pile of papers would have
deceived a clerk of twenty years' service. Of
these ' books ' we made some hundreds, and as
there was no necessity for advertising, my public
being to my hand, I took reply-postcards, printed
E

66 RUDYARD KIPLING

the news of the birth of the book on one side, the
blank order-form on the other, and posted them
up and down the Empire, from Aden to Singapore,
and from Quetta to Colombo. . . . Each edition
grew a little fatter, and, at last, the book came to
London with a gilt top and a stiff back, and was
advertised in the publishers' poetry department.

" But I loved it best when it was a little brown
baby, v/ith a pink string round its stomach ; a
child's child, ignorant that it was afflicted with all
the most modern ailments ; and before people had
learned, beyond doubt, how its author lay awake
of nights in India, plotting and scheming to write
something that should ' take ' with the English
public."

The courteous dedicatee of this book is
thanked for a gift of the first " Ditties."
By that (and by the author's own state-
ment) I know that the cover bore the
words : '' Departmental Ditties. On Her
Majesty's Service Only {erased) No I of
1886. To all Heads of Departments and
all Anglo-Indians. Rudyard Kipling, Assis-
tant. Department of Public Journalism,
Lahore District." Tv/o newspapers were
thanked for permission to reprint. There

THE POETRY BOOKS 67

were twenty-six poems only ; but a gen-
uine copy will soon be worth a pound a
poem !

Of course, the volume best for real use
is that containing the "other verses," and
the vocabulary. It is dedicated to the *' dear
hearts across the seas " in a few simple
sincere verses, beginning :

" I have eaten your bread and salt,
I have drunk your water and wine,
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the Hves that ye led were mine."

In the opening "General Summary," there
is a satirical reference to the similarity
existing between the Official sinning of
the arrowhead age and present spacious
times. The theme is rich in sardonic possi-
bilities.

The first ditty that draws sharp attention
is ''The Story of Uriah." As the title fore-
shadows, the story is the old-new one of a
coveting third person, collusion and then —
another husband put in the forefront of the

68 RUDYARD KIPLING

fight. The lawful owner of the present
Bathsheba was one Jack Barrett.

" And when the Last Great Bugle-call

Adown the Hurnai throbs,
When the last grim joke is entered

In the big black Book of Jobs,
And Quetta graveyards give again

Their victims to the air,
I shouldn't like to be the man

Who sent Jack Barrett there ! "

Even the ''Quarterly" praised the note
of real anger in this last verse.

" The Man who could Write" and, " The
Rupaiyat of Omar Kalvin " show that if
Mr. Kipling paid much attention to political
penning, he would be no feather in the
scale against his Opposition. His Carlyleian
faculty of marking his man with a name,
that, thrown as a burr, sticks like a javelin ;
and his knowledge of official nomenclature,
(important item,) would make him feared
in all Forum fighting.

In "The Man who could Write," the
Bengali Babu, who is ever trying to blow

THE POETRY BOOKS 69

himself out bullock - size, is labelled as
Boanerges Blitzen of the ready pen. Mr.
Kipling thoughtfully points out to him, that
men do not float Simla-ward in paper ships
upon a stream of ink, but need still some-
thing more : '' Wicked wit of Colvin, Irony
of Lyall."

Parenthetically, the Babu is a fowl of
wonderous feather : a particular product
of India, and worthy of a Monograph.
Freighted from earliest days with some
such fearful name as — Bandarjee Ajib
Kitabkhana, he writes books, serried ranks
of them (only the White Ant could get
through them), and sends ''My Notes on
India" (pp. 550) in dozens to everybody
who is anybody — from the Lieutenant-
Governor, down to the latest imported M.P.
''More English than the English," he has
b^en known to correct the pronunciation
of them that taught him. So much for
Boanerges Babu and his futile fluency and
impertinent ignorance. If you wish for a
more working knowledge of the breed, read

70 RUDYARD KIPLING

'' Babu English," and that screaming farce —
** India in 1983." Meanwhile, stand assured
that, in a time of stress, the Babu will snap
like singed thread.

*' The Rupaiyat of Omar Kalvin " has in
its title a Persic pun, that may overpass the
ears of many. The verses are very clever.
Written straight at the head of the " wicked,
witty" Chief- Commissioner of Oudh, they
could not fail to attract attention — apart
from their merits. And '^ Pagett, M.P.,"
is possessed of a like personal note. The
name of the slayer of Abel, spelt with an
added "e," occurs to one instanter on
reading about the fluent man who came on
a four months' visit to study the East — in
November ; and who spoke of the heat of
India as the Asian Solar Myth. It is with
joyous hate that one reads of his after
troubles with sand- flies, mosquitoes, dust-
storms, liver, fever and dysentery. And it
is with solemn glee that one follows the
narrator's discomfiture of " Pagett, M.P.,"
and joins in with the ultimate stanza :

THE POETRY BOOKS 71

"And I laughed as I drove from the station; but the

mirth died out on my lips
As I thought of the fools like Pagett who write of their

' Eastern trips,'
And the sneers of the travelled idiots who duly misgovern

the land ;
And I prayed to the Lord to deliver another one into

my hand."

The gargoyle grotesquerie of " La Nuit
Blanche" and "Divided Destinies" shows
us their author's fine sense of farce. " La
Nuit Blanche " describes, with matter and
manner quite unique, the results that accrue
from a state of alcoholic saturation. (It is
to be noticed that, in the hands of most
rhymers, this class of poem is usually treated
in the classic bacchic style or in the language
of the Halles — of Music.)

" In the full, fresh fragrant morning

I observed a camel crawl,
Laws of gravitation scorning.

On the ceiling and the wall ;
Then I watched a fender walking,

And I heard grey leeches sing,
And a red-hot monkey talking

Did not seem the proper thing."

72 RUDYARD KIPLING

Here is the real Veritas of the vine !
'' Divided Destinies " is full of quaint philo-
sophy. It is a comparison between the
ape and derided man. The local Simla
references in this, and other poems, in no
way impede the reading : " Change but the
name and the tale is told of yourself."

The ape apostrophises :

" Oh man of futile fopperies — unnecessary wraps !
I own no ponies in the Hills, I drive no tall-wheeled

traps,
I buy me not twelve-button gloves, short-sixes eke,

or rings,
Nor do I waste, at Hamilton's, my wealth on pretty

things."

So I answered :

" Gentle Bandar, an Inscrutable Decree,
Makes thee a gleesome, fleasome Thou and me a

wretched Me.
Go ! Depart in peace my brother, to thy home amid

the pine ;
Yet forget not once a mortal wished to change his lot

with thine."

Striking, for their concentrated style,
and more for their subject matter, are

THE POETRY BOOKS n

''Certain Maxims of Hafiz." They will bear
many readings, memorising even. Consider
Maxim Fifteen and the grand breadth of the
teaching therein. The Queen (of one's heart)
can do no wrong, he says. At all costs her
honour and glory are to be kept undiminished.
There is a creed in this final couplet :

" If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest
can clear,
Lie^ while thy lips can 7nove^ or a man is alive to hear."

''The Unknown Goddess," "The Lovers'
Litany," and "A Ballad of Burial" are of
the lighter society verse genre. The first
of this triad recalls the best work of that
charming and fortune-favoured poet Locker-
Lampson. Of course, the tender pathos of
"Christmas in India," and the humorous
backsliding of " Jock Gillespie " should be
especially noted. It is safe to predict that In
the anthologies of after -ages the " Lovers
Litany" and the "Fall of Jock Gillespie"
will hold a proud place. As always, the
" Envoy " should be specially commended.
But, to my mind, the three best pieces of

74 RUDYARD KIPLING

work In the volume are : " The Ballad of
Fisher's Boarding House," ''The Grave of
the Hundred Head," and ''The Galley
Slave." In the two first Is exhibited the
author's delicious ' brutality ' ; In the last
(allegorical though It be) Is struck, with
no bloodless hand, the note of sympathy
and rejoicement with all the men that toll
— the note that has recurred so persistently
throughout much of Rudyard Kipling's after-
work. And In all three is to be found, not for
the first time, that true and original grip and
force, compression and literary power that is
so inseparably associated with most of their
craftsman's later-wrought productions.

In "The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-
House" we find that gift of adjective and
verb, and that genius for proper names, and
that startling Irony which I have mentioned
elsewhere.

" That night, when through the mooring-chains

The wide-eyed corpse rolled free,
To blunder down by Garden Reach

iVnd rot at Kedgeree,
The tale the Hughli told the shoal

The lean shoal told to me. . . .

THE POETRY BOOKS 75

" Thus slew they Hans the blue-eyed Dane

Bull-throated, bare of arm,
But ' Anne of Austria ' looted first

The maid Ultruda's charm —
The little silver crucifix

That keeps a man from harm."

In *' The Grave of the Hundred Head"
we find that piquant mixture of an old-world
form and an up-to-date substance that
Rudyard Kipling has made peculiarly his

own.

" There 's a widow in sleepy Chester

Who weeps for her only son ;
There 's a grave on the Pabeng River,

A grave that the Burmans shun ;
And there 's Subadar Prag Tewarri,

Who tells how the work was done. . . .

" A Snider squibbed in the jungle —

Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris

Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead

And the back blown out of his head."

In "The Galley Slave," partly allegorical
but wholly human, we find, addressed to a
certain section of society, that strong pity

^6 RUDYARD KIPLING

and tender praise that has been answered
(even by others than that said section) with
not only admiration but support, encourage-
ment, love.

"It was merry in the galley, for we revelled now and

then —
If they wore us down like cattle, faith, we fought and

loved like men !
As we snatched her through the water, so we snatched

a minute's bliss.
And the mutter of the dying never spoiled the lover's

kiss.

" Our women and our children toiled beside us in the

dark —
They died, we filed their fetters, and we heaved them

to the shark —
We heaved them to the fishes, but so fast the galley

sped
We had only time to envy, for we could not mourn

our dead. . . .

" It may be that Fate will give me life and leave to row
once more —
Set some strong man free for fighting as I take awhile
his oar.

THE POETRY BOOKS ^^

But to-day I leave the galley. Shall I curse her

service then?
God be thanked — whate'er comes after, I have lived

and toiled with men ! "

Of course, some of these ''Ditties" bring
with them remembrances of many poets
that we have long counted among the list
of the elect on the lower slopes of our
Parnassus : Aleph Cheem, Bon Gaultier,
Praed, Calverley, W. S. Gilbert, Locker-
Lampson. But is this not recording for
them praise real as kind? At any rate, it
is of interest to know that a man as authori-
tative as Sir W. W. Hunter (writing in the
^'Academy," 1888) said: ''Mr. Kipling's
' Ditties ' well deserve the honour of a
third edition \now raised to a tenth]. They
are true, as well as clever. ... In the
midst of flippancy and cynicism, come notes
of a pathetic loneliness and a not ignoble
discontent with himself which have some-
thing very like the ring of true genius
There are many stanzas, and not a few
poems, in the little volume which go straight

78 RUDYARD KIPLING

to the heart of all who have suffered, or are
nov/ suffering, the long pain of tropical exile.
. . . Taken as a whole, his book gives
promise of a literary star of no mean mag-
nitude rising in the East." Prophecy is
usually the most gratuitous form of folly ; in
this case, the risk was worth running — and
was justified. The potentiality was in no-
wise over-stated ; if anything, it was under-
stated : what arose in the East was not a
star, but what is peculiar to the East — a
sun.

With '* Barrack-Room Ballads" Mr. Kip-
ling widened by thousands the rather select
circle of readers who in his early days knew
him to be a true poet. Although in the
"Ballads" there is some ''caviare," the
soldier-songs alone have secured a truly
notable audience. It is said that over
fifty thousand copies of this book has been
the demand. The verses that have been
set to music have won a name out of their
original gallery. The " Barrack-Room Bal-
lads " proper are written mostly in a short

THE POETRY BOOKS 79

staccato metre ; and they all have a very
trenchant " refrain " or ritornel. Thomas
Atkins is not yet educated up to the uses
of the "dulcet decasyllabic." The other
Ballads have all the command of metre,
rhyme, and rhythm that singled out Macaulay
as a balladist of the front rank. And
each has a splendid ''tale to tell."

Let us consider some of these verses
fully ; keeping mostly to those not quite so
well known as their more favoured fellows.
First, in order, is the poet's dedication to his
late collaborateur Wolcott Balestier. It is a
noble and vigorous eulogy of the man who,
*' Borne on the breath that men call Death,"
went from him, and from us, with only half his
fame fulfilled. This dedication shadows forth
once more that great Gospel of Work that
pulses through so much of Mr. Kipling's
very best writing. He gives you work as
a gospel with " First deserve and then
desire" as the golden text. The pink-faced
fatuities that disgrace the name of Man are
stripped and whipped thoroughly in many

8o RUDYARD KIPLING

of these pages. He says of his dead fellow-
worker :

" To those who are cleansed of base desire, sorrow and

lust and shame —
Gods, for they know the hearts of men, men, for they

stooped to Fame,
Borne on the breath that men call Death, my brother's

spirit came."

The 61oge ends with a triumphant paean of
praise :

"Beyond the loom of the last lone star, through open

darkness hurled,
Farther than rebel comet dared or hiving star-swarm

swirled.
Sits he with those that praise our God for that they

served His world."

Then follow the " Barrack- Room Ballads"
proper — twenty in number. These are now
so well known, through constant quotation
and musical settings, that it will not be
necessary to speak of them at great length.

But they must not be passed entirely
in silence, these poor beggars in red :

THE POETRY BOOKS 8i

because, as one of them mentions (while
admonishinor the world In oreneral to walk
wide of the Widow at Windsor — for the
half of Creation she owns) they have bought
her the same with the ^wc-rd -^ d :l e finme,
and have salted it down with their bones.
P.oor beo:o:ars ! It's blue with their bones!
Therefore, let us once more shake hands
with the men that watched, and suffered as
they watched, the hanging of Danny Deever
— with the men that are "drunken and licen-
tious soldiery " in the piping times of peace,
but that are transformed into a thin red line
of heroes when the drums begin to roll —
with the men that made the square that was
crumpled by the only thing that doesn't give
a damn for a regiment of British infantry, the
men that re-formed that said crumpled square.
Let us once more shrug shoulders with the
fellow of the true philosophy who advised
the girl, that was lamenting her slain lover, to
take him (her informant) for her new love.
Let us glance, in passing, at the guns that
fancy themselves at two thousand, those guns

F

82 RUDYARD KIPLING

that are built in two bits; and at the man that
was there in the "Clink" for a thundering
drink and blacking the Corporal's eye ; and
at the man that so truly appreciated the
water carrier Gunga Din : who, in the place
where it is always double drill and no canteen,
will be squatting on the coals giving drink to
poor damned souls, and thus enable the
narrator to "have a swig in Hell with Gunga
Din." Let us be vulgar and natural, and wink
the other eye at the man that advises his
comrades to loot in pairs : which, although it
halves the gain, much safer they will find —
as a single man gets bottled on those twisty-
wisty stairs, and a woman comes and clubs
him from behind. Let us commiserate with
" Snarleyow," who, at the desire of his
mortally wounded brother, drives the gun-
wheel across his chest to put him out of
pain ; and with the man that was in a row
in Silver Street and saw the poor dumb
corpse that couldn't tell the boys were sorry
for him. Let us shudder once again at the
advice to the young British soldier who,

THE POETRY BOOKS Ss

should he be wounded and left on Afghan-
istan's plains, and the women come out to
cut up what remains, must roll to his rifle
and blow out his brains, and go to his God
like a soldier. Let us share our regrets for
the thousandth time with that hungry-hearted
man who, when the '' blasted Henglish
drizzle " wakes the fever in his bones, hears
the temple bells a-calling and fain would be on
the road to Mandalay where the flying fishes
play, and the dawn comes up like thunder
out of China 'cross the bay. I Let us "smile
some more " with the happy wight who ad-
monishes the lovely Mary-Ann not to grieve
for him — as he will marry her "yit" on a
fourpenny-bit as a time-expired man ; and
with Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha! who, quite
ignorant of what the war was about, assisted
to break a king and to build a road, and
who knew only that a courthouse stands
where the regiment "goed," and that the
river is clean where the raw blood flowed
when the Widow gave the party. Let us
pity again the inconsolable hussar that.

84 RUDYARD KIPLING

through no fault of his own, left his mate for

ever, wet and dripping by the ford. And

let us remember the man whose name is

O'Kelly, and who has heard the "revelly"

from Leeds to Lahore.

" Think what 'e 's been,
Think what 'e 's seen.
Think of his pension, an'

/ ' Gawd save the Queen ! "

/ "Gentlemen Rankers" must have full at-

tention accorded it. The life of those men,
gentlemen, who have tired out families and
friends by excesses and disgraces, is therein
very grimly recounted. Mr. Kipling has a
real respect for an English Gentleman. His
respect and, where possible, admiration,
are accorded unhesitatingly. '* Gentlemen
Rankers" shows in tense phrases one more
aspect of the pathos of the " withheld com-
pletion " that awaits those who cannot learn
to live their lives aright.

•'We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to
Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung.
And the measure of our torment is the measure of
our youth.
God help us, for we knew the worst too young !

THE POETRY BOOKS 85

Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that
brought the sentence,
Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf
enfolds us
And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.

*' We 're poor Httle lambs who 've lost our way,
Baa ! Baa ! Baa !
We 're little black sheep who 've gone astray,
Baa — aa — aa !
Gentlemen Rankers out on the spree.
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa ! Yah ! Bah ! "

Yes— " Gentlemen Rankers" is a grim
unhappy song. It is not cheering to dwell
upon the subject of *'the men who were."
The late Mr. Story's sad, but musical, stanza
occurs to the memory anent this same pathos
of man's fall :

"Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose

hopes burned in ashes away,
From whose hand slipped the prize they had grasped at,

who stood at the dying of day
With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied,

unheeded, alone,
With Death swooping down o'er their Failure, and all

but their faith overthrown."

86 RUDYARD KIPLING

" The Ballad of the King's Mercy " and
*'The Ballad of the King's Jest" first
appeared In '' Macmillan's Magazine" under
the pseudonym of '' Yusuf." It would be
interesting to know how many recognised
the author's touch at this time !

''The King's Mercy" was like unto the
mercy of that King in the Scriptures who
heaped upon his suffering subjects the
''mercy" , of increased impositions and
harassings. A poor wretch condemned to
death by stoning, beseeched that the King
would give orders for him to be shot. Moved
by his agonies, the executioners sought the
King even in that holiest place, the Harem,
and asked for an order to fire. Out of the
greatness of his mercy the King consented,
and the dying man glorified the King with
praise.

" They shot him at the morning prayer, to ease him of

his pain,
And when he heard the matchlocks cHnk, he blessed

the King again.
Which thing the singers made a song for all the world

to sing,
So that the Outer Seas may know the Mercy of the King."

THE POETRY BOOKS 87

"The King's Jest" is a story equally
hideous, told in a splendid manner and
showing full knowledge of the nomadic life
of the East and of the sardonic way in which
justice was meted out in the days of one-
man despotism. The King while holding
Durbar, or Council, is excitedly told by one
Wali Dad that the Russians are on the
road. The King orders him to mount into
a peach tree and duly apprise them of the
enemy's approach. The tree is ringed round
with spearmen ; and on the seventh day
Wali Dad drops, insane, upon the spear
points. A gruesome theme ; but in its
exposition some wondrous rhyming and
sound philosophy are given us.

" Heart of my heart, is it meet or wise
To warn a King of his enemies ?
We know what Heaven or Hell may bring,
But no man knoweth the heart of the King.
Of the grey-coat coming, who can say ?
When the night is gathering all is grey.
Two things greater than all things are,
The first is love and the second War.
And since we know not how War may prove.
Heart of my heart, let us talk of Love ! "

88 RUDYARD KIPLING

And now for some thought of that
arrestive piece of work: "TomHnson." An
averaofe man, cursed with the curse of the
non-producer, Hying a Hfe of boredom and
pococurantism, dies at his house in Berkeley
Square. The soul wings its v/ay to Heaven's
Gate, and is denied. Thence, It goes to Hell;
and we are finally told that, after pronouncing
a shortened commination service upon It,
His Highness of Hades sends the wretched
soul back to re-inhabit the body. Tomlinson
was found too rich in vice for Heaven, but
too poor in it for Hell! The language used
for the imparting of the tale is perfectly plain,
brutally frank. And there are fifty couplets,
at least, that haunt the memory like a tune.

Peter questions :

" ' Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought,' he said,
' and the tale is yet to run ;
By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer
what ha' ye done ? ' " . . .

Tomlinson answers :

" ' O this I have felt and this I have guessed, and this I
have heard men say ;
And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl
in Norroway ' " . . .

THE POETRY BOOKS 89

Peter concludes :

" ' Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for doom
has yet to run,
And . . . the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square
uphold you, Tomlinson ! '" . . .

Satan questions :

" ' Wot ye the price of good pit-coal that I must pay ? '
said he,
' That ye rank yoursel' so fit for Hell and ask no leave
of me?"' . . .

Tomlinson answers :

" ' Once I ha' laughed at the power of Love and twice at
the grip of the Grave,
And thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men
might call me brave.' "...

Satan concludes :

" ' Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed — go back with

an open eye,
And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye

come to die :
That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for

one by one.
And ... the God that you took from a painted book

be with you, Tomlinson ! ' "

The reasoning of the poem is relentless.
There is an uncanny touch about it all that
causes a strong sense of discomfort. It may

90 RUDYARD KIPLING

be commended to students of Eschatology :
it may help them to re-arrange their ideas
of the ordering of ''the lands the other side
the sun and under where we stand."

The remaining works in the volume are
chiefly Eastern border-ballads, satiric verse,
and some grim stories of the shipmen who
have knowledge of the sea. " The Ballad
of East and West," "The Conundrum of
the Workshops," and "The Ballad of the
' Bolivar ' " fairly represent these three kinds.
For rollicking humour of the type found in
the pages of Lever and Lover, it would be
hard to beat the verses on the Ark, the

ape and the D 1. And for a shocking

attack upon wrong, and a splendid defence
of right, as may be found in the pages of
Swift and Pope, it would be harder still to
beat "The Rhyme of the Three Captains."
In this (though ever allegorical and im-
personal) the author does not call a burglar
a kleptomaniac — does not hesitate to brand
the pirate -publisher as a hypocrite and a
liar, as a scoundrel and a thief.

THE POETRY BOOKS 91

Of a certainty it may be said that there
are stanzas and lines in this volume of
poetry that we can never spare.

But what shall be said of "The English
Flag " ? Only this ! Learn the poem from
" Winds of the World give Answer ! " to
*' Ye have but my waves to conquer — go forth,
for it is there ! " Then, teach it to others.
Accept as a truth that " The English
Flag" is worth reams and reams of "Rule
Britannia "s. It is inspiring; it is not
theatrical. It is concrete ; it is not anaemic.
It is brave ; it is not bombastic. It is good ;
it is fine ; it is true. And, above all, it is
literature.

In any special study of the verses apart
from actual subject - matter, a number of
beauties in rhyme and rhythm, metaphor
and simile, are noticeable at once. The
first three long ballads are rich in many
of those jewels of literature we term
figures of speech, fancies and graces. Clear,
strong, fresh, is the expression throughout.
For example: Kamal's son who "trod the

92 RUDYARD KIPLING

ling like a buck in spring and looked like
a lance in rest"; "And like a flame among
us leapt the long, lean Northern knife";
*' Overloaded, undermanned, meant to foun-
der, we — Euchred God Almighty's storm,
bluffed the Eternal Sea!"; "That night,
the slow mists of the evening dropped —
dropped as a cloth upon the dead"; "As
the shape of a corpse dimmers up through
deep water " ; and so on, and so on.

For power, beauty and unerring verse-craft
some passages in these ballads cannot be
surpassed in all modern poetry. From the
tender and grave "Oraison funebre " with
which it opens to the unflinching satire with
which it ends in '' Tomlinson," this book
of ballads must be considered a gift of
price.

If '' Barrack-Room Ballads " has had any
superior in the last twenty years, that
superior is surely "The Seven Seas" — and
that only. Some there are who assert that
the first was the better : they were spoilt ;
they were made too exacting. As a matter

THE POETRY BOOKS 93

of truth, the two books — taken on the whole
— are equal.

Let us rapidly bring to mind the most
striking flotsam and jetsam of " The Seven
Seas." Followinor a recital of thino-s done
and of things that will be done, Rudyard
Kipling exhibits the men who have done
them and the men who will do them. There
are the merchantmen, who, all to bring a
cargo up to London Town, have sailed coast-
wise, cross-seas, round the world, and back
again. Then comes M' Andrew with the
prayer that God will forgive his steps aside
at Gay Street in Hong Kong, and with the
hope, nay the belief, that God has left in
the world a glimmer of light by v/hich Man
shall yet build the Perfect Ship. Later,
we have the little cargo-boats — the cargo-
boats that would still be engaged in home
and foreign trade even if the Liner (who is
a lady, by the paint upon her face) were
not made — the cargo-boats that, if they were
not here, the Man-o'-War would not have
to fight for home and friends so dear.

94 RUDYARD KIPLING

Then follows Mulholland the cattleman,
whom the skippers accuse of being crazy —
because he has " got religion " ; but who is
given charge of the lower deck with all
that doth belong : which they would not
give to a lunatic — and the competition so
strong ! Afterwards we make the acquaint-
ance of William Parsons, who used to be
Edward Clay, and who heard the feet on
the gravel — the feet of the men that drill —
and said to his fluttering heart-strings — said
to them, " Peace, be still ! " Then comes
the man with a dreadful pre-vision of what
will happen after the battle — with a shock-
ing knowledge that the jackal and the kite
have a healthy appetite, and you'll never
see your soldiers any more — that the eagle
and the crow they are waiting ever so, and
you '11 never see your soldiers any more !
('Ip! Urroar!) And now arrives, to stay in
our memories for ever, the kind of a *' giddy
harumfrodite " — soldier and sailor too — the
sort of a "blooming cosmopolouse " who
stood and was still to the Birkenhead drill :

THE POETRY BOOKS 95

which was a damn tough bullet to chew.
After that we get the sappers, who are the
men that do something all round. And then
comes the man that for certain well-defined
reasons wishes he were dead before he did
what he did, or saw what he saw that day ;
followed by the mournful ironist of the
cholera-camp, who points out that there is
a deal of quick promotion on ten deaths a
day. Nor can we cease to remember that the
backbone of the army is the non-commis-
sioned man ; and that, in the matter of
women, what you may learn from the
yellow and brown will help you a lot with
the white. And we all have a fellow-
feeling for the man who oft-times stood
beside to watch himself behaving like a
" blooming" fool. And as for the hero of the
*' Sestina of the Tramp Royal " — well, read
that Sestina; if you have, read it again.

There are many other things in ''The
Seven Seas" that help to make the book
the equal of its predecessor : notably the
fine " Hymn before Action " : the song

96 RUDYARD KIPLING

of "The Jacket"; the dramatic "Rhyme
of the Three Sealers." And there is the
magnificent study of character entitled " The
' Mary Gloster ' " : to which mere quotation
would do injustice. And the same must be
said of the *' Rhyme of True Thomas":
which contains a not too occult meaning —
apart from its legend. But the '' Song of
the Banjo " is perhaps the more popular ;
and not without reason. Listen ! The
banjo — ''the war-drum of the White Man
round the world " — is speaking.

" I am Memory, and Torment, I am Town,

I am all that ever went with Evening-Dress ...
In the silence of the camp before the fight, [prayer,

When it's good to make your will and say your
You can hear my strumpty-tumpty overnight

Explaining ten to one was always fair."

^ ^ * * ^ *

" Let the organ moan her sorrow to the roof —

I have told the naked stars the Grief of Man !
Let the trumpets snare the foeman to the proof —

I have known Defeat, and mocked it as we ran !
My bray ye may not alter nor mistake

When I stand to jeer the fatted Soul of Things,
But the Song of Lost Endeavour that I make.

Is it hidden in the twanging of the strings ? "

THE POETRY BOOKS 97

And so on, and so on : till in all verity the
sono" of- lost endeavour that it makes is not
hidden in the twanging of its strings.

And now we must consider the number
with which the book opens. In his fore-
going volumes of verse Rudyard Kipling
had exhibited that he was a singer of songs
and a maker of ballads — ballads that en-
thralled, songs that haunted. In the first
number of "The Seven Seas" — "A Song of
the English " — Rudyard Kipling exhibited
that he was a Voice.

" If," growled Carlyle upon a certain
occasion, " if a man has anything to say,
for God's sake let him say it, and not sing
it!" If a man has anything to say of the
nature of Rudyard Kipling's saying — well,
for God's sake let him sing it i

" Hear now a song — a song of broken interludes —
A song of little cunning ; of a singer nothing worth.
Through the naked words and mean
May ye see the truth between
As the singer knew and touched it in the ends of all
the Earth ! "
G

98 RUDYARD KIPLING

Well, we — you and I — have heard that
song (''A Song of the English") and we —
you and I — have thanked our Gods that the
thing is about Us. It is addressed to me,
it is addressed to you; it is ours. And lo,
it is written that we shall not forget !

Read this ! Of course you have read it
before ; but do so again.

" Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guard-ports

of the Dawn !
Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the

Horn!
Swift shutdes of an Empire's loom that weave us main

to main,
The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome

back again ! "

" We have fed our sea for a thousand years

And she hails us still unfed.
Though there 's never a wave of all our waves

But marks our English dead.
We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,

To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty.

Good God, we ha' paid in full ! "

THE POETRY BOOKS 99

Later In the poem, occurs the song of
the sons :

"... Mother be proud of thy seed —
Count, are we feeble or few ?
Hear, is our speech so rude ?
Look, are we poor in the land ?
Judge, are we men of The Blood ? "

England answers :

*' Truly ye come of The Blood ; slower to bless than to

ban;
Little used to He down at the bidding of any man. . . .
Deeper than speech our love, stronger than life our

tether ;
But we do not fall on the neck nor kiss when we come

together. . . .
Now ye must speak to your kinsmen and they must

speak to you,
After the use of the English, in straight-flung words and

few.
Stand to your work and be strong, halting not in your

ways.
Baulking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise.
Stand to your work and be wise — certain of sword and

pen.
Who are neither children nor gods, but men in a world

of men ! "

So much for " A Song of the EngHsh " :
which, after "The Flag of England," was

loo RUDYARD KIPLING

the first thing to proclaim that Rudyard
Kipling was a Voice. _

There are some other verses that have
not yet been gathered into a book, but that
will make a demand for the volume long
before it appears. Among them is the true
and fine eulogy of Lord Roberts, and the
spirited account of the Sergeant What 's-
his-name, w^ho drilled a black man white
and who made a mummy fight ; and there
are " White Horses," and " Kitchener's
School," and "The Destroyers," and "The
Feet of the Young Men," and " The White
Man's Burden " — a burden of new-caught
sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child —
and that noble as splendid piece of work,
"Recessional," reminding us of our dominion
over palm and pine, and telling us to walk in
circumspection — lest we forget. And there
is more than one man who w^ould like to see
resurrected (from the pages of the dead, and
ever-to-be-mourned "National Observer")
the ballad that told the story of "The
Dove of Dacca."

THE POETRY BOOKS loi

The argument (taken from a Bengal
legend) is something as follows : A Hindu
Raja, the last of his race, is attacked
by Muhammadan invaders. He goes out
bravely to meet his enemies, carrying with
him a pigeon : whose return to the palace
is to be regarded by his family as an inti-
mation of defeat, and as a signal to burn
tlie palace and put themselves to death.
The Raja wins the battle ; but, while he is
stooping by a river to drink, the bird escapes
and flies home. The Raja gallops madly
back in pursuit, but is just in time only to
hurl himself on the all-consuming pyre.

What is to be said as a general summary
of these Poetry Books .^ Firstly, they are
not only books but pictures of life ; secondly,
they are not only poetry but expressions
of sympathy. They exhibit character in
nearly every line. Not the catch -word,
actor s- make -up character so peculiar to
literature ; but that queer jumble of heart,
brain, soul, temperament, environment,
heredity so peculiar to life : a certain

I02 RUDYARD KIPLING

section of life, be it understood : where
the men are mostly uncouth, brave, rough,
devoted, illiterate, strong, coarse, tender, and,
above all, manly. These poems, though
sometimes brutal in phrase, are always
sympathetic in tone. They show a masterly
knowledge of the irony and cruelty so often
dealt out by Chance, Providence, Fate (call
it what you will) to the majority of the
world's workers and fighters. And they
show a fellow-feeling with these men — a
fellow-feeling of suffering at their defeats
and sorrow, and of rejoicement at their
victories and gladness. Not once are they
unreal ; not once are they intolerant. And
always they are brave, inspiriting and manly.
Concerning their artistry. While, on the
whole, wonderfully well-sustained, they are,
in parts, somewhat unequal. Here and
there, a line marches with its fellows with
an effect incongruous and startling — as a
private marching among generals. But it
must not be forgotten that such abrupt
intrusions are often a matter of character-

' THE POETRY BOOKS 103

drawing. Rudyard Kipling himself does
not (at any rate, in his latter-day work) see
language all on one plane ; it is the people
with whom he deals that say such things
as : " Through all the seas of all Thy
world slam-banging home again." And so,
of course, no sensible man sets down these
descents as beinof on the debit side of
our author's poetry. What is sometimes
objected to — and for cause — is the techni-
calities with which many of the verses
abound. Now and then, this trick of using
exact terminology degenerates into mere
cataloguing. But even the Sun has spots.
And therefore these few blemishes of work-
manship are as naught compared with the
amazing mastery of rhythm, rhyme and
reason that appears throughout the Poetry
Books.

The conclusions I arrive at are two :
namely — this poet is an artist ; this artist
is a man. \

THE INDIAN LIBRARY

He needs no ship to cross the tide,
Who in the Hves about him sees

Fair window prospects opening wide
O'er history's fields on every side

In Ind and Egypt, Rome and Greece.

— J. R. Lowell.

With these little booklings, issued firstly,
with indifferent type and paper, from the
Pioneer Press, Allahabad, Rudyard Kipling
may be said to have laid in England the
plinth of that fame to which he has added so
fine a shaft and capital. Published nominally
at a rupee, literally at a shilling, " Soldiers
Three " and its co-partners, quite early in
the day, achieved a splendid success. Good
men and true were not long coming to a
knowledge of what these slate-hued bro-
chures portended ; and as soon as issued
104

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 105

they were bought up with an eagerness that
must have recalled to the book-people the
glorious clays of the Dickens parts. The
first to be famous was the one containing
the further adventures of those *' esteemed
friends and sometime allies " Privates Ter-
ence Mulvaney, Stanley Ortheris and John
Learoyd.

'T want to read all of the 'Soldiers
Three' stories," I once heard Lord Ran-
dolph Churchill say, during a spirited
criticism of Rudyard Kipling.

His Lordship (whose own wit ranged
easily from the '' Lords of pineries and
vineries " to the " mere chips " of the
Woodman of Hawarden) had in his pretty
and valuable Library everything that Rud-
yard Kipling had then published.

The desire of the famous statesman is
the desire of a hundred thousand, and
shows very clearly how far behind Rudyard
Kipling has left that "bookstall" vogue the
" Quarterly " referred to so mistakenly.

Whimsically reminding one of that Athos,

io6 RUDYARD KIPLING

Porthos and Aramis who once made the
world wonder, these latter-day Musketeers
have won their way largely because they
illustrate the same idea as their forerunners,
by Dumas, namely comradeship frank and
free through woe or weal, and staunch to
the backbone — each of the triad. From
preface to envoi, neither page nor paragraph
should be missed. There are seven stories
in the book, and from them we gain an
understanding of mighty-hearted Mulvaney,
lazy Learoyd and keen-witted little Ortheris
caught up from our great Metropolis. Mul-
vaney the Multivagant, who holds the picture
place in the Kipling pantheon, takes our love
the first, and, perhaps, will hold it longest.
A masterpiece is this man. Theseus of free-
lances, a pipe-clayed belted musketeer of the
masses, and as adventuresome and amorous as
those much-harassed men of Dumas. I think
he shines well always, even in his misdeeds.
We have him in many moods, and even the
sadness and heartache of modern existence
is not strange to him. "The God from the

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 107

Machine," "The Big Drunk Draf" and his
Incarnation as Krishna show him to be of
infinite resource and daring. In such stories
as the "Courting of Dinah Shadd " and
*' With the Main Guard," we touch the man
more personally and the motley gear gives
place to hodden-grey. Whether as jester,
philosopher, or freelance, fearless of all
comers, Terence Mulvaney is always a
fellow-soul, well met.

"The World" laid special stress upon
" Soldiers Three," saying : "What will natu-
rally be most appreciated by the public are
those stories the majority of which have
appeared under the title of ' Soldiers Three';
for, fine as these are in conception, they
never wander by one hair's -breadth from
the facts as they are, even when by
so doing their effect might be enhanced.
No one hitherto has attempted to treat
Tommy Atkins as a separate human entity,
instead of the eight - hundredth or nine-
hundredth component part of a whole ; and
the freshness of the characters of Mulvaney,

io8 RUDYARD KIPLING

Learoyd and Ortherls are of course the more
acceptable from their novelty. Mulvaney is
the man after Mr. Kipling's own heart, with
whom he has intense untiring sympathy. To
write of him is no labour, but a delight ; and
the big soldier, great in all matters of disci-
pline, comes out in full accoutrements from
the storehouse of his creator's mind, at first
call, sometimes even unbidden, and, as his
maker avers, 'stops all other work.' "

The happily named "In Black and
White" is also one of the most happily
written of the '' Rupee Books."

It bears in the opening pages a very
droll thing in the way of proems, written
by the author's Khitmatgar, or buder.
This book is also made especially dis-
tinguished in that it contains two of the
very finest tales ever written by Rudyard
Kipling, or anyone else ; '' On the City
Wall" and ''The Sending of Dana Da."
But I will speak of them further on.

There are eight tales in all here : a
tragedy of revenge, five tragi-comedies of

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 109

the cunning, avarice and general impiety
of the dark people, then that wise and
masterly satire "The Sending of Dana Da,"
and last the puzzling, panoramic " On the
City Wall."

*' Dray Wara Yow Dee " is a tragedy
that it would be hard to surpass with even
the horrors of ^schylus. A tragedy was
originally a song in honour of Bacchus.
The one under notice is one sune in
honour of blood and hatred. It has the
grip and intensity of meaning that Edgar
Allan Poe is well remembered for, and all
his fine feeling for the tragic sense.

The native from whose mouth the tale
is spoken says, '' Whence is my sorrow ?
Does a man tear out his heart and make
Kabobs thereof over a slow fire for auo-ht

o

other than a woman ? "

He had wedded a woman of the Abazai,
partly to staunch an open inter-tribal feud.
But she had a lover. (Yes, it's the old tale
of the ever-eternal triangle). She was with
this lover one night when her husband

no RUDYARD KIPLING

returned. The lover, Daoud Shah, escaped
into the dark ; but swift doom came to the
woman : "for jealousy is the rage of a man."
Her husband struck off her head and cast
the body to the Kabul river. Then began
the hunting of Daoud Shah. From place
to place, his only light his burning heart, the
betrayed man went, always seeking Daoud
Shah, always crying for the life of that one
man.

" What of the hunting hunter bold ?

Brother, the watch was long and cold.

What of the quarry ye went to kill ?

Brother, he crops in the jungle still." . . .

He prays for the day of vengeance, glory-
ing in the contemplated death he will deal.
'* I would fain kill him quick and whole with
the life sticking firm in his body. A
pomegranate is sweetest when the cloves
break away unwilling from the rind. Let
it be in the daytime, that I may see his
face and my delight may be crowned."

This awful "goat-song" has running
through it "Dray wara yow dee," all thi^ee

THE INDIAN LIBRARY iii

a7^e one; and the simple sentence acquires
a mighty meaning. The story as a whole
shows in lurid light the unrelenting hatred
of the East where their women-folk are
concerned. It is a fearful conte a trois coins.

The next five native tales hold one by
their colouring of scene and speech. Not
once does their author permit either to
lose in clearness or cohesion of part and
part. In particular do I refer to the
stories of " Howli Police Station" and ''In
Flood Time." There is something very
pathetic in "The Judgment of Dungara" and
the frustrate life that Justus Krenk had to
moan, but Mr. Kipling makes ample amends
in the side-shaking picture of that plexus
of craft and simplicity Afzal Khan, who
fought with Dacoits at the Thana of Howli.
Of " Gemini," the tale of the twins, one can
say in its praise that it reads like one of
the pages of Burton's '' Nights." Burton
had the keenest scent for a well-told tale.

The "Sending of Dana Da" is a story
that should come as a special joy to certain

112 RUDYARD KIPLING

people of importance : those supersubtle
adepts who can see books in the muddiest
brooks, sermons in stones, and the phalHc
triad in everything. The story opens in a
fine satiric strain, subject Theosophy ; which
is labelled in the Carlyleian vein, The Tea
Cup Creed, from H. P. B.'s incident of the
teacup hidden at Simla.

" This Religion approved of and stole from
Freemasonry; looted the Latter-day Rosicrucians
of half their pet words ; took any fragments of
Egyptian philosophy that it found in the En-
cyclopaedia Britannica ; annexed as many of the
Vedas as had been translated into French or
English, and talked of all the rest ; built in the
German versions of what is left of the Zend
Avesta ; encouraged White, Grey and Black
Magic, including spiritualism, palmistry, fortune
telling by cards, hot chestnuts, double-kernelled
nuts and tallow droppings : would have adopted
Voodoo and Oboe had it known anything about
them, and showed itself, in every way, one of the
most accommodating arrangements that had ever
been invented since the birth of the Sea."

Well, from out of the unknown into the
known there came one Dana Da to weave

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 113

a part of the pattern of this creed-en
cumbered cult. Dana Da, the man from
nowhere, carne, and, finally fastening him-
self to an Englishman, expounded the faith
that was in him ; a special self-made creed
built upon a dissent from that of the Tea
Cups.

For whisky and rupees, Dana Da agreed
to send a Sending that should greatly dis-
concert one Lone Sahib, a disturber of the
Englishman aforesaid.

A Sending is '' a thing" sent by a wizard,
and may take any form, but, most generally,
wanders about the land in the shape of a
little purple cloud till it finds the Sendee,
and him it kills by changing into the form of
a horse, or a cat.

The Englishman agrees, first to send a
letter of warning to Lone Sahib to open the
ball. Then the Sending is sent. It takes
the form, or forms, of kittens, and Lone
Sahib had a private plague of them,
organised solely for his behoof. The kittens
came everywhere, never in all the land had

H

114 RUDYARD KIPLING

so many kittens been gathered together in
the name of Pasht or Bubastis.

Now, Lone Sahib, who is in touch with
the Heads of Houses of the Tea Cup Creed,
makes this Visitation known. Finally after
a grand demonstration — the coming of
twelve kittens — the Sending ceased. Then
Dana Da explains everything to the Eng-
lishman who has kept him in Rupees and
Whisky all through the Sending. It is the
very best satire of its kind since Richard
Garnett's "Prophet of Ad."

The last tale of ''In Black and White"
differs materially from the other seven, and
should receive full praise for its many
charms. In precis, it is a story having for
backbone one Lalun, a Lais in little, or
scripturally to speak, a " Strange Woman."
She is the puppet-puller in a pocket con-
spiracy to bring about the escape of an
imprisoned native kinglet ; the teller of the
tale and one Wali Dad being her aiders and
abettors therein. Upon the night of a great
religious festival it is all carried out and the

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 115

escape effected. The object of their minis-
trations was not particularly grateful and,
in fact, returned to his captors voluntarily.
There are many side issues to the story, and
en passant a study is made of the deep-bred
fanaticism that often underlies the western
wisdom of such very wise young men as
Wali Dad.

" He possessed a head that English artists at
Home would rave over and paint amid impossible
surroundings— a face that female novelists would
use with delight through nine hundred pages. In
reality he was only a clean-bred young Mahom-
medan, with pencilled eyebrows, small-cut nostrils,
little feet and hands, and a very tired look in his
eyes. By virtue of his twenty-two years he had
grown a neat black moustache, which he stroked
with pride and kept delicately scented. His life
seemed to be divided between borrowing books
from me and making love to Lalun in the window
seat He composed songs about her, and some
of the songs are sung to this day in the City from
the Street of the Mutton Butchers to the Copper-
smiths' ward."

The portrait of Lalun as below quoted
is a passage the like of which is rare in the

ii6 RUDYARD KIPLING

stories. \ For Mr. Kipling does not dwell at
any length upon descriptions of women. A
few bold lines in macchia, a hasty touch of
colour, and — the rest is left to you. ^_ That
other Lalun, the Dainty Iniquity, however,
was well pourtrayed and her picturesque
accessories caught up with delightful touches.
But Lalun has not yet been described.

" She would need, so Wali Dad says, a thousand
pens of gold, and ink scented with musk. She
has been variously compared to the Moon, the
Dil Sagar lake, a spotted quail, a gazelle, the Sun
on the Desert of Kutch, the Dawn, the Stars and
the young bamboo. These comparisons imply
that she is beautiful exceedingly, according to the
native standards, which are practically the same
as those of the West. Her eyes are black and
her hair is black, and her eyebrows are black as
leeches ; her mouth is tiny and says witty things ;
her hands are tiny and have saved much money ;
her feet are tiny and have trodden on the naked
hearts of many men. But, as WaH Dad sings : —
' Lalun is Lalun, and when you have said that you
have only come to the Beginnings of Knowledge.'"

From my angle of vision, "On the City
Wall " appears to be one of the best stories

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 117

that Mr. Kipling has given us. In about
twenty pages are comprised the Hves of
Lalun and WaH Dad, a satire upon the
Supreme Government, the wonderful house
on the City Wall, subtle, swift-limned
sketches of the loungers in the little lupanar,
a religious riot and a sardonic account of
Khem Singh, native kinglet and Our captive.
The whole being woven into a story that
reads with deepest interest from the first
word to the last. The dedication, which
closes the little volume, is to Lockwood
Kipling. Quaint both in wording and
phrasing, it is a welcome novelty in dedica-
tions.

It was said of Victor Hugo once, in
highest praise, that he was ^' Child - lover
and the lord of human tears," and well
might the sonorous phrase be applied to
Mr. Kipling for his gallery of children.
S. Coming to "Wee Willie Winkie," we
me^ with the closest portrayal of child
life and character. And it will be remem-
bered that there are other children in the

ii8 RUDYARD KIPLING

works : such as the unhappy Little Tobrah,
and that noticeable story of Mohammed
Din. The deep love that the world has for
" the fair faces of little children " is partly
shown in the fact that "Wee Willie Winkie"
reached a greater number of editions in
England than all the other Rupee Books.
The keynote of character in these children
of Kipling seems to be their understanding
and precocity. They take a different place
to almost all the children that penmen have
given us. ^\

Dickens dwelt upon the lovable part of
children, in the main ; their sharpness or
shrewdness appealing but little to him.

Perhaps, after Dickens, Habberton was
the best child-lover v/ho stood to the front.
The babies of Helen are ''classic," their
babies' phrases have been caught up and
treasured lovingly " wherever an English
tale is told."

Bret Harte, too, has been very successful
with many child characters in both song and
story ; his young girls having an especial

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 119

fragrance and charm : they are often like
flowers shut within the leaves of a book of
storm and stress and direful deeds. Per-
haps the only " book of children " that has
been as successful as Mr. Kipling's in these
days, is that truly delightful "Timothy's
Quest" by Kate Douglas Wiggin. It has
its place on book-shelves side by side with
*' Helen's Babies." Reviewing child stories
as a whole, one gains the impression that
to succeed in this difficult branch of human
literature high qualities and a patient and
peculiar temperament are needful. Patience,
perhaps, most of all.'_Of the four stories that
make up the book ''Wee Willie Winkie,"
I think that "His Majesty the King" is
the one that will be loved longest. He is
such a dear little fellow. Moreover, he acts
as a sort of avenging angel or Nemesis,
and by bringing remorse to the parents who
slighted him casts domestic happiness once
more in the Austell home. His Majesty,
the King, or Master Austell, lived and ruled
sole monarch in the nursery, adored by his

I20 RUDYARD KIPLING

English teacher, but left severely alone by
a self-absorbed mother, and a very busy
Departmental father.

"At the door of the nursery his authority
stopped. Beyond, lay the empire of his father
and mother — two very terrible people who had no
time to waste upon His Majesty the King. His
voice lowered when he passed the frontier of his
own dominions, his actions were fettered, and his
soul was filled with awe, because of the great grim
man who lived among a wilderness of pigeon-
holes, and the most fascinating pieces of red tape,
and the wonderful woman who was always getting
into or stepping out of the big carriage."

One unhappy day His Majesty opened
a post -packet, and requisitioned for future
amusement a diamond tiara, that had been
sent to his mother by her cicisbeo. When
ill and conscience-stricken, his theft was
discovered, and good resulted ; it brought
the husband and wife together upon a
happy footing; and His Majesty became
loved of both.

The story is full of the quaint speeches and
turns of thought that obtain In childhood-

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 121

land, Its pleasures, so small and simple, and
yet so deeply absorbing, — as in the lizard
shikar with playmate Patsie.

" Turn 'long Toby ! Zere 's a chu-chii lizard in
ze chick, and I 've told Chimo to watch him till
we turn. If we poke wiz zis wod his tail will go
wiggle-waggle and fall off. Turn long, I tan't
weach."

And then its sorrows, which are so real,
and its faults of such exaggerated magnitude!

Yes, a patient and peculiar temperament
is needful to interpret the ways and words of
childhood. The resourceful Willie Winkie,
Tods the Tearful, defiant Black Sheep, and
Little Tobrah and the poor pathetic figure
of tiny Mohammed Din-Budmashl^ give Mr.
Kipling every right to that praise wKich was
given to one, who w^as, for all the glory of
his high estate, a lover of the ways and
words of little children, and hence a lord of
human tears.. Suffer little children

*' Under the Deodars," in the social by-
ways of Simla, is a book concerning itself
chiefly with women-folk ; five of the stories

122 RUDYx\RD KIPLING

being wholly studies in gynarchy. The first
and fifth stories bringing Mrs. Hauksbee ;
chief among all the women-kind of Rudyard
Kipling. In the face of certain studies of
George Meredith's, to wit Diana Merrion and
Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, the character
of Mrs. Hauksbee can hardly be termed
a " creation," among the women of fiction.
Of Mrs. Mountstuart (who is only Diana
grown older) Mr. Meredith says : —

" She was a lady certain to say the remembered,
if not the right thing. Again and again was it
confirmed on days of high celebration, days of
birth or bridal, how sure she was to hit the mark
that rang the bell ; and away her word went over
the country ; and had she been an uncharitable
woman she could have ruled the country with an
iron rod of caricature, so sharp was her touch.
A grain of malice would have sent county faces
and characters awry into currency. She was
wealthy and kindly, and resembled our Mother
nature in her reasonable antipathies to one or two
things which none can defend, and her decided
preference of persons that shone in the sun. Her
word sprang out of her ; she looked at you and
forth it came ; and it stuck to you, as nothing
laboured or literary could have adhered."

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 123

And might not Mrs. Hauksbee be known
by the same portrait ? Mrs. Mountstuart,
Diana and Mrs. Hauksbee hold their chief
ambition in common : an overweening desire
to act as a force, a dynamic force in the
world around them, to "bring things to
pass," to be goddess from the machine — in
fact anything but the old, static, hearthside
influence that rocks cradles and, in the end,
really rules worlds. Diana pulls the strings
of a puppet politician and sells his secrets,
acting in the double role of Diana — Delilah :
a truly awesome combination : Mrs. Mount-
stuart sways the circle of which Patterne is
the centrum. Mrs. Hauksbee queens it over
social Simla and acts a part in all Its passing
show, from Government to Guards Bur-
lesque. Mrs. Hauksbee can be very, very
witty, as you can see from several of the
stories of "the English in India," and from
that long fascinating story " Mrs. Hauksbee
Sits Out." Chiefly is she brilliant in tongue-
tip fencing and, even as Diana of the Cross-
ways, can become inspired by another woman.

124 RUDYARD KIPLING

" ' Polly, I 'm going to start a salo7i!

" Mrs. Mallowe turned lazily on the sofa, and
rested her head on her hand. ' Hear the words
of the Preacher, the son of Baruch,' she began.

" ' Will you talk sensibly ? '

'•' ' I will, dear, for I see that you are going to
make a mistake.'

"'I never made a mistake in my life — at least,
never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.'

"'Going to make a mistake,' went on Mrs.
Mallowe, composedly. ' It is impossible to start
a salon in Simla. A bar would be much more
to the point.'

" ' Perhaps, but why? It seems so easy.'

'*'Just what makes it so difficult. How many
clever women are there in Simla ? '

" ' Myself and yourself,' said Mrs. Hauksbee,
without a moment's hesitation.

" ' Modest woman ! Mrs. Feardon would thank
you for that. And how many clever men ? '

" ' Oh — er — hundreds,' said Mrs. Hauksbee
vaguely.

"*What a fatal blunder! Not one. They are
all bespoke by the Government.' "

Mrs. Mountstuart cannot shine till she
is self-conscious and sex-conscious, as in the
passage of arms saying Patterne's intended
is "a Dainty rogue in porcelain."

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 125

" ' Why rogue ? ' he insisted with Mrs. Moiint-
stuart.

" ' I said — in porcelain/ she repHed.

" ' Rogue perplexes me.'

" ' Porcelain explains it'

" ' She has the keenest sense of honour.'

" ' I am sure she is a paragon of rectitude.'

" ' She has a beautiful bearing.'

" ' The carriage of a princess ! '

" * I find her perfect'

" ' And still she may be a dainty rogue in
porcelain.'

" ' Are you judging by the mind or the person,
madam ? '

" ' Both.'

" ' And which is which ? '

" ' There is no distinction.'

"*To be frank, rogue does not rightly match
with me.'

" ' Take her for a supplement.' "

Mrs. Hauksbee has longings for the
laurels of Madame Recamier and Madame
Mohl. In Simla she would found a Salon,
lift the bushel from hidden lights, and act
the conservatrice to any man who interested
her ct la the dear " Mamma" of the youthful
Rousseau. But Mr. Kipling has knowledge of

126 RUDYARD KIPLING

a truer sweeter woman than all this : though
he very rarely attempts to write about her :
a woman fitted to rank as the partner of that
clean-bred, frank, fearless English gentleman
who figures in his stories to such advan-
tage. Hints of this ''other woman" are
not wanting. She flashes in and out of
"Cupid's Arrows," ''False Dawn," "The
Light that Failed," "The Gadsbys," and
she is the May Holt of " Mrs. Hauksbee
Sits Out." An English girl, demure, not
at all divine, not at all wise, but clear in
heart, head and repute, pretty and lovable
from head to heel. England has not been
moulded as it is by women who can hold a
Salon together by their eyelashes, and we
should bear this fully in mind ; having
wholesome fear of the demi-vierges that are
such powers behind the thrones.

"At the Pit's Mouth," "A Wayside
Comedy," (what a "Song of the Village"
is here!) and "The Hill of Illusion" are
further studies of the woman and her works.
Witty, sardonical, with an ache in all their

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 127

hearts, the characters In these stories bring
to us something of the pain of their
own blas^ and bornd existences. The
pessimism of Russia, the despair of Norway
and the persiflage of Paris have their echoes
in this most striking triad of tales. The
women are neither good nor lovable. The
trail of Eden's serpent stains them all, and
they are of those who would rather talk to
the Serpent than become ennuy^e with
Adam. Marriage lines are to them but a
new form of letters of marque and dauntless
reprisal. Having married their husbands
from various mistaken motives, they are
wilHng to do the next best thing for the first
men who perceive this and dilate upon It.

After laying down '' Under the Deodars,"
one's thoughts fly almost unconsciously to
Ibsen and his relentless pourtrayal of
triangular friendships in small towns and
marriage knots that the fragile fingers of
women so deftly turn Into a running noose.

''The City of Dreadful Night" and
*' Letters of Marque " may aptly be spoken

128 RUDYARD KIPLING

of together. They are both books of travel-
talk, land-talk, or sea- faring, and they have
both been withdrawn from circulation.
"The City" is of Calcutta, "the many-
sided, the smoky, the magnificent." There
are also chapters upon the Railway Folk
and the Coal Miners of India, and a visit
to an opium factory. The Calcutta part of
these entertaining little books is an object-
lesson in the '' writing up " of a big city.
When the author has unwound a string of
details — statistics even — that the pens of
most writers would wreck pages with, there
is a shake of the cap and bells, and we read
on, unwearied, with many side laughs at his
scholia upon 'Cutta in relation to odours and
olfactics quite alien to Piesse or Rimmel.

Early in the book, the note of ''exile"
is struck deeply. Listen to the hehnweh
of it.

" All men of certain age know the feeling of
caged irritation — an illustration in the Graphic, a
bar of music, or the light words of a friend from
home may set it ablaze — that comes from the
knowledge of our lost heritage of London. At

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 129

home they, the other men, our equals, have at their
disposal all that Town can supply — the roar of
the streets, the lights, the music, the pleasant
places, the millions of their own kind, and a
wilderness full of pretty fresh-coloured English-
women, theatres and restaurants. It is their right.
They accept it as such, and even affect to look
upon it with contempt. And we, we have nothing
except the few amusements, that we painfully
build up for ourselves — the dolorous dissipations
of gymkhanas where everyone knows everybody
else, or the chastened intoxication of dances where
all engagements are booked, in ink, ten days ahead,
and where everybody's antecedents are as patent
as his or her method of waltzing. We have been
deprived of our inheritance. The men at home
are enjoying it all, not knowing how fair and rich
it is, and we at the most can only fly westward for
a few months, and gorge what, properly speaking,
should take seven or eight or ten luxurious years.
That is the lost heritage of London ; and the
knowledge of the forfeiture, wilful or forced, comes
to most men at times and seasons, and they get
cross."

The talk sv^eeps on v^ith many reflections,

upon the decent ordering and administering

of such a city : Calcutta Councils, (very

satiric this) Calcutta's craft, the shipmen

I

I30 RUDYARD KIPLING

that have knowledge of the sea, Calcutta
police and patrols, and some pathetic
comments upon one Lucia, the Eurasian
quarter, and the sole Eurasian poet, Henri
Derozio.

Of all this, and the chapters after, one's
attention is most attracted by the account
of the patrolling with the police ''while the
city sleeps." Here is described the visit to
the House of the Dainty Iniquity.

" A glare of lights on the stairhead, a clink of
innumerable bangles, a rustle of much fine gauze,
and the Dainty Iniquity stands revealed, blazing —
literally blazing — with jewellery from head to foot.
Take one of the fairest miniatures that the Delhi
painters draw, and multiply it by ten ; throw in
one of Angelica Kaufmann's best portraits, and
add anything that you can think of from Beckford
or Lalla Rookh, and you will still fall short of the
merits of that perfect face. For an instant, even
the grim professional gravity of the Police is
relaxed in the presence of the Dainty Iniquity
with the gems, who so prettily invites everyone to
be seated, and proffers such refreshments as she
conceives the palates of the barbarians would
prefer. Her Abigails are only one degree less

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 131

gorgeous than she. Half a lac, or fifty thousand
pounds worth — it is easier to credit the latter
statement than the former — are disposed upon
her little body. Each hand carries five jewelled
rings, which are connected by golden chains to a
great jewelled boss of gold in the centre of the
back of the hand. Ear-rings weighted with
emeralds and pearls, diamond nose -rings, and
how many other hundred articles make up the
list of adornments. English furniture of a gor-
geous and gimcrack kind, unlimited chandeliers,
and a collection of atrocious Continental prints —
something, but not altogether, like the glazed
plaques on bon-bo7z boxes — are scattered about
the house, and on every landing — let us trust
this is a mistake — lies, squats, or loafs a Ben-
gali, who can talk English with unholy fluency.
The recurrence suggests — only suggests, mind —
a grim possibility of the affectation of excessive
virtue by day, tempered with the sort of unwhole-
some enjoyment after dusk — this loafing and
lobbying and chattering, and smoking, and unless
the bottles lie, tippling among foul-tongued hand-
maidens of the Dainty Iniquity. How many men
follow this double, deleterious sort of life ? The
police are discreetly dumb.

f: ^ * ^ ^

And indeed, it seemed no difficult thing to be
friends to any extent with the Dainty Iniquity,

132 RUDYARD KIPLING

who was so surpassingly different from all that ex-
perience taught of the beauty of the East. Here
was the face from which a man could write Lalla
Rookhs, by the dozen, and believe every word that
he wrote."

'* Letters of Marque " have not yet been
published in England. In his bright light-
ning-sketch manner, Mr. Kipling touches
on road and rail-faring, temples, horses, ele-
phants, and monkeys, the talk of the trains,
and men and manners en route generally.
At the latter end of the voyaging he en-
counters two " Officers of Her Majesty's
Navy — midshipmen of a Man-o'-War In
Bombay — going up country on a ten days'
leave ! They had not travelled much more
than twice round the world, but they should
have printed the fact on a label. They
chattered like daws, and their talk was
as a whiff of fresh air from the open
sea, while the train ran eastward under the
Arcavalls." ... It was not until they had
opened their young hearts with Infantine
abandon, that the listener could o-uess from

THE INDIAN LIBRARY i^s

the incidental ar^v^ where these pocket
Ulysseses had travelled. South African,
Norwegian, and Arabian words were used
to help out the slang of Haslar, and a
copious vocabulary of ship - board terms,
complicated with modern Greek. . . .

Now that the Diary is dead, and Letters
have sunk into a decline, it is a pity that
letters of marque and reprisal are not more
often taken out by privateers of the pen, for
the benefit of longing listeners in England.

But would they cruise in such waters as
Mr. Kipling, and could they set down a
tale as plain and pleasing ? So much
depends on the angle of vision, and the
selection of the picture-plane.

I have not heard truly why these two
travel-books have been suppressed. Unlike
certain other book ''suppressions" we know
of, this Is genuine, and both books when
found, go into the catalogues of the cogno-
scenti at a noteworthy figure. If the
publishers would issue "The City," ''The
Letters," and that book of American travel,

134 RUDYARD KIPLING

which lies embalmed in the sheets of Luke
Sharp's paper, all in one volume, we should
then have a book to rank well with the
travels of Kinglake, Steevens, Verestchagin,
et alia.

The Story of the Gadsbys, stated to be
a tale without a plot, is a story in some
eighty pages of a typical Anglo -Indian
officer, his w^ooing, his wife, and his work.
All told with many new touches of craft-
manship and in that easy conversational
Clublandic tongue, peculiarly our author's
own. Gyp has succeeded with this subject
and style, but few others.

"The Gadsbys" is split up into seven
sketches or scenes. As each scene adds
its quota of evidence the interest deepens,
and the hopes and fears of the dear little
Featherweight, Mrs. Gadsby, become our
own.

Simply, the story is of the affairs of
heart of Captain Gadsby, who, after acting
as cavalier servente to Madam Threegan,
falls in love with Minnie, her daughter, as

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 135

only the blas4 and ennuyd can fall in love.
There are certain attachments to be sloughed
off by the Captain before the way to the
Altar is clear, and then at last they marry.
" High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone."
After a severe struggle, Captain Gadsby
determines to sell out of the beloved Army:
his love has put into him the fear — the
awful fear of danger, and of death. Quite
a gamut of sensations are to be found in
this volume of the Indian Library. Wit,
wisdom, genial sarcasm, and very true and
tearful pathos are found here. Our atten-
tion is held easily while Gadsby discusses
even the cutting down of harness weight
and the maxims of Prince Kraft, master of
the Three Arms : Mr. Kipling can dress up
the dry bones of detail, here and elsewhere,
into something akin to ivory. A strong
man is Captain Gadsby and a man of
meaning, but the fragile clinging fingers of
a young wife become more to him than
all the tactics, strategics, or logistics known
to Moltke, Kraft, or Maurice. Says Mr.

136 RUDYARD KIPLING

Kipling, acting as Choragus, after the fall
of the curtain :

" White hands cling to the tightened rein
Slipping the spur from the booted heel,

Tenderest voices cry ' Turn again,'
Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel,

High hopes faint on a warm hearthstone.
He travels the fastest who travels alone."

Now to speak of The Phantom Rickshaw.

Our knowledge of the ethics and economics
of the other world, the risen dead, twilight
glimpses and dream - warnings have been
strongly reinforced in recent days by the
strenuous exertions of Mesdames Florence
Marryatt and Annie Besant, " Psychical
Research " and " Borderland." The old-
fashioned and endeared ghost story, has
now a literature of its own and the pomp
and circumstance of a bibliography. In
Mr. Kipling's view of the ghost story there
is no echo of aught of the foregoing. His
tale is told in "straight-flung words and
few," as a tale should be told. . He neither
footnotes nor annotates these eerie tales ;

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 137

knowing full well that the subject should
not be submitted to the arbitrary strain of
fact and date.

*' The Phantom Rickshaw " (and other
eerie tales) must have a noticeable place
among what is termed (alia Tedesco) shudder-
literature.

In company with the sorrowful story of
'' The Phantom Rickshaw " is found '' My
Own True Ghost Story," ''The Strange Ride
of Morrowbie Jukes," and lastly that great
story, ''The Man who would be King."

Of these four, two are certainly master-
pieces that have helped forward materially
the fame of their creator. I allude to the
two last.

Coolly, and with all the circumspection
that comes of a craft held in restraint, Mr.
Kipling begins his account of the life-endings
of Pansay and his quondam love, Agnes
Keith-Wessington who, after death, haunts
him in the public places in a rickshaw and
with bearers as phantasmal as herself.

The refrain that is ever upon the phantom

138 RUDYARD KIPLING

lips and the reproach that Hes at the back of
the phantom eyes are dwelt upon with a
sombre and relentless touch as the author
warms to his work and shows us a mystery
and a punishment that carry with them
meaning and warning palpable to all.

The scene brought before us in which the
man Pansay, his dead paramour, and his
living love go over some passages in their
past, stamps itself upon the mind with a
gruesome insistence. It is so awful. One
recalls Swinburne :

" The Burden of Dead Faces. Out of sight
And out of love beyond the reach of hands,
Changed in the changing of the Dark and Light
They walk and weep about the barren lands ! "

I can only think of one other man who could
tell such a tale in such a manner — Edgar
Allan Poe. He and Kipling often associate
in one's mind.

In lighter vein, by far, and yet not without
its touch of the grim and grey, is the author s
''own" ghost story. It has a most cunningly

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 139

contrived climax and Is quite a study of the
Dak- Bungalow as a home and a haunt.

*'The Strange Ride of Morrovvbie Jukes"
though not a ghost story is ten times more
eerie than many that are. Out into the
desert rode Morrowbie Jukes and there he
fell (literally) into the company of the dead
who are not dead: human beings condemned
and branded with disease, unfit for society at
large. From this hideous village of the
condemned there is but one way of escape
with life, unaided. This way of escape was
found on the body of one who had died
there ; a veritable legacy of life for any who
could avail themselves of it. But Jukes
escapes by other and quite unforeseen
means, and by his lips Is the tale told. The
description of the ''Village," Its cowering
inhabitants, rascally Gunga Dass, the at-
tempts at escape, the plan and Its murdered
owner are told with power and circumstance.
'' Thus and thus It was " says the author and
you believe him, thoroughly — you cannot
help yourself.

I40 RUDYARD KIPLING

Concerning the fourth and last of the
stones, " The Man who would be King,"
let it be said that a long and very ap-
preciative criticism is its just desert. In its
own particular line of narrative it readjusts
the understood standards and alters the
values. It is of a certain class of tale
that has always obtained considerable
success : The '' idea " of men, citizens and
commoners, plotting or fighting their way to
a throne and crown has always in both life
and literature, possessed great fascination
for us.

In India, the knowledge that two men
were sanely and soberly planning to seize
and subdue Kafiristan, or any other king-
dom, would scarcely cause a thrill of
surprise.

There a man may sit in an editor's chair
(your only true throne nowadays) and see
pass a complete procession of the primal
passions, lusts, hatreds, famines or battles
of breed and creed, and yet, not necessarily,
lose a point in his cue-play through it.

THE INDIAN LIBRARY 141

/ Wherefore when Dravot and Carnehan,
blackguards both, calmly say they are going
to be Kings of Kafiristan the only rebuff
they receive from their hearer is an account
of the hardship of the travelling to be done
ere thev win to their kinordom. The men
consult maps and books, determine their route
and on the morrow disguised as Mullahs set
forth on their perilous journey.

A matter of two years later one traveller
returns, Carnehan, and his parched lips and
bruised and broken body (he had suffered
crucifixion) have just sufficient strength to
tell his tale.

When he had made an end he produced
his evidence : —

" From a mass of rags round his bent waist he
brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with
silver thread ; and therefrom shook on to my
table — the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot !
The morning sun that had long been paling the
lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken
eyes ; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded
with raw turquoises that Carnehan placed tenderly
on the battered temples.

142 RUDYARD KIPLING

'' ' You behold now,' said Carnehan, ' the Em-
peror in his habit as he lived — the King of
Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. Poor
old Daniel that was a real monarch once ! ' "

Carnehan died two days later in the
Asylum. There are many fine critics who
consider this story of the Kings of Kafir-
istan to be the best, in every way, among
Mr. Kipling's earliest successes.

THE OTHER STORIES

" It must be a delicious sensation to know that one has
emerged ; that one has done supremely well what so many
try and fail to do. I can imagine nothing more inspiring,
more satisfying, than to have realised one's dreams, and
made a great artistic success." — LuCAS Malet.

The stories other than the Indian Library
set are as follows: — "Plain Tales from the
Hills," ''The Light that Failed," '' Life's
Handicap," "Many Inventions," ''The Nau-
lahka," and "The Jungle Book."

Of this volume about three-fourths of its
forty tales are of the English in India, the
remainder being stories of Natives.

Simla is certainly a revelation to us. It
has been stated and repeated, with sufficient
frequency to pass it into a proverb, that the
average Englishman's idea of the exact
sciences is derived from fiction ! This cer-
tainly applies with regard to geography, and
143

144 RUDYARD KIPLING

such wondrous lands as, say, California,
Africa, Australia are known to us mainly
in their intimate features by the vivid
and powerful descriptions of Bret Harte,
Rider Haggard, Olive Schreiner and
Rolf Boldrewood. But it was left to Rud-
yard Kipling to take in hand our great
Indian Empire and its Simla and bring
it in books to our library table. ] While
reading many of the stories of Simla proper
I supplemented my knowledge of it by a
reference to two notes of the now very
famous summer capital in the Hills. The
first is from the pen of an " Unknown," and
for the second, one must thank Marion
Crawford. It is from the latter's vivid and
picturesque romance of modern India " Mr.
Isaacs."

''The Station of Simla in the Hills has a
population of something like fifteen thousand.
Its inhabitants sometimes refer to it as a
'sanatorium.' It is, out there, much the
same as our Hydros are here — for people
to frequent who fancy their labours have

THE OTHER STORIES 145

laid them up. Also for the culture of the
gentle art of the Flirt. Part of Simla was
retained by Us at the wind-up of the Gurka
affair, circa 18 16.

"Lieutenant Ross seems to have been the
man especially ordained to discover Simla,
and plant there a thatched cottage early in
this century.

" Lieutenant Kennedy, and other officers,
built there also, later, and in 1826 Simla
became a Settlement. Some lordly officials
took their ease with dignity there, and then
it soon became popular with Europeans.
From the spacious times of Lawrence (1864)
Simla has become a summer capital of India
numbering over 500 European residences.
These are upon a crescent-shaped ridge of
five miles. At the foot of the ridge is a sharp
descent to a well-watered valley. The outer
west of the Station owns Jutagh, a little
military post perched on the point of a steep
hill ; here are Head Quarters of Mule Bat-
teries (Mountain Artillery). A mile or so
off Jutagh is Prospect Hill, 7000 feet above
K

146 RUDYARD KIPLING

sea-level. The same distance to the East
of this place is Peterhoff, the Vice-regal
residence. West of Peterhoff is the Obser-
vatory. The Library, established 1859, is
a mile from the Viceroy's House. The
Club is near to Combermere Bridge. The
hill Jakko lies east of the Club and is 8000
feet above sea-level. Lowrie's Hotel, the
Band Stand, the Church and the Club are
all fairly close to one another. The Mall
is the public promenade. The Simla scenery
(of which we have sketch-etchings dotted
through Mr. Kipling's tales) is of a strange
beauty and possesses some magnificent
views ; the Ambala Plains, Kasauli Hills,
etc. Beneath the eye-level many ravines
lead into the deep valleys which mark out
the mountain sides. To the North a con-
fusion of chains in rising ranges are crowned
at the back by snow peaks in high relief
against the sky."

Mr. Crawford charges his palette with
warmer colour in painting his picture of
Simla.

THE OTHER STORIES 147

'' But in India whatever the ailing, low
fever, high fever, ' brandy pawnee ' fever,
malaria caught in the chase of tigers in the
Terai or dysentery imbibed on the banks of
the Ganges, there is only one cure, the
'hills' ; and chief of 'hill-stations' is Simla.

" On the hip rather than on the shoulder
of aspiring Himalayas, Simla— or Shumla,
as the natives call it — presents during the
wet monsoon period a concourse of pilgrims
more varied even than the Ba^neres de
Bigorre in the south of France, where the
gay Frenchman asks permission of the lady
with whom he is conversing to leave her
abruptly, in order to part with his remaining
lung, the loss of the first having brought
him there.

" ' Pardon, madame,' said he, 'je m'en vais
cracher mon autre poumon.'

"To Simla the whole supreme Govern-
ment migrates for the summer — Viceroy,
council, clerks, printers and hangers-on.
Thither the high official from the plains
takes his wife, his daughters, and his liver.

148 RUDYARD KIPLING

There the journalists congregate to pick up
the news that oozes through the pent-house
of Government secrecy, and faiUng such
scant drops of information, to manufacture
as much as is necessary to fill the columns
of their dailies.

*'0n the slopes of 'Jako' — the wooded
eminence that rises above the town — the
enterprising German establishes his concert-
hall and his beer-garden ; among the rhodo-
dendron trees Madame Blavatsky, Colonel
Olcott and Mr. Sinnett moved mysteriously
in the performance of their wonders ; and
the wealthy tourist from America, the
botanist from Berlin, and the casual peer
from Great Britain, are not wanting to com-
plete the motley crowd. There are no roads
in Simla proper where it is possible to drive,
excepting one narrow way, reserved when I
was there, and probably still set apart, for
the exclusive delectation of the Viceroy.
Everyone rides — man, woman and child ;
and every variety of horseflesh may be
seen in abundance, from Lord Steepleton

THE OTHER STORIES 149

Klldare's thoroughbreds to the broad-sterned
equestrian vessel of Mr. Currie Ghyrkins,
the Revenue Commissioner of Mudnuoofer
in Bengal.

" But I need not now dwell long on the
description of this highly -favoured spot,
where Baron de Zach mloht have added
force to his demonstration of the attraction
of mountains for the pendulum. Having
achieved my orientation and established my
servants and luggage in one of the reputed
hotels, I began to look about me, and, like
an intelligent American observer, as I pride
myself that I am, I found considerable
pleasure in studying out the character of
such of the changing crowd on the verandah
and on the Mall as caught my attention.

"All visits are made on horseback in
Simla, as the distances are often consider-
able. You ride quietly along, and the sals
follows you, walking or keeping pace with
your gentle trot, as the case may be. We
rode along the bustling Mall, crowded with
men and v/omen on horseback, with numbers

I50 RUDYARD KIPLING

of gorgeously arrayed native servants and
ckuprassies of the Government offices hurry-
ing on their respective errands, or dawdling
for a chat with some shabby - looking
acquaintance in private life ; we passed by
the crowded little shops on the Hill below
the church, and glanced at the conglomera-
tion of grain-sellers, jewellers, confectioners,
and dealers in metal or earthen vessels,
every man sitting knee-deep In his wares,
smoking the eternal ' hubble-bubble ' ; we
noted the keen eyes of the buyers and the
hawk's glance of the sellers, the long
snakelike fingers eagerly grasping the
passing coin, and seemingly convulsed into
serpentine contortion when they relinquished
their clutch on a single ' pi ' ; we marked
this busy scene, set down like a Punch and
Judy show, in the midst of the trackless
waste of the Himalayas, as if for the
delectation and pastime of some merry
geniiis loci weary of the solemn silence in
his awful mountains, and we chatted care-
lessly of the sights animate and inanimate

THE OTHER STORIES 151

before us, laughing at the asseverations of
the salesman, and at the hardened scepticism
of the customer at the portentous dignity
of the superb old messenger, white-bearded
and clad in scarlet and gold, as he
bombastically described to the knot of
poor relations and admirers that elbowed
him the splendours of the last entertainment
at ' Peterhof,' where Lord Lytton still
reigned. I smiled, and Isaacs frowned at
the ancient and hairy ascetic believer, who
suddenly rose from his lair in a corner, and
bustled through the crowd of Hindoos,
shouting at the top of his voice the con-
fession of his faith — ' Beside God there is
no God, and Muhammad is his apostle!'
The universality of the Oriental spirit is
something amazing, customs, dress, thought,
and language are wonderfully alike among
all Asiatics west of Thibet and south of
Turkestan. The greatest difference is in lan-
guage, and yet no one unacquainted with the
dialects could distinguish by the ear between
Hindustani, Persian, Arabic and Turkish."

152 RUDYARD KIPLING

In the usual library books about India
there is very little to be found about Simla
or its people "in their costumes as they
live." I quote a little paragraph from the
book of some Major - General (name for-
gotten) who appears to have had some
dim idea of the literary possibilities of the
subject.

" Who that has visited Simla can forget
its pine-covered hills and cultured valleys,
gleaming away far below the mountain
sides into the misty ' straths ' and purple
glens and gorges ; Its flush of rhododendron
forest and groves of oak and ilex, Its wild
flowers and breezy ridges — haunts of the
chlkor? The glory of novelty has long since
faded from the writer's mind, and he finds
it difficult to impart to his words the en-
thusiasm of youth as formerly felt on viewing
these fair mountains.

'' As regards the social aspects they must
be left to the traveller, novelist, or social
critic. Who of the ancien regime could not
draw on his memory for reminiscences of

THE OTHER STORIES 153

old Simla, Queen of Indian 'watering-
places!' Its provincial magnates and little
great men, its exotic swelldom, and dandies
male and female ! Let them pass."

Very fortunate must we account it that
Mr. Kipling did not also let them pass
without first taking toll or tribute.

Early in " Plain Tales from the Hills " we
meet the man Strickland, who, after Mul-
vaney, takes high place in this Hindu
Pantheon.

The character of Strickland is an amazing
one, and I think the possibilities and poten-
tialities of it have im.pressed even Mr.
Kipling himself. Strickland was in the
Police and turned his daily calling into
high art, and this was partly the manner
of man he was when at work. He was
perpetually ''going Fantee" among natives,
which, of course, no man with any sense
believes in. He was initiated into the Sat
Bhai at Allahabad once, when he was on
leave ; he knew the Lizard Song of the
Sansis, and the Halli-Hukk dance, which

154 RUDYARD KIPLING

is a religious cancan of a startling kind.
When a man knows who dance the Halli-
Htikk, and how, and when, and w^here, he
knows something to be proud of. He has
gone deeper than the skin. But Strickland
was not proud, though he had helped once,
at Jagadhri, at the Painting of the Death
Bull, which no Englishman must even look
upon ; had mastered the thieves'-patter of
the changars ; had taken a Eusufzi horse-
thief alone near Attock ; and had stood
under the nimbar-ho^xdL of a Border mosque
and conducted service in the manner of a
Sunni Mollah.

In this story in which he first figures, *'Miss
Youghal's Sais," he enacts a prime part
in the assumed garb of a groom, the better
to be near the presence of his beloved,
Miss Youghal, whom he afterwards married.
The story seems designed to introduce
Strickland and the attributes peculiar to him.
We do not really see him at work until he
reappears in the Bronckhorst Divorce Case
and that awesome study ''The Mark of the

THE OTHER STORIES 155

Beast." The great fault of the Strickland
stories Is that there are so few of them.

"His Chance in Life" is a joco-serious
story of a lower grade of the Eurasian people.
It is a quaint account of the Dutch courage
once shown by one Michele whose blood
has a dash of the white in it — our white.
He Is deslreful of marrying in his proper
caste and colour and the lady is a Miss
Vessis. The description of this saintly
creature need not be here emphasised.
(This story shows clearly how Its writer
can step aside and fixing his attention upon
some side scene or underplay of the great
tragic-ironic, study it apparently in mass, but
really in minutlae.j If it is a Sect we have its
dominant faith, its work and its daily hopes
and fears, what part It really plays in the
general scheme and with what hope of success :
the characterisation and conversation leaven-
ing the whole. /"Plain Tales" has several of
those studies, almost entirely oriental, that
are the abiding relief Mr. Kipling has brought
to the aid of our romantic llteratureH

156 RUDYARD KIPLING

" In the House of Suddhoo," "Beyond the
Pale," "The BIsara of Pooree," "The Gate of
the Hundred Sorrows," and lastly that very
curious account of the out-casted English-
man Jellaludln Mcintosh In ''To be Filed
for Reference." In reading Suddhoo there
comes again a shuddering remembrance
of that lurid genius Edgar Poe and his
Imaginings of things darksome and full
of dread, In fact, through almost all the
above-mentioned stories there Is a thought
haunting one that the actors in the several
dramas live and have their being in some
land akin to Jinnistan, where ghoul and
dhoul wait ever upon the destinies of
man, and where no one is quite safe from
that " trembling of the balance " betwixt
clean, clear sanity and — outer darkness. In,
one of his epigraphs Mr. Kipling seems to
acknowledge and anticipate the shudder that
will greet these gazings into the windows
of the East and Into its inmost life.

Very fascinating and tantalising Is the
story of the BIsara of Pooree. Tantalising

THE OTHER STORIES 157

because (like that stone, the Naulahka,
Tarvin searched for so well) we could follow
its vicissitudes through a hundred pages and
yet have to be content with about five.
Again we see how Mr. Kipling has caught
and trained by his handicraft an idea long
laying about in the world's "unused litera-
ture." I mean the idea of tracing the
history of a Talisman or Fetish, and its
influence upon its owners' lives. Think
what princely reading the history of (say)
the fateful De Sancy stone would make,
which went from prince to prince shining
through centuries, until it rested with a
great and gracious lady. Says Mr. Kipling,
describing the Bisara:

" Some natives say that it came from the other
side Kulu, where the eleven inch Temple Sapphire
is ; others that it was made at the Devil-Shrine
of Ao-Chung in Thibet, was stolen by a Kafir,
from him by a Gurkha, from him again by a
Lahouli, from him by a khitmatgar, and by this
latter sold to an Englishman, so all its virtue was
lost ; because to work properly, the Bisara of
Pooree must be stolen — with bloodshed if possible,
but at any rate, stolen.

158 RUDYARD KIPLING

" These stones of the coming into India are all
false. It was made at Pooree ages since — the
manner of its making would fill a small book —
was stolen by one of the Temple dancing girls there,
for her own purposes, and then passed on from hand
to hand, steadily northward, till it reached Hanle :
always bearing the same name — the Bisara of
Pooree. — In shape it is a tiny square box of silver,
studded outside with eight small balas-rubies.
Inside the box, which opens with a spring, is a
little eyeless fish, carved from some sort of dark,
shiny nut and wrapped in a shred of faded gold-
cloth. That is the Bisara of Pooree, and it were
better for a man to take a king cobra in his hand
than to touch it."

Possibly, strong-minded people v^ill laugh
with derision, at the gravely-stated belief
that a fetish can ever act as an influence In
one's life. Yet Fetishism flourishes strongly
enough, and the meaning it has for even
seasoned thinkers is hinted at by Kipling
in Heldar's lucky coin in "The Light that
Failed " !

" To be Filed for Reference " is a story
which has an interest above many others in
the book, in that it is deslg-ned to act as

THE OTHER STORIES 159

the prelude, or proem, to a larger work
from Mr. Kipling: "The Book of Mother
Maturin," to wit, handed to him, we are
asked to suppose, by a Mohammedanised
Oxonian, Jellaludin Mcintosh. It is difficult
to say whether it is meant to be pessimistic
or merely sardonical. Unfortunately the full
meaning of Jellaludin yet waits, for "The
Book of Mother Maturin " has not come
to us.

" The Light that Failed," held by so many
critics to be a doubtful or debatable success,
I consider without question to be a really
fine performance and a sound criticism of
the work-a-day world and its ways viewed
from the eyes of two men who had to fight
life in her fiercest moods. The chief charac-
ter Dick Heldar is a very fascinating one
indeed. A true cosmopolitan is this man
(reminding one of Stevenson's Loudon Dodd
— the man who worked up from tin-types to
treasure-trove). Heldar and Maisie passed
their early days together under the rod of
an old petticoated terror. They early realise

i6o RUDYARD KIPLING

something of the meaning within them,
Vv^hich on one side, at any rate, developed
into love. Dick walks out to view created
cosmos, and plays the solivagant for about
ten years — an undaunt ugly duckling of a
fellow !

He returns after many days, a successful
war-artist, and when in London, throws in
his lot with Torpenhow — another seeker
after bubble reputation at the pencil's point.
Dick draws for the papers, paints for
pleasure, and covers his face with fatness.
Talks wondrous talks with Torpenhow :
brush-and-palette talk, war-and-travel talk,
with an occasional digression concerning
the manners and misdeeds of the Ego.
Now comes a truly troublous time ; for
Maisie returns from out of the years and
Dick's forgetfulness is severely reproached.
Naturally helpful, onward work is much
neglected, and Heldar uses many panderings
to the emotions, which retard considerably.

Some useless over-work and some fate-
sent over-worry, bring about illness, and

THE OTHER STORIES i6i

finally (an old sabre-stroke helping) blind-
ness. A pretty little conflict, Eros v. Ego,
ends in Maisie coming to help "and in her
eyes show pity for his toil." A significant
fact is that poor '' B. V.'s" work "The
City of Dreadful Night " forms so much
of the backing of one part of the book.
There is pathos here when one remembers
the vastly different receptions and appre-
ciations accorded the two authors.

There are many things in the conversa-
tions of Heldar that are worthy of often
being repeated. " If we sit down quietly
to work we may, or we may not, do some-
thing that isn't bad. A great deal depends
on being the master of the bricks and
mortar of the trade. But the instant we
begin to think about success and the effect
of our work — to play with one eye on the
gallery — we lose power and touch and
everything else. . . . See ! " etc.

This story passed from the pages of
" Lippincott's Magazine" to the pomp and
pride of a book-form Edition, altered and

L

i62 RUDYARD KIPLING

enlarged, with the author's statement that
this was the story as originally conceived.
In its new form it has a long, important
conversation of the war-correspondent's and
in place of Heldar's marriage his journey to
the Soudan seat-of-war, and death. These
are the two chief alterations. The life
of Heldar (in whichever form you prefer
to read it) possesses a strong fascina-
tion which the tense phrases of the diction
heighten. Take the long and carefully
worked out scene between Heldar, Torpen-
how and the Nilghai after the return of
Heldar from unhappy lovemaking at Fort
Keeling. As he sits listening with aching
heart to the wit and banter of his confreres
the motifs of Roving life, Restless love and
Untouched work, act and react upon him,
torturingly, until the coming of Despair.
The "pull" of the old days of darkness and
unsuccess, the woman who would not wed
and the masterpiece that would not create
itself: dray war a yow dee. He stifles all
but the longing to paint the masterpiece

THE OTHER STORIES i6

O

that shall make him accepted of his love.
The subject chosen to be a Melancholia
inspired by that awful woman of "The City
of Dreadful Night." From inception to
completion this picture has a little history
of its own. Then the blindness comes, and
he turns aside from a chance there is to
marry Maisie, and the old leit-motif of
wandering struggling life returning he goes
out to the Egyptian War and from the dark-
ness of sightlessness to the last darkness
of Death. Much of the soul-weariness of
poor Bysshe Vanolis and his Dreadful
Dream, finds its way into these pages,
with the inevitable result that one wishes
to know of the life and labour of a writer
whose vision, philosophy and literary form
accords so much with the exacting intellect
of Kipling.

Although I had once read the rare "City
of Dreadful Night," in the early days, I
returned to its perusal and moreover
gathered some notes of its writer and his
tragic life and death. In precis I repeat

i64 RUDYARD KIPLING

these notes and give the base of supplies
for more.

James Thomson, the second, (" B.V.") was
born at Port Glasgow in 1834 of Scotch
parentage both ways. When about twenty-
years old he was enlisted as an army
Schoolmaster, firstly In connection with a
South Devon Regiment. He appears to
have been an excellent teacher, and in all
matters chiefly referring to mental training
to have had great grasp. He taught
himself French, German, Spanish, and
Italian, and the usual ''little Latin and
Greek." After great vicissitudes James
Thomson reached the period in which his
now world-famous poem was penned. " The
City of Dreadful Night," written between
1870 and 1874, has been accepted as the
masterpiece of Its Author, — and rightly. . . .
We feel In reading "The City" that we
are In the presence of one who has not
only been profoundly awed by the mysteries
of existence, but who has seen, as only
a great poet can see, and who, moreover,

THE OTHER STORIES 165

is gifted with the rare poetical faculty
of translating his vision into words which
impress themselves on the mind of the
reader with the vividness and intensity of
a picture.

The object of "The City of Dreadful
Night" as set out in Thomson's proem is
twofold : — in the first place to set forth
the "bitter, old and wrinkled truth" of
pessimism, and secondly to speak a word
of fellowship and comfort to the other
wanderers in the city; ''and feel a stir of
fellowship in all disastrous fight." . . .

I think it may fairly be said that the
allegorical meaning of " The City of Dread-
ful Night" is, in the main, sufficiently clear,
though as in most other allegories the
precise significance and inter-connection of
some of the details may not admit of easy
explanation. ''The City of Dreadful Night"
is symbolic of the gloom of pessimistic
thought : the dwellers in the city are they
whose despondent mood has been so per-
sistent as to become a second nature. Like

i66 RUDYARD KIPLING

Bunyan's Pilgrim, they are the prisoners of
Giant Despair, but they have no key by
which to effect their liberation.

The workmanship of the poem is a
wonder and delight.

I am grateful to an excellent work upon
'' B. V." written by H. S. Salt for some
matter quoted above ; the completest account
of his Life, Letters, and Poems will be
found in Mr. Salt's book which can be
recommended to all lovers of good books.
^[Tn the volumes " Life's Handicap (Stories
of Mine Own People)" and ^' Many In-
ventions " Kipling has given us of his very
best, particularly in the first named. I
consider that it shows its author at the
height of his present power, both in prose
and poetry, for the verses in the Envoi are
among the sweetest and the subtlest in all
the works. They touch with a strange,
wonderful touch upon the work, the word-
wizardry, of their writer. But to speak of
the body of the book. The preface tells us,
with the unmatched touch that we get to

THE OTHER STORIES 167

know and love so well, that, '' these tales
have been collected from all places and all
sorts of people, from priests in the Chubara,
from Ala Yar the Carver, Jiwun Singh the
Carpenter, nameless men on steamers and
trains round the world, women spinning
outside their cottages in the twilight, officers
and oentlemen now dead and buried, and
a few, but these are the very best, my father
gave me." The preface is in itself a story —
and a study^j The twenty -seven stories
comprise in their range most of the subjects
so assimilated by Kipling, and in this respect
it is the most representative of all his books.
It is a set of masterpieces. Early in the
book Terence Mulvaney, his wondrous In-
carnation as God Krishna, and his very
human courtship as a private person, have
first call. The '' unhistorical extravagance "
and splendour of the first story is in curious
contrast to the Mulvaney who went court-
ing with his heart at his lips, and many
of its truest promptings shining in his
honest eyes. ''Without Benefit of Clergy"

i68 RUDYARD KIPLING

may be described as a love-study rather than
story. It has a conviction and a complete-
ness that causes the loves of John H olden
and Ameera to take form of flesh and come
before us as in that powerful story of the
painter's Passion in the Forest that Zola tells.
John Hoiden, officer of Her Majesty in
India, loved a Mussulman's daughter, pur-
chased by him. His love was returned
twentyfold and a child was born. Then,
when love was at its height, there came the
Harvester-by- Night in the similitude of a
Plague. Both child and mother succumb,
and John Hoiden goes back to the life he
knew before. There is a ghastly mother-in-
law and one Pir Khan, guardian of the gate,
who help to explain some of the less manifest
things. That is all the story. But listen to
this, to gain an idea of the force and feeling
in the telling :

" When there is a cry in the night, and the spirit
flutters into the throat, who has a charm that will
restore .'' Come swiftly, Heaven-born ! It is the
black cholera ! "

THE OTHER STORIES 169

Holden galloped to his home. The sky
was heavy with clouds, for the long-deferred
rains were near and the heat was stiflinor.

o

Ameera's mother met him in the courtyard,
whimpering, '' She is dying. She is nursing
herself into death. She is all but dead.
What shall I do, Sahib ? "

Ameera was lying in the room in which
Tota had been born. She made no sign
when Holden entered, because the human
soul is a very lonely thing, and when it is
getting ready to go away, hides itself in a
misty borderland where the living may not
follow.

The black cholera does its work quietly
and without explanation : Ameera was being
thrust out of life, as though the Angel of
Death had himself put his hand upon her.
The quick breathing seemed to show that
she was either afraid or in pain, but neither
eyes nor mouth gave any answer to Holden's
kisses.

There was nothing to be said or done,
Holden could only wait and suffer. The

I70 RUDYARD KIPLING

first drops of the rain began to fall on the
roof and he could hear shouts of joy in the
parched city.

The soul came back a little and the lips
moved. H olden bent down to listen. " Keep
nothing- of mine," said Ameera. "Take no
hair from my head. She would make thee
burn it later on. That flame I should feel.
Lower ! Stoop lower i Remember only
that I was thine and bore thee a son.
Though thou wed a white woman to-
morrow, the pleasure of receiving in thy
arms thy first son is taken from, thee for ever.
Remember me when thy son is born — the
one that shall carry thy name before all men.
His misfortunes be on my head. I bear
witness — I bear witness" — the lips were
forming the words in his ear — " that there
is no God but — thee, beloved ! "

You will remember John H olden as being

-one of the best types of the English officer

and gentleman in India. Ameera as a

painstaking consistent portrait of the better

type of native womanhood, and Tota as

THE OTHER STORIES 171

another study of early childhood worth}^ of
the pen that created " Mahommed Din"
and " Little Tobrah."

*'At the End of the Passage" is a triumph
in "atmosphere." As the full meaning of
the lives of these four slaves-of-office lies
bare it seems as though there has been
described a Song of the Sun more awesome
than even Thomson's " Night."

It is with great pleasure after the pre-
ceding horrors of, say, " The Mark of the
Beast," the ghoulish "Bertram and Bimi"
Insomnia, Leprosy and Beast-madness, that
one turns to the repose and fabulistic play of
fancy in " The Finances of the Gods."

There are two more stories : "The Amir's
Homily" and " Naboth " that are both
signal successes in tragedy and comedy,
respectively. Tragedy as sombre and un-
lifting as that hunting of Daoud Shah in
" Dray Wara Yow Dee." Comedy of that
delicious vein shown in ''Pig" and '*A
Friend's Friend."

It is His Royal Highness Abdur Rahman,

172 RUDYARD KIPLING

Amir of Afghanistan, who deHvers the
Homily and thereby takes us at a sweep
back to just and fearless Al Raschid,
Caliph, of blessed memory. As the Amir
sat counselling and judging one day, a man
was brouorht before him accused of theft.

o

The mighty ruler shows no mercy and to
prove his justness he tells the assembled
court of nobles how he had once ''wrought
day by day bearing burdens and labour-
ing with his hands " tempted and tried,
driven to the money-lender and yet remain-
ing honest through all the awful days before
he came into his kingdom. . . . "But he, this
bastard son of naught, must steal ! For a
year and four months I worked, and none
dare say I lie, for I have a witness." . . .
Then rose in his place among the Sirdars
and the nobles one clad in silk, who folded
his hands and said: — "This is the truth of
God, for I, who by the favour of God and
the Amir, am such as you know, was once
clerk to that money-lender." There was a
pause, and the Amir cried hoarsely to the

THE OTHER STORIES 173

prisoner, throwing scorn upon him, until he
ended with the dread " Dar Arid" which
clinches justice. . . . "So they led the thief
away, and the whole of him was seen no
more together ; and the Court rustled out
of its silence, whispering ' Before God and
the Prophet, but this is a man ! ' "

"The Amir's Homily" should stand as a
record and high mark in the art of precise
if not indeed perfect, expression through the
medium of simple narrative prose. It is
distinguished, dignified, and helps forward
towards that high belief in the power and
glory of the writer's craft that pleads so
passionately in that Proem to " Many Inven-
tions " and the Envoi of the present book.

I have said above that "Naboth" is of the
CTenre of "Pio^" and "A Friend's Friend." In
subtlety of style, yes : but in subject-matter
it is another of those keen portraits of
Hindu rascality that form the chief feature
of the earlier work " In Black and White."

" Naboth " brings the "poor Gentoo "
forward with the laughing satire and deft

174 RUDYARD KIPLING

strokes that Bret Harte used when he gave
an admiring world *' Ah Sin ! " — crystallising
for ever certain characteristics of the child-
likej^hinee.

/ There is a certain part of the art of
Kipling very noticeable in " Life's Handi-
cap " to which I have not done justice.
I refer to his ability to take up "the least
of little things " and fabricate a song or
story that shall be a dear delight. ! Take
a grlance at literature behind or around and
interest yourself in noting how many people
of the pen have this power.

Remember how Dickens gave a deep
interest to the dreary mental struggles in-
volved in the study of Shorthand : Thackeray
built up pages of delectable reading from
merest Club customs and chatter : Burns
wrote a sheaf of song from the memorised
lullabies, and knee-songs of his mother.
James Thomson possessed this faculty in a
high degree. Theophile Gautier, too, takes
an inch of mythos from peerless Lempriere
and creates Le Roi Candaule ; another inch

THE OTHER STORIES 175

of history and gives us " Une Nuit de
Cleopatre." . . . \ And so with Rudyard
Kipling. His "central fact" is often of the
very simplest possible kind : a Waterbury
Watch, departmental data, an archery score,
a police trick, or poison -plant,' or as in
''Naboth" a caitse cdlebi-e from the'scriptures.
Kipling takes leave of his labours in
"Life's Handicap" with quite as fine a set
of verses as any we have yet been glad-
dened by. The incidental verse that is found
occasionally in great works of prose is over-
shadowed by its easier read and more in-
sistent prose kindred. I quote the third
verse of the Envoi to "Life's Handicap":

" One instant's toil to Thee denied
Stands all Eternity's offence,
Of that I did with Thee to guide

To Thee, through Thee, be excellence,"

and the final " Credo " :

" It is enough that through Thy grace
I saw naught common on Thy earth."

" Take not that vision from my ken ;
Oh, whatsoe'er may spoil or speed,
Help me to need no help from men,
That i may help such men as need ! "

176 RUDYARD KIPLING

Containing " My Lord the Elephant,"
"A Matter of Fact," and "The Record of
Badalia Herodsfoot" (to name three not-
ables) the book of stories entitled " Many
Inventions" could hardly fail to find fame.
The general epigraph is from Ecclesiastes :
" Lo ! this only have I found, that God hath
made man upright ; but they have sought
out many inventions." The title is certainly
one of happy choice, for these tales are for
the most part concerning those who have
gone very far from their original upright-
ness. The first story, " The Disturber of
Traffic," being of a monomaniac, the second
an Egotist, the fourth a bombastic ambas-
sador of the Chateaubriand type, while
" Love- o'- Women " and the "Record of
Badalia Herodsfoot" are both terribly grim
stories of the influence of the wrong-doer
on human fate and fortunes. The story of
the "Embassy of Shafiz Ullah Khan " (One
View of the Question) is distinguished by
being the wittiest piece of work extant in
that section of literature known as Lettres

THE OTHER STORIES 177

Persanes. The foremost effort In this
direction was, of course, accomplished by
Montesquieu. It can safely be said that
since Robert Morier wr te that highly-
humorous book " The Adventures of Hadji
Baba," in England nothing really good
has been done with the *' leth^e persane "
as a stalking-horse for the satirising of
the English. Hadji Baba (who should be
much more widely read) was a creation :
a sort of Persian Gil Bias, adventuresome,
resourceful, and very witty. The attention
that Mr. Kipling has drawn to the Indian
Native, Morier drew to the Persian, with
great success. In Mr. Kipling's '' lettre
persane'' — "One View of the Question" —
the satire, however, is more marked than in
Hadji Baba, and hard knocks are given to
some of our Home idols. Shafiz Ullah
Khan, who is on a mission to England
from His Highness the Rao Sahib of
Jagesur, writes a long letter to Jamal-ud-
Din, Minister, and speaks of the English
in England with no uncertain sound, and

M

178 RUDYARD KIPLING

with a very certain and very mordant satire.
This compte rendu is full of ''good things,"
for Shafiz Khan is both a wit and a philo-
sopher.

So masterfully can Rudyard Kipling speak
of them that go down to the sea in ships,
and '' old sea wings ways and words in the
days of oak and hemp," that it seems a pity
he did not tell the story of the naval adven-
tures of Charlie Mears in '' The Finest Story
in the World" without its present framing,
ingenious though it is. Charlie Mears is a
clerk who is sickening for the irritable fever
of Poesy. In moments of dreamy abstrac-
tion, Mears has remembrances of a previous
state of existence. These remembrances
are of value because of the correctness
of their materiel and personnel, as the
tacticians say, and, moreover, of the deep
human interest underlying them. But upon
a day Mears falls in love. The power of
his passion completely enfolds him, thought
and deed. The dream of the past, ''half
forgot and half foretold," fades from his

THE OTHER STORIES 179

mind ; and he awakes in a very sober state
from his course of day-dreams eager for the
more concrete pleasures of a woman's love.
** He tasted the love of woman that kills
remembrance," and "the finest story in the
world was never written down from his
lips."

The story is interwoven and given com-
pleteness of presentment by its author's
special and peculiar power of giving the
most improbable theme vraisemb lance.
Moulded by him, those characters that
would be the veriest puppets in others'
hands live for us in his pages, and have
a reality that is one of the most enduring
tributes to their creator's genius. But a
final word upon this last story. Mears,
as before hinted, was by way of being
a poet, and he is supposed to have written
a spring song, which is fully quoted. This
song of the awakening of Love and the
Earth is so fine that I wonder the longing
fingers of the musician have not closed
upon it ere this. It is a song with all

i8o RUDYARD KIPLING

the wild warmth and sweetness of young
spring blood, a Renouveau in the strict
meaning of the word :

" The day is most fair, the cheery wind
Halloos behind the hill,
Where he bends the wood as seemeth good,

And the sapling to his will.
Riot, O wind ! there is that in my blood,
That would not have thee still.

Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad ;

I am Victor. Greet me, O Sun !
Dominant master and absolute Lord

Over the soul of one ! "

" A Matter of Fact " is one more reading
of the Great Sea Serpent belief To invest
an old-time myth (that has already had
a great work written upon it) with a
new interest, and, moreover, a deep human
interest, is an achievement indeed. In "A
Matter of Fact" the monster plays his part
to the danger of the limb and life of the
beholder ; and, by means of the narrator's
power of description, the Kraken (our old

THE OTHER STORIES i8i

friend of the deep sea fauna) is again given
life, and death, with eldritch effect.

After *' In the Rukh " (the forerunner of
the Jungle stories) and '' Love-o'-Woman," a
Baudelairean study of physical passion, disease
and Death, we come to that " Record " of
Badalia Herodsfoot that set the reading world
and the critics in a commotion when, some
years ago, Mr. Kipling published it in the
Christmas number of the ' ' Detroit Free Press. "
It was said that, one morning, this disappeared
from the bookstalls. The then Editor of the
" Detroit Free Press " — Mr. Barr, I have no
doubt, remembers the incident — asked the
reason for this sudden swoop of the censor-
ship; he was told that 07ie pei^son had written
to Smith and Son complaining of the sale
of such shocking impropriety. Well, some
of us took a different view ; and, armed with
certain expressions of public opinion, Mr.
Barr invited Smith and Son to remove their
interdict. They had the courtesy to comply ;
and ''Badalia" flourished once more on the
bookstalls, ' blemishes ' and all.

i82 RUDYARD KIPLING

It may, perhaps, be best described as a
most masterful use of the methods of Real-
ism applied to English, and London, life.
The vogue such stories have is undeniable.
A year or so after " Badalia," the " Esther
Waters" of George Moore and ''Tales
of Mean Streets " by Arthur Morrison show
that this painfully real side of life is re-
ceiving a considerable amount of attention.

" Many Inventions," which is fairly full
of the Sturm tmd dra^tg of modern life, ends,
as it began, with true romance. Satiric
farce and eerie naturalism give place at
the last to the fairy fancy of '' The Children
of the Zodiac." Turning again to the open-
ing of the book and the parable unfolded
in the lines " To the True Romance,"
I think I have mentioned elsewhere that it
is a noble-spirited and passionate pleading
for the Author's culture and craft of pure
romance, told with a choice of word and
phrase that makes a stately melody, lit by
many unusual passages of beauty — as in the
opening verse : —

THE OTHER STORIES 183

" Thy face is far from this our war,

Our call and counter-cry,
I shall not find thee quick and kind.

Nor know thee till I die.
Enough for me in dreams to see

And touch thy garment's hem ;
Thy feet have trod so near to God

I may not follow them."

A sweeter defence of Romance, It would
be hard to find In any language — The
Comfortress of Unsuccess : the Handmaid
of the Gods.

" Devil and brute, thou dost transmute to higher lordlier
show
Who art in sooth that utter Truth the careless Angels
know ! "

In a scholarly, but lengthy, study of the
works of Thomas Hardy, Lionel Johnston
insistently says that It is a delicate and
difficult thing to make studies of the art of
a living writer. Granted. But I consider
it to be a much more delicate and difficult
thing to make a study, or even an apprecia-
tion, of the works of those who labour in
collaboration. With "The Naulahka" (a story

i84 RUDYARD KIPLING

of West and East) this difficulty fronts one.
Which part of the book did Rudyard Kipling
write ? Surely the matter dealing directly
with the great gem the Naulahka, surely
the splendid scene between Nicholas Tarvin
and the Ranee of Rhatore, and most
assuredly the frequent snatches of melody ?
The story was once re-cast for Opera.
In the latter form, it has not yet publicly
appeared. It was tried in camera. The
Quest of the Great Naulahka by Tarvin,
an adventurer of unbounded resource, shows
the spirit of American enterprise in ex-
celsis. Beyond doubt the death of Wolcott
Balestier, its part Author, removed one
who would have been a force in literature
worth reckoning.

The perusal of the "Jungle Book" re-
calls the fact that in certain parts of his
works Kipling has been greatly attracted
by the possibility of developing the Fable
as a medium. In " Mrs. Hauksbee Sits
Out" and "The Bridge-Builders," the flora
and fauna are called in to help the exploiting

THE OTHER STORIES 185

of the main theme of the story, and in " Many
Inventions" there is that curious story ''In
the Rukh" where commences the series of
Jungle adventures that form the subject of
the "Jungle Books." In laying a claim to
the laurels of the fabllast, the many-sided
intellect of our author carries his art back
to the very beginnings of things. The great
''Father of all Fables" the Hitopadesa he
has always had with him, and to its influence,
it may be, we owe the studies of "Hide and
scale and feather" in the "Jungle Books."
It will be remembered Sir Edwin Arnold
theorises that the Hitopadesa is the direct
exemplar from which inspiration has been
drawn for the fables of -^sop, Pilpay, and
that world-famous fable of Reynard the
Fox that figures in most languages. Be
that as it may, the fable-stories begun by
Kipling in ''In the Rukh" and continued
in the "Jungle Book" are a distinct and
rare gain to literature. The book is built
upon a new plan ; each story, or section,
having a rhymed envoi which acts as an

i86 RUDYARD KIPLING

explaining Choragus. Among these verses
there are, of course, some that could only
have been v/rltten by the author of " Barrack-
Room Ballads." Particularly fine is ''The
Road Song of the Bandarlog, or Monkey-
folk." It has an unflagging spirit and swing,
and a quaint charm or felicity in its wording.
Among the Epigraphs are many musical
versicles, such as " The Seal Lullaby" which
follows : —

" Oh ! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,

And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon o'er the combers, looks downward to find us

At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow,

Oh, weary wee flipperling curl at thy ease !
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,

Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas ! "

The second "Jungle Book" is, of course,
a continuation of the first "Jungle Book,"
although each is complete in itself. It is
built upon the same plan (story and song
alternating) and illustrated by Lockwood
Kipling. The chapter that arrests one's
attention first is that bearing the title :

THE OTHER STORIES 187

"The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," a long story
of man, beast and the forces of nature.

Purun Dass, a Prime Minister of a native
state and loaded with honours, suddenly
renounced all place and power and became
a begging priest or pilgrim. He lived in
a hut, and there made friends with all who
came near, whether man or beast. His
wonderful knowledge of the ways of animals
and their fears warned him one night of a
great landslip, the falling away of a hill, by
which he had dwelt for years. He was able
to warn the inhabitants of the village, whose
lives were saved, but he lost his own through
the perils of the landslip, and the people built
a temple upon the place of his death.

From this very strange story of renuncia-
tion of the world and return to nature,
with its picture of self-denial in the wilder-
ness culminating in one sublime act of
loving- kindness, we turn with a kind of
relief to the lighter stories of " Quiquern,"
'' The King's Ankus," " The Spring Run-
ning," and others.

i88 RUDYARD KIPLING

This second ''Jungle Book" is made
notable in the memory by the story of
Purun Bhagat, by the lovely Ripple Song :

" Foolish heart and faithful hand,
Little feet that touched no land,
Far away the ripple fled,
Ripple — ripple — running red ! "

The Eskimo story '' Quiquern " contains,
at the end, the following delightful piece of
literary make-believe — perhaps the most dis-
tinctly Kiplingite piece of prose in the whole
book.

" Now Kotuko, who drew very well in the Inuit
style, scratched pictures of all these adventures on
a long flat piece of ivory with a hole at one end.
When he and the girl went north to Ellesmere
Land in the year of the Wonderful Open Winter,
he left the picture-story with Kadlu, who lost it in
the shingle when his dog-sleigh broke down one
summer on the beach of Lake Netilling at Niko-
siring, and there a Lake Inuit found it next spring
and sold it to a man at Imigen, who was interpreter
on a Cumberland Sound whaler, and he sold it to
Hans Olsen "

and so on to the end of the tale.

SOME EARLY CRITICISMS

"The critics cackled. . . . For it was a new sort of egg,
an unexpected egg ; and their smartness and knowledge of
the world, and literary gifts, and artistic acumen, notwith-
standing, they were really at a loss to determine what kind
of living creature might be inside it. One section of them,
the younger, more progressive, and daring, declared that it
undoubtedly contained an eagle."— The Wages of Sin.

This is the place to say that an especial
gratitude should be felt towards the "World,"
the '' National Observer" and the " Pall Mall
Gazette " by all lovers of Rudyard Kipling :
for these three papers have done more to
help forward that writer in England, than all
the others combined. ** Vanity Fair " could
not fail to welcome one who had so much of
the wit and style of their own lamented Ali
Baba whose papers, '' Twenty-one Days in
India," appeared in their pages. In the
" National Observer " (which will go down

189

I90 RUDYARD KIPLING

to posterity as one of the few journals that
bear reading in bound - up copies) were
published most of the Barrack - Room
Ballads, and an appreciative article dealing
generally with "the man and his work."
Of course, the ''Quarterly Review" article, of
which I will speak presently, gave him
that cachet that he wanted — in the eyes of
those devoid of judgment. With, I think,
the sole exception of Robert Buchanan and
W. D. Howells, the voice of the magazinist
was cordial, even grateful, throughout the
pages of long articles. Howells in " Har-
per's Magazine" is here quoted.

"It Is a pathetic fact that with such
artistic and important books within our
reach, the great mass of us prefer to read
the Rider Haggards and Rudyard Kiplings
of the day ; but, it cannot be denied, of these
two the new fad is better than the old fad :
but he seems a fad all the same : the whim
of effete Philistinism (which now seems the
aesthetic condition of the English), conscious
of the dry-rot of its conventionality and

SOME EARLY CRITICISMS 191

casting about for cure In anything that Is
wild and strange and unHke Itself. Some
qualities In Mr. Kipling's tales promise a
future for him ; but there Is little In the
knowlngness and swagger of his perform-
ance that Is not to be deplored with many
tears ; it Is really so far away from the
thing that ought to be. The thing that
ought to be will be vainly asked, however,
of the English of Smaller Britain, or of any
part of the English race which her bad taste
can deprave. With one of Mr. Kipling's
jaunty, hat-cocked-on-one-side, wink-tipping
sketches, he will find the difference between
painting and printing in colours. Or perhaps
he will not ; it depends very much upon
what sort of reader he Is. But It is certain
that his preference will class and define him,
and that if he should prefer the Kipling
sketches he had better get some sackcloth
and ashes and put them on, for he may be
sure that his taste is defective. The con-
viction need not lastingly affect his spirits :
bad taste is a bad thlno^, but It is not sinful."

192 RUDYARD KIPLING

Julian Hawthorne, in " Lipplncott," is of
another way of thinking. He surrenders
himself to the charm of Kipling, and de-
votes pages to describing him. He says : —
f ^If Mr. Kipling recalls anyone, it is Bret
TTa'rte ; there is a similar self-possession and
sagacity in the style ; he is never crude ; he
has the literary touch ; whatever he writes
becomes literature through his manner of
putting it. He is manly masculine, and
consequently has an intense appreciation of
the feminine in nature : he never touches
a woman but we feel the thrill of sex.
Thomas Hardy has the same faculty in this
regard ; but Mr. Kipling here surpasses
Bret Harte, who seems not to like women,
or not to respect them, and has contributed
no lovable or respectable woman to litera-
ture {szc f). Mr. Kipling has been brought
up in the best society, which is better (for
a writer) than to get into it after being
brought up. He has also been brought up
in, or born in, a literary atmosphere ; I
must return to this ; he is a born writer : he

SOME EARLY CRITICISMS 193

knows just how a story must be told ; just
what not to say ; just how to say what Is
said. He is as easy and conversational as
a man lounging among friends in his own
smoking - room ; but he never makes a
mistake of tact, his voice never rings false,
he has more self-control than his reader. He
has a great imagination, of the least common
sort. It is so quiet and true that its power
is concealed ; we think all the time that we
are reading about real people/^Jj

The much -discussed ''Quarterly" article
which appeared in that astute compilation
in 1892 is not one that could have impressed
anybody very much. Like a certain well-
known study of Thomas Hardy, it is chiefly
noticeable by its great wealth of reference —
and irrelevance, which, of course, is properly
characteristic of the ''Quarterly" and its com-
peer the "Edinburgh." After the fashion of
his kind the Quarterlyist presses into service
Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Moliere, Aristotle, a^;;^
mult, al., quite early in his article. Only after
considerable shilly-shallying do we get his
N

194 RUDYARD KIPLING

real opinion. How valuable this opinion of
many pages is can easily be judged by the
following transcript : —

. . . '* We should hesitate to put his stories
into the hands of a woman, however accom-
plished ; neither do we think that the best
women (and we mean such as have brains)
would feel any pleasure in them."

However — to give the Reviewer his due,
and in order to credit him with more per-
ception than the above cutting presupposes
— I will now quote a longer passage from
the end of the article where the writer drops,
for a time, the lukewarm style in which he
has handled Kipling's work : —

"There are the elements of a great poem
scattered in the finer stories. The price
which we pay for an Eastern Empire has a
terror and a magic which are not only sung
because hitherto the singer has been wanting,
Heine observes in his correspondence that
although the English are encamped upon
the Sacred Ganges and watch the lotus
blossoms as they float along its deity-haunted

SOME EARLY CRITICISMS 195

stream, they feel no intoxication coming
upon them ; they still look upon the Gods
with prosaic eyes ; the scent of the enchanted
flower does not make them dream, he says,
or startle them from the enjoyment of the
tea-kettle which they fill with consecrated
water, for the afternoon draught. ... At all
which rhapsodies of the Romantic Jew,
Mr. Kipling would certainly laugh, for he
is the coolest of Englishmen by profession.
Yet, when he had remarked upon the
absurdity of touching Ganges water till it
was boiled, he might think to himself that
some of his own tales, both Native and
British, were better than Heine could have
written, and had the Indian charm in them
besides. For he has many a touch of the
weird and even pagan spirit, testifying to
what he has seen or what others have
believed — Somnia, terrores magicos^ iniraculay
sagas, — all the marvels which by one gate or
another pass into the ' City of Dreadful
Night' which we call the Hindu imagina-
tion. Things about which the European

196 RUDYARD KIPLING

has no doubt (for he does not believe hi
them) have under the Himalayas a steadfast
air of reality."

One section of them, the younger^ more
progressive aiid daring, declared that it
undoubtedly contained an eagle. So wrote
Mary Kingsley of James Colthurst in her
masterpiece : and an eagle it was ; that
dared to soar upward and stare in the face
of the sun. And as with Colthurst so with
Rudyard Kipling in his day.

BY WAY OF EPILOGUE

Or who would ever care to do brave deed,

Or strive in virtue others to excel,
If none should yield him his deserved meed —

Due praise that is the spur of doing well?
For if good were not praised more than ill,

None would choose goodness of his own free will !

Tears of the Muses.

Since the last of the foregoing chapters was
written three more books by Mr. Kipling
have appeared : " Captains Courageous : A
Story of the Grand Banks"; "The Day's
Work," a collection of reprinted stories ; and
''A Fleet in Being : Notes of Two Trips
with the Channel Squadron."
\ ^^Captains Courageous " I do not propose
to discuss at any great length, believing
it to be a novel that will not appreciably
increase its writer's fame. It is, of course,
striking as a piece of sustained descriptive-
writing giving a good insight into an un-

197

198 RUDYARD KIPLING

familiar byway of life ; but its scene and
action is so restricted and the " outcome "
of the whole story is so slight in its effect
upon the reader's view of life that one is
surprised Mr. Kipling stuck to the story
for so long. Viewed as a piece of work —
literary craft — and not as a mere tale, the
sheer cleverness of "Captains Courageous"
is to be found in the very limited space that
its author allows himself; nearly the whole
of the action taking place upon a small
fishing vessel, manned by three or four
men.

"Captains Courageous," tersely told, Is a
story of the Gloucester Fishing Fleets and
of the daily and nightly life on board a sloop
(the "We're Here") In the fishing season
off the Banks of Newfoundland. The
principal character, Harvey Cheyne, the six-
teen year old son of an American man of
money, falls overboard from an Atlantic
Liner and is picked up by the aforesaid
"We're Here." The boy Is put to work on
the vessel and made to learn and labour for

EPILOGUE 199

his food until the close of the usual fishing
season. The work, the life and the curious
pastimes of his leisure, as well as the training
and the democracy and the rough kindness
of his new companions, help make a man of
the lad ; and the simple upright living of the
fisher-folk shows him how paltry is the veneer
of latterday selfish indulgent loafing in towns.
He returns, after a while, to his own place
and people ; and so the book ends.

In this work peeps out the note-book : the
note-book of a novelist ; but nevertheless
a note - book. Although in his previous
writings he enumerated detail upon detail,
his matters of fact never appeared to be set
forth, but always seemed to be permitted to
occur. In "Captains Courageous," again
and again he lets his story drift, what time
he plays with his collection of terminologies,
details, facts, statistics. However, the book
has its compensations, and Is something more
than the work of a tricky fellow writing for
the magazines, or even than that of a clever
man writing to amuse himself. The descrip-

200 RUDYARD KIPLING

tive matter, if at times a trifle tedious, is
quite wonderful in its mastery of language
and truth. The tastes, touches, sights,
smells, sounds of ocean and ship are repro-
duced with all our author's power over verb
and adjective, things and perceptions. And
the book is full of well-presented studies of
fine (if somewhat restricted) characters. To
sum up, it exhibits Rudyard Kipling's com-
mand of episode, and his ability to engage
attention ; but it does not satisfy.

With the book that followed "Captains
Courageous " we were able to welcome
warmly the old matter and the old manner :
for ''The Day's Work" unquestionably con-
tains stories v/orthy to be considered equal
to, say, ''Life's Handicap" — or any of the
earlier volumes. It is the Kipling of ten
years ago ; but strengthened, more closely
observant, more sure of eye and hand,
more serenely and strongly grave. For
with the exception of the two short stories
*'An Error in the Fourth Dimension" and
^' My Sunday at Home," this book is a

EPILOGUE 20I

grave one. It deals with the larger life of
strenuous effort for high stakes and a well-
defined goal ; it deals with the Work men
can do when they hear the first faint call of
Fame, and have spent sleepless nights pray-
ing to the God that made them for ability,
resource, and strength, sufficient to help
them *' emerge." Such are the Ideas that,
to the present writer, inform with life and
deepest human interest the stories '' The
Bridge- Builders," "The Tomb of His
Ancestors," and ''William the Conqueror."
Of the complete success of these stories
there cannot exist any doubt ; and so with
** The Day's Work " Rudyard Kipling's fame
as a teller of tales, and as a writer, gathers
force and volume.

The sea stories are excellent. Not even
the men who have lived the life and after-
wards come to make tales about It — such as
Joseph Conrad, and Louis Becke — not even
they write better accounts or descriptions
more faithful or more characteristic. I
have talked v/ith sailor-men who have done

202 RUDYARD KIPLING

the things about which Rudyard Kipling has
written ; and they each and all testify to
his ability and power and truth — they each
and all agree that he knows precisely what
he is talking about : which is the highest
praise that such men can accord. And
to their pleasure of recognition and their
admiration of the man who has set down
these things in language understanded of
the people, I can add my little word of
praise concerning the artistry that informs
the mere writing, the literary power that
moves us to read of matters which otherwise
we might neglect. And because I come of
the race that has mastered every ocean of
the world, and because I have walked and
talked with the very men that are helping
to keep that race precisely where it is, I am
made — whenever I read the sea stories of
Rudyard Kipling — both extremely proud
and extremely grateful.

The writing in " The Brushwood Boy "
is sheer delight. It has the glamour of
style, the quaint thought, and the choice

EPILOGUE 20

O

of word and phrase that Is so closely con-
nected with all those stories by which our
author is best known. The story ^ua story
is slight. Every man that is wise dreams
of some one woman In whom, gathered up,
are his finest thoughts upon womanhood,
and who Is to him that which no other
woman ever is, or ever can be, while life
lasts; In ''The Brushwood Boy" the ''one
woman " came out of the land of dreams
and was made flesh, and the souls of the
Brushwood Boy and the Brushwood Girl
met even as their lips met. To bring to-
gether for ever a man and a woman each
of whom has lived in the dreams of the
other Is fine and daring ; it exacts as much
craft from the writer as It does reverence
from the reader. As a love-story it has
the same touch of freshness and fragrance
that is seen in Heldar's love for Maisie
in "The Light that Failed"; nor is the
pathos wanting that was found in the
earlier novel. The dream -song that the
Brushwood Girl sang is exceedingly beautiful.

204 RUDYARD KIPLING

and it would be difficult to describe it by words
more apt or more true. It has the qualities
of a great poem : beauty, word-music, reverie,
and the ''tears that are in mortal things."
Few men could read this poem and resist
its appeal : for in sensitive beauty it is of
the kind found most easily in the verses of
the greatest masters of the lyric.

One day, Mr. Kipling may collect into
a volume the songs that are placed in his
stories. Then, this song of " the edge of
the purple down " must have a proud pre-
eminence. Read again its first stanza and
note the magic and the daring of its pauses
and its fancies.

" Over the edge of the purple down,
Where the single lamplight gleams.
Know ye the road to Merciful Town

That is hard by the Sea of Dreams —
Where the poor may lay their wrongs away.
And the sick may forget to weep ?
But we — pity us ! Oh, pity us ! —
We wakeful ; ah, pity us ! —
We must go back with Policeman Day —
Back from the City of Sleep ! . . ."

EPILOGUE 205

Equally unforgettable are some of the
lyric snatches in " The Naulahka," such as :

" Strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled

and plumed were we ;
I was the Lord of the Inca Race, and she was the

Queen of the Sea.
Under the stars beyond our stars where the reinless

Meteors glow.
Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago."

/-""" For those who assert that Rudyard
Kipling cannot write poetry, cannot make
things dainty and pretty, I here remind
them of the following. One is from " The
Naulahka " ; the other is the epigraph to

J^On Greenhow Hill."

" Wind of the South, arise and blow.

From beds of spice thy locks shake free ;
Breathe on her heart that she may know,
Breathe on her eyes that she may see.

"Alas ! we vex her with our mirth,

And maze her with most tender scorn,
Who stands beside the gates of Birth,
Herself a child — a child unborn !"

v^-

2o6 RUDYARD KIPLING

This epigraph — apart from Its truth and
beauty — has the additional merits of apposite-
ness and orlglnaHty.

" To Love's low voice she lent a careless ear ;

Her hand within his rosy fingers lay
A chilling weight. She would not turn or hear ;

But with averted face went on her way.
But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,

Lifted his bony hand, and, beckoning,
Held out his cypress wreath, she followed him ;

And Love w^as left forlorn and wondering
That she, who for his bidding would not stay,
At Death's first whisper rose and went away."

The last of the three books mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter was con-
tributed to the " Morning Post " in the form
of articles, each complete in itself yet all
of them connected by the personality of
their writer. This forms the fourth book
of travel-talk and personal adventure that
Rudyard Kipling has contributed to the
periodical press : the others being " Letters
of Marque," ''The City of Dreadful Night,"
and ''American Notes " (the two former,

EPILOGUE 207

as previously mentioned, now suppressed,
the latter as yet unreprinted, and, in
England, never published). " A Fleet in
Being," as its name may Imply, deals with
"the sailor men that sail upon the seas
to fight the Wars and keep the Laws " ;
and with their ships. The key - note of
the book is its writers particular and
peculiar ability to accept and assimilate a
new phase of life ; to step Into it, so to
speak, and at once settle down, receptive,
observant, and diligent in making records :
creating, almost at once, even from unlikely
matter, pictures of the life around him
destined to interest and enthral thousands
who have looked upon the objects he has
here written down, but have been unable
to see them — as he sees them. When ob-
servation and receptivity are trained to work
in the leash of a literary style, we get pieces
of prose as clear, strong, and yet imaginative,
as the following :

" No description will make you realise the
almost infernal mobility of a Fleet at sea. I

2o8 RUDYARD KIPLING

had seen ours called, to all appearance, out of
the deep ; split in twain at a word, and, at a word,
sent skimming beyond the horizon; strung out
as vultures string out patiently in the hot sky
above a dying beast ; flung like a lasso ; gathered
anew as a riata is coiled at the saddle-bow ; dealt
out card-fashion over fifty miles of green table ;
picked up, shuffled, and redealt as the game
changed. I had seen cruisers flown like hawks,
ridden like horses at a close finish, and manoeuvred
like bicycles ; but the wonder of their appearance
and disappearance never failed."

In '' A Fleet in Being" the reader is
much impressed by the vividness v^ith which
things are seen, the animation, almost exu-
berance, with which events are watched and
followed. This, of course, is of real value
when the things and the events can be
adequately recorded and other eyes made
to see almost as keenly as the author's
own. To some minds this faculty or ability
seems only to be " special reporting " ; to
other minds it seems to be sheer genius.
It is probably neither ; but is the practised
craftsmanship of the writer, the man who can

EPILOGUE

209

describe — for those who lack the power of
description and who are, outside their own
Httle world, inarticulate — things seen, heard
and experienced.

And, now, note the way it is done ; and,
if you are sufficiently capable, kindly go
and do likewise — with any subject. And
I promise you that all will read and praise
and recommend.

"FOUR HOURS AT FULL SPEED.

" The swell that the battleships logged as light
(Heaven forgive them !) began to heave our star-
board screw out of the water. We raced and
we raced and we raced, dizzily, thunderously,
paralytically, hysterically, vibrating all down one
side. It was, of course, in our four hours of full
speed that the sea most delighted to lift us up on
one finger and watch us kick. From 6 to 10 p.m.
one screw twizzled for the most part in the cir-
cumambient ether, and the Chief Engineer — with
coal-dust and oil driven under his skin — volun-
teered the information that life in his department
was gay. He would have left a white mark on
the Assistant-Engineer, whose work lay in the
stokehold among a gang of new Irish stokers.
Never but once have I been in our engine-rooms ;

^lo RUDYARD KIPLING

and I do not go again till I can take with me their
designer for four hours at full speed. The place
is a little cramped and close, as you might say.
A steel guard, designed to protect men from
a certain toothed wheel round the shaft, shore
through its bolts and sat down, much as a mud-
guard sits down on a bicycle-wheel. But the
wheel it sat on was also of steel ; spinning one
hundred and ninety revolutions per minute. So
there were fireworks, beautiful but embarrassing,
of incandescent steel sparks, surrounding the
Assistant-Engineer as with an Aurora Borealis.
They turned the hose on the display, and at last
knocked the guard sideways, and it fell down
somewhere under the shaft, so that they were at
liberty to devote their attention to the starboard
thrust-block, which was a trifle loose. Indeed,
they had been trying to wedge the latter when the
fireworks began — all up their backs.

"The thing that consoled them was the thought
that they had not slowed down one single turn.

"HIS HOURLY RISK.
"The gentleman with the little velvet slip
between the gold rings on his sleeve does his
unnoticed work among these things. If anything
goes wrong, if he overlooks a subordinate's error,
he will not be wigged by the Admiral in God's
open air. The bill will be presented to him down

EPILOGUE 211

here, under the two-inch steel deck, by the Power
he has failed to control. He will be peeled, flayed,
blinded, or boiled. That is his hourly risk. His
duty shifts him from one ship to another, to good
smooth and accessible engines, to vicious ones
with a long record of deviltry, to lying engines
that cannot do their work, to impostors with
mysterious heart-breaking weaknesses, to new and
untried gear fresh from the contractor's hands,
to boilers that will not make steam, to reducing-
valves that will not reduce, and auxiliary engines
for distilling or lighting that often give more
trouble than the main concern. He must shift
his methods for, and project himself into the soul
of, each ; humouring, adjusting, bullying, coaxing,
refraining, risking, and daring as need arises.

" Behind him is his own honour and reputation ;
the honour of his ship and her imperious demands ;
for there is no excuse in the Navy. If he fails in
any one particular he severs just one nerve of the
ship's life. If he fails in all the ship dies — a
prisoner to the set of the sea — a gift to the nearest
enemy.

"And, as I have seen him, he is infinitely patient,
resourceful, and unhurried. However it might
have been in the old days, when men clung
obstinately to sticks and strings and cloths, the
newer generation, bred to pole-masts, know that
he is the king-pin of their system. Our Assistant-

212 RUDYARD KIPLING

Engineer had been with the engines from the
beginning, and one night he told me their story,
utterly unconscious that there was anything out of
the way in the noble little tale.

"'NO END GOOD MEN.'
" It was his business so to arrange that no single
demand from the bridge should go unfulfilled for
more than five seconds. To that ideal he toiled
unsparingly with his Chief — a black sweating
demon in his working hours, and a quiet student
of professional papers in his scanty leisure.

"*An' they come into the ward -room,' says
Twenty-One, ' and you know they Ve been having
a young hell of a time down below, but they never
growl at us or get stuffy or anything. No end
good men, I swear they are.'

" * Thank you, Twenty-One,' I said. ' I '11 let that
stand for the whole Navy if you don't mind.' "

Rudyard Kipling, by his literary power,
not only commands our admiration for the
men and things he writes about, but excites
our sympathies as well. I ought to have
written re - excites : for no true - minded
Englishman has anything other than sym-
pathy for the men here written of — unless
it be admiration.

EPILOGUE

MEN LIVE THERE.

"Next time you see the 'blue' ashore you do
not stare un intelligently. You have watched him
on his native heath. You know what he eats, and
what he says, and where he sleeps, and how. He
is no longer a unit ; but altogether such an one as
yourself— only, as I have said, better. The Naval
Officer chance met, rather meek and self-effacing,
in tweeds, at a tennis party, is a priest of the
mysteries. You have seen him by his altars.
With the Navigating Lieutenant 'on the 'igh an'
lofty bridge persecuting his vocation' you have
studied stars, mast-head angles, range-finders, and
such all ; the First Lieutenant has enlightened
you on his duties as an Upper Housemaid, and
the Juniors have guided you through the giddy
whirl of gunnery, small-arm drill, getting up an
anchor, and taking kinks out of a cable. So it
comes that next time you see, even far off, one
of Her Majesty's cruisers, all your heart goes out
to her. Men live there."

To those highly superior persons who
allege that Rudyard Kipling can only spin
a yarn and sing a song — can, in short,
do anything but write, I commend the
following.

214 RUDYARD KIPLING

"BOAT-RACING.

" Our whaler would go out between lights under
pretence of practising, but really for the purpose
of insulting other whalers whom she had beaten
in inter - ship contests. Boat - racing is to the
mariner what horse -racing is to the landsman.
The way of it is simple. When your racing crew
is in proper condition, you row under the bows of
the ship you wish to challenge and throw up an
oar. If you are very confident, or have a long
string of victories to your credit, you borrow a
cock from the hen-coops and make him crow.
Then the match arranges itself. A friendly launch
tows both of you a couple of miles down the bay,
and back you come, digging out for the dear life,
to be welcomed by hoarse subdued roars from the
crowded foc'sles of the battleships. This deep
booming surge of voices is most moving to hear.
Some day a waiting fleet will thus cheer a bruised
and battered sister staggering in with a prize at
her tail — a plugged and splintered wreck of an
iron box, her planking brown with what has dried
there, and the bright water cascading down her
sides. I saw the setting of such a picture one
blood -red evening when the hulls of the fleet
showed black on olive-green water, and the yellow
of the masts turned raw-meat colours in the last
light. A couple of racing cutters spun down the

EPILOGUE 215

fairway, and long after they had disappeared we
could hear far-off ships applauding them. It was
too dark to catch more than a movement of masses
by the bows, and it seemed as though the ships
themselves were triumphing all together.

''THE BEAUTY OF BATTLESHIPS.

" Do not believe what people tell you of the
ugliness of steam, nor join those who lament the
old sailing days. There is one beauty of the sun
and another of the moon, and we must be thankful
for both. A modern man-of-war photographed in
severe profile is not engaging ; but you should see
her with the life hot in her, head-on across a heavy
swell. The ram -bow draws upward and outward
in a stately sweep. There is no ruck of figure-
head, bow-timbers or bowsprit -fittings to distract
the eye from its outline or the beautiful curves
that mark its melting into the full bosom of the
ship. It hangs dripping an instant, then, quietly
and cleanly as a tempered knife, slices into the
hollow of the swell, down and down till the sur-
prised sea spits off in foam about the hawse-holes.
As the ship rolls in her descent you can watch
curve after new curve revealed, humouring and
coaxing the water. When she recovers her step,
the long sucking hollow of her own wave discloses
just enough of her shape to make you wish to see

2i6 RUDYARD KIPLING

more. In harbour, the still waterllne, hard as the
collar of a tailor-made jacket, hides that vision ;
but when she dances the Big Sea Dance, she is as
different from her Portsmouth shilling photograph
as is a matron in a macintosh from the same lady
at a ball. Swaying a little in her gait, drunk with
sheer delight of movement, perfectly apt for the
work in hand, and in every line of her rejoicing
that she is doing it, she shows, to these eyes at
least, a miracle of grace and beauty. Her sides
are smooth as a water-worn pebble, curved and
moulded as the sea loves to have them. Where
the box-sponsioned, overhanging, treble-turreted
ships of some other navies hammer and batter
into an element they do not understand, she, clean,
cool, and sweet, uses it to her own advantage.
The days are over for us when men piled baronial
keeps, flat-irons, candlesticks, and Dore towers on
floating platforms. The New Navy offers to the
sea precisely as much to take hold of as the trim
level-headed woman with generations of inherited
experience offers to society. It is the provincial,
aggressive, uncompromising, angular, full of ex-
cellently unpractical ideas, who is hurt, and jarred,
and rasped in that whirl. In other words, she is
not a good sea-boat and cannot work her guns in
all weathers,"

EPILOGUE 217

r No summarising of the splendid work
done in literature by Rudyard Kipling can
be quite complete if it does not consider his
relationship to the other writers who have
worked in the Anglo-Indian school of letters. j
Undoubtedly some good work was done
there in pre-Kiplingite days, but no one of
any note happened to see such work, and
attempt the discovery of its source, or the
brilliant writings of Torrens, Mackay, and
others, would be better known to us. In
prose fiction Meadows Taylor certainly
stands high, although in comparison with
the modern fiction of Anglo- India he ap-
pears rather heavy. He seems to have been
attracted mostly by the historical aspects of
India. Between his books and those now
before us lies a mass of Mutiny fiction as
appalling in details as in magnitude. But
wiser wits got to work, and clever books
written by Mrs. F. A. Steele — to name one
of the most important novelists — and others,
exist and testify. Before Kipling some of
the best known books dealing with the

2i8 RUDYARD KIPLING

English In India were " The Chronicles of
Dustypore," " Twenty-one Days in India,"
and " Budgpore." These were prose. In
verse, perhaps "Allph Cheem's Lays of Ind"
and ** Verses Written in India by Lyall " are
the finest. In the former book there is much
very amusing writing of the Gilbertian, or
Bon Gaultier, type. " The Chronicles of
Dustypore " have been highly praised by
the late Lord Randolph Churchill, who was
ever keenly alive to literary excellence.
*' Twenty-one Days in India" by Sir AH
Baba (George Aberigh Mackay) Is one of
the wittiest books ever written. It appeared
originally in "Vanity Fair." It is a series of
delightful satires of Departmental people in
India, from the Viceroy downwards. Speak-
ing of one official, AH Baba says : —

**Thus he became ripe for the highest
employment, and was placed successively on
a number of Special Commissions. He
enquired into everything; he wrote hundred-
weights of reports ; he proved himself to
have the true paralytic ink flux, precisely

EPILOGUE 219

the kind of wordy discharge or brain haemor-
rhage required of a high official in India.
He would write ten pages where a clod-
hopper of a collector would write a sentence.
He could say the same thing over and over
again in a hundred different ways. The
ftieble forms of official satire were at his
command. He desired exceedingly to be
thought supercilious and he thus became
almost necessary to the Government, was
canonised, and caught up to Simla."

The best of the Anglo-Indian verse is
much the same as those " blossoms of the
flying terms" that flourish and fade in Under-
graduate Journals, Sir Alfred LyalFs poems
excepted. They are masterpieces. What
glorious verses were those he gave us as
''Written in India"! By one poem alone,
" I am the God of the Sensuous Fire," his
fame as a poet was assured. William Watson
wrote of Sir Alfred Lyall, a while ago, —

"Amongst our subject millions in the East,
Sir Alfred Lyall has not made a point of
cultivating in his own person that majestic

220 RUDYARD KIPLING

vice of mental insulation which has earned
for Englishmen the character they enjoy of
being unsympathetic and spiritually non-con-
ducting in their relation with foreign and
especially with dependent races. Whilst
remaining a thorough Englishman he has,
nevertheless, felt intensely the fascination,
curiously shot through with repulsion, which
the mysterious Eastern nature exercises
over all impressionable Western minds. . . .
This strange people who call us master, with
their subtle, sinuous intellects, their half-
developed moral sense, their profound mys-
ticism, underlying the barbarous rites and
grotesque forms of a monstrous mythology,
have been very real to him. The spectacle
of their immemorial nationalities jostled by
our hard, shrewd, bustling civilisation —
modified by it, yet never coalescing with it —
has been to him inexhaustibly interesting."

An '' appreciation " of the writings of
Rudyard Kipling can hardly help being of
the nature of a '' free rendering." To apply

EPILOGUE 221

cold canons or any Critique of Pure Criticism
would result in a heartless production —
academic as an Oxford essay. Calmest
analysis of Dialogue, Vocabulary, Hyperbole
etc., would weary, exceedingly.

As there be Gods many and Lords many,
so there be critics many and criticasters
many ; and the hands of the latter have not
laid light upon Mr. Kipling's works. " It
would be hazardous to say what place Kipling
will occupy in the Literature of the future"
seemed to be the stock shibboleth of the
latter class of writers. They looked upon
him as a rough-and-ready public juggler, and
were minded to pen him up for causing a
crowd to congregate.

And, even at this late day, from certain
quarters come certain hostile mutterings.
But, when all is hinted in regard of the Cult
of the Bounder and the Bayonet and the
Butt, when all is alleged in regard of Britons
and Brutality, Beer and Butchery, when all
is exhausted in regard of any abuse whatever
— alliterative or otherwise — we are brought

222 RUDYARD KIPLING

back to the truth that, although Rudyard
KipHng does not happen to be William
Shakespeare, does not think it good to
endeavour to ape Shelley and to fail at
mimicing Sterne, yet, wherever he has found
love, honour, truth, strength, merit of any
kind, he has proclaimed it with literary
power and greeted it with loud - voiced,
strong-handed applause. And, although, of
late, he has exhibited a slight tendency to
preach — which error he should leave to
those compounds of actor and bully that
succeed so well in alluring many women
to certain churches — Rudyard Kipling is,
nevertheless, quite innocent of up-stirring any
sort of "i\ngio-Saxon rowdyism" whatever;
and, while he remains the man and the artist
that he is, Rudyard Kipling will continue to
be innocent of all such Hyde Park oratorism
and social and racial misbehaviour.

The conclusion of the whole matter is
that you must read for yourself those won-
drous stories of the Kills and Plains of
India; the Lands and Seas of the World;

EPILOGUE 223

must meet Mrs. Hauksbee, that engaging
cross between a spiritual wife and Lady
Hamilton, Lalun, that little Asian Aspasia,
whose house was upon the city wall, The
Soldiers Three, Strickland, Jellaludin Mc-
intosh, and all the tribe of subtle swarthy
Hindus ; must meet Tarvin and Kate,
Heldar and Maisie, Torpenhow and the
red-haired impressionist girl ; must meet
Findlayson, John Clisson, Mr. Wardrop,
McPhee, the Brushwood Boy, Harvey
Cheyne, and all the loving and lovable
children — boys and girls, black and white ;
must read the things they do, and the things
they sing, and the lives they live, and the
deaths they die — as the case may be.

You will never tire : for there is alter-
nating speech of Men, Women, Animals,
Work and War, the forest and the desert,
religions and politics, and indeed the mani-
festations of the Human Spirit from the
almost bestial to the almost Divine. Nor
will the milieu chosen for giving this know-
ledge pall upon you. And manner is as

224 RUDYARD KIPLING

much varied as matter: for the author ranges
from the Chaucerian to the Cockney and
Clublandish dialects. The conte and chro-
nique are handled, too, in such wise as they
have not been handled since the days of
Maupassant and the good Gaultier. What-
ever the subject under the eye, people
and their conversation, natural phenomena,
animal studies, etc., one can find some-
thing rare, outside of us and all our life :
a strange matter told in a strange manner
that has, at times, a curious uncouthness
belonging to some far earlier bardic or
balladic age. And what subjects. When
one can turn from, say, the primal passions
and horrors of "Dray Wara Yow Dee"
to '' Mrs. Hauksbee Sits Out," wherein are
the strategies of Sanatorium Simla, shot
through and through with comedy chatter
and keenest characterisation ; when one can
turn from, say, the uncanny shocks of " The
Mark of the Beast" to the tender thrills
of ''Without Benefit of Clergy" ; when one
can turn from, say, " The Light that Failed "

EPILOGUE 225

to the magic and mystery of '' The Finest
Story in the World"; when one can turn
from, say, the ragged prose of '' Badalia
Herodsfoot" to the silken poetry of "The
Brushwood Boy " ; when one can turn from,
say, the social squabbles In " Departmental
Ditties" to the splendid shouts in "The
Seven Seas."

I have attempted to sound a fair and full
note of appreciation ; but no words of mine
can thoroughly describe the enduring charm
of these writings. They hold to the full that
desire to experience and to express and that
"clean clear joy of creation" that should
find the truest reception from all who are
desirous of widening the life of Intellect
and effort and achievement. And they are
destined to live ; and they should be enjoyed
during their youth ; and their maker should
be acclaimed while he is in a position to
note such acclamation.

I would not have It thought that the
foregoing writing Is considered by myself
to be the fullest justice that can be rendered
p

226 RUDYARD KIPLING

to Rudyard Kipling. Far from it. You
will recall that after our great Poet-Crltic
had written a whole book upon Hugo, he
still found it desirable to write afterwards
a lengthy essay upon merely '' L' Homme
Qui Rit ! " It is so hard to say the last
word of these men whose intellects have the
facets of a rose -diamond, its beauty and
light, and offer so many sides to the sun.

What I have thought and wrought here
is just what I have believed, according
to my angle of vision. There are many
things yet to be said of the real genius
and fine talents of Rudyard Kipling. He
paints from a great palette. The pigments
are ground from the hearts of exhaustless
things. And he has neither worked himself
out, nor shown any signs of ever doing so.

Consider, then, this book of mine as being
the praising comments of a playgoer, while
the play progresses, who will listen none
the less intently to the lucubrations of the
stalled critic, speaking In a more "stretched
metre " in the morning.

THE LIST OF BOOKS

" Fiction is in no sense the trivial thing which it is popularly
considered. It is an educational factor of peculiar importance, one
whose influence may be salutary or the reverse ; moreover, it is the
complement of a nation's annals, that insight into daily life which
the ancient monarchies neglected to prepare for us."

— Edgar Saltus.

Following Is a list of the books of Rudyard
Kipling to the end of 1898.

This list is not compiled as perhaps the
Queen's Bookseller would compile it. It is
simple, but quite sufficient, and does not
leave out those items of the earliest days
that are virtually unobtainable. The Scheme
of the Short Stories may give an idea of
what Mr. Kipling has done under certain
headings. Under Kipllngana (for beginners)
only the most interesting articles are men-
227

228 RUDYARD KIPLING

tioned. There are, of course, Kipling
Burlesques, etc., by the dozen, to be found
in the usual haunts.

Schoolboy Lyrics. 1880.

Echoes. 1884.

Departmental Ditties. 1886.

Plain Tales from the Hills. li

Soldiers Three. 1889.

The Story of the Gadsbys. 1889.

In Black and White. 1889.

Under the Deodars. 1889.

The Phantom Rickshaw. 1889.

Wee Willie Winkie. 1889.

The City of Dreadful Night. 1890.

American Notes. 1891.

Letters of Marque. 1891.

The Smith Administration. 1891.

The Light that Failed. 1891.

Life's Handicap. 1891.

Barrack-Room Ballads. 1892.

The Naulahka. 1892.

Many Inventions. 1893.

The Jungle Book. 1894.

The Second Jungle Book. 1895.

The Seven Seas. 1896.

LIST OF BOOKS 229

Captains Courageous. 1897.
An Almanac of Sports. 1897.
The Day's Work. 1898.
A Fleet in Being. 1898.

SCHEME OF THE STORIES

"With the fever of the senses, the delirium of the passions, the
weakness of the spirit ; with the storms of the passing time and
with the great scourges of humanity." — ^Joubert.

SOLDIER STORIES.

Soldiers Three.

The Light that Failed.

The Taking of Lungtungpen.

The Daughter of the Regiment.

The Madness of Private Ortheris.

The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney.

The Courting of Dinah Shadd.

On Greenhow Hill.

My Lord the Elephant.

His Private Honour.

Love-o'-Women.

The Mutiny of the Mavericks.

NATIVE STORIES.
In Black and White.
The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes.
Lispeth.

His Chance in Life.
230

SCHEME OF THE STORIES 231

In the House of Suddhoo.

Beyond the Pale.

The Bisara of Pooree.

The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows.

The Head of the District.

Without Benefit of Clergy.

The Return of Imray.

Namgay Doola.

Through the Fire.

Finances of the Gods.

The Amir's Homily.

Jews in Shushan.

The Limitations of Pambe Serang.

Moti-Guj, Mutineer.

Bubbling Well Road.

Naboth.

One View of the Question.

In the Rukh.

The Jungle Books.

THE ENGLISH IN INDIA.

The Gadsbys.

Under the Deodars.

The Man Who Would be King.

Three and an Extra.

Thrown Away.

Miss Youghal's Sais.

Yoked with an Unbeliever.

False Dawn.

RUDYARD KIPLING

The Rescue of Pluffles.

Cupid's Arrows.

Watches of the Night.

The Other Man.

Consequences.

The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin.

A Germ-Destroyer.

Kidnapped.

The Arrest of Lt. GoHghtly.

His Wedded Wife.

The Broken-Link Handicap.

In Error.

A Bank Fraud.

In the Pride of his Youth.

Pig.

The Rout of the White Hussars.

The Bronckhorst Divorce Case.

Venus Annodomini.

A Friend's Friend.

On the Strength of a Likeness.

Wressley of the Foreign Office.

By Word of Mouth.

To be Filed for Reference.

The Man Who Was.

The Mark of the Beast.

The Wandering Jew.

Gorgie Porgie.

Tlie Dream of Duncan Parrenness.

The Bridge-Builders.

SCHEME OF THE STORIES 233

The Tomb of His Ancestors.

William the Conqueror.

The Maltese Cat.

The Naulahka.

His Father's Son.

Bitters Neat.

The Enlightenments of Pagett M.P.

GHOST STORIES.

The Phantom Rickshaw.
My Own True Ghost Story.
At the End of the Passage.
The Lost Legion.

CHILD STORIES.

Wee Willie Winkie.

Tod's x\mendment.

Mohammed Din.

Little Tobrah.

The Children of the Zodiac.

SEA STORIES.
A Disturber of Traffic.
A Matter of Fact.
Judson and the Empire.
The Ship That Found Herself.
The Devil and the Deep Sea.
Bread Upon the Waters.
Captains Courageous.

234 RUDYARD KIPLING

AND

Bertram und Bimi.

RIengelder and the German Flag.

The Finest Story in the World.

A Conference of the Powers.

Brugglesmith.

The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot.

The Lang Men o' Larut.

A Walking Delegate.

•007.

An Error in the Fourth Dimension.

My Sunday At Home.

The Brushwood Boy.

Of Those Called.

The Pit that They Digged.

The Track of a Lie.

The Legs of Sister Ursula.

The Lamentable Comedy of Willow Wood.

The Smith Administration.

KIPLINGANA

" The Press errs, no doubt, now and then, but it is, on the
whole, honest, independent, and able ; and as long as this is the
case, the English Press, with all its faults, must remain what it
is at present — one of the ornaments of our public life."

Chas. Pebody.

World, " Celebrity at Home."
Pall Mall Gazette, " Lions in their Dens."
National Observer, '' Modern Men."
Vanity Fair, '' Men of the Day."
Bookman, " The Suppressed Works."
St. James s Gazette, "A Talk with Kipling."
Pall Mall Gazette, "A Day with Kipling."
Detroit Free Press, "A Chat with Kipling."
Cassell's Saturday, " Celebrities of the Day."
Idler, " My First Book."

Quarterly Review, " Mr. Rudyard Kipling's Tales."
Atlantic Monthly, " Rudyard Kipling."
Academy, " The Unknown Kipling."
Globe, " Rudyard Kipling."
Outlook, " The New Kipling."
Golden Penny, "A Girl's Impressions."
Star, " The School of Kiplingites."
235

236 RUDYARD KIPLING

Daily Mail, " XXth Century Men."
Star, "A Chat and some Letters."
Forum, " Mr. Kipling's Work so Far."
Cosmopolis, " Vom Englischen Biichertisch."
Bohemian, " Bohemian Bookmen."
Great Thoughts, '•' The Art of Rudyard KipHng."
Daily News, " Rudyard Kipling in the Eighties."
Revue de Paris, " Rudyard Kipling."
Literature, " Un Po^te de L' Energie."
St. James's Budget, " Mr. Kipling as a Schoolboy."
Pall Mall Gazette, "A Glimpse of Simla."
Literature, " Kipling as a Journalist."
The West-End, " The Lost and Earliest Works of
Rudyard Kipling."

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY

Return to desk from which borrowed.
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

tu

18 1947

2Mar49HJ

liun'StLU

24Jan5 2WK

10Jan'52LU
gAprS^K'

2AprS2i4f

8iu'

5 1962

UBRARY USE

JAN 11 1961

4 liu c^' I;;

"SNov'esPY

REC'D LD

N0V16'63-10h»,

l-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476

r^ 0/^-7

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY