Rudyard Kipling

by John Palmer

  V

  SOLDIERS THREE

  Mr Kipling's three soldiers--Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd--are aliterary tradition. They are the Horatii and the Curatii, the threeMusketeers; Og, Gog and Magog; Captains Fluellin, Macmorris and Jamy;Bardolph, Pistol and Nym. That Kipling's soldiers three are a literarytradition is significant of their quality and rank as part of theirauthor's achievement. They belong rather to the efficient literaryworkman who wrote the Simla tales than to the inspired author of theJungle books. Though we have run from the House of Suddhu to thebarrack-yard, we have not yet lost sight of Mr Kipling, decorator andcolourman in words. We shall find him conspicuously at work uponMulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd. Where, at first, he seems most closelyto rub sleeves with the raw stuff of life we shall find him most aloof,most deliberately an artificer. Mr Kipling has seemed to thejudicious, who have duly grieved, to be in his soldier tales throwingall crafty scruples to the winds in order that he may the more joyfullyindulge a natural genius for ferocity. Mr Kipling's soldiers areregarded as an instance of his love for low company, of his readinessto sacrifice aesthetic beauty to vulgar truth.

  This is quite the wrong direction from which to approach Mr Kipling'ssoldier tales. Mr Kipling's ferocity on paper is not to be explainedas the result of a natural delight in violence and blood. On thecontrary, it is distinctively a literary ferocity--the ferocity, not ofa man who has killed people, but of a man who sits down andconscientiously tries to imagine what it is like to kill people. It isessentially the same kind of ferocity in imaginative fiction as theferocity of Nietzsche in lyrical philosophy or of Malthus inspeculative politics. When Mr Kipling talks of men carved in battle tothe nasty noise of beef-cutting upon the block, or of men falling overlike the rattle of fire-irons in the fender and the grunt of apole-axed ox, or of a hot encounter between two combatants wherein oneof them after feeling for his opponent's eyes finds it necessary towipe his thumb on his trousers, or of gun wheels greasy from contactwith a late gunner--when Mr Kipling writes like this, we admit that hispages are disagreeable. But let us be clear as to the reason. Thesethings are disagreeable, not because they are horrible fact, butbecause they are deliberate fiction. We feel that these things havebeen written, not from inspired impulse, but by taking careful thought.Here, clearly, is a writer who writes of war, not because he is bynature full of pugnacity, or necessarily loosed from hell to speak ofhorrors, but because war is a good "subject" with opportunities foreffective treatment.

  It is incorrect to say that Mr Kipling naturally delights in savagewar. He has been accused of a positive gusto for knives and bayonets,for redly dripping steel and spattered flesh. The gusto must beconfessed; but it is not a gusto for the subject. It is the skilledcraftsman's gusto for doing things thoroughly and effectively. MrKipling cannot conceal his delight in his competency to make war asnasty as Zola or Tolstoi have made it. But this has nothing to do witha delight in war. Professors have gloried in blood and iron who wouldprobably faint away in the nice, clean operating theatre of a Londonhospital. Philosophers who cannot run upstairs have preached thesurvival of the physically fittest. The politest of Roman poets hasfelicitously described how the two halves of a warrior's head fell toright and left of his vertebral column. Mr Kipling's savagery is ofthis excessively cultivated kind. It is not atavism or a sinisterresolution to stand in the way of progress and gentility. Mr Kipling'swarrior tales, in fact, allow us clearly to realise that Mr Kipling'sreal inspiration and interest is far away from the battle-field and thebarrack. They are the kind of battle story which is usually written bysedentary poets who live in the country and are fond of children. Onlythey are the very best of their kind.

  Mr Kipling's study of the professional soldier is best observed inPrivate Ortheris. Mulvaney is more popular, but Mulvaney in no sensebelongs to Mr Kipling. He is the stage Irishman of the old Adelphi andthe hero of many tales by Lever and Marryat. He is as purely aconvention of the days of Mr Kipling's youth as are Mrs Hawksbee andthe Simla ladies. His chief importance lies in the opportunities hegives Mr Kipling for indulging his joyful gift for pure farce._Krishna Mulvaney_ and _My Lord the Elephant_ are farce of the firstquality, whose merit liberally covers the charge that their hero is ofno human importance. Ortheris is in rather a different case. He hasjust that air of being authentic which is needed for an anecdote ornarrative. He is not a profound and original document in human nature.There is no such document in any one of Mr Kipling's books. But hestands well erect among the professional soldiers of literature.

  We will take one look at Private Ortheris at work:

  "Ortheris suddenly rose to his knees, his rifle at his shoulder, andpeered across the valley in the clear afternoon light. His chincuddled the stock, and there was a twitching of the muscles of theright cheek as he sighted; Private Stanley Ortheris was engaged on hisbusiness. A speck of white crawled up the watercourse.

  "'See that beggar? . . . Got 'im.'

  "Seven hundred yards away, and a full two hundred down the hillside,the deserter of the Aurangabadis pitched forward, rolled down a redrock, and lay very still, with his face in a clump of blue gentians,while a big raven flapped out of the pine wood to make investigation.

  "'That's a clean shot, little man,' said Mulvaney.

  "Learoyd thoughtfully watched the smoke clear away. 'Happen there wasa lass tewed up wi' him, too,' said he.

  "Ortheris did not reply. He was staring across the valley, with thesmile of the artist who looks on the completed work."

  This passage has been quoted against Mr Kipling as evidence of hisinhuman delight in the hunting of man. If we look at it closely weshall find (1) an obvious delight in Ortheris as a professional expertwho knows his business, the same delight which we find in MrHinchcliffe the engineer or in Dick Heldar the painter, and (2) theextremely self-conscious and cold-blooded effort of a competent authorto write like a professional soldier, and (3) the intrusion of a bornsentimentalist in Learoyd's little touch of feeling at the close.

  The War Office book of infantry training contains some very curt andcalm directions for getting a "good point" in bayonet exercise. Thebayonet has to be correctly driven in, left in the enemy for areasonable time, and extracted with a minimum of effort to thepractitioner and a maximum of damage to the subject. Disabling theenemy in war is a professional and technical matter, and Mr Kipling isalways able to be enthusiastic when things are beginning to betechnical. Whether it be sighting a deserter at seven hundred yards,painting a charge of horse, writing what Dr Johnson would describe asthe "most poetical paragraph in the English language," or building abridge over the Ganges, Mr Kipling is ready to be interested so long asthe workman is competent, and the work of a highly skilled and specialnature. Naturally, therefore, Mr Kipling has succeeded in getting verynear to the professional view of soldiering. All Mr Kipling's soldierstake their soldiering as men of business. This was what so terriblyastonished and interested Cleever when he met the Infant and heard thatafter he had killed a man he had felt thirsty and "wanted a smoke too";and Cleever has been followed in his astonishment by many of MrKipling's literary critics.

  The greatest study in literature of the professional soldier--though heis infinitely more than that--is Shakespeare's Falstaff. It will beremembered that Falstaff, after having led his men where they werefinely peppered, also suffered from thirst; and, being an oldcampaigner, he was not unprovided. The fate of Falstaff upon theBritish stage for many centuries--where he has actually been played,not as a professional soldier, but as an incompetent poltroon!--seemsto indicate that no figure is more liable to be misunderstood than theman whose business or duty it is to fight between meals. Even MrKipling, in his anxiety to emphasise that a regular soldier, apart fromany personal and heroic qualities he may happen to possess, is to beregarded as just a skilled practitioner whose work asks for courage andresource, fails to take soldiering with the magnificent nonchalance ofShakespeare's soldiers. Shakespeare takes the professiona
l view forgranted. But Mr Kipling does not quite do that. There is acontinuously implicit protest in all Mr Kipling's soldier tales that asoldier's killing is like an editor's leader-writing or a painter'ssketching from the nude--a protest which by its frequent over-emphasisshows that Mr Kipling, not having Shakespeare's gift of intuition intoevery kind of man, has not quite succeeded in identifying himself withthe soldier's point of view. It is always present in his mind assomething novel and surprising, needing insistence and emphasis.

  This is equally true of all Mr Kipling's essays in brutality. Hisferocity is as forced as his tenderness is natural. Violence and warare clearly foreign to his unprompted imagination. Only it happensthat Mr Kipling has talked with soldiers; and, like Eustace Cleever, heis prompted occasionally to spend a perversely riotous evening in theircompany. The literary result is far from being contemptible; but it isfar from being as precious as the result of his unprompted intrusioninto the country of the Brushwood Boy, into Cold Lairs and the CouncilRock.

  The soldier tales rank not very far above the tales from Simla. Theirinterest is mainly the interest of watching a skilled writerconsciously using all his skill to give an air of authenticity tothings not vitally realised. Mulvaney is pure convention, andOrtheris, though he more individually belongs to Mr Kipling, is ratheran effort than a success. We have not yet got at the heart of MrKipling's work. It yet remains to cross the barrier which divides someof the best journalism of our time from literature which will outliveits author.