157
Cras ingens iterabimus aequor. Horace, Odes, 1, 7: ‘Tomorrow we set out over the vast sea.’ The only way to make clear what King and his class are up to is to give the text of Horace’s ode, and a translation: Caelo tonantem credidimus Iovem regnare; praesens divus habebitur Augustus adiectis Britannis imperio gravibusque Persis. milesne Crassi coniuge barbara turpis maritus vixit et hostium (pro curia inversique mores!) consenuit socerorum in armis sub rege Medo, Marsus et Apulus anciliorum et nominis et togae oblitus aeternaeque Vestae, incolumi love et urbe Roma? hoc caverat mens provida Reguli dissentientis condicionibus foedis et exemplo trahentis pemiciem veniens in aevum, si non periret immiserabilis captiva pubes, ‘signa ego Punicis adfixa delubris et arma militibus sine caede’ dixit ‘derepta vidi, vidi ego civium retorta tergo bracchia libero portasque non clausas et arva Marte coli populata nostro, auro repensus scilicet acrior miles redibit, flagitio additis damnum: neque amissos colores lana refert medicata fuco, nec vera virtus, cum semel excidit, curat reponi deterioribus. si pugnat extricata densis cerva plagis, erit ille fortis qui perfidis se credidit hostibus, et Marte Poenos proteret altero, qui lora restrictis lacertis sensit iners timuitque mortem. hie, unde vitam sumeret inscius, pacem duello miscuit. O pudor! o magna Carthago, probrosis altior Italiae minis!’ fertur pudicae coniugis osculum parvosque natos ut capitis minor ab se removisse et virilem torvus humi posuisse voltum, We believe that Jove is king in heaven because we hear his thunder peal; Augustus shall be deemed a god on earth for adding to our empire the Britons and dread Parthians. Did Crassus’ troops live in base wedlock with barbarian wives and (alas, our sunken Senate and our altered ways!) grow old in service of the foes whose daughters they had wedded—Marsian and Apulian submissive to a Parthian king, forgetful of the sacred shields, the Roman name, the toga, and eternal Vesta, while Jove’s temples and the city Rome remained unharmed? ’Twas against this the far-seeing mind of Regulus had guarded when he revoked from the shameful terms and from such precedent foresaw ruin extending to the coming ages, should not the captive youth perish without pity. ‘With mine own eyes,’ he said, ‘have I seen our standards hung up in Punic shrines and weapons wrested from our soldiers without bloodshed; with mine own eyes have I seen the hands of freemen pinioned behind their backs, the gates [of Carthage] open wide, the fields once ravaged by our warfare tilled again. Redeemed by gold, forsooth, our soldiers will renew the strife with greater bravery! To shame ye are but adding loss; the wool with purple dyed never regains the hue it once has lost, nor does true manhood, when it once has vanished, care to be restored to degenerate breasts. If the doe gives fight when loosened from the close-meshed toils, then will he be brave who has trusted himself to perfidious foes, and he donee labantis consilio patres firmaret auctor numquam alias dato, interque maerentes amicos egregius properaret exsul. atque sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor pararet. non aliter tarnen dimovit obstantes propinques et populum reditus morantem, quam si clientum longa negotia diiundicata lite relinqueret, tendens Venafranos in agros aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum. will crush the Carthaginians in a second war who has tamely felt the thongs upon his fettered arms and has stood in fear of death. Such a one, not knowing how to make his life secure, has confounded war with peace. Alas the shame! O mighty Carthage, raised higher on Italy’s disgraceful ruins.’ ’Tis said he put away his chaste wife’s kisses and his little children, as one bereft of civil rights, and sternly bent his manly gaze upon the ground, till he should strengthen the Senate’s wavering purpose by advice ne’er given before, and amid sorrowing friends should hurry forth a glorious exile. Full well he knew what the barbarian torturer was making ready for him; and yet he pushed aside the kinsmen who blocked his path and the people who would stay his going, with no less unconcern than if some case in court had been derided, and he were leaving the tedious business of his clients, speeding to Venafran fields, or to Lacedaemonian Tarentum. Andrew Lang wrote of it: ‘That poem could only have been written by a Roman! The strength, the tenderness, the noble and monumental resolution and resignation—these are the gifts of the lords of human things, the masters of the world.’ And Maurice Baring called Lang’s translation of it ‘more satisfactory than any of the versions in verse which [he had] seen, as satisfactory as the translation made by Mr King to his class in Kipling’s Stalky and [sic] Co.
158
Thank God, I have done my duty : almost Nelson’s last words.
159
Oblittus … Oh-blight-us : Beetle uses a false quantity and then corrects it.
signs affixed to Punic deluges : the translation should be ‘standards hung up in Punic temples’.
160
Flagitio additis damnum : you add injury to disgrace.
162
Boeotian : Boeotia in ancient Greece had a reputation for boorish ignorance.
probrosis : an adjective which Vernon had rendered as a verb.
163
Conington : verse translation of the Odes of Horace by John Conington (1825–1869), first published in 1863.
Wardour Street : at the time, Wardour Street in the west end of London was used mainly by dealers in antiques and imitation-antiques, and Wardour Street English was therefore a sort of pseudo-archaic English used by historical novelists, today known as ‘Tushery’ (from ‘Tush!’ as an exclamation).
164
As though … Tarentum’s bay : from Conington’s version.
167
law … of the Medes and Persians : unalterable law. Daniel 6: 8.
169
‘the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost’: Browning, ‘The Statue and the Bust’. King stresses I, meaning himself. Browning continues: ‘Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin.’
the Mantuan : Virgil, who came from Mantua.
Tu regere … superbos : in the translation by J. W. Mackail (1850–1945) this reads: ‘Be thy charge, O Roman, to rule the nations in thine empire; this shall be thine art, to ordain the law of peace, to be merciful to the conquered and beat the haughty down.’ Mackail was, incidentally, Kipling’s cousin by marriage; his wife was Margaret Burne-Jones, daughter of the painter Edward Burne-Jones and Kipling’s Aunt Georgiana.
174
Hypatia : seen note to p. 147.
177
a quasi-lictor : a half-lictor; see note to p. 119.
178
Analects of Confucius : religious treatise by Confucius (551–479 bc).
178
K. C.B. : Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.
White sand and grey sand : words of a well-known ‘round’.
180
A TRANSLATION : this is not in fact a translation—there is no Fifth Book of Horace’s Odes—but an imitation or pastiche by Kipling himself.
181
Qui procul hinc : from Sir Henry Newbolt’s ‘Clifton Chapel’. The Latin means ‘Who perished far away, before his time, but as a soldier and for his country’. The third line is on the plaque in Burwash church in Sussex, which commemorates Kipling’s son John, who was killed at the age of 18 in 1915 at the Battle of Loos.
the Pavvy : the London Pavilion, then a famous music-hall.
King’s ‘whips an’ scorpions’ : from 1 Kings 12: 11: ‘my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions’. Since King keeps mentioning them, and they appear in the Old Testament book of Kings, it is a double joke.
182
cat : vomit. From the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth it was used with this meaning.
Pomposo Stinkadore : echo of Surtees’s Pomponius Ego, and Bombastes Furioso, hero of a burlesque opera parodying Orlando Furioso.
183
Oh, you Prooshian brute! : see note to p. 117.
184
Strange, how desire doth outrun performance" : misquoted slightly from 2 Henry IV, II. iv.
186
Board-school games : board-school meant what is now called a state school. Games like marbles and hopscotch were supposed to be played by childr
en at such schools and were therefore socially despised by masters like King.
we aren’t a public school… a shareholder, too : these are among the most quoted sentences in Stalky & Co, often used to make points about the United Services College. See H. A. Tapp, United Services College (1933), p. 1: ‘The need for a school where the sons of officers of the two services could be given a good education at a moderate fee, and whence their subsequent entry into Sandhurst or Woolwich could be ensured, led to the founding of the United Services Proprietory College Ltd. at Westward Ho! in September 1874. A Company was formed, consisting mostly of Army officers, and the purchase of fifty £1 shares enabled the holder to nominate one boy for education at reduced terms. This company was not formed for profit, and the name of the School was soon shortened to the United Services College.’
187
the mute with the bow-string : the Turkish executioner who was a mute and strangled his victims with a bow-string.
my pound of flesh : reference to The Merchant of Venice.
189
the Shop : Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, where officers were trained for specialist arms like the Artillery and Engineers, while Infantry and Cavalry officers were trained at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.
Chiron : see note to p. 155.
190
D.S.O. : Distinguished Service Order.
194
cleek : cloth(?). From the late 1950s, in beatnik slang, cleek has meant a wet blanket at a party. The more usual sense is a metal hook or a special kind of golf club.
Kalabagh : in the North-West Frontier Province, south of Peshawar.
Afridis : Afghans.
Sepoys : native soldiers in Indian Army.
200
Aaron and Moses : an unidentified but presumably obscene song.
Desire don’t outrun performance : see note to p. 184.
201
It’s a way we have in the Army : cf. note to p. 65. This seems to have been a school adaptation of the song, which Kipling quotes again in ‘An English School’.
203
K.C.B. : see note to p. 178.
204
fly : hired one-horse carriage.
205
sassingers : sausages.
206
Sobraon : battle in 1846, when the Sikhs were defeated in the First Sikh War (1845–6).
207
cads : the word cad was then used in public schools in describe anyone not of the public-school class. It was not meant to be rude or offensive, but must have seemed so to outsiders.
208
Minhla Fort : near Theebaw and Mandalay in Burma. The first officer killed in the Burma campaign of 1887 was R. A. T. Dury, who was at the UCS in 1878–81, and so seems likely to be the model for Hogan.
bimbashi : British officer in the Egyptian service. It also means a Turkish military captain or commander.
209
Sandhurst or the Shop : see note to p. 189 above.
210
Catullus : Roman poet, 87–54 bc.
Defence or Defiance : the motto of the Volunteer Movement of 1859 was ‘Defence not Defiance’.
rot : chaff, tease, mock, talk ironically [of].
privatim et seriatim : see note to p. 62 above.
ergo : therefore; propter hoc: on account of this.
212
They’ve tiled the lodge … complete : reference to the secrecy of Masonic meetings.
215
five years of Mr Gladstone’s rule : beginning with the defeat of the Conservatives in 1880.
without form and void : Genesis I: 1.
216
bargee : see note to p. 63.
217
Bopper : this may have been an invented word, referring to the Boy’s Own Paper. See note to p. 101.
Jebusite : the Jebusites were the original inhabitants of Jerusalem and the land around it. David said: ‘Whosoever smiteth the Jebusites first shall be chief and captain. So Joab the son of Zeruiah went first up, and was chief.’ In the seventeenth century it was used as a nickname for Roman Catholics, particularly Jesuits, and in general as a term of abuse. The Hivites were another of the peoples inhabiting Palestine before the Jewish settlement there.
Gadarene Swine : Mark 5.
220
bred in a Board-school : see note to p. 186.
223
pearls … cast before young swine : reference to Matthew 7: 6.
ad hoc : for this purpose.
224
epigonoi : originally, the seven sons of the Argive chiefs who in Greek legend marched against the city of Thebes in Boeotia. The Greek word, meaning descendants, came to mean the less distinguished descendants of an earlier generation.
Harrison Ainsworth : (1805–82) a writer of historical novels, which were not intended particularly for the young but were very popular with children until recently; the best known are The Tower of London and Old St Paul’s.
Marryat : Captain Frederick Marryat, 1792–1848, writer of adventure stories which were popular with schoolboys before Kipling’s day (Tom Brown and his friends were reading them in the 1850s). His best-known books are Peter Simple, Mr Midshipman Easy, Masterman Ready, The Settlers in Canada, and The Children of the New Forest.
the dog of Scripture : 2 Peter 2:2.
Allow me to observe… Peter Simple : In his introduction to Peter Simple, David Hannay writes: ‘Gentleman Chucks, who by common consent is Marryat’s masterpiece … would of himself be enough to place the book high … In Marryat’s hands he is one of the fellowship of brave, good men with a bee in his bonnet, a relation, humble but undoubted, of Don Quixote, my Uncle Toby, Lismahago and the Baron of Bradwardine. Not one of them would have seen anything absurd in Mr Chucks’s aspiration to be a gentleman.’
Dr Johnson, as limned by Macaulay : see Macaulay’s essay on Samuel Johnson in the Edinburgh Review, September 1831. Collected in his Critical and Historical Essays.
Admirable Crichton : someone distinguished by outstanding allround talents. The original, who inspired the name, was James Crichton (1560–85), a Scottish traveller, scholar, and swordsman, who was portrayed in Sir Thomas Urquhart’s The Exquisite Jewel, which in turn inspired Harrison Ainsworth’s novel The Admirable Crichton. J. M. Barrie’s play of the same name, often performed, and the film made from it, have made it familiar in more modern times. The expression obviously never fell out of use, as it is used descriptively and in a familiar way in, for instance, Cuthbert Bede’s Adventures of Mr Verdant Green and H. A. Vachell’s school story, The Hill.
Du Maurier : George du Maurier, whose drawings in Punch and book illustrations made familiar, both then and even today, a certain style of (particularly female) looks.
225
De tous ces défunts cockolores : this, in Punch, was a limerick. Kipling leaves out the first line: ‘Chaque époque a ses grands noms sonores.’
Fénelon : François de Salignac de la Mothe (1651–1715), known as Fénélon after his birthplace, French writer and ecclesiastic.
‘Oh, won’t you come up, come up?’: traditional chorus sung after each solo when limericks are sung. The full chorus is: Oh, won’t you come up, come up (twice)
Oh, won’t you come up,
Come all the way up,
Come all the way up to Limerick.
225
Curiosities of Literature : by Isaac D’lsraeli, father of Lord Beaconsfield; a rag-bag of literary anecdotes and miscellaneous information which obviously appealed to the young Kipling.
not without dust and heat : quotation from Milton’s Areopagitica (1644).
226
impot-basket : see note to p. 56.
Twelfth of the Third : the twelfth Ode in Horace’s third book of Odes.
Ionicum a minore : the techical name of the metre used in this Ode, with feet consisting of two ‘short’ followed by two ‘long’ syllables.
Miserar’ …: the opening lines of the Ode.
227
/> Aubrey : John Aubrey, 1626–97, antiquary whose biographical collections were published as Brief Lives after his death.
The Complete Stalky & Co Page 38