Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

by Rudyard Kipling

  honestly believe that the average Englishman would faint if you told him it was lawful to use up human life for any purpose whatever. He believes that it has to be developed and made beautiful for the possessor, and in that belief talkatively perpetrates cruelties that would make Torquemada jump in his grave. Go to Alipur if you want to see. I am off to foreign parts — forty miles away — to catch fish for my friend the char-cat; also to shoot a little bird if I have luck.

  Yours,

  Rudyard Kipling.

  II

  To Captain J. McHail,

  151st (Kumharsen) N. I.,

  Hakaiti via Tharanda.

  Captain Sahib Bahadur! The last Pi gives me news of your step, and I’m more pleased about it than many. You’ve been “cavalry quick” in your promotion. Eight years and your company! Allahu! But it must have been that long, lean horse-head of yours that looks so wise and says so little that has imposed upon the authorities. My best congratulations. Let out your belt two holes, and be happy, as I am not.

  Did I tell you in my last about going to Woking in search of a grave? The dust and the grime and the grey and the sausage- shop told on my spirits to such an extent that I solemnly took a train and went grave-hunting through the Necropolis — locally called the Necrapolis. I wanted an eligible, entirely detached site in a commanding position — six by three and bricked throughout. I found it, but the only drawback was that I must go back to town to the head office to buy it. One doesn’t go to town to haggle for tomb-space, so I deferred the matter and went fishing. All the same, there are very nice graves at Woking, and I shall keep my eye on one of ‘em.

  Since that date I seem to have been in four or five places, because there are labels on the bag. One of the places was Plymouth, where I found half a regiment at field exercises on the Hoe. They were practising the attack in three lines with the mixed rush at the end, even as it is laid down in the drill-book, and they charged subduedly across the Hoe. The people laughed. I was much more inclined to cry. Except the Major, there didn’t seem to be anything more than twenty years old in the regiment; and oh! but it was pink and white and chubby and undersized — just made to die succulently of disease. I fancied that some of our battalions out with you were more or less young and exposed, but a home battalion is a creche, and it scares one to watch it. Eminent and distinguished Generals get up after dinner — I’ve listened to two of ‘em — and explain that though the home battalion can only be regarded as a feeder to the foreign, yet all our battalions can be regarded as efficient; and if they aren’t efficient we shall find in our military reserve the nucleus — how I loath that lying word! — of the Lord knows what, but the speeches always end with allusions to the spirit of the English, their glorious past, and the certainty that when the hour of need comes the nation will “emerge victorious.” If (sic) the Engineer of the Hunger- ford Bridge told the Southeastern Railway that because a main girder had stood for thirty years without need of renewal it was therefore sure to stand for another fifty, he would probably get the sack. Our military authorities don’t get the sack. They are allowed to make speeches in public. Some day, if we live long enough, we shall see the glories of the past and the “sublime instinct of an ancient people” without one complete army corps, pitted against a few unsentimental long-range guns and some efficiently organised troops. Then the band will begin to play, and it will not play Rule Britannia until it has played some funny tunes first.

  Do you remember Tighe? He was in the Deccan Lancers and retired because he got married. He is in Ireland now, and I met him the other day, idle, unhappy and dying for some work to do. Mrs. Tighe is equally miserable. She wants to go back to Poona instead of administering a big barrack of a house somewhere at the back of a bog. I quote Tighe here. He has, you may remember, a pretty tongue about him, and he was describing to me at length how a home regiment behaves when it is solemnly turned out for a week or a month training under canvas:

  “About four in the mornin’, me dear boy, they begin pitchin’ their tents for the next day — four hours to pitch it, and the tent ropes a howlin’ tangle when all’s said and sworn. Then they tie their horses with strings to their big toes and go to bed in hollows and caves in the earth till the rain falls and the tents are flooded, and then, me dear boy, the men and the horses and the ropes and the vegetation of the country cuddle each other till the morning for the company’s sake. And next day it all begins again. Just when they are beginning to understand how to camp they are all put back into their boxes, and half of ‘em have lung disease.”

  But what is the use of snarling and grumbling? The matter will adjust itself later on, and the one nation on earth that talks and thinks most of the sanctity of human life will be a little astonished at the waste of life for which it will be responsible. In those days, my captain, the man who can command seasoned troops and have made the best use of those troops will be sought after and petted and will rise to honour. Remember the Hakaiti when next you measure the naked recruit.

  Let us revisit calmer scenes. I’ve been down for three perfect days to the seaside. Don’t you remember what a really fine day means f A milk- white sea, as smooth as glass, with blue-white heat haze hanging over it, one little wave talking to itself on the sand, warm shingle, four bathing machines, cliff in the background, and half the babies in Christendom paddling and yelling. It was a queer little place, just near enough to the main line of traffic to be overlooked from morning till night. There was a baby — an Ollendorfian baby — with whom I fell madly in love. She lived down at the bottom of a great white sun-bonnet; talked French and English in a clear, bell-like voice, and of such I fervently hope will the Kingdom of Heaven be. When she found that my French wasn’t equal to hers she condescendingly talked English and bade me build her houses of stones and draw cats for her through half the day. After I had done everything that she ordered she went off to talk to some one else. The beach belonged to that baby, and every soul on it was her servant, for I know that we rose with shouts when she paddled into three inches of water and sat down, gasping: ‘‘ Mon Dieu! Je suis mort!” I know you like the little ones, so I

  don’t apologize for yarning about them. She had a sister aged seven and one-half — a lovely child, without a scrap of self-consciousness, and enormous eyes. Here comes a real tragedy. The girl — and her name was Violet — had fallen wildly in love with a little fellow of nine. They used to walk up the single street of the village with their arms around each other’s necks. Naturally, she did all the little wooings, and Hugh submitted quietly. Then devotion began to pall, and he didn’t care to paddle with Violet. Hereupon, as far as I can gather, she smote him on the head and threw him against a wall. Anyhow, it was very sweet and natural, and Hugh told me about it when I came down. “ She’s so unrulable,” he said. “ I didn’t hit her back, but I was very angry.” Of course, Violet repented, but Hugh grew suspicious, and at the psychological moment there came down from town a destroyer of delights and a separator of companions in the shape of a tricycle. Also there were many little boys on the beach — rude, shouting, romping little chaps — who said: “ Come along! “ ‘‘ Hullo! “ and used the wicked word “beastly! ‘‘ Among these Hugh became a person of importance and began to realise that he was a man who could say “beastly,” and “Come on!” with the best of ‘em. He preferred to run about with the little boys on wars and expeditions, and he wriggled away when Violet put her arm round his waist. Violet was hurt and angrv, and I think she “

  slapped Hugh. Relations were strained when I arrived because one morning Violet, after asking permission, invited Hugh to come to lunch. And that bad, Spanish-eyed boy deliberately filled his bucket with the cold sea- water and dashed it over Violet’s pink ankles. (Joking apart, this seems to be about the best way of refusing an invitation that civilisation can invent. Try it on your Colonel.) She was madly angry for a moment, and then she said: “Let me carry you up the beach, ‘cause of the shingles in your toes.” This was divine, but it did
n’t move Hugh, and Violet went off to her mother. She sat down with her chin in her hand, looking out at the sea for a long time very sorrowfully. Then she said, and it was her first experience: “I know that Hugh cares more for his horrid bicycle than he does for me, and if he said he didn’t I wouldn’t believe him.”

  Up to date Hugh has said nothing. He is running about playing with the bold, bad little boys, and Violet is sitting on a breakwater, trying to find out why things are as they are.

  It’s a nice tale, and tales are scarce these days. Have you noticed how small and elemental is the stock of them at the world’s disposal? Men foregathered at that little seaside place, and, manlike, exchanged stories. They were all the same stories. One had heard ‘em in the East with Eastern variations, and in the West with Western extravagances tacked on. Only one thing seemed new, and it was merely a phrase used by a groom in speaking of an ill-conditioned horse: “No, sir; he’s not ill in a manner o’ speaking, but he’s so to speak generally unfriendly with his innards as a usual thing.”

  I entrust this to you as a sacred gift. See that it takes root in the land. “Unfriendly with his innards as a usual thing.” Remember. It’s better than laboured explanations in the rains. And I fancy it’s raw.

  And now. But I had nearly forgotten. We’re a nation of grumblers, and that’s why other people call Anglo-Indians bores. I write feelingly because M, just home on long leave, has for the second time sat on my devoted head for two hours simply and solely for the purpose of swearing at the Accountant- General. He has given me the whole history of his pay, prospects and promotion twice over, and in case I should misunderstand wants me to dine with him and hear it all for the third time. If Mwould leave the A.-G.

  alone he is a delightful man, as we all know; but he’s loose in London now, button-holing English friends and quoting leave and pay- codes to them. He wants to see a Member of Parliament about something or other, and I believe he spends his nights rolled up in a’ rezai on the stairs of the India Office waiting to catch a secretary. I like the India Office. They are so beautifully casual and lazy, and their rooms look out over the Green Park, and they are never tired of admiring the view. Now and then a man comes in to report himself, and the secretaries and the under-secre- taries and the chaprassies play battledore and shuttlecock with him until they are tired.

  Some time since, when I was better, more serious and earnest than I am now, I preached a jehad up and down those echoing corridors, and suggested the abolition of the India Office and the purchase of a four-pound-ten American revolving bookcase to hold all the documents on India that were of public value or could be comprehended by the public. Now I am more frivolous because I am dropping gently into that grave at Woking; and yet I believe in the bookcase. India is bowed down with too much duftar as it is, and the House of Correction, Revision, Division and Supervision cannot do her much good. I saw a committee or a council file in the other day. Only one desirable tale came to me out of that office. If you’ve heard it before stop me. It began with a cutting from an obscure Welsh paper, I think, A man — a gardener — went mad, announced that Lord Cross was the Messiah and burned himself alive on a pile of garden refuse. That’s the first part. I never could get at the second, but I am credibly informed that the work of the India Office stood still for three weeks, while the entire staff took council how to break the news to the Secretary of State. I believe it still remains unbroken.

  ******

  Decidedly, leave in England is a disappointing thing. I’ve wandered into two stations since I wrote the last. Nothing but the labels on the bag remain — oh, and a memory of a weighing-in at an East End fishing club. That was an experience. I foregathered with a man on the top of a ‘bus, and we became great friends because we both agreed that gorge- tackle for pike was only permissible in very weedy streams. He repeated his views, which were my views, nearly ten times, and in the evening invited me to this weighing-in, at, we’ll say, rooms of the Lea and Chertsey Piscatorial Anglers’ Benevolent Brotherhood. We assembled in a room at the top of a public- house, the walls ornamented with stuffed fish and water-birds, and the anglers came in by twos and threes, and I was introduced to all of ‘em as “the gen’elman I met just now.” This seemed to be good enough for all practical purposes. There were ten and five shilling prizes, and the affable and energetic clerk of the scales behaved as though he were weighing-in for the Lucknow races. The take of the day was one pound fifteen ounces of dace and roach, about twenty fingerlings, and the winner, who is in charge of a railway bookstall, described minutely how he had caught each fish. As a matter of fact, roach-fishing in the Lea and Thames is a fine art. Then there were drinks — modest little drinks — and they called upon me for a sentiment. You know how things go at the sergeants’ messes and some of the lodges. In a moment of brilliant inspiration I gave “free fishing in the parks” and brought down the whole house. Sah! free fishing for coarse fish in the Serpentine and the Green Park water would hurt nobody and do a great deal of good to many. The stocking of the water — but what does this interest you? The Englishman moves slowly. He is just beginning to understand that it is not sufficient to set apart a certain amount of land for a lung of London and to turn people into it with “There, get along and play,” unless he gives ‘em something to play with. Thirty years hence he will almost allow cafcs and hired bands in Hyde Park.

  To return for a moment to the fish club. I got away at eleven, and in darkness and despair had to make my way west for leagues and leagues across London. I was on the Mile End Road at midnight and there lost myself, and learned something more about the policeman. He is haughty in the East and always afraid that he is being chaffed. I honestly only wanted sailing directions to get homeward. One policeman said: “Get along. You know your way as well as I do.” And yet another: “You go back to the country where you corned from. You ain’t doin’ no good ‘ere!” It was so deadly true that I couldn’t answer back, and there wasn’t an expensive cab handy to prove my virtue and respectability. Next time I visit the Lea and Chertsey Affabilities I’ll find out something about trains. Meantime I keep holiday dolefully. There is not anybody to play with me. They have all gone away to their own places. Even the Infant, who is generally the idlest man in the world, writes me that he is helping to steer a ten-ton yacht in Scottish seas. When she heels over too much the Infant is driven to the O. P. side and she rights herself. The Infant’s host says: “Isn’t this bracing? Isn’t this delightful?” And the Infant, who lives in dread of a chill bringing back his Indian fever, has to say “Ye-es,” and pretend to despise overcoats. Wallah! This is a cheerful world.

  Rudyard Kipling.

  THE ADORATION OF THE MAGE

  THIS is a slim, thin little story, but it serves to explain a great many things. I picked it up in a four-wheeler in the company of an eminent novelist, a pink-eyed young gentleman who lived on his income, and a gentleman who knew more than he ought; and I preserved it, thinking it would serve to interest you. It may be an old story, but the G.W.K.T.H.O., whom, for the sake of brevity, we will call Captain Kydd, declared that his best friend had heard it himself. Consequently, I doubted its newness more than ever. For when a man raises his voice and vows that the incident occurred opposite his own Club window, all the listening world know that they are about to hear what is vulgarly called a cracker. This rule holds good in London as well as in Lahore. When we left the house of the highly distinguished politician who had been entertaining us, we stepped into a London Particular, which has nothing whatever to do with the story, but was interesting from the little fact that we could not see our hands before our faces. The black, brutal fog had turned each gas-jet into a pin-prick of light, visible only at six inches range. There were no houses, there were no pavements. There were no points of the compass. There were only the eminent novelist, the young gentleman with the pink eyes, Captain Kydd and myself, holding each other’s shoulders in the gloom of Tophet. Then the eminent novelist delivered himself of an epigram. />
  “Let’s go home,” said he.

  “Let us try,” said Captain Kydd, and incontinently fell down an area into somebody’s kitchen yard and disappeared into chaos. When he had climbed out again we heard a something on wheels swearing even worse than Captain Kydd was, all among the railings of a square. So.we shouted, and presently a four-wheeler drove gracefully on to the pavement.

  “I’m trying to get ‘ome,” said the cabby. “But if you gents make it worth while . . . though heaven knows ‘ow we ever shall. Guess ‘arf a crown apiece might . . . and any’ow I won’t promise anywheres in particular.”

  The cabby kept his word nobly. He did not find anywheres in particular, but he found several places. First he discovered a pavement kerb and drove pressing his wheel against it till we came to a lamp-post, and that we hit grievously. Then he came to what ought to have been a corner, but was a ‘bus, and we embraced the thing amid terrific language. Then he sailed out into nothing at all — blank fog — and there he commended himself to heaven and his horse to the other place, while the eminent novelist put his head out of the window and gave directions. I begin to understand now why the eminent novelist’s villains are so lifelike and his plots so obscure. He has a marvellous breadth of speech, but no ingenuity in directing the course of events. We drove into the island of refuge near the Bromp- ton Oratory just when he was telling the cabby to be sure and avoid the Regents’ Park Canal.

  Then we began to talk about the weather and Mister Gladstone. If an Englishman is unhappy he always talks about Mister Gladstone in terms of reproof. The eminent novelist was a socialistic-Neo-Plastic-Unionistic- Demagoglot Radical of the Extreme Left, and that is the latest novelty of the thing yet invented. He withdrew his head to answer Captain Kydd’s arguments, which were forcible. “Well, you’ll admit he’s all sorts of a madman,” said Captain Kydd sweetly.