“He’s a saint,” said the eminent novelist, “and he moves in an atmosphere that you and those like you cannot breathe.”
“Yes, I always said it was a pretty thick fog. Now I know it’s as thick as this one. I say, we’re on the pavement again; we shall be in a shop in a minute,” said Captain Kydd.
But I wanted to see the eminent novelist fight, so I reintroduced Mister Gladstone while the cab crawled up a wall.
“It’s not exactly a wholesome atmosphere,” said Captain Kydd when the novelist had finished speaking. “That reminds me of a story — perfectly true story. In the old days, before he went off his chump — ”
“Yah-h-h!” said the eminent novelist, wrapping himself in his Inverness.
“ — went off his nut, he used to consort a good deal with his friends on his own side — visit ‘em, y’ know, and deliver addresses out of their own bedroom windows, and steal their postcards, and generally be friendly. Well, one man he stayed with had a house, a country house, y’ know, and in the garden there was a path which was supposed to divide Kent and Surrey or some counties. They led the old man forth for his walk, y’ know, and followed him in gangs to hear that the weather was fine, and of course his host pointed out the path, the old man took in the situation, and put one I daresay they had strewn rose-leaves on it, or spread it with homespun trousers. Anyhow, one leg on one side of the path and the other on the other, and with one of those wonderful flashes of humour that come to him when he chooses to frisk among his friends, he said: ‘Now I am in Kent and in Surrey at the same time.’ “
Captain Kydd ceased speaking as the cab tried to force a way into the South Kensington Museum.
“Well, what’s there in that?” said the eminent novelist.
“Oh, nothing much. Let’s see how it goes afterwards. Mrs. Gladstone, who was close behind him, turned round and whispered to the hostess in an ecstatic shriek: ‘Oh, Mrs. Whateverhernamewas, you will plant a tree there, won’t you?’ “
“By Jove!” said the young gentleman with the pink eyes.
“I don’t believe it,” said the eminent novelist.
I said nothing, but it seemed very likely. Captain Kydd laughed: “Well, I don’t consider that sort of atmosphere exactly wholesome, y’ know.”
And when the cab had landed us in the drinking-fountain in High Street, Kensington, and the horse fell down, and the cabby collected our half-crowns and gave us his beery blessing, and I had to grope my way home on foot, it occurred to me that perhaps you might be interested in that anecdote. As I have said, it explains a great deal more than appears at first sight.
A DEATH IN THE CAMP
TWO awful catastrophes have occurred. One Englishman in London is dead, and I have scandalised about twenty of his nearest and dearest friends.
He was a man nearly seventy years old, engaged in the business of an architect, and immensely respected. That was all I knew about him till I began to circulate among his friends in these parts, trying to cheer them up and make them forget the fog.
“Hush!” said a man and his wife. “Don’t you know he died yesterday of a sudden attack of pneumonia? Isn’t it shocking?”
“Yes,” said I vaguely. “Aw’fly shocking. Has he left his wife provided for?”
“Oh, he’s very well off indeed, and his wife is quite old. But just think — it was only in the next street it happened!” Then I saw that their grief was not for Strangeways, deceased, but for themselves.
“How old was he?” I said.
“Nearly seventy, or maybe a little over.”
“About time for a man to rationally expect such a thing as death,” I thought, and went away to another house, where a young married couple lived.
“Isn’t it perfectly ghastly?” said the wife. “Mr. Strangeways died last night.”
“So I heard,” said I. “Well, he had lived his life.”
“Yes, but it was such a shockingly short illness. Why, only three weeks ago he was walking about the street.” And she looked nervously at her husband, as though she expected him to give up the ghost at any minute.
Then I gathered, with the knowledge of the length of his sickness, that her grief was not for the late Mr. Strangeways, and went away thinking over men and women I had known who would have given a thousand years in Purgatory for even a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and who were anything but well off.
I passed on to a third house full of children, and the shadow of death hung over their heads, for father and mother were talking of Mr. Strangeway’s “end.” “Most shocking,” said they. “It seems that his wife was in the next room when he was dying, and his only son called her, so she just had time to take him in her arms before he died. He was unconscious at the last. Wasn’t it awful?”
When I went away from that house I thought of men and women without a week wherein to arrange their affairs, and without any money, who were anything but unconscious at the last, and who would have given a thousand years in Purgatory for one glimpse at their mothers, their wives or their husbands. I reflected how these people died tended by hirelings and strangers, and I was not in the least ashamed to say that I laughed over Mr. Strangeways’ death as I entered the house of a brother in his craft.
“Heard of Strangeways’ death?” said he.
“Most hideous thing. Why, he had only a few days before got news of his designs being accepted by the Burgoyne Cathedral. If he had lived he would have been working out the deails now — with me.” And I saw that this man’s fear also was not on account of Mr. Strangeways. And I thought of men and women who had died in the midst of wrecked work; then I sought a company of young men and heard them talk of the dead. “That’s the second death among people I know within the year,” said one. “Yes, the second death,” said another.
I smiled a very large smile.
“And you know,” said a third, who was the oldest of the party, “they’ve opened the new road by the head of Tresillion Road, and the wind blows straight across that level square from the Parks. Everything is changing about us.”
“He was an old man,” I said.
“Ye-es. More than middle-aged,” said they.
“And he outlived his reputation?”
“Oh, no, or how would he have taken the designs for the Burgoyne Cathedral? Why, the very day he died . . .”
“Yes,” said I. “He died at the end of a completed work — his design finished, his prize awarded?”
“Yes; but he didn’t live to . . .”
“And his illness lasted seventeen days, of twenty-four hours each?”
“Yes.”
“And he was tended by his own kith and kin, dying with his head on his wife’s breast, his hand in his only son’s hand, without any thought of their possible poverty to vex him. Are these things so?”
“Ye-es,” said they. “Wasn’t it shocking?”
“Shocking?” I said. “Get out of this place. Go forth, run about and see what death really means. You have described such dying as a god might envy and a king might pay half his ransom to make certain of. Wait till you have seen men — strong men of thirty-five, with little children, die at two days’ notice, penniless and alone, and seen it not once, but twenty times; wait till you have seen the young girl die within a fortnight of the wedding; or the lover within three days of his marriage; or the mother — sixty little minutes — before her son can come to her side; wait till you hesitate before handling your daily newspaper for fear of reading of the death of some young man that you have dined with, drank with, shot with, lent money to and borrowed money from, and tested to the uttermost — till you dare not hope for the death of an old man, but, when you are strongest, count up the tale of your acquaintances and friends, wondering how many will be alive six months hence. Wait till you have heard men calling in the death hour on kin that cannot come; till you have dined with a man one night and seen him buried on the next. Then you can begin to whimper about loneliness and change and desolation.” Here I foamed at the
mouth.
“And do you mean to say,” drawled a young gentleman, “that there is any society in which that sort of holocaust goes on?”
“I do,” said I. “It’s not society; it’s life.” And they laughed.
But this is the old tale of Pharaoh’s chariot- wheel and flying-fish.
If I tell them yarns, they say: “How true! How true!” If I try to present the truth, they say: “What superb imagination!” But you understand, don’t you?”
A REALLY GOOD TIME
THERE are times when one wants to get into pyjamas and stretch and loll, and explain things generally. This is one of those times. It is impossible to stand at ease in London, and the inhabitants are so abominably egotistical that one cannot shout “I, I, I” for two minutes without another man joining in with “Me, too!” Which things are an allegory.
The amusement began with a gentleman of infinite erudition offering to publish my autobiography. I was to write a string of legends — he would publish them; and would I forward a cheque for five guineas “to cover incidental expenses?” To him I explained that I wanted five guinea cheques myself very much indeed, and that, emboldened by his letter, which gave me a very fair insight into his character, I was even then maturing his autobiography, which I hoped to publish before long with illustrations, and would he forward a cheque for five guineas “to cover incidental expenses?” This brought me an eight-page compilation of contumely. He was grieved to find that he had been mistaken in my character, which he had believed was, at least, elevated. He begged me to remember that the first letter had been written in the strictest confidence, and that if I notated one tittle of the said “repository” he would unkennel the bloodhounds of the law and hunt me down. An autobiography on the lines that I had “so flippantly proposed” was libel without benefit of authorship, and I had better lend him two guineas — I.O.U. enclosed — to salve his lacerated feelings. I replied that I had his autobiography by me in manuscript, and would post it to his address, V.P.P., two guineas and one-half. He evidently knew nothing about the V.P.P., and the correspondence stopped. It is really very hard for an Anglo-Indian to get along in London. Besides, my autobiography is not a thing I should care to make public before extensive Bowdlerisation.
These things, however, only led up to much worse. I dare not grin over them unless I step aside Eastward. I wrote stories, all about little pieces of India, carefully arranged and expurgated for the English public. Then various people began to write about them. One gentleman pointed out that I had taken “the well-worn themes of passion, love, despair and fate,” and, thanks to the “singular fascination” of my style had “wrought them into new and glowing fabricks instinct with the eternal vitality of the East.” For three days after this chit I was almost too proud to speak to the housemaid with the fan-teeth (there is a story about her that I will tell another time). On the fourth day another gentleman made clear that that beautiful style was “tortuous, elaborated and inept,” and it was only on account of the “newness of the subjects handled so crabbedly” that I “arrested the attention of the public for a day.” Then I wept before the housemaid, and she called me a “real gentleman” because I gave her a shilling.
Then I tried an all-round cannon — published one thing under one name and another under another, and sat still to watch. A gentleman, who also speaks with authority on Literature and Art, came to me and said: “I don’t deny that there is a great deal of clever and superficial fooling in that last thing of yours in the — I’ve forgotten what it was called — but do you yourself think that you have that curious, subtle grip on and instinct of matters Oriental that that other man shows in his study of native life?” And he mentioned the name of my Other Self. I bowed my head, and my shoulders shook with repentance and grief. “No,” said I. “It’s so true,” said he. “Yes,” said I. “So feeling,” said he. “Indeed it is,” said I. “Such honest work, too!” said he. “Oh, awful!” said I. “Think it over,” said he, “and try to follow his path.” “I will,” said I. And when he left I danced sarabands with the housemaid of the fan-teeth till she wanted to know whether I had bought “spirruts.”
Then another man came along and sat on my sofa and hailed me as a brother. “And I know that we are kindred souls,” said he, “because I feel sure that you have evolved all the dreamy mystery and curious brutality of the British soldier from the pure realm of fancy.” “I did,” I said. “If you went into a barrack- room you would see at once.” “Faugh!” said he. “What have we to do with barrack-rooms? The pure air of fancy feeds us both; keep to that. If you are trammelled by the bitter, bornce truth, you are lost. You die the death of Zola. Invention is the only test of creation.” “Of course,” said I. “Zola’s a bold, bad man. Not a patch on you” I hadn’t caught his name, but I fancied that would prevent him flinging himself about on my sofa, which is a cheap one. “I don’t say that altogether,” he said. “He has his strong points. But he is deficient in imaginative constructiveness. You} I see from what you have said, will belong to the Neo-Gynekalistic school.” I knew “Gyne” meant something about cow-killing, and was prepared to hedge when he said good-bye, and wrote an article about my ways and works, which brought another man to my door spouting foam.
“Great Landor’s ghost!” he said. “What under the stars has possessed you to join the Gynekalistic lot?” “I haven’t,” I said. “I believe in municipal regulation of slaughterhouses, if there is a strong Deputy Commissioner to control the Muhammadan butchers, especially in the hot weather, but ...” “This is madness,” said he. “Your reputation is at stake. You must make it clear to the world that you have nothing whatever to do with the flatulent, unballasted fiction of . . .” “Do you suppose the world cares a tuppeny dam?” said I.
Then he raged afresh, and left me, pointing out that the Gynewallahs wrote about nothing but women — which seems rather an unlimited subject — and that I would die the death of a French author whose name I have forgotten. But it wasn’t Zola this time.
I asked the housemaid what in the world the Gynekalisthenics were. “La, sir,” said she, “it’s only their way of being rude. That fat gentleman with the long hair tried to kiss me when I opened the door. I slapped his fat chops for him.”
Now the crisis is at its height. All the entire round world, composed, as far as I can learn, of the Gynekalistic and the anti-Gynekalistic man, and two or three loafers, are trying to find out to what school I rightly belong. They seem to use what they are pleased to call my reputation “as a bolster through which to stab at the foe. One gentleman is proving that I am a bit of a blackguard, probably reduced from the ranks, rather an impostor, and a considerable amount of plagiarist. The other man denies the reduction from the ranks, withholds judgment about the plagiarism, but would like, in the interest of the public — who are at present exclusively occupied with Bar- num — to prove it true, and is convinced that my style is “hermaphroditic.” I have all the money on the first man. He is on the eve of discovering that I stole a dead Tommy’s diary just before I was drummed out of the service for desertion, and have lived on the proceeds ever since. “Do yew know,” as the Private Secretary said at Simla this year, “it’s remarkably hard for an Anglo-Indian to get along in England.”
Shakl hai lekin ukl nahin hai!
ON EXHIBITION
IT makes me blush pink all over to think about it, but, none the less, I have brought the tale to you, confident that you will understand. An invitation to tea arrived at my address. The English are very peculiar people about their tea. They don’t seem to understand that it is a function at which any one who is passing down the Mall may present himself. They issue formal cards — just as if tea-drinking were like dancing. My invitation said that I was to tea from 4:30 till 6 p.m., and there was never a word of lawn-tennis on the whole of the card. I knew the English were heavy eaters, but this amazed me. “What in the wide world,” thought I, “will they find to do for an hour and a half? Perhaps they’ll play games, as it�
��s near Christmas time. They can’t sit out in the verandah, and chabutras are impossible.”
Wherefore I went to this house prepared for anything. There was a fine show of damp wraps in the hall, and a cheerful babble of voices from the other side of the drawing-room door. The hostess ran at me, vehemently shouting: “Oh, I am so glad you have come. We were all talking about you.” As the room was entirely filled with strangers, chiefly female, I reflected that they couldn’t have said anything very bad. Then I was introduced to everybody, and some of the people were talking in couples, and didn’t want to be interrupted in the least, and some were behind settees, and some were in difficulty with their tea-cups, and one and all had exactly the same name. That is the worst of a lisping hostess.
Almost before I had dropped the last limp hand, a burly ruffian, with a beard, rumbled in my ear: “I trust you were satisfied with my estimate of your powers in last week’s Concertina.V’
Now I don’t see the Concertina because it’s too expensive, but I murmured: “Immense! immense! Most gratifying. Totally undeserved.” And the ruffian said: “In a measure, yes. Not wholly. I flatter myself that”
“Oh, not in the least,” said I. “No sugar, thanks.” This to the hostess, who was waving Sally Lunns under my nose. A female, who could not have been less than seven feet high, came on, half speed ahead, through the fog of the tea-steam, and docked herself on the sofa just like an Inman liner.
“Have you ever considered,” said she, “the enormous moral responsibility that rests in the hands of one who has the gift of literary expression? In my own case — but you surely know my collaborator.”
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 446