Considered merely abstractly, as one considers a meteor for its flight, the phenomena of Mr. Kipling’s reputation are remarkable — the suddenness of his appearance, the decisiveness of it, and the speed of his publicity. In our day the reputation of Aubrey Beardsley is only more remarkable; for its instantaneousness, as by cable all round the world, was not, as in Mr. Kipling’s case, the sudden spark of fame to a mine of work accumulated and already well known in another land — nor, need one say, was Beardsley gifted to be the darling of the Anglo-Saxon.
I have no sufficient data for considering Mr. Kipling’s earlier Indian incarnation.
But I believe I am not wrong in thinking that the first man who said “ Kipling” in an English journal was Sir William Hunter, the journal being The Academy (then edited by that enthusiastic Indian scholar, Mr. J. S. Cotton), and the occasion a review of “ Departmental Ditties.” The article impressed one rather by its prophetic note, than by the case Sir William Hunter was able to make out for quotations that seemed in themselves but little to prognosticate a great reputation. One gathered from the article that the young writer was already a person in India, and that his reputation was even then furiously on its way to us. So, indeed, it proved. Within a fortnight it had fallen upon us like a monsoon, and every paper one took up blew the beautiful shining trumpets of a fair young fame. Kipling was born.
If there had only been “Departmental Ditties” and “Plain Tales,” things might not have gone so merrily. But Mr. Kip ling had heavier metal in readiness to follow up this first attack, and almost immediately the book-stalls were stacked with green paper-backed pamphlets, looking shabby and weary as colonial books have a way of looking, bearing such titles as “ Soldiers Three,” “Under the Deodars,” “Black and White,” “ The Story of the Gadsbys.” Thus it was that all the work at the back of “ Departmental Ditties,” all the prodigious precocity of experience, told. It was when we read “the little green books” that we understood what Sir William Hunter meant.
Now “ Departmental Ditties “ was verse strictly ‘‘ for those whom it might concern ‘‘; that is, for those whose lot was cast among the humours and chicaneries of Anglo-Indian officialdom. We can imagine them enjoying the hits hugely, as they read them week by week in various Indian papers. So do lawyers chuckle over the wicked little verses in The Laiv Times. The laughter which greets the u departmental “ Is necessarily limited in area, but it is proportionally hearty. And Mr. Kipling’s first business was to win the laugh, or the tear, nearest to him.
The reader will remember the vivid picture of an Indian provincial newspaper office which occurs in “The Man who Would be King.” As it was under the conditions there described that “ Departmental Ditties” came into being, a quotation from that storv will not be out of place:
“One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a Community was going to die or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram.
It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red- hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our wear)’ world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the pressroom than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the nightjars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads, and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back, whatever it was, would not come off, though the loo dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man, or struggling people, might be aware of the inconvenience the delay was causing. There was no special reason be yond the heat and worry to make tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to three o’clock, and the machines spun their flywheels two or three times to see that all was in order before I said the word that would set them off”, I could have shrieked aloud.”
To this it will be interesting to add something from Mr. Kipling’s own account of the birth of his “ little brown baby,” contributed to The Idler a few years ago:
“As there is only one man in charge of a steamer, so there is but one man in charge of a newspaper, and he is the editor. My chief taught me this on an Indian journal, and he further explained that an order was an order, to be obeyed at a run, not a walk, and that any notion or notions as to the fitness or unfitness of any particular kind of work for the young had better be held over till the last page was locked up to press.
He was breaking me into harness, and I owe him a deep debt of gratitude, which I did not discharge at the time. The path of virtue was very steep, whereas the writing of verses allowed a certain play to the mind, and, unlike the filling in of reading matter, could be done as the spirit served. Now, a sub-editor is not hired to write verses: he is paid to sub-edit. At the time, this discovery shocked me greatly. . . . This is a digression, as all my verses were digressions from office work. They came without invitation, unmanneredly, in the nature of things; but they had to come, and the writing out of them kept me healthy and amused. To the best of my remembrance, no one then discovered their grievous cynicism, or their pessimistic tendency, and I was far too busy, and too happy, to take thought about these things. So they arrived merrily, being born out of the life about me, and they were very bad indeed, and the joy of doing them was payment a thousand times their worth. Some, of course, came and ran away again, and the dear sorrow of going in search of these (out of office hours, and catching them) was almost better than writing them clear. Bad as they were, I burned twice as many as were published, and of the survivors at least two-thirds were cut down at the last moment. Nothing can be wholly beautiful that is not useful, and therefore my verses were made to ease off the perpetual strife between the manager extending his advertstisements and my chief fighting for his reading-matter. They were born to be sacrificed. Rukn-Din, the foreman of our side, approved of them immensely, for he was a Muslim of culture. He would say: ‘ Your potery very good, sir; just coming proper length to-day. You giving more soon? One-third column just proper. Always can take on third page. . . .’ And in this manner, week by week, my verses came to be printed in the paper. I was in very good company, for there is always an undercurrent of song, a little bitter for the most part, running through the Indian papers. The bulk of it is much better than mine, being more graceful, and is done by those less than Sir Alfred Lyall — to whom I would apologise for mentioning his name in this gallery — ’ Pekin,’ ‘ Latakia,’ ‘ Cigarette,’ ‘O.,’ ‘ T. W.,’ ‘Foresight,’ and others, whose names come up with the stars out of the Indian Ocean going eastward.
Sometimes a man in Bangalore would be moved to song, and a man on the Bombay side would answer him, and a man in Bengal would echo back, till at last we would all be crowing tog-ether like cocks before daybreak, when it is too dark to see your fellow. And, occasionally, some unhappy Chaaszee, away in the China Ports, would lift up his voice among the tea-chests, and the queer-smelling yellow papers of the Far East brought us his sorrows. . . . My verses had the good fortune to last a little longer than some others, which were more true to facts and certainly better workmanship. Men in the Army, and the Civil Service, and the Railway, wrote to me saying that the rhymes might be made into a book. Some of them had been sung to the banjoes round campfires, and some had run as far down coast as Rangoon and Moulmein, and up to Mandalay. A real book was out of the question, but I knew that Rukn-Din and the office plant were at my disposal at a price, if I did not use the office time. Also, I had handled in the previous year a couple of small books, of which I was part owner, and had lost nothing. So there was built
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 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. There was no trade discount, no reckoning twelves as thirteens, no commission, and no credit of any kind whatever. The money came back in poor but honest rupees, and was transferred from the publisher, the left-hand pocket, direct to the author, the right-hand pocket. Every copy sold in a few weeks, and the ratio of expenses to profits, as I remember it, has since prevented my injuring my health by sympathising with publishers who talk of their risks and advertisements. The down- country papers complained of the form of the thing. The wire binding cut the pages, and the red tape tore the covers. This was not intentional, but Heaven helps those who
help themselves. Consequently, there arose a demand for a new edition, and this time I exchanged the pleasure of taking in money over the counter for that of seeing a real publisher’s imprint on the title-page. More verses were taken out and put in, and some of that edition travelled as far as Hong Kong on the map, and 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 with 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.”
This little brown baby is, very naturally, one of the collector’s treasures to-day, just as Mr. Kipling’s first sock, or his first sailor-hat, would have its commercial value. Even a critic lingers thus unduly over his first book — if “ Departmental Ditties “ can be called a first book after the reference in the foregoing to “a couple of small books, of which I was part owner.” What these books were I must leave the bibliographer to tell us.
From a literary, or any serious, point of view, indeed, “ Departmental Ditties” are hardly more important than Mr. Kipling’s first sailor-hat. That they should be scattered broadcast at sixpence is a little unfair to his position at the moment, though in many respects they are the very thing for a sixpenny public. For the most part they are sprightly imitations of American farcical verse-writers; the kind of knock-about poetry you find in comic recitation books — and often very funny poetry, too, in my humble opinion. For example, not spedally of the funniness, but of the type —
“Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
Stands at the top of the tree;
And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led
To the hoisting of Potiphar G . . .
Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.,
Is coarse as a chimpanzee;
And I can’t understand why you gave him your hand,
Lovely Mehitabel Lee.”
‘Boanerges Blitzen “ and “ Ahasuerus Jenkins” of the “Operatic Own” are two more names which give the genre better than many words — Anglo-Indian humours and ironies set to American farce-metres. For typical examples, and most amusing, read “The Post that Fitted” and “A Code of Morals.” Then you have comic Poe to this tune:
“As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervour from afar.”
Comic Swinburne to this:
“Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my soul going out from afar?
Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar?
Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind?
Shall I meet you next session at Simla, oh sweetest and best of your kind?”
Comic sentimental as thus:
“Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.”
Comic Omar, too, applied to the dilemmas of the Indian budget:
“Now the New Year, reviving last Year’s Debt,
The thoughtful Fisher casteth wide his Net;
So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue
Assail all Men for all that I can get.”
You will find, also, a comic “ ballade,” duly furnished with an envoi beginning “ Princess.”
Personally, I like Mr. Kipling for beginning with the “ bones.” It was a healthy sign. And here and there amid all the imitative patter there were struck notes, somewhat deeper, which we can recognise now for signs of what was to come. In “ Pa- gett, M.P.” we first hear his impatience with the dilettante grandees who make their fair-weather studies of the East, and pooh- pooh the hard lot of the Anglo-Indian official. Pagett didn’t believe in the stories of Indian heat, till April with its sandflies, May with its dust-storms, June with its dysentery, and July with its “ Cholera Morbus,” convinced him, and he returned home:
“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.”
Then there was the ballad of Jack Barrett, who was sent to Ouetta for official reasons worth quoting at length:
“Jack Barrett went to Ouetta
Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
On three-fourths his monthly screw.
Jack Barrett died at Ouetta
Ere the next month’s pay he drew.
Jack Barrett went to Ouetta
And there gave up the ghost’
Attempting two men’s duty
In that very healthy post;
And Airs. Barrett mourned for him
Five lively months at most.
Jack Barrett’s bones at Ouetta
Enjoy profound repose;
But I shouldn’t be astonished
If now his spirit knows
The reason of his transfer
From the Himalayan snows.
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.”
And there were two sea-ballads: “ The Ballad of Fisher’s Boarding-House,” and “The Galley Slave” particularly which secreted hints of the brutal vigour and knock-down metaphor of “ The Ballad of the ‘ Bolivar.’ “ There were also early spring shoots of Mr. Kipling’s aphoristic gift: for example —
“The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes,
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.”
And —
“If She have spoken a word, remember thy lips are sealed,
And the Brand of the Dog is upon him by whom is the secret revealed.
If She have written a letter, delay not an instant but burn it.
Tear it in pieces, O Fool, and the wind to her mate shall return it!
If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can clear,
Lie, while thy lips can move or a man is alive to hear.”
In spite of the chivalry of the last quotation, there were hints not uncertain of Mr. Kipling’s general, amused, somewhat contemptu
ous and bitter, and entirely fatherly, view of women:
“For Maggie has written a letter to give
me my choice between
The wee little whimpering
Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen.”
That was the trouble referred to in an earlier quotation. The surface moral of the story is that no true man could think twice before choosing — the cigar; but, of course, the real moral, if I am not taking a triviality too seriously, is that a woman worth having wouldn’t make such a silly condition. It is the old story of the lady who threw her glove down among the lions, and received it back in her face. Women are not like that quite always in Mr. Kipling’s writings.
To make an end with “ Departmental Ditties,” one may further instance a prologue and an epilogue, striking a note of artistic seriousness which the intermediate pages hardly support; as though a nigger- minstrel with banjo and blackened face should whisper that he is M. Paderewski in disguise; a note of beauty and pathos, too:
“For it may be, if still we sing
And tend the Shrine,
Some Deity on wandering wing May here incline;
And, finding all in order meet,
Stay while we worship at Her feet.”
That deity was to visit the shrine in another volume. Meanwhile, “ Departmental Ditties,” to one looking forward, could have little significance; but to us, looking backward, we can see that Mr. Kipling was already tuning his banjo to such purpose that it might even, on occasion, do duty as a lyre.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 965