Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

by Rudyard Kipling

  Probably Orthcris, so far as we can individualise him, is more typical of the British Tommy, and he is nothing like so attractive. Learoyd is little more than a battering-ram with a Yorkshire dialect. Yet there is one remark of his, with Mulvaney’s and Ortheris’s comments upon it, which may serve as a text for Mr. Kipling’s vindication of the British soldier, disregarded no less by a peace-loving, war-wag ing people, than is the obscure Anglo-Indian official whom he supports with his rifle:

  “They talk o’ rich folk bein’ stuck up an’ genteel,” says Learoyd, telling the story of his heart, “ but for cast-iron pride o’ respectability there’s naught like poor chapel folk. It’s as cold as th’ wind o’ Greenhow Hill — ay, and colder, for ‘twill never change. And now I come to think on it, one at strangest things I know is ‘at they couldn’t abide th’ thought o’ soldiering. There’s a vast o’ fightin’ i’ th’ Bible, and there’s a deal of Methodists i’ th’ Army; but to hear chapel folk talk yo’d think that soldierin’ were next door, an’ t’other side, to hangin’. . . . And they’d tell tales in th’ Sunday-school o’ bad lads as had been thumped and brayed for bird- nesting o’ Sundays and play in’ truant o’ week-days, and how they took to wrestlin’, dog fightin’, rabbit-runnin’, and drinkin’, till at last, as if ‘twere a hepitaph on a gravestone, they damned him across th’

  moors wi’, ( an then he went and ‘listed for a soldier,’ an’ they’d all fetch a deep breath, and throw up their eyes like a hen drinkin’.’

  “‘ Fwhy is ut? ‘ said Mulvaney, bringing down his hand on his thigh with a crack.

  ‘In the name av God, fwhv is ut? I’ve seen ut, tu. They cheat an’ they swindle, an’ they lie an’ they slander, an’ fifty things fifty times worse; but the last an’ the worst by their reckonin’ is to serve the Widdy honest. It’s like the talk av childer — see- in’ things all round.’

  “‘ Plucky lot of fightin’ good fights of whatsername they’d do if we didn’t see they had a quiet place to fight in. And such fightin’ as theirs is! Cats on the tiles. T’other callin’ to which to come on . . .’ said Ortheris with an oath.”

  Yet, though India is the subject-matter which best suits Mr. Kipling’s hand, as another man will write best of Greece, another of ‘‘ Wessex,’’ and another of ‘‘ Thrums,’’

  and though that choice of subject-matter was a fortunate accident of birth so far as Mr. Kipling’s contemporary vogue is concerned, it was, perhaps, rather in spite of, than because of his subject, that he was most enthusiastically read by those whose enthusiasm matters most in the end. So far as literature is concerned, India owes more to Mr. Kipling than he to India. In whatever environment he had hatched out, his voracity for knowledge would no less have eaten up his surroundings — to spin in the end no less brilliant a literary cocoon.

  Seriously speaking, it is rather a pity for literature that he was thus born in a sensational province of the empire, as it was a pity for so great a natural gift as that of Burns to be born into the Scotch dialect, or as it is a pity that so many gifts of similarly vivid impressionism should be born into American journalism. Important to us as India is to-day, and as it will continue to remain for a few to-morrows, its importance is only a passing crisis in those strategical and commercial complications of the human race which change nothing in that human nature with which lasting writings are concerned. India has its lasting importance in literature — the importance of its sacred books. Mr. Kipling’s stories, as subject-matter, are merely the cables of a brilliant journalist describing the long-drawn looting of an ancient civilisation. The circumstances are of no original importance. “When India belongs to Russia,” said a distinguished poet to the present writer, “no one will understand Kipling.” At all events, he will certainly need a glossary. Yes, only in so far as the stories are universally human, as well as Indian, will they — and do they — really matter. How far they are that we may, perhaps, measure by considering them not as Indian stories, but just as stories. I do not propose to examine them exhaustively or on any set principles, but by recording several impressions of the stories as a whole I may, perhaps, best suggest a tentative conclusion. Yet if occasionally I should seem to hint at, or even be compelled to refer to, general principles, such references may, I hope, seem inevitable to some few readers.

  Perhaps the quality that first struck one in reading Mr. Kipling’s stories was their exceptional reality — while you read them. That, and the extraordinary knowledge not only of the details of human life, but of its less speedily learnt moods, complications, and significances; knowledge, too, that, even in a generation so inured to marvellous boys, was made the more astonishing by its precocious acquirement. There was, indeed, a conscious and irritating air of knowingness; as, for example, here: “ Michcle was working in his office when he heard the sound that a man never forgets all his life, the ‘ ah-yah ‘ of an angry crowd. [When that sound drops about three tones, and changes to a thick, dron ing ut, the man who hears it had better go away if he is alone.]” This is, indeed, calculated to impress, and yet, in spite of these boyish airs of omniscience, it was evident that Mr. Kipling had read deeply in the book of human life. He really did know an astonishing number of things about men and women, white and brown.

  It was almost uncanny to hear this Chat- terton of India talking after this fashion: “Now, a Dalesman from beyond Skipton will forgive an injury when the Strid lets a man live; but a South Devon man is as soft as a Dartmoor bog”; “ I have seen Captain Haves argue with a tough horse — I have seen a tonga-driver coerce a stubborn pony — I have seen a riotous setter broken to gun by a hard keeper . . .”; “Did vou ever know Shackles — b. w. g., 15. if — coarse, loose, mule-like ears — barrel as long as a gate-post — tough as a telegraph- wire — and the queerest brute that ever looked through a bridle? He was of no brand, being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at £4. ioj. a head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta for Rs. 275.”; “ The women sang the Song of the Pick — the terrible, slow, swinging melody with the muttered chorus that repeats the sliding of the loosened coal, and, to each cadence, Kundoo smote in the black dark”; “ Listen! I see it all — down, down even to the stays! Such stays! Six-eight a pair, Polly, with red flannel — or list, is it? — that they put into the tops of those fearful things.” The way of “ Queenstown potato-smacks in a runnin’ tide,” the danger of poking a camp-fire with a bayonet, the window decorations of Aylesbury dairies, the secret talk of women as they unhook their stays with a sigh of relief after a ball, the meaning (hidden from his readers) of “ T. Gs,” and “ E. P. tents,” the hardness of “ five- year-old tea-baulks,” and, apparently, all the heart of man and the whole heartlessness of woman: was there anything this youngster had not seen, done, or remembered?

  Then he was evidently a born storyteller. To him had been given the wonderful knack of doing with the pen what so many delightful men, quite inglorious and often hardly respectable, do daily in bar-parlours and other haunts of anecdote, by fleeting fascinating word of mouth. Indeed, here was just that very method captured in literature — the vividness, the nearness, the endearing, or irritating, slang of it. The last minstrel of the bar-parlour; the fish-liar of the smoking-room; the flashlight man of American journalism; the Eng- 1; h “ public-school” man, who brilliantly “don’t you knows” his way through a story: here were all these, plus that “ something, something” of genius that makes “ not a fourth sound, but a star.”

  A humourist, too, at once simple and subtle. Perhaps farce is the test of your true humourist; and, over and over again, Mr. Kipling was convicted of a delightful boyish love of farce. Serious realists have reproached him, I see, for such revelries of fun as u The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney.” As if anything in the world couldn’t happen to Mulvaney — Mulvaney drunk, with his heels kicking out of a queen’s palanquin to begin the story.

  Also he had written at least one love- story (“Without Benefit of Clergy�
�) that broke one’s heart; and ghost-stories, and tales of so-called “supernatural” horror, which, in spite of traditional expedients (such as “It” and “The Thing,” and dogs barking at the unseen, and horses plunging, and the breaking of the photographic plates in “ At the End of the Passage “ — as obvious a begging of the mystery as that which Stevenson has pointed out in the “ impressively” reticent conclusion of “ The Pit and the Pendulum “), really got hold of one. One may pause to remark that this vein of “ supernaturalism “ is verv characteristic of Mr. Kipling; and that related to it the theory of previous incarnations seems to have considerable attraction for him. Witness “ The Brushwood Boy,” one of his best love-stories. One mav note, too, his interest in insanity and morbid states of mind.

  In “The Gadsbys “ was some of the most brilliant!v exact social dialogue written in recent years.

  Then there were touching child-stories, which you fancied or not; there were the two “ Jungle Books,” not unlikely the most enduring things Mr. Kipling has written: and, if the stories had left us with no other gain, thev had given us one lifelong companion, Terence Mulvaney.

  Scattered here and there among the stories were remarkable descriptions, pictures, and picturesque phrases, much wit, and many kinds of wisdom. Such was our first, and, in many respects, lasting impression.

  II

  In speaking of the remarkable sense of reality conveyed by Mr. Kipling’s stories, I added, “while you read them”; and, gratefully recording the one impression, I must be allowed also to record that which, unexpectedly enough, is its complement. The stories are full of surprises, but one great and disappointing surprise is the facility with which we forget them. Paper and print have seldom, if ever, produced so magic-lantern-like an impression of reality. One is the more surprised to find how skilfully they elude the memory. Out of all these one hundred and thirty-one stories, there is not more than a dozen of which a normal memory can recall the features, and, numerous as are the characters to which we have been introduced, there are certainly not half-a-dozen whom we can differentiate. I think that one reason for this in the case of many of the stories, is to be found in the slightness of narrative motive. They are glorified anecdotes, for the most part, and, as in the case of those oral raconteurs to whom I have referred, they exist only in the skilful telling. But there is still another, and, perhaps, more important, reason.

  Is it not a question of methods, and are not the stories that most live with us just those that are less markedly “ Kipling- esque,” and more related to traditional methods of storv-telling? Broadly speaking, it is the Mulvanev stories that we remember best; those, and two or three pictures written in comparatively classical English, such as “ The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows” and “The City of Dreadful Night.”

  Now, limited as a medium as is the Irish dialect, it is classical compared with the idiom in which most of Mr. Kipling’s stories are told. There are English dialects for which so far even conspicuous literary talent has failed to win permanent acceptance in serious literature. William Barnes would have been recognised as a poet of considerable importance had he not chosen to write in Dorsetshire; and Edwin Waugh was a humourist of genius and a poet of real charm, who has taken the consequences of hiding his light under the bushel of the Lancashire dialect. Nor is the Welsh way of breaking English acceptable in literature. What we call “ Irish “ and “ Scotch,” however, have managed to win recognition for themselves as literary media; it remains to be seen whether Mr. Kipling will be able to win like permanent recognition for “ Cockney.” It will surely be posterity’s loss rather than his if it should prove otherwise.

  An Irishman’s way of telling a story is among the accepted traditional forms of story-telling, like the manner of the Arabian Nights. Also, however original an Irish character may be, he is already more than half made with his dialect. Thus Mulvaney may be the most delightful Irishman who ever lived in a book, but, whether that is so or not, his road to our hearts has already been more than half made by many a delightful forerunner in Lever or Lover. He is a development, a variation of a traditional type, rather than a creation. And, perhaps, one may as well say here, once for all, that Mr. Kipling possesses but little power of creating character. He is deft at giving you sufficient notion of this man or that woman to last out their story. But mainly the story is the thing, and the characters are little more than pegs on which to hang an anecdote.

  One’s memory of a novelist’s names and one’s memory of his characters go together. One never forgets the name of a really memorable figure in a book. All the lasting story-tellers will bear this test. Of living men take George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, and J. M. Barrie; and, out of England, Tolstoi, Zola, and Ibsen. Or take the novelist with whose name Mr. Kipling’s is so often mentioned, Dickens. Perhaps no other novelist has ever created so many living names. The names, some may say, are more real than the people. But that depends on one’s test of reality. If one’s test is the test of the occurrence of Dicken- sonian characters in what we call real life, it is narrow and irrelevant; for some of the most living creations of literature have never existed, nor ever will exist anywhere but in the imagination of novelist and reader. Is anyone going to deny the reality of Mr. Micawber on anv such shallow grounds? His name comes so readily to one’s lips because he is so imaginative a reality. Have we a friend of whose identity we are so absolutely sure? Maybe he has never yet been met in the Strand, nor shall we meet him; but were we to do so, should we have a moment’s doubt as to his identity? “Why, it’s Mr. Micawber!” we would exclaim excitedly, as though it were the ghost of Mr. Gladstone.

  We might recognise Mulvaney in the same way, but of all Mr. Kipling’s dramatis persona, he is the one alone, and very genuinely isolated, of whom we would thus be sure: and then it would not be so much because he was Mulvaney, as because he was an unmistakable Irishman. And yet, if that be true, is there any other Irishman in fiction we would more gladly meet? How fascinating he is, with all his contrasts of nature; his blackguardism, his chivalry, his gallantry, his folly, his wisdom, his never-failing humour, and his ever- lurking melancholy. It is of such contrasts that the true human clay is kneaded. Someone should make a “ Book of the Wisdom of Terence Mulvaney.” It would take a high place in pens’ee literature. I append a small collection towards it.

  This self-picture might be included by way of introducing the sage: “ I’m a born scutt av the barrick-room! The Army’s mate an’ dhrink to me, bekaze I’m wan av the few that can’t quit ut. I’ve put in siv- inteen years, an’ the pipeclay’s in the marrow av me. Av I cud have kept out av wan big dhrink a month, I wud have been a Hon’rv Lift’nint by this time — a nuisince to my betthers, a laughin’-shtock to my equils, an’ a curse to meself. Bein’ fwhat I am, I’m Privit Mulvaney, wid no good- conduc’ pay an’ a devourin’ thirst. Always barrin’ me little frind Bobs Bahadur, I know as much about the Army as most men.”

  Here beginneth the Wisdom, etc.: u Hit a man an’ help a woman, an’ ye can’t be far wrong anyways; “ — ” But I’ve had my day — I’ve had my day, an’ nothin’ can take away the taste av that! O my time past, whin I put me fut through ivry livin’ wan av the Tin Commandmints between Revelly and Lights Out, blew the froth off a pewter, wiped me moustache wid the back av me hand, an’ slept on ut all as quiet as a little child! But ut’s over — ut’s over, an’ ‘twill niver come back to me; not though I prayed for a week av Sundavs; “ — ” Kape out av the Married Quarters, I say, as I did not. ‘Tis onwholcsim, ‘tis dangerous, an’ ‘tis ivrything else that’s bad, but — O my sowl, ‘tis swate while ut lasts! “ — ” Watch the hand: av she shuts her hand tight, thumb down over the knuckle, take up your hat an’ go. You’ll only make a fool av voursilf av you shtav. But av the hand lies opin on the lap, or av you see her thry- in’ to shut ut, an’ she can’t, — go on. She’s not past reason’ wid; “ — Afther thev was all gone, I wint back to Canteen an’ called for a quart to put a thought in me; “ — ” I
am av the opinion av Polonius whin he said, Don’t hght wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av hghtin’, but if you do, knock the nose av him first an’ frequint; “ — ” Good cause the reg’ment has to know me for the best soldier in ut. Better cause have I to know mesilf for the worst man. I’m only fit to tache the new drafts what I’ll niver learn myself;” — ”Niver show a woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an’ begad she’ll come bleatin’ to your boot- heels! “ — ” I kissed her on the tip av the nose an’ undher the eye; an’ a girl that lets a kiss come tumbleways like that has never been kissed before. Take note av that, sorr; “ — ” They’ll take the airs an’ the graces instid av the man nine times out av ten, an’ they only find the blunder later — the wimmen; “ — ” Whin liquor does not take hould, the sowl av a man is rotten in him.”

  Mulvaney’s is that effortless life which belongs to all really vital creations of fiction. It would seem that the more pains Mr. Kipling takes with his characters the less they live. For example, take the fishermen in “ Captains Courageous.” How hard Mr. Kipling strove to distinguish and vitalise them is written all over them, and yet, with the partial exception of the cap tain, the most careful reading has failed to fix them in the memory.