Mrs. Lockwood Kipling (née Alice Macdonald) RUDYARD KIPLING'S MOTHER The Kipling Journal The Organ of the Kipling Society QUARTERLY No. 42 JUNE, 1937 Contents Plate: Rudyard Kipling's Mother News and Notes ...... 33 The Kiplings' Family Doctor 43 Branch News........ 36 Kipling and Doctors .. .. 47 Reviews and New Books .. 36 , Annual General Meeting and The Original Fairbridge Farm Luncheon........ 59 and Kipling ...... 38 The Battle of One against Three ........ 40 Secretary's Corner...... 67 News and Notes LITTLE need be said about the beautiful portrait of Mrs. Lock- wood Kipling that forms our illustration in this number. We have to thank Miss Florence Macdonald for giving us this picture. X X X X X The fifth Meeting of the 1936-37 Session was held at the Washington Hotel, Curzon Street, W., on Wednesday, April 7th at 4.30 p.m. In the unavoidable absence of Mr. S. A. Courtauld, Lt.-Colonel B. S. Browne took the Chair and introduced the Lecturer, Mr. J. G. Griffin, Member of the Council of the Society :—" The subject of the Paper is, I think, a very important one for us at this time. It is now, not hereafter, as the forgetful years go by, that it is our business to be particularly careful to collect material for the biography, and all the information we can get, before the people who knew and remember Rudyard Kipling have passed away. We must try, now, to consider his life rather than his work. I feel, therefore, it is particularly ap- propriate that we have this Paper now. I will ask Mr. Griffin to deliver his Paper, " Concerning ' Teem :' (Something More of Himself ?)." The address which followed proved of absorbing interest and aroused one of the best Discussions that have taken place after a lecture. Owing to pressure on our space (Mr. Griffin particularly wished that his Paper should appear in full), it will appear in our September issue. 34 THE KIPLING JOURNAL The sixth Meeting of the 1936-37 Session was held at the Wash- ington Hotel, Curzon Street, W.1., on Tuesday, June 15th at 8.30 p.m. Mr. S. A. Courtauld, Chairman of the Council of the Society, presided and introduced the Lecturer, Mr. Victor Bonney, F.R.C.S. :—" We are here this evening to listen to a lecture by Mr. Victor Bonney. It is hardly necessary for me to introduce him to you, because a year ago he read a most delightful Paper about Kipling. As to the exact subject, I do not wish to anticipate him. It must be within the know- ledge of most of us how often Kipling has alluded to the medical profession and doctors, both in his prose works and in his poems, sometimes in a very serious aspect—as the medical profession often comes before us—and sometimes with the lighter aspect, because, like all professions, there is something to be said of the lighter side when they appeal to our sense of fun. I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bonney, who is one of the leaders and one of the exponents of his branch of medicine, will give us a most interesting Paper." Between the Lecture and the Discussion some very excellent recita- tions were given by Miss Nancy Bayne of poems illustrating the beauty of Kipling's phrasing. An animated debate followed, and the whole of the proceedings were much enjoyed by an audience, the numbers of which taxed the seating accommodation of our large Meeting Room. The discussion was opened by our President ; Mrs. Fleming (sister of Rudyard Kipling), whose membership of the Society was announced in our last issue, was present and contributed some per- sonal recollections of her brother. X X X X X The Annual Lunch of the Old Boys of the United Services College was held at the Criterion Restaurant on June 3rd. Nearly 100 Old Boys and guests were present, including our President and Mr. L. de O. Tollemache, Headmaster of the Imperial Service College. X X X X X Most of those who read Kipling's lines in " The Islanders "— Idle—except for your boasting—and what is your boasting worth If ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life on earth ? instantly jumped to the conclusion that this meant conscription on Continental lines. Mr. E. V. Lucas did not share this hasty view, so he wrote to Kipling, from whom he received a reply clearing the point up. Mr. Lucas gives this letter in his book " Post Bag Diver- sions," from which we quote the following extract :— THE KIPLING JOURNAL 35 " But don't the lines following on ' the lordliest life on earth ' make it clear what that life was. (Here Kipling quotes the next four lines.) By that I meant to picture the ordinary English life that they were born to—not the life of a ' year of service ' which they grudged." We are indebted for this illuminating note to Major General James D. McLachlan. X X X X X From our President we have received a review of " Something of Myself " which appeared in the North China Herald early in the year. This runs to three columns and, though severely critical in places, is in the main fair. We must, however, comment once more on the curious attitude of a number of critics who never allow Kipling to have any political views, though in many other cases views far more extreme are treated as part of the author's personality and either excused or fulsomely praised. This reviewer does at least admit that Kipling is an artist :—" As the mists of time slowly gather round his work, political eccentricities will be forgotten. The grand mastery of the English tongue, the vivid gift of description, the poignant sincerity of his art will remain and take their places in the permanent memorials of English literature." X X X X X We regret to record the death of Mr. S. E. Wheeler, which took place in January last. Another link with Kipling disappears, for the late Mr. Wheeler was Editor of the Civil and Military Gazette when Kipling was working on that paper. X X X X X In the Civil and Military Gazette (9th December, 1936) there is the following paragraph about Kipling's Mother Lodge :—" Lodge Hope and Perseverance 782 E.C., of Lahore, Kipling's Mother Lodge is in future to be known as Lodge Hope and Perseverance, the Kipling Lodge. At a Lodge Meeting on Monday night, it was unanimously decided to add the subsidiary title to the name of the Lodge. Rudyard Kipling was initiated as a Freemason in the Lodge in 1886, and for three years he served as Secretary of the Lodge. He always retained a warm corner in his heart for his Mother Lodge, and in 1929 he pre- sented the Lodge with a silver-mounted gavel having at its head a stone which Kipling obtained from King Solomon's Mine and in- scribed with a verse from his poem, ' The Mother Lodge.' " x x x x x 36 THE KIPLING JOURNAL The Prize Winners in the Kipling Essay Competition are :— B. R. Bray—first—67 per cent., P. Brock—second—65 per cent. Both these, and the third in place, G. D. Saunderson, belong to the Imperial Service College, Windsor. T. Dorey, of the Victoria College, Jersey, was placed fourth-—no mean achievement, as this was the first year that this school has entered. The assessors were : Captain E. W. Martindell ; Lt.-General Sir George MacMunn, and Mr. B. M. Bazley, Hon. Editor. X X X X X The address of the Hon. Librarian, Mr. W. G. B. Maitland, on and after July 1st will be :— 39, Marlborough Place, St. John's Wood, London, N.W.8. X X X X X The Secretary would be very glad to hear from Members who would be willing to contribute songs or recitations at Meetings, or who would bring friends able to do so. Branch Reports The Victoria B.C. Branch has been very active, holding Meetings in January, February and March this year. The Revd. T. G. Griffith of Victoria spoke at the first or Birthday Meeting, and compared Kipling with Burns, in that they both wrote of the common things of life, to touch the hearts of men the world over. In February Mr. Leighton gave a reading of " A Doctor of Medicine," with notes on the source of the tale by Culpeper. In March Mrs. V. S. McLachlan struck a new note by giving the little known tale, " The Children of the Zodiac." Mr. Leighton, Vice-President, read selections from " Something of Myself." We heartily commend this Branch for their admirable way of study- ing Kipling in this thorough manner : it is not surprising that their efforts meet with deserved success. Equally encouraging news comes from the New Zealand Branch at Auckland ; no report is yet to hand, but from letters we hear that they are very much alive. Floreat ! Reviews and New Books. Rudyard Kipling : Craftsman. Lt.-General Sir George MacMunn, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., D.S.O. (London : Robert Hale and Co., 10s. 6d.). THE KIPLING JOURNAL 37 At last we have a real book about Kipling. It goes without saying that General MacMunn is well-equipped for such a task, when we recall his record as a distinguished soldier who has seen active service in many parts of the Empire, his career as a successful administrator, his experiences in the India of Kipling's early tales and his talent as an author. No readers will regret purchasing this book, for it clears up many obscurities ; those who are wise will keep it by them for reference. First, there are rebukes (much needed) for the ' superior ' critics :—" Writers write for the people, and not for those who don't like them." Then, in many places, we have disproofs of the foolish utterances about Kipling's ' sabre-rattling,' a crime of which he was never guilty though he was always a patriot, of which quality none need be ashamed. Himself a literary man, Sir George stresses Kip- ling's beauty of phrase, which is discovered in the most unlikely places— the " saint's whisper " of Dinah Shadd to Mulvaney, for example. Under this heading comes the wonderful poetry of the English country- side, wherein the true charm of our land is expressed in simple brev- ity :—" Sussex verse and anthologies of such are numerous, often beautiful and nearly satisfying ; and then comes Kipling with the magic of the necessary word both in ballad and story, and no one else can live in the same verse book with him, or story either." Sir George ranges over all Kipling's many phases : soldiers and sailors, India, the Americas, France, animals, children and women. Mulvaney gets his meed of praise from all, but in these pages Pyecroft comes to his own, for as a literary creation the critics have missed him. India is easily told of by one who has seen so much service there ; but the American chapter will supply a ' long-felt want,' and the same under- standing is shown about France. Dogs take prominent place ; most readers will agree with the author's choice :—" But among the later ballads, too well known even to quote from, is the ' Supplication of the Black Aberdeen,' which touches the tears of things to perfection." That Kipling loved and understood children is common knowledge ; here we learn, too, about his studies of women from the author of " Kipling's Women," with further information. The chapters en- titled " Sources of Power " and " Uncollected Work " draw the cur- tains aside on new settings. Lastly, and perhaps most vital, are the notes on our Master's feelings for the under-dog :—" Kipling also rad- iates sympathy for all that are poor and oppressed." Those who know their Kipling will find that Sir George has written with insight and real critical power, correcting misunderstandings, discovering many 38 THE KIPLING JOURNAL new beauties and glossing the old ones. Specimen volumes of Macmillan's sumptuous Sussex Edition of Kipling are now on view at the principal book shops. In every way— binding, paper, type and arrangement—they reflect the care bestowed by this firm on their work. We hear that orders for this edition, which is only sold complete, are coming in very satisfactorily. Messrs. Macmillan have also issued a cheap edition of " Toomai of the Ele- phants " with illustrations taken from the film at 2S. 6d. ; " ' Captains Courageous,' " in small format (but with the original illustrations), has now appeared, in view of the release of the film of that name ; the price is only 2s. The Original Fairbridge Farm and Kipling By Mrs. Alec-Tweedie WHY do we not start Fairbridge Farms all over England ? They are exactly what we want. I was in Australia just before Christmas, 1936 and saw the original and most famous of the Fairbridge Farms at Perth, Western Australia. (That visit I have described fully in the April number of the Empire Review.) Three hundred and forty girls and boys, be- tween the ages of eight and fifteen, learning to be farmers and farmers' wives. Boys and girls from our slums, from Barnardo's Homes, and such-like institutions, living happy healthy lives out on the open land. Just the same could be done here if we only had a little vision, and generous benefactors, who are generous enough to start hundreds of children along the same flourishing, honest, hard working lines. Rudyard Kipling was very far seeing when he made his will, handing over the residue of his fortune to the Fairbridge Farm scheme. And we can only hope that his life long patriotism will be rewarded by a farm bearing his name at no distant date in Great Britain. The thing that struck me most at that farm was the happy expression of the children. There was none of the usual look of loneliness. They were one big party, and a very happy party too. It was not a very big farm, in fact it is only 3,200 acres, and there is a long drive up to it, a sort of avenue of gum trees, and a very English farm gate at the entrance. There were 213 boys and 130 girls. The boys learn every branch of farming from cattle to horseshoeing ; pigs, chickens, horses, hay, wheat, etc., and in the Domestic Science section THE KIPLING JOURNAL 39 the girls learn to cook, make their dresses, launder, jam, gardening, in all its branches, and bee keeping. And every three months the whole lot turn over from one job to another. Why is it we send Missionaries overseas at vast expense when all their influence should be used at home ? Why do we start farms over- seas before we benefit by the experiment at home ? Our Empire is the greatest thing in the world's history, and alas, so few of us know that fact. Kipling did. He helped to make it, and was very human. I knew him. He visited my elder son's grave in Palestine " because he wanted to tell me personally all about it." He lost his only son. I lost my two. Yes, Kipling being a man of vision, always looked to the future, and " the residue of his property to the Fairbridge Farm scheme," seems to say that eventually something like £120,000 (roughly) will go to this education scheme, and as Kipling's books are likely to sell for many years to come, that sum will probably be much augmented. As I walked along those farm roads with the various little chalet- like houses on either side, I kept saying to myself " Why on earth have we not got several of these places in England?" Here are we, the richest country in the world, requiring more food to the square mile than any other land, and yet we make little or no attempt to take our children wholesale from the slums and dump them on to our derelict farms with some sort of subsidy. Surely in the end that will be far cheaper than bringing children up as wasters to go on the dole, with bad health, bad morals, no initiative, no ambition, ready to be spoon- fed for the rest of their lives, no good to anyone, and certainly no good to themselves. Well done, Kipling, and may there be a few more Kiplings with ideas for building up a happier, cleaner more useful nation of Britons. The farm I saw was only started in 1921, yet 1,200 children have already passed through, and are out working in comfortable jobs on the land. More than that, about 100 children pass out each year fully equipped for the battle of life. So successful have these children proved themselves that there is a waiting list of 1,300 farmers pleading for the 100 children about to leave, so that 1,200 farm homesteads can- not be supplied. The main sustenance of a nation is its food. Food must be obtained at all costs, and properly recognised farms with properly trained children are the best places to make strong men and women whose work is of 40 THE KIPLING JOURNAL value to the world and who, at the same time are learning to be good citizens while playing out in the open fields instead of in the unwhole- some gutters. These boys and girls looked splendid. They wore no shoes and stockings because it was the hot season of the year. Nor did they wear hats. Shorts and blue shirts for the boys, blue cotton frocks for the girls ; and they were all housed in small homesteads containing fourteen children and a farm-mother with her husband. That farm- mother was responsible for the welfare of the children and the man was one of those engaged in teaching on the land. The scheme is practically self-contained once it has been started. The Battle of One against Three By G. C. Beresford AFTER puzzling over the " clinging much as bees ball a Queen " incident in " Something of Myself," I have come to the conclusion that it represents a slightly distorted memory on the part of Kipling of a battle with a schoolfellow Shute. How different was the reality ; however the final result was the same. Shute, the cock of the little boys' house in 1878, was I think the " large toughish boy " to be taken "on in a long mixed rough-and- tumble just this side of the real thing." I think, as far as it went, it was the real thing. Our Shute, cock of the house, was Gordon Clode Shute, son of Colonel Neville Shute, late 64th Reg. (Persia and Indian Mutiny) aged fifteen. It all happened on a summer's day in 1878 in Kipling's second term, he was only twelve and a half. It was June, after our early dinner, and there were three of us, who had plotted to pull down Shute, cock of the house, we were feeling full of beans owing to the time of the year and day. We three were Kipling, (Gigger) little Gibbons, aged thirteen, the schoolboy baronet, who is the Infant who entertains in a Country House in a later Stalky story, he inherited a baronetcy from his uncle ; and there was myself, aged fourteen. I think Gigger at the age of 12, with his moustache and a most- laughable hairy chest, was beginning to fancy himself as a fighting man. He was disillusioned. Little Gibbons, Charles John Gibbons, the son of Capt. C. Gibbons, R.N. was born at Wexford, he was one of the boys of Wexford and THE KIPLING JOURNAL 41 should have sung the defiant rebel song : " We are the boys, we are the boys, we are the boys of Wexford ;" but he didn't, he was a com- plete wash-out as a fighting man ; for he was very tiny, and had a pink babyish complexion as if he had only one skin. He stopped six years at the Coll. and went to Oxford, having to learn a little Greek privately with the Head to pass his Responsions ; he was our only Grecian visible to the naked eye. The talk about Gigger doing Greek Testament with fiery red Has- lam on cold mornings is talk. Where was Stalky ? Well to be truthful Stalky was not on in this act ; if he had been things would have been very different. Stalky in fact was never in Pugh's little boys' house or at the school at all in 1878. There was a gap in his Westward Ho ! attendance of 2 or 3 years. Well, there was the ragged regiment, Blind Bartimes, alias Gigger, alias Kipling, tiny Gibbons, the schoolboy Baronet, and myself. On the other part was Shute, Gordon Claude Shute (we didn't at the time really know each other's Christian names), having a fine super- iority complex, cock of the house. Shute was portly, and used to talk himself up quite a lot which is very good for the health ; he wore the same clothes and underclothes summer and winter : that is he wore summer clothes in the winter, and no overcoat ; he had a fine circula- tion, that should have warned us. I think he died eventually of pneu- monia as a result of his garmenture, as was to be expected. He had one foible ; if he hadn't won an athletic event that he had entered for, we had to listen in the dormitory to long explanations over and over again as to why he hadn't won, generally the result of some unfairness somewhere. About midnight when we were all dropping off to sleep, he had as good as won the event with his mouth, so all was well. The ragged regiment of three had some down on Shute whether it was for " raiding our poor little lockers " as suggested in R.K.'s book, or for merely clouting our heads as he passed by is uncertain ; I think the latter, as Shute was too proud for the locker business. There was no very compelling cause for our attack on Shute, except that in the absence of real bullying in the little boys' house, we were an uppish lot and didn't care to stand nonsense from anyone. There was no organized, elaborate, prolonged bullying, which is the real thing, in little boys' house, in spite of R.K.'s implication of " persistent bullying," and " young devils of fourteen acting against one butt." 42 THE KIPLING JOURNAL R.K. himself did not suffer from " butt " trouble, as he had the art of getting two or three on his side, and a butt is generally alone. In fact R.K. was capable of making a " butt " of the whole house, in- tellectually, standing there and abusing the whole outfit for reading " Jack Harkaway " and getting no answer back. To return to our battle ; we three thought it out exactly on the lines disclosed in Kipling's book, a beautiful closing in well inside his guard and fists, the tussle would result in a wrestling match, three against one " working by pressure and clinging, much as bees " ball " a Queen " and we would get him down, and sit on his head till he repented. But it didn't come off like that, not a little bit. The battle started, in fact took place in the one form room of the little boys' house. House No. 4, out of class time, of course, and after dinner as said. The exact theatre of war was near the south wall close to the fireplace and opposite the balcony window. I could point out the spot now ; there is no plaque on the wall, but at least a picture should be hung there depicting the contest. Gigger alias Kipling took Shute's left side and I tackled the right arm the place of honour, and the little baronet to be, flung his arms round Shute's neck from behind, a fairly safe move for our weakest contingent. Shute was taken by surprise, which is prudent when handling a notorious tough. We flung ourselves on him in unison ; but he tumbled to the thing in a flash and shook himself nearly free like a boar surrounded by boar hounds. He was quite an expert in the use of his left arm, which is unusual in the case of boys who generally only use their right, we didn't know this. Kipling was the first to get a splendid clout from Shute's left fist on the right side of the jaw. Shute and we, luckily, did not know that the point of the jaw is the place to aim for to get a knock-out. Anyhow, the side of the jaw was good enough for R.K. I can see his fat face now rather swarthy from the summer sunshine, with a clenched fist settled on it, wearing a look of pained surprise and dismay as if such treatment of a distinguished litterateur was against the laws of nature. Kipling's spectacles flew off as if they had taken wings and lay in imminent danger on the floor ; Kipling was as much out of action as a torpedoed cruiser ; there is every excuse for him as he could only see twelve inches and didn't know where his specs. were: he could not carry on the war striking at an invisible foe. So without analysing his psychological reactions or condemning his want of will to strife, we can excuse his further activity at this stage. Merely noting that our THE KIPLING JOURNAL 43 myopic hero became aware, perhaps for the first time, that serious fisticuffs were outside his range of possibilities ; as they resulted in almost immediate though temporary blindness. So henceforward he had always to find another way out from a difficult situation. To go on with our yarn. Shute swung round in a flash and landed his right well and truly on my nose ; which organ immediately let me down by taking on the duties of a vintner, and supplying claret to all and sundry. We three stood there doing nothing, as the sudden change in the aspect of affairs, from our wrestling and "clinging much as bees ball a Queen " idea, to violent-striking with the fist upset our plan of cam- paign. What we required was time for a committee meeting to discuss the situation in all its bearings and formulate, preferably on paper, new proposals for action. This prerequisite of time was not available, so while Kipling and I were temporarily out of action, having food for thought, Shute swung round and completely eliminated the little baronet to be. I forget quite how, but it didn't require much doing. Shute by now was out of breath and if we could have closed in, the day could have been retrieved, but we didn't know enough of war for that, and there seemed an endless number of violent fisticuffs left in Shute ; he was such a surprise packet that we were obfusticated. So we decided that the army of three would consider themselves second best and Shute thinking, inside, that he had had all the luck, and things might have gone very differently, also decided to desist, merely registering his triumph vocally by declaring loudly his glorious victory of one against three, shouting " there were three of you against me and I beat you all." We let him go on with it. But one result of the set-to was, that the losing side reaped the fruits of victory, as the cock of the house, mended his manners, for he might not have won next time, as he might have more opponents. So all was well enough. The Kiplings' Family Doctor By Professor Dr. Alfred Fröhlich of Vienna RUDYARD Kipling died a year and a half ago, on the 18th January, 1936. There was a time, now long long ago, when he trustingly looked up to me as his instructor in the noble art of skating edges on the 44 THE KIPLING JOURNAL ice. Not that I was in any way the equal of the great masters or even of the less distinguished adepts, but merely because his own skill on the slippery surface of the great Engelberg ice-rink—at the sign of the Cattani family—was far far below mine. I think the great writer regarded me as a kind of college tutor of winter sport who with a little more assiduity and scientific penetration into the sub- ject might attain to a professorial chair. But Kipling not only availed himself of my arm as a welcome support when doing the " forward- outward edge " or the beginnings of the "serpent edge." As often as—and in those unforgettable winter days this was not seldom the case—a member of his family, wife, daughter, son, felt a bit poorly they did not send for the resident Swiss doctor, but for me who at that time was a young pharmacologist of considerable perception though but very little experience in the treatment of human ailments. But to me as to all pharmacologists the prospect of experimenting on two-legged rabbits was uncommonly alluring. That on these mostly harmless occasions there should be lively medical debates was only to be expected from Kipling's effervescent temperament and fanciful humour. One special source of worry was the precarious state of health of Mrs. Kipling who on my advice went to see the famous physician in Zurich, Professor Eichhorst. On the 14th of February, 1910, Kipling reported the result of this consultation. " Dear Fröhlich, Your charming letter has just come. ... I am sorry my last letter was not as legible as you could wish. (I had complained that his handwriting was sometimes hardly decipherable) Observe the pains I am taking to reform. (The first page of the letter was written laboriously in block letters !) We took your advice about Mrs. Kipling and last week we went to Zurich to see Professor Eich- horst. . . ,. Now I will try a new kind of writing. (The second page follows). We stayed the night at the Baur au lac, which was like a half-dead corpse. We went to the Professor (Herr Doctor, Professor, etc., etc.,) and I could not at first find the front door. (I was quite sober, but the door was round the corner !) He made an examination and pronounced Mrs. K. to be quite full of arthritis, gout and rheumatism and all such things. Then he made a prescrip- tion and (prohibiting beer) recommended baths—such as Vernet les Bains. (I think I will now try a third kind of writing !) We hope to go to Vernet-les-Bains at the end of this month and there she THE KIPLING JOURNAL 45 shall be washed and bathed and washed. Only she has made me pro- mise that I will also take baths. I prefer to be dirty and happy. She is really much better . . . and now that Eichhorst has pronounced that she is not suffering from six deadly diseases she is very gay. My best loved cousin (Mr. Stanley Baldwin) and his wife have come out to spend 14 days here. ... He skis (which he cannot do ; but the falls please him as much as if he could) and she skates. . . . (Now we will try a more ladylike style !) I am truly grieved to hear about your sad life during the Carnival. Here at Engelberg we are re- spectable. I am the most respectable of all. That is why I am sorry you are not here. We could support each other. Please let me know how many people you will kill by your new discoveries. I am also writing a new story. I think these things account for the unrest in Europe. With our best love, Yours sincerely, Rudyard Kipling. P.S. v. St. is as mad as ever. On the 16th of May Kipling wrote to me from Rome. " Dear Fröhlich, (wherefore " Mr." to me ?) .... We are still in Rome doing as the Romans do, that is to say enjoying the most awful bad weather. Now I shall never be able to think of Rome as a place where Julius Caesar and Co. went about in togas with bare legs. I imagine nothing but overcoats and hot grog. . . . There was two feet of snow at Lugano which you recommended as a pleasant resort. I shall not forgive you. ..." And on the 26th July, 1911 : " . . . . I hope you will be wise. Most work is unnecessary and the rest was invented by the devil. I except here your work and mine which as dealing with psychology is useful, but we should both take great care not to do too much. Have you seriously considered the wisdom of becoming a naturalized Russian ? I believe the Mus- covite has 316 saint-days in the year and he observes them all ! ! ! . . ." I had promised Kipling's little daughter Elsie who suffered terribly from seasickness on every voyage that I would discover a new remedy and test it on a dog that had a very queasy stomach. Not long after I could report that the dog became exceedingly jolly and danced on his hind legs whenever given the medicine. It is to this that Kip- ling alludes in the following excerpt dated 13th January, 1913 : 46 THE KIPLING JOURNAL . . . there is no news. Those who love—love. Those who hate— hate. Those who talk scandal—talk scandal. I have just been introduced to Garnier the aviator. He is of a new type and de- scribes a (to me) unknown world. ... I would almost sooner be a toxicologist (—a hit at me—) than an aviator. This reminds me that Elsie sends her love to the joyful dog who some day is to render her immune against seasickness. . . . And again from Engelberg on 1st February, 1913 : .... Mrs. K. has a cold, so has Elsie ... I am fed up. I begin to think that the only person who can be really happy is the dog. Be good to him. The stomachs of Empires unborn depend on his reacting properly. With love from us all, ever sincerely, R.K. Kipling's attitude to the representatives of medical science is shown in the following letter : " Dear Fröhlich, I haven't written to you because you said that with luck you expected to be at the medical conference in London this year—in which case you promised to come to Bateman's. Well all the savants and cranks and bacteriologists and osteopaths and faith-healers and miracle-workers assembled and inflicted their theories on us and fought with each other but—Devil a sign of you ! I quite agree that you were well out of it, but you might have sent us a line just to say you were not coming. We really did hope to catch you this year. ... His last letter to me reached me shortly before the world war that put an end to our friendly meetings. It is dated March 14, 1914. Hotel du Parc, Vernet-les-Bains : ". . . . We have been washed here. Mrs. K. is going to be better for the treatment ; at present it only makes her very tired. It makes me furious, but I feel that so many washings must do good. So we are made better by faith. And now goodbye. Our best love. Ever yours, R.K." Notwithstanding all his keen and yet kindly mockery the great writer had unbounded confidence in my medical ability and this confidence was shared by his family, so that I could justly consider myself to be the " Winter holiday family doctor " of the Kiplings. I could always sleep quietly conscious of having cared well for my patients both as a theoretical medico and as a pharmacologist. Kipling recognised this too. On the title page of a presentation copy of that THE KIPLING JOURNAL 47 delightful book for children " Puck of Pook's Hill " he wrote : " To A. Fröhlich, Doctor of Medicine "—these words are underlined— " from his obliged servant, the Author." Kipling and Doctors By Victor Bonney THE Medical Profession like other callings musters in its ranks men most various in mental and moral make up ; but the in- fluence of the calling on the individual who follows it is more pronounced in Medicine than in any other branch of work. Not by intention or design but by its very nature it is a creed, a cult and a sect, and the mind of him who enters it is unconsciously moulded until its tenets largely dominate his original self and his outlook be- comes separated from that of the generality of mankind. It is not then surprising that in fiction the doctor, in his professional capacity, is so rarely drawn well, for the understanding required to do so postulates knowledge not merely of the technical details of his work, but of the mental attitude that lies behind the work. Quaint misconceptions of that work abound in fiction ; impossible illnesses, impossible cures, and impossible operations carried out by impossible persons. Sharp criticism is bestowed on the writer who does not verify his references, but he who from ignorance misdes- cribes technical matters equally deserves it, for the avenues to accuracy are wide for those who will use them. More blameworthy still is the author who for the sake of plot or effect knowingly distorts them, for this is mere story-telling in both senses of the word. Mistakes, then, in professional details indicate either slovenliness or intellectual dishonesty, but mistakes in the drawing of the pro- fessional mind is another matter, for here an author has to think in terms quite other than himself—a very difficult thing to do. Unlike the problems of other callings those presented to the doctor, concerned as they are with the shifting phenomena of life, are contained in no fixed framework of laws whereby they may be measured and solved so that for an outsider to conceive and don the mental response to them requires not only great imagination but profound observation and thought as well. The portrait of the doctor in fiction most constantly fails because the professional mind is conceived incorrectly, the characters drawn 48 THE KIPLING JOURNAL being laymen with medical degrees—an impossible combination, for Medicine alters the mind as surely as limestone touched by vol- canic magma becomes marble. No writer has depicted the technical and spiritual aspects of Medicine so understandingly as Kipling, and therein medical men are in debt to him for ever. The understanding is assignable, firstly, to that insatiable craving for inner knowledge which was so striking a part of his nature and which compelled him to minutely observe and study the details of every sort of work ; and secondly, to his power of vision which perceived in all work a spiritual significance far greater than the work itself. He himself has described to us how in his earlier days he was by force of circumstances brought into intimate relation with men of many varied callings :— "And in that Club and elsewhere I met none except picked men at their definite work—Civilians, Army, Education, Canals, Forestry, Engineering, Irrigation, Railways, Doctors, and Lawyers—samples of each branch and each man talking of his own shop. It follows then that ' show of technical knowledge ' for which I was blamed later came to me from the horse's mouth, even to boredom." But Medicine had, I think, a special attraction for Kipling, pro- bably because its subtle problems challenged his deeply inquiring mind. In " Something of Myself " two doctors have specific mention, Dr. Conland, " the best friend I made in New England," and the late Sir John Bland-Sutton with whom, as readers of the biography will remember, Kipling pursued an unwilling cock to verify the workings of its gizzard. Bland-Sutton was a very remarkable person, avid for the acquire- ment of knowledge, especially if the knowledge concerned matters odd and unthought-of, and he was moreover gifted with the faculty of viewing things from an angle quite different from that used by the ordinary man. He possessed, in short, the very type of mind to interest and attract a mind like Kipling's, and an old-standing and intimate friendship subsisted between them. He is introduced as Sir James Belton into the story " The Tender Achilles " and the portrait is quite unmistakable to those who knew this famous surgeon. The "St. Peggotty's " of the tale is the Middlesex Hospital, to which Bland-Sutton gave a fully equipped Pathological Institute. His bust stands in the museum which forms a part of it, and underneath the bust is this epitaph written by Kipling :— THE KIPLING JOURNAL 49 JOHN BLAND-SUTTON A seeker after knowledge that should avert or mitigate pain Labouring throughout life to this end, he gave greatly of his substance that the search should continue in this place. Evidences of Kipling's knowledge of the technical side of Medicine are numerous. For instance, from " The Spies March," which deals with medical men in relation to infectious disease, take the following verse :— " Go where his pickets hide- Unmask the shape they take, Whether a gnat by the waterside, Or a stinging fly in the brake, Or filth of the crowded street, Or a sick rat limping by, Or a smear of spittle dried in the heat, That is the work of a spy !" A gnat conveys malaria and yellow fever, and a stinging fly sleeping sickness. Filth of the crowded street could occasion many diseases, most notably perhaps enteric fever. The sick rat stands for Bubonic plague which is transferred to man by the rat-flea, whilst the smear of dried spittle is the common agent of tubercular infection. In " A Deathbed " the last two lines of the first verse accurately describe the outward signs of malignant disease of the throat or tongue : " This is a gland at the back of the jaw— And an answering lump by the collar-bone." Witness his reference to Bacteriology in " A Translation :" " Some cultivate in broths impure The clients of our body—these Increasing without Venus, cure Or cause, disease." In a bacteriological laboratory you will see rows of glass tubes con- taining the thin broth in which bacteria are being cultivated, and like all low forms of life they multiply by simple fission not by sexual con- jugation. Agents of disease as they are, research has wrenched from them certain substances, which, administered as vaccines or sera are antidotes to disease. 50 THE KIPLING JOURNAL In " Marklake Witches " one of the characters is René Laennec, the French physician who by his invention of the stethoscope laid the foundation of our knowledge of diseases of the heart and lungs. René in the story is a prisoner of war on parole and Philadelphia tells Dan and Una how she watched René demonstrating his " little wooden trumpet " to Jerry, the local seller of charms and cures. Jerry listening to René's chest says :— "but unless I've a buzzin' in my ears, Mosheur Lanark, you make much about the same kind of noises as old Gaffer Macklin, but not quite so loud as young Copper—It sounds like breakers on a reef, a long way off. Comprenny ?" " Perfectly," replies René, " I drive on the breakers. But before I strike I shall save hundreds, thousands, millions perhaps, by my little trumpets." The earliest stethoscopes were made of wood and were shaped like a short trumpet. If you auscultate a healthy lung the principal sound heard is that caused by inspiration, but in pulmonary tuberculosis and certain other conditions, expiration is equally heard, only the sound is rather more prolonged and its pitch is lower. Jerry's pictures- que simile exactly describes this " tubular breathing " as it is called. And how fine is Rene's reply ! But the fullest example of the accuracy of his medical knowledge is to be found in " The Ballad of Boh Da Thone." You remember the Boh was a marauding chief :— " Boh Da Thone was a warrior bold : His sword and his rifle were bossed with gold, And the Peacock Banner his henchmen bore Was stiff with bullion but stiffer with gore. He shot at the strong and he slashed at the weak From the Salween scrub to the Chindwin teak : He crucified noble, he scarified mean, He filled old ladies with kerosene :" Who is pursued by Captain O'Neil of the Black Tyrone : " And his was a company seventy strong, Who hustled that dissolute chief along." O'Neil and his men overtake him : " And at last they came when the Daystar tired, To a camp deserted—a village fired, THE KIPLING JOURNAL 51 A black cross blistered the morning-gold, But the body upon it was stark and cold. The wind of the dawn went merrily past, The high grass bowed her plumes to the blast. And out of the grass on a sudden broke A spirtle of fire, a whorl of smoke— And Captain O'Neil of the Black Tyrone Was blessed with a slug in the ulna bone— The gift of his enemy Boh Da Thone." Now mark Kipling's medical knowledge :— " Now a slug that is hammered from telegraph wire Is a thorn in the flesh and a rankling fire." The wound suppurates as such a wound would be sure to do : " The shot-wound festered—as shot-wounds may In a steaming barrack at Mandalay. The left arm throbbed and the Captain swore ' I'd like to be after the Boh once more !' " Septic fever supervenes and he becomes delirious :— " The fever held him—the Captain said 'I'd give a hundred to look at his head.' " Babu Harendra hears him and hankers for the rupees but is too cowardly to attempt to earn them. The Captain is invalided, goes to a hill-station and takes him a wife : " And she was a damsel of delicate mould, With hair of sunshine and heart of gold, And little she knew the arms that embraced Had cloven a man from the brow to the waist. And little she knew that the loving lips Had ordered a quivering life's eclipse, Or the eye that lit at her lightest breath Had glared unawed in the Gates of Death. For these be matters a man would hide, As a general rule from an innocent bride." Meanwhile Babu Harendra is wending his way in the rear-most cart of the Government Bullock Train when the Boh and his followers attack the convoy. There is a fierce fight with the escort : 52 THE KIPLING JOURNAL " But Fate had ordained that the Boh should start On a lone-hand raid on the rearmost cart, And out of that cart, with a bellow of woe The Babu fell—flat on top of the Boh ! For years had Harendra served the State, To the growth of his purse and the girth of his pêt There were twenty stone, as the tally-man knows, On the broad of the chest of this best of Bohs. And twenty stone from a height discharged Are bad for a Boh with a spleen enlarged. Oh ! short was the struggle—severe was the shock— He dropped like a bullock—he lay like a block. And the Babu above him, convulsed with fear Heard the labouring life-breath hissed out in his ear." Repeated attacks of malaria cause great enlargement of the spleen, and a large proportion of the natives of malarial districts are so affected. This is a perfect picture of extensive rupture of the spleen with severe internal haemorrhage causing rapid death. Harendra then hacks off the head of the Boh, and sends it in a packing case to O'Neil with the finest example of a Babu's letter ever rendered into verse, asking for the rupees. The case arrives at breakfast time and is opened on the table. " Their breakfast was stopped while the screwjack and hammer Tore wax cloth, split teak-wood, and chipped out the dammer, Open eyed, open mouthed, on the napery's snow, With a crash and a thud rolled—the Head of the Boh !" O'Neil's wife who is with child four months (this is very cleverly expressed) is terribly shocked and faints. And now comes the most interesting point of all. From time immemorial it has been believed that impressions strongly stamped on the mind of a pregnant woman may imprint a physical simulacrum on the child, and at intervals cases are reported in the medical journals lending colour to the belief, as for instance when a woman frightened by a one-armed man brings forth a child with congenital absence of an arm. In this instance the child is born with a superficial birthmark, or congenital noevus, on its shoulder, resembling the contour of the Boh's head. THE KIPLING JOURNAL 53 " And this is a fiction ? No, go to Simoorie And look at their baby, a twelve-month old Houri A pert little Irish-eyed Kathleen Mavournin— She's always about on the Mall of a mornin'— And you'll see, if her right shoulder-strap is displaced, This : Gules upon Argent, a Boh's head, erased !" As in Heraldry Gules means red and Argent white, the description of the red birth-mark against the child's white skin is very apt. The term ' erased ' is also used in heraldry where an object, such as a head, is separated from the body it belongs to leaving a jagged edge, and the Boh's head was so separated. But Kipling also intended the word to be interpreted in a second sense. These birth-marks if superficial and not too large, can be obliterated or erased by what is called electrolysis, and because the position of this one would render it specially unsightly electrolysis almost surely would have been carried out. It is a fine example of Kipling's genius for playing on the double meaning of a word and blending the parlances special to two apparently unrelated subjects. The dominant force that lies behind medical work is often ascribed to conscious benevolence, whereas it is something quite different, though I would not have you think that doctors lack this virtue. Medicine disciplines its followers—not by order or drill as a regiment disciplines its men, but by the power of its traditional aims. The result, however, is the same—an automatic habit of thought and action which continues to work long after conscience and courage have gone by the board ; and the doctor who struggles out of his sick-bed to see a patient far less ill than himself ; or from an island shieling to the boat bound for the mainland, carries in his arms a case of Typhus ; or allows to bite him a mosquito known to be infected with Yellow Fever, in order that the disease may be further studied, is embarrassed when his deed is lauded on the score of humanity and courage, knowing as he does, that its mainspring is a habit of duty, so long engrained, that it has become subconscious. This and the nature of the ex- periences through which the doctors' mentality is attained were well known to Kipling, as the following unpublished verse shows : " ' Such as in Ships and brittle Barks Into the Seas descend,' " They see the glories of the Lord And wonders without end. 54 THE KIPLING JOURNAL But such as heal the sick and maimed, Do meet more manifold Amazements, in one midnight watch, Than all the oceans hold." You will observe that he quotes the first two lines from a previous poem of his. In 1908 he delivered an address to the students of the Middlesex Hospital which in eloquence and understanding is by far the finest appreciation of the medical profession ever written and almost every sentence of it might be used as a text on which to found a dissertation. He described doctors as being " Your permanently mobilized army which is always in action, always under fire against Death." And whose business is :— " to make the best terms you can with Death on our behalf ; to see how his attacks can best be delayed or diverted, and when he insists on driving the attack home, to take care that he does it accord- ing to the rules of civilized warfare." The same conception of the doctor's function recurs in the following unpublished verse written, I believe, many years afterwards :— " Man dies too soon, beside his work half planned. His days are counted and reprieve is vain. Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand; Or cloke the shameful nakedness of pain ?" The last line is very wonderful. The speech went on to recite the obligations of the profession :— "In all times of flood, fire, famine, plague, pestilence, battle, murder or sudden death it will be required of you that you report for duty at once," and then its privileges : " If you fly a yellow flag over a centre of population you can turn it into a desert. If you choose to fly a Red Cross flag over a desert you can turn it into a centre of population towards which, as I have seen, men will crawl on hands and knees." You must remember that the South African War was only six years distant. And he ended thus :— THE KIPLING JOURNAL 55 " I do not think I need stretch your patience by talking to you about the high ideals and lofty ethics of a profession which exacts from its followers the largest responsibility and the highest death rate—for its practitioners—of any profession in the world. If you will let me, I will wish you in your future what all men desire- enough work to do, and strength enough to do the work." What finer wish could be uttered to an audience of young men ? Of all doctors, those who devote themselves to Research are, I think, the highest type, for not only are the rewards small, but years of strenuous thought and labour may be expended only to find that the path followed to seek for knowledge leads nowhere or comes to a blind end. Kipling has voiced this as only he could voice it : these are the lines, unpublished as yet :—• " Send here the bold, the seekers of the way— The passionless, the unshakeable of soul, Who serve the inmost mysteries of man's clay, And ask no more than leave to make them whole." The interest Kipling took in Medicine covered not only its present but its past and its future. In ' Our Fathers of Old " he sings of the ancient physician-astrologers " Yet when the sickness was sore in the land, And neither planets nor herbs assuaged, They took their lives in their lancet-hand And, oh, what a wonderful war they waged ! None too learned, but nobly bold Into the fight went our fathers of old." These held that the Universe and all it contains is one in ultimate essence and that happenings in the whole are reflected in the individual man who forms a part of it. In the address that he gave to the Royal Society of Medicine in 1928 he dwelt on this doctrine and, looking into the future, said : "Is it then arguable that we may still mistake secondary causes for primary ones, and attribute to instant and visible agents of disease unconditioned activities, which in truth, depend on some breath drawn from the motion of the universe,—the entire universe revolving as one body (or dynamo if you choose) through infinite but occupied space. The idea is wildly absurd ? Quite true. 56 THE KIPLING JOURNAL But what does that matter if any fraction of an idea helps towards mastering even one combination in the great timelocks of Life and Death." In the labyrinth of knowledge through which we thread our way Science has already unlocked many doors, but a myriad remain through which we must pass, and who shall assert where or where not we may come to at last ?—no doctor. DISCUSSION The President (Stalky) : " I thank you Mr. Chairman, for the honour of inviting me to open this discussion. I have much pleasure in doing so. I have never listened to a paper that I have enjoyed more than the one we have had given to us this evening. It was not only a delightful paper but was delivered in such a charming style. My particular task this evening is to lead the discussion—a very different matter from discussing. Those of you who have ever seen a riot will know that a fellow leads the riot until there is a little trouble ahead ; then he gradually drops behind and gives his advice. There is nothing I can add to the lecture, nor have I any questions to ask : therefore I will mark time in the rear, and hope that others, more able than I, will take part in the discussion. Mr. J. H. C. Brooking : " I think that if Mr. Kipling had known less about Doctors, we should have had him in the flesh now, and it may be that knowledge, large and close, that he had of the medical profession, arose out of the amount of time he spent under its practi- tioners. I am not sure that we know quite how many months or years he spent in illness, but we know that he was not too healthy a man during his later years, and I can quite imagine that during his sojourn in Hospital he would not lie there and see nothing : he would be learning the whole time, not only about his own troubles but about all the patients in the Hospital. That, I think, is one of the reasons why we have had three papers during the last year or so on Kipling and the medical profession, two from Mr. Bonney and one from Dr. Vaughan Bateson—all excel- lent, full of meat, and all showing how carefully Kipling knew his business when he wrote about things medical." Mrs. Fleming : " I am afraid my long life must have been a very sheltered one as I have never before found myself so dumbfounded and tongue-tied. I do not know what to say about my brother in THE KIPLING JOURNAL 57 relation to doctors because the time when I knew him best and when we were most together, was about the middle of last century, when we knew very little of doctors, excepting that I danced with some of them occasionally, and thought that they danced almost as well as subalterns, but not quite ! That was the light in which I regarded doctors at that time. If you would like me to tell you a little story about my brother which has nothing whatever to do with doctors, I shall be very glad to do so, because I notice that, although in his Autobiography he told us a great deal about his youth, he did not mention one fact—a fact that has been the one pride of my life. When we were very young, living in that dreary little house in Southsea, my brother, aged six years, and myself three and a half, our Aunt Rosa thought it would be more convenient if we both learnt to read at the same time. She instructed us together, the only difference being that our punishments were different. Rudyard, being six years old, and a man, was rapped over his knuckles with a ruler, whereas I, being a lady was only made to stand alone on the table. It seemed to me then that tables were the height of Martello towers, and very slippery. I was not even allowed to hold on to my brother's hair, which was very long and fair, nor even to hold his sailor collar, which he offered me as a life-line. My shoes had soft rounded soles, and to be made to stand alone on a high slippery table, with no edge, was a most terrifying ordeal. Perhaps, however, this punishment sharpened my wits, because it is my boast that I learnt to read with fair fluency some weeks before he did. He was still spelling out his syllables and fitting them together like a jig-saw puzzle, when I was promoted, as a great reward, to reading the psalm at family prayers. This pro- bably made me quite insufferable, and it became necessary for my brother to reason this out with me in the following way : ' You are so little,' he said, ' that you are not big enough to understand the really hard things about reading. That is why it is easier for you to read without spelling, than it is for me : besides, you know there is a lot of guessing. This very morning when you read your portion from the Bible you said " leather thing " instead of " Leviathan," and that was guessing.' I am rejoiced to see so many good Kiplingites here : it makes me realise that his ' work continueth greater than ' his knowing." Mrs. Frank Straker: "I do not think I have anything to contribute when it comes to Mr. Kipling's work, but after Mrs. Fleming's delightful 58 THE KIPLING JOURNAL little personal touches about her brother I think this little story may in- terest some present. When I was at school in New York in the late '90s. Mr. Kipling was very ill. People who cared about him were anxious about him, but few realised how popular and wonderful was the hold this man had taken. Late one night a cabby came up to our Hotel in New York to put down a fare. The old cabby then climbed down from his box and came to the door of the Hotel to read the bulletin. Someone said to him, ' Cabby, don't you think it is about time you were turning in,' and the old man replied, ' Well, I am the last one out to-night, and a lot of fellows will be back there when I turn in, and if the last fellow to get back doesn't know how Kipling is, there's the devil to pay.' " Mrs. Fleming said that in return for Mrs. Straker's story she would tell one more. At the time of Rudyard Kipling's serious illness in America, the news had just come over that he was considered to be out of danger. A great admirer of his was coming to see their Mother, and as he jumped out of his hansom cab at Mrs. Kipling's door he said to the cabby, ' Kipling's all right I see.' The cabby replied, ' I don't seem to remember that 'orse Sir." Dr. Young : "As a member of the profession and a friend of our distinguished lecturer to-night, I should like to add a tribute of ad- miration for the address which he has given us. Mr. Bonney is a colleague of mine, and a very great friend. During the War we were going back together from a visit to a Hospital with which we were associated, some distance out of London, travelling in a darkened rail- way carriage. We began to talk about Kipling, whom we both loved, and whose works we have known from our earliest days. Mr. Bonney then illuminated some of Kipling's poems for me and showed me what treasures were often concealed and could be brought to light by an earnest student. Whenever we meet we compare notes. I am sure his address to-night has taught most of us a great deal. I would like to stress the extraordinary catholicity of Kipling's work. Like Shakespeare, one can always go to him for some illustration of a point. Some of the things that illustrate the medical aspect come almost better from some of his poems on other subjects. I recently had to give an address to an audience of medical practitioners, and I wanted to point out how doctors have their enthusiasms, and I quoted from ' The Last Rhyme of True Thomas :' And some they give me the good red gold, And some they give me the white money. THE KIPLING JOURNAL 59 And some they give me a clout o' meal, For they be people of low degree. And the song I sing for the counted gold The same I sing for the white money, But best I sing for the clout o' meal That simple people given me. We as doctors feel that we do get appreciation sometimes from the poorest of our patients, and love working for them, and that is what we do find in Kipling—something so apposite for all the needs of life. I would like to thank my friend and colleague for the charming address he has given us : no one else could have delved so richly into the wonderful mine that Kipling's work gives on all subjects." The Chairman : " We have had a very interesting evening. In winding up the meeting and moving a vote of thanks I should like to express my own gratification of his particular mention of Mr. Kip- ling's story from ' Marklake Witches,' in ' Rewards and Fairies.' I think that story is one of his finest pieces of imaginative narrative, and illustrates Kipling's love of accuracy. Sir Arthur Wellesley is one of the characters in the story, and it is an actual fact that he had command of the Brigade at Hastings in 1812. Many people know that it was Laennec, a French philosopher in England who invented the original stethoscope, and I was very pleased that Mr. Bonney mentioned that story. We have not only heard Mr. Bonney's most able paper, but we have had a most interesting rider to it from Dr. Young. I have the honour to be connected with the Middlesex in one way or another, and I cannot help saying how very pleased and proud I am to think that two of our leading physicians and leading surgeons have given such excellent paper and remarks about Mr. Kipling and his work. Mr. Kipling was particularly attached to the Middlesex Hospital. As our lecturer has said, he was a great personal friend of Sir John Bland Sutton, and Mr. Kipling actually ended his life there a year and a half ago. It makes one feel rather proud of the personnel of the Hospital that two of the leading men on its Honor- ary Staff have been here to-night and have interested us to such a great degree in what they have said about Mr. Kipling. Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting of the Members of the Society took place on the 10th June at the Criterion Restaurant, Piccadilly Circus, General L. C. Dunsterville, President of the Society in the Chair. 6o THE KIPLING JOURNAL 1. The President reviewed briefly the work of the Society for the past year. He was very glad that the Coronation had given an opportunity to the Council to welcome many overseas members through the kindness of Lady Cunynghame who had entertained a party at her house. He referred to the most excellent progress made by the Auckland N.Z. Branch under the wise and energetic guidance of Mrs. Buchanan and regretted that similar progress had not been made in other branches. The attendance at many of the Members' Meetings was, however, very poor in many instances and he thought that perhaps the Society was not sufficiently catering for the younger people ; controversy, he thought, should be welcomed to make pro- ceedings interesting and the expressions of opinions which were not in accord with the majority of members should not be discouraged. The most satisfactory condition of the Society's finances must be attributed to a hard working Council and officers and he thought that special mention should be made of the excellent work performed by Mr. Bazley, Mr. Maitland and Sir Christopher Robinson. 2. Sir George MacMunn, Honorary Treasurer, moved the adoption of the Annual Report and Accounts. He explained many of the items to the Meeting and pointed out that owing to the changing of the financial year at the last meeting so that it would end in future at the 31st December, the present accounts were for the nine months only from the end of the last financial year, 31st March, 1936, to 31st December 1936. Lady Cunynghame seconded. The Report and Accounts were adopted unanimously. 3. The Honorary Secretary moved, on behalf of the Committee and members of the Victoria B.C. Branch : " That the Rules of the Society be amended by inserting the following new Rule :—' Any Society which has amongst its objects the increase of the knowledge of Kipling's works may be affiliated to the Kipling Society on payment of an annual affiliation fee of one guinea, which may, however, be increased under special circumstances by the Council. Each affiliated society shall be entitled to receive two copies of each issue of the Journal and such other privileges as the Council may from time to time approve.' " Several members questioned the wisdom of this Rule and thought that it would prevent the formation of Branches as a cheaper alternative way to join the Society. It was difficult to see to which sort of Society their Rule was intended to apply. In any case, it was thought that the Council should have power to refuse such pro- THE KIPLING JOURNAL 61 posais to affiliate. The Hon. Secretary suggested that the proposed Rule be amended by inserting after the words " may be affiliated " the words "at the discretion of the Council." The amendment was carried and the proposed Rule as amended was adopted. 4. The following Officers of the Society were unanimously re- elected for the year ending 30th June, 1938 :— President.—Major-General Dunsterville. Vice-Presidents.—All existing Vice-Presidents. Honorary Treasurer.—Lt.-General Sir George MacMunn. Honorary Secretary.—Sir Christopher Robinson. Honorary Editor.—Mr. B. M. Bazley. Honorary Librarian.—Mr. G. W. B. Maitland. 5. The following members of the Council who retire under Rule VI of the new Rules were unanimously re-elected :— Mr. J. G. Griffin. Mr. R. E. Harbord. Mr. J. R. Turnbull. The resignation from the Council of Mr. J. C. Beresford was ac- cepted with regret. 6. The following members who had been co-opted to the Council during the past year were unanimously elected. Major E. Dawson. Mr. John Sanderson. 7. Mr. Clement Cusse, the Honorary Solicitor and Messrs. Milne, Gregg and Turnbull, the Honorary Auditors were proposed for re- election by Mr. R. E. Harbord, who said that they were very grateful to Mr. Cusse for his valuable help and advice. As regards the Audi- tors, they were extremely grateful to them for remitting their usual— though modest—audit fee of eight guineas. He pointed out, however, that since the present Honorary Secretary had reorganised the Society's system, he had so simplified the accounting that the Auditors had found that their work was now so reduced that they would no longer charge a fee. Whilst thoroughly appreciating the Auditors generosity, he felt that Sir Christopher Robinson's contribution should not be forgotten. The re-elections were carried unanimously. 9. Mr. Roake suggested that more of the members' meetings should be held in the evenings instead of in the afternoons. Mr. Austen Hall agreed but thought a compromise might be effected by holding the afternoon meetings later—say from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. 62 THE KIPLING JOURNAL The Meeting referred the matter to the Council. The proceedings then terminated. The Annual Luncheon THE Eleventh Annual Luncheon of the Kipling Society was held at the Criterion Restaurant on Wednesday, June 16th, 1937. The toast of ' The King ' was given by the President, Major General L. C. Dunsterville, C.B., C.S.I. The number present constitutes a record in the annals of the Society ; it was particularly gratifying to see so many members from ' the ends of the earth.' The first toast, ' The Unfading Genius of Rudyard Kipling ' was pro- posed by Mr. B. M. Bazley, Hon. Editor of the Kipling Journal. The toast of "Our Guests" was proposed by Lt.-General Sir George MacMunn, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., D.S.O. :—" As there are important speeches yet to come, it is unfortunate for you that I am a soldier, short of speech and rough of tongue. This toast is in many ways not only the most British, but the most important of toasts. We are fortunate in having a number of distinguished people among our guests to-day, and I am particularly pleased to welcome Mrs. Flem- ing, our hero's sister, a lady, famous in younger days for her share in helping Rudyard Kipling, and who, with her father and mother, had been responsible for that little Magazine, " The Quartette " written in Lahore many years ago : it was a great privilege to welcome her. Another guest of honour is Sir Edward Grigg, who is typical of all that Kipling's message stands for. First he has had experience in ' ink ' on the Editorial Staff of The Times ; then in the War as General Staff Officer. Later he was working with Mr. Lloyd George at the time when he led the Empire through the industrial storms, and since then Sir Edward has been one of the great Governors of Kenya. He pro- bably knew, perhaps better than any man, what Kipling meant by that much abused phrase ' the White Man's Burden.' When the United States, after abusing this country for her activities, suddenly found themselves ' holding the baby ' themselves in the Philippines, it was of that that Kipling wrote ' Take up the white man's burden '— and it was not written in any sense of superiority. Mrs. Fleming, in replying, said :—" An old proverb comes home to me painfully on this occasion—' She went to a feast but was set down to grind.' I have Lad my feast and enjoyed it, but I am dumb- THE KIPLING JOURNAL 63 founded at being asked to reply to the toast. As I grow older I realise that influence is sometimes strengthened when it is freed from the body ; I feel this will continue to be the case where my brother's in- fluence is concerned. Critics to-day are apt to forget that Rudyard Kipling felt from the beginning that the word of the Lord was laid upon him, and that he had to do that for which he was sent. From his early days he felt the power of the written word, and it had an exaggerated importance for him in that he thought it was possible for everyone to write. Kipling took life seriously, and therein lay the reason of his success. I would like to quote a little verse which has has not yet been published, that Kipling wrote for me on the occasion of my twelfth birthday :— " Therefore while each new day brings some new thought, And life's chain glitters brightly, link by link, Right swiftly, good or evil, all is fraught More deeply than you think." Those were the words of a young man who took life seriously. Sir Edward Grigg, gave the toast of " The Kipling Society and its President :"—" I regard it as a very great honour to have been invited to address the Society. I feel it is a bond, the ribbon of that medal, invisible, but easily recognised, which all who loved England wore, who loved her language, who honoured great Englishmen, who loved the Empire too and strove to serve it with their lives. I feel specially privileged to have heard the speech made by Rudyard Kipling's sister. It seems to me to have been truly in great Kipling vein. I feel un- worthy to speak about Kipling amongst so many who were his friends in childhood and early life. I have known Kipling over a period of about thirty years, and was sometimes in his good books and some- times in his bad, because our political opinions had not always agreed. It is a great honour, however, to have been in his book at all, and I shall never forget the inspiration and encouragement I have received from him on many occasions in my life. The chief impression that remained with me was of his extraordinary faith and catholic interest in mankind and in things everywhere. All who had travelled overseas would probably have had the experience of coming back to this country and finding that nobody was in the least interested in what they had seen or where they had been. Kipling was not one of these ; he was always delighted to hear where one had been and what one had seen, however insignificant the impressions 64 THE KIPLING JOURNAL might have been. In that way he was like two other men, both great in their way, that it has been my privilege to know, one was Lord Milner, who had that same capacity, and the other was Lord Haldane, who always wanted to hear what anybody had experienced or seen overseas. I should like to tell the Members of the Kipling Society what I feel to be the great debt of this generation to Rudyard Kipling, and what was his legacy to the literature of the English language. What first appealed to me in Kipling's writing was the steady glow of romance which illuminates almost every page that he wrote. What was romance? It was sometimes best to describe things by their opposite, and all knew the opposite to romance—that type of modern literature which analysed and dissected. Everything at the end of that somehow looked sordid and mean. Kipling was not of that sort ; he was a great analyst, always determined to pluck out the heart of every mystery, but when he had plucked it out he did not destroy it, but gave it back again, stronger in colour, deeper in significance and with a new and vivid reality. All could give examples of that— in the men he invented or described, in all that he wrote about animals of the jungle, or polo ponies, or dogs. In his writing about ships, which became living things always under his hand, in his writing about machinery, which also became alive in Kipling's mind, and in his writings about nations and their institutions. All these things came alive and were tinged with this extraordinary glow of truthful, but somehow inspiring romance. Romance was the mainspring of his genius ; he was always on the trail of romance in whatever he saw, thought or did, and that gave him an astonishing catholicity. Kipling was amongst the first to realise that the heart and the home of the Empire could not be detected in England alone, but that the Empire was one great family. He felt about Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and India as intimately as about England : he was much before his time, and therefore there could be no doubt of the spirit which inspired him in all he wrote about the Empire, and that that spirit must continue to inspire all who came after, if the Empire was to endure. Of course he would live. He could not die. His songs and his ballads and his stories are proof against oblivion which overwhelmed so much that was highly valued in its own time, and I feel convinced that Kipling will be read as long as the English language is read and that, I believe, will be as long as the world endures. THE KIPLING JOURNAL 65 Major-General L. C. Dunsterville, in reply, thanked Sir Edward for the toast :—" I hope that some Members from the United States are present ; I know that we have a fair contingent of members and guests from overseas, and I am delighted to welcome them, and hope that when they return to their homes they will convey the best wishes of the Society to friends in distant lands. Referring to the activities of the Society, they had not done very much at the time of the Corona- tion, as it was not their function, but thanks to Lady Cunynghame, they had been able to entertain some of their overseas friends at a small sherry party. Personally, I am almost always an absentee, but I generally rush back to London in June, chiefly for the purpose of meeting the Society once a year. I am much in the position of an overseas member. I always welcome the Journal, and enjoy reading the accounts of the meetings held, and the excellent papers read. I hope that the atten- dance at these meetings will improve and that more of the younger gen- eration will be attracted. I think a little adverse criticism is good for the Society and livens things up. You have heard able speeches bring- ing out the wonderful points of this great writer, and they all agreed with every word that was said ; if anyone would state the contrary, it would strengthen their belief, and give a little more ginger to the proceedings. I could myself furnish any amount of controversy : the Society does not seem to know that I have written poetry and been paid for it, and why should not some member get up and say that he preferred my poetry to that of Rudyard Kipling ? The Society is doing extremely well ; it is a small Society, with a small subscription, reluctantly paid, but it still has a good balance in the Bank, due almost entirely to the fact that most of its officers work for the Society for nothing, and a great debt is owed to these gentlemen. Letter Bag Looking over the old files of the British Medical Journal I found the following under the date May 19, 1900 :— St. Bartholomew's Hospital Journal for April publishes some inter- esting leaves from Mr. Bowlby's diary in South Africa. On February 28th he was at De Aar while the train bearing the captured Cronje passed through and then he went on to Modder. He says Rudyard Kipling was in the train the last trip it made, and Dr. Boswell had a 66 THE KIPLING JOURNAL piece of shell from Modder which he intended to make into an inkpot, whereupon Mr. Kipling was moved to write the following lines on the shell : Beyond the trenches' outer bink I flung my message from afar, And now I serve to hold the ink Whilst men write lies about the war." The B.M.J. suggests that Mr. Kipling has simply perpetrated " one of those things that one would rather have expressed otherwise," and later goes on to speak of " this well-meant but awkwardly worded epigram." But lots of lies are written about wars, as none knew better than R.K. I wonder whether the inscribed inkpot is in existence, or if it ever came into being. Mr. Bowlby was presumably later Sir Anthony Bowlby, the eminent surgeon. The word ' bink,' which Kipling uses is defined in Chambers's Dictionary as meaning a bank or shelf (Scots). H. S. Carter, M.D. Portsmouth Parish Church Bells. It may not be generally known that the eighth bell on the Portsmouth Parish Church, "fecit 1730," bears the quaint inscription :—" We good people all to prayers do call ; we honour to the King and brides' joy do bring. Good tidings we tell, and ring the dead's knell." If one refers to the story " With Any Amazement " in " The Story of the Gadsbys," we learn that this is what the bells pealed forth at Cap- tain Gadsby's wedding. Another interesting point in connection with the Portsmouth bells is the curious coincidence that the fourth bell was cast in 1737 by one Joshua Kipling. As we are aware that Kipling spent his early schooldays at Southsea, is it calling too much on the imagination to suggest that this most precocious boy of an enquiring turn of mind had explored the parish church belfry and, struck by the coincidence of the fourth bell's being cast by a namesake of his, made a note of the quaint inscription on the eighth bell, only to use it later on when writing " The Story of the Gadsbys," which appeared in The Week's News, June 16th, 1888 ? However, I mention the curious coincidences for what they are worth. E. W. M. THE KIPLING JOURNAL 67 Secretary's Corner The popularity of the Secretary of any Society varies in indirect ratio with the period which has elapsed since the last luncheon or dinner of the Society. Arranging the seats at a function of this kind is like a very complicated Jig- Saw puzzle except that in the latter there is one, and one place only, for each piece whereas in the former there are a number of alternatives none of which can be absolutely satisfactory. So between relatives and friends who want— and do not want—to be separated, members who are deaf in the left ear and those who are deaf in the right, those who want to sit at the top table and those who don't, the unfortunate Secretary is led a pretty dance ! However, the Golden Rule in these matters is that it is impossible to satisfy everybody and so I hope that those members who have had bad luck as regards their seats at this year's lunch, will accept my apologies and regrets. We have had a great opportunity this year—and one which does not often come our way—of welcoming a number of our overseas members. Lady Cunynghame, this year's Chairman of the Council, very kindly invited every overseas member who was in London to a sherry party at her house to meet the members of the Council. We all passed a most delightful evening and it was very pleasant for both parties to meet those who hitherto had only been names. We feel sure that the Society will benefit from such personal contacts. The greatest problem which every Society has to face, is that of maintaining and increasing its membership. In every Society there are always a certain amount of resignations and " drop-outs " and these have to be filled by new members if the Society is only going to be maintained at its existing member- ship level There must, among the vast population of our Empire, be hundreds of thousands of people who admire Rudyard Kipling. The problem is how to reach these people. The best solution for small Societies like ours which cannot afford to advertise is for each of our members to regard him or herself as a recruiting sergeant ! I do not for a moment suggest that our members should embark upon a canvassing campaign for the Society, but if they would bear in mind the desirability of keeping a weather eye open for Kiplingites in their ordinary social contacts, and if each of them could bring us in just one new member every year, we should soon reach the point when advertising would be possible and then we should unquestionably build up something really worth while. C. H. R. 68 THE KIPLING JOURNAL NEW MEMBERS SINCE MARCH ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL 1486 H. Bethell, Esq. Richmond. A 1487 Peter Cuningham, Esq. London. 1488 Lt.-Col. R. F. Truscott London. 1489 Major Teall, D.S.O. London. A 1490 R. R. Feilden, Esq. Burwash. 1491 The Hon. Lady Monro London. 1492 Desmond Tuck, Esq. London. 1493 Sir Alexander Gibb, G.B.E., C.B., F.R.S. London. 1494 Galen T. Pearson, Esq. Los Angeles, California. 1495 Selfridge and Company London. 1496 James Shields, Esq. Philadelphia, U.S.A. 1497 Vere Stent, Esq. Pretoria, S.A. 1498 Major Townsend Sheringham. 1499 J. B. Carr, Esq. Detroit, U.S.A. 1500 C. Prideaux Selby, Esq. London. 1501 Victor Riley, Esq. Coventry. 1502 C. H. Highman, Esq. Johannesburg, S.A. 1503 Miss I. Slocock Newbury. 1504 Miss Bellamy Brown London. 1505 Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. 1506 Lt.-Col. the Hon. A. B. Bathurst London. Branches : A.56 Miss Manning Auckland, N.Z. A.57 Dr. Buckley Turkington Auckland, N.Z. A.58 Miss McGill St. Heliers, Auckland, N.Z. A.59 Miss R. McGill St. Heliers, Auckland, N.Z. A.60 Mrs. A. Aitken Morrensville, N.Z. A.61 Miss Johnson Auckland, N.Z. A.62 Rev. C. E. Perkins Auckland, N.Z. A.63 Mrs. Perkins Auckland. N.Z. A.64 Mrs. Bamfield Auckland, N.Z. A. 65 Miss C. Murray Auckland, N.Z". A. 66 Miss F. Murray Auckland, N.Z. A.67 Mrs. K. Parker Auckland, N.Z. A.68 Dr. Hilda Northcroft Auckland. A.69 Warwick Smulon, Esq. Auckland. A.70 C. F. Goodridge, Esq. Auckland. A.71 Mrs. C. F. Goodridge Auckland