CONTENTS PAGE Notes........... 3 Kipling and Charing Cross—J. P. Collins .... 8 On Re-Reading the Youthful Kipling—E. G. Hawke . . 13 A Kipling Memory—Coulson Kernahan . . . .15 Kipling's Sheer Poetry—Lt.-Gen. Sir George Macmunn, k.c.b. 17 More Uncollected Kipling Writings II.— Captain E. W. Martindell ..... 21 Kipling Fifty Years Ago—A Review of " Soldiers Three " . 27 Kipling Questions......... 30 " Just So " Stories Broadcast....... 31 Kipling As He Appeals to Me—F. H. Kendall ... 34 H.M.S. Kipling......... 37 The Earliest of the Plain Tales—Sir Max Pemberton . . 38 Kipling and the Cinema........ 39 Reports From Branches ........ 40 Letter Bag .......... 42 Book Reviews .......... 44 Secretary's Corner......... 47 THE KIPLING SOCIETY SALES DEPARTMENT Badges : Gold 15/- Silver 3/6 Gilt 2/6 Postcards : Burwash or Kipling's Grave. 1d. each or 9d. per dozen. Kipling Pencils : 2d. each or 1/9 per dozen. Binders for Journal : 3/6 each. Christmas Cards, 1939 : 4d. each, plus ½d. every three cards postage. Society's Show Card : Free where a member can have it displayed in any club, hotel, etc. Journals : Extra copies for mem- bers only : 2/- each. Special prices, which may be obtained from the Secretary, apply to twelve of the earlier numbers which are nearly out of print. List of Members : Extra copies for members only, 6d, Book Plates : 1d. each All the above are sent post free with the exception of Christmas cards. We are now in a position to supply one complete set of Kipling Journals in- cluding those numbers recently reported as out of print. How to Join The Kipling Society Members render great service to the Society by enrolling their friends. Below (left) is a General Application Form, to be completed and returned to the Hon. Secretary with the yearly or life membership subscription. Below (right) is a Banker's Order Form, by using which members save themselves the trouble and postage cost of annual subscription renewal. MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION To THE SECRETARY, KIPLING SOCIETY, 45 GOWER STREET, LONDON, W.C.I. Please enrol me as a member of the Kipling Society. I enclose — £ s. d. Life Membership Fee (£5/5/-) .............. : : Donor Membership Fee (Subscriptions exceeding 10/6 per annum)........ : : Ordinary Membership Fee (10/6 per annum) ...... : : Total : : Signature ........................ BANKER'S ORDER To....................Bank Ltd. ......................Branch Address of your Bank .............. Pay to Lloyds Bank, Ltd., 68, Warwick Square, London, S.W.1, for a/c The Kipling Society, the sum of...... now and on the first day of this month next year and annually thereafter until further orders. Name ............................ (Say Mr., Mrs,, (IN BLOCK CAPITALS) Over Miss or Title) Address .......................... Signed............................ (in block capitals) 2d. Stamp .......................... Date................19.. .. FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date received ................ Membership No............... Receipt No................... Indexed ..................... MRS. RUDYARD KIPLING We deeply regret to record the death of Mrs. Rudyard Kipling, who passed away on Dec- ember 19th at Bateman's, Burwash, at the age of 73. The sad news was received by the Kipling Society after this issue of the "Journal" was printed. On behalf of members of our Society in all parts of the world, we express our deep sympathy with the bereaved family in their loss. KIPLING'S FINAL VISIT TO LAHORE which he records in " Home." The draw- ing depicts, inter alia, Rudyard Kipling assisting at Lady Lyall's Bazaar in aid of the Mayo Hospital, Lahore, December 1891. Well-known Anglo-Indians are fig- gured. In the upper panel, Mrs. Rattigan, wife of an Advocate of the Punjab Chief Court appears; in another; Lady Lyall, wife of the Lt.-Governor of the Punjab 1887-1892; another panel shows " Tommy Dodd," a gambling game much played at the period, in full swing. (Illustration lent by Captain E. W. Martindell). THE KIPLING JOURNAL published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. VII. No. 52. December 1939. THE EMPIRE'S LAUREATE. CONTRASTS and similarities 'between this war and the last are "frequent and free," and many of them turn upon the vast improvements in aircraft and the mechanisation of warfare. The Premier in an important broadcast dwelt rather upon moral factors like his conviction that the present struggle sees the Empire united more vitally than at any previous period in its history. But surely in nothing is the Empire handicap- ped so heavily as in the fact that it no longer has its Laureate to breathe into us his living voice and inspiration. One has only to turn up the files and records of the last European war, to realise what a heartening and immeasurable force he was on the side of right and freedom and order. As one of our war corres- pondents on the French front wrote home to a friend the other day—' ' We are more than marking time, and time is on our side. But it would take a Kipling to convey to the folk at home the immensity of difference between the humdrum tasks of camp-life and the wonderful spirit that animates the soldiers of both nations." FINE SENTENCES. One quotation worth recalling emerges from a scamper through a Kipling scrap-book filled with stirring passages bearing on the war of 1914-18. In opening a hut for American Officers Kipling ended a characteristic speech with these fine sentences— "We are all blood-brothers in a common cause, and therefore in that enduring fellowship of loss, toil, peril, and home-sickness which needs must be our portion before we come to the victory . . . There are worse fates in the world than to be made welcome, as you are, and more than welcome, to the honourable and gallant frater- nity of comrades-in-arms the wide world over. Our country and our hearts are at your service, and with these, our understanding of the work ahead of you. That understanding we have bought at the price of the life-blood of a generation." Only those present who knew the facts could have realised how 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 much grief, and personal grief, were buried in those last reticent and quiet words. A KIPLING MEMORIAL. The war has delayed the pleasant task of celebrating the jubilee described upon another page. Kip- ling House in Villiers Street is collaborating with the London County Council and having a tablet designed to commemorate the fact that Kipling lived there fifty years ago. He occupied a set of rooms on one of its highest storeys, having wisely chosen a corner set looking out upon the river. " Seven flights of stairs," is the account he gives us in " The Light that Failed," the novel which he wrote on these premises, and still there has been dispute whether his actual level was the seventh or the sixth. From his tiny balcony he must have turned many a time to the East, as Victor Hugo did from his attic balcony in Guernsey, during the years of banishment from his beloved France. Years of toil elapsed before Kipling ceased to yearn for Indian scenes and sun- shine, and the sparkling company of his witty mother, his sister, and his wise old father. All things considered, it is as well that the scope for inscription on that tablet is strictly limited ; though this will not lessen the long stream of pilgrims who will drift there from all parts of the earth. WRONG AND RIGHT ENDINGS. " The Light that Failed," by the way, is the latest of Kipling's books to be filmed, and word should soon be forthcoming as to dates and things. It is said that when he went over this screen script years ago, his comments were caustic in the extreme. Naturally there will be keen curiosity as to the manner in which the tragic ending has been treated. Lippincott's Mag- azine, which printed a twelve- chapter version of the novel as its New Year's number for 1891, persuaded him to frame a happier solution for Dick Heldar than permanent blindness and a broken heart. And though the author reverted to his original plot in the book and the play, he never ceased to regret, we are told, that he had truckled to the market and the public taste in those trying early days. Can we see the time coming when even the cinema gives way to the logic of an author's mind ? THAMES-SIDE IN KIPLING'S TIME. An explanatory word may be acceptable concerning the Thames- side illustrations in the present number. Mr. Joseph Fennell, one of the founders of the American Academy of Arts, was a genuine lover of London and Father Thames. He and Mrs. Pennell lived for December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 years in a high flat in Buckingham Street, Adelphi, and then until they returned to America, in a Robert Street flat, afterwards occupied by Sir J.M.Barrie. It was from the first of these that the drawing of Charing Cross bridge was made ; and from the hither end of the bridge that Pennell made the sketch of the Embankment Gardens in Winter. The aspect and period of both concur as nearly as possible with Kipling's, and the drawings faithfully record the features familiar to him whenever he looked river- wards from his windows,—Water- loo Bridge, the old Shot Tower, the old Lion Brewery, and above all the railway bridge that linked his old life with the new, and will continue to do so in his writings perhaps, when railways are no more. THE STORY OF AN EPITAPH. Cables from Canada have more than answered the query put in our notes of the October number, and Colonel Milburn, one of our Vice-Presidents, raised the matter first in the September issue of 1936. In an article on "Epitaphs by Rudyard Kipling " THE NIGHT MAIL TO INDIA IN KIPLING'S TIME This black-and-white sketch by the late Joseph Pennell was done in the days when he and Kipling were neighbours in the Adelphi, London, and shows the departure of the Conti- nental night mail across Charing Cross Bridge. This was an event that Kipling watched, as he said in his letters at the time, almost with tears in his eyes because it was his broken link with the India he had just left behind. The illustration is reproduced from the original sketch lent by Mr. J. P. Collins. 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 he quoted a letter himself in which the poet referred to a Canadian memorial for which he had written this epitaph more than a decade ago— "We, giving all, gained all, Neither lament us nor praise Only in all things recall It is fear, not death, that slays." This was an inscription, as Colonel Milburn kindly reminds us, for a memorial which was being erected at Sudbury, Ontario, in the spring of 1928, but it arrived after the plaque had been cast with a quatrain by another hand. It was Captain Jules J. Ferry, of the Sudbury branch of the Canadian Legion, who had written to Kipling and made the request, and his comrades have always been warrantably anxious to see the original lines put to their destined purpose. Quite unconscious of this, we asked in the October number which martial centre in the Empire would ask permission to use the lines " when the present struggle has been won and done with." As several correspondents now cable or write and inform us from various parts of Ontario, Sudbury had set to work long before the Kip- ling Journal arrived on November 2nd, so that by that evening the query was answered by a Sudbury dispatch in the " Montreal Daily Star." Next morning the " Winni- peg Free Press," and the " Montreal Gazette " gave the story in full. And this has been cabled far and wide. It seems that Sudbury has combined with its neighbour, Cop- per Cliff, and the two branches of the Legion have set up a cairn apiece, one in Park Lawn cemetery, the other in the Roman Catholic cemetery two miles away. The now famous lines are being chiselled into the stone of each, and each cairn has been provided with space for a second inscription of honour to the heroes of the war now waging. Thus we may fitly say in a double sense,— " One stone the more swings into place In that dread temple of Thy worth." M. ANDRÉ MAUROIS' MESSAGE. The inspiring words of our Presi- dent, Major-General Dunsterville, in the October issue of the Journal, on the Kipling Society and the War, have brought us many messages of appreciation. None, we believe will be more highly valued by our members than that of Monsieur Andre Maurois, which appears on the next page. "If Kipling were with us today " wrote Stalky, " he would doubtless give the nation a message of faith in our righteous cause, and courage to meet our inevitable losses and hardships leading to ultimate victory ; but lacking his bodily presence, we may turn over the pages of his poems and find in many places words that exactly fit the present crisis," To that December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 spirit the celebrated author of Les Silences du Colonel Bramble sub- scribes, when he writes that on November nth, 1939, the anniver- sary of the Armistice, "on a lu à la Radio Française l'Ode à la France de Kipling et j'ai moi-même, dans un discours, évoqué son souvenir." OUR NEW COVER. This issue of The Kipling Journal appears in a new cover, a change which has not been made without mature consideration, and which we hope will be com- mended by our readers. It has long been felt that the magazine of our Society, which stands as a permanent memorial to the great Writer, should bear his portrait in every issue. It ________ is fitting that the illustration chosen should be that of the plaque which the Kipling Soc- iety recently pre- sented to H.M.S. Kipling. TO OUR MEMBERS. So far the war, and the months of crisis leading up to it, have not ser- iously affected the publication of our Journal. The cost of production of the magazine has increased, but in spite of that we are endeav- ouring not only to maintain the present standard, but to develop it. Every member may help us to do this by proposing friends who are genuinely interested in Rudyard Kipling and his works, as members of the Kipling Society. A steady increase in member- ship not only extends the in- fluence of our organization—it widens the scope of our Journal. We invite all members who can to propose three new members by the March 1940 quarter. The only condition is that those who join us shall be keen Kiplingites ! BRANCH FORMATION Correspondents in any part of the world who are interested in the formation of a local Branch, should write to the Hon. Secret- ary of the Society in London, who will be pleased to offer suggestions and advice. The address is : 45, Gower Street, London, W.C.1, A MESSAGE FROM M. ANDRÉ MAUROIS, K.B.E., TO THE KIPLING JOURNAL " Un grand écrivain est im- mortel. Kipling disparu con- tinue d'être, pour la France et l'Angleterre en guerre, un admirable inspirateur. Le 11 Novembre, 1939, anniver- saire de l'armistice, on a lu à la Radio Française l'Ode à la France de Kipling et j'ai moi- même, dans un discours, évoqué son souvenir. Nous lui demeurons fidèles parce qu'il reste, malgré les années, le plus exact des peintres et le plus sage de philosophes. André Maurois. de l'Académie Française 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 Kipling and Charing Cross An Interesting Anniversary This issue of the Kipling Journal marks the fiftieth anniversary of Kipling's coming to London. Mr. J. P. Collins, formerly London Editor of the " Civil and Military Gazette," Lahore, here recalls interesting details of the Master's life in London. "WHY, sir," said Dr. Johnson, " Fleet Street has a very animated appearance, but I think the full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross." We must remember that in those days " the Cross " was on the margins of rurality, and the Doctor used to take his constitutionals as far as St. Martin's in the Fields,— a title still justified by its verdant character. A couple of centuries have changed all that, but London is just as good a place to leave as ever. Kipling broadened Johnson's say- ing on to a transcontinental plane when he said there were " three great doors in the world where if you stand long enough, you shall meet anyone you wish,—the head of the Suez Canal, Charing Cross Station, and the Nyanza Docks." Thus he gave two traffic-honours to Africa, and none to his native continent of Asia, when he might easily have cited Singapore or Colombo, and nobody who knows the East would ever have contradict- ed him. In all three nominations, be it noted, he reverted to his passion for the handiwork of man. All three points link water-routes with railways, and the greatest is the middle one, because it marks the point of intersection between Father Thames and the line that connects London with India. The river Thames, as Mr. John Burns said years ago, is " liquid history," and Charing Cross is the post that Kipling made for when he shook the dust of Lahore from his shoes, just fifty years ago. It was in 1889, when he was not 24, that he came to the heart of the Empire to challenge fame and fortune,— with what success is now a matter of literary history. It is curious, however, that with all our popular organs scouring heaven and earth for personal gossip, and unknown facts about well-known people, none of them has noted that we have just passed the fiftieth anniversary of Kipling's arrival in our midst. For, as he records himself at the head of the fourth chapter in " Something of Myself," it was " in the autumn of '89 " that he " stepped into a sort of waking dream," and began to December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 naturalise himself for all time as a denizen of London. If he ever gave a thought to the many notables who had passed through the "great door" of Charing Cross region, he says nothing of it in his books. And what a pageant of " Britishistry " he could so easily have woven out of those four centuries of celebrities, all linked with Villiers Street, or near. Think,—Bacon offering "so much " to the riverside fishermen for their day's " take ; " its sponsor, George Villiers, Duke of Bucking- ham, whose palace of York House is commemorated by the stately old water-gate of Inigo Jones ; Sam Pepys, who witnessed an ambassadors' dispute at that very spot ; Evelyn the diarist, who settled in York Buildings for " important concerns " and the education of his daughters ; Rous- seau, who managed to dicker up one of his typical quarrels while in residence here ; Benjamin Frank- lin, who lodged a few yards away, in Craven Street ; the brothers Adam, who built the Adelphi and its Terrace, now no more ; Garrick and Topham Beauclerck who dwelt there and played the host to Johnson and his set ; Dr. Percy, of the " Reliques," who lived with his kinsman, the Duke, at Northum- berland House, near at hand ; and Dickens, who served a hard probation as a lad in the blacking factory at Hungerford Stairs. No- body yet has worked out completely the influence of " Boz " on Kipling's evolution as an artist ; but there are implications in the name of Hungerford that awaken echoes in the minds of those who know the story of their lives. Southsea was not the only place of Kipling's early hardships, and he admits in print that loneliness in London had many heartaches before he found consolation in growing fame and income, travel, and a happy marriage. An Indian friend showed me once a packet of letters sent back by Kipling during those early days in London, and one of them said something about willingly exchanging all his success for a few hours of the old sunshine at Lahore. He mentions also in his auto- biography how " staleness and depression " brought him a month of "real influenza, when all his old Indian microbes of fever and dysentery joined hands and sang in the darkness of Villiers Street." One or two of his missives written about that period, are dated from the Royal Hospital, Dublin,—if the verb is not a misnomer, seeing that few of his letters then ever bore a date at all. In " Something of Myself" he admits "straight overwork," and until the magazine editors and literary agents came hammering at his door for stories, he must have experienced dejection over India's inappreciation of his 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 weekly letters at a guinea a piece. America soon put that right, and it was thus that, like Canning, he brought in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. The fact is, he had looked forward somewhat too keenly to what he called in some casual verses of anticipation— Odours dear of London smoke And tumult of the Strand. And the literary gods of London were a miscellaneous lot in their reception of the new arrival in their midst. We know from " The Rhyme of the Three Captains " how unfeelingly his senior con- frères could treat a youngster of dazzling cleverness, and we can hardly be surprised that he found the company of authors, however rich in reputation, less congenial than plainer folk who made up the great kaleidoscope of London life in all its bustle and variety. In those days Frank Harris was a swashbuckler of the late Victorian age, who somehow captured the editorial chair of the Fortnightly Review after Mor- fey had been spirited away by Mr. Gladstone to the Cabinet THE EMBANKMENT GARDENS IN WINTER Seen from Kipling's window by the Adelphi, opposite. The illustration is reproduced from a water colour by the late Joseph Pennell, and lent by Mr. J. P. Collins. Pennell, the famous lithographer and etcher, and biographer of Whistler, lived for many years in the Adelphi eyrie which was taken over by Barrie when the Pennells went to the United States. December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 and Dublin Castle. Most of Harris' successes came by way of guile or impudence, and he treated Kipling much as he did everybody else. Mr. Morton Fullerton, the author and critic, has told in the ' ' Figaro ' ' how he came to London from New England . . , and encount- ered Kipling in the waiting-room outside the editorial sanctum. When Harris sent for them it was to harangue them like fellow-delin- quents "with bewildering raillery and in a vein of gaiety," They came away together "in a state of indignation and in a sort of stupefaction that left us dumb." Finding each other congenial, how- ever, they ascended to Kipling's flat five storeys high above the scurry of Villiers Street, and this is Mr. Fullerton's description— or the nearest version I can make of his lively French— " There were only a camp-bed, a table, and a couple of chairs, with plenty of papers and an absence of books. But he offered me a whiskey and soda, and there was all that was necessary for our pipes. Coming away, I brought along with me one of those little budgets of stories known ... to the world as " Plain Tales from the Hills, "— a publication which to-day commands a price among collectors that runs into three figures. . . . " During the year that followed our first encounter we saw each other three or four times a week. We held long conversations in which I never heard him say a word revealing any conception of his originality and importance .... I had some trouble in getting him to spend an evening with the great Henry James. Yet James and he became inseparable friends. And when Kip- ling was married, he saw to it that James was his best man. " In 1890 I was sent to Paris as " Times " correspondent alongside the great De Blowitz, and the jolly talks I had so often had with Kipling were interrupted. But the hard-and-fast friendship was never broken. . . . France has never had a surer friend nor one who was better informed in his role of soothsayer or link between the two nations." An author who has written well of that period in Kipling's career, is Mr. Trevor Allen, who has occupied for years the flat that Kipling rented (and later, the one adjacent) in Embankment Cham- bers, now re-christened Kipling House. To read his account and that of his predecessor, Mr. Frederic Whyte in "A Bachelor's London," is to round up a vivid vignette of what the region of Hungerford Bridge had to offer the exile from India. He settled down to ten hours' work a day, or rather a night, and has told us himself with what emotion he watched the nine o'clock mail thunder out every night for the Continent and India. There, among old prayer-carpets and Persian rugs, shelves-full of magazines, and all the parapher- nalia of an ardent smoker, he wrote The Light that Failed. If he never dated his letters, he dated that first novel, for he embroiders its pages with touches of autobiography half disguised, but more in the French fashion than the English. 1 hen came the dramatisation of the book, with Forbes Robertson as Dick Heldar, at the Lyric 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 Theatre in 1903, and one old dramatic critic may confess to indulging in false prophecy at the time, for that heart-searching play made one feel we had found the man who was to make the British theatre live again, and free us from the pall of Ibsen and Co. Would he have taken to the stage in a friendlier mood if he had not had to tinker its climax into a happy ending and back again ? Or was his Maisie too hard a specimen of her sex to meet the managers' ideas ? Kipling's later associates in the Adelphi neighbourhood included Sir J. M. Barrie, and Mr. Trevor Allen says that in Sir James's flat there was an interesting gathering in 1914 when the first Zeppelin invader dropped a bomb that scarred Cleopatra's Needle. The guests included Kipling, Arnold Bennett, Wells, and Joseph Conrad, —all engaged on threshing out a literary problem of the day. If that Thames-side bomb had come a hundred yards closer, what a difference it might have made to the literature of modern England. J. P. Collins The Autographed Leaf MAJOR W. WILKIE, who was elected Junior Bailie for Monifieth, has a treasured possession which is probably un- ique. It is a leaf autographed by Rudyard Kipling. This is the story of the leaf. 1st The Major, who joined the Gordon Highlanders as a young lad, went through the Boer War. He was lying seriously wounded in a hospital near Cape Town when one day a small, bespectacled man entering the ward inquired if there were any Highland soldiers there. He was conducted to Major Wilkie's bed. The visitor asked him if he would care to have any books to read when he felt better. The Major replied that he would very much like to have some works by Burns and Kipling. Major Wilkie then saw the stranger pick a leaf from some branches in a nearby vase. He then wrote on the leaf and placed it beside the soldier's pillow. Great was the astonishment of the Major when, reading the leaf some days later, he discovered he had been entertaining Rudyard Kipling. —From the Dundee Courier December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 On Re-reading The Youthful Kipling " After fifty years, Kipling's turns of phrase, the tricks of expression, even the asides, are instantly recalled in one glance at the printed page." OLD readers of Kipling, who discovered his genius in those little paper-covered books that somehow found their way from Allahabad to a few London book- stalls, must be interested in The Spectator's review of 1889 that is reprinted elsewhere in this issue.* I do not think that I ever saw this competent and appre- ciative notice of the new star. I first heard of Kipling from a clever chemist who told our little circle at Oxford about the stories that were delighting literary London. Such recommendations by word of mouth are, as publishers will agree, the best possible way of making a young author known. Thus when the early tales were re-issued by an English firm and followed by Bar- rack-Room Ball- ads and The Seven Seas there was a large undergrad- uate audience ready made and expectant. Vig- our was the qual- * See Page 27 ity which seized our youthful minds, no less than the tech- nical adroitness of the story- teller. We knew nothing about Kipling himself. India was very remote in those days. But we recognised his freshness, his courage and his humour as of our own generation, and we liked him all the better because there was nothing academic about him. Whenever I re-open these early books, I find it difficult to realise that half a century has passed since I first read them. My memory is very far from what it should be, and yet, so vividly did Kipling impress his characters on my mind, that they all seem as familiar as if they had been introduced to me only yesterday. Learoyd and Mulvaney, Gads- by and his wife and the too insis- tent other lady, and all the rest re-appear as close acquaintances, though one may not have seen THE APPEARANCE OF A NEW LITERARY STAR IN THE PER- SON OF RUDYARD KIPLING, AND THE EFFECT OF THE LITTLE PAPER-COVERED BOOKS UPON THE OXFORD UNDER GRADUA TE OF FIFTY YEARS AGO, IS HERE DES- CRIBED BY MR. EDWARD G. HAWKE THE DISTINGUISHED AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST, WHOSE EARLY AFFECTION FOR THE WORKS OF KIPLING HAS INCREASED WITH THE YEARS 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 them for years. The turns of phrase, the tricks of expression, even the asides, are instantly recalled as one glances at the printed page. Of few authors read in youth can one say this truthfully, as in the case of Kip- ling. # # # On the other hand, when I read his youthful books again, I am conscious of one very great change that has come about in the half century. These books reflect a peaceful world such as our rising generation cannot visualise. When Kipling wrote Tommy— " O, it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy, go away' ; " But it's 'Thank you, Mister Atkins', when the band begins to play "— he bitterly resented the attitude of the British public to the red- coated rank and file. But our elders can remember that the small Army of those days was regarded as almost unnecessary, except for service in India and the Colonies. Europe under Bis- marck seemed destined to enjoy lasting peace. The outbreak of the South African war in 1899 came as a shock to most people, not so much because of the politi- cal issues involved, as because the idea of our fighting white men was strange and unwelcome. We have had to accustom our- selves to it in the twentieth century. But Kipling's early books are the best proof of our pacifism in Queen Victoria's day. # # # It is easy to understand why Kipling was long denounced as a jingo and a militarist. Com- fortable Puritans in England who seldom saw a soldier in uniform, and to whom the Crimea was a vague memory, might well regard this young admirer of military men as a firebrand who stirred up thoughts that were best suppressed. He was, of course, no militarist in the European sense. But he had the vision denied to most of us because he had lived in a country where the British Army kept the peace, within and with- out. He saw that some day the peace of the Empire might be threatened elsewhere than on the North-West Frontier, and that we should then need our Army very badly. Nowadays this is a truism. But, when Kipling hinted it, the suggestion seemed to many people so remote as to be offensive. The world, unhappily, has changed for the worse, as Kipling feared. Edward G. Hawke December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 A Kipling Memory The following article by Coulson Kernahan, is reprinted by permission of The Times. WAS it in the late summer of 1913 because a slender moon lay, like a finger, upon the lip of night, as if to command silence, that Kipling turned sudden- ly to me to say : " That was a true word of yours to the Chief (meaning Lord Roberts) about Peace and Silence— that even to mention Silence is to break it, and that the same often holds good about Peace, for Peace- Palavers are generally followed by war, as history shows. " In April, 1898, the Tsar address- ed a rescript to the nations, inviting international discussion on the means of ensuring universal peace for the world. " In the same year we had the Spanish-American War. " The first Hague Meeting Peace Agreement was signed, on behalf of the assembled Powers, in July, 1899. " Two months later, October, England was involved in the Boer War ; and we had the Manchurian War in 1902 and the Russo- Japanese War in 1904. " The second Hague Meeting was in 1907, since when we have seen the Italian-Turkish War in 1911, and mark you, less than one year before that, Mr. Carnegie had placed $10,000,000 at the service of the Carnegie Fund for the ending of war and the consummation of universal peace. " In 1911, too, England and America negotiated a Treaty, by which matters of dispute were to be submitted for arbitration for the prevention of war. When France also joined, this Treaty was hailed as the coming of the Mill- ennium, and thanksgiving services were held and sermons announc- ing the arrival of universal peace were preached in countless churches and chapels. " And that very year, which was to see the end of war, plunged Europe into the bloody Balkan war, and, after it was over, some of the very allies who had fought together against Turkey wanted to go to war among themselves for the division of the spoils. And that Balkan business isn't over yet, and God only knows into what wars it may not lead Europe and the world, one of these days. " Then Kipling swerved aside to exclaim :— " A glow-worm, by Jove ! The first I've seen this year. Look here, you fellows ! " He squatted, Hindu-wise, on 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 his haunches by the hedgeside ; and as an officer signals silently to his men, instead of using a spoken word of command, so Kipling, by an inward movement of his extended hand, palm open, signalled to us to do the same, and the three of us crouched there together. Then he seemed to forget us, and to be talking to—not about— the glow-worm, communing with his tiny fellow-sharer in the in- explicable miracle and boon of life. As for reproducing from memory, and long years after, what was said by a man of genius, all I can do is to attempt to con- vey the gist of what was said and to convey the impression left upon us who listened. Kipling was musing, aloud, on the " one-ness " of life, as if he held that there is one and the same life-element in all which is animate ; and as if, so holding, he saw, in the minute creature over which he was musing, that which strangely related the minute creature to our own scarcely less minute existence ; and as if he held, too, that, just as a mere dewdrop on a blade of grass may mirror the great sun in the sky, so the flickering and uncertain spark which—be it in man or be it in glow-worm—we call " life " is but the infinitesimal reflection of the one great Source of all light and all life. Then, not as he who turns aside from, but as he who con- tinues the same thought, Kipling passed on, in his musings, to find in the infinitely little, as in the infinitely great, the same " One-ness " of which he had been speaking, thus relating the vast and multitudinous universe, and the vaster and more mul- titudinous system of universes which are revealed by the telescope, with the multitudinous and teeming life revealed by the microscope. Dull, commonplace, and colour- less this summary—in my words— of Kipling's musings may be. But each of his words was weighed and chosen (as David weighed and chose the stones he slung at Goliath), and all that he said was so illuminated by Kipling's own flashing phrase and metaphor, that his musings seemed to afford his two listeners a glimpse, at least, of " those cycles of God's providence, " as Robertson of Brighton called them, which are on so unimaginably vast a scale that no mortal and finite eye can follow them in their orbing. Yet, none the less, those musings seemed to bring the slender moon in the heavens, the luminous glow-worm on the grass, and our little insignificant selves into some close and mystic relationship, each with the other—and with God, December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 Kipling's Sheer Poetry by Lt. General Sir George MacMunn, K.C.B., who shows that " in joy and pathos and the interpretation of the things of the mind and the heart and memory," Kipling is placed by the student of his verse " as firmly among the poets as among the singers of ballads." TO most of the world, and even to the ordinary reader of his verse, it is as a balladist, a stirring balladist voicing incident and public sentiment amaz- ingly, but still as a writer of bal- lads . . . that he appears. But to the real student of his verse it is equally apparent that while supreme with ballad and heroic verse, it would be possible to cull from his singing an anthology of pure poetry, that in joy and pathos and the inter- pretation of the things of the mind and the heart and memory, places him as firmly among the potts as among the singers of ballads. If you have studied Persian with Saadi in the Garden, or the Garland of Roses, you will admit that no Persian poet touched deeper than The Answer, written as far back as 1892, after, it is said, gazing on the monument to Rose Aylmer who died in the glory of young beauty, the pride of all the writers of Gaeden Reach more than a century ago. You will remember how it begins— A Rose in tatters on the garden path Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst his wrath Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush ; And God Who hears both sundried dust and sun Had pity whispering; to that luckless one " Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well— What voices heard thou when the petals fell ? " And the Rose answered "In that evil hour "A voice said 'Father wherefore falls the flower ? ' " For lo, the very gossamers are still, " And a voice answered ' Son, by Allah's Will.' " And then there came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord :— Whereat the withered flower, all content Died as they die whose days are innocent. In these dark days when the young men of the world must die, in all the pride of youth, to make a mad beast's holiday, there is comfort here for those who remain. The Lore Song of Har Dyal is too well known to need quoting but its haunting lilt has two pregnant aspects, the lure of the latticed window in a city of Northern India, and a woman's heartbreak. One of the very early songs, Christmas in India, read by me during my first bitterly homesick Xmas there more than fifty years ago, has the stark sickness of exile :— 18 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 Grey dusk behind the tamarisks— the parrots fly together— As the sun is sinking slowly over Home Oh the white dust in the highway ! O the stenches in the byway ! It has for me now a happier call, the call of the Punjab winter, where my heart ever lies, and the slow drawl of the Punjab peasantry that to me is like Zummerzet. Since the best poetry ever deals with grief more than joy, let us look at The Widower— For a season there must be pain. For a little, little space I shall lose the sight of her face, Take back the old life again While she is at rest in her place. And then comes the last verse, of the end, when she reaches forth her hand saying— " Who but I have the right ?" And out of a troubled night Shall draw me safe to the land. Blue Roses sings of the woman who always wanted the unattain- able, as sad a mentality as abnormal- ity can produce— Roses red and roses white Plucked I for my love's delight. She would none of all my posies— Bade me gather her blue roses. Home I came at wintertide, But my silly love had died Seeking with her latest breath Roses from the arms of Death Something of the same is the song of " Helen All Alone," the woman who must fend for herself, and whose love could not last, forgetting the old age when even someone to quarrel with is worth while. It is again a poem of bitterness but with the sting in the end— So Helen went from me, she did, Oh my soul, be glad she did, Helen all alone ! The Helens all alone must dree their own weird. In quite a different connection we also see the man of one idea of destiny and upbringing. It is given us in these lines from What the People Said, that was written in 1887 when every phase of Indian life appealed— And the Ploughman settles the share More deep in the grudging clod : For he saith :—"The wheat is my care, And the rest is the will of God. How many of us know the tramp in the wet country lane and the warm autumn fog when every yearning comes back ? O, leave me walk on Brookland Road, In the thunder and warm rain— O, leave me look where my love goed, And p'raps I'll see her again. But in this case I think she was a Pharisee. In most cases the joy of life and love is interpreted in the ballads, and poetry remains the expression of the sad things. Be- twixt and between is The Power of the Dog ; pathos and whimsy mingled. When the body that lived at your single will, With its whimper of welcome is stilled (how still !) When the spirit that answered your every mood Is gone—wherever it goes—for good, You will discover how much you care, And will give your heart to a dog to tear. These are days when the glory and tragedy of Epitaphs should stir many chords of sympathy and December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 19 admiration for the Hun is once more at our gates. A Son My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few. R.A.F. {Aged eighteen) Laughing through clouds, his milk teeth still unshed, Cities and men he smote from overhead. His deaths delivered, he returned to play Childlike, with childish things now- put away. A Servant We were together since the War began He was my servant—and the better man. There are many, and the trenchant bitter ones of which there are more than one, especially A Dead Statesman, do not come within our conception of Poetry which is not necessarily the same as Truth. But the ballads are as full of poetry too, let us turn to the Mary Gloster. Owners we were, full owners, and the boat was christened for her, And she died in the Mary Gloster. My heart, how young we were ! * # * * # I want to lie by your mother, ten thousand mile away. Then for sheer stark drama there is The Last Suttee, when the Bhoondi Queen got through the guards to die on the pyre with her lord disguised as a light o' love, and prayed to an old relative, who knew her not, to slay her beside the pyre. He drew and struck : the straight blade drank The life beneath the breast. " I had looked for the Queen to face the flame, " But the harlot dies for the Rajpoo dame— " Sister of mine, pass, free from flame, " Pass with thy King to rest ! " And since poets should sing of the countryside what is wrong with Sussex. Clean of officious fence or hedge, Half-wild and wholly tame, The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge As when the Romans came. # # # * # Each to his choice, and I rejoice— The lot has fallen to me In a fair ground—in a fair ground Yea, Sussex by the Sea ! Or The Flowers :— Robin down the logging-road whistles " Come to me." Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free. All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain. Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again ! Buy my English posies ! Kent and Surrey may— Violets of the Undercliff Wet with Channel spray : But in almost every ballad you will find a subtle line, and since poetry is not confined to verse you may search for it every- where even in the short stories. A Madonna of the Trenches and The Gardener are enough, the story of Sergeant Godsell and Bella who had written that she was to be operated on for cancer, and who met him in the old disused dressing station behind the line, he with his charcoal braziers and her nephew who saw it. " Why Bella " 'e says this must be only the second time we've 20 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 been together in all these years." An' I saw her hold out her arms to 'im in that perishing cold. An' she nearer fifty than forty an' me own aunt," and The Gardener to Helen Turrell looking in Hagen- zeele Third War Cemetery for her nephew's grave. " Come with me," he said, " and I will show you where your son lies." * * * * Let us end with The Night Before, written by the boy Rudyard when he was thirteen. The felon soliloquizes :— I sneered when I heard the old priest complain That the doomed are voiceless and dull of brain For why should a felon be other than dumb As he stands at the gate of the World to come ? The tick-tock Of the great Jail Clock Is more to me than the holiest prayer That ever was mingled with dungeon air. # # # # Will it never be dawn in the cold, grey skies ? The great red sun will he never arise ? # # # # I hear the carts, in the street once more And the Sheriff's step on the stony floor. That is drama indeed and touches the very lacrymae rerum. George MacMunn. The Kipling Journal MEMBERS of the Kipling Society have learnt with regret of the resignation of Mr. B. M. Bazley, who for a number of years has filled the office of Hon. Editor of The Kipling Journal with such distinction. Owing to the war he has been obliged to abandon many of his activities, of which the editorship of our Journal was one of the most important. Happily we shall still have the benefit of his advice as he remains a member of the Council. Mr. Bazley is succeeded as Hon. Editor, by Mr. E. D. W. Chap- lin, who is associated with the direction of several well-known publications, and whose help to the Society since the outbreak of the war has been much appreciated. Readers who wish to propose friends as members of the Kipling Society, may obtain membership forms from the Hon. Secretary, 45, Gower Street, London, W.C1. December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 21 More Uncollected Kipling Writings. II. In the following article, Captain E. W. Martindell deals with the period October 1891 to March 1892. [This is the second of the articles on Kipling's uncollected writings, specially contributed to the Journal by Captain E. W. Martindell. The period under review—October, 1891 to March, 1892—is very little known, and we believe that few readers are aware of the three uncollected items here recorded.] FROM an uncollected letter, " Letters on Leave, IV," which Kipling wrote in September, 1890, though it did not appear in The Pioneer till November 1st of that year, we learn that he was recruiting his health at the seaside. Incidentally he records coming across an outraged "Infant" whose " language even for the Infant was appalling. " At the end of this letter he divulges that the doctor has ordered him to take a trip on a P. & O. ship to " Gib. ", Malta and Naples. Eventually, however, Kipling decid- ed to take a voyage round the Cape to Australia and New Zealand and to return via Colombo to India, where he wished to visit his people at Lahore and spend Christmas with them, and thereafter return to England. The only story, as far as is known, that was contributed to a New Zealand paper by Kipling, was written by him whilst on this trip by sea, and is entitled " One Lady at Wairakei. " It appeared in The New Zealand Herald of January 30th, 1892, several weeks after he had left New Zealand when he was on his way back from Lahore to England. It begins as follows :— " The extraordinary thing about this story is its absolute truth. All tourists who scamper through New Zealand have in their tours visited the geysers at Wairakei, but none of them have seen what I have seen .... from the depths of the pool, and so quietly that even the wild duck was not scared, there rose up the head and shoulders of a woman. " To Kipling's question " To whom have I the pleasure of speaking ? " the reply came " They call me all sorts of things, but my real name is Truth. Haven't you heard that I live in a well ? This is it." Kipling then goes on to ask her to tell him the truth about New Zealand, how the people live, what they think, how they die, and what makes them love and fight and trade in the particular manner in which they do. Truth replies 22 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 that the time is not yet, but it will come some day. Kipling next enquires who is going to tell the story, and is informed that it will be a descendant of the settlers " as soon as the spirit of the fern hills and the snow mountains has entered into their blood." When Kipling alludes to the future of " Colonial Liter- ature," Truth turns scornfully on him and tells him that what he alluded to as " stuff written in the colonies " was written by men and women, that the Weavers at the loom of Fate only make men and women, and she enquired whether, until he stept off this world, he could expect anything more than stories of the lives of men and women written by men and women ? Kipling then admits that " It's only men and women that we have to think of all the world over." Before she disappears under the water Truth's final remark is " that those who make the noise will not be the people who tell the stories." Kipling con- cludes the sketch by saying " New Zealand is bound to pay her unwritten debt. Truth said so, and I have seen the assets. They are sufficient securities. The other things are not of the slightest importance." # # # We now leave the Antipodes for Ceylon and India. This is how Kipling describes his feelings when they were a league off shore from Colombo. " A smell came up out over the sea—a smell of damp earth, cocoanut oil, ginger, and mankind. It spoke with a strong voice, recall- ing many things ; but the most curious revelation to one man was the sudden knowledge that under these skies lay home and the dearest places in all the world : even the first sniff of London had not caused so big a choke in the throat or so strict a tightening over the heart. There was a most urgent necessity to get away to Lahore swiftly .... a big B.I. boat took charge of me to Tuticorin, and at the first turn of her screw, the first glimpse of the kitmatgars on deck, Australia, the Cape, New Zealand and the British Isles dropped under the sea." Thus opens a most delight- ful article entitled " Home, " full of intimate autobiographical details which Kipling wrote after his arrival at Lahore for the Civil and Military Gazette's Christmas Supplement, December 25, 1891. He describes his journey by rail from Tuticorin through Southern India up to Lahore, teeming with incident after incident portrayed in Kipling's inimitable way. When he arrives at Lahore " Up start the brown faces in the familiar verandah .... ' Yes, by the Sahib's favour, we be all well, December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 23 Other of the Sahib's household be coming to make salutations after breakfast .... and'—Kadir Baksh, pearl among kittmatgars, the voice was thine !—' there is ' Hussani kabab for hazri" .... I should like to dance sarabands with Kadir as he grins and hands the curry .... To clinch every- thing the Very Dearest Dog in all the world recognises a long lost master,and behaves accordingly. Vixen, do you remember the hot weathers we shared together when you lay in the therm an- tidote and panted ? Do you re- member the wet tonga drives to Simla and the rat-catching in this office ? Vixen, it's nearly seven years since I bought you at the sale of a dead-man's kit, and you are getting old. " Take me out," says Vixen, " show me a squirrel and see." Next Kipling visits the old office of the C. & M. Gazette but is told that the paper itself is printed at another office and elsewhere. Here he remarks " No man can put in his seven years on an Indian journal when he is half the staff, and the sheet is part of his being, without loving her dearly." Inside the office there is a long talk here—talk of the old days, reminiscences of catch- words, bygone practical jokes, and all the intimacies, squabbles and crises between two joke-mates for years and then—it had to come, but it hurt—"Well I must get through the dak, old man. Can you give us something while you're here ?" You give us ! "Yes, I think so. An epic if I had it in hand. " " There is no demand for epics in the Punjab : men live them; but anything else will do. " So back again with the "you give us" rankling in my breast. " From the office he goes into the City and finds that the Municipality have sold the Taksali Gate for brickwork, his comment thereon is worth recording : "Gentle- men, whose souls would be dear at one brick a piece, you have done a sin ; for that Gate was built like the Pyramids. It had little beauty save of age and time, but while it stood it was full of beautiful light and shade. . . niches where the burnished doves sat in the hot hours and the kine of the city used to troop under its arch twice a day making golden haze of dust without, before they plunged into the cool darkness within. You could have bought bricks from the potter, but you will never build another Taksali Gate." Then to the barracks and fort and back to the City where memories crowd in upon him. " Here lived the Jews of Shushan, there arrogant and un- ashamed was Lalun's naughty little house, Azizun of the Douri Bagh was a little beyond and On this and on the opposite page are reproduced fly-leaf autograph inscriptions by Rudyard Kipling, in the author's presentation copies of "Plain Tales from the Hills." The photographs of the original fly-leaf inscriptions by Rudyard Kipling, reproduced on this and on the opposite page, were lent to the Kipling Society by Captain E. W. Martindell. 26 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 the house of Suddhoo was not far off, the ringing roaring gulley of the coppersmiths, where the lean traders sat by piles of beaten gold vessels selling the splendour of the East for a few annas. Here were the Pathan horse-dealers chaffer- ing with the seal-cutters for a new- signet ring .... The Dubbi Bazaar is full of old friends, from the fat bunnia among the turmeric heaps to the policeman with the kallam and the green glazed inkpot in his hand. They don't know me, but I know them. . . . How shall one describe the sunlit river of the people ? ... As if its own beauty were not enough, the dyers have spread filmy muslins of palest blue and pink across the street, and you look upon the old witchery of the old life through the pearl tinted mists of dawn .... Below there is the hurry and the shouting, the broken waves of colour, the deep shadows that heighten colour as velvet displays the diamond, and above all, and apart from all, as a prayer from a tortured heart, the mosque of Wazir Khan flings up its four minars to heaven. What need to cry five times a day that God is Great ? " "Home " is full of word pictures and throbs with wonderful colours. Why this little gem was omitted from " The Sussex Edition " passes comprehension. For anyone who can buy, beg, borrow or even steal a copy, there is a real treat in store. I shall conclude with some stanzas of the verses printed at the head of " Home," as this befits this Christmas number. God rest you merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay ; They know the men of the Outer Wards From here to Far Cathay. For some must fight and some must smite, And some must watch and speir, And I have spread your name with men A year and a year and a year. God give you peace at Christmastide, And heart and grace thereon ; They know the men of the Outer Wards From here to Prester John. I could not fight and I could not smite But I held by the Lion's Breed ; And every stroke ye struck my men I bade the wide world heed. God Give you strength at this Christmastide, And honour and high ease— They know the men of the Outer Wards, Beyond the Seven Seas. The dead they lie beneath your feet, And God is overhead, And ye shall judge if I say truth Of living and of dead. Will you carry ray name in your hearts, my men, As one who spoke of your worth ? Till the end of the fight is won, my men, And God shall judge the earth. E. W. M December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 27 Kipling Fifty Years Ago A Review of " Soldiers Three " "Mr. Kipling's brilliant sketches of the barrack room, realistic in the best sense of the word, deserve a hearty welcome" wrote a "Spectator" reviewer in the year 1889. [" That " The Spectator " was among the first of the reviews to recognise the quality of Rudyard Kipling is an interesting fact which has been brought to our notice by a correspondent, who writes : "Look- ing through a copy of the " The Story of The Spectator" by Sir William Beach Thomas, (published in 1928 in connection with the centenary of that paper) I came across a reference to a remarkable review of " Soldiers Three," which appeared in " The Spectator " of March 23rd, 1889. In the chapter on " Letters and Art " Sir William wrote : " The Spec- tator " was quicker than most con- temporaries in discovering Kipling. There is no record of the earliest Indian Books, but "Soldiers Three" (Allahabad 1889) had an enthusiastic review on March 23rd, 1889, when Kipling's name was almost unknown in England." By courtesy of " The Spectator " we consulted their files for the year 1889, and here reproduce what may well be one of the earliest reviews of " Soldiers Three."] "AS a wholesome corrective to what may be called the oleographic style of depicting military life, now so much in vogue, Mr. Kipling's brilliant sketches of the barrack-room, realistic in the best sense of the word, deserve a hearty welcome. Here be no inanities of the officers' mess, no apotheosis of the gilded and tawny-moustachioed dragoon, no languid and lisping lancer, no child-sweethearts,—none in fact, of the sentimental paraphernalia familiar to readers of modern military fiction. Here, instead, we have Tommy Atkins as the central figure : and not Tommy Atkins on parade, but in those moods when the natural man finds freest expression—amorous, pug- nacious, and thievish—a somewhat earthy personage on the whole, but with occasional gleams of chivalry and devotion lighting up his clouded humanity. Too many so-called realists seem to aim at representing man as continuously animal, without any intervals in which his higher nature emerges at all. But Mr. Kipling happily does not belong to this school. The actualities of barrack-room life are not extenuated, but the tone of the whole is sound and 28 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 manly. The author does not gloss over the animal tendencies of the British private, but he shows how in the grossest natures sparks of nobility may lie hid. He has taken three widely different types of British soldier, a Yorkshireman, a Cockney, and a ''Paddy from Cork' ' and in spite of the savagery of the first, the cynicism of the second, and the thrasonical complacency of the third, we can fully com- prehend the attractions which their company is supposed to have offered to the narrator. Of a truth it must, indeed, have been " better to sit out with Mulvaney than to dance many dances," if Mulvaney in the flesh was at all like his liter- ary representation. " Hit a man an' help a woman, and ye can't be far wrong, anyways "—one of his own maxims—sums up very adequately the philosophy of this combative but chivalrous warrior, whose voluble tongue and droll humour render him the most conspicuous figure of this quaintly assorted but most attached trio. Private Mulvaney—he was "a Corp- 'ril wanst," but he was " rejuced aftherwards"—he is really a humor- ist of a very high order, witness the following passage :— " I tuk up my cap and wint out to canteen, thinkin' no little av mesilf, an' there I grew most ondacintly dhrunk in my legs. My head was all reasonable, ' Houligan,' I sez to a man in E. Comp'ny, that was by way av being a frind av mine, ' I'm over- tuk from the belt down. Do you give me the touch av your shoulther to presarve my formation an' march me acrost the maidan into the high grass. I'll sleep ut off there,' sez I." Mr. Kipling has a genius for reproducing quaint and character- istic Hibernicisms. How expressive for example are the words in which Mulvaney describes the court paid by an unscrupulous officer to a girl whom he wished to elope with him :—" So he went me- nowderin', and minanderin', and blandandherin' round an' about the Colonel's daughter." In another place he speaks of some men who " can swear so as to make green turf crack. '' Who but an Irishman, again would think of addressing a ghost as "ye frozen thief of Gene- sis," or who would speak of a "little squidgereen " of an officer. Some of the stories in this collec- tion introduce us to the realities of warfare in a surprisingly vivid fashion, and here also Mulvaney's sayings are full of life and originality. For example, he tells how in a peculiarly bloody engagement with some hill tribes, an Irish soldier was anxious to avenge a comrade:— " 'Tim Coulan'll slape aisy to-night' sez he, wid a grin (after bayoneting a Pathan) : and the next minut his head was in two halves, an' he wint down grinnin' by sections." There is strange power in the following grim picture of another episode of the same fight :— " 'Thin another man av the Tyrone came up, wid the fog av fightin' on him." ' The what, Mulvaney ? '— ' Fog av fightin'. You know, Sorr, December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 29 that, like makin' love, ut takes each man diff'rint. Now I can't help bein' powerful sick whin I'm in action. Orth'ris, here, niver stops swearin' from ind to ind, an' the only time that Learoyd opins his mouth to sing is whin he is messin' wid other peoples' heads ; for he's a dirty fighter is Jock Learoyd. Recruities some- time cry, an' sometime they don't know fwat they do, an' sometime they are all for cuttin' throats an' such like dirtiness ; but some men get heavy- dead-dhrunk on the fightin'. This man was. He was staggerin', and his eyes were half shut, an' we cud hear him dhraw breath twinty yards away. He sees the little Orf'cer bhoy, an' comes up, talkin' thick an' drowsy to himsilf. "Blood the young whelp!" he sez ; " Blood the young whelp ! an' wid that he threw up his arms, shpun round an' dropped at our fect, dead as a Paythan, an' there was niver sign or scratch on him. They said 'twas his heart was rotten, but O 'twas a quare thing to see ! ' " Mr. Kipling is equally at home in the Yorkshire and Whitechapel dialects ; and perhaps the most purely humorous narrative in the book is " Private Learoyd's Story," a tale of successful imposture, in which the dog-fancying instinct of the Yorkshireman has full scope. The victim is thus described by the narrator ; the last sentence speaks volumes :— " ' Ortheris, as allus thinks he knaws more than other foaks, said she wasn't a real laady, but nobbut a Hewrasian. I don't gainsay as her culler was a bit doosky like. But she was a laady. Why, she rode iv a carriage, an' good 'osses too, an' her 'air was that oiled as you could see your faice in it, an' she wore di- mond rings an' a goold chain, an' silk an' satin dresses as mun 'a cost a deal, for it isn't a cheap shop as keeps enough o' one pattern to fit a figure like hers.' " Another very happy touch is Private Learoyd's contemptuous dismissal of the caressing nonsense which womenkind lavish upon dogs, as " thot sort o' talk, 'at a dog o' sense mebbe thinks nowt on, tho' he bides it by reason o' his breedin'." The point of this story consists in the successful substitution of a very vicious cur for a fox-terrier, for the theft of which the Eurasian lady described above had offered a heavy bribe to the narrator. How this was done is best described in the words of two of the conspirators. Mulvaney was the first to conceive the idea of palming off another dog on their covetous friend :— " ' Isn't our frind Orth'ris a Taxi- dermist, an' a rale artist wid his nim- ble white fingers ? An' fwat's a Taxidermist but a man who can thrate shkins ? Do ye mind the white dog that belongs to the Canteen Sargint, bad cess to him—he that's lost half his time an' snarlin' the rest ? He shall be lost for good now ; an' do ye mind that he's the very spit in shape an' size av the Colonel's, barrin' that his tail is an inch too long and he has none av the colour that divarsifies the rale ' Rip ', an' his timper is that av his masther an' worse ? But fwat is an inch on a dog's tail? An' fwhat to a professional like Orth'ris is a few ringstraked shpots av black, brown, an' white ? Nothin' at all, at all.'—Then we meets Orth'ris, an' that little man bein' sharp as a needle, seed his way through t' business in a minute. An' he went to work a practisin' 'air-dyes the very next day, beginnin' on some white rabbits he had, an' then he drored all ' Rip's' markin's on t' back of a white Com- missariat bullock, so as to get his 'and in an' be sure of his colours ; shadin' off brown into black as nateral as life. If ' Rip ' hed a fault it was too mich markin', but it was straingely regular, an' Orth'ris settled himself to make a fost-rate job on it when he got hand 30 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 o' t' Canteen Sargint's dog. Theer niver was sich a dog as thot for bad temper, an' it did nut get no better when his tail had to be fettled an inch an' a half shorter. But they may talk o' theer Royal Academies as they like. I niver seed a bit o' animal paintin' to beat t' copy as Orth'ris made of ' Rip's ' marks, wal t' picter itself was snarlin' all t' time an' tryin' to get at ' Rip ' standin' theer to be copied as good as goold." The perusal of these stories cannot fail to inspire the reader with the desire to make further acquaintance with the other writings of the author. They are brimful of humanity and a drollery that never degenerates into burlesque. In many places a note of genuine pathos is heard. Mr. Kipling is so gifted and versatile, that one would gladly see him at work on a larger canvas. But to be so brilliant a teller of short stories is is in itself no small distinction." # # # The footnote to this review is as follows :— SOLDIERS THREE: A COLLECTION OF STORIES SETTING FORTH CERTAIN PASSAGES IN THE LIVES AND ADVEN- TURES OF PRIVATES TERENCE MUL- VANEY, STANLEY ORTHERIS AND JOHN LEAROYD. Done into type and edited by Rudyard Kipling. Allahabad : Pioneer Press. Kipling Questions Readers may test their knowledge of Kipling with these questions. The answers appear on page 46. WE print below a set of twelve Kipling questions. They are not difficult ques- tions, and most of them will be answered with ease by members of the Kipling Society. They form, however, the introductory set of a series of questions and answers which we hope to publish regularly in subsequent issues of the Journal. Readers who are in- terested in this feature are invited to send us, on a postcard, more difficult Kipling questions (with the answers) for consideration and possible inclusion in the series. 1. In what newspaper and on what occasion was Kipling's Recessional originally published ? 2. Name the title of Kipling's first long story. 3. Which collection of Kipling's stories contained the splendid Mulvaney extra- vaganza " My Lord the Elephant ? " 4. Name the two famous artists who were uncles by marriage to Rudyard Kipling. 5. Name the place where Rudyard Kipling was educated, and the book in which it is described. 6. What is there specially remarkable about " Plain Tales from the Hills " which revealed their author as a new master of fiction ? 7. With what stories did Kipling conquer a new world and a new audience, producing what many critics regard as his most flawless work ? 8. What may be regarded as the most successful of Rudyard Kipling's longer narratives ? 9. At what age did Rudyard Kipling become the sub-editor of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette ? 10. In what year was the Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Rudyard Kipling ? 11. In which of Kipling's works does the character " a genius called Graydon " appear ? 12. Name the Kipling character in " a public billiard saloon " who " called the marker ' Bullseye'." December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 31 Just So Stories Broadcast It had been said that Rudyard Kipling's famous " Just So Stories" are at their best when read aloud. Wireless listeners have recently had an opportunity to judge for themselves. WHEN in 1902, Rudyard Kip- ling wrote—and illustrated —his famous Just So Stories, he described them as " for little children." But the whimsical charm of their themes, and the vivid, masterly words in which the tales are told, have captivated a wider public. For two generations, The Elephant's Child, The Cat that Walked by Himself, Yellow-Dog Dingo and Old Man Kangaroo have been the delight of parents no less than of their children. The tales are at their best, perhaps when read aloud and B.B.C. listeners have lately been able to judge for themselves that the tales might well have been designed for broadcasting. We asked Mr. Gordon Stowell, the Deputy Editor of The Radio Times to let us into the secret of the principle upon which the adaptors of the Stones were work- ing, in order to make as few changes as possible for broadcasting pur- poses. The idea was inspired, he said, by the success of the recent series of broadcasts of "The Finest Stories of the World." These, of course, were various stories from the Bible. They were told in the exact words of the Bible, but words directly spoken by biblical characters were spoken by different actors. " It sounds simple enough," said Mr. Stowell, " and even silly." One wonders at the outset why one good reader should not be asked to do the whole thing. But in practice there was a surprising intensification in the effect of these familiar stories which may have been even more marked to those listeners to whom the stories were not familiar. The idea in the mind of various people in the B.B.C. Drama Department (including Mr. Val Gielgud, the Director of Drama, —himself an enthusiast for the Just So Stories) was to do exactly the same sort of thing for the Kipling tales, which seemed to lend them- selves unusually well to the same treatment—possibly because they are so very biblical in their style. Thus listeners heard the voices of the Whale, the Cat, Old Man Kangaroo, and Painted Jaguar, but no less important was the linking voice of the story-teller. This was all very well until Mr. Maurice Brown, told off to make the adaptations in biblio- graphical order, from Whale to Butterfly, discovered afresh that the Rhinoceros spoke only one word—"How!" 32 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 "Personally," added Mr. Stowell, " I found all these preliminary discussions most amusing, but quite evident all the time was the sincere desire on the part of all those people not only to do as full justice as possible to the stories but to introduce them to an even wider circle of people." The Adaptor's Appreciation. We reproduce, for the benefit of readers of The Kipling Journal who have not had the opportunity of seeing it, Mr. Maurice Brown's appreciation of the famous Just So Stories which appeared in The Radio Times before the first broad- cast took place :— "I am delighted," he writes "that the magnificent Just So Stories—'for little children,' Kip- ling calls them—arc to be broad- cast in dramatised form. I am even more pleased that I myself have had the job of adapting them for the microphone. Adaptation is a high-sounding word, but I ask you to remember, as I hope I have remembered, some wise words spoken to me the other day : ' The art of adaptation is to change the original as little as possible.' That is what I have tried to do. 1 hope that no one who loves these stories will find his favourites spoiled. I don't think you will notice many changes, even if you know these stories by heart. A few words have been added and some taken away ; a few verbs have changed their tenses and some sentences have jumped a line or two ; but the story-teller will still be the important member of the cast, and the Cat, the Camel, the Whale, and Yellow-Dog Dingo will still speak the words they have spoken for thirty-seven years. I have one fear. Will the Ele- phant's Child say 'Led go ! You are hurtig be!' or Mother Jaguar say 'A tortoise can't curl himself up' in just the way they have always said it in your mind and mine ? Will the Cat be truly cat-like as only you and T know how ? Can, indeed, all the Just So Story charact- ers possibly remain the same to us when they start to speak out loud ? Most of us have very definite views about these voices, founded upon the way the stories were read to us in our childhood, or upon our own imaginations when we read them for ourselves. You may say this fear might apply to many radio adaptations of famous plays and stories. It might, and does. But there is this peculiarity about the Just So Stories : while the number of ways in which human beings may talk is, after all, limited, the number of ways in which animals might talk, the variety of inflexions with which different animals—cats, whales, rhinoceroses, butterflies, kangaroos, bi-coloured- python-rock-snakes, and the rest— December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 33 might utter human sounds, is infi- nite. And if the actors taking these parts don't strike exactly the right inflexion, the one to which your mind's ear has so long accustomed you, you run the risk of being disappointed. A Mother Jaguar, for example, who says ' son, son !' ever so many times, graciously waving her tail but says it in just too fine a shade of contralto, might be enough to destroy all the illusion of reality. And to me, at any rate, the animals in Kipling's stories are not fiction but reality. Nevertheless, perhaps my fear is ill-founded ; and there is the comforting, if strange, fact that many will be meeting these charact- ers for the first time. They will also hear for the first time the moral commentaries in verse which Kipling wrote at the end of each tale ; for the Just So Stories would be incomplete without them. One omission must be made much to my sorrow. Radio cannot show you the author's own drawings To New THE Kipling Society exists to honour and extend the influence of Rudyard Kipling in uphold- ing the ideals of the English Speaking World. We invite all readers of Kipling who are not yet members to join our Society. Membership is open to men and women of every nationality, or chuckle over their lengthy captions. There is one of the Elephant's Child pulling bananas from a banana tree with his fine new trunk. Opposite this is written ' I think it would look better if you painted the banana tree green and the Elephant's Child red.' " * * * A Wider Circle of Readers. That, as we say, was written before the broadcast of the Just So Stories, and we can well understand the adaptor's hopes and fears. The B.B.C. are to be congratulated upon the way in which they have handled the Just So Stories. Apart from the intense interest with which their enterprise must have been followed by readers of Kipling, the sincerity of the B.B.C. in doing " as full justice as possible to introduce the Stories to an even wider circle of people" is of inestim- able value, and, will we hope, bring Rudyard Kipling's message to many potential readers of his works to whom, hitherto he was but a famous name.—C. Readers wherever resident, who are genu- inely interested in the works of Rudyard Kipling. Readers to whom these lines bring news of the activities of our Society for the first time, are especially invited to correspond with us at 45, Gower Street, London, W.C.1. (Telephone ; Museum 1406). 34 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 Kipling " As He Appeals to Me " A talk by Mr. F. K. Kendall, given to the Cape Town Branch of the Kipling Society. THIS is not a formal, well considered paper, but merely a casual talk upon Kipling as he appeals to me .... While talking of Kipling recently with a lady whose opinion upon artistic matters I regard as excep- tionally good, she remarked that she was not very keen on him on the whole, as she " did not like his women." This had never occurred to me before, but I confess it struck me as a very true and apt criticism. Although Kipling's char- acters and scenes cover an enor- mously wide field—almost every- thing—the female element, when one comes to think of it, is not much in evidence. Whatever he writes he expresses with an air of one who knows all there is to know about it. He is not merely a person who has heard of such and such a thing, but he is one of the active participa- tors or observers with all the inside knowledge of the subject. Some- how, he has never quite attained to that position with his women— perhaps because, like some other men, he has found women difficult to understand ! Of course women occur in his writings, but they rarely play principal parts in any of his scenes, and even when they do (as in that delightful story "They") the woman is of an abnormal type, and most of his women are undesirable or un- important. Thus, although the absorbing topic of women does not often occur in Kipling's works, we can forgive him for the reason that any artist has his limitations, and the mystic subject of women did not chance to fall altogether within Kipling's scope. An artist may be an admirable landscape, sea- scape or portrait painter, but he cannot excel at all three. He confines himself usually to the type which comes best within his particular powers. In the case of Kipling these particular powers cover so wide a range that we must willingly accept this limitation. What strikes us, I think, most particularly in his work is its masculinity. The outline of his subject is boldly drawn, and the filling in is massively applied with strong colours—indeed, an un- limited pallet—while there is al- ways the picturesque background including the sounds heard off— as they say in stage parlance. I think a good parallel might be drawn between Kipling's work and a good Brangwyn picture where there is strength in the drawing December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 35 and bold masterly handling of the colouring. Although so much de- cisive strength is shown in both these, there is yet something left to the imagination which may often be of the most subtle and delicate suggestion even in the midst' of so much boldness. He calls a spade a spade unmistakably, and when there is reason for it he does not hesitate in calling it a " bloody shovel." As a realist he frequently uses slang or bad language, and determined men often perform deeds of the greatest valour, self- sacrifice and nobility of character under the influence of drink, accompanied by bad language (as in " The Bolivar "). It is not that he employs these coarser methods for the purpose of wallowing in low-down associa- tions, but simply because they are incidental and necessary to the thrilling picture which he is present- ing. Much modern fiction is un- savoury for its own sake and because it will attract attention— but this is not Kipling's method. So skilfully does he choose the right word and expression that quite often it will be found that a beautiful conception seems even to be enhanced (by contrast, it may be) by the apt use of slang. " Mandalay," for instance, would lose much of its compelling beauty if deprived of the picturesque descriptive slang of the British Tommy. If it could be possible for a person to read some of Kipling's works without any previous know- ledge of his personality and try to visualise what sort of man he was, he certainly would not picture the author as a tall, weedy individual with long hair, who dressed himself up in velveteens with silk stockings and a lace collar, walking " down Piccadilly with a sunflower or a lily in his mediaeval hand." He is the antithesis of that type. One may well wonder where he got the inspirations for his many and varied plots, and the wealth of information for his settings. I was once told by Mrs. Kipling that he never lost an opportunity of talking to stray people— it may be in a train, on the quay-side, or anywhere else, and ingratiate himself with soldiers, sailors or any stray people who appeared to be of possible interest. He had the faculty of drawing people out. He did not merely talk to them in a condescending manner, but soon put them at their ease and induced them to talk, and in such ways he often acquired invaluable information and inspiration for his creations. Whether in prose or poetry he appeared to be equally at home and the subjects upon which he touched seem to be almost un- limited. Sometimes he was a soldier, sometimes a sailor, an adventurer, a man of almost any 36 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 type : sometimes even an animal— with all the most intimate " behind the scenes " knowledge—as if he breathed the same air and shared the same instincts, and was himself actually one of his characters. Consistently, also, there seemed to be a patriotic or imperialistic undercurrent to his thoughts— even when the stories dealt with only the hard lives of man in all sorts of occupations in some of the remote outposts of the Empire carrying out their occupations amidst unbelievable difficulties. There was always the inference that the Anglo- Saxon stock could produce people who could and did carry on their jobs with reasonable success under all the difficulties that this life presents. He did not shirk from adminis- tering home truths to his fellow countrymen (as in ' The Islanders') though he drew upon himself a great deal of unpopular criticism through his references to " The flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals." Or again, his generous praise of an enemy as in " Fuzzy-Wuzzy "— the pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man— " 'Then ere's to Fuzzy-Wuzzy an' the missus and the kid; Our orders was to break you, an' of course we went an' did, We sloshed you with Martinis, an' it wasn't 'ardly fair; But for all the odds agin' you, Fuzzy - Wuz, you broke the square." Of his individual pieces of work I think it must be admitted that " Kim " is a masterpiece and stands almost alone, though it happens to be an exception in the form of a long story. It is difficult to say precisely where his best work • generally occurs, but I was very interested to read something like thirty years ago, an article by Conan Doyle, who selected what he considered the twelve best short stones in the English language. He would not permit more than two by any one author, but he chose from Kipling's works " The Man who would be King " and " The Drums of the Fore and Aft." If Conan Doyle were living today, it is conceivable that he might have substituted some of Kipling's later work, but I question whether he would want to revise this opinion. To my mind these are about the best of Kipling's stories, though for similar qualities several others must run them very closely— " The Mark of the Beast," " The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," " The Man that was," " Bertran and Bimi," " The Wandering Jew," " The End of the Passage" etc. Yet he could write such beautiful stories as " They," " The Brushwood Boy," etc., and one could enumerate a number of poems of all sorts of merit from " The Recessional" downwards. Perhaps he is most in his element with such weird im- pressions as " Boots," " Gunga Din" " The Young British Soldier," December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 37 —or the beauty of the lonely " Bridge Guard in the Karroo," and where could you find a more spirited and enticing opening to a racy tale than the much quoted— " Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat : But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth !...." H.M.S. "Kipling" The following note had been amended by the Censor. WE have our own Ship in this War. She is H.M.S. Kipling, a new destroyer of the "K" Class and we, the members of the Kipling Society, are her godparents. This is a responsibility—and an honour—which I am sure our members will be glad to accept, for after all it is only natural that we, who are banded together to pay homage to the eternal memory of Rudyard Kipling, should take to heart the welfare of the men who are keeping the White Ensign flying over his name in this the Empire's struggle with those whose aim it is to destroy us. It is on the ceaseless vigilance and courage of our seamen in all weathers and conditions that we depend for our food, and in this vital task we are confident that our ship will play a noble part. I lunched the other day with her Captain,——and her " No. 1," ——both of whom are great ad- mirers of Kipling and most enthu- siastic about the connection between their Ship and the Society. Later on, when the ship goes into com- mission, her captain will let me know what we can do for the officers and men, whereupon I will at once circularize all members to tell them how they can help. In the meantime we can assure her captain and his ship's com- pany that our Society welcomes this opportunity to undertake what is to us a most fitting war job. Better war work for the Society could not be found anywhere and we shall all follow the fortunes of the "Kipling" with the liveliest sympathy and interest. C. H. Robinson Meetings of the Kipling Society MEMBERS' Meeting are held at all branches. In London they take place at regular intervals. Owing to the War, they have been temporary suspended. The proceedings usually take the form of a Lecture, and recitals of Rudyard Kipling's songs and verse. 38 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 The Earliest of the " Plain Tales " Sir Max Pemberton in the Bristol Evening World writes on " Great Novelists I Have Known ", and makes the following reference to Rudyard Kipling. MY introduction to Kipling and his genius was curious. One day there stalked into the office of Vanity Fair, then the leading society journal, a tall and stern ex-Jesuit who had quitted the order for the very good reason that he had to go out into the world to support his sister. Speaking with unwonted earnest- ness, he declared that he had dis- covered a genius, and he proceeded to throw down upon the table a little book bound in green paper covers and emanating from India. It was a volume containing some of the earliest of the ' ' Plain Tales from the Hills:' How much I wish that I had seized upon that trifle: to-day its market value is, I suppose, some- where about a thousand pounds. A month or two after this, all literary London was talking Kipling, the younger people especially stress- ing the ballads. Well do I remem- ber the astonishment of the great Mudford, the famous editor of the old Standard, when his nephew quoted at his dinner table the well- known lines : Oh! the 'oont, Oh! the 'oont, Oh the gawd-forsaken 'oont ! The old gentleman could not make head or tail of it, but he thought it very shocking. Shortly afterwards I was set a difficult task by certain estimable people who had invited that great American writer, George Cable, to come to London. " You must give a dinner to Cable at the Reform Club," they said, "and you must get Kipling." My answer was that they might as well expect me to get the Emperor of China and his mother. They, however, persisted, so I sat down at last and sent Kipling a wily telegram. He, at that time, de- clined flatly to go even to quasi- public dinners and " receptions " were abhorrent to him. None the less I tried it on. " Cable is here, " I wired, " America would take it as a great compliment if you were present at the dinner about to be given to him at the Reform." Well, he fell for it—and Tree, who heard of the business, was so good as to declare that I was the " best social diplomat in Town." Not very long after this Kipling was having a few merry encounters with his American publishers, Doubleday and Page. They ob- jected to his title, " A Day's Work," for one of his novels. He cabled back : " Why not ' a December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 39 Doubleday's work—'?" The same years saw him in a pretty mood when the editor of " Appleton's Magazine " quarrelled with his bias toward alcohol. " One of your sea captains," the editor cabled, ' drinks a glass of hot rum when he is at sea. Could not you substitute a non-alcoholic beverage ?" In reply Kipling cabled, " Why not try Mellin's Food?" Kipling and the Cinema Rudyard Kipling, almost a stranger to films in his lifetime, is becoming increasingly popular as a screen author. RUDYARD KIPLING, during his lifetime, was almost a stranger to the cinematograph film, yet he is becoming increasingly popular as a screen author. A writer in The Picturegoer points out that— Kipling was never known to be a film enthusiast. " Quite a legend has been built up of his dislike of the medium. It rests largely on his reference to Hollywood in the lines :— ''There rise her timeless capitals of empires daily born, Whose plinths are laid at midnight and whose streets are packed at morn ; And here come hired youths and maids that feign to love or sin In tones like rusty razor-blades to tunes like smitten tin." But there were films he did like, and some of them he saw twice. He admired D. W. Griffith's " Way Down East" and " Intoler- ance," And he saw the two pre- vious versions of " The Light That Failed." Gunga Din was filmed after Kipling's death. Kim is still in the offing. # # # Curiously enough, one of his last pieces of work was the editing of Paramount's present script of The Light That Failed. It is, therefore, one of the most valuable items of literary value in the studio's vault. Kipling read it through several times. He made changes in pen and ink, striking out phrases, substituting others, and filling the margins with comment. " Never say ' ocean ' when you mean ' sea' " is one. Another is : " Make this ' En- glishman,' not ' Britisher'." He substituted for one mild insult a sharper one: " You silly ass!" In all, he made about fifty corrections, all on the side of pre- cision and realism." 40 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 Reports from Branches MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. The Late Dr. Joske. Our genial President died very suddenly the day before our last meeting (September 7th). He was attending a meeting of the Austra- lian Medical Association, of which he was President, and collapsed with a heart attack just as he was about to take the chair. As it was impossible to postpone our meeting we made it a memorial one for him. Neither of our Vice-Presidents was in Mel- bourne at the time, so the Rev. A. E. Macdonald took the chair. A resolution of sympathy and regret was moved by him and seconded by the Treasurer, Dr. Boyd-Graham, and myself, as I knew Dr. Joske better than any of our members. Members stood in silence as a tribute to our President. A copy of the re- solution was sent with flowers to Mrs. Joske and her daughter, who have always given us such loyal support. We shall miss Dr. Joske very much, for his know- ledge of Kipling was so complete in every way that he was a splendid guide in our discussions, and his generosity in letting members see his Kipling Library (about 1000 volumes) was always greatly appreciated by us all. Dr. Joske will be much missed in the literary world of Melbourne, for he was Chairman of our Public Library, which is such a help to readers. He also was Chairman of our National Gallery and a member of the Felton Bequest Committee which periodically buys notable pictures for the Gallery. His own collection of pictures by Austra- lian artists is very well-known in Melbourne. He has done much good work, artistic and literary, in Melbourne as well as in his own profession, and this year when the Birthday Honours were distributed he received the O.B.E., for all his public services. [The sad news of Dr. Joske's death was received as we closed for press for the October issue of the Journal, in which we were able to include a reference to this great loss to the Society.—Ed.] SIR JULIUS BRUCHE As we have only two more meetings this year, our Senior Vice-President, Sir Julius Bruche, was invited to take the President's place. As he is absent for the winter, Dr. Boyd-Graham agreed to be our second Vice-President, and to carry on until Sir Julius returns. We appointed our Auditor Mr. Astley, as Treasurer in place of Dr. Boyd-Graham, so every- thing will continue smoothly until our next Annual Meeting, when members will appoint any other December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 41 office-bearers. Since our last Report went in we have had four meetings, all well attended, and several new members have registered. We had the good fortune to hold a reading of Mr. Bazley's paper on " Kipling as a Parodist. " This was some- thing quite new to members, and we hope in the future to receive more papers from our parent Society in London, as these are a good guide to members who prepare papers here. We shall finish our year with a night with " Kipling and India, " when the speakers will be Sir Julius Bruche—who knows Kim by heart—and Mr. Morton who, before he was invalided out of the Army, was a member of Stalky's old Regiment, so we look forward very much to his talk on the India of Kipling. And now to you who have to live in the shadow of War nearing England may I for all our Branch send this message from our very own Kipling : " We that were bred overseas will stand by through thick and thin. " (Mrs.) Grace Broughton. VICTORIA, B.C., CANADA Our Society started the 1939-40 session with a social evening which was well attended. We have changed into new rooms, which are more convenient and central than those we had last year. At the last Executive Meeting we discussed the question of the nomination of a member of the Central Society to the Council of the Society by each Branch Committee. We thought it a very good idea. We have obtained permission from the Victoria Radio Station C.F.C.7 to broadcast a series of a 15-minute programme of Kipling every Tuesday at 8 p.m. This venture was suggested by Mrs. Barclay a member of our Executive, who will be in charge of the arrangement of the weekly programme. Sir Robert Holland has kindly promised to give the first broadcast on Tuesday next, October, 3rd. Mrs. Barclay is an enthusiastic Kipling reader, and we feel there is much in Kipling's poems and speeches, as well as his stories, that is particularly applicable to the people of our Empire at this present time, and incidentally, it will advertise our Society ! I am hoping to enrol more new members at our next meeting. (Mrs.) W. J. Neal. An Application Form for Membership of the Kipling Society will be found on page 2 42 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 Letter Bag " Stalky " and " Beetle" ALTHOUGH General Dun- sterville admits that he is the " Stalky" of Stalky & Co. and that ' 'Beetle' ' (who was never known at Westward Ho by such a nick- name, but as "Gigger" on account of his spectacles) is Kipling himself, yet our President modestly suggests that most of the incidents related in Stalky & Co. are fiction. " The English School " in Land and Sea Tales seems, however, to disprove this as the following extract shows :— " Then they all grew very good, and one of them got into the Army ; and another—the Irish one—became an engineer, and the third one found himself on a daily paper half a world away from Pebble Ridge and the sea-beach. The three swore eter- nal friendship before they parted." We know, further, that " Stalky " loves Russia, and that he was chosen to lead 'Dunsterforce' largely because of his expert knowledge of the Russian language, which he speaks fluently. " Stalky was handed over to the Head, who said that he had better learn Russian under his own eye, so that if ever he were sent to Siberia for lampooning the author- ities he might be able to ask for things." Rudyard Kipling in the opening paragraph of The Man Who Was shows that he has weighed up the Russian character perfectly. " Let it be clearly understood that a Russian is a delightful fellow till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists on being treated as the most easterly of Western peoples, instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next." These coincidences are no doubt traceable to their joint education at "STALKY & CO." (Left) Gigger, (Centre) Stalky, (Right) McTurk. This illustration (lent by Captain David Preston) is taken from sketches by the late G. C. Beresford (McTurk) which he made when he was at Westward Ho as a schoolboy. "Gigger" is the "Beetle" of Stalky & Co. (Kipling) and 'Stalky" is General Dunsterville. December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 43 Westward Ho : " The English School." The Head would sometimes tell " Beetle " about the manners and cus- toms of the Russians. In Stalky & Co. there are some lines in the chapter on " Slaves of the Lamp"* referring to Russia. " Or who in Moscow toward the Czar With the demurest of footfalls, Over the Kremlin's pavement white With serpentine and syenite Steps with five other generals— That simultaneously take snuff, For each to have pretext enough, And kerchiefwise unfold his sash, Which—softness' self—is yet the stuff To hold fast where a steel chain snaps And leave the grand white neck no gash." " Don't understand a word of it," said Stalky. " More fool you ! Construe " said McTurk. " Those six bargees scragged the Czar and left no evidence. Actum est with King. " " He gave me that book too " said Beetle. Can any reader tell me the name of the book from which the above lines are taken and what they mean ? David Preston. Overseas House, St. James's, London, S.W.1. " The Beginnings." I see that you have put into the last number of the Journal "The Beginnings '—' When the English began to hate," and I see that you have spiritualised the meaning. * Slaves of the Lamp. p.51. Macmillan's Pocket Kipling. Now I am very sure that that is not the way the man in the street reads the poem. In case you have not seen it, I enclose a copy of an answer made to the poem by a man who evidently accepted it as mean- ing exactly what it says. Taking the ordinary common or garden meaning of the words, I am inclined to agree with him, and have a copy of these verses stuck in my book opposite to " The Beginnings." F. W. Mackenzie-Skues. 5, Campden Road, South Croydon, Surrey. {enclosure) From The Evening Standard, 3/5/17. A DIVERSITY It was not suddenly bred, It will not swiftly abate, Through the chill years ahead, When Time shall count from the date That the English began to hate— Mr. Kipling's New Book. Consider the Englishman, Tussling still with Fate— How long is it since he began To buck himself with hate ? Be not enlarged, O Hun, Though you do hate your fill, He simply hasn't begun, He simply never will. No vainer thing might be dreamt Of England's pith and thew— Contempt, contempt, contempt Is ail we offer you. None shall infect our State With the last cankering sin ; None shall teach us to hate, We are too sound to begin : THAT IS WHY WE SHALL WIN. 44 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 Book Reviews SIXTY POEMS. By Rudyard Kip- ling, 2s. (Hodder and Stoughton.) Hodder and Stoughton have filled a long-felt want by publishing at the very modest price of 2/- a grand selec- tion of Kipling's poems under the title of Sixty Poems by Rudyard Kipling. It appears in their well-known " Black Jacket " series and the format being 7 ¼" by 4½" it is a very handy little volume. The book has been divided up into eight parts under the following sub- headings :—Dedicatory Poems ; Eng- land and the Empire ; Men and Women ; Animals ; Adventure ; Cities, Thrones and Powers ; Prayer and Praise ; and finally Valedictory Poems. The choice in each case is an excellent one, and many favourite poems have been included. To do the volume full justice it would be necessary to mention and remark upon each but space for- bids, and as the publishers have wisely selected poems well-known to all Kip- ling readers such a course seems un- necessary. There are four Dedicatory Poems including the splen- did dedication from Barrack-Room Bal- lads, also My New- Cut Ashlar—surely one of the finest things Rudyard Kipling ever wrote. England and the Empire contains amongst others A Song of the English (and no better choice could have been made at the present time) ; Sus- sex; A School Song from Stalky & Co ; and of course Re- cessional. In Men and Women there is a varied assortment commencing with Rimini, the March- ing Song of a Roman Legion ; M'An- drew's Hymn and The Mother Lodge THE BOOKPLATE OF THE KIPLING SOCIETY. The size of the bookplate is three inches by two and a half inches. K.S. Bookplates may be obtained by Members, upon application to the Hon. Secretary, at a cost of 1d. each. together with several of the old Barrack- Room Ballads. From the poems dealing with animals Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton have selected three from the Jungle Books and these are The Law of the Jungle ; The Song of the Little Hunter ; Road Song of the Bandar-Log. There are also most fitly, two dog poems, and the chapter headings from Just-So Stories. In the portion devoted to Kipling's adventure poems we find our old friend Mandalay which even if the critics com- plain that no flying fishes can be seen " On the Road to Mandalay," is still a very fine little piece of verse. There are also The Lost Legion ; The Explorer and The King with its familiar words : "Farewell, Romance, the cave-men said " Another excellent choice is Cold Iron (from Rewards and Fairies) with its solemn reminder that of all precious metals, " Iron—cold iron—is master of men all ! " Of Prayer and Praise five of the best have been chosen and of these I shall mention but two:— Eddi's Service ; and When Earth's Last Picture is Painted as being sufficient bait to whet the appetite. The volume con- cludes with four Valedictory Poems, viz., the brief but very beautiful Chartres Windows beginning with those words which all artists know to be so true:—"Col- our fulfils where magic has no power" ; The Fairies' Siege ; The Hour of the Angel and lastly, The Prayer. With such a wealth of material provided by their already pop- ular Inclusive Verse, 1885-1932 Edition, the task of selecting sixty representative poems must have been difficult and December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 45 Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton are to be congratulated on providing such excellent value. W. G. B. Maitland. KIPLING'S READING and its Influence on his Poetry. By Ann. M. Weygandt. (University of Penn- sylvania Press. Philadelphia. 1939.) After reading Dr. Weygandt's wonder ful book I am left amazed, once more, that we should have to go abroad to find an adequate critical book on Kipling's work. M. Andre Chev- rillon began the good work in France with his " Three Studies in English Literature, " the bulk of which is devoted to Kipling ; the English critics remain silent on the subject— perhaps wisely, though there are one or two who could do good work in this line. So it has been left to a citizen of the United States to give us a volume, which can be best described as a source book. Anyone who reads his Kipling carefully finds odd quotations and tricks of manner or style that seem familiar to the man who has read at all extensively, but it is quite another matter to lay a finger on the place where he thinks these might be found. Herein is the main purpose of this book. The author first draws our attention to Kipling's fondness for the Nordic Saga, commenting on his fondness for thorough investigation ; thus the Weland of the Puck Stories is an enlargement of the English legends. The Smith of the Gods was probably one of the lesser gods, like Hercules in Greek Mythology, and is connected with Egil and Finn of heroic legend. Not only are the cases given where the early English note is definitely present, but also where it has suggested something—"The Rowers," for example Kipling would have been a great scoop, had he lived in those times. Dr. Weygandt pays a high tribute to Kipling on his knowledge and appreciation of Chaucer, not merely in the Canterbury Tales but in the more difficult prose :— " The borrow- ing (of words) would not make it successful, were Kipling not able to catch the rhythms of Chaucer's prose as well as those of his poetry. But it, also, reveals how thoroughly the modern writer had absorbed the spirit of his fourteenth-century proto- type. " A comment is made on the critic being wrong, he who accused Kipling of lifting Mrs. Ashcroft from the Wife of Bath. In the Elizabethan section we are made to realise how widely read Kipling was in the great literature of this period ; he seems thoroughly at home in practically all metres and styles of that very rich time. It is pointed out that " direct parody weakens, but the use of words and phrases employed by Shakespeare is legitimate and effective." Later on we read that "both the good parody and the bad reveal Kipling's intimacy with Shakespeare, as does his paper on the source of the Tempest :— " He must have been intimate with the play to recognize Stephano's beach, complete with cave and gap in the coral reef, without book." Many others of this period were taken as models by Kipling ; how, for example, he has caught Marvell's style and use of words in "The Palms," most of which fragment was collected as the poem " In the Matter of One Compass. " Here is a very good example of the careful manner in which the author has done her work :— " Kipling displays familiarity with the work of Pope and Gray, but he has not paro- died them ; if he had not parodied Prior, Gay, and Shenstone we should not have been able to prove that he had ever read them. Where one form of evidence fails us, the other supplies the lack. " The late George Beresford's book, " Schooldays with Kipling, " is frequently quoted as a third and valuable source of inform- ation. Further on, we gather that Kipling did not think so highly of the Augustan poets as he did of Defoe, Swift and Johnson ; as Mr. Beresford says, he liked work better " that was not constructed with too conscious an art. " Here we get a glimpse of how Kipling derived inspiration from what he did not admire. In fact, this idea is suggested in one of the later Stalky tales, " The Propagation of Knowledge. " Among the Victorians we are shown 46 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 that Kipling is absolutely at home ; Browning and Swinburne are his prime favourites—the former especially, but everywhere we read of research into the highways and byways ; it is his use of the latter that makes Kipling's work unlike that of his contemporaries. Much the same applies to the 19th Century period in American Literature. Naturally Kipling's use of the Bible, both for words and ideas, is dealt with here. We are told of instance after instance, in cases that are not obvious, of how he plays with it as a skilful pianist touches the keys of a piano. It may be news to many that the New Testament is rather more freely used than the Old—so much for those who said that his philosophy was derived from the more savage pre-Christian books of the Bible. There is a slight slip in this chapter in a reference to " The Church That Was At Antioch, " where the author states that this is one of two tales entirely devoted to St. Paul ; in actual fact. In this tale St. Peter is emphasised as the principal character. But the above is a slight mistake, slight as are a few others. Tho point which does strike home forcibly is, how thoroughly well the whole thing has been done. There is no trace of adulation, nor do we get the even more offensive spiteful fault- finding. On the appreciative side it is interesting to learn that Dr. Weygandt selects two poems, " The Sea and the Hills " and " Sestina of the Tramp-Royal, " as being worthy of the highest praise, giving solid grounds for her approbation ; everyone who knows Kipling's poetry will agree with her, in spite of the fact that these two pieces are often cited as bad work by the learned critics on this side of the Atlantic. # # # Although her book is packed with information—one might almost say, " crowded with culture "—Dr. Wey- gandt's work is something more than a text book ; it is exceedingly well written and pleasantly readable. Her scholarship and appreciation of good literature are only to be paralleled by her knowledge and appreciation of the work of Kipling. Basil M. Bazley. Answers to Kipling Questions THE QUESTIONS APPEAR ON PAGE 30. 1. In The Times of July 17th, 1897, on the occasion of Queen Victoria's second Jubilee. 2. " The Light that Failed. " 3. " Many Inventions. " (1893) 4. Sir E. Burne-Jones and Sir Edward Poynter. 5. Westward Ho ; Stalky & Co. 6. The remarkable fact is that the Tales were all written before the author was twentv-two. 7. The inspired beast-stories in The Jungle Book (1894) and The Second Jungle Book (1895). 8. Kim. 9. At the age of 16. 10. In 1907. 11. In Dayspring Mishandled (Limits and Renewals.) 12. Charlie Mears in " The Finest Story in the World." ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE KIPLING JOURNAL Members of the Kipling Society who possess letters, press cuttings, photographs or sketches associated with Rudyard Kipling and his works, which they think might be suitable for publication in the Journal, are invited to send particulars to the Hon. Editor, The Kipling Journal, 45, Gower Street, London, W.C.1. December, 1939 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 47 Cheaper Kipling Books ON an earlier page a reviewer deals with Sixty Poems by Rudyard Kipling, published by Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton at 2S. That price of 2s. is most encouraging to those Kipling enthusiasts who, like Mr. J. H. C. Brooking (who wrote on the question of highly priced books in our last issue) wish to make the Master's works available to readers of small means. And now we have re- prints of six popular Kipling volumes issued by Messrs. Mac- millan & Co. at 3s. 6d. each. These volumes include " Kim," " Captains Courageous," " Puck of Pook's Hill," " The Jungle Book," "The Day's Work," " Many In- ventions." These books are recommended to all readers who have not yet completed their collection of Kip- ling's works. For those who have done so, there is now an oppor- tunity to choose these books as New Year and Birthday gifts. We wish we had known earlier of these good things to come, for the membership of the Kipling Society is a fruitful field for publishers of low-priced editions of Kipling's works. In The Kipling Journal we have often drawn attention to the need for cheaper Kipling books for the benefit of less well-off readers. Last year we published a paper on the subject of a cheaper book of poems up to 100, selected from the 600 odd poems in the 1932 edition at 25s. We referred to this in our last issue, and mentioned a corresponding need for cheaper prose volumes than the 7s. standard. We are glad to feel that our suggestions have not been made in vain, and we hope that the publishers' enterprise will not be unrewarded. Secretary's Corner Any services which the Society can perform for country and overseas members are gladly offered. SINCE the outbreak of War, we have lost 44 members. The War has, no doubt, hit many of us very badly, but we do hope that as many members as possible amongst those who are feeling the financial strain will do their utmost to continue their support of the Society. We must at all costs keep the Kipling Flag flying during the War, and it would be a poor demonstration of our devotion to Kipling if we failed to stand up to these hard times and 48 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1939 had to go out of business. Members will see from this num- ber of the Journal in its new make-up that we are putting our best foot forward to give them good value. We hope to make our little Quarter- ly a really good publication which will be known throughout the world as something which no Kipling enthusiast can be without. Addit- ional copies of this issue are being sent out to Hon. Secretaries of Branches who, we hope, will make good use of them in recruiting new members. The War has meant a drastic cutting down of our expenditure. Consequently we are very short staffed. Members would help us enormously if they would be so kind as to pay their subscriptions punctually and thus save us the additional labour of "following up" the unpaid dues. The best way to do this would be to give us Banker's Orders for the payment of their subscriptions when they fall due. This method saves both ourselves and members a great deal of extra work and commits the member giving it to nothing, for a Banker's Order is, after all, quite easily cancelled if the wolf growls too loudly at the door ! C.H.R. Obituary We record with great regret the death on the 29th July, 1939 of one of our original members, Captain J. O.Tyler. Captain Tyler was particularly interested in the Kipling Journal of which he had a complete collection from the first number. He also had copies of all Kipling's works which he knew from cover to cover, and it would be a very elusive quotation from Kipling which Captain Tyler would not have been able to place from his memory. We offer Mrs. Tyler and her family our deepest sympathy, and are very glad to hear that his daughter is becoming a member in her father's place. The Sudbury Memorial Epitaph Letters are still arriving as we go to press in regard to the Sudbury memorial epitaph dealt with in our opening notes, so that we cannot mention all the writers to whom we are indebted. But for the first batch of letters and cables let us thank Colonel Milburn (Harro- gate), Mr. Bernard Collitt (Mon- treal) with a collection of cuttings, Col. E. A. Pridham (Winnipeg), and several English provincial friends enclosing cuttings from the " York- shire Evening Post " and other papers, detailing the text of Reuter's dispatch from Canada dealing with the matter—Ed. H. F. Lucas & Co., 151 North Road, Southend-on-Sea.