CONTENTS PAGE Notes ----------- 1 We Carry On !—Major General L. C. Dunsterville, C.B., C.S.I. 5 Some Early Critics of Kipling—Captain E. W. Martindell 7 Kipling and the School—Miss E. B. Hawkings - - - 11 Maurice Baring on Kipling - - . - - - - 14 Branch Report -----.---15 Rudyard __........16 The Homes of Rudyard Kipling—Colonel C. H. Milburn, O.B.E. 17 " Tommy Dodd ----------20 Kiplingiana.......---21 Letter Bag -----.....24 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. 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. A complete set of the Kipling Journal is now available including those numbers recently reported as being out of print. We learn that H.M.S. Kipling is in need of binoculars. Any members who can give or lend a pair would be doing our ship a great service. They should be sent to The Commander, H.M.S. Kipling, c/o G.P.O., London, and should contain a slip bearing the name and address of the donor, stating whether the glasses are a loan or a gift. A postcard notifying me of what has been done would greatly help our records. C. H. ROBINSON, Hon. Secretary, The Kipling Society, 45, Gower Street, London, W.C.1. December, 1940. THE KIPLING CHAMBER, BEAR HOTEL, BURWASH. THE KIPLING JOURNAL published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. VII. No. 56. December, 1940. Notes RIGHT ENCOURAGEMENT. CORRESPONDENCE that reaches us from all parts of the world amply endorses the Council's endeavour to keep the Journal going in war-time ; and while it recognises the many difficulties, affords every encourage- ment for the good work to carry on. (On page 4 we invite the practical co-operation of our mem- bers in this endeavour, as their help is essential to enable us to publish quarterly issues in 1941.) Fortunately, most of the writers realise the disadvantage caused by the paper shortage, and refrain from complaint that only a slender proportion of what they send finds accommodation in our pages, owing to diminished size. But so long as they appre- ciate the pains that are taken to publish a representative choice of their communications in " Letter Bag " and " Kiplingiana," so long can we assure them of our best endeavours. In other words—the words of Gilbert's Ko-Ko—we " hope to merit a continuation of those favours which it has ever been our study to deserve." MASTERY OF THE AIR. Over and over again, in various ways, friends and members concur with the conviction stated in a recent number that Rudyard Kip- ling still remains without a rival as the Laureate of the Empire and its fighting services, Navy (with the Merchant Service, of course), Army, and the Royal Air Force. To name this last is merely to emphasise its junior- ity in point of age, but we believe, if Kipling were still alive, he would say in no invidious spirit that the Benjamin of the three has more than " caught up." By its consistent display of speed and dash and valour, in spite of so many deterrents, it has done three things at least. It has electrified an admiring world ; it has mastered not only enemy resistance, but time and space as well ; and it has done as much as youth and gallantry can do to atone for the enemy's abuse of aviation as a vent for inhuman- ity. But how much more vividly and lastingly all this and more might have found inspired ex- pression if our Laureate had been here to say it ! INTERESTING PARALLEL. For months past Mr. Churchill has risen to the rarefied level of the few men who—as Mark Twain said of Kipling, or was it the other way ?—found their words cabled round the earth on the least provocation. Few utterances, certainly, have justi- fied such honorific treatment as 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 the appeal the Premier lately addressed to the French people. It is good hearing that enemy spite and ingenuity could not keep the message from reaching its destination, here and there ; and keen observers have remarked a wholesome change in France's spirits since. There was also noted in that particular broadcast a greater divergence than ever from the usual diction of statesman- ship, and a reversion to the plain speech of the common people. Also, it was thought, if the voice had been a note or two higher and the intonation a little more flexible, we might almost have been listening to Kipling him- self, voicing his love of France. A FAMOUS NIGHT. One remembers how Mr. Churc- hill, as chief orator at the Kipling Banquet at Grosvenor House, proved how well he had studied the best that the Empire's Laureate said and wrote. No one, by the way, has yet done justice to Kipling's singular felicity as a public speaker, or the way in which he banished the trite and ponderous for the sake of pleasant- ry, allusiveness, and humour. This is the consummation of an art that Erasmus praised—that of say- ing a grave thing lightly—and one that has always been regarded as more French than English. Perhaps that is why French listen- ers were amazed to find a British Premier with such a mastery of French and English speech that he could frame an historic appeal from one nation to the other, not only without rancour 01 re- crimination, but in clear and simple terms that the veriest peasant could understand. EAST AND WEST Europe this winter, according to the medical men, is facing the worst epidemics she has known for centuries ; but there is one incurable epidemic we have always with us, and that is the habit of loose quotation. Our contributors more than once have pointed out the airy way in which the open- ing line of The Ballad of East and West is handled and mis- construed. By omitting the inter- jection at the start, slapdash talkers and writers ignore its use as a symbol of the ballad form, with all that heroic and declamatory licence the ballad should command. Again, by citing a single line and nothing more, these offenders show that all they want is a " slogan " to adorn their statement or con- tention, for what it is worth. Thirdly, these " littery gents " do the poet an injustice by leav- ing a fine quatrain dismembered, and one that more than most stanzas of the kind, suffers when left imperfect and incomplete. MAJESTY IN VERSE. The four lines in question, it should be remembered, figure in italic type and close the poem as well as open it :— " 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, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!" Durand, in his excellent Hand- book on the Poetry of Rudyard Kipling, devotes a couple of service- able pages to the poem and its points, but avoids any reference December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 to this refrain-verse or " envoi," as a lyrical technician might call it. But if he had been commentator as well as annotator, Durand might have protested against taking a majestic line like this from its context to the injury of poem and author alike. A WORD OF CAUTION. The reason for bringing the matter up at the moment is that one of our great Press oracles, in writing about the war in China, falls into the error we are deplor- ing, and delivers himself as follows— There is a. lot in Kipling, as posterity will be pretty sure to judge, but the genius of impres- sionism is one thing and that of reflection another. Goethe, who put Byron very high, said that when he reflected he was a child. One Kipling phrase used to be as familiar as fallacious. East and West were called a twain that could never meet. Instead, their interactions have been endless. Politics and infallibility are out- side our sphere, but we may doubt if this publicist took the trouble to refresh his memory before he wrote. Five minutes reference or " reflection " might have shown him that the line he was paraphrasing is no mere syllogism or apophthegm, but may be regarded as almost what rhetori- cians call a rejected supposition. Kipling had a way of saying things with such finality that we must beware of converting a poetic sentiment into a pro- position of universal application EUROPE AND ASIA. Doubtless, if he had ever been asked to construe his refrain, and defend it from being " soiled by all ignoble use," he might have fallen back upon the answer that Tennyson made on a like occasion. Apropos of this, Cap- tain Martindell pointed out in an early Society lecture (see No. 3 of the Journal) that before the Ballad in question, Kipling had written of East and West as resembling " parallel straight lines which being continued will never meet." Nevertheless, Mr. Bazley (see Nos. 45 and 46) raised objection to the mistake of ignoring the point of the Ballad —that the mutual esteem of " high- er types of humanity " is capable of surmounting any barriers of caste or environment. Enough for the present. We can see this interesting theme providing dis- cussion at many a meeting to come. THE MACDONALD CLAN. Kipling was always interested in reading or hearing anything about the clan MacDonald, and proud of his descent therefrom through his mother. The centen- ary has just occurred of the death of Maréchal MacDonald, Duke of Tarentum, the French warrior who rallied the Imper- ialist army beyond the Loire in the year of Waterloo. There is extant a letter of Sir Walter Scott's, tracing the Maréchal's descent from the MacDonalds of Clanronald, and recalling how the Maréchal's father was an active adherent of the Jacobite cause. This all reminds us of a story which Sir Walter used to say was the neatest and proudest assertion of tribal supremacy he had ever known. It told how the head of the MacDonalds once had his title called in question by a rival, and retorted by letter that wherever the MacDonald sat was the head of the table. There- 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 fore, until his rival could sub- stantiate a claim, the letter con- cluded :—" I am, Yours, The Mac- Donald." Friends say that Kip- ling knew the story, and used to agree with a laugh that Scott's judgment, as usual in these matters, was without a fault. OBITUARY We learn with deep regret from Mrs. Buchanan, the Hon. Sec- retary of our Auckland, New Zealand, Branch, of the death of her husband. Our members will, we know, join with the Council in their expression of sympathy with Mrs. Buchanan in her bereavement. R.K.'s verse As we close for press, we have received from Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd., a copy of The Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling's Verse, (25/-), which will be reviewed fully in the next issue of the Journal. UNCOLLECTED KIPLING WRITINGS In the October, 1940, number of The Kipling Journal there appear- ed under this heading certain writings by Mr. Rudyard Kipling which were never republished by him and which do not form any part of his collected works. This material was sent to us and its publication authorised by Captain E. W. Martindell. Unfortunately Captain Martindell did not pre- viously obtain authority for publi- cation from Mrs. Bambridge, the daughter of Mr. Rudyard Kipling and the present owner of the copyright. It is now for Mrs. Bambridge, as it was previously for Mr. Kipling himself, to deter- mine what publication shall be made of Mr. Kipling's writings. Captain Martindell has apologised to Mrs. Bambridge and expressed his regret that he should have made this publication without au- thority, and we desire to associate ourselves with him both in the regret and apology and to state that no publication in The Kip- ling Journal of any work of Mr. Kipling will in future be made without the express authority of Mrs. Bambridge. TO OUR MEMBERS DURING the past eventful year, the Kipling Society has contrived to continue its work under difficulties. The normal activities—especially the holding of meetings—have necessarily been reduced to a minimum. Many members who hitherto helped in the all important task of enrolling new members are now busily engaged upon various forms of war work and, in common with other organisations, the Society has suffered in consequence. Our quarterly Journal, restricted ,it is true, to twenty-four pages, has, however, appeared at its due time throughout the year, and in order to maintain regular publication during 1941, we have to appeal to every member to co-operate with us. For reasons of economy, it has been suggested that in the special circumstances two issues only of the magazine should appear during the year 1941 instead of four issues. We feel sure our members at home and overseas will agree with us that it is desirable to avoid this alternative. May we suggest that every member individually can help to enable us to publish the Journal regularly each quarter by enrolling one friend as a member of the Society ? Those who for any reason are unable to do so are invited to send a donation, to be allocated to the Journal Fund. As publication arrangements have to be made well in advance, members are asked to send in their application for a new member (or equivalent donation) as a New Year offering to the Society, during the month of January, 1941. Bis dat qui cito dat December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 We Carry On ! by MAJOR-GENERAL L. C. DUNSTERVILLE, C.B., C.S.I. [Members of the Kipling Society will join us in sending greetings to our President, who recently cele- brated his seventy-fifth birthday. In the following characteristic note, " Stalky " shows that in spite of war conditions, our Society still " carries on."] I AM sure that all our mem- bers realize that our staff is working under considerable difficulties and strain, and a great number of our members who are themselves Londoners are 'carry- ing on ' in similar rather tragic circumstances and manage to keep smiling withal. The normal activi- ties of the Society are kept up in spite of the constant stream of unpleasant explosives from the sky, so that our last issue of the Journal was quite up to time and contained many items of unusual interest. I am not a Londoner myself, but we live within twenty miles in a small village that might be considered beneath Hitler's notice, yet we have had in this quiet spot no day or night for the last seven weeks without our siren warnings, and we have had enough bombs to make us feel— as we all wish to feel—that we are well in the front line. We used to feel quite proud of our numerous craters and show them to friends who visited us from quieter spots. That was before we went to London ! We have been up now and have come back feeling almost ashamed of our poor little battle- scars, and after seeing those wonder- ful citizens of London, I am prouder than ever of being able to call myself an Englishman. Getting to London with air- raids on and off most of the time, proved to be a long but very interesting journey. I could not think it altogether good manners to visit London just out of curiosity, so I was glad to have the legitimate excuse of unavoidable business in the neighbourhood of Cornhill. We knew that many difficulties were likely to be encountered on the way, so we made an early start and got a 'bus that took us to the station. There we took return tickets to London, and after a short wait we got into a train labelled for that desti- nation. In the suburbs something must have happened just ahead of us on the line and we were told the train would go no further—we must find our own way on by tube, 'bus or tram. This seemed quite simple as this place is on the tube that runs into the city, but people we asked seemed to think the tube was also bust up for the moment. We didn't know this part of Suburbia so we wandered about looking for the tube station. After a short walk we passed a sort of backyard entrance, on which were pasted large labels, OPEN. Obviously this would be the tube station, so we dashed in and found ourselves in Wool- worths ! There was indeed a fine example of ' carrying on,' The 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 real front of the stores on the main road was knocked about and unsafe, so the manager had had the bright idea of making this emergency entrance at the back. Then we made for the tram and had to walk some distance as the track had been disturbed by a recent bomb. This tram took us to Kennington where we sat on a bench outside a half- ruined church, chatting with a working man who said, " We'll stick it whatever 'appens, and we'll make 'Itler wish 'e'd never started this row." After some time we got a bus that took us to Marble Arch, and thence with- out further incident the tube took us to the Bank. It was rather dull finding things running so smoothly, but on emerging from the station, we found all sorts of things—including craters —that sufficed to keep us interested for the rest of the day. Our return journey took us rather longer and we were not able to take the same route, as various things had happened in the course of the day, but throughout our journey, we never encountered anything in the way of a difficulty, only an unavoidable increase of delay. We walked down Regent Street and Whitehall to Victoria, stopping en route to enjoy a simple but very good lunch in Piccadilly. During our walk the siren sound- ed twice, but ladies shopping in Regent Street seemed quite unperturbed and continued to pass in and out of the various shops, only taking care to step neatly over piles of broken glass. The latter part of our journey was carried out during the rush hour and we were only too glad to take our place in very long queues, as this enabled us to see the Londoner at his best. Muttered oaths on the part of the male workers were not in- frequent, but what one really remarked was an entire absence of bad temper and the prevalence of a splendid spirit of mutual help and subdued cheerfulness. Arriving home, we found the only item of news during our absence was just one fresh crater, which, after our London visit we treated with scorn and con- tempt ! # # # # I fell asleep dreaming of those self-sacrificing fellows in London who carry on their tasks in our behalf to enable the Kipling Society to ' carry on.' But I awoke with a rather mean sense of avoidance of danger and a feeling that our President, who should be with us at the front, inspiring us with his ex- ample, slumbers peacefully in his comfortable bed in a Surrey vil- lage. L. C. Dunsterville. B—. November, 1940. 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, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 Some Early Critics of Kipling by CAPTAIN E. W. MARTINDELL. THE earliest criticism seems to have appeared in The Calcutta Review in 1885 in a review of Echoes, which says, inter alia:— "A most quaint, original and altogether charming little volume of Anglo-Indian verse. The authors are, we believe, two children. If this is the case, what particularly phenomenal child- ren these two little ones must be .... The parodies are some- what unequal. Some of these are very weak, notably the parodies of Matthew Arnold and Rossetti, in the sense that they are not readily discernible as parodies at all. They do not hit off very happily the characteristic pecu- liarities of the writers whom they profess to imitate. On the other hand, the parodies of the more pop- ular and celebrated poets, Tenny- son and Longfellow, are exceed- ingly funny and show a keen and delicate sense of imitation which would be creditable to veteran versifiers, and is aston- ishingly creditable from such young hands as the authors of this delightful little volume .... If strikingly precocious gifts are any earnest of future excellence, they are destined to achieve an honourable and distinguished place among the Anglo-Indian poets of our time." Later on we get the views of Signor Verdinois, a Neapolitan critic, who laments the impres- sion of disconsolate sadness in all Kipling's writings, which he says, " might be all called The Light that Failed." He goes on to say, " Kipling's art is still unequal and disconnected ; it flies and touches ; weeps and sobs ; crushes and breaks ; a blazing torch, which till now smokes too much. We wish health to the poet and that he may live to disperse this smoke. May Rud- yard Kipling live long, and in- stead of stumbling in the dark, give to art the light that never fails." That was written about 1899. About the same time a French writer, M. Victor Basch, wrote :—" The muse of Kipling lives in the courts and purlieus of the barracks. She has her nose purpled with gin ; she smokes a pipe, chews tobacco, and is sea-sick. Her speech is the most fantastic of amalgams, in which the most diverse species of slang elbow each other. She speaks by turns the jargon of the soldier, the marine, the Cockney, the Irishman, and all the little colonial niggers. But she has one in- contestable merit, and that even in her prose speech—the merit of movement and life." Here is an appreciation of Kip- ling in the Cockney dialect, which appeared in the Daily Chronicle in the closing years of the last century :— 'Is Kingdom runs wheer the white men be, 'E reigns till the ormernacks goes ter sleep. 'E's cut 'is name on the bloomin' tree, And 'e's cut it bloomin' deep. The ships is sylin', the troops mawch art, The tiger sleeps when the sun is 'or, 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 And we all come a mucker in 'ole or part— But Kiplin' 'e knowed the lot. A writer in Blackwood in the early 'nineties said :—"This young man of genius has shown us all what the Indian empire means. It is a magic, it is an enchant- ment. If Her Majesty herself, who knows so much, desires a fuller knowledge of her Indian Empire, how it is ruled and de- fended and fought for every day against all the Powers of Dark- ness, we desire respectfully to recommend to the Secretary for India that he should place no sheaves of dispatches in the royal hands, but Mr. Rudyard Kipling's books. There are only two volumes of them, besides sundry small brochures . . . .but there lies India, the most wonderful acquisition of any victorious kingdom ever made, the greatest fief, perhaps, that ever was held for God." In 1902, when Kipling's . The Islanders appeared, there was an outburst of much adverse criticism. In the Tatler, Mr. Adrian Ross wrote as follows :— Dear Mr. Rudyard Kipling, you need not have been so rude ; We liked your " Kim " and the Lama (the Russian was rather crude) ; For " The Absent-minded Beggar " we paid and paid and paid, And we read your tales of the war, which were not the best you've made. But you really oughtn't, Rudyard, to pose as one of the bards With verse that even a duffer could spin by the hundred yards Give us some more of " Mowgli," give us some more of " Kim," Of the wily Eastern native and the way to deal with him, Give us the blending of East and West, of new and of old ; But don't go writing verses in the style of a common scold. For it makes the metre rocky and it makes the rhyming weak, And you never were a master of poetical technique. In short, pray give us prose that is boy's, and man's delight, Not verse that's hard to scan but terribly easy to write. At the same period a topical verse was added to Ross's song of the Raja of Bhong, Raja. There's a writer of rhymes that appear in The Times, Who is down upon football and cricket, And he pours out his soul on the oaf at the goal, Or the flannelette fool at the wicket ! There was violence feared when his poem appeared, But the poet was hardly a dreamer ; When the oafs in the mud came to look for his blood, He was off to the Cape on a steamer ! Peace ! peace ! leave him in peace ! Though he pitches it rather too strong ; We'll forget how he sails if he'll tell us some tales Of the beautiful valley of Bhong ! Chorus. Peace ! peace ! leave him in peace ! There is peace in the valley of Bhong ! Raja. Let his verses repose if he Kiples in prose Raja and Chorus. On the beautiful valley of Bhong ! The Islanders also aroused the ire of Dr. N. Monro Anderson, the Australian poet, who broke out into verse in the Morning Post, Delhi. Lord of the loud-lunged legions ! Prince of the Purple Press ! Are we but pigmy people Lost in the wilderness, That we of the Younger Nations, Should call back our fighting men, At the blast of your tin war-trumpet Or the scrawl of your scathing pen ? Safe in your inky dug-out Flinging your gibes about, What do you know of England December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 Or the quest that brought us out ? We of the Younger Nations, Reared on the range and plain, Scornful out of the battle Hurl you the lie again. We of the Younger Nations, Are we but sickly spawn ? Spoilt little lambs of the Empire On whom the elders fawn ? Willing and freely we sought it Out of the range and the plain, Freely, unbribed, undriven, As we would seek again. Lord of the loud-lunged legions ! Scribe of a jaundiced age ! We of the Younger Nations Were taught from a brighter page— and so on in the same strain. The best, however, of the crit- icisms of The Islanders came from Newbolt's pen in An Essay on Criticism, of which the last two stanzas are as follow :— O Rudyard, Rudyard, in our hours of ease (Before the war) you were not hard to please : You loved a regiment whether fore or aft, You loved a subaltern, however daft. You loved the very dregs of barrack life. The amorous colonel and the ser- geant's wife. You sang the land where dawn across the Bay Comes up to waken queens in Mandalay, The land where comrades sleep by Kabul ford, And Valour, brown or white, is Border-lord, The secret Jungle-life of child and beast, And all the magic of the dreaming East. These, these we loved with you, and loved still more The Seven Seas that break on Britain's shore, The Winds that know her labour and her pride, And the Long trail whereon our fathers died. In that Day's Work be sure you gained, my friend, If not the critic's name, at least his end ; Your song and story might have roused a slave To see life bodily and see it brave. With voice so genial and so long of reach To your Own People you the Law could preach, And even now and then without offence To Lesser Breeds expose their lack of sense. Return, return ! and let us hear again The ringing engines and the deep sea rain, The roaring chanty of the shore wind's verse, Too bluff to bicker and too strong to curse. Let us again with hearts serene behold The coastwise beacons that we knew of old ; So shall you guide us when the stars are veiled, And stand among the Lights that never Failed. In 1890, The New York Herald said, " The most forcible im- pression which is left on the average mind by Mr. Kipling's works is the dismalness, insin- cerity, brutality and utter worth- lessness of all classes of British humanity in India." A reply to this attack, headed American Critics, followed in the Pioneer Mail of November 20th, 1890. We are " insincere " they tell us, " Brutal," are we, " dismal," " worth- less," So our cousins very plainly Shout across the western water From their land where all are candid, Gay, sincere, and very worthy With a worth which knows its value. Lepel Griffin tells the story Of the happy life out yonder, Of the cultured minds of Boston, Of the bacon of Chicago, Of the Chinamen of 'Frisco, Of the negro of New Orleans, Of the Red man and his whisky 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 Of the sanctimonious Mormon, And the innocent revolver, And the mildly playful bowie. Rudyard Kipling, too, has told us As from sea to sea he journeyed Of the happy, gracious manners Of the Land of Minnehaha, Of the Land of Laughing Water. Very grave in our demeanour, But we sometimes yield to laughter, Gay, sincere, if brutal laughter, When America rebukes us, From the very mouth of Kipling, From the mouth of Rudyard Kipling For the very sins we cherish ; And quite candidly are proud of, For brutality, moroseness, Insincerity and so on ; Then, indeed, we ache with laughter, And the Himalayas echo And the Baboo stops to wonder What on earth the sahibs laugh at, What disturbs the dismal white man. How should they know where the joke comes They, our very distant cousins, Who are all sincere and happy In a land which owns no loafers, Where no Tommy stains the sun- shine, And the women shun flirtation ; There it is, as someone tells us, " Humbug has a solid valley " And the politician labours For his countrymen's advantage And is very very honest. There the negro has his franchise, And John Chinaman is happy, And the Red man drinks his whisky And the Irishman finds refuge From the brutal, dismal Balfour. And the " average observer " Finds the Anglo-Indian hateful. Well, he is not such as we are, And may well misunderstand us, So we freely laugh, and freely Bless the Transatlantic critic Who provokes our sudden laughter As we think of Rudyard Kipling And his quiet smile of pleasure, As he reads that we are " brutal " " dismal," " insincere "and " worth- less." The most competent of the early critics was Francis Adams, with whose criticisms Sir George MacMunn has dealt at length in Rudyard Kipling—Craftsman, and there the early critics must rest for the present. E. W. M. RUDYARD KIPLING'S EARLY LANCHESTER motor car. It is not a steam driven vehicle, but was only so described for the purpose of his story. The car is a 12 h.p. 2 cylinder, 1903 Lanchester model, and is now owned by the Daimler Co. Ltd., by whose permission this photograph is published. It stands in their showroom at Coventry, 'next to the " museum " car of King Edward VIL In reply to a member's enquiry, the answer was : "No money could buy either car." December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 Kipling and the School The first part of an address given to the Cape Town Branch of the Kipling Society by Miss E. B. Hawkins. IT is the pleasant pastime of many people to try to classify their fellows into two mutually exclusive groups. So today we hear much talk of Haves and Have-nots, of Democracies and Dictatorships, and many other such dichotomies. We might with equal accuracy divide mankind into those who talk shop in season and out of season, and those with a consum- ing curiosity about the other man's job. But young subalterns, for instance, mercilessly trained not to talk shop at mess, often take their revenge in later life by publishing their memoirs, and mak- ing a good deal of money out of them. And many members of the medical profession have recently ministered at once to their own desire to talk shop, and to the interest of the rest of mankind in a profession " whose commonplaces " are " our miracles" in a spate of medical novels which have had so phenomenal a vogue as to prove yet again that every man has in the story of his own life the makings of at least one good novel. Kipling is most emphatically one of those interested in the other man's job. And for those belonging to the sheltered—not to say cloistered—teaching pro- fession, half his attraction lies in the fact that he has provided us with a window opening on to a rich and varied world of workers and adventurers and men of action whose lives normally lie far beyond our ken. And the other half of his attraction arises from our affectionate grat- itude to him not only for this gift, but for letting us see our profession through his eyes, and giving us, too, a place in his gallery of workers. For all his pride and joy in his own profession, and his knowledge of it as a reporter, a war corres- pondent, a poet and a novelist, it is odd that he nowhere gives us a full-length study of a writing man. War correspondents are intro- duced in The Light that Failed as a kind of " giddy parergon " as he himself might have said. Newspaper reporters come into A Matter of Fact; a novelist is used as a peg for reminiscences of the Burmese expedition in A Conference of the Powers ; and one might mention a few more equally lightly sketched figures; but that is all. Even Something of Myself is only a partial study, precious though it is. No, to him the life-long obsession was the other man's job—you will remember his dissertation upon it in Sea Warfare—and no writer has given us the other man's job as successfully as he or as large and varied an assortment of jobs. It is, therefore, not wholly sur- prising that he should have paid a certain amount of attention to the schoolmaster's job, not with the burning enthusiasm of a novelist who is also a social reformer, like H. G. Wells, but 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 with the zest of a man who found all constructive work interesting and thanked God unceasingly for the " diversity of the creatures in His adorable world." What is surprising is that he should have remembered his four short years at school with such photographic clearness, and that his memories should have re- mained quite untransmuted by later experiences. At school, G. C. Beresford ("M'Turk") tells us, his attitude was always that of the adult. He was on such friendly terms with the masters that some of them even gave away Common Room secrets to him ; the Head was a family friend before he went to school, and his own close friend long after he left school. Yet the outlook in all the school stories is in essence that of a senior school boy, with common sense enough" to know where his own interests and those of the school lay, who realized he must submit to discipline and must work with an eye to his future career. You will remember in Stalky & Co., the angry pre- fects discussing Mr. King's atti- tude to them and the necessity for a " first-class row," when Flint settled the whole trouble with these words— " Rot, King's the best classical cram we've got ; and 'tisn't fair to bother the Head with a row. He's up to his eyes with extra tuition and army work as it is ... .' Seems to me we should be interfering with ourselves. We've got to get into the Army—or get out, haven't we ?" And again " We take crammers' rejections—we've got to do that to make our name, of course, and we get them into Sand- hurst somehow or other." So too the Volunteer Corps acquired a large number of members because the bovs wished to learn to " handle a half company anyhow, and so be dismissed drill early at Sandhurst." And they practised "tongue-lashing the corps in turn " because you never know what you may have to say to your men, and because it's ' good for the temper ' to learn to be able to stand it. One might sustain a pretty thesis to prove that the school- boy lives on in the breast of every man, however old. And the read- ing of Kipling suggests that the schoolboy survives longest in the breast of a soldier —probably on account of the similarity in the circumstances of their lives. Both live herded together in groups ; both have to submit to discipline and the force of tradition in every little matter of dress and behaviour. So in The Tie (Limits & Renewals, 1932) when pro- vidence (or his own reckless driv- ing) delivered into the hands of a group of officers, dyspeptic through bad catering, one of the heads of the firm of caterers responsible, the sight of an old school tie familiar to some of them brought the schoolboy atti- tude to the surface in a flash. See p.81 " What was your House ?" .... p.82 " I wasn't a 2nd lieut. any more. I was just a starving 'outraged boy'." And Mackworth, whom we regarded as Head Prefect in the matter, "jawed" Haylock on the dis- grace he had brought on the School. He ended with the class- ical tag " I've a great mind to give you a special licking on my own account for the House's sake. You've got off very cheap with only your head smacked." This is pure schoolboy—and to the very life. A glance at the accompanying poem The Totem would prove very illuminating. December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 Of course it is not only soldiers who keep an eternal schoolboy locked up inside them. Prime Ministers appear at times to do the same. Or is it a family failing ? Certainly it is a little surprising to find the then Mr. Stanley Baldwin saying, " When the call came to me to form a Government, one of my first thoughts was that it should be a Government of which Harrow should not he ashamed. I remembered how in previous Govern- ments there had been four or perhaps five Harrovians, and I determined to have six. To make a Cabinet is like making a jigsaw puzzle fit, and I managed to make my six fit by keeping the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer for myself." It might be interesting at this stage just to remind ourselves of the details of Kipling's own education and decide whether he was a good judge of his debt to the circumstances that formed his life for him. You will remember he heads the first chapter of his autobio- graphy with the Jesuits' claim, " Give me the first six years of a child's life and you can have the rest." Now the first six years of Kipling's life were spent in Bombay under the loving care of his parents, his sister and devoted Indian servants, with the free run of his father's studio. We know how deep and lasting were all his family ties. We know too that he looked upon India as his real home, for he actually says on his return to that country in 1882, " My English years fell away, nor ever, I think, came back in full strength." He seemed to become almost a part of the English soil as he has certainly become part of the English language. His India has passed, but his pictures of the England of Puck of Pooks Hill and Rewards & Fairies, of My Sunday at Home, An Habitation Enforced, and a hundred other such have lasted and will last because his roots are there—it is his spiritual home, despite the accident of his birth in India. His formal education began at Southsea under the most unhappy conditions. Of his school he says too little but that his experience there did not lead him to look forward to school at Westward Ho. His " informal " education, if we may call it so, could not have been more unfortunate. Yet through the harshness of " the Woman " he was driven to seek consolation in books ; through her punishments he got to know the Bible almost by heart, and that knowledge coloured all his writing to his life's end. There he learned to live within himself, to be self sufficient and indepen- dent—valuable lessons, though the price paid for them was very high. Baa, Baa, Black Sheep and a page or two in The Light that Failed describe these bitter years. Then came his four years at the United Services College—un- happy at first, but afterwards fashioned to his liking by his two friends and by the influence of the Headmaster, who was in- terested in developing the taste for reading and for writing that he saw growing in his pupil. Throughout his time here and at Southsea his holidays with literary and artistic aunts and uncles gave him great happiness 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 and fostered a familiarity with artists and their ways which is shown in a good deal of his work. Theoretically his four years here completed his education, at the age of sixteen, but I like to think of the Punjab Club as his Uni- versity where during the seven years of apprenticeship to his art I met none," he says, " except picked men at their definite work— Civilians, Army, Education, Canals, Forestry, Engineering, Irrigation, Rail- ways, Doctors, Lawyers—samples of each brand and each talking his own shop." I leave you to decide whether his first six years were as important, as his choice of a caption might lead us to think. But at least his mind photo- graphed his life at College with a wealth of detail and a sharpness of outline that time could not blur. The man in the street who often regards himself as an educationist because he once underwent the process of being educated, however unwillingly and unreflectingly, usually thinks about education seriously at two stages in his life. One is when he is not getting on as well as he thinks he should ; and then he often finds that he was educated along the wrong lines. The other is when he has children of his own for whom he wishes to do as much as possible. There is of course the purely reminiscent stage, but that usually comes late in life and is so bound up with vain repining for lost youth and its vanished joys, that school days are seen through a haze of sentimentality, which so dis- torts them that Kipling says, " one wonders at which end of their carcases men keep their school memories." His Horatian ode in front of The United Idolaters dwells on age's " unfailing pride in memories of his frolic youth." ( To be continued) Maurice Baring on Kipling A note by Major Ernest Dowson. IN Have You Anything to De- clare ? : "a Note Book with Commentaries, "Maurice Baring tells that when he was at Eton he once said to " one of the more cultivated masters": "What fun it would be if a really great writer were to appear on the scene," and that the master replied, " You mean, someone like George Eliot ? " And Baring said hopefully, " Yes, another George Eliot.'' " Yet,'' continues Baring, " Yet at that very moment Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills and his Soldiers Three and some, if not all, of the little grey paper books first publish- ed in India were on sale. The great writer was there. It would be untrue to say that nobody suspected the fact. His fame came in a day, his books were snatched at and devoured greedily, and praised by the most important critics (Henry James, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, etc.). But at that moment people had no idea what an echoing reverberation his fame would make in the world, nor what was to be the world-wide range of his reputation, nor that he would one day be buried in Poets' Corner December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 in Westminster Abbey, with a Prime Minister, an Admiral of the Fleet, and the Chief of the General Staff for pall-bearers." On another page : " People can say what they like about Swinburne, .... He shares with Byron and with Kipling the distinction of never having been thought a minor poet." Again : " Sigh out a lamentable tale of things Done long ago, and ill done ; and, when sighs Are wearied, piece up what remains behind With weeping eyes, and hearts that bleed to death ; John Ford, Lover's Melancholy. The first line and a half of this passage are put with supreme appropriateness by Mr. Kipling at the head of one of his stories— Love O' Women : a story which some people consider to be first among his masterpieces." And again : " I am an old and solitary man, Mine eyes feel deeply out the setting sun, Which drops its great red fruit of bitterness Today as other days, as every day, Within the patient waters. Robert Browning. "I came across these lines . . . and tried to trace them for many years in vain .... Rudyard Kip- ling told me he thought the second line sounded like Browning, but he had no idea by whom they were written, and that he had searched through Browning in vain. Then one day in a bookshop I found the lines in a posthumous poem of Browning's called Soliloquy of Aeschylus, in the complete collected edition in one volume." Branch Report VICTORIA, B.C., CANADA. THE Annual Meeting of the Victoria Branch was held on Tuesday, May 25th. The Sec- retary's report showed a good year in both membership and finance. All officers were re-elected by acclamation for the coming year, with the exception of Mrs. Barclay, a member of the Executive, who is returning to her home in the country. Her resignation was accepted with regret, and it is hoped she will still be able to attend the monthly meetings. The business was followed by a competition directed by Mr. K. C. Symons, in which questions on Kipling stories, especially those read during the past session, were given, the competitors being required to write their answers. The prize, a book of selected Kipling stories, was won by Mr. T. A. Simmons. During the past session, a knitting circle was formed among the ladies of the Branch to work for the men of H.M.S. Kipling. The sum of $30 has been raised among the members for buying wool and postage of parcels. Two parcels of goods have been sent, containing 25 pair of seamen's socks and 2 pair of day socks in all. In addition, there have been gifts of money and socks sent direct by individual members. This work will be continued when the meetings are resumed. On August 7th, the members of the Branch held their annual picnic at Mount Douglas Park. A competition arranged by the President, assisted by Mr. Oliver and Mr. McGrath, resulted in an additional $7.50 being raised for the wool fund. After tea, several of the party climbed Mount Douglas. A steep winding road of about a mile leads to the summit, but the ascent is well worth the trouble. Here, looking south, the view shows Victoria, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and the long range of the Olympic Mountains in the background. Eastward, across the Straits of Georgia, with its numerous islands, there is a faint outline of the British Columbia coastal range, and further south, Mount Baker lies like a cloud on the horizon, and all combined with a blue sky and a sea equally blue. — Mary Neal (Mrs.; W. J. Neal, Hon. Secretary Treasurer, 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 Rudyard IT has been stated that " Rud- yard " is a Hollandish word and derived from the ancient Teutonic, being made up of two Teutonic words—Hruod, " coun- cil " or " counsel," and Gyerd, " a fence," or " inclosure " ; and hence it carries the meaning " council-guard " or " the in- closure of a conclave." This second syllable may be compared with our own English words " yard," "guard, " and ' 'garden" —all of them derived from the same Teutonic original. The Irish race, in strict conservatism of the primal sound, continue to pronounce " guard " as " gyarrd," and " garden " as " gyarrden " and " guardian " as " gyarrdyen." What have our phil- ologists to say of this derivation of Rudyard? In Winchfield, Hants., parish church are the tombstones of the " Rudyerd " family, dating from Stuart times, the most notable being Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, who was a poet as well as a politician. It has been stated frequently that Kipling was named " Rudyard" after Rudyard Lake in Stafford- shire. Here is a story that appeared in the Kansas City Star as told by one J. Bourne Pinder. " My father was Thomas Pinder of the pottery firm of Pinder, Bourne & Co., now Doulton's, in Burslem, Staffordshire. In the pottery was a young man named John Kipling, a designer of decorations. He was a very clever young man, although somewhat eccentric. He used, I remember, as a boy, to carry pet mice attached to him by fine chains. He was a very vigorous man, full of amusing stories, and could do innumerable tricks. When I was a boy he made casts of my face. He made paper quills and put them in my nostrils, greased my face and then covered it with wet plaster. It was no fun, I can tell you, but he was a good sort of chap and used to tell me stories and sing songs and make things with a jack-knife for me, so I let him do it. He was a constant visitor at our house, and both my mother and father were very fond of him. One day my mother gave a picnic to the young people of the neighbourhood at a pretty little English lake between the villages of Rudyard and Rushton, not far from Burslem. John Kip- ling went, of course, and there met a pretty English girl, named Macdonald, the daughter of a Methodist minister at Endon. Kip- ling fell in love with her at once. They met very often at my mother's house, and it grew into a love affair on both sides. Then John Kipling went to the art schools in Kensington, and afterwards went out to direct the art schools in Lahore, and he took Miss Macdonald along with him to India as his wife. In the fulness of time a son was born to the Kiplings in Bombay. Their first meeting at Rudyard Lake must have been the pretty bit of senti- ment of their lives, for when they named their son they took for him that of the little lake on the banks of which they first saw each other." In a letter dated July 11, 1900, to the Manchester Daily Dispatch, Rudyard Kipling wrote to say " that so far as he knew there was no con- nection between his family and the place named Rudyard." This seems to dispose of J. Bourne Pinder's interesting little story in the Kansas City Star. December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL l7 The Homes of Rudyard Kipling by COLONEL C. H. MILBURN, O.B.E. [ This is the first of a short series of three articles on the houses in which Rudyard Kipling lived.] IN this study, I have endeavoured to trace the sequence of homes (houses) in which Rudyard Kipling lived. He was evidently a great traveller, and must have stayed for varying periods at many more houses than have been re- corded. I am quite prepared (and hope) for additions and possible corrections from some of our members ; for my only aim is to arrive at some authentic record of the various homes of Kipling, and for two reasons :— (1) that it may be a useful list to guide our Society if, at some future time, it thinks it desirable that a memorial plaque should be placed on some of the more important houses in which has lived one who has been described as " the great Victorian writer;" and (2) that there may be available a record (apart from his writings) which may be a foundation on which the future biographer could build. In thus trying to trace the resting places in his travels, I have endeavoured to do it chronologically—though I fear not always successfully. I have found many statements which cannot be dated ; I must therefore leave them for amplifica- tion by others who may be interested and who may probably have sources of information, not available to me. Confirming what I have said above on the extent of Kip- ling's travels, I have a copy of the Transactions of a Masonic Lodge in New Zealand on September 16th, 1925, which relates how, after certain business, " The follow- ing paper was read :— Bro. Rud- yard Kipling, by Wor. Bro. C. Dash. An active discussion then followed, in which W. Bro. A. Selwyn Bruce, Associate, took part, and spoke as follows. ' I met Bro. Rudyard Kipling in London in 1909. We were admitted to- gether into the . . . Society .... When Bro. Kipling saw ray name on the programme and learnt I was from New Zealand, he asked me what part I came from. On my replying " Christchurch," he said " Christchurch ! Oh, I well remember spending a very enjoy- able holiday in the Oxford Bush." I asked him how long ago that was and he replied " Twenty years ago," so that he was in Canterbury in 1889. I told him I did not know he had ever been in New Zealand and his reply, with a twinkle in his eye, was " There are not many parts of the world where I have not been, you know." This " twenty years ago " must have been only an approximate period, as from Something of Myself, page 96, it would appear that he commenced his tour of Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania in 1891. In 1889, he was in Lon- don.' In the following notes, " S " refers to Something of Myself ; and " K.J." refers to the Kipling Journal ; the first figure following gives the number of the " K.J.", 18 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 the second figure gives the page on which the reference will be found. 1865. BOMBAY. The birth- place of Kipling. " Near our little house on the Bombay Esplanade. ." " Far across green spaces round the house." (S.3.) " The under- standing visitor . . . will view with more than the ordinary interest of the ordinary sightseer the circular bronze tablet with its wreath of laurel, provided by Lord Lloyd, on which are inscribed the words :— Rudyard Kipling son of Lockwood Kipling first principal of The Bombay School of Art was born here 30-12-1865." (K.J. 3-13) I have not come across any state- ment as to what was his age when he was sent to England, but in S.4. it states that " there was a time in a ship with an immense semi-circle blocking all vision on each side of her. (She must have been the old paddle-wheel P.& O. Ripon.) There was a train across a desert (the Suez Canal was not yet opened) and a halt in it." " Then came a new small house smelling of aridity and emptiness. ... I lived in that house for close on six years .... The house itself stood in the extreme suburbs of Southsea, next to a Portsmouth unchanged in most particulars since Trafalgar .... It was an estab- lishment run with the full vigour of the Evangelical, as revealed to the Woman." (S.5.) ROTTINGDEAN. "For a month each year in December, I stayed with my Aunt Georgy at the Grange, North Road End, Rottingdean .... But on a cer- tain day—one tried to fend off the thought of it—the delicious dream would end and one would return to the House of Desolation, and, for the next two or three mornings there, cry on waking up." (S.11, et seq :) EPPING FOREST. "I was taken at once from the House ,of Desolation, and for months ran wild in a little farmhouse on the edge of Epping Forest, where I was not encouraged to refer to my guilty past." (S.17.) LONDON—Brompton Road. " Then we went to London, and stayed for some weeks in a tiny lodging-house in the semi-rural Brompton Road, kept by an ivory- faced lordly-whiskered ex-butler and his patient wife. ... I slip- ped out into the little brick- walled garden and saw the dawn break." (S.18.) In an article in Chamber's Journal for July, 1939,, Mrs. Fleming says " I never walk along Brompton Road, or go into Harrods', without wondering which glittering department rears its many stories over the site of little number 227 .... It was as though a little country cottage had been picked up and set down in a London street. The window of our square sitting-room, which had deep dark brown cupboards built in on either side of the fire place, and a very old unused penny postage stamp of fabulous value we were certain, stuck on the ceiling, was flat upon the street, without any railing or area .... The back of the house was even more fascinating than the front. The long narrow bed- rooms upstairs had beams in their low ceilings, were papered with a pre-Victorian striped pattern December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 19 of shaded ivy-leaves, very faded but still curiously elegant, and the windows gave on a beautiful expanse of roofs and leads." Kensington High Street. "My mother on her return to India, con- fided my sister and me to the care of three dear ladies, who lived off the far end of Kensington High Street, over against Addison Road, in a house filled with books, peace, kindliness, patience and what today would be called ' culture.' But it was natural atmosphere." (S.21) 1878. UNITED SERVICES COLLEGE "was in the nature of a company promoted by poor officers and the like for the cheap education of their sons, and set up at Westward Ho ! near Bideford. (S.22.) 1878. PARIS. At the end of his first term, he had to stay up at the College for the Easter holidays, but for compensation, " in the Spring of the Paris Exhibition of 1878, my father was in charge of the Indian Section of Arts and Manufactures there . . and he promised that I should accompany him to Paris on con- dition that I gave no trouble .... Late at night we came to a boarding house full of English people, at the back of the Parc Monceau." (Souvenirs of France. pp.1). 1882. RETURN TO INDIA. " Fortunately, and thanks to the India Office, we now know that the Brindisi (P. & O. Steamer) reached Bombay on October 18, 1882, and that one of the passengers from London was ' Mr. Kipling.' " (K. J. 7-14) LAHORE. " Where my people lived "...." I had my own room in the house." (S.39) In the issue of The Civil & Military Gazette, Christmas Supplement of 1933, there is an illustration of the tablet, unveiled by the late Sir Michael O'Dwyer, which is now on the editorial office of that Gazette and bears this inscrip- tion: " Rudyard Kipling Worked Here—1882-1887." Though this can hardly be called a ' Residence,' I think it is worthy of inclusion in this record, as Kipling spent most of his working life there whilst in India. I have not been able to find any description of his residence there ; but in the Journal of June, 1933, (K.J. 26-33) there is a good illustration, describing Rudyard Kipling's home in Lahore—1883, from a drawing by Bago Ram, by permission of the Editor of the Bookman. SIMLA. " My month's leave at Simla, or whatever Hill Station my people went to, was pure joy. . . Simla was another new world." (S.57) ALLAHABAD. An illustration in K.J. 29-1 shows the bungalow at Allahabad, in which The Pioneer was first printed in 1865. When the new Press Building was erected at that city, the old building was, it is believed, used as a residence by Kipling and in it he is supposed to have written most of his early contributions which appeared in The Pioneer. (K.J. 29-3) " In '87 orders came for me to serve on The Pioneer, our big sister-paper at Allahabad, hundreds of miles to the southward." I have not been able to find any notes as to where he lived there. (S.69). (To be continued) 20 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 "Tommy Dodd" This throws further Light upon our December frontispiece. WE published in the Journal for December, 1939, a frontis- piece entitled "Kipling's Final Visit to Lahore." The visit was recorded by Kipling in Home, and the drawing depicted, inter- alia, Rudyard Kipling assisting at Lady Lyall's bazaar in aid of the Mayo Hospital, Lahore, in December, 1891. One of the panels in this quaint drawing showed " Tommy Dodd," a gambling game much played at the period, in full swing. The drawing—-by " E.H.A."*—was reproduced in the Kipling Journal by courtesy of Captain E. W. Martindell, who kindly lent the block, and from whom we have since received the following interesting note : "The enclosed copy of " Liber- avi Animant Meant," which throws a little light on " Tommy Dodd " de- picted in the original drawing by E. H.A. and reproduced in the December issue of the Journal, appeared in The Week's News of April 21st, 1888. when Rudyard Kipling was editing that paper. The authorship is un- known as it was unsigned. # # # LIBERAVI ANIMAM MEAM " The Bishop of Bombay is displeased with Society because it encourages the sinful game of " Tommy Dodd " at Charity Bazaars." Pioneer, April 14th. My name is Tommy Dodd (Tommy Dodd) And I scorn the Bishop's rod (Tommy Dodd) You may find me spinning free At each Charity Squeejee— " Stakes confined to one rupee " (Tommy Dodd) Bis. And the Bishop he may write, He may write Yea, in lawn sleeves black and white Urge the fight, And in language erudite Lash the gambling appetite Of Society polite. (Tommy Dodd). But the Bishop's wielded crook, (Tommy Dodd), Ere they cursed by Bell and Book (Tommy Dodd) Crozier, rochet, mitre, pall, I am stronger than them all, And shall flourish when they fall (Tommy Dodd). Dam the Indus in its bed (Tommy Dodd), Blanket Kinchinjunga's head (Tommy Dodd). Skid a glacier, cook a crater, Make the Morning Sun rise later, And I'll own that you're the greater (Tommy Dodd). Spokeshave every failing human (Tommy Dodd) Turn the heart of man from woman (Tommy Dodd) Cleanse the Earth of evil in it Pinion Passion's wings with sinnet, And—I'll abdicate this minute (Tommy Dodd) While the breath of man endures (Tommy Dodd) There's an older Law than yours (Tommy Dodd). He will quit your highest altars For the Chance that clicks and falters Where the croupier reads the psalters (Tommy Dodd). Here's my answer to your cry (Tommy Dodd) " See the little horses fly ! (Tommy Dodd) Open bank and we'll begin Let the whirring needle spin Try your luck—you're sure to win ! (Tommy Dodd.") * Author of the once famous book. " Behind the Bungalow," and other charming Indian Sketches December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 21 Kiplingiana Press and other comment on Kipling and his work KIPLING'S CREW AND CAPTAIN THE area of free speech is now so lamentably restricted in the world that genuine comment on Mr. Churchill's fine broadcast is confined to relatively few countries outside the British Empire. In the United States—the centre point of untrammelled criticism and appre- ciation—the speech is rated high. Americans recognize in it the accents of leadership, which is all the more noteworthy, as he himself said that this is the war of the unknown warrior. It is, of course, a case of Kipling's Crew and Captain who understand one another— " For the one will do what the other commands, although they are chilled to the bone, And both together can live through weather that neither could face alone. '' — The Times. STORYTELLER & MYTHMAKER The British Empire was to Kipling the fine product of a due recognition of a stratified society inherent in the universal law of nature. The incidental faults of this system he condoned be- cause the principle was grand and true. Because later generations have scrutin- ised the faults more closely, or more querulously, Kipling's reputation came under a shadow during the phase of aggressive Radicalism. It has been his misfortune to be judged very often because of his politics when he should have been valued as an artist—as if one should reject the greatness of " Othello " because the author had extremely insular views of the French character when he wrote " Henry V." .... Kipling, after the quarrels of rival ideologies have become matters for the historian, will survive not as the Poet of Empire, but as the great storyteller, myth-maker, and hymner of heroic society.—Glasgow Herald. ' INNOCUOUS DESUETUDE." Phrases of Mr. Churchill's have a way of passing into the language. He had loud laughter out of the House when he said that the Silent Column had " passed into what is called, in the United States, innocuous desue- tude." ' Innocuous desuetude "—what a phrase ! A friend of mine has tracked it down to Kipling's " The Captive " (in " Traffics and Discoveries "). There the inventor said that he and his patent field-gun lived during the Boer War in " innocuous desuetude." Now, the inventor was an American, one Laughton O. Zigler. Did Kipling pick up an American phrase from somewhere ? Or did Mr. Churchill pick up a manufactured American phrase from Kipling ?— News Chronicle. A MAN OF HIS TIME. Kipling was far more fundamentally a man of his time than is usually supposed, for he was so not only politically but also metaphysically. As to Hardy and to so many others of his contemporaries, humanity seemed to him to be isolated in a faintly hostile void. For Kipling, man could only affirm himself by creating himself in action : even the everyday affair of business, meals, and clothing. Builds a bulwark 'twixt despair and the edge of nothing ; and the action must not be merely an " indecent restlessness," but the result of thought. It is thought which produces the only action worth while ; but action is judged worthy for its motives rather than for its results (Kipling had great sympathy for failures), and the only motives for which Kipling really cared were self- abnegation and loyalty. " I tell you now that the faith that takes care that every man shall keep faith, even though be may save his soul by breaking faith is the faith for a man to believe in." Power, or anything else given a man, is given for something selfless : It is not given For goods or gear But for the Thing. —Bonamy Dobrée in Time & Tide. MARTELLO TOWERS & R.K. The late Mr. Rudyard Kipling was among those who conceived the idea of occupying a Martello tower as a holiday resort. Writing to Sir John 22 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 Fisher, First Sea Lord of the Admiralty in September, l905, he says : " 1 want to rent a Martello Tower on the Kent coast for a year or two as a summer refuge. Could you tell me to which of the Departments I should apply— the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports or who ? I promise not to injure the article or let it be stolen." In minuting this to the Secretary of the Admiralty, Fisher remarks : " He's a patriot and I would like to help him.....I suppose it is the War Office who have the Martello Towers." Actually, both of these celebrities were somewhat out of their reckoning. The Martello towers were not connected with the Cinque Ports in any way, and those still in military control were limited to a few on Shorncliffe Heights and a few on Hythe rifle range. In order to rent a Martello tower capable of reasonable human habitation, the best plan would be to apply to a house and estate agent. The writer learns from Mr. Kipling's daughter that the scheme came to nothing and that it was she who, as a little girl of adventurous spirit, persuad- ed her father to consider it in the first place. The failure of her plan is not hard to understand when it is realised that the Kent coast towers were confined to Folkestone, Hythe and Dymchurch, few of which would be desirably situated and fewer still habitable. Contrary to popular belief, the proportion of Martello towers fit for occupation is remarkably small. Out of 103 originally built in Kent, Sussex, Essex and Suffolk, only forty- five remain to-day, and of these only six appear to have been converted for private residence. It is true that others have been used for coastguard stations and other official needs, but the coastguardsmen even then usually lived in near-by cottages while the tower was employed mostly for look-out purposes and as a store. One or two more are in partial occupancy as tea or refreshment rooms, while No 73, at Eastbourne, and Tower " F," at Clacton, serve as museums of sorts and are open to the public as show places.—Commander Hilary P. Mead, R.N., in " Country Life." AN INTERVIEW WITH "STALKY" FORTY YEARS AGO. Looking through a book of newspaper cuttings I came across an article by one " Louis Tracy " on an interview that he had with " Captain L. C. Dunsterville of the 20th Punjab In- fantry, then stationed at Delhi." Louis Tracy remarks " We all knew he was a clever chap—Russian interpreter, you know, and that sort of thing— whilst his professional status may be gleaned from the mere fact that at the present moment he is carrying on the duties of Station Staff Officer and Cantonment Magistrate of Delhi in addition to officiating as Wing Com- mander and Adjutant in his regiment .... We have come to regard his lightest utterances as fraught with hidden meaning. He cannot even, with his customary accuracy, tell us exactly what the thermometer registered at 1.30 p.m. yesterday, but we strive to unveil a bit of sardonic humour at our expense. Nevertheless the sus- picion is quite unjust." Referring to Stalky & Co. just published at that time, Louis Tracy says :—" In the first place he assured me that the main incidents of the series of stories which have attracted so much attention are based on fact. " We three," Dunsterville said, " were quite as distinct and apart from the other boys in the school as we are represented to be. I cannot honestly say we were popular with either masters or boys. It was not to be expected. So far as the Masters were concerned not one of them could ever get the better of Kipling. His keen wits and unfailing resources never deserted him. Even when they knew he was humbugging them they could not catch him. As for our schoolmates, what must they have thought of three youngsters who tried to model their lives—for a month or so at a time— on the maxims of Ruskin, varying the menu with a course cf Carlyle—who decorated their study with a seagreen dado and Greek border—who spent their pocket money in buying prints of medieval saints in the cult of pre- Raphaelite art ? " When asked if it was true that none of Kipling's schoolmates anticipated the fame that awaited him, Captain Dunsterville laughed. " I should have said exactly the opposite," he replied. Why, we all credited Gig-lamps— that was his nickname not Beetle— with the sense of a man of thirty when he was thirteen. Appreciate his genius December, 1940 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 23 indeed ! When we were hard up we used to rush him into our study and sit over him until he dashed off an article for the local paper, for which he got ten boh. Could appreciation go fur- ther ? One day, when he was lazy, and even punching would not make him work, we sold all his clothes, every stitch except one small jacket. We revelled in cocoa for days on the strength of that desperate resort. . . . Rudyard always had the Imperialistic touch in his work. In the School Magazine of March 20th, 1882, is a poem he wrote when the news came that some wretched fanatic had attempt- ed the life of Her Majesty. It is headed Ave Imperatrix." Louis Tracy concludes by saying . . . " Every now and again a letter reaches Stalky (which again was not Captain Dunsterville's juvenile cognomen— it was the school equivalent for " cute ") adorned on the cover with a nourish representing a pair of spec- tacles. By this token he knows at a glance that a message has come far borne across the seas from his old schoolmate. Judging from the manner in which these missives are stored away with fearful pictures of dragons and other monsters, they rank among his most cherished possessions." I wonder if " Stalky '' remembers this interview of forty years ago. —E. W. M. KIPLING IN NEW ENGLAND. " This note " writes a correspond- ent, " might well find a corner in your interesting feature " Kipling- iana." It is a letter which appeared in The Times Literary Supplement dated July 31st, 1937, from Mr. Howard C. Rice, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The letter runs :— The reviewer of my booklet on Rudyard Kipling in 'New Eng- land, in your issue of May 15, 1937, calls attention to the dis- crepancy between my account of how Kipling came to settle in Vermont and that given in Kip- ling's own autobiography. I stated that the Kiplings purchased the ground on which their home " Naul- akha " was later built during their first visit to Vermont in February- March, 1892, that they then made a trip to the Orient, and returned to live in Bliss Cottage while their house was being built. The auto- biography does not suggest that Kipling had any intention of settling in New England when he first passed through America on his wedding journey, and implies that the failure of his bank in Japan forced him into " flight " back to New England. The latter ver- sion implies that Kipling's estab- lishment in Vermont was wholly accidental: the former indicates a definite desire and decision to settle there. Curiously enough, the account given in my booklet is substantially correct. The present owner of Naulakha has informed me that the land records of the town of Dummerston show that the ground in which Naulakha stands was purchased by the Kiplings in March, 1892, several weeks before their departure for Japan. Further- more, the newspapers of the time tell of the Kiplings' plans to build a home on land already purchased. QUESTION AND ANSWER. In the Sussex County Herald of February 25th, 1938 under the head- ing " Questions and Answers con- cerning Sussex," this note appeared : Question. Of course I know that the late Rudyard Kipling spent a long period in India. But the scenes of Captains Courageous, seen re- cently on the films, are so different that I wonder if you can say how he came by all his information ? Answer. In his early married life in New England Kipling went on summer visits to Gloucester, Massachusetts, and there attended the annual memorial service to the men drowned or lost in the cod-fishing schooners, seen as a fit close to the film. This no doubt gave him the idea for his book. Also, Dr. Conland, his doctor in New Eng- land, had served in his youth in the cod-fishing fleet and was thus able to supply him with details. He himself could take a large cod and with the appropriate knives demonstrate how the fish was pre- pared for the hold, in such a way that Kipling could make no mis- take in print. Together, too, they boarded every craft which looked as if it might prove useful, supple- 24 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1940 mented by all kinds of charts and instruments for use off the Banks which he procured for him. R. K. AND GEORGE MAC- DONALD. This letter appeared in The Scots- man of February 14th, 1940 :— " Sir, It would be difficult to imagine two writers more unlike each other than the author of Barrack Room Ballads and the Scot who wrote innumerable tender lyrics of childhood, some fine hymns, " David Elginbrod," and " Alec Forbes." Hitherto I had never connected the two, but a recent article in a London weekly from the pen of Mr. A. G. Macdonell stated that Rudyard Kipling's mother had been Miss Alice Macdonald, daughter of George Macdonald, the Scottish novelist and poet- preacher. This of course, is a mistake ; her father was the Rev. F. W. Macdonald, whose daughters must have been very remarkable young women, as one married Alfred Baldwin, father of Earl Baldwin ; another Burne-Jones ; and another Sir E. J. Poynter. The object of this letter is to inquire if the Rev. F. W. Macdon- ald was any relation of George Macdonald, as to the best of my knowledge no mention of the fact has previously been made.—I am, &c, Andrew Fairservice. Letter Bag Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication as short as possible. FROM SIR PERCY BATES. WITH reference to the note on " The Last Chantey," I think the word ' speckshioner is one of R.K.'s rare errors. There should not be an apostrophe in front of it, see Moby Dick, chapter 33, also the Oxford Dictionary. The word really means fat-cutter. I asked R.K. to remove the apostrophe when his Sussex Edition was under way but he did not do it and I am afraid I never asked him why.— Percy E. Bates, Hinderton Hall, Neston, Wirral, Cheshire. CECIL RHODES'S DREAM. In The Times of September 13th, 1940, there appeared under the above heading an extract from a letter from Cecil Rhodes to W. T. Stead, written at the end of 1893, in which he said inter alia :—" What an awful thought it is that if we had not lost America, or if even now we could arrange with the present members of the United States Assembly and our House of Commons, the peace of the world is secured for all eternity. We could hold your Federal Parliament five years at Washington and five at London." It is not without interest to note that in a sketch entitled Dm Aliter Visum that Kipling contributed to the Pioneer in July 4th, 1885, later reprinted in the U.S.C.C, he closes with this prophetic statement :—" Yet the world spun no whit the less steadily on its axis because five decades hence the two great Anglo-Saxon nations should be welded together .... into one vast empire, and that the united flag should wave from the Azores to the Golden Horn, and from Behring Straits to Tasmania." It is true that this Anglo- Saxon union had not taken place in 1935 as predicted by Kipling, but is it altogether beyond the bounds of probability, seeing the trend of world affairs today ?—E. W. M. "JOHN SHORT.'' Referring to Colonel C. H. Milburn's query in Journal No. 54 for July (page 31) regarding the identity of J. Short. In notes sent to me in 1936, the late Mr. G. C. Beresford used the following description :— "John Short. The quaint hare- lipped bellringer used to pace up and down ringing the big bell for class times, prayers, call-overs, meal- times, also for the detested getting- up times in the mornings. John Short was a ' character,' a piece of old Devonshire. He was never a second late with his ringing."— A. Eric Parry, " Chez-Nous," Pimpley Road, Northam, N. Devon, A MEMORANDUM Many members will have received recently a Memorandum, signed by the President and the Chairman of Council, referring to the effect of the war upon the Society, and giving a list of suggestions, in the hope that some members can make use of them with a view to increasing interest in the Society. A number of members have already answered, and General Dunsterville and Mr. Brooking are engaged in dealing with these replies, which contain offers of help and further suggestions, some of which may be helpful. Several members have sent cheques in lieu of service, which are also very welcome. A summary of the results of the appeal will appear in our next issue with a list of donations. H.M.S. KIPLING A Note from the Hon. Secretary of the Kipling Society. I am afraid I cannot give members anything like the information I know they would like to have about H.M.S. Kipling. The Censor forbids. Officers and men are going strong and there have been few changes in the Ward Room since our members' visit in the early part of the year. The ship's company send Christmas greetings to all members of the Society who have taken so much interest in H.M.S. Kipling—good wishes which are heartily reciprocated by members of our Society in all parts of the world.