CONTENTS PAGE Notes......- 1 Shere Khan's Skin -------- 4 Kipling's Hindustani— Lieut.-Gen. Sir George MacMunn, k.c.b., k.c.s.i., d.s.o. 6 Kipling Among the Early Critics—Captain E. W. Martindell 9 H.M.S. Kipling......... 12 When Rudyard Kipling was in New Zealand—Tom L. Mills 13 Pierre Mille—Henry D. Davray, c.b.e. - - - - 16 Kipling and the School II—Miss E. B. Hawkins - - - 17 In Memory of Kipling -----..-- 20 The Homes of Rudyard Kipling—Colonel C. H. Milburn, o.b.e. 21 Book Reviews --------- 24 Letter Bag ---------- 25 Kipling and the Boy Scout Movement 27 Kiplingiana.......... 28 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. H.M.S. KIPLING THE KIPLING JOURNAL published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. VIII. No. 57. April, 1941 Notes STINGS BENEATH WORDS. THE leading article quoted from The Times elsewhere is a handsome tribute to Kipling's multifarious interest, and a no less handsome addition to that material which it is our task to sift and harvest in a presentable form. The masterly prowess and rapidity with which General Wavell has wrested Libya and so much else from an apostate Italy is only equalled by the ease and point with which he handles the facts in Kiplingesque terms. Slap- dash critics to whom we lately referred have been too much in the habit of associating Kipling merely with the barrack-room and its " bat,"—meaning the choice vernacular thereof. Nobody dimin- ishes the genius which took the discredited lingo of the drill- ground or the " pub," and turned it to satires and songs that the world will not willingly let die. But here we find him honoured by conquerors, no less. As a boy, Kipling had a gift for the double-edged wit of school days, just as he had for the wild- flowers of speech and folk-lore all his life among the conquerors. This faculty came to a rich fruition when he conjured up old Indian memories in order to weave jungle fables for his own youngsters, and everyone knows how children of many nations have hailed them as a godsend ever since. But this fresh endorsement of the merit of those splendid stories shows how they enjoy a close and permanent place in the heart of a first-class leader of men who has written his name with such dash and brilliance on the annals of this war of world-liberation. The cold touch of fact has long ago dispelled that picturesque legend of Napier's cable about his con- quest of Scinde—" Peccavi,"— (Latin for "I have sinned "), much to the distress of word- play connoisseurs. But this neat exchange of cables branding a pair of vainglorious impostors with the jungle labels they deserve, is an unalterable fact, as well as an abiding classic in the lighter records of Empire and of war. ACROSS 3000 YEARS. Talking of the Jungle-Book, an admirer of the Greeks and the magnificent fight they are putting up against the foul Italian in- vasion, sends The Times a sug- gestion which shows both appre- ciation and discernment. He des- cries in the qualities the victorious Greeks have shown hitherto, many of those that mark Rikki-tikki- tavi in the fifth chapter of the Jungle-Book, and everyone who knows that indomitable warrior- 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1941 in-miniature will endorse the com- pliment. "Greece," the letter adds, " that has flown at the venomous aggressor, is as skilful as she is gallant in fight," and so on. The writer might have added that some two or three thousand years ago Greece led the way in cele- brating those qualities of patriotic valour and sacrifice which have been the foundation of pagan and Christian chivalry since. This, perhaps, is why Greek classic writers have figured so repeatedly amongst the day-by-day quotations which The Times has given as a source of welcome encourage- ment since the war began. That being so, we may look forward to seeing a superb citation from the Odyssey, namely the three brief speeches of father, son and grandsire with which Homer concludes his noble epic, or nearly so :—Thus Odysseus : " Telemachus, soon shalt thou learn this when thou thyself art got to the place of the battle where the best men try the issue—namely, not to bring shame on thy father's house, on us who in time past have been eminent for might and hardihood over all the world." Then wise Telemachus answered him, saying, " Thou shalt see me if thou wilt, dear father, in this my mood no whit disgracing thy line, according to thy word." So spake he, and Laertes was glad and spake, saying : " What a day has dawned for me, kind gods ; yea, a glad man am I. My son and my son's son are vying with one another in valour." This is the version given in the Oxford prose rendering of Butcher and Lang, and fitly blends the past, the present, and the future with the symbolic laurels of three generations of Greeks. A GREAT PIONEER. The Westminster Abbey service in memory of Lord Baden-Powell brought together a congregation that was also worthy of remem- bering. For it included repre- sentatives of the King and the Prime Minister, of the Dominions and allied and neutral countries, of the Red Cross and many in- ternational societies, and of five million scouts and guides in all parts of the world. It is also worth noting that whereas such memorial services are usually the closing of a chapter, this one links the past and the present with an assured future. For no man in modern times has left a constructive piece of organi- sation behind him that possesses a wider appeal or a surer promise of survival and extension for the good of mankind. "B.-P." AND '' R. K." From a privileged source we get an interesting comment on " B.-P." which has an interest for all our members. One even- ing at Bateman's a few years ago the name or the great Scout Founder cropped up, apropos of a suggestion in an Indian paper that he richly deserved the Nobel Prize. One regretful comment was that the only available channels to that distinction were science and literature, and accordingly it was urged that in this connection there was something to be said for " Aids to Scouting." This early effort of his pen contained the germ of Baden-Powell's whole idea, and had more dynamic and widespread results perhaps, than April, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 any handbook of its size ever written. This suggestion was received with a word and a nod of assent, and so was the further remark that if the Nobel bequest was founded to honour the promoters of world-peace, then '' B.-P " un- doubtedly stood amongst the first in the way of merit. Nor can it be denied that the Scout and Guide movement embodies more of Kipling's ideals than any or- ganisation of our time—especially in habits of self-reliance, open- air life and ideas, and a disposition to befriend every grade and every race, without bating a single British ideal in any way. INK & THE 'EIGHTIES. Captain Martindell's survey of the treatment Kipling received at the hands of his contemporaries and critics is a reminder that his début as a writer was not a course of " roses all the way," still less an orgy of the proverbial " beer and skittles." We have had it borne in upon us in a hundred ways, what an infinitude of toil and application went to the perfecting of his style and range, and what pains he took to keep ahead of all demands in respect of freshness and vigour and that essential touch of self where he was unapproachable. Mr. Wells and others have pointed out how the 'eighties brought a happy convergence of magazine enterprise and first-class illustrators, as well as an eagerly appreciative public, to smoothe the path of the short-story expert ; and here Kipling had no equal. But if it was a period which had checked the enfeebling hobby of " log-rolling," or mutual admiration for business purposes, the trade of criticism began to go ahead more than ever—with what tendency to doctrinairism and jargon and logic-chopping we have seen too often since. ANTIPODEAN LAURELS. Kipling's connection with New Zealand, referred to on another page, gives us occasion to regret how hardly the sister-islands of meadow and mountain and sun- shine have fared of late in respect of sunken mails ; but how nobly her sons have been doing in nearly every phase of the war. In this connection how many readers, we wonder, have noted a rather unusual centenary. Just a hundred years ago the reading world was all agog with the name of New Zealand, because the Imperial Government had con- sented at last to annex the islands after a century ana a half of indecision and delay. The famous Canterbury settlement was in the offing, with all that has happened since, from pastoral development to " Erewhon" ; and Macaulay's mythical New Zealander had just made his appearance in the " Edin- burgh Review." What he had to say of the " ruins of St. Paul's " was neither new nor destined to be realised, thank goodness ; but it comes home to us curiously now, all the same. Readers will render service to the Kipling Society by enrolling their friends as members. 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1941 Shere Khan's Skin Sir Archibald Wavell's Jungle-Book Message THOSE members of our Society in various parts of the world who heard the recent B.B.C. News Bulletin reference to the exchange of telegrams between the Society and one of its most distinguished members, General Wavell, Commander in Chief in the Middle East, doubtless listened, as one correspondent well says, with ' ' surprised pleasure or pleasur- able surprise." Following the triumph of Sidi Barrani, and before the fall of Bardia the Kipling Society sent to General Wavell, on his victory over the Italians in Egypt, the following telegram :—" Kipling Society sends congratulations on Tabaqui's discomfiture and all good wishes." To this Sir Archibald Wavell replied:—" Many thanks Hope Shere Khan's skin will soon be on Council Rock." The references contained in this exchange of telegrams emanate of course, from Kipling's Jungle Books. Tabaqui is the dish licker, one of the jackal tribe, a jungle gossip, talebearer, and mischief maker, who truckles to Shere Khan, the lame man-eating tiger that brought shame on the Free People and boasted that he "killed man for choice and not for food," though " to kill man is always shamefu1—the Law says so." Sir Archi- bald Wavell's reference to Shere Khan is intended for Hit- ler and his German man-killers, who wish to destroy Mowgli, the man- child. At the last jungle council meeting that Mowgli attended before he left the jungle, he told Shere Khan that next time he came to the Council Rock it would be with Shere Khan's hide on his head, and his farewell remark to those present at the council was :—" I will surely come, and when I come it will be to lay out Shere Khan's hide upon the Coun- cil Rock." SHERE KHAN AND TABAQUI On the day following the publi- cation of these telegrams, The Times, in a leading article, wrote :— " The telegram from the Kip- ling Society to Sir Archibald Wavell and his answer have put Rudyard Kipling firmly among the myth-makers. Everybody had called Mussolini a jackal—the par- allel is too obvious to miss. When the Kipling Society calls him Tabaqui, he becomes both a particu- lar jackal and the typical jackal. Instead of a rather vague implication of unpleas- ant qualities we have a very definite portrait of a creature exercising its unpleasant qualities, to the scorn and detest- ation of all who are not afraid of its power to hurt themselves. And when General Wavell replies in terms of The Jungle-Book, the prompt- General Sir Archibald Wavell, C.i.C. in the Middle East. April, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 ness and the striking aptness of his reply prove how deeply the veracity of Kipling's types has impressed itself upon Kip- ling's countrymen. The jackal, the rogue tiger, and the victorious law-abiding man fill the frame completely ; and once more a myth-maker is seen to be a master of broad and simple truth to which, for all their complexity, human affairs will conform. To do this is to do something more than tell a good story (and to think of Kipling at this moment is to think what a glorious yarn he would have made out of the nine English prisoners who made prisoners of their captors in the Singarella) ; it is to lay down a pattern for truth. A KIND OF SHORTHAND, "It looks as if The Jungle-Books (and others among Kipling's books, no doubt) were to be classics in terms of which people can talk to each other in a kind of shorthand. Neither General Wavell nor the Kipling Society could have said so much in so few words without the common ground of Kipling. An omniscient or nearly omniscient reader, such as a George Saintsbury, might find it an amusing task to take any book of the kind that Charles Lamb would allow to be a book, and follow out all the things in it which (whether the writer knew it or not) were derived from or referred to some other book. R. K's BIBLE KNOWLEDGE. "It is a common-place that the English Bible leaves its traces in every page of English books and in every article in English newspapers ; and indeed Kipling himself revealed again and again his first-hand knowledge of it. Here, as everywhere, there is no getting away from Shakes- peare ; but other famous books there are—Gulliver's Travels, Don Quixote, and Pickwick are among them, and perhaps a plea might be put in for Tom Jones—which are to be found in the stuff of nearly all our literature. APT REFERENCE. " The indebtedness has its lighter side. In his book of reminiscences Mr. Graham Robertson records (we tell the story from memory) how Ellen Terry once remarked to him " By the living Jingo ! " Mr. Robertson's reply was to open a window. They both knew their Vicar of Wakefield, and no more words were needed to show that Dame Ellen was suffering as Miss Skeggs had suffered. There are writers and talkers who pride themselves on their unsparing reliance upon say, the two Alice books, or the Bab Ballads or The Young Visitors ; while more serious minds find in Ruskin or in the letters of Horace Walpole an apt quotation or reference for the enrichment at any and every turn of their own thought. A HUNDRED YEARS HENCE " But behind this conscious use of authors there lies the uncon- scious use which is truly the highest possible tribute to their work—the proof that it has sunk so deep into the general mind that its origin has been forgotten. A hundred years hence minds deeply indebted to Kipling may quote Kipling without knowing it." 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1941 races could communicate and be managed. It grew up on the basic language of Aryan India with a vocabulary that is largely Persian and Arabic, but with a grammar that is Hindi. It is normally written in the Persian- ised form of the Arabic character, which leads from right to left. Hindi is normally written in the Devanagri character which reads from left to right like our own. Urdu is the Turkish word for an army, and is used to this day in the Turkish Arm), for an ' army corps.' It is the same as the Anglicised word ' horde.' It is a beautiful language, having great power of expression, owing largely to its Persian vocabulary, and it is found in its purest and most graceful form, near the capital cities of the Moslem dynasties, viz : Delhi and Lucknow, and far in the south at the conquerors' colony of Vellore, but here rather more Persianised than in the north. Persian itself was the official language of India since the days of William the Conqueror, the Moslem conquests having begun about the year one thousand. But the peoples of India speak many sweet prakrits or vernaculars, all derived, save where in the south there may be tongues of Turkish origin, from the old Aryan language of the white invaders, which has come down to us, from the old polished language, the Sanskrit, as Hindi. In the distant provinces, it has melted down and moulded itself into THE earlier books and stories of Rudyard Kipling contain many Hindustani words, naturally enough. In these stories, written in India for Europeans in or of India, that is but natural. Even then the Indian words are not in excess, and the text is not ' larded ' with them. But the words and phrases are of two different categories, one : the terms, often in themselves in- accurate, in everyday use among educated Europeans in India, the words of the house, the stable, and the hunting field—these latter more dignified in their accuracy— and secondly, the words used more colloquially, more accurately, and often beautifully, in the pure stories of Indian drama and tragedy. There is perhaps one more cate- gory, the amazing mangled phrase- ology with which Thomas Atkins used to, and still does, make himself understood by the Indian, by what has something of tele- pathy inherent. These categories are worthy of a glance for their own sakes, but before we do so, a few words of the language or rather languages of India are worth saying, for they have much of beauty and history inherent in them. Hindustani, or more properly Urdu, is the language of the edu- cated people of all Central and Upper India, and it is lingua franca left by all the conquering Moslem invaders from Central Asia and Afghanistan and Persia, the one language in which the mercenary conquerors of many Kipling s Hindustani by LIEUT GENERAL SIR GEORGE MacMUNN, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., D.S.O. April, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 Punjabi, Bengali, Guzerati, and sweetest of them all, Mahrathi, and several others, moulded to suit the peoples' requirements just as England wore down the stiff and awkward old Saxon into the expressive English of today, free of all the German-like inflections. Plain Tales from the Hills, De- partmental Ditties, and the like were stories of the English in India, and therefore contained many words of the first category aforesaid, and the sixpenny edition of the latter collection published in 1899, actually produced a glossary at the end for the benefit of the English reader who was unfamiliar with the East. It even explained the allusions to the names of houses in Simla, and to prominent European firms referred to in the text thus—' Benmore, The Old Simla Assembly Rooms,' ' Hamil- ton, a well known firm of jewellers ' etc., alongside such Indian words as Duftar, Bheesti, and Khidmutgar, this latter a Persian word really meaning " a renderer of service," and hence a table servant. This vocabulary is not always accurately rendered, but it will suffice and is interesting in its variety. I notice sometimes in our notes and queries, that some one asks the meanings of this or that Hindustani phrase, and I have not always been edified by the answers that readers have sent. The sense of what is meant is given truly enough, but not the how and the why. The British in India speak often a language that is very much ' English-French ' and not ' French-French.' An in- stance of that is the phrase kala juggah, of which some one asked the meaning. It is literally a " black place," and we use it for the dim little sitting-out places that we make for our dances where couples, between the dances, may chat in quiet and hold each others' hands, if they so wish. But kala is black in colour, and I don't think any Indian would use the phrase for ' black ' in the sense of ' dark.' But it is a time-honoured phrase in the best ' English-Hindustani,' and of course Kipling uses it as a house- hold word. He had a very good knowledge of the language and its idiom, as every child has, to which, if he return to India, he often comes back. There is one Indian habit that I have always loved, and that is the euphony of many of the domestic words which we run across in the Kipling stories of cantonment life. The lesser dom- estics come from the old outcast aboriginal tribes brought down by the Dravidian and Aryan con- quests. There is an instinctive sympathy with their status, in the names that their callings are given. The sweeper, the night- soil removalist, the lowest of them all—there lies one in an English churchyard, buried close by a crusader, by an English Vicar during the late war—is known as Mehtar which is Per- sian for Prince. The sweeper is summoned by the cry " O Mehtar " " O Prince ! " You will remember that the ruler of the state of Chitral bears the title Mehtar. Then again the humble useful tailor, the dirzee who makes up ball dresses for missy sahib on the verandah, is always called, at any rate in the North, the ' Khalifah'. Now Khalipha or 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1941 Caliph is the title of and means the " Successor "to the Prophet, one of the great religious problems of the world of Islam. A dirzee's feelings would not be hurt by the imperious summons from the head servant " O Khalif, come quickly ! But the most interesting of all euphemisms in domestic use, is the name of the water-carrier, the most useful and faithful of all your establishment ; humble, and outcast, yet many degrees higher than the knight cf the broom whom some English wag, without euphemistical intent, often calls " Plantagenet." Gunga Din was the bhisti, or bheestee, which is the term by which the water- carrier is addressed and known, and it is both beautiful and symbolic. Bihisht is ' heaven ' and the bhisti is 'the man of Heaven or Paradise,' though the latter itself is drawn from fardous, a hunting park, which realm would he the ' paradise ' of an Eastern Prince. If you put your head oui of the train window at some Indian railway station in the hot season, you will hear the cry down the long sun-stricken platform, " Oh ! Bhisti, Oh ! Man of Paradise ! bring water !" as Dives called to Lazarus. One can believe any- thing of a country that calls its water-carrier thus, and so Kipling wrote us Gunga Din. But when you get down to Kim and The Naulakha, (the nine-lakh necklace) you will find the real Indian words that the people use,—chela which is disciple, farash, the carpet- layer, zoolum, oppression, jumali, which is well affected (of spirits) or jullali which is terrible, and so forth. The Naulakha takes you to the heart of an old fashioned Prince's State. Muniras, which are charm-prayers, and dawut which is invocation, Shabash ! well done ! which really means " Be a king ! " and is pure Persian. Incidentally if you are young enough, read how the Gypsy Queen made love to Tarvin, and make up your mind when the war is over to go seek another such. One more re- mark. The word pukka, carelessly so written in the Kipling text, means ' cooked,' and so ' thorough.' It is used wrongly by the journa- list of today with the inferiority complex, in the phrase ' pukka sahib.' That is an Indian phrase, which they use of a gentleman in the highest sense of the word, the word described and defined in the fifteenth Psalm,—courteous, considerate, straight as a die. To use it for the somewhat over- bearing Englishman of fable, some- times still to be met, is merely wrong and mischievous. The term for such is bahadur, literally ' brave,' but used by the Indians themselves for a swashbuckler, hectoring and overbearing, and we English have made a half-English adjective for such gentry, white or brown, viz ; ' bahaduring.' Apart from the actual Indian words that Kipling uses, there is a special charm and accurate interpretation in the English that he uses when he makes an Indian speak. The turn of sentence, the idiom and the colour is Indian, even when the words are English. It is of course very evident in Kim, and astoundingly so in those letters purporting to be from Indian soldiers in France or their relatives to them, given in The Eyes of Asia. Such colour reaches its brightest, perhaps, in the un- April, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 collected, most powerful poem The Seven Nights of Creation (Calcutta Review, April, 1886) and to an equal height in The Vision of Hamid Ali (ibid, Oct., '85). which begins : " Azizun of the Dauri Bagh : the Pearl and Hamid Ali of the Delhi Gate Were present when the Muezzin called to Prayer at midnight from the Mosque of Wazir Khan. —a poem which it is greatly to be hoped may some day see the light of day again in a volume of verse. Kipling Among the Early Critics by CAPTAIN E. W. MARTINDELL LOOKING AHEAD IN 1898 Dr. Kellner, author of the History of English Litera- ture in the Victorian Era, des- cribed in the Neues Wiener Tage- blatt a visit he paid to Kipling at Rottingdean. He summed up his impressions in the phrase : " Today I have seen happiness face to face." This is what he said about his visit :—" The work- room is of surprising simplicity, the north wall is covered with books half its height, over the door hangs a portrait of Burne- Jones, to the right, near the window, stands a plain table on which lie a couple of pages containing verses. No works of art, no conveniences, no knick-knacks, the unadorned room simple and earnest like a Puritan chapel. "I do my daily task conscientiously, but not all that I write is printed : most of it goes there." The waste paper basket here received a vigorous kick and a mass of torn-up papers rolled on the ground. The Puritanic strain in his nature came out the more strongly at the moment when others—like Burns, for example—have lost their hold on themselves in the hour of triumph. Kipling is never so distrustful and self-critical as when he has around him the cries of praise. " I am very distrustful against praise," said he, " very distrustful against fame. You know the fate of eighteenth-century Eng- lish literature, how many ' immortal poets' that prolific time brought forth, and yet how much of this ' immortal ' poetry still lives in our time ? To name only one, who reads Pope nowadays ? I often run over these volumes here " (here he pointed to the Edition de Luxe of his works, published by Macmillan) " and think to myself how much of that which is printed on such beautiful paper ought never to have seen the light. How much was written for the love of gain, how often has the knee been bowed ' in the House of Rimmon ? ' (a favourite expression of Kipling). All that fate—Kipling would call it " the good God "—has to bestow of real worth has been granted to this wonderful child of fortune ; love, domesticity, independence, fame, and power in the vigour of his youth (he is only thirty-two) and sound health, and above all, the capacity for enjoying his 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1941 good fortune. Nor is that all ; Kipling has the happiest fortune which can happen to a man when he has attained his highest aims, his father and mother are still alive, and he can and does say with proudest modesty, " All that I am I owe to them." " The annexation of one white nation by another," he said, " I regard as the greatest crime that a politician can commit. Don't annex white men." " How about the blacks ? " " I am against slavery," was the answer, " if only for this reason, that the white man becomes de- moralised by slavery." He is an ardent admirer of Cecil Rhodes, whom he knows personally and whose work he is able to judge from his recent visit to Matabele- land. " How did you get on with Rhodes ? What sort of a man does he appear ? " was the question to which the answer came : " Rhodes is greater than his work . . . ." He interests himself in all the literary work of the day, and is at home in all the chief movements and side currents in the spiritual life of England. When discussing the Literary History of England (which Dr. Kellner has in hand) Mr. Kipling said, "If I had your book to write I would attempt in a final chapter to discover the path which may lead from the present chaotic conditions of our literature and that of the twentieth century. 1 would call the chapter ' Between Two Epochs.' I feel that we are between ebb and flood. It is now just what sailors call ' slack tide' ; we are waiting for the great personality which will unite all the minor tendencies of the time and collect all the partial and petty forces into one power that will give a new and adequate expression to the new time." Dr. Kellner concludes his remarks with the question, "Is that man still still to come, or is he already here?" AS TRAVEL GLIDE An American writer, Mr. Joseph M. Rogers, writes of Kipling in 1889 as follows :—" In the fall of 1889, as I remember, there came to my office—that of Managing Editor of The Inquirer (Philadelphia) —a short, well-built young man, who introduced himself as an Anglo-Indian travelling home-ward via the States. He said he was a newspaper man. At this I receded a trifle, for I expected an application for a position, and there were no vacancies. It appeared, however, that he was only after information, though my recollection is that he offered about ten short stories at a modest price. These were not accepted, much to my later regret. He spent the whole night in the office, and regaled me with many stories of India and Japan. He had just spent some time in the latter country, in which I was particularly interested, as I had some hope of making a journey thither myself. Upon my explaining this he became enthusiastic, and sitting down, drew a map of Japan, indicating the places I ought to see .... Later on I expressed a desire to know of places in India I should visit when I got the chance. Most agreeably he drew another map, and jotted down the names of some particularly notable places which I should by no means miss. He was exceedingly modest, and never in the least intrusive. He displayed the same interest April, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 in the mechanical as in the editorial departments of the paper, and paid special attention to the pro- cess of zinc etching, just then coming into vogue, and to him entirely unfamiliar. That night I folded up the manuscript he had left, and placed it in my desk at home, among a lot of papers. If I caught the name of my visitor it made no impression on me .... A few years later I was moving my household goods, and looking through my desk to sort out papers, I found the maps and memoranda which until then I had completely forgotten. I was amazed to see at the bottom the now familiar signature " Rud- yard Kipling." DOOLEY'S TRIBUTE Here is Mr. Dooley's approval of " Roodyard " Kipling. " He's prisident iv th' Pome Supply Company—fr-resh pothry delivered ivry day at ye'er dure. Is there an accident in a grain illyvator ? Ye pick up ye'er mornin' pa-aper an' they'se a poem about it be Roodyard Kipling. Do ye hear iv a manhole cover bein' blown up ? Roodyard is there with his ready pen." " 'Tis written in Cashum-Cadi an th' book iv th' gr-reat Gazelle that a manhole cover in anger is tin degrees worse thin hell ! " He writes in all dialects an' anny language, plain and fancy pothry, pothry f'r young an' old, pothry be weight or linyar measuremint, pothry f'r small parties iv eight or tin a speciality. Most potes I dispise. But Roodyard Kipling's pothry is aisy. Ye can skip through it while ye're atin' breakfuss an' get a correct idee iv the current news iv' th' day." REAL EMPIRE In The Spectator of October 3, 1903, the reviewer of The Five Nations wrote thus :—" Those who are uneasy as to the future of our race because they see in the spirit of Imperialism which has taken hold of the nation certain crude, hard, selfish, material- istic and domineering qualities are apt to look askance at Mr. Kipling, and to imagine that he has had a hand in inspiring and encouraging these dangerous devel- opments. They imagine him to be a sort of lyric Jingo whose desire is to create a new-fangled, cen- tralised Empire which shall be filled with the spirit of arbitrary rule and of militarism—an Empire which will look upon those who want free action and independence in the Colonies, and who boast of the nationhood of Canada and Australia, as hardly loyal to the Imperial idea. Yet in reality there is no saner, or freer, or less dom- ineering Imperialist in existence than Mr. Kipling. If the people who object, and rightly object, to inflated, insane, insensate Im- perialism, the Imperialism of the Jingo, would only take the trouble to understand Mr. Kipling's message they would realise that instead he is the upholder and the inter- preter of the true Imperialism, the supporter of nationhood and freedom within the Empire, and the advocate of those sacred bonds of brotherhood and common feeling which link without strain and bind without friction. However, in Mr. Kipling's own phrase " they do not understand," and we fear it is useless to try to clear their eyes. At any rate, 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1941 those who are sane Imperialists and do understand will delight in the tone and temper of the poems in The Five Nations. The name is in itself an act of Imperial interpretation, and signifies that within our Empire stand the five free nations of Canada, Australia New Zealand, South Africa and " the islands of the sea . . . ." All we know is that his inspiration rings true, and that when his lyre is in his hand he gives us the authentic airs of freedom, and of that true Imperialism which is the very negation of sordid and sorry commercialism." Shortly after the appearance of The Five Nations, T. W. H. Crosland wrote his parody of it in The Five Notions, a copy of which he presented to Douglas Ainslie who wrote to the author as follows :—" Many thanks for The Five Notions. I have read it through with huge amusement. You have done yeoman service to literature in pounding and crushing that ludicrous creature, Kipling, as in a mortar of his own making." But the editor of the Church Times of July 2nd, 1920, has aptly remarked when reviewing Letters of Travel—" No other Eng- lish writer of today has a public as staunch, so resolute in reading his every word. Of course, there are people who mislike his work ; among them you find many ladies, most Anglo-Indians, and all the clever young neo-Georgians who prattle each other's praises and suppose the art of English fiction to have begun with themselves. On the other hand, the multitudes, who do like Mr. Kipling, like him exceedingly." Did not Kipling himself refer in December, 1889 to the clever young things of his day in scathing terms, when he said :— But I consort with long-haired things In velvet collar-rolls Who talk about the Aims of Art, And " theories " and " goals," And moo and coo with women-folk About their blessed souls. But that they call " psychology " Is lack of liver pill, And all that blights their tender souls Is eating till they're ill, And their chief way of winning goals Consists in sitting still.-—E. W. M H.M.S. Kipling OUR frontispiece in this issue of the Journal is a reproduction of a photograph of H.M.S. Kipling at sea. Our happy association with H.M.S. Kipling continues and the liveliest appreciation was ex- pressed by the ship's company of the donation of £30 towards the men's Christmas dinner, which was made possible by the generosity of the members of the Kipling Society, who had contributed to our H.M.S. Kipling Fund. The ship's company are also very appreciative of the gifts of knitted garments and binoculars re- ceived from members during the year. It is obviously impossible to give any details with regard to the activities of H.M.S. Kipling at this time but members of the Society know well that she is performing splendid work fully worthy of the name she bears. April, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 When Rudyard Kipling was in New Zealand A story told by Tom L. Mills, a New Zealand Journalist. BEFORE the outbreak of the present war, distinguished visit- ors from the ends of the earth passed through New Zealand so frequently and rapidly that our city papers were hard put to it to keep pace with them and tell their readers about them. It was not always so. Up to thirty years ago they came un- heralded, for the means of com- munication were not organised as they art today, nor were the news agencies so closely in touch with the movements of interest- ing tourists who meant " good copy" to the papers, and inter- views with whom meant great " scoops " to the. live reporter. Special reporters in New Zealand's daily papers are just as keen for " scoops " as the world's best and, like the Canadian mounted men, they generally get their man. But Rudyard Kipling always remained the most difficult literary Hon to capture. Yet he walked right into the hands of a reporter in Wellington—and walked out again some hours later without that reporter getting a line in his newspaper. The story is in- teresting. The already famous Anglo-Indian, then a young man, came across without any publicity from Sydney to Wellington. That was in the early 90's. A shipping reporter was on board and promptly put the usual question : " Anybody worth while on board—any dis- tinguished visitors ?" " Oh, my word, yes !" was the reply of the purser. " We have Rudyard Kipling on board." Now that reporter could have given off- hand the pedigree of every lead- ing horse on the race cards and could have named every ship of the M.S.S. Co's fleet ; but he was not up in the writers of his day. ' Who is this Kipling ? " he asked the purser, who gazed at him in astonishment, failed to find the right and fitting bio- graphy, and then shot out: " Why he's Rudyard Kipling !" Just then the purser was asked by another visitor : " Have you Mr. Rudyard Kipling on board ? " " Yes, in- deed," quickly replied the re- lieved officer. " He is in his cabin getting ready for shore. I'll take you to him. Come this way." The reporter knew this visitor, so here was something tangible to get his teeth of curiosity into. This was Herbert Baillie, of Baillie Bros., the Cuba Street booksellers. He bought his sport- ing papers from that shop. So the shipping reporter followed along the deck and asked as he walked : " Say, Baillie, who is this chap Rudyard something or other ?" In amazement—was it possible that in this year of grace there was a newspaperman who had not read " Departmental Dit- ties " and " Plain Tales from the Hills " ?—the bookseller and ardent Kiplingite replied ; " Why, he's 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1941 Rudyard Kipling, of course." Herbert and I had arranged to go down to the Sydney boat to give the writer a welcome to the colony. We had both read all his writings to date and had copies of his rupee editions pub- lished in Calcutta—those little books that are invaluable today. I was then on the New Zealand Times, employed as a proof-reader. It was a long and heavy night, and as I got home with the milk- man I slept in. When I got down to the boat Kipling was away and I found no trace of Baillie. In the meantime, Herbert had taken the author in tow to act as host and show him the city. The shipping reporter tagged along. As they walked north along Lambton Quay the guide, re- membering that the visitor's father was a noted curator, suggested : " I suppose you would not care to have a look at our national museum?" "Wouldn't I! Take me to it !" That is where I can see this wonderful country's early history." Along the quay Kipling was shooting off verbal fireworks in observations that would have made thrilling copy had the quips and acute criticisms only been reported. But the limit of the shipping reporter's capacity and curiosity was : " Who the dickens is this Rudyard Kip- ling ? " Entering the old museum building, Kipling exclaimed : " Ah, here I am at home again amongst the dead bones and the ancient stones !" As for that reporter, despite the fact that he was in the company of a man of genius for over two hours and had the opportunity of the scoop of a lifetime he did not get a line into his paper, not even a personal paragraph to the effect that Mr. Rudyard Kipling was in town. But the next morning's Times scored a scoop of first and historic importance—historic, in that in the later days of his life when he was one of the world's foremost writers and had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Kipling declared with emphasis he had never knowingly granted an interview to any newspaper and that all the alleged interviews published in the United States wert fakes. The story behind the New Zealand Times scoop provides another interesting bit of Kiplingiana. On the night of the only day the visitor spent in Wellington the editor of the Times, the late Mr. R. A. Lough- nan, met him at the Club on the Terrace. Along about midnight the editor came into my room in great glee. " Mills !" he cried, " I've got the scoop of a lifetime— I got a column interview with Rudyard Kipling !" " Where did you run him to earth ?" I asked. "Up in the Club." We both chortled. " And did he talk for the paper?" I asked. 'I'll say rather—a whole column of it," he repeated. "And more th?n that, he is up at the Club now waiting to see the proof of the article." " Wise man," said I. " Why wise, Mills ?" " Why, to insist on seeing a proof," was my reply, " for then he is res- ponsible for what goes into print, and not you." In less than an hour—type was set by hand in those days, long before the lino- type speeded things up on daily papers—the editor came back, got the proof-slip and took it to the April, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 Club, where the visitor was being entertained. As an experienced reporter, Kipling read the proof rapidly. Then he threw it from him, with a gesture of disgust. " What's the matter ?" he was asked. " Rotten !" he flung back. " The damn thing has neither beginning nor ending. I've a good mind to dump it." " Oh, you can't do that, my dear fellow ! " cried the editor. "It is in type and they are waiting to go to press. You know very well we can't dump a column at this hour of the morning." " Oh, very well. We shall have to let the opening go by default, but I'll round it off as a good interview should be rounded off." And when the proof came back to me after his revision there was written on the blank paper below the type the following anecdote in Kipling's neat and small cali- graphy :— " He (that is R. K. talking to the editor) tells a story of having in India interviewed a dentist who had travelled