CONTENTS PAGE Notes ----------- 1 Kipling and England—Captain E. W. Martindell 4 Stalky on "Stalky & Co.,"—Major-General L. C. Dunsterville 5 Branch Report (Victoria, B.C.)......6 Kipling As a Classic—Edward Shanks ----- 7 If (Parody)—Mrs J. M. Fleming......10 R. K.'s Three Noted War Poems—Gerald A. Alberts - - 11 Westward Ho in 1941—Basil M. Bazley - - - - 13 Old Johnny Grundy—Victorian - - - - - - 14 The Sane Imperialist - - -.....15 The Making of England—F. S. Townley-Little 16 R. K.'s Editors and Punctuation - - - - - - 19 Rudyard Kipling's Home in Allahabad 20 " Twenty-Five" ---------- 21 Letter Bag ---------- 22 Kiplingiana ---------- 24 THE KIPLING SOCIETY SALES DEPARTMENT Gilt Badges : 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. Correspondence should be addressed Lo The Hon. Secretary, The Kipling Society, 2, High Street, Thame, Oxfordshire, THE KIPLING JOURNAL published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. VIII. No. 60. December, 1941 Notes KIPLING AND THE WAR. IN the series of contemporary estimates of authorship past and present, now being delivered through the B.B.C, there have been none better than Mr. Shanks's tribute to Kipling, reproduced in this present number from The Listener by permission. It cer- tainly marks an advance in urbanity and warmth upon his recent mono- graph, and rounds up a many- sided theme with the right treat- ment in the way of variety and brevity. It easily justifies its title, and the examples it selects from the long range of Kipling's works will appeal to readers and Kipling lovers as revealing true breadth of sympathy. READ AND REJOICE. The peroration—if that is not too lofty a name—strikes one as particularly good and sound, and endorses a war-view we have put into these Notes ever since the war began, that better than any other author, Kipling shows us what we are defending and why we should persist until victory arrives. But the passage is im- proved by the wise addition that in studying this problem in Kip- ling's later books, the reader will assuredly enjoy himself, and if this is a welcome revelation to any book-explorer, let him join the Kipling Society without delay. THE OLD SCHOOL SITE. Mr. Bazley's vignette in this number of Westward Ho as it exists to-day, is a pleasant reflex on the reminiscences of their old school surroundings by the two major-generals. But they all miss an anniversary which strikes a Kipling chord, though the link fell short of their wonderful era by several years. Many a reader of Stalky and Co., must have wondered why its stories and scenes lacked that railway atmo- sphere in which the poet revelled as the years wore on. As Mr. Bazley says, the little Bideford- Appledore line had no actual con- nection with the South-Western line beyond the Torridge, and the inaccessibility of the school was not without its compensations. THE LINE THA T FAILED. It is a notable coincidence, however, that we have just passed the fortieth anniversary of the opening of the minor line, though it had been projected five years before as a hybrid of rail and tram. In 1896, when the Act of incorpor- ation was passed, Kipling was living in Vermont, and by 1906 when the extension to Appledore was opened, he was a world- celebrity. But there was some- thing of his spirit hovering in the air, surely, when one of the three tiny locomotives was christened 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 after his sea hero, Grenville. After the line was dismantled, the track was shipped off to France, and the puffy little old-fashioned line became a memory. TREASURE OR TRASH ? One of the most interesting of Kipling myths is revived by Vic- torian's page on " Old Johnny Grundy,"—a nursery fragment at- tributed to Kipling in the 'eighties, and disowned by him years after- wards. Mr. Frank Foster, a former vice-consul at Seattle, told the story as far as it then seemed to go, in the 47th issue of this Journal. Being unable to accept the poet's disclaimer, he told how the ditty originated in a kindly American woman's appeal to help her fresh- air fund for Chicago's waifs. VERDICT NOT PROVEN. Perhaps the firmest witness to its authenticity was Sir Charles Roberts, who knew the poet and his writing well, and explained the enigma on the lines of tired memory in a man who was notor- iously generous and impulsive, and may have forgotten the episode entirely. Opinion will always be divided in a case like this, and the interval of years between incident and inquiry makes decision far more difficult than it was in the case of " The Old Volunteer," which was merely topical doggerel and had not a touch of Kipling in it. But these questionable things help to explain why the poet's executors are so rigid in enforcing their copyright ban against frag- ments he had never countenanced for reprint purposes himself. R.K. AND FLEET STREET. Kipling was never an actual habitué of Fleet Street, though he knew its leading figures in his day, and had his say more than once about its Bohemian freaks and incrustations. Novels have been written about its sobering evolution from a " street of ad- venture " to a battered thorough- fare that is helping the Allies to make history. Those who have known it longest and closest, however, sometimes say there was one cataclysm in its annals that came without any flourish of trumpets, and would be searched for in vain through the local files. This was the supersession of more than one ancient hostelry, by the milk bar, and over any thought of such a beverage invading the scene of their labours, the two Irish sub-editors in Pendennis would have drunk anathematic toasts " until the cows came home." With his true prophetic touch, Kipling would seem to have anti- cipated this change-over from the brown brew to what sub-editors used to christen " the lacteal fluid." Turn, oh gentle reader, to the cita- tion from Twenty-five upon another page of this issue, and you will find Kipling telling Mr. Beverley Nichols : " Put your last dollar on hot milk." But to do him justice, he was considering it as medicine, so all is well. A KIPLING COLLECTION IN THE SALE ROOM. In the sale of the late Mr. J. Grierson's small collection of Kip- ling books, prices reflected war conditions, as will be seen from a few of the main items. The Sussex Edition, £39; United Services College Chronicle, Nos. 2— 44, 50 and 88, £5 10s.; Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys, In Black and White, Under the Deodars, The Phantom Rickshaw, Wee Willie December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 Winkie and The City of Dreadful Night, all First Editions in original wrappers, £15 10s. ; Letters of Marque, £1; Just So Stories, 1st Edition, £2 6s.; Kipling's Verse, 1886-1920., 3 vols., £7 10s. ; Bunga- low Ballads, £5 5s. The beautiful medallion by Julio Kilenyi realised £1 8s., whilst Strang's etchings and Detmold's illustrations to The Jungle Books only realised £1 2s. and £1 8s. respectively. On the same day a copy of the First Edition of The Seven Seas, which belonged to Mary Spring Rice, with two poems—Recessional and The White Man's Burden—copied out in Kip- ling's handwriting, fetched £16. WE CARRY ON, In spite of the war, the Kipling Society continues its work, and our Journal has so far appeared regu- larly each quarter without interrup- tion. This is no place to record the difficulties of production under present conditions. We have to be content with a reduced number of pages, fewer and shorter articles and no illustrations. To conserve paper supplies is a patriotic duty and we know that no members will complain when, during 1942, they receive a coverless Journal, as the special paper for the cover will no longer be available. Within limits, however, we shall endeavour to maintain the standard of interest at which we have always aimed in pre- paring our pages, and we rely upon our members to continue sending us notes and cuttings (always with details as to their sources) relating to Rudyard Kipling and his life and work. OUR TASK. It is also a patriotic duty to keep the Kipling flag flying at this time, and to honour and extend the in- fluence of Rudyard Kipling in up- holding the ideals of the English- speaking world. There are those (many for the first time in recent months) who see in the " modest patriotism which Kipling taught our only hope as a nation in the future." To publish the Journal regularly in the months ahead is our main task at the present time, and in this we need the co-operation of every individual member of the Society at home and abroad. Ever-increasing costs of war-time production compel us to invite their aid in this matter. THE YEAR 1942. The year 1942 will be a hard one for many societies in common with the Kipling Society, and it is only with the help of members them- selves that we can hope to send them their Kipling Journal regular- ly quarter by quarter. Apart from the donations generously contribu- ted to our Journal fund during 1941, we need further guarantees for 1942. We urge every member, therefore, to propose two friends, who are genuinely interested in Rudyard Kipling, as new members, before the March quarter. If every reader would adopt this compara- tively easy means of helping the Society, our prospects of publish- ing the Journal without interrup- tion would be assured. Will you, fellow member, please act now ? GREETINGS. Owing to the need for economy in paper, and to relieve the strain on the mails, it has been decided not to issue Kipling Society Christmas Cards this year. Al- though this number of the Kipling Journal will, in many cases, reach its destination too late to convey Christmas Greetings to our readers we send them all good wishes for the New Year. 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 Kipling and England by CAPTAIN E. W. MARTINDELL T has been said of English poetry that it resembled the course of an English river, fresh and beautiful, but more or less smooth and placid, until there came a new breath and noise upon the water, of iron upon iron, tall ships, strange sailormen with strange talk, vulgar, noisy, drunken fellows, troopships embarking and disembarking, rumours of India, the Malay States and the China Seas, the ends of the earth. The river had suddenly become less beautiful, less romantic, yet fascina- ting, with bustling noisy little steam-tugs most interesting to men. Rudyard Kipling had changed the face of the waters. He had a message for the young man, for the un- cultured man, so that he could both understand and like poetry, which hitherto had hardly appealed to him. There seemed to be a carelessness, nay, a roughness, in the new style. But it was only because this suited the subject, and as the poet went further and deeper the style chastened itself and gained both strength and refinement and made for beauty. Most of the measures of English poetry were mastered and Kipling's verse made for beauty in peace and in war- time for depth, and that sadness, which is the veritable salt of art. The spirit of a great people inspired him. He spoke in glowing terms of the Empire of the English, shining in the adventures and achievements of the English spirit, and his poems are a monument to the English race. All this has been said over and over again, but it holds good today because it is true. Now in these dark days it is still the brave spirit of England that breathes as Kipling depicted it in the more sombre note of his verse. Our world has passed away In wantonness o'erthrown There is nothing left today But steel and fire and stone ! Though all we knew depart The old Commandments stand : " In courage keep your heart, In strength lift up your hand," # # # There is but one task for all— For each one life to give. Who stands if freedom fall ? Who dies if England live ? Let us follow the example set by our King, who like his father, fol- lows in the foot-steps of his illustrious grandfather, of whom Kipling wrote as follows in The Dead King : Who in the realm today lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear ? And, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged sands have run ? Let him approach. It is proven here Our King asks nothing of any man more than our King himself has done ! # * # # Who in the realm today has choice of the easy road or the hard to tread ? And, much concerned for his own estate, would sell his soul to remain in the sun ? Let him depart nor look on our dead. Our King asks nothing of any man more than our King himself has done ! No easy road lies ahead of us, but if we all do our duty we shall find, as the Dawn Wind foretells : Suddenly, all men arise to the noise of fetters breaking, And everyone smiles at his neighbour and tells him his soul is his own. E.W.M. December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 Stalky on " Stalky & Co." "Good Fiction is the Best Way of Conveying Facts" [In the following amusing note, Major-General Dunsterville adds some further details to the West- ward Ho Reminiscences of Major- General Rimington, which have appeared in the last two issues of the "Journal. "] "AS one of the few old boys of the United Services College, Westward Ho, of the far-off days of Rudyard Kipling's boy- hood, I have enjoyed enormously reading the reminiscences of General Rimington. I think any editor runs a great risk when he invites very old gentlemen like Rimington and myself to give the public anything in the nature of personal remini- scences of their boyhood's days. I have often in my earlier life invited old gaffers to tell me something of their early life, and I have invariably been rewarded by an interminable account of events which I am quite sure were the purest fiction. These old men are not simply liars,'— they remember important events of the period they are referring to, and they really do believe that they themselves took part in them. For instance, each one of them always remembers Queen Victoria and the kind words she used when addressing them—which of course she never did. Now Rimington may cer- tainly be described as an 'old gaffer ' and I may say he is the only honest one I have met so far in 76 years of life. He says " there seems to be a dearth of events sufficiently interesting to others to be recorded." What a chance he missed ! In his re- marks dealing with Stalky &Co., I think he dismisses the subject too abruptly as mere fiction. Fiction it certainly is, and good fiction is the best way of con- veying facts. For instance—I once went to Brighton on August Bank Holi- day just to see what it was like. When asked what I saw I say ' there were one million people walking one way of the promenade and one million walking the opp- osite way, and one million swarming on the beach.' Well, that is obviously fiction. I didn't stop to count them, and if I had I I expect they would have proved not quite so numerous, but what is the impression left on the minds of my listeners ? That there were incredibly large numbers of people and that English crowds take their pleasures with a solemnity that would make any of the continentals smile a very broad smile. And there you have absolute fact recorded in your mind as a result of my fiction. The fictional events described in Stalky & Co., have more basis in fact than Rimington admits, but then it must be remembered that he was two years ahead of us at school and most of the stories would deal with just those two years in which we three remained to- gether after he had gone. I think I put the matter quite fairly in my books of rem- iniscences from which I may quote the following passage :— " Stalky & Co., is a work of 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 fiction, and not a historical record. Stalky himself was never quite so clever as portrayed in the book and the book makes no men- tion of the many times when he was let down. But he represents, not an individual—though his character may be based on that of an individual—but the medium of one of the prevailing spirits of this untypical school. " "Our earlier escapades were on the lines of simple buff- oonery, but we soon evolved on to a higher plane of astute plotting on more intellectual lines, the essence of each plot being that it should leave our adversaries nothing to hit back at. The culmination of the plot was the appearance of the elusive criminals in the pleasing pose of injured innocence.'' L. C. Dunsterville. Major-General Rimington writes : "If these "fictional events" as described are more allied to" absolute fact " than I presumed them to be, then perhaps it is as well I did not remain at the College another year, because, as a prefect, my relations with the redoubtable three might have become more strained than I would have wished, for I really liked them as cheeky and rather reckless young- sters." Branch Report VICTORIA, B.C., CANADA. MEMBERS at our Branch March Meeting were entertained by a showing of motion pictures illustrating elephant training and wild life in India, by Mr. C. C. Wilson, C.I.E., who has spent many years in India. His talk was of great interest. Scenes showing a fight to a finish between a mongoose and a cobra brought " Rikki Tikki Tavi " vividly to our minds. The proceeds of the admission charge to the meeting were divided between the Red Cross and the Kipling Wool Fund. Edward Shanks's book, Rudyard Kipling, will be used as a study book at next winter's session. At the Annual Meeting in May the officers of the Branch were re-elected by acclamation, and Mrs. Reese Burns gave the members a dramatic reading of The Man Who Was. A Kipling Quiz Contest followed and the prize, a copy of Just So Stories, was won by the President. The Annual Picnic was held at Gold- stream Park in August. Members had a pleasant surprise at our September meeting. Madame Taufflieb, the widow of General M. Emil A. Taufflieb, an Alsatian General of the last war, is at present staying in Victoria. She and her husband were great friends of Kipling and his wife, a friendship which extended over many years. She gave the members an in- formal talk full of personal reminiscences of their long friendship. Various members have made inter- esting contributions of stories and poems read at the meetings, and the Knitting Circle are continuing their work for H.M.S. Kipling. Owing to A.R.P. and First-Aid work I have been obliged to hand in my resig- nation as Secretary-Treasurer for this Branch. I think the Journal readers might be interested to hear that the First-Aid instructor is named Rud- yard Kipling. Mr. Kipling is Canadian born but his family came to Canada from Durham a generation back. Mary Neal. (As mentioned in this report, our Branch Secretary at Victoria, Mrs. W. J. Neal, has to relinquish the Hon. Secretary- Treasurership of the Branch owing to the war work she has undertaken. We wish to express our gratitude to Mrs. Neal for her splendid work for the Kip- ling Society in the past, which has been very highly appreciated at the London Office and, we know, by her many Kip- ling friends. Mrs. Neal's successor as Branch Secretary is Mrs. D. C. F. MacArthur, 870, St. Patrick Street, Victoria, B.C., Canada.—Ed.) December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 Kipling as a Classic by EDWARD SHANKS WHEN I was young, when I had just begun to read grown-up books, I used to hear my elders talking about con- temporary reputations. One name which was often on their lips was that of Rudyard Kipling. That would be, I suppose, two or three years after the end of the South African War. They all said much the same thing. They said that Kipling had gone up like a rocket and that now the blackened stick was lying on the ground. His early work, they owned, had been brill- iant. It had astonished them. Perhaps, they seemed to suggest, it had astonished them so much that they had thought it more brilliant than it really was. At any rate Kipling had not fulfilled his first promise and now nobody any long- er paid much attention to him. All the same, they seemed to remember with considerable vividness nearly everything he had ever written. They quoted him often, and they used to buy any magazine in which a story of his had been published. There were several reasons for this attitude of mind. Kipling had been a prophet of Imperialism, and the Imperialist doctrine was not over-popular in those years, especially in the circles where books are mostly discussed. It is, of course, sheer muddled thinking to condemn an artist because you dis- like his politics; but people will do it. Some people considered that he had been too boastful and that he This broadcast talk is reprinted by permission of Mr. Edward Shanks and of " The Listener." had been exposed by the initial failure of our armies in South Africa. Besides this, his style was changing. It was growing richer, softer, tenderer. He was no longer giving his public what he had taught it to expect, and that is a thing which the public does not always like. The work of those early years, up to, say, the end of the century, was that of a man who did not know or for that matter feel, very much about his own country. Kipling was born in Bombay. He was sent back to England at the age of six or so and had a miserable and in- creasingly short-sighted childhood. His boyhood at Westward Ho was obviously happier. But at seven- teen he was off to India again. There he discovered a country which provided endless material for an insatiable pen. The glare and glitter, the bright colours, the infinite variety of the human beings, both white and brown, these kept him going for a long time. He put out a constant stream of first-rate stories and poems, enough to make a dozen reputations. The people at home then knew very little about life in India. Kipling described it for them on all its sides ; the life of the natives and the British soldiers and the civilian officials—not forgetting their wives. He wrote with an assurance and a vividness of colour- ing which carried instant convic- tion. The Soldiers Three and Strickland and Mrs. Hauksbee were familiar figures to everybody, as any character in Dickens. 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December 1941 He returned to England by way of a trip round the world. But he was not yet ripe for her. He lived near Charing Cross amid squalor and fog. He has told us that even when his surroundings became unbearably depressing it never occurred to him that he could take a holiday from them in the country. And he had a mission, as he saw it. It was to preach the greatness of the British as an Imperial people. They established law where there had been no law. He urged that the work should go on. He pleaded for sympathy and support for those who actually did it in remote and dangerous places. He was so far less interested in the land which had bred them. After his marriage he travelled again and for a time he lived in America. It was not until after the war in South Africa that he really settled at home. Then the change in him began to be obvious. Perhaps it can best be expressed by saying that in youth he discovered India for the English people and that later he discovered England for himself. He has given us an idea of how it happened in one of his loveliest stories " An Habitation Enforced." In this, as you may remember, a nerve-tortured American business-man is sent for rest into the deep peace of the English countryside. At first the quietness frets him. Then both he and his wife fall under the spell. Little by little, as they show them- selves worthy, they are made free of the mysteries. At last they become part of what had seemed at first an alien land. Kipling sums it all up in a poem, attached to this story, which begins : I am the land of their fathers. In me the virtue stays. I will bring back my children, After certain days. Under their feet in the grasses My clinging magic runs. They shall return as strangers. They shall remain as sons. With this story begins a truly extra- ordinary series of English landscapes —among the most beautiful in our language. They are to be found all through Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies and in such stories as They and Friendly Brook, and in his poetry in such pieces as The Way through the Woods. Kipling needed the strength and consolation he found in his new Sussex home. From one point of view, the South African War might be called the most important event in his life. It was almost as though it forced him to make a new life for himself. He had been alarmed and sobered. He still believed, above everything, in the reign of law and civilisation. That was the funda- mental conception of his whole career. He had expounded it in the Jungle Book. We find it again and again in the " Puck " stories. But he began to realize that the spreading of it over the world was not going to be as easy as he had imagined when he was younger. He had darker thoughts than this. Perhaps what was most important now was not to extend the reign of civilisation but simply to defend what we had. There was a deep meaning for Kipling in the two stories in " Puck " about the defence of the Roman Wall against the barbarians. Today there is a deep meaning in them for us too. The two young men, Parnesius and December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 Pertinax, who are in charge of the Wall, learn that their master Maxi- mus, has been defeated and killed by Theodosius, his rival for the Empire. They will get no rein- forcement. Theodosius may kill them too. But Parnesius says, " It concerns us to defend the Wall, no matter what Emperor dies or makes die." Pertinax laughs at him for talking heroics and then they make plans together for the defence of the Wall. As long ago as this Kipling foresaw that we, in our turn, should have to defend the Wall. One of the best things he found when he settled at home was the assurance that the Wall would be manned. Taking all his work together, we have a wonderful picture of what lies on this side of the Wall, as well as of much that lies on the other. Certainly nothing I have said has meant to exalt his later work at the ex- pense of the earlier, though I do think think it is too little regarded. Look back at that earlier work and you will be astonished anew, just as my father's generation was. Consider that strange and thrilling story, The Man Who Would Be King. Consider the enforced but heart- rending pathos of Without Benefit of Clergy. Consider the horrors compressed into The Mark of the Beast and At the End of the Passage. Consider the laughter compressed into Brugglesmith and My Sunday at Home. No, it isn't a question of crying these things down to cry up others. It is much more a question of being grateful that the young man who gave us these things should have developed into the older man who gave us also the English country scenes and people of They and Friendly Brook and The Wish House. No one has yet dared to estimate Kipling's place in the hierarchy of English writers. But in the universality of his appeal he is with Shakespeare and Dickens. And that estimation is based on the whole of his work, not on any part of it. But I do want to suggest before I end, that the later work makes par- ticularly good reading now. Kip- ling is here a patriotic poet of the very best sort. He does not merely exhort us to love our country and to fight for her. He actually shows the country we are to love, the country we are to fight for. He gives us reasons which are not less concrete for being expressed in a very moving way with all the skill of a great artist. Remember the words he once put into the mouth of a returning soldier : If England were what England seems, And not the England of our dreams, But only putty, brass and paint, How quick we'd chuck her. But she ain't ! As it happens, he wrote these lines before he had fully discovered for himself the truth of those last three words. But he did discover how true they were and he did pro- claim their truth. That was one of the great achievements of one of our greatest authors. Kipling died in 1936 in a world which was already beginning to be dark with the darkness which he had foreseen. But he had done his work. In that work he left behind him a testament which we can study in these days with both profit and delight. If anyone wants to know just why we should go on defending our island against no matter what odds, let him read the later Kipling. He will enjoy himself while he is getting the answer, 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 Rudyard Kipling and T. S. Eliot " Kipling's stature as a great poet has not hitherto been fully measured" IN A Choice of Kipling Verse made by T. S. Eliot (published by Fabers—8/6) " Mr. Eliot has gathered together what he considers to be Kipling's best and most significant poetry and prefaced the collection with a long essay on Kip- ling and his verse,'' says The Bookseller. "This book is likely to become something of a literary landmark, for Kipling's stature as a great English poet has not hitherto been fully measured in spite of —or perhaps because of—the immense popularity of Barrack Room Ballads. The prose works, too, have stood in front of the poetry. As the first re- presentative selection this volume should command a wide public and prove an ideal Christmas gift. Admirers of Mr. Eliot will look for- ward to the pleasure which they derive from one of his major critical essays; Kipling's public will be specially glad of such true and fine estimate of his poetry, and lovers of literature in general will obtain a very special and intense pleasure from seeing two periods of English literature join hands." If— "O God why ain't it a man ?"—R.K. (to a young C.O. now enjoying exemption) By MRS. FLEMING (Rudyard Kipling's Sister) If you can keep your job when all about you Are losing theirs because they're soldiers now ; If no Tribunal for C.O.'s can flout you, Or tilt the self-set halo from your brow ; If you hold forth, demand your soul's pre- emption, And play up conscience more than it is worth, You'll win your case, enjoy "complete exemption," And—at the usual price—possess the earth. If you can take from college and from city Culture and comfort all your conscious days, Take all and render nothing, more's the pity, But cunning preachments of self-love, self-praise ; Exempt you are, forsooth, and safely nested, Above your priceless pate a plume of white, Protected by this symbol all detested, Your worst foe—Self—is all you need to fight. If you can claim to follow Christ as Master (Tell us when He shirked service or grim death), How dare you plead for freedom from dis- aster, And wrapped in cotton-wool, draw easy breath ? If you evade—not touching with a finger—- The heavy burdens other young men bear, We dare not breathe the ugly word "malinger " For fear, perchance, your craven soul we scare. If girls in uniform do not distress you, It you can smile at verbal sneers made plain, If you don't wince when soldier friends address you, Proffer bathchairs, and greet you as "Aunt Jane," Then rhino hide is nothing to the human, Holier than they are, grudge ye not their fun, But laddie, realise the average woman Gives heartfelt thanks that you are not her son. (With due apologies to my brother, who wrote the original " If," and who did not love shirkers.) A. M. Fleming. Reprinted from the "Edinburgh Evening News" by permission. December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 R. K's Three Noted War Poems By GERALD A. ALBERTS [The writer of this article is a member of the Victoria, B.C., Canada branch of the Kipling Society.] IF Rudyard Kipling were with us today, his war poetry would be somewhat changed. His three poems on which I will comment are, For All We Have And Are, England's Answer and The Greek National Anthem. For All We Have And Are was written in 1914. It applies today as much as when it was written. "FOR ALL WE HAVE AND ARE." In the first stanza, Kipling bids us, though we hate war, to defend our lives, liberties, and rights from the successor of Wil- helm II, the madman Adolf Hitler —Adolf Hitler who on the 3rd of September, 1939, after breaking his pledged word in 1938, to Mr. Chamberlain, invaded Poland, and plunged the free civilised world into a continuous blood-bath rang- ing three-quarters of the earth. The United States is now affected, and is on the agenda of conquest. " ONCE MORE WE HEAR THE WORD." In the second stanza we see the peace of twenty years broken by the war of the Hun, who has the mania for adding lands and power to his country. This mad- man, a worthy successor of Wil- helm II ,started by effecting the German Annexation of Austria in 1938, and in the same year, bringing about the separation into two parts of Czechoslovakia, by first annexing the Sudetenland, and, some months later, the rest of Czechoslovakia—this under the claim that it had been governed by Austria before the break-up in 1919. All this happened after making a solemn promise to a good churchman, Neville Chamber- lain, who declared, " We have won Peace for our time." The unity resulting from the Empire's gathering its forces and war efforts plus French aid helped a little. But this unity was to last until June, 1940 when France capitulated after Germany and Russia divided, rotted, conditioned Poland which was unprepared to fight. The countries of Belgium, Nor- way, Denmark, France, the Nether- lands, Luxembourg, fell, and now Nazi Germany has the majority of the countries under its leaden boot. Later in 1941, Roumania and Bulgaria, too, were rotted away by Nazi poison and their forces subordinated to Germany's. Thus war has brought unity to Europe. " COMFORT, CONTENT, DE- LIGHT." In the third stanza we are advised to keep our feet on the ground, not to lose our head, to be unified at all times, and to keep the Decalogue faithfully though under fire as we are in Great Britain today and tomorrow in America, if it should happen to us here. " NO EASY HOPE OR LIES" The fourth stanza too is of the greatest importance to us in 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 our Anglo-American world. This last stanza is of importance— for it paraphrases the words of Mr. Churchill, who called Britain the corner-stone of the Demo- cratic world. The closing words of this poem urge us to unite, or hang separately on the Cruci- fixion Torture Implement of the Hooked cross of Barbarism, made in a country where all are slaves of a man who thinks he is Napoleon the 1 st. " ENGLAND'S ANSWER." England's Answer although it was written years ago, and not in 1914, was applicable in the Great War of 1914-19 and in this second Great War of Septem- ber, 1939, to the day it ends. Here the poet says that the people of Britain and the Empire are a very tolerant people, not quickly enthusiastic but seeing the good points, approve of them. They are slow to condemn others to whom they are willing to give a chance. Kipling knew the nature of his countrymen and their oppo- sition to tyranny ; he counsels them to maintain their heritage, and to keep watch over their liberties. Continuing, Kipling says that Britons don't kiss or embrace as the French do, for that is not the way of the Anglo-Saxon cul- ture. Speaking of Britons, the poet says that England shall not weaken, and that its strength must be maintained. He refers to men born in Britain's Isles and says that they will be the creators of more sons to carry the Empire's fame the world over. Speaking now of self-govern- ment, Kipling in these lines tells the people to talk over their affairs, referring to the Peers, Councillors and Representatives of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He urges the Peers and Commoners to meet their King, Parliament, Com- mons and Lords, and to know them, to know their kinsfolk, and to uphold their heritage. The lines proceed to tell the people at large to carry on, and to make their strength known, so that their country may not collapse in disunity as the building did, which Samson knocked down after the Lord, in the Old Testa- ment, restored his strength. Here germinates the idea of the Act of Westminster of 1931. This line gives the Dominions full rights to make their own laws and forever rule their household independently, and not as sub- ordinates. The only provision is that they be on good terms with their fellow-Britons. That today applies to all British Dominions and colonies where self-govern- ment prevails,—which is every- where. THE GREEK NATIONAL ANTHEM. It might be said that Athens, the first city-state of what is now the Kingdom of Greece. was the birthplace of Democracy, Greece after a time went into an eclipse and even then hailed liberty above everything else. Rud- yard Kipling in honour of Greece translated into English " The Greek National Anthem," 1918. He makes the spirit of Greece speak and recall the gods of old who protected their ancestors, and mentions Greek might in speaking of the sword. Greece fought val- December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 iantly on the side of the Allies in 1914-18, and saw a decisive smashing of German might at Salonica. The poet recalls the valour of the men who died in the war of 1914-18, and the spirit of these men is alive today when Greece fights Germany and Italy in the Second Great War where she has been aided by Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, South Africa and the rest. In the fourth stanza, Kipling refers to the coming tyranny, and forecasts what has happened to Greece in our time. The fifth and the sixth stanzas refer to the blood of Greek soldiers who are now dying in Albania and Greece, and the urge to fight for their country in the cause of Liberty or die for it. Westward Ho in 1941 by BASIL M. BAZLEY "FROM the pictures, it appears to have at last become a ' seaside resort ' which old Molesworth tried to make it seventy years ago and failed to attract one single paddler. That was very nice for us as we had the whole place to ourselves and that, as you know, was the origin of the old school .... I cannot imagine happier or healthier surroundings for young boys than Westward Ho was in those early days." (Letter from the President to the writer). Nowadays, the place where Kipling was at school attracts many paddlers and swimmers, for the famous Pebble Ridge still exists. Since the Moles- worth days, a biggish hotel and some other large houses have been added, and there are several streets of bunga- loid growth. Two of the older features have gone : the pier, from which Kipling is supposed to have dived ; and the little Bideford, Westward Ho and Appledore Railway. This latter, constructed after the Stalky era, was a short standard gauge line, which started from the Strand, Bide- ford, almost opposite the old inn (now closed) where the " Brotherhood of the Rose " was formed. Unfortun- ately, it had no physical connection with the then L. & S.W.R. on the further side of the Torridge, so the goods traffic, which would have kept it alive through the year, was non- existent ; it was unable to live on the summer visitors and died early in the last great war. The " twelve bleak houses by the shore " (afterwards called Kingsley— not Kipling—Terrace) look bleakly seaward still. They suggest Vic- torian domestic architecture at Folkestone, for example, or in North London. The twelve have now more or less reverted to their original function as boarding houses for summer visitors. The shore and Northam Burrows owed much of their attraction to their lack of ' development ' on modern lines. This solitude is now a thing of the past, but the beauty of the general situation remains. The wooded hillside and deep Devon lanes behind the old U.S.C. are unspoilt ; nor are there any blemishes in the sea- ward views that cover Braunton, Baggy Point, the meeting of the sister rivers, Taw and Torridge, Bideford Bay and " a far view of Lundy." There is one other change. West- ward Ho—aye, and Bideford, too— now realise that one of England's great literary men, greater than he from whom it took its name, was at school there and immortalised it in a book that is now a classic of boarding-school life—one that should be studied by all schoolmasters in any type of school. I stayed at Appledore in 1911 ; in the vicinity, Kipling's name was hardly known. To-day, the hills behind the College are ' preserved ' under the name of " Kipling Tors " and, stranger still, one of the twelve sections of Kingsley Terrace is now named " Kipling House." This tardy recognition is suggestive of the " Little House at Arrah." 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 Old Johnny Grundy Further Light on a Kipling Mystery IN a recent issue of The Evening Telegram (Toronto) there appear- ed an article by Mr. Percy Ghent entitled " A Kipling Mystery is the Jolly Rhyme ' Old Johnny Grundy '." The writer states that about 15 years ago he picked up a quarto volume of a book carrying the title of Fame's Tribute to Children, published in 1892, for the benefit of the Children's Home of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. All the contributions from the famous names of that day—poems, letters, sentiments—were presented in fac- simile of the original script. Though the contributions do not make very cheerful reading there was one brilliant exception in a poem in the script of Rudyard Kipling and carrying his signature. The poem was Old Johnny Grundy. As the poem was not to be found in any of Kipling's published works, the writer of the article states that he wrote a somewhat diffident letter to Kipling, seeking illumination at its source. He received a courteous response from Kipling's secretary, dated Feb- ruary 8th, 1928, that Mr. Kipling was abroad and had no fixed postal address, hence no mail could be forwarded to him. So the letter was tucked inside the book containing the touching story of the old grey mare and the incident was considered closed. Recently, however, an article by Vincent Starrett in the November, 1938, issue of The Coronet came to the notice of Mr. Ghent—it was entitled Skeleton in the Closet, Starrett had thought the poem in Fame's Tribute to Children entitled Old Johnny Grundy a very jolly poem indeed, and accord- ingly had sent Kipling a copy of the poem with an earnest request for permission to use it in a magazine of which he was then the Editor. From Kipling's agent, however, came a strange response. Kipling denied all know- ledge of the verses, and, if they were again published, they must not be ascribed to Kipling. Most emphatic and final was the denial of authorship. On the evidence of the poem's Kipling " touch," and the faithful reproduction of the poet's script and signature, Starrett believed that there could be little doubt about the author- ship. Why, then, the denial of authorship ? Had Kipling com- pletely forgotten its existence or had he taken a violent dislike to the rhyme ? A few hours after Mr. Ghent had read the Starrett article, Sir Charles G. D. Roberts called to see him and he told him the story and showed him the poem in facsimile. Being a friend and correspondent of Kipling's for years, Sir Charles readily recognised the signature, and his comment was " Kipling was always ready to dash off a few lines of verse and he had probably forgotten all about the lines in question." " So that is the story behind the story of Old Johnny Grundy—the Kipling poem that Kipling did not write," thus concludes Mr. Ghent's article. In The Kipling Journal No. 47 December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 of October, 1938, will be found another article about Old Johnny Grundy from the pen of Mr. Frank Foster. He, too, deals with this Kipling mystery, but is quite certain that Kipling wrote the poem. More than one modern author, including George Moore, H. F. Mencken and other literary lights, have endeavoured to sup- press or destroy every copy of poetical outpourings published in their youth, and their efforts, generally fruitless, have provided comedy for those observers who are ' in the know.'—Victorian. The Sane Imperialist Reproduced by permission of " The Patriot." I HAVE been reading a book on Kipling by Edward Shanks,* sent to me by the " Right Book Club." It is a well-written appreciation of the author and of his life, though perhaps a little too sophisticated in explaining the views and experiences of one who was in all things the essence of sane simplicity, especially in his early work. In his later productions Kipling was apt to lose, sometimes, the supreme merit of concealing what long-haired men and cropped women would call " his art," and became so meticulously technical that some of his stories are apt to be boresome. But his early poems and tales, and many of his later ones, have never lost, and never will lose their magic charm. How distasteful such a varied output of spontaneous, though largely unconscious, self-expression must always have appeared to what a friend of mine calls the " literary gents," the biographer clearly demonstrates. Kip- ling, in his time, wrote about many men, women and things, but the light in which he has always appeared to me is that of the sane patriot and Imperialist, whose views are as far removed from national swagger and Jingoism as the deplorable period, part of which he had to live through, of sickly internationalism and putrid pacifism was removed from practical politics and common sense. Who can ever forget the disgust shown by the schoolboys at an " Imperial College " at the flag-waving antics of the visiting bigwig ? It is the white man's burden to be borne cheerfully under every sort of obstacle and official discouragement, which is the theme of his pictures of the life of his countrymen overseas, and not in the least their privileges and self-asserting superiority complex, such as we associate with the Prussian bully, now rampant on the European Continent. It is because, in the modest patriotism and sane imperial- ism which Kipling taught, I see our only hope as a nation, in the future, that I commend this book. One personal touch I cannot help adding as a humble tribute to the man himself, who was, in some respects, greater than his works. It was my privilege to get an intro- duction to him on a sea voyage, and so it came about that I very quickly got to know him well. Never, in all my experience, have I met a man, famous or otherwise, who exhibited such a kindly nature, or whose character was so redolent of what I may term a resplendent simplicity. He had no " artistic frills " of the successful literary gent, or, in fact, any frills whatever. It is true that whatever subject came up for discussion was one about which Kipling seemed to know everything worth knowing, but the information was imparted in such a way as to hint modestly, " Oh ! I happen to know something about that, if you care to hear it." Never will those days at sea with Kipling fade from my memory, and there are few things which I regret more than the non-fulfilment of the ex- pectation which we cherished that some day we would meet again on his return to England. O. B. * RUDYARD KIPLING : A Study in Litera- ture and Political Ideas, by Edward Shanks, was reviewed in the Kipling Journal, No, 54, July, 1940. 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 The Making of England The first part of an Address to the Auckland, N.Z., Branch of the Kipling Society—by Mr. F. S. Townley-Little, Chairman and Vice-President. IN Richard II, Shakespeare has certain lines which throughout the centuries have found an echo in the heart of every patriot, so you know how they must have appealed to such a great Imperialist as Rudyard Kipling. " This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-Paradise, This precious stone ?et in the silver sea, This blessed plot, this realm, this earth, this England, This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land — Dear for her reputation through the world." All through Rudyard Kipling's work breathes the spirit of England. Granted that in many cases there is a local rather than a national setting, we are content to have it so ; because the spirit that permeates all his work is not only of one place but of all England. In Actions and Reactions there is in particular one story, An Habita- tion Enforced, breathing England in every line. It is the tale of an American and his wife who came to England to live, full of the speech and customs of their own country, and of how they came up against the English at every turn till the old traditions of their forbears gradually asserted themselves and they both became English of the English. And so it is in many of the books. A Diversity of Creatures is purely English. To quote only two tales, The Village that voted the Earth was Flat and My Son's Wife is sufficient. They are an ab- solute joy to read. But as re- gards The Making of England, there are two books which seem to me to have a special signifi- cance in dealing with this subject— Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies. The name of the first is easy enough to trace— Puck was the spirit, the gnome, the pixie—call him what you will—which has always been the familiar genius that has appeared in so much English literature- poetry and drama in particular. In Midsummer Night's Dream he appears under his own name. In the Tempest he appears as Ariel. Milton speaks of him in " L'Allegro " and to Spenser and many other great poets he was a familiar figure. About the title Rewards and Fairies there is some uncertainty. There is an old song called " Farewell Rewards and Fairies," dating from the 17th century, but I doubt if this was the inspiration. Asked where he got the title, Kipling said, " From Shakespeare ' '—probably without meaning it at all—for certainly it does not appear in the two great fairy plays A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. But why vex our souls about this point ? We have the tales and they abide as a priceless heritage, both to us and to the generations yet to be. Is there anywhere a more gen- uinely English book than Puck of Pook's Hill ? It is literally redolent of the soil of the land of which it treats—and in particular December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 of Sussex—Kipling's most beloved county. This book and its sequel, Rewards and Fairies, are a wonder- ful pageant of English history, and moreover they carry with them the precious atmosphere of olden days, when Sussex was the country of the great iron works, the relics of which abound every- where today. Then also it was the particular part in a somewhat later day when " the gentlemen of the road "—the Smugglers- carried on their romantic, albeit illicit, trade. Puck of Pook's Hill centres round the two children, Una and Dan, who, by a curious combination of circumstances, were acting parts of A Midsummer Night's Dream on Midsummer Eve, in the middle of a Ring right under Pook's Hill or Puck's Hill— one of the oldest hills of old England—and to them appears Puck--the oldest Old Thing left in England. Puck of Pook's Hill and its companion book, Rewards and Fair es, unfold for us a wonderful pageant of England and its making. By means of the magic leaves of Oak, Ash and Thorn, the children were given power to go back and see the ancient happenings, and then, by the same magic, all memory of them vanished. Oak, Ash and Thorn, the three great trees that are so closely identified with old Eng- land ! Hear Rudyard Kipling's own words - " Of all the trees that grow so fair Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun Than Oak and Ash and Thorn. Sing Oak and Ash and Thorn, good Sirs, All of a midsummer morn ; England shall bide till judgment- tide 'Neath Oak and Ash and Thorn." So Saxons, Britons, Romans Danes, Normans and others played their part on life's stage in the making of England, fitting into the mosaic that made up the perfect whole. The first story is called Weland's Sword, and it deals with the last of the old Gods left in England. He had not been a gentle god and could not be released to join his fellow- deities till someone truly wished him well, and now he had fallen from his high estate and was kept an unwilling sojourner in England. And so the centuries passed, and Puck revisiting the place, finds this ancient god work- ing for hire as Wayland-Smith. And then the long desired came to pass and a novice of the new faith wished this old heathen god thanks for all he had done in kindness and charity. In return, this Smith of the Gods made a wondrous sword for this novice, afterwards the great Hugh, who wore it and used it in many a hard-fought fight. Young Men at the Manor deals with the coming of the Normans and the battle of Senlac when Harold, the last Saxon king, fell; and tells of the first faint beginnings of the welding together of the two races. See also how these stories dovetail into one another. Saxon Hugh appears here with his wondrous sword, and the tale centres largely round Sir Richard Dalyngridge, who came over with William the Conqueror, and confidently predicts the time when there shall be neither Saxon nor Norman in England. Truly he was a man of vision. The Knights of the Joyous Venture contains the voyage of Saxon Hugh and Norman Richard to 18 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 strange and unknown lands. They met with great adventures, rem- iniscent of Gulliver's Travels or The Adventures of Baron Munc- hausen. Coming by accident on board a Danish ship, they fell in with Witta the captain and found favour in his eyes. On and on they went into uncharted seas, past the country of the Moors and to the then unknown coasts of Northern Africa. The fight with the gorillas—the supposed devils-—is most realistic. Here Saxon Hugh lost his right arm in a struggle with one of these devils and later on he hands his now useless sword to Sir Richard. Is not this meant as a symbol of the gradual passing of Saxon power into Norman hands? Here too we see the gradual passing of the old superstitions, evidenced by the children's telling Hugh that his devils are really apes who build in trees. So back they came, bringing much gold, and in the next tale, Old Men at Pevensey, we read of its disposal. Here watch and ward were kept by de Aquila, the old Norman knight, on behalf of King Henry I. Robert of Normandy was plotting against his brother, and at Pevensey was the clerk Gilbert, in league with him, a fact known to de Aquila who says that " if there are devils in Northern Africa, there are worse ones in Pevensey." Hugh and Sir Richard join with de Aquila and keep a watch upon Gilbert and his treachery, which also included the murder of de Aquila and the handing over of Pevensey Castle to a certain Sir Fulke—an arch-traitor. By a sup- reme act of mercy, the traitors were unmasked and forgiven, and their detection and the utter scorn that fell upon them was a very bitter aftermath in the way of punishment. (To be continued) Kipling Inkstand for Destroyer AN inkstand of Georgian silver, given by Mr. Rudyard Kipling to his sister, Mrs. J. M. Fleming, in June, 1890, has been presented to the British destroyer Kipling by Mrs. Fleming. Mrs. Fleming said that the Kipling Society, of which she is a vice-president, asked to be allowed to adopt the ship. The " baptismal " gifts from the society were a bronze plaque of Rud- yard Kipling and a silver cigarette box and ash trays. Last year the society was presented with a bronze plaque of the ship's badge. "I still felt I wanted to give some personal gift—the equivalent of a mug or silver spoon—to my last and largest god- child, and looked among my possessions for something associated with R.K." The Times. DONATION. We acknowledge with gratitude a donation to the Kipling Society's General Fund of £5 5s. 0d. from—Mr. H. G. Willmot, Cape Town. December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 19 R.K's Editors and Punctuation Comments of Interest to Kipling Society Members THE following comments by an Anglo-Indian poet, on the punctu- ation of certain verses of The Last Suttee, have been sent to us by Sir George MacMunn.*— * * * * 1st. Verse Udai Chand lay sick to death In his hold by Gungra hill. All night we heard the death-gongs ring, For the soul of the dying Rajpoot King, All night beat up, etc., etc. Comment. I think the comma after " ring (3rd line) is a mistake. The 3rd and 4th lines should be one unbroken sentence. 8 th. Verse For I ruled the King as ne'er did Queen,— Tonight the Queens rule me. Comment. As this was spoken from the wall in " the gathering day " —the opening dawn—and the woman wanted to get away from the palace at once, not at nightfall, the word " to-night " reads like an oversight. " Today " would seem to be more correct, but I hesitate to make so important a change. 11th. Verse The herald read his titles forth We set the logs aglow : " Friend of the English, free from fear, " Baron of Luni to Jeysubmeer, " Lord of the Desert, etc., etc. Comment. In the Inclusive Edition, 1885 to 1926, no punctuation mark whatever appears after " forth " in the first line. Obviously a printer's error. In any case, the colon after " aglow " (2nd line) seems also to be an error— an editorial error. There is a con- tinuity of thought connecting the first line with the third, fourth, fifth and sixth lines ; and the second line should be a parenthesis—an inter- ruption—to be indicated either by brackets like this :— The herald read his titles forth, (We set the logs aglow) " Friend of the English, etc., etc. or better, perhaps, this way :— The herald read his titles forth,— We set the logs aglow— " Friend of the English, etc., etc. 16th. Verse Then she : "By the faith of my tarnished soul, " All things I did not well, " I had hoped to clear ere the fire died, " And lay me down by my master's side, " To rule, etc., etc. Comment. The comma after " well " (2nd line) quite ruins the sense. What did she " hope to clear " ? It seems * [Sir George MacMunn writes : " These comments have been sent to me by Mr. F. C. Scallan, a resident of Calcutta, who is compiling an anthology of verses on Indian subjects. Feeling that they would interest members, I have taken on myself to suggest their publication in our Journal, which I think he would appreciate. His suggestions re punctuation seem to me correct and worthy of attention in any new Edition. As regards text,— what R. K. has written he has written ! "] 20 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December,1941 plain to me that Kipling meant this :— " All things I did not well " I had hoped to clear ere the fire died, " And lay me down, etc., etc. The sacrifice of her life " cleared " the wrongs the supposed wanton had done. She—speaking as the Nautch girl—hoped to have absolved her sins by becoming " suttee " before the fire died down. This idea is confirmed by the 5th line of the 18th verse :— " Sister of mine, pass, free from shame." I imagine the comma after " well " was put in by Mowbray Morris, editor of Macmillan's Magazine, when he published (after editing them) this poem and The Ballad of East and West in his magazine in 1889 and 1890. The 2nd and 3rd lines of this 16th verse should be one unbroken sentence. Though there is no change necessary in the last two lines— " To rule in heaven his only bride While the others howl in hell." I doubt whether Mowbray Morris appreciated the implications of these sentences—that in referring to "heaven" Rudyard Kipling's REFERRING to the series of articles on "The Homes of Rudyard Kipling " by Colonel Milburn which have appear- ed in recent issues of the Journal, Mrs. William M. Carpenter, of Evanston, Illinois, sends us the following note relating to Kip- ling's stay in Allahabad : " Among my husband's notes are references to Kipling's stay in Allahabad. He left Lahore in 1887 where he had lived with his family, to go down to Allahabad to work on the larger and more important paper " The Pioneer." At first he had rooms at the home of Mr. Allen, proprietor of the Lahore and Allahabad newspapers. Among his earliest acquaintances in Allahabad were the Hills, an English professor and his American wife, and the three soon became fast friends. It was in their company that Kipling made his journey " From Sea to Sea " in 1889, in which letters frequent and " hell " the Boondi Queen spoke like a Mussulmani—a Moslem—and not as a Hindu. Azizun, the Nautch girl of Lucknow, was a Moslem. One other change would add to the suggestion of imperiousness in a dom- ineering woman confident of her power :— 15 th. Verse He said : " O shameless, put aside The veil upon thy brow ! " Who held the King and all his land " To the wanton will of a harlot's hand. etc., etc. Comment. It seems to me that " wanton will " does not exactly suit the word " hand " : it suggests more a mental process. If it was not considered too great a liberty I would like to substitute :— " To the wanton beck of a harlot's hand." —" beck and call " is already a phrase suggesting unquestioned dominance that is familiar. " Beck " also indi- cates a manual action. The alliterative rhythm of " wanton will " and " har- lot's hand " would be lost, but " beck " increases the suggestion of power' Home in Allahabad reference is made to " The Professor." In June 1888 a shake-up was made in the Allen papers, and another employee took over R. K.'s rooms at the Allen's, so it was necessary for him to find other quarters. " There's always the Club to fall back upon, I suppose," he wrote. His friends the Hills, came to his rescue with an invitation to move in with them, and accordingly in July, 1888, he moved to " Belvedere," the Hill bungalow, where he stayed until early March, 1889, when he and the Hills started for England via America. At " Belvedere " he had his own suite of rooms, a personal servant Kadir Baksh (who speaks the Foreword of " In Black and White,") his own horse and buggy (which he called " The Pig and Whistle,) and complete independence in a congenial environ- ment. In his sitting room at " Belve- dere " he wrote, " The Man who would be King," " Baa, baa, Black Sheep," among other tales." December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 21 " Twenty-five " The following extract from "Twenty-five," by Beverley Nichols, is reproduced by permission of the publishers, Messrs Jonathan Cape Ltd. London. RUDYARD Kipling is a fine example of a great man who will forgive almost everything to youth. He certainly forgave me as charmingly as it was possible to do so. It happened during lunch. I felt very guilty when they said that Rudyard Kipling was coming because two years before, when still at Oxford, I had written a letter to the Morning Post on the subject of " Our Modern Youth," in which there were a great many violent (and rather silly) remarks levelled against anybody who had the misfortune to be over forty. The letter attacked, with sublime indifference, such diverse subjects as militarism, old age, imperialism, prime ministers, and incidentally Kip- ling, whom I had never read, but who seemed to sum up a great many aggressive tendencies. " Where," I asked, in the peroration, " will you find the spirit of the age ? Not in the flamboyant insolence of Rudyard Kipling, not in the .... etc." Not one of my best works, that letter, but it was written in a hammock on a hot summer's day, with flies buzzing round, and certainly without the thought that perhaps, one day, the writer would meet the man whom he had attacked. However, when Kipling was announc- ed, he came straight up to me (where I was hiding in a corner) and said : " You're the young man who was rude to me in the Morning Post, aren't you ?" I admitted that this was so. " I'm awfully sorry . . . . " I began. " Sorry ? What for ?" said Kipling. " I used to be much ruder to people when I was your age. The only thing that I should be sorry for was that you didn't make it worse." I heaved a sigh of relief. " Besides," said Kipling, " that was a jolly good phrase—flamboyant insolence—I liked it." And then he began to talk about literary style with a gusto that is more often found in amateurs than in celebrities. Kipling did not strike one, in the very least, as " literary." If one had not seen his face caricatured in a hundred newspapers, one would gather that he was a successful surgeon or a prosperous architect. Especially does he convey the surgeon, with his keen bright eyes, his more-than- bedside manner, and the strong capable hands, that push out eagerly from the white cuffs as though they were about to carve something. Carving, too, is a phrase that might be applied to his prose. He hacks out his sentences, cuts up his para- graphs, snips at his descriptions. I was struck, even at the beginning, with his positively encyclopaedic know- ledge of subjects about which he might well have pleaded justifiable ignorance. Drugs, for example. Some- body mentioned anaesthetics, and that led to a wider discussion of all drugs that partially or wholly remove con- sciousness. Kipling suddenly broke into the conversation, held it and dominated it, illustrating everything he said with the most apposite examples. He told me that when he was in India, as a young man, he had experimented in taking a very potent drug which even the natives can only imbibe in small quantities. " It laid me out completely," he said, " and I didn't dream a bit, as I had hoped. I woke up, with a splitting headache, but fortunately I knew the cure— hot milk, as much of it as you can drink. If ever you find yourself in that condition in India, you put your last dollar on hot milk. It's the only thing that will pull you round." 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, Lincoln House, Harrow-on-the-Hill. 22 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 Letter Bag Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication as short as possible. THE HOMES OF R. K. WITH reference to Colonel Mil- burn's paper on Kipling's re- sidences :— (1). Kipling sailed from New York in the latter part of September, 1889, on board the S. S. City of Berlin, at the conclusion of his eastern voyage homewards from India and so must have arrived in England in October of that year. (2). In Letters on Leave IV, which appeared in The Pioneer of November, 1890, Kipling mentions that he was enjoying " Sunshine ! real hot, white, permanent sunshine for thirteen whole days .... All our summer has been compressed into the first fort- night of September," down at the seaside (Brighton most probably). At the end of the letter he records his return to London, where a doctor ordered him to go for a sea voyage, so he was going on a "P. & O. boat for a drift up the Inland sea—Gib., Malta and Naples—a shipload of Anglo-Indians, three men in a cabin because the leave season is ending." Unfortunately we do not have any mention of the name of the P. & O. boat, but he states he was sailing the day after he wrote this letter. (3). The Rev. F. W. Macdonald (Kipling's uncle) in his recollections, entitled As a Tate that is Told, states that at the end of May, 1891, he heard from his elder brother in New York that he had not long to live as his ailment was incurable. Accordingly he immediately decided to sail over to America and as " my nephew, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, being at the time a good deal out of health, deter- mined upon a voyage to New York and back, we sailed together from Liverpool." Unfortunately, Mr. Mac- donald does not state the name of the ship, though he records that Kipling registered under the name of Mac- donald. However, when they reached their hotel in New York, an enter- prising interviewer, having got wind of a rumour that Kipling, under the name of Macdonald, had just landed, came down upon them. On enquiring for Mr. Macdonald, the Rev. F. Mac- donald received the said interviewer, who approached him with a knowing smile and said " Mr. Kipling, I believe." At first the denial that he was Macdonald and not Kipling did not carry conviction, but on Mr. Macdonald stating that Kipling was in the hotel with him, but was unwell and unable to receive callers or be interviewed, the interviewer departed in sorrow and anger. Next morning's paper stated that, " Mr. Kipling had arrived in New York, but was a wreck in body and mind." Kipling did not accompany his uncle on his journeys in Canada and elsewhere at that time and most probably returned to England shortly after. (4). In December 1891 Kipling arrived at Colombo from Australia on S. S. Valetta, and from Colombo to Tuticorin he says "a big B. I. boat took charge of me to Tuticorin," this was the S. S. Narbudda. He spent Christmas that year at the old home in Lahore and wrote the article "Home" then. (5). In May 1897 he stayed at the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington. (6). In March 1911 Kipling was staying at the Hotel du Parc, Vernet- les-Bains, and then Why Snow Falls at Vernet saw the light of day. (7). In January 1912 he stayed at the Grand Hotel, Engelberg. (8). In April 1923 he was staying at the Hotel California, Cannes. (9). Either in 1933 or 1934 he was in Jersey, C.I., where Mrs. Kipling underwent treatment by Sir Herbert Barker. The " three dear ladies who lived off the far end of Kensington High Street over against Addison Road" mentioned on p. 21 of Something of Myself were the Misses Craik, cousins of Sir Henry Craik. When he met Theodore Roose- velt in New York in April 1896, Kipling was staying at 262 Fourth Avenue. In early 1897 he stayed at Maidencombe, Torquay.—E. W. Martindell, Oaklea, Hook, Hants. December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 23 KIPLING " ORIGINS." The ardent Kipling reader ever delights in the search for Kipling " origins," and I suggest that all those who discover new " specimens " should send them to yon so that readers of the Journal may have the benefit of seeing them. I wonder how many readers have noticed that the " lines " in Brugglesmith are all taken from well-known poems, as shown by the following examples ? Ye towers 0' Julia, London's lasting wrong By mony a foul an' midnight murder fed. (Brugglesmith). Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, With many a foul and midnight murder fed. The Bard by Thomas Gray, (1716- 1771). See part 2, book 3, line 11. Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song. (Brugglesmith). Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song. Prothalamion, by Edmund Spenser, 1553-1599). See "the refrain of the poem written in honour of the Ladies Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset. And yon's the grave as little as my bed. ( Brugglesmith). Teach me to live that I may dread The grave as little as my bed. (Lines 3 and 4 of verse 2, " Glory to Thee my God this night.") Bishop Thomas Ken, (1637-1711). Evening Hymn. A. & M. 23. —R. E. Harbord, (We hope our members will adopt Mr. Harbord's suggestion, and send us their Kipling " origins " for publi- cation in the "Journal." Ed.) THE TREK-OX. The following extract from Days of Fresh Air, by the Rt. Hon. L. S. Amery, M.P. (Hutchinson), may in- terest our members :— Pp. 149-50 (during the Boer War, 1900). " The Kiplings came out about then and were my table companions for some weeks. Kipling and I had great talks, and on one occasion I was privileged to be present at the conception and birth of one of his poems. We were discussing over breakfast the all-important question of transport, and I suggested that he ought to write a poem to celebrate the trek-ox as the pivot of all strategy in South Africa. Kipling said nothing, but two minutes later, when we were talking of other things, he read out from his menu-card the following :— The Trek-ox when alive can haul Three-quarters of a ton per head ; But he can shift you, camp and all, Once he is dead. This poem, with its odoriferous memories, has not, I think, appeared in any published collection."—J. H. C. Brooking. THE SEA DOG'S PROBLEM. The Anchor Song contains many nautical mistakes, but the instance quoted by " G. E. F.'s " captain in the Merchant Service is not one of them. His mistake lies in imagining the first " Port " to be a helm direction, instead of a repetition of the way the ship's bows are trending. If an order, the first " Port " would be followed by a note of exclamation, instead of a hyphen. As printed it bears the same meaning as, say, " off—off—she goes." As a star- board anchor breaks out, the ship must steer to port, and that without steerage way, when the helm would have no effect. Still, G. E. F.'s nautical friend has some justification for his mistake, as the Anchor Song is a mixture of sailing-orders, cogitations, reflections, statements, and anticipations. Proof of this is obvious in the third refrain— " Choking down our voices, as we snatch the gaskets free "—for no officer of a sailing ship, giving the orders of the preceding verses, would be up aloft, loosing sail. No !—the voice of the poem is sometimes that of the officers, some- times that of the crew, and sometimes it speaks for the ship herself—" Sick she is, and harbour-sick ....'' But why jettison G. E. F. for a mis-reading ? By such mistakes alone can the truth emerge.—T. E. Elwell, 24 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1941 KIPLING'S INTERNATIONAL VISION. KIPLING loved beauty and success and the sounds and savours of triumph, more than most men. But, equally more than most men, he was aware of their dangers. He saw increasingly as the century drew to its close, and a new one opened amid all the doubts and hysteria of the Boer War, that his compatriots in the Mother Country, divorced from the actual responsibilities of governing in the ends of the earth, needed urgently reminding of the facts upon which a continuation of that government was based. His vision became international. He saw civilisation itself at stake if there was any slackening of vigilance and fortitude in the maintenance of law and order, and slackening against the disrupting forces of anarchy and the jungle law—of which none better than he was qualified to speak—of each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.—Candidus in the " Daily Sketch." KIPLING'S ENGLAND. In an article in John O' London's Weekly, entitled " There'll Always Be—" Olga Venn writes :— There is, for instance, the England of which Kipling wrote :— I am the land of their fathers, In me the virtue stays. I shall bring back my children After certain days. Under their feet in the grasses My clinging magic runs. They shall return as strangers ; They shall remain as sons. "IF ANY MOURN US." " As a pendant to the impressive article by Mr. J. C. Johnstone on the vital need of putting an end to deliberate " absenteeism " in our great industrial factories, " writes Mr. E. H. Blakeney in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, "the words of Kipling (written during the last war) ought to be read, learned and inwardly digested. His lines are headed" Batter- ies out of ammunition." " If any mourn us in the workshop say We died because the shift kept holiday." Our great patriot being dead yet speaketh." R. K.'s STORIES AND POEMS. " A difficult task confronts anybody who sets out to make a selection of Kipling's stories and poems," writes the Sussex Daily News. " Each of us has our favourites, and no two are likely to agree, but the " Kipling Treasury," recently published by Mac- millan (3s. 6d.), is as representative a selection as anybody could wish to read. The stories show Kipling in his various moods. Naturally his Indian writings are well represented, and " The Man Who Was," " Toomai of the Elephants " and " The Man Who Would Be King " are master- pieces of their kind. " They " and "An Habitation Enforced" are notable for Kipling's interpretation of the English countryside, while " Bread Upon the Waters," and " Their Lawful Occasions " show what a master Kipling was in the art of telling stories about the sea. The poems include " Puck's Song," "Our Fathers of Old," " The Glory of the Garden," and " For All We Have and Are," the last-named, written at the time of the Great War, having a message for to-day :— " Though all we knew depart, The old Commandments stand :— ' In courage keep your heart, In strength lift up your hand.' " THE NATIONAL TRUST AND BATEMAN'S. In their Report for the year 1940-41, The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, have the following note, which appears under the heading " Properties Owned or Protected by the Trust :" " Burwash, Sussex : Batemans : on the south side of Burwash. 300 acres including Rye Green and Dudwell farms, two small houses, several cottages and the home of Rudyard Kiplingiana Press and other comment on Kipling and his work December, 1941 THE KIPLING JOURNAL iii Kipling. The surroundings are re- flected in Puck of Pook's Hill and other later works of Kipling, and the house, built early in the seventeenth century, and the gardens would be well worthy of preservation quite apart from their literary associations. Bequeathed in 1940 by Mrs. Kipling with the furnishings of the house and an endowment. Kipling's study has been preserved unaltered and the furnishings include Mr. Lockwood Kipling's original illustrations to Kim, etc." " CALLING MR. KIPLING." The following cutting from the " Atlanta Constitution " has been sent to us by Mr. S. S. Baldwin of Chilmark, Mass, U.S.A. :— I wish that Mr. Kipling could have lived a little longer ; I'd like to have him know a " Tommy Atkins " even stronger Than those he used to write about ; who drank their gin and beer And fought to save the Empire in the days when he was here. He knew the ways of camel trains and horse artillery— I wish he might have seen the lads who make the R.A.C. He would have been enthralled to watch the British people stick Through all the hellish fury when the bombs are falling thick. I wish he might have stood upon the white-chalk cliffs of Dover And watched the fires across the way when boats were going over; The little boats, the pleasure boats, the launch and fishing smack Or any piece of floating junk to bring a soldier back. The burning sands of Africa are burning hot again .... Another British army, marching on through sweat and pain, Is mopping up the enemy upon a foreign shore The way the other armies did a hundred years before. I often wish " R. K." .... who knew the British people well Was here to watch the present armies storm the gates of hell ; To write again of fighting men where England's standard flies— Though men of Empire perish that old spirit never dies ! Ollie Reeves. R. K.'s WITTY MOTHER. A correspondent sends this extract from Notes and Queries of October 4th 1941 :— " Kipling Dedication (clxxxi. 146).— The Editorial comment is supported by the experience of the late Sir George Birdwood, long resident in India. Sir George expressed the opinion in conversation that Kipling inherited his wit from his mother, and by way of illustration added : " Lord Dufferin was much impressed by Mrs. Kipling, and took such opportunities at offered of conversing with her. This caused heart-burning among some of the titled ladies, one of whom remarked to Mrs. Kipling : ' You had a long conversation with the Viceroy the other day.' ' Yes, indeed ; and do you know it was as broad as it was long,' came the quick retort."— J. P. DE C. Please Remember the Kipling Society in Your Will The following Form of Bequest should be used LEGACIES from Members who wish to support the work of the Kipling Society are accepted by the Council with gratitude. The follow- ing Form of Bequest should be used : "I bequeath to The Kipling Society, 2, High Street, Thame, Oxfordshire, a sum of ( £ ) free of duty, to be applicable for the general purposes of the Society. And I declare that the receipt of the Hon. Treasurer or other proper official for the time being of the Society shall be a good and sufficient discharge to my Executors." Printed by H. F. Lucas & Co., 151, North Road, Southend-on-Sea.