CONTENTS

PAGE

Notes—J. P. Collins     :-----..             l

H.M.S. Kipling—An Epitaph and a Suggestion—

Francis McMurtrie   ---       -       -       -       -             4

on the road to mandalay—lieut.-general sir george

MacMunn  ---------                              7

The Annual Meeting    -        -        -        -        -        -        -        -          8

Kipling at Home II—- Dorothy Ponton        -                                     9

Major-General Rimington (Obituary).—L.C.D.   -        -        -        11

The Genius of Rudyard Kipling—H.R.T.    -        -        -        -        13

The Making of England III—F. S. Townley-Little    -       -        14

Kipling as Journalist in India—E.W.M.      -        -       -       -        15

Jerome K. Jerome on R K.—Victorian                                               16

Letter Bag    -                          -------        17

Kiplingiana ---.------ 18

THE  KIPLING   SOCIETY

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published quarterly by
THE KIPLING SOCIETY

Vol. IX.   No. 62.

July,  1942

Notes

By J. P. COLLINS

CRITICS  OF SORTS.

OUR correspondence shows
much interest among mem-
bers concerning the topic
discussed in last number—the
curious and miscellaneous treat-
ment accorded to Rudyard Kipling
by certain contemporary critics.
Whereas some of these heartily
deplore his passing away on the
eve of the present momentous
struggle, and despair of seeing
his successor as an Empire Laureate,
there are others who seem dis-
posed to abuse him for having
appropriated so much of the lustre
and " limelight " of his period.
Volumes might be written to
show that he was far more modest
than such commentators seem to
believe. Here the evidence would
range from his own rash deter-
mination in early life to stay and
be an Indian journalist and " let
London go hang," down to the
climax of his fame and success
as a poet, when he disavowed
any such title, and was content
to rank simply as a " maker of
verse." This mild and unassertive
attitude by no means agrees with
the halo of assumption and aud-
acity that some of his critics
try and spin around his brows.
Thus "we are forced to the con-
clusion that too much of this
pseudo-criticism of to-day is spoil-

ed by prejudice, literary inex-
perience, " cussedness," or simply
the automatic reaction of a new
period and fashion supervening
upon another era no longer in
a position to answer for itself.
But talking of lustre, how can
we commiserate self-constituted
oracles who impair their eyesight
by too much glaring at the sun ?

JARGON   OUT   OF   PLACE.

If this unserviceable kind of
paper-waste were confined to Kip-
ling, one might be less disturbed,
but unfortunately it is not. Each
new monograph we buy or borrow
tells the same story. For instance,
we are tempted by the name of
Keats only to find his mother
coarsely assailed ; or we find
the glamour of Dickens spoiled
by hopeless over-emphasis on the
" amoroso " pedal. Burke is rigged
out in the extravagant habits
of Sheridan ; and Milton is held
up for obloquy, not as a limner
of Satan and Moloch but a pioneer
hero  of divorce.

In short, our national Valhalla
collapses into a double-dyed chamb-
ber of horrors. Landor is displayed
as a disreputable termagant who
could not write prose for " nuts "
(the " nuts " are our authority),
and Byron himself is libelled,
if   that   be   possible,   alike   as   a

THE   KIPLING   JOURNAL

2                       THE  KIPLING JOURNAL

July, 1942

poet and as a man. In such
a cataract of gratuitous and
indiscriminate invective, who shall
escape ? All we can do is to
stack our set of Kipling a shelf
or two higher, and save him
from contact with such literary
pot-wallopers and scavengers in
a   thin   disguise.

SLOGANS   AND    CATCHES.

The fact is that these cremation-
ists of literature are incapable
of reading the signs of the times,
or consequently of distinguish-
ing between the ephemeral and
the permanent. Every week brings
its quota of tribute in all sorts
of ways, as if to show that R.K.
is as much in the minds of men
as ever. Indeed, it shows the very
progress of the war which he
warned us against, is inseparable
from his increasing and mounting
reputation. His name and message
are inseparable from our leading
articles and Parliamentary debates,
the correspondence columns of
the best papers, and the headings
that adorn our broadcasts and
perorations. Quotations from his
pen serve as titles for new books
of all sorts, his ringing slogans
are imported into war movements
and pamphlets, in various con-
troversies here or overseas he
is quoted as an authority, and
the occasions are numberless when
he and his works are cited with
honourable mention in the world's
reviews   and   magazines.

Someone lately referred to his
jest about the Kensal Green of
the newspaper files (a neat metaphor
in one of his wittiest verses),
but nobody surely can forget
the mild sarcasm he put into
a   skit   on   the   unclassifiables   of

his old  profession,  as follows :—
But  the  bubble  is  blown  and
the   bubble   is   pricked

By Us and such as We
Remember the battle and stand
aside

While Thrones and Powers

confess

That King over all the children
of  pride

Is   the  Press—the  Press—
the  Press !

COLOUR   AND   SHADOW.

Since General Wavell turned
to the ' ' Jungle Book ' ' to find
a stinging parallel with the Gog
and Magog of Totalitarianism,
the scenario-writers have been
occupying themselves in plundering
the great quarry of Kipling's works
in order to provide fresh con-
quests for the film. The latest
is a new Technicolor version
of the "Jungle Book" which
bids fair to excel anything attempted
yet in the portrayal of forest
and jungle life amid the blaze
and warmth and vividness of
southern Asia. But for the bene-
fit of America's children and
our youngsters in their midst,
the story has been overhauled
for the National Board of
Review.

In the alert western method,
a series of interesting queries
have been framed which bear
upon the plot and persons of
the story. We can recollect no
other instance of a veteran author,
alive or dead, being requisitioned
so repeatedly in the course of
production in order to commend
the new film, and incidentally
to show how lavish this jungle
epic is in everything that can
interest  young   and   eager  minds

July, 1942

THE   KIPLING   JOURNAL                      3

through the transmutation of colour
and shadow. Finally the young-
sters themselves have been drilled
with a questionnaire of extreme
ingenuity in order to bring out
the originality of the story, and
its appeal in picture form to
arrest the young folk's attention
for years to come. Some of the
critics demur to an interpolation
of western smartness into the
dialogue and plot, but this was
more or less inevitable nowadays,
even  in  Kipling's  Jungle.

THE  SEVEN  SEAS.

A correspondent has asked the
" Daily Telegraph " which are
the oceans Lord Trenchard had
in mind the other day when he
drew on Kipling for the familiar
phrase of the Seven Seas. He
used it first in the middle 'nine-
ties, and FitzGerald had used
it in his version of Omar forty
years before that. The Persian
in all probability was talking through
his fez, in a strictly poetic sense,
of course, because it is doubtful
if he had scraped acquaintance
with any more than two such
waters—that is to say, the Indian
Ocean (as we style it to-day),
and the Persian Gulf. This query,
by the way, has crossed the stage
more than once as an ingredient
of discussion in this Journal ;
and Kipling himself specified
the group of seas he had in mind
once as the North and South
Pacific, the North and South
Atlantic, the Indian, the Arctic
and   the   Antarctic   Oceans.

But there have been other in-
terpretations, some of them based
on the supposition that in the
throng of visions and splendours
crowding through the poet's mind,

he may conceivably have for-
gotten which particular waters
he had had originally in mind.
This is a far-fetched supposition,
and could hardly be shared by
every reader. But at least the
scope of the interpretation may
be enlarged by recapitulating the
various readings which have appear-
ed in print at one time or another.
The Seven Seas, then, have been
numbered by various correspon-
dents as follows :—-

(By the Mercantile Marine) :
The Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan,
Java Sea, Banda Sea, Flores Sea,
Sea of Celebes and Molucca Sea.
(By a member of Lloyd's) :
The Seas of Arafura, Banda,
Celebes, Flores, Java, Sulu and
Timor.

And   so   on.    But   it   is   worth
while    adding   that   many   years
ago   someone   compiled   a  list  of
fifty-five seas and oceans in alpha-
betical order of names,  and sent
it   to    Kipling,    who   agreed    as
to the old age of the expression,
and    then   marked    the   list   off
as already said.    Finally, this diver-
sity of views may very well con-
clude  with  these  lines   from  his
poem    The   Flowers :—
Far   and   far   our   homes
Are set round the Seven Seas :
Woe for us if we forget,
We  who  hold   by these.
Unto   each   his   mother-beach,
Bloom   and   bird   and   land—
Masters    of   the    Seven    Seas
Love   and   understand.

D.S.O. FOR LIEUT. NIALL
ROBINSON.

We congratulate Lieutenant
Niall Robinson of H.M.S. Kipling
upon the recent award of the
Distinguished  Service  Cross.

4                       THE   KIPLING JOURNAL

July, 1942

H.M.S. Kipling:

An Epitaph and a Suggestion

By FRANCIS McMURTRIE

MEMBERS of the Kipling Society
will   have   learned   with     deep
regret   of   the   loss   in     action
of H.M.S.   Kipling,   four  and  a  half
years   after   the   date   on   which   her
keel    was    laid.    News    of   her    end
was   given   in   the   following   official
Admiralty    communiqué,     issued    to
the  public  on   May   12 :

"Yesterday (Monday, May 11)
afternoon a force consisting of
four of our destroyers was heavily
attacked by enemy aircraft in the
Eastern Mediterranean. H.M.S.
Lively (Lieut.-Commander W. F. E.
Hussey, D.S.O., D.S.C., R.N.) was
hit and sunk. The remaining three
destroyers were subjected to further
heavy air attack by the German
Air Force during the evening.
H.M.S. Jackal (Commander C. N.
Lentaigne, D.S.C., R.N.) and H.M.S.
Kipling (Commander A. St. Clair
Ford, D.S.O., R.N.) were both
hit. The Kipling sank. The Jackal
was taken in tow, but had to be
sunk by our own forces during
the early hours of this morning,
since it became impossible to save
the  ship.

The next-of-kin of casualties in
H.M.S. Lively, H.M.S. Jackal and
H.M.S. Kipling will be informed
as soon as possible. It is known
that more than 500 officers and
men from these three ships are
safe, so the total number of casual-
ties  cannot be  heavy.

During   these   air   attacks   Beau-
fighters    of   the    R.A.F.    destroyed
one    Heinkel    111     and    damaged
at    least    two    Heinkel    1ll's    and
five  Junkers   88's."
Enemy accounts of this action add
little of value to the above brief narrative.
According   to   the    German   version,
the   destroyers   were   attacked   to   the
south   of   Crete,   while   the    Italians
said it was off the coast of Cyrenaica.
The  former would  appear to  be  the
more probable, in view of the reputed
strength of the Luftwaffe in the island
of   Minos.

This is not the first time the des-
troyer Kipling has been associated
with that island in the war news.
As stated in the April number of
the Journal, her captain, Commander
A. St. Clair Ford, was awarded the
Distinguished Service Order, and two
of his officers, Lieut.-Commander.
(E). H. C. Hogger, R.N., and Sub-
Lieut. P. W. B. Ashmore, R.N.,
each received the Distinguished Service
Cross, for operations in Cretan waters
during May, 1941. On that occasion
the Royal Navy took heavy toll of
the German invading forces which
attempted to pass by sea. Unfortunate-
ly, being without air support, our
warships suffered heavily, the cruisers
York, Gloucester, Fiji and Calcutta,
and the destroyers Greyhound, Here-
ward, Imperial, Juno, Kashmir and
Kelly being sunk in action with enemy
aircraft. Ultimately a large proportion
of the British troops in the island
were evacuated in spite of all the
enemy could do to prevent their
being   embarked.

On January 2, 1942, Admiral Sir
Andrew Cunningham, Commander-
in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet, issued
the following communiqué from his
flagship    at   Alexandria :

" During the advance of our
Army in Libya, the enemy appeared
to have been making special efforts
to interfere with our supplies by
sea. In this they had little success,
while our counter-attacking forces
have done great execution. They
have sunk one Italian and two
German submarines and brought
in prisoners. The forces carrying
out these successful operations in-
cluded H.M.S. Farndale, Kipling,
Hasty and Hotspur."
In an interview given the same day
*to a number of Press representatives
the Commander-in-Chief added the
following    remarks :                *

" There are indications that a
fair number of enemy submarines
have been operating in the Eastern
Mediterranean.    Apart  from  trying

July, 1942

THE   KIPLING  JOURNAL                         5

to dislocate our sea line of com-
munications, there is evidence that
they have attempted to maintain
the Bardia garrison by submarine.
The enemy is chary of using surface
craft. Also there has recently been
a noticeable slackening of hostile
air activity. This is believed to
be due to the Libyan and Cretan
aerodromes   being   waterlogged.

From the three submarines de-
finitely sunk—which is probably
a modest estimate—there have been
taken 40, 50 and 40 prisoners
respectively. All the submarines
were destroyed by depth charges
dropped by our forces on the surface.

The captain of one British rescuing
destroyer said some of the Germans
were truculent, ill-behaved and of
the Gestapo type, and had" asked
to be separated immediately from
the Italians. The captain of the
British destroyer suggested that
the Germans might be dumped
into the sea to solve the problem,
but for humanitarian reasons this
proposal   was   not   adopted."

In the first instance Commander
D. T. Dowler, R.N., was appointed
to    command    the    Kipling,    to    date

' August 1, 1939 ; but on the outbreak
of war he was transferred to a sister
destroyer, and relieved by Commander
A. St. Clair Ford, who was still
captain at the time of the ship's loss.
For   a   short   time   in   the   early   part

. of this year, while Commander St.
Clair Ford was on sick leave, Commander
J. S. M. Richardson, D.S.O., R.N.,
held   the   command.

Officers serving in H.M.S. Kipling
when she was commissioned in 1939
included Lieut.-Commander J. E. S.
Bush, R.N., Lieut. J. K. L. Evans,
R.N., Lieut. D. V. M. MacLeod,
R.N., Lieut.-Commander (E). E. C.
Senior, R.N., Gunner (T), N. W. Fox,
R.N., and Midshipmen E. A. Burnham
and P. A. Chubb, R.N.R. At the
the same time, Lieut. N. B. Robinson,
R.N.V.R. (son of the Hon. Secretary
of the Kipling Society) and Surgeon
Lieut. E. W. Rees, R.N.V.R., also
joined the  ship.

In 1940 Lieut. C. J. Steel, R.N.V.R..
and Sub-Lieut. J. S. Woosley, R.N.V.R.
were appointed to her. Several changes
in personnel occurred in 1941, Lieut.-

Commander (E). H. C. Hogger re-
lieving Lt.-Com. Senior as " Chief,"
Sub-Lieut. P. W. B. Ashmore, R.N.,
replacing Lieut. MacLeod, and Surgeon
Lieut. J. I. A. Jamieson, R.N.V.R.,
and Gunner (T). A. J. Stanton, R.N.,
succeeding Surgeon Lieut. Rees and
Mr. Fox, respectively. Other appoint-
ments in 1941 included Lieut. W. T.
Sinclair, R.N.V.R., Acting Sub-Lieut.
A. J. C. Baker, R.N.R., and Mid-
shipman F. M. H. Milburn, R.N.,
the first-named being relieved within
a few months by Lieut. D. H. Wilkin-
son, R.N.V.R. More recently, Lieut.
(E). P. G. Fyers-Turner, R.N., has
taken the place of Lieut.-Com. Hogger,
promoted.

Other officers who have served
in the Kipling are Lieut. W. D. Shaw,
R.N., Midshipman A. E. P. Deane,
R.N., Midshipman R. G. Shaw, R.N.,
and Midshipman C. N. Russell,
R.A.N. The appointments of the
last three were for short periods of
training.

A LINK WITH THE SOCIETY

It is felt that the connection of
all these officers with H.M.S. Kipling,
and thus with the Society, is one
that needs to be placed on record
in these pages. The first reference
to the ship's officers in the Journal
will be found in the issue for December,
1939, where it is mentioned that
the Hon. Secretary had been invited
to lunch on board. He found the
captain and the first lieutenant to
be " great admirers of Kipling, and
most enthusiastic about the con-
nection between their ship and the
Society." A fuller account of this
luncheon appeared in the Journal
for    April,    1940.

It was on April 6, 1940, that a
deputation from the Council visited
the ship. After a plaque of Rudyard
Kipling had been unveiled by Mr.
J. H. C. Brooking, Founder of the
Society, and a silver cigarette box
and ashtrays had been presented
to the Ward Room Mess, a replica
in bronze of the ship's boat-badge
was given to the Society.

Other gifts to H.M.S. Kipling
from the Society and its members
included books, magazines and papers
for the ship's library,dartboards, bio-
oculars and knitted and other garments

6                       THE   KIPLING  JOURNAL

July, 1942

from the Comforts Fund that was
instituted. In 1940 a donation of
£30 provided a special Christmas
dinner for the ship's company.

Last year Mrs. J. M. Fleming
presented to the Kipling a Georgian
silver inkstand which her brother
had given her in 1890. As she put
it, "I felt I wanted to give some
personal gift, the equivalent of a
mug or silver spoon, to my last and
largest  godchild."

THE NAME OF KIPLING

Though the name of Kipling has
temporarily disappeared from the Navy
List, that is no reason why such a
cordial association should be allowed
to lapse. It should be possible for
members, in spite of the inevitable
delays of war time, to preserve touch
with the officers and men who have
served in H.M.S. Kipling until such time
as another ship of the name is launched.

The Admiralty Committee on Ship
Names is always ready to welcome
suggestions. The early revival of
Kipling as the name of a new ship
is one which the Society might well
make. It would be by no means
the first case of the kind, Gurkha
being   a   recent   instance.

In a broadcast by Commander
Anthony Kimmins, R.N., some men-
tion was made of the Kipling's share
in the Cretan operations, which is
quoted    below :—

" At dawn on the morning of
May 23 the Huns made their third
and final attempt to invade Crete
by sea. Actually only two enemy
ships made the attempt. They
were sighted creeping towards the
beach at the first streak of dawn.
The Fifth Flotilla tore in to inter-
cept and sank both of them. The
first was full of Hun soldiers who
leapt overboard in their full heavy
equipment. The second was loaded
with ammunition. Shells from the
Kelly's and Kashmir's 4.7's soon
found their mark and set her on
fire.

All this had happened in full
view   of the   Hun   airborne   troops,

who had already felt the effect of
the destroyers' guns. You can
imagine their fury at seeing their
much needed supports scuppered
at the last fence. You can imagine
the air sizzling with their impassioned
signals for the bombers to concen-
trate on the destroyers who had
been responsible ; and it wasn't
long before they came. The first
to arrive were the high level bombers.
They started at 5.30 in the morning
and continued until 8. Hundreds
of bombs were dropped, but both
the Kelly and Kashmir then managed
to escape unscathed. At 8 a large
formation of dive-bombers took
over and were more successful.
The third wave got the Kashmir
with a 1,000-lb. bomb abaft the
funnel. The Kashmir broke in
two and sank in a couple of minutes.

Shortly afterwards another 1,000-
pounder hit the Kelly abaft the
engineroom. At that moment she
was steaming full out at 30 knots
and heeling over under helm. The
speed of the ship and the force
of the water on the wrenched
plates in her side were too much.
She heeled further and further,
and 50 seconds after being hit 
turned   turtle.

Some three and a half , hours
later, the destroyer Kipling, of
the same flotilla, who had been
detached earlier and had herself
been repeatedly bombed, managed
to reach the scene. In spite of
further and continued dive-bombing,
she got the survivors of the Kelly
and   Kashmir   safely   away.

Up till now it had been clean
fighting, and there was no question
that our sailors had developed
a sneaking admiration for these
dive-bombers. But now, as their
victims lay helpless in the water,
those same pilots flew up and down
close to the surface while their
rear-gunners riddled our men with
machine-gun bullets. I think they'll
live   to   regret   doing   that.

So ended the Hun's third and
final attempt to invade Crete by
sea."

July, 1942

THE   KIPLING   JOURNAL                        7

On the Road to Mandalay

by LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR GEORGE MacMUNN,

THE Road to Mandalay has a
sad significance for all now,
lovers of Kipling or not. Much
nonsense has been talked of neglect
of precautions and a word or two on
this may not be out of place. For
long the Defence of Burma has been
a subject carefully studied by the
General Staff. But, and it is a very
big ' but,' never from the point of
view that France would collapse
and her remnant sell Indo-China
to Japan. That altered the whole
problem. Defence was only con-
sidered against a China who always
laid claim to Burma, and to whom
at any rate till quite lately, the Govern-
ment of Burma including our own,
paid tribute. But that did not justify,
so it seemed, the making of an other-
wise useless road at the expense of
the Indian and Burmese peoples.
The quite unnecessary political idea
that made a Burma separate from
India, deprived her, moreover, of the
regularized military support of her
great neighbour. The Burmans can
never defend themselves, being worth-
less as troops and not much good
as Quislings. The district of Tharrad-
waddy always did include a fanatical,
but unwarlike party, all people of
whom Kipling wrote " They shot
at the strong" (i.e. from a safe distance)
" and slashed at the ' weak " (who
could not respond), and the wounded
British or Indian soldier has been
the principal enemy that they con-
tended with. Therefore when taken
they have been " disposed of " by
our troops without form or ceremony.
But such Burmese troops as there
are, a few battalions, are raised from
Kachins, Karens, and Chins, Mongo-
loids all, who all furnish troops of
the Gurkha type. Their behaviour
from such accounts as have come
through have been admirable. The
battalion of Kachin Rifles sent late
to the Tigris in the last war, put the
"fear of God" into the Kurds, taking
the rebel chief Sheikh Mahmud them-

selves, at the Bazian Pass, in Kurdistan,
and much impressing the Kurds
with their dahs. The Kurd is a
gentleman who will sling rifles and
bandoliers and knives over himself,
but who dislikes cold steel as a cat
hates   water.

But Malaya and Burma are the
hapless victims of the collapse of
France; and Vichy's treachery which
brought the thousands-of-miles-away
Japs to our coasts, added to the con-
temptible turpitude of our last two
pre-war Premiers who destroyed the
Navy and feared to tell the people
of what the Service Chiefs told
them about defence in the Pacific.
The result is Mandalay in flames.
Theebaw's teak palace gone, and so
many of all the beautiful things and
memories we in this country have
treasured of the " Road to Mandalay
where the flying fishes play." That
line has often been criticised by the
ignorant, thinking Kipling wrote of
the Irrawaddi running north and
south,   whereas

" Where the flying fishes play
And the dawn comes up like thunder
Out of China 'crost the Bay "
refers of course to the troopships
going East across the Bay of Bengal
for Rangoon and Mandalay. Our
Press writers, who so often get their
allusions wrong, have talked of Man-
dalay as Burma's ' ancient capital.'
That, of course, is tosh. It was built
by Theebaw's predecessor, for it
pleased most rulers and dynasties
to build them a new capital. But
Theebaw's palace, the military head-
quarters and British club when I
knew it, was beautiful enough, with
its gilded teak and pagoda roofs,
inside the crenelated fort wall of
Tartaresque design, but of little mili-
tary value. Myitkhyina, ' the town
of big fish,' has gone too, lying as
it does on a very wide reach of the
Irrawaddi. That is sad but it was
a mushroom town, with, when I
knew  it,   only  a  few traders' booths

8                       THE   KIPLING  JOURNAL

July, 1942

where Ma Shwe Mas smoked big
cheroots, and Kachin and Shan-
Talok girls made googoo eyes, round
a pongyed Military Police post and
stockade. It will re-appear as soon
as the cloud has passed, as will Man-
dalay, but who will rebuild, in all
its picturesqueness, the gilded teak
architecture of Theebaw's Palace, I
don't   know.

Kipling wrote three sets of Burma
verses, each of great charm and power,
Mandalay, Boh Da Thone, and The
Grave of the Hundred Head, the last
two redolent of all that must have
been happening as our men forced
their way through the bamboo jungles.
Then there was Mulvaney's story of
" Lung Tung Pen."
" Boh Da Thone was a warrior bold

His sword and his sabre was bossed

with    gold."

Like most Mongoloids he was entirely
ruthless  on  the  warpath.
" He crucified noble, he scarified mean

He filled old ladies with kerosene,—"
this latter to make them show where
their valuables were. He was en-
tirely contemptible as a warrior, but
entirely Hun and Nazi in spirit as
far as the weak and helpless were
concerned. Have you read what a
sergeant reported as done in the truly
Eastern way, to six murdered and
mutilated men of his regiment ? If
so   you will understand why Quislings

are so quickly ' disposed of.' The
Grave of the Hundred Head tells
much the same story of ambush by
those who shot at the strong for
safety's    sake.

" A snider squibbed in the jungle—
Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris
Picked up their subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead
And the back blown out of his head."
Incidentally, I don't know if any
one has noted the usual Kipling
subtlety of fact in this yarn of typical
verse. The Indian officers were Suba-
dar Prag Tewarri and Jemadar Hira
Lal, Oudh Brahmins both, of a Hin-
dustani regiment of classes now not
enlisted, for their military value was
not first class." If you mentioned
Indian Officers today they would
usually be Sikh, Dogra, or Moslem.
The Oudh men were dying out,
but the Oudh regiments were in
Burma at the time of which Kipling
wrote, and their names are a very
good mark to his intimate knowledge.
Ah well! there it is, and for the moment,
affairs touch the lacrymae rerum.
But not for long till we once more
see, to quote another Kipling line,
" The King's Peace over all dear
boys, the King's Peace over all."
But Boh Da Thone will have a rough
time for " The Black Tyrone have
seen   their   dead."

The Annual Conference

THE   Annual   Conference   of the
Society     was    held    in    London
on   June  18th,  when  Mr.   R.  E.
Harbord, the Chairman of the Council,
presided  in the absence of the Presi-
dent.   (An account of the proceedings
will appear in our next issue).

The business meeting (from which
telegrams of greeting were sent to
our Overseas Branches) was followed
by a gathering at the Dorchester
Hotel, when members and their friends
had tea together and compared notes
on the progress of the Society during
the past year. This was the first
social meeting of members in London
since the outbreak of war, and they
were specially gratified by the atten-
dance of the President, Major-General
Dunsterville,   who   had   travelled   up

from the country for the occasion.
His inspiring talk was very highly
appreciated. As a writer in the
" Daily Telegraph " commented, " He,
the original Stalky is the only one
living today of the famous ' Co,'
now that Beetle has followed McTurk
into the shades. Indeed, he is the
sole survivor of those who knew
Kipling well in the days when, as
the General once unfeelingly re-
marked, ' we were a lot of potty little
schoolboys.' " Sir Christopher Robin-
son described some of the experiences
of the survivors of H.M.S. Kipling,
who he said, were expected to arrive
in this country at an early date. They
will be warmly welcomed by the
members of the Society when an
opportunity arises  to meet them,

July, 1942

THE   KIPLING  JOURNAL                         9

Kipling at Home II

by DOROTHY PONTON

(This is the second of three articles
by Rudyard Kipling's former Secretary.
The first, " Kipling's Home," appeared
in the April, 1942, number of the "Journ-
al.")
KIPLING AT WORK 1911-1923.

BETWEEN 1911 and 1913 the 
verses and chapter-headings of
Mr. Kipling's prose works were
collected in Songs from Books and
many of the short stories and verses
written, which were later published
in A Diversity of Creatures. While
the suffragettes were very active,
Mr. Kipling drafted his verses The
Female of the Species. The suffragettes,
as a body, objected to Mr. Kipling's
view on votes for women, and threats
to burn down Bateman's reached him,
but he quietly ignored them and
pursued   his   own   policy.

On the declaration of war against
Germany in August, 1914, Mr. Kipling
sounded a rousing call to arms in
his verses, For All We Have and Are,
followed by the prophecy of the Ger-
man moral collapse in Zion, and a
moving eulogy on the death of Earl
Roberts when visiting the Indian
troops at the Front. At the beginning
of 1915 he visualized the mental
sufferings of a sick German woman
in Swept and Garnished, followed
by Mary Postgate, which showed
how an unimaginative English woman
reacted against a German airman,
who had fallen from his machine
after dropping bombs on the village
and killing a little girl.

After the loss of his only son (2nd.
Lt. John Kipling of the 2nd Battalion,
Irish Guards), who was reported
' wounded and missing ' after the
Battle of Loos in September, 1915,
Mr. Kipling revealed, in some measure,
his unspoken grief, in the verses,
A Nativity, and My Boy Jack. Endor
uttered a stern warning to all who
hoped to trace their lost ones by
resorting to spiritualism and A Song
at Cock-crow ruthlessly criticised the
attitude of the Vatican towards atroci-
ties committed by the enemy, as did
also some of the Epitaphs. But through
the gloom of those years, Mr. Kipling

always welcomed anything that lifted
the pall for a moment and in A Re-
cantation he praised the Music-hall
artists for their invaluable services
in lightening the burden of the troops
at the front by their entertainments.
And when rumour attributed the
manufacture of margarine from corpses,
he electrified some friends by reciting
the   following   lines :

" Charlotte, when    she    saw    what

Hermann
Yielded  up  when  he  was   dead,

Like a well-conducted German "
Spread him thickly on her bread."
In Mesopotamia he severely blamed
the Government for its lack of proper
medical provision for the wounded
in that part of the world, and in The
Hyaenas he denounced the Press
for its unfair criticism of Lord Kitchener
after his death in the Hampshire.
His verses The Choice were written
as a sequel to The Question, after
America joined the Allies. In The
Song of the Lathes, he describes the
feelings of a widowed munition-
worker, and Gethsemane provides the
poignant monologue of a soldier before
he is gassed. In Justice he sternly
warns the Allies against the folly of
offering too easy terms to the enemy.
His verses, The Irish Guards, outlined
the • history of the regiment his son
joined, and he was already collecting
material for his history of The Irish
Guards in  the   Great   War.

In 1921 Mr. Kipling was made a
Master of the Sorbonne and in Novem-
ber the family went to France for a
brief period. At the Sorbonne Mr.
Kipling gave an address entitled The
Virtue of France, and read a thesis
before the assembly. At Strasbourg
he delivered three speeches, A Return
to Civilisation at the University, The
Trees and the Wall at the University
Banquet   and   Waking from   Dreams.

During my secretaryship from 1919
to 1924, Mr. Kipling's chief work
was The Irish Guards in the Great
War, a work of two volumes written
as a memorial to his son. It was
a work of poignant memories ; for
he knew many of the men who had

10

THE  KIPLING JOURNAL

July, 1942

been killed in action. Some of the
material for the book was collected
from the diaries of officers—mere
scraps of paper stained with the mud
of the trenches—or even flecked with
blood.

The Irish Guards, 1st Battalion,
returned to England in March, 1919,
and the 2nd Battalion were disbanded
later. Some of the officers spent
week-ends at Batemans,' when they
doubtless gave the author first-hand
information of certain engagements
at the front, which he skilfully wove
into the fabric of the whole story.
Often Mr. Kipling would take his
visitors along the banks of the Dudwell
to fish. "It's a strange thing," he
said, " these war-worn youngsters,
who didn't mind killing Huns, will
blanch and squirm when the moment
arrives to attach a worm to the end
of a hook." ' Please, would you
mind doing it ?' they will plead and
look  the  other  way."

As the regiments were disbanded,
many of the young officers —whose
education had been interrupted by
the call to arms—returned to college,
Mr. Kipling's verses, The Scholars
and The Clerks and the Bells describe
their attempt to return to the studies
of youth. But with an occasional
side-step to create some vivid word-
picture on some important current
event, or to find relaxation in some
lighter vein, Mr. Kipling bent his
whole genius to completing this master-
piece of the Great War. " This
will be my great work," he once said,
and at another time. " It is being
done with agony and bloody sweat."

He worked at it methodically and
with the utmost care to get all details
correct. His usual method of pro-
cedure was to study the subject closely
and then set down, in his own in-
imitable style, the result of this study.
This formed the original manuscript.
When the typewritten copy was pre-
sented to him, he pruned or expanded
it, and the next copy would be subjected
to the same process till-—perhaps not
until four or five copies had been
carefully revised—the finished article
would be laid aside till a final revision
of the whole was made just before
publication.

His handwriting was sometimes
difficult   to   decipher   and   he   once

 accused me of making ' pot shots '
at an undecipherable phrase. But,
when I admitted my guilt and asked
what I was to do about it, he smiled
and said, " Continue the pot shots.
They sometimes give me an idea ;
anyway I like 'em better than blanks."
At another time he threatened to
get a typewriter of his own—and did.
But the work composed on it was,
at first, much more undecipherable
than the other. " The beastly thing
simply won't spell," he complained.
One day he came stealthily to the
office window and stood for a moment
listening while I was typewriting.
" How did you know I was there ?"
he exclaimed, as I turned to see what
he wanted. I pointed to a glazed
calendar standing on the roll-top
desk. " Oh, I see !" he observed
solemnly. " A perfect reflector of
all that goes on behind your back.
I shall have to be more circumspect
in the future. This visit was prompted
by professional jealousy to discover
your speed on that infernal machine."

On one occasion a whole chapter
of the Irish Guards history, which
had been sent for a fourth revision,
disappeared. Mr. Kipling asked me
to return it, and when I said it had
already been returned there was some
consternation. Nobody could find it
and it was not until the library was
being checked some weeks later
that it turned up inside another book
in   Mr.   Kipling's   study.

Every scrap of manuscript was
supposed to be returned as soon as
it had been copied, and Mrs. Kipling
jealously guarded these till the end
of the year, when they were sent to
London to be mounted and then
placed in safe custody. One day—
not long after the typescript had gone
astray—Mr. Kipling asked for the
copy of a page of manuscript, which
he supposed had been given to me.
I denied having received it, and Mrs.«
Kipling looked very suspiciously at
me. " Are you sure it is not in the
office ? I'm almost certain it was
given out," remarked Mr. Kipling
seriously. I asked what it was about
and then added, " I have no recollection
of receiving that piece " whereupon
Mr. Kipling went off humming, as
was his wont when bothered. But,
before I had been in the office half*

July, 1942

THE   KIPLING   JOURNAL

11

an-hour, he appeared at the window
with a broad smile and placed the
missing sheet on the table. " Here it
is. I'd only forgotten to tear it off
my block. Sorry !" he said. "Thank
you. I'm glad it has been found,"
replied I. " And I'm glad I didn't
say ' Quite certain it was given out '."
added    he.

In the early summer of 1922 Mr.
Kipling, as a member of the Imperial
War Graves Commission, went to
visit the graves when King George V
made his pilgrimage there. Mr. Kip-
ling's  verses, The King's Pilgrimage,
were  published  on  this  occasion.

By the end of the summer, the
Irish Guards History was ready for
publication—at least almost ready.
But when Mr. Kipling handed it
over to be forwarded to the printers,
Mrs. Kipling chanced to turn over
a few pages and her keen eyes lighted
upon certain alterations in Mr. Kip-
ling's handwriting. " But this is not
the final copy, Rud," she remarked.
Mr, Kipling raised his eyes to Heaven
in despair, and then glanced quickly
at me. " It's all right, Carrie," he
said after a blank pause, " I've made
only a few alterations ; they're quite
clear." But Mrs. Kipling was adamant.
No typescript, bearing any alterations
in Mr. Kipling's handwriting, must
leave the house. He bowed wearily
to her wishes and the work was handed
to me to be re-typed at high pressure.
" I appreciate your industry," said
Mr. Kipling when the last fifty pages
were handed to him, " and still more
the fact that you never turned a hair
when the whole thing was decanted
upon you and you settled to the load."

In August Mr. Kipling, whose
health had ,been troubling him for
some time, suddenly became des-
perately ill and was rushed to London
for an X-ray examination. On his
return he kept to a special diet, but
though this restored him partially
to health, he always looked ill. " Shall
I always have this pain ?" he once
asked wearily, but the doctors assured
him all was well. During the autumn
the proofs of the Irish Guards History
were corrected by dint of sheer will-
power. In November Mr. Kipling
became ill again, and as he was then
strong enough to bear an operation,
this was decided upon in the hope
of effecting a cure. The operation
was performed at the Middlesex
Hospital and he returned to Bateman's
within three weeks. Gradually he
recovered some of his former vitality
and, while convalescing, wrote portions
of Propagation of Knowledge—a new
chapter on the immortal Stalky and
Co., and The Janeites which was pub-
lished  later  with  other  tales.

In February. 1923, Mr. Kipling
attended the annual dinner of the
Royal College of Surgeons and eulogised
the skill of the surgeon in his speech
Surgeons   of   the   Soul.

When he was strong enough to
travel, Mr. Kipling went abroad
with his family, and on their return
in May, 1923, turned his attention
to writing short stories, many of which
appeared later in the collection of prose
and verse   entitled Debits and Credits.

(To be continued. The next and
last article in this series, entitled
" Kipling's Farm " will appear in
the   next   issue   of   the    " Journal.")

Major-General Rimington

BY   the   sudden   death   on   April
30th    of    Major-General    J.    C.
Rimington,     C.B.,     the     Kipling
Society suffers the loss  of one of its
most   loyal   members.

General Rimington was one of
the very few remaining Westward
Ho boys who were contemporary
with the Stalky trio, and at one time
for a short period he shared a study
with Kipling. He had the peculiar
nickname of ' Potiphar,' but none
of us could  ever remember the cir-

cumstances that led us to this rather
absurd choice. However, we always
spoke of him as Potiphar up to the
day of his death. I knew him per-
sonally as a good soldier and a staunch
friend, and his sudden end came as
a   great   shock   to   me.

Members of the Society will recall
the short articles contributed by
General Rimington to recent issues
of   the   Magazine.

L.    C.    Dunsterville .

12

THE   KIPLING JOURNAL

July, 1942

The Genius of Rudyard Kipling

Hid Versed on Soldiering and Sport in Two Continents (Reprinted by permission from
" Horse and Hound.")

KIPLING was torn in Bombay
in 1865 and educated at Westward
Ho, Devon, but returning to
India in 1882 became famous when
just turned twenty by his stirring
verse and graphic stories of Indian
military life—Departmental Ditties,
Plain Tales from the Hills, Soldiers
Three, Barrack Room Ballads, the
Jungle Books, and Kim. These made
him perhaps the most popular writer
of the day. He received as the first
Englishman the Nobel Prize for Litera-
ture in 1907 and died in 1936. Al-
though primarily regarded as the
apostle of Empire, Kipling's works
contain many stories in prose and
verse of sport and stirring events
of flood and field, notably A Sahib's
War and The Captive in prose, and
M. I. (Mounted Infantry) and Lichten-
berg (New South Wales Contingent)
in verse, the first of which opens as
follows :—

I wish my mother could see me now, with

a   fence-post   under  my   arm,
And a knife and a spoon in my puttees that

I found on a Boer farm,
Atop  of  a  sore-backed  Argentine,   with   a
thirst  that  you  couldn't  buy.
I  used to  be in  the  Yorkshires  once,
(Sussex,    Lincolns   and   Rifles   once),
Hampshires, Glosters and Scottish once !

(and lib.)

But  now  I   am  M.I.
That is what we are known as—that is  the

name you must call
If you want officers'  servants,  pickets,  and

'orseguards an'  all—
Details for buryin'-parties,  company-cooks,

or supply-
Turn out the chronic Ikonas ! Roll up the—

M.I!

There are seven stanzas in this poem,
too many to quote further, but to
those who served in the South African
War the witty satire with which they
are charged is beyond compare. The
raison d'etre of the M.I. was the
inability of the authorities at the be-
ginning of the war to realise that
the immobility of heavy-booted in-
fantry was fatal to the success of
rounding up mounted Commandos
of Boers who knew every square
yard of the veld. Mounted infantry
had therefore to be raised in a hurry ;

horses and ponies were imported
from all over the world, sent up to
the front weeks before they were
acclimatised, and the wastage of
horseflesh was lamentable and scandal-
ous. Here are two stanzas from
Lichtenberg :—

Smells  are  surer than  sounds or  sights

To   make   your   heart-strings   crack—

They start those awful voices o'  nights

That whisper   " Old  man,   come  back !
That must be why the big things pass

And  the  little  things  remain,
Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,
Riding in, in the rain."

I  have forgotten  a hundred fights,

But  one  I   shall  not  forget—
With the raindrops bunging up my sights,

And my eyes bunged up with wet ;
And the crack and the stink of the cordite—

Ah.. Christ !    My   country   again !
The smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,

Riding in,  in the rain.

In 1910 appeared Actions and Re-
actions, which contains besides Garm,
a Hostage, a tale of the loan of a bull
terrier to the author by a Tommy
in India. Another story is called
Little Foxes, in which figures an
account of a foxhunt in Ethiopia
and what happened to a foolish spoil-
sport globe-trotter there. The poem,
The Power of the Dog, is one of Kip-
ling's    best    creations.

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day ;

And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why  do   we   always   arrange  for  more ?

Brothers  and  Sisters,   I  bid  you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

When   the   fourteen   years   which   Nature

permits

Are closing in asthma or tumour or fits,
And  the  vet's   unspoken  prescription  runs

To   lethal   chambers   or   loaded   guns,
Then you will find—it's  your own affair,
But .... you've   given   your   heart   to
a dog to tear.

It was said at the time that when
the Poet Laureateship was vacant
in Queen Victoria's reign that Kipling
would have been offered the post
if he had not written a poem called
The Widow at Windsor to the theme
of which Her Majesty took exception,
but as it was a comparatively inoffensive
piece of writing I think this unlikely.

July, 1942

THE   KIPLING   JOURNAL                      13

The  chorus  runs :—

Then 'ere's to the Widow at Windsor ;
And 'ere's to  'er stores  and  'er guns.
The men and the 'orses what make up the

forces
O'   Missis   Victorier's   sons.

(Poor   beggars !    Victorier's    sons !)

But for a whiff of the Victorian barrack-
yard nothing can bear comparison
with Back to the Army Again, in which
poem is portrayed in the inimitable
jargon of the old soldier the sentiments
of an ex-infantryman. Would that
space  permitted  its  recital  here !

ANGLO-INDIAN   LIFE.

Kipling's short stories in Plain
Tales from the Hills and The Day's
Work deal exclusively with incidents
of Anglo-Indian life. Miss Youghal's
Sais, The Broken-Link Handicap, and
The Rout of the White Hussars are
tales respectively of police work in
Upper India, up-country racing, and
how an English cavalry regiment
was stampeded by a skeleton-mounted
drum-horse which was thought to
have been shot after being cast by
the Colonel. In the first Strickland,
a police officer, who had mastered
from A to Z the ins and outs of lingo
and ways of native criminals, is re-
fused by the parents of his ladylove
on account of his serving in the worst-
paid Department in the Empire.
After one long talk with Miss Youghal
he disappears for three months from
police life, and in a disguise which
no one but the lady detects, takes
service as a native groom in her father's
stable. It is not difficult to guess
the sequel. The author opens the
Broken-Link Handicap tale with the
remark, " There are more ways of
running a horse to suit your book
than pulling his head off in the straight.
Some men forget this. Did you
ever know Shackles—bay waler gelding,
15 hands l3/8 in, coarse, loose, mule-like
ears—barrel as long as a gate-post,
tough as a telegraph-wire, and the
queerest brute that ever looked through
a bridle ? He was of no brand,
being one of an ear-nicked mob taken
into the Bucephalus at £4 10s. a head
to make up freight and sold raw and
out of condition, at Calcutta for Rs.
275. He trained himself, ran him-
self, and rode himself, and if his
jockey   insulted   him   by   giving  him

hints he shut up at once and bucked
the boy off. But he was beaten in
the end ; and the story of his fall is
enough to make angels weep." In
his last race of all, backed to win
a small fortune, Shackles's jockey,
a lad from Perth, Western Australia,
got " stage fright," owing to hearing
an echo from a brick-mound in the
last lap, rammed his heels into Shackles's
side, and the horse stopped short,
slid along the course for fifty yards,
and bucked his rider off. The Rout
of the White Hussars cannot possibly
be told as a potted tale. Suffice
it to say that two subalterns, one of
whom was Hogan-Yale, an Irishman,
bought the cast drum-horse at its
sale, staged an internment of another
old waler trap-horse and despatched
the former at the gallop with a skeleton
wired on his back to the barrack-yard
at watering time. The White Hussar
riders and horses scattered and broke
and fled at the sight.

I suppose that thirty years ago
The Maltese Cat, which appears
in The Day's Work, was known and
read in every Mess in India and the
United Kingdom. Briefly it is an
account of a final between the polo
team of " a poor but honest infantry
regiment," and the Archangels, a
crack cavalry regiment, playing with
half a dozen ponies apiece. It is
inconceivable that Rudyard Kipling,
who had never played polo, could
have described with the faithfulness
to detail of T. F. Dale or Moray-
Brown the niceties of the give and
take of a polo match, but he did.
The Maltese Cat, who was bought
by his owner, the Captain of the Skidars
team, out of a vegetable cart in Malta,
is the hero of the match, and in the
final goal for his side, to save his
rider who had broken his collar-
bone, turned sharp to the right of
the goalpost, straining his back-sinews
beyond hope of repair. " When Lut-
yens, his owner, married, his wife
did not allow him to play polo any
more, so he was forced to be an umpire
and his pony on these occasions
was a flea-bitten grey with a neat
polo-tail, lame all round, but des-
perately quick on his feet, and as
everyone knew, Past Pluperfect, Pres-
tissimo Player of the Game."—H.R.T,

14                      THE   KIPLING  JOURNAL

July, 1942

The Making of England III

The third part of an Address to the Auckland, N.Z., Branch of the Kipling Society—by
Mr. F. S. Townley-Little, Chairman and Vice-President.

NOW,   with   England   established
in all her glory, let us note  the
reaction of the Great Dominions
and    Colonies    towards    her.    When
the    question    of    the    independence
of Canada arose, what was that country's
answer, even while asserting the right
to    freedom    of   action ?

" The   gates   are   mine   to open—
As the gates are mine to close—
And I abide by my Mother's house
Said   our   Lady   of the   Snows."
And then note the tie  of affection
between   England   and   South  Africa,
a tie  that remains unbroken in spite
of    all    politicians    and    separatists :
" Lived   a   woman   wonderful,
May the  Lord  amend  her,
Neither  wise  nor kind  nor  true
But  her  pagan   beauty   drew
Christian   gentlemen   a ' few
Hotly  to  attend  her.
Christian   gentlemen   a   few,
From    Berwick    unto    Dover,
For  she  was  South  Africa
And   she   was   South   Africa
She  was  our  South  Africa,
Africa   all   over !"

Then again Australia,  at the  birth
of the Commonwealth, in that wonder-
ful   poem.     The    Young    Queen,    as-
serting   at   the   one   time   both   her
dependence    and    her   independence.
" It shall  be crown of our crowning
to  hold  our crown  as  thy gift ;
In  the  days when  our  folks  were
feeble    thy    sword    made    good
our    lands,

Wherefore   we   come   in   power   to
seek   our   crown  at   thy   hands."

And so with all the dependencies
of England. In the terrible days
from 1914-1918, the way in which
they rallied round the Motherland
is an assertion that should for ever
still the voice of the Little Englander
and the separatist and prove to all
the world the solidarity of the British
Empire. Although these following words
were really written for a gathering
in  the  Albert Hall  of the   survivors

of the Indian Mutiny, yet they apply
with   equal   force   to   any   crisis   that
may arise in the British Empire to-day.
" One service more we dare to ask—
Pray   for  us,   heroes,   pray,
That when Fate lays on us our task
We do not shame the day !"
And is not an Empire like this worth
righting   for ?    Kipling   has   sounded
many a solemn note of warning—never
more  needed   than  to-day—when,   in
these    times    of   treachery    and    dis-
loyalty, truly one's foes are sometimes
those of his  own  household, we  hear
the   prophetic   note   in   The   City   of
Brass.

" For   the    hate    they    had    taught

through   the   State   brought   the

State   no    defender,

And   it   passed   from   the   roll   of

the Nations in headlong surrender."

But   how   many   there   are   who   will

not heed the handwriting on the wall

till the day of doom is actually upon

them !    In     The     Islanders,    though

written at the time of the Boer War,

the  warning  is   as   clear  to-day  as   it

was then to those who are unprepared.

" When ye go forth at morning and

the    noon    beholds    you    broke,

.  Ere   ye    lay   down   at   even,   your

remnant    under    the    yoke."
What greater patriotic poem has ever
been    written    than    Kipling's    Song
of   the   English ?    How "can   one   do
better than end on the same   note as
the   poet   in   his   idea   of   service—of
stainless    honour—and    of   obedience
to   the   higher   powers.
" Fair is our  lot—O   goodly   is   our

heritage !
Humble ye my people and be fearful

in    your    mirth !

For the Lord our God Most High
He   hath   made   the   deep   as   dry,
He   hath   smote   for  us   a   pathway
to   the   ends   of  all   the   Earth !
Keep  ye  the  law—be  swift  in  all

obedience—

Clear  the   land   of  evil,   drive   the
road  and  bridge  the  ford.

July, 1942

THE   KIPLING  JOURNAL                      15

Make ye sure to each his own

That he reap where he hath sown ;

By   the   Peace   among  our   peoples

let men know we serve the Lord."

And    we    have   England's   answer

and her promise to her Dependencies.

" Also   we   will   make   promise.    So

long  as  the  Blood  endures
I shall know that your good is mine ;
ye   shall   feel   that   my   strength
is    yours."

The great Empires of the past—Assyria,
Persia, Greece, Rome—where are they
to-day ?    All    have    disappeared   and

left nothing but monuments and
relics behind—beautiful in their decay
perhaps, but naught save the dead
ruins of a vanished past. For they
were built on an insecure foundation.
The British Empire has its roots
in the great principles of truth, justice
and righteousness, and as long as
it is true to these ideals, so long will
it stand and flourish. Let us keep
in mind those solemn words of Kip-
ling's Recessional—never more preg-
nant with meaning  than now—

" Lest   we   forget—lest   we   forget !"

Kipling as Journalist in India

IN an article which the late Mr.
E.   Kay   Robinson   contributed   to

Literature on " Rudyard Kipling
as a Journalist " he states that he
wrote to Kipling in 1886 and told
him that a man who could write as
he could should go home to England,
to London, where fame could be won ;
but he replied in a characteristic
letter as follows :—" You ought to
know better at your time of life than
to knock a youngster off his legs in
this way. How do you expect anyone
will be able to hold me after your
letter ? Would you be astonished
if I told you that I look forward to
nothing but an Indian journalist's
career ? Why should I ? My home's
out here ; my people are out here ;
all the friends I know are out here ;
and all the interests I have are out
here. Why should I go home ?
Any fool can put up rhymes, and the
market is full of boys who could under-
sell me as soon as I put foot in it.
Let us depart our several ways in
amity. You to Fleet Street (where
I shall come when I die if I'm good)
and I to my own place, where I find
heat and smells of oil and spices and
puffs of temple incense and sweat
and darkness and dirt and lust and
cruelty, and—above all—things wonder-
ful and fascinating innumerable. Give
me time, give me seven years, and
three added to them, and abide the
publishment    of    Mother    Maturin."

Mother Maturin was the great work

by which for many years Kipling
proposed to make his name. In
1886 he had 350 foolscap pages of
its manuscript lying at the bottom
of a ' bruised tin tea box.' It was, he
said, " the novel which is always
being written and yet gets no forrader."
After describing the pains which
Kipling took to get the wonderful
knowledge he displayed in his work,
Mr. Robinson went on to reveal
where Kipling got his stories. " By
the road, thick with the dust of camels
and thousands of cattle and goats,
which winds from Lahore Fort across
the River Rair, there are walled caravan-
serais, the distant smell of which
more than suffices for most of the
Europeans who pass ; but sitting
with the travellers from Bokhara or
Badakhshan in the reeking interior
Kipling heard weird tales and gathered
much knowledge. Under a spreading
peepul tree overhanging a well by
the same road squatted daily a ring
of almost naked fakirs, smeared with
ashes, who scowled at the Europeans
driving by, but for Kipling there
was, if he wished it, an opening in
the squatting circle, and much to
be learned from the unsavoury talkers.
That is how his finished word pictures
take the life-like aspect of instantaneous
photographs. When, moreover, any
man acquired a reputation for special
skill in his calling, to him Kipling
always went for knowledge. From
men   like   Warburton  of  the   Police,

16

THE  KIPLING JOURNAL

July, 1942

J.   R.    Bell*   of the   Civil   Engineers,      Mulroney of the Medical, Henderson

---------------------------------------------------—     of  the  Secret   Service,   and   others—

(*J. R. Bell was the original " Bridge     mostly    dead   now—he   learned   the

Builder "   in   Kipling's   story   of   that     secrets of life and work and crime on

name.    He spent twenty years in India    the  large  and  often  lurid  scale  that

in  the P.W.D.  and died at Ightham,     fits the colouring of an Eastern can-

Kent, in July,  1912.)                              vas."    —E. W. M.

Jerome K. Jerome on R.K.

R.K.'s importance in the literary field in 1900

I   CAME  across the following  Idle
Ideas,   by   Jerome   K.   Jerome,   in
The Sun of May 7th, 1900, which
shows   how   chagrined   some   authors
of    that    period    were    at    Kipling's
importance   not   only   in   the   literary
field,   but   in   the   world   at  large   as
well :—

" I speak on the subject with bated
breath. I know the retort courteous
and otherwise that can be made
against me. For months I have
struggled against the inclination to
say it. I have wrestled with my
evil nature ; I have tried to bring
myself concerning this thing to a
proper frame of mind, but the devil
in me has got the better of me ; I
try to keep silent, but he drives me
on to say it. It is an awful speech
to make. What will become of me
when I have done it I dare not think.
My conscience cries frantically to
me. Fight against this evil impulse ;
think what you are doing. I can
hardly expect that afterwards I shall
have a single friend 1 eft to me. I
see mothers snatching their children
from my path for fear of contact
with me. I hear the curses of all
good men ringing round me in my
sleep. I know it will not be un-
deserved if I have to end the rest
of my miserable life shunned by
the human species. I even wonder
if afterwards my very dog will not
desert me. Yet I have come to
that pass when I must say it or expire
in spontaneous combustion. It is
this—and I beg the printer to put
it in the smallest type he can command
in the hope that it will escape atten-
tion :   " I'm  getting just a little wee

bit tired  of Mr.  Kipling."
*        *        *

"Already   I   feel  better.    The   die

is cast, my fate is sealed. I am waiting
to see what happens to me. Five
minutes have passed, and no lightning
has yet descended upon me from
Heaven. The sky has not even be-
come suddenly overcast. I have said
it, and I live. Why is this ? Can
it be that there is any legitimate
excuse for me ? The mood will
pass. I shall return to read my
Kipling again with the profit and
pleasure I once derived from him.
But since this war began he appears
to have dominated the universe to
the exclusion of all other beliefs.
Kipling day by day has grown into
a sort of nightmare. " Kipling and
the Queen," " Kipling and the German
Emperor," " Kipling and Tommy
Atkins," " Kipling in the Hospital,"
" Kipling in the train that's going
to the Hospital," " Kipling before
he got into the train that went to
the Hospital," " Kipling on the Boers,"
" Kipling on People who dare to
express an Opinion on the Boers,"
" Kipling on People who dare to
say anything about People who say
anything about the Boers," " Kipling
on the War," " Kipling on the Causes
that led to the War," " Kipling on
the Settlement that is to come after
the War," " Kipling on Everybody
and Everything under Heaven, except
Kipling," " Kipling at the Front,"
" Kipling round the Corner." For
the last six months it has been Kipling
this and Kipling that, Kipling here
and Kipling there, till there has come
over me an unholy longing to find
a corner of the globe that Mr. Kipling
doesn't boss, and go and live there.
Maybe this is the best thing that
could happen to me, only I don't
know where to find it."

VICTORIAN.

July, 1942

THE   KIPLING   JOURNAL                     17

Letter Bag

Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication as short as possible.

TWO   OF   OUR   MEMBERS   IN
JAPAN.

I AM sure members will learn
with   regret   that   Mr.   and    Mrs.

Gatenby, who joined the Kipling
Society in its earlier days, have been
interned in Japan. Mr. Gatenby had
been for a number of years a Professor
of English at a University College
in Fukishima, and latterly at a place
called Sendai. They were keen mem-
bers of the Society and were always
interested in our activities. They
are close friends of mine, and until
the outbreak of war we had carried
on a regular and constant correspon-
dence giving them all the latest " Kip-
ling "   news.

In October of last year I had a
postcard from them written in July
(!) asking for news of us all. I wrote
off at once, but unfortunately Japan
had by that time entered the war,
and my letter was returned to me
as " Undeliverable." Then came an-
other card written in October which
reached me in December—and that
is the last word I have had from them.
G. wrote of their plans to return
home in March (1942)—now, alas,
impossible.

I am in touch with the Foreign
Office, who will let me have any
further details of the Gatenbys' fate
or whereabouts as soon as this in-
formation leaks through. If I hear
anything further, or get an address
to which I can write, I will ask the
Editor to publish it in the Journal
as I believe many members will
like to write a few words of comfort
and cheer to relieve their hardship.—
W. G. B. Maitland, 39, Marl-
borough    Place,    London,    N.W.8.

THE  WORD  "STEER."

The word " steer " in the last
lines of the first paragraph of my
letter in the December, 1941 Kipling
Journal, is a misprint for " sheer."
To " sheer to port " is to surge in
that direction whether under way
or not. In the case quoted the ship
was not under way, but the reaction
from the starboard anchor's breaking
out   would   send   her   head   to   port.

Motorists mentioning a "skid"
parallel perfectly a sailor who talks
of  " taking  a  sheer."

My sentence would be well under-
stood by sailors because of its con-
text, but landsmen may sense a con-
tradiction in " steer " without having
steerage way.—T. E. Elwell, Drew's
Court,   Churchdown,   Gloucester.

SHAKESPEARE  AND  KIPLING.

A correspondent recently wrote
to the President asking if there was
any record of Kipling having re-
ferred to the tradition that Shakespeare
was consulted with regard to the
actual wording of parts of the Bible,
and particularly in regard to the
Psalms. General Dunsterville referred
him to the story " Proofs of Holy
Writ ' ' which was published in the
Strand Magazine of April, 1934,
since collected in the Sussex Edition.
Attention was drawn to the fact that
the Psalms were translated from the
Hebrew in the year 1610. In that
year Shakespeare was 46 years old,
and it will be found that the 46th
word from the beginning of the 46th
Psalm is " shake " and the 46th word
from the end of the Psalm is " spear."

Were such codes usual at that
time ? It is a matter of great interest,
of course, and although Kipling does
not deal with the Psalms, but Isaiah,
the whole question will be of general
interest to students of Kipling as
well as of Shakespeare.—London
Member.

[Captain Martindell informs us that
an exhaustive account is given of the
Authorised Version of 1611 in the
introduction to Scrivener's " Cambridge
Paragraph Bible," 1873. There is
also Eadie's " The English Bible,
an External and Critical History
of the various English Translations
of Scripture," 1876, which is one of
the fullest popular accounts extant of
the whole subject and contained in two
volumes. Sir Sidney Lee makes no
mention of Shakespeare having any-
thing to do with the translation of the
Bible in his " Life of William Shakes-
peare."—Ed.]

18

THE   KIPLING  JOURNAL

July, 1942

Kiplingiana

Press and other comment on Kipling and his work

WAR   IN   KIPLING   LAND,

IN the Yorkshire Observer of Feb-
ruary 6th the following note appear-
ed :

Japan is now carrying war into
the   Kipling   Country.

It has long been known to us that
the blackest crimes at Clapham may
be chaste at Martaban. But only
the more earnest students of Kipling
knew with precision where Martaban
was, the rest of us being content in
the assurance that it was somewhere
hot, romantic, slightly sinister, and
(of course) East o' Suez. Now, thanks
to the Japanese, we all recognise this
place where the moral values of a
London suburb were upset, as a town
of  strategic  importance  in  Burma.

Similarly, that old call sent out
so long ago from beside the old Moul-
mein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea,
has now been answered. " Come
you back, you British soldier, come
you back to Mandalay." But it is
no longer merely the dawn that comes
up like thunder outer China 'crost
the  Bay.

As I browsed through Kipling,
tasting the old fascination of temple-
bells, and winds in palm trees, and
the Best of the Breed in tropic lands,
I encountered a delightful parallel
between two speeches. Squadron-Lead-
er J. B. Nicolson, V.C., speaking in
Leeds the other day as part of the
Ark Royal Week proceedings, said :
" I ask you if you have done your
best, to do a little more, and, if you
have not done your best, to do a lot
more."

Speaking in May, 1912, Kipling
said : "If you give a man more than
he can do he will do it. If you only
give him what he can do, he'll do
nothing." Kipling's old friend, the
British Tommy, now fighting against
the background of Kipling's verse,
should, on this showing, never feel
that the Far Eastern situation is too
much for him. In the end, he'll
" do it."
"THE  BLUE LAST."

In Dorset Street, a little steep street

that falls off Salisbury Square, Fleet
Street, London, I noticed (writes
a correspondent in the Manchester
Guardian) the lower part of a broken
building being picked to pieces  to
be carted away. It looks a domestic
building and near its doorway is
some ironwork that obviously held
a sign. I remember the sign—it
was " The Blue Last,"—and the
house was an inn until the last war,
when it became an office building,
and the blue last, a roughly carved
wooden model, was taken to a public-
house near by.

But the old Blue Last had its legends.
One was about Rudyard Kipling
writing his " Absent-minded Beggar "
during the Boer War at the " St.
James's Gazette " office, which was
opposite, needing inspiration for his
1st verse, and coming over to the Blue
Last for a pint of beer. Some pundits
have it that it was Kipling's " Bolivar "
that prompted the excursion, and
certainly its last verse justified the
pint.

But its literary associations go back
beyond Kipling. Early in the century
I had a chop there, and a friend who
took me there drew out the dingy
waiter about them. " Thackeray came
here, didn't he ?" The waiter replied,
" Oh, yes—Thackeray. He was a
regular. Yes, he cut that initial
there on the pew—there it is, ' T.'
Yes, ' T ' for Thackeray, sir." Later
we asked him about Tennyson—
' he used the inn, didn't he ?" The
waiter was ready for us. " Tennyson,
yes—he was a regular too. Let me
see. Yes, he cut his initial somewhere.
There it is. Yes, ' T '—' T ' for
Tennyson."

GENERAL MACARTHUR AND
KIPLING.

The Daily Sketch recently published
an extract from a letter written by
General MacArthur before the United
States came into the war, which
throws light on his character.' It
was Sent ''from 'Marilla to comrades
of the last war and says : " I  am hard

July,  1942

THE   KIPLING   JOURNAL                       19

at work in this far-flung outpost
in the Pacific trying to prepare it
to   meet   any   crisis   that   may   arise.

I only hope that if I have to fight
again I may find behind me such
troops as composed the 42nd Division.
Swift and sure in attack, tenacious
and determined in defence, they
aroused perfect confidence in their
own commanders and a sense of
anxiety and concern in the ranks
of their  opponents.

They truly constituted what Kipling
calls ' first-class fighting men.' Give
them   my   affectionate    regards."

UNITY.

The following cutting from the
New York World Telegram has been
sent to us by Mr. William Britton
Stitt, of New York. This appeared
on Monday, December 8th, 1941.
" Till,     dazed     by      many    doubts,

he   wakes.

The    drumming    guns    that—have
no   doubts."

Kipling wrote that, back in 1894,
of " An American " and " The Ameri-
can   Spirit."

America has been attacked. The
drumming guns are sounding. And
many problems have been solved
on a Sabbath day. Chief of these
is the problem of national unity.
We will have that unity—from here
on.

America now turns, as Kipling
said, " A keen, untroubled face home,
to  the  instant need  of things."

THE IMMORTALITY OF KIP-
LING.

Another cutting has reached us
from the American press—this time
from the New York Herald Tribune—
sent by Mr. Paul E. Vernon, Brooklyn,
New York. It is given below in
full :—

" Rudyard Kipling would have been
seventy-six years old if he had lived
until tomorrow. With what grim
concern he doubtless would have
watched the struggle that is going
on for the preservation of all that
he held dear ! This tremendous con-
flict has not yet produced, so far as
we can see at the moment, any out-
standing literary voice ; it has re-
awakened   more    than    one    memory

of the heritage which Kipling left.
For some time before his death in
the early part of 1936 there were
obvious signs of what might be called
a Kipling revival ; those signs, in
the intervening years, have multiplied.
He had a rare something that persists
through the decades, and we could
not ignore it if we tried.

A new edition of his works, to be
known as the Burwash Edition, is
soon to be issued. But that is by
no means all. Just as the older
people are ' turning back to their
Kipling, so are the young ones making
the discovery that here was a writer
whose seductive cadences never die.
The young men about town, in uni-
form and out, are given these days
to quoting from him. They are
rememorizing his Recessional ; in
the bars there is heard the song about
the little lost sheep, and there is talk
of  Fuzzy-Wuzzy  and   all   the   rest.

It is, to be sure, rather far-fetched
to attempt to consider Kipling as a
champion of the democratic ideal.
He was, in his way, a Diehard Tory,
and there is no need to try to deny
his jingoism, his Imperialism and
his preoccupation with ways of life
that are somewhat out of date today.
But that is not the point ; he had
something more than all that, and
that is why he survives. And among
those immortal qualities were a high
and stirring gallantry, a courage that
never failed in the face of the most
terrible circumstances, and a spirit—
adventurous, romantic and essentially
decent—that must appeal always to
the men and women who are on the
right side of this battle to the death.
From Dover to Singapore, Kipling's
is still a voice of the far-flung battle
line."

£5,000   KIPLING   RELICS.

A presentation copy of Kipling's
" The White Man's Burden " fetched
£125 in New York when sold with
400 other Kipling relics, which totalled
over £5,000.—B.U.P., from the London
" Evening   News."

BLUNT AND KIPLING.

The following note from Mr. William
White, of Whitman College, Walla
Walla, Washington, U.S.A., appeared
in Notes and Queries  —" One source

20

THE  KIPLING  JOURNAL

July, 1942

of literary odds and ends which has
not been thoroughly investigated is
the catalogues of rare-book dealers.
Time and again these privately printed
books have contained first and only
printings of letters, diaries, poetical
fragments and marginalia ; and while
they are published for purely com-
mercial reasons, they are nevertheless
sometimes important to the scholar.
In a catalogue printed in 1936 by
Mr. David Magee, of San Francisco,
California, I found this summer two
bits of choice literary criticism written
by A. E. Housman in two books by
Wilfrid Blunt and Rudyard Kipling.
Mr. Magee tells me that they were
printed also in Joseph Henry Jackson's
book-review column in the San Fran-
cisco Chronicle some time during
the summer of 1936, but they are
so delightful and typical of Housman
that they deserve wider circulation.
On the half-title of Wilfrid Blunt's
' Love Sonnets of Proteus ' (London,
1898), Housman, evidently disappointed
with the poetry, inscribed the following
quatrain   in   pencil :

If     boots     were     bonnets,
These    might    be    sonnets.
But   boots   are  not ;
So   don't talk  rot.

The other comment by Housman
appears on the last page of Rudyard
Kipling's The Seven Seas (London,
1896) opposite the famous line " Shall
draw the Thing as he sees It for the
God of Things as They Are !" Hous-
man's  couplet in pencil reads :

The God of Things as They Are is never
the  God for me,

For He is the God of Things as They Did
Not Ought To Be.

Another comment by A. E. H. on
Kipling was pencilled in his copy
of ' The Five Nations ' (London,
1903), now in the possession of Mrs.
William S. Kuder, of Oakland, Cali-
fornia. On p. 56 of this book, opposite
Kipling's line, " David went to look
for donkeys, and by God he found
a kingdom !" Housman corrects the
other poet's history with the acid
remark :   " by  God  he  didn't."

TO   MY  FAG.

A note appeared in The Scotsman
dated December 24th 1941 :—(Sir
Mark Young, the Governor of Hong-
Kong, was at one time the fag of
Professor Oliffe Richmond, of the
Chair of Humanity in Edinburgh
University. To mark his appreciation
of his former fag's heroic stand
Professor Richmond has sent us
the   following   lines) :—

Mark,   you   were   tough   and   grim   enough
As a youngster,  and a memory lingers
Of you in your fagmaster's chair
Curled  in  your  muddy  boots   (that  made

me   swear),

My   Kipling   clutched   between   most   inky
fingers.

Tough, grim and gay, you went your way
When I was a don and you a scholar.
No need of me or my chairs or books :
You gave the softer arts but sidelong looks,
And glowered on fools, but more in scorn
than   choler.

Once we  met  by  chance  (you were   home

from   France)

At Charing Cross and the train from Dover,
You from the trenches muddy and grim—-
Fagmaster proud  you  stopped  to   welcome

him,
Still  by your hands  and  boots  his  fag  all

over.

Now you've Chinese boys to fag for ploys ;
For  (here   there   can't   be   two   opinions)
Men have  found  in you  the  sterling stuff
Of   Kipling's   Britisher   grim   and  tough,
And   sent   you,   Governor   where   you   best

belong

With more than toasting-forks to hold Hong-
Kong,

The toughest,  grimmest job  in the  King's
Dominions

" NINE-AND-SIXTY WAYS."

The Oswestry Advertiser, in a
competition note, has this reference :—
" I wonder if any of you have read
a poem by Rudyard Kipling in which
he writes : " There are nine-and-
sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
and every single one of them is right."
I thought of that quotation when
I was opening the entries for our
competition in which I asked you
to give a list of words beginning
with the letters " Can." For I have
had 99 entries and as Kipling says,
every single one of them is right.
Now there's a problem for you .  . .  ."

CHANGES OF ADDRESS. Will members who are changing their address
please notify the Hon. Secretary, Kipling Society, 2, High Street, Thame
Oxon ?

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The Kipling Society, the sum of......

now and on the first day of this month
next year and annually thereafter until
further  orders.

Signed............................

2d. Stamp

Date....................19

FOR OFFICE USE ONLY .

Date received    .....•...........         Membership No...............

Receipt No...................         Indexed  ......................

Printed by H. F. Lucas & Co., 151, North Road, Southend-on-Sea.