CONTENTS PAGE Notes—J. P. Collins :--.--.- 1 Kipling & The Past in India—Lt.-Gen. Sir George MacMunn 3 Wanted—A Man—Captain E. W. Martindell - 5 One Good Thing the War Has Done—St. John Ervine - 6 " The Wound and the Bow "—Basil M. Bazley - 8 Kipling—Poet of Empire—II.—Dr. Norman Boyes - - 9 The Homes of Rudyard Kipling—Colonel C. H. Milburn - 12 Kipling Olla Podrida—T. E. Elwell ----- 14 A Snapshot of R.K.—Victorian - - - - - - 15 Kipling Awakes—Cecil O. Hull - - - - - 16 Letter Bag ---------- 17 Kiplingiana ---------- 19 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 to The Hon. Secretary, The Kipling Society, 2, High Street, Thame, Oxfordshire, published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. IX. No. 64. December, 1942 Notes A SYMPHONY. THE war-time atmosphere re- calls the Laureate of Empire, but hardly conduces to the calm or consecutive thought one desires for the enjoyment of his work. Readers should therefore feel the more in- debted to the contributors to this Journal who make each quarterly issue possible in these straitened days. It is sufficient, perhaps, to cite a few instances. Sir George MacMunn never fails to summon up the glamour and colour of the East ; this time he plunges us into the clash and fury of the Mutiny and the old Sikh Wars. Nor does he fail to add that flick at the finish which reminds us how true to life was the immortal Terence Mulvaney. Captain Martindell writes with all the authority of the best- informed Kiplingite alive, and Mr. St. John Ervine, creator as well as critic, adds the testimony of a master of the pen with quiet sarcasms that ought to snuff out some of the farthing dips which are fouling the air around the poet's altar. Mr. Bazley is never more at home than when he is find- ing the best in a brother-devotee's work, and the remaining papers prove how the unanimity which pervades the Empire to-day extends to the homage it pays its poet as well. WHY LOCKWOOD ? A correspondent is trying to trace the origin of the Lockwood in the patronymics of Kipling's father, and it sends one's thoughts back to old tramping days over the Yorkshire dales, by way of his grandsire's home at Pateley " Brig," near Nidder- dale. In an old farm house there- about I noted an antique wall-paper where the patterning, in old and faded brown ink, consisted of Old Testament episodes like Abraham's sacrifice, Ruth and Naomi, and Joseph and his brethren. The figures were garbed in robes and breeches, and wore Rembrandtesque turbans or shovel hats; and besides, the artistry was obviously Dutch. The question was: had that paper come over in the roll from Leyden or Amsterdam with pilgrims seeking refuge from Span- ish tyranny ? And did these include any of Kipling's ancestors ? PIONEER AND ARTIST. One would expect a name like Lockwood to figure many times over in the D.N.B., yet the only conspicuous instance is the late Sir Frank, lawyer artist and M.P. for York. By the way, in a far part of British Columbia I once encountered a Yorkshire settler of like name whose fame is secure in Canada. Speaking over a long and adventurous experience, he told me he had tramped westward from the Great Lakes, years before the Red River rebellion. The country he covered in those months of trek was so heavily forested that he tramped for many a week and never saw the sky. What is more, he found the Indian tribes en route so well disposed that he never needed anything to smoothe the way but a bit of " bacca " and a few scraps of French. A prospector's life ever since had served him badly, and he had occupied many a lonely winter in his hut by carving models of obsolete Canadian tools and implements of the chase and the household, mining, farming and the rest. He told me that long years afterwards, when these toys had been bundled away into oblivion, there came a request that he would give or sell them to the museum of McGill University. So there they rest in honoured and perpetual dis- play as a memorial of one Lockwood, or some such name, who would other- 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL wise have been forgotten. The point for our purpose is that as I remember him, in his short and sturdy build and well-trimmed beard, he bore a tolerable resemblance to his name- sake, that other rare artist and York- ist, the sire of Rudyard Kipling MEA CULPA. Hard is the lot of the Corregidor, especially when he has to correct himself. In our last number the writer of these random Notes took up a cudgel for Kipling's style and idiom against a critic from beyond the Border. It was almost a case of what Byron called " English Bards & Scotch Reviewers." The passage under discussion was that ringing line, " the tumult and the shouting dies,"—perhaps as famous as any Kipling ever wrote. The point at issue was not the meaning or the trace of Bible in the phrasing, but a grammatical snag Macaulay's school- boy would have scorned. The en- deavour was to show that the singular inflexion of " dies " was admissible, inasmuch as the subject was simply the double expression of one idea, and not necessarily a plural. Judge of everybody's horror when " tumult " appeared in print as " trum- pets !" Surely the serenade of Jericho and the force of unpoetic licence could no further go. The explanation is that in working out a case for the defence, one's thoughts wandered on to John Bunyan and his vision of " the trumpets sounding on the other side." Obviously the word " trum- pets " would have quarrelled with the word " dies," yet it served by force of contrast to strengthen the defensive argument. There must have been something in this line of per- suasion, for the error went unnoted in " proof " by colleagues keen in detection and thoroughly grounded in Kiplingology. At any rate, they are exempt from blame, and as for this humble and contrite scribe, I wonder if I shall ever have the pre- sumption to correct or criticise any- body else again. J. P. Collins Lt.-Colonel J. M. Fleming THE Council and Members of the Kipling Society extend deep sympathy to Mrs. Fleming on the death of her husband, Lt. Colonel J. M. Fleming, late of the Indian Army. Colonel Fleming was a son of Surgeon-General Andrew Fleming of the Indian Army Medical Service, and was born in India in 1858. His paternal grandfather was Professor John Fleming, of Aberdeen. His mother, owing to a fortunate circumstance which found her in Bengal, escaped death in the Indian Mutiny, practically all the members of her family perishing in Cawnpore in 1857. The military career of Colonel Fleming began in 1879, when he was commissioned in the King's Own Scottish Borderers. After a long and active career in the Army, Colonel Fleming retired in 1911, and busied himself with a work entitled "The A.B.C. of the More Important Battles of the Eight- eenth and Nineteenth Centuries," which was to remain in manuscript, though it had been favourably commented upon, in his capacity as a reader, by the late Lord Tweedsmuir, then John Buchan. The outbreak of war prevented publication. He belonged to a family of three sons and two daughters. Both his sisters have survived him, and one of his brothers also. Colonel Fleming married Miss Alice Macdonald Kipling, a sister of Rud- yard Kipling, (see page 12) and so entered a family with connections like Earl Baldwin, Burne-Jones and Sir Edward J. Poynter. The circle in which Mrs. Fleming moved in her girlhood included such famous figures as Ruskin, William Morris Mrs. Meynell, Lord Roberts and Sir Frank Benson. December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 Kipling and the Past In India By SIR GEORGE MacMUNN THERE are many things which one regrets that Kipling did not write or sing of for us perhaps because he had not time. Especially does this apply to the romance of the British in India, that sub-continent as big and populous as Europe without Russia. In the rebuilding of the broken, warring, hating pieces into which the Turkish Empire of Delhi had dissolved, England had made such a League of Nations as that august body never even dreamed of for Europe .... this league of nations which the traitor Congress, and the treacherous Gandhi endeavour to revile and betray before the rather scornful world. Had Kipling had time to think of it, there is room for twice as much as he has ever written. It is remarkable how little he has touched our past at all and still less the stately past of India, British or even Mogul. Of our past out of India there is nothing in prose and but little in verse, save only the in- imitable Puck of Pooks Hill, and Rewards and Fairies, but there are the verses, The River's Tale, " Twenty Bridges from Tower to Kew, Wanted to know what the River knew." The Roman Centurion's Song, " Legate I had the news last night—my cohort ordered home." Danegeld. " And that is called paying the Dane- geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Danegeld You never get rid of the Dane." The Anvil is good enough for all time, when the Norman hammered England to hard steel, " England's on the anvil—hear the hammers ring," and then Edgehill Fight, with the closing line we know so bitterly now— " The first dry rattle of new-drawn steel Changes the world today." The American Rebellion subscribes to Dean Inge's dictum, that " there is no event in our history so grossly perverted and misrepresented " as all modern American historians admit, with its pathetic lines— " The snow lies thick on Valley Forge, The ice on the Delaware, But the poor dead soldiers of King George They neither know nor care." Now in this particular stanza perhaps the poet has forgotten, for it was Washington's poor soldiers who died and froze at Valley Forge to enrich their dastard contractors, while the British lay warm in Philadelphia; but he saw the crime and tragedy for which neither Washington nor King George was responsible. As for the past of India, Mogul or Rajpoot, or British, there is not much. The Last Suttee, though it tells an incident of '89, breathes cen- turies of the Rajpoot spirit, when the Queen slunk out as a harlot to brave the British decree that widows should not burn with their departed, yearn they never so bravely. Here is the telling stanza, and the blow of the old Thakur, " I had looked for the Queen to face the flame, But the harlot dies for the Rajpoot dame— Sister of mine, pass, free from shame. Pass with thy King to rest." Of the Mogul days of the great destruction of the Mahratta host at Afghan hands, near Delhi, at the last battle of Panipat, by The Black Mango Tree, With Scindia to Delhi sings. That was the battle of which the news ran through India, by the underground channel of the bankers— " Two pearls of great price have 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 been lost and thirty gold mohurs, while the number of the silver and copper cannot be cast up." It is the terrible story of Scindia's escape with the Afghans in close pursuit, and his light o' love, that he tried to save. True history every word of it. The Mutiny of the Bengal Army, that great drama which the British in India had to experience, he has only touched on once, in the remarkable story of The Lost Legion. The title alone bears tribute to Kipling's wide reading and knowledge. It is the name in history for the famous Ninth Legion, The Legion Hispanica, that about the year 80 A.D. marched out from York, fully equipped, six thousand strong, to deal faithfully with the 'brigands' of the Northern territories, the Brigantes, a Teuto-Celtic tribe from the Black Forest, powerful and numerous. The legion was never heard of again. No prisoners escap- ing, no slaves rescued, no arms ever for sale nor ever dug up .... the mystery of history, that made a long gap in the Army lists of Rome for many a year. And Kipling uses it for his only Mutiny story. The story is really of the 55th Bengal Native Infantry that mutinied at Nowshera and Mardan near Peshawur, and with a small party of mutineer cavalry made for the Trans-border and the Swat Valley, calling on the tribesmen to join them and extirpate the British. But the tribesmen knew more about the British than that, and coveted the mutineers' horses and arms and accoutrements, and chased them up and down across the border, while John Nicholson and his levies did the same. The story remained of their massacre, and the joy that the Pathans took in it, and Kipling took the story of their ghosts wandering and clattering among the tombs, possibly a story then current, of how the noise of the ghostly squadron had enabled a real cavalry regiment to pass the hillside watchtowers, as the watchers prayed in terror of the ghosts—and thus surround a pirate's stronghold. A fine story well told, and it is almost the only hint in his writings of this tragedy which the builders of modern India had to go through. Of the great Sikh wars that we had tried so hard to avoid or the Mahratta wars, both against armies trained by the French, there is no word save in Snarleyow. Now Snarle- yow, as all should remember, was the name of the dog in one of Captain Marryat's sea stories. But it was given to the off-centre horse in a troop of Bengal Horse Artillery, and the story told in the Kipling ballad is word for word the story as told in the memoirs of Quarter- master-Sergeant Bancroft of the Bengal Artillery, who in 1845 was a gunner in ' G ' Troops 2nd Brigade, at the famous and terrible battle of Firozshah, the battle of the Midnight Bivouac. The ballad refuses to say what was the battle, and the line runs— " An' what the bloomin' battle was I don't remember now " with the terrible happening to Snarle- yow, and the driver's brother—nor would any one else, had I not chanced to pick up in a junk shop in the Simla bazaar, a pamphlet, being Bancroft's memoirs. There he tells the whole story of the tragedies, and it was from that memoir that Kipling wrote the incidents. Even the great John Company that ruled India more humanely than ever Parliament did, is hardly referred to, though in Namgay Doola, you do read of the half Lepcha descendants of an Irish soldier, who said their prayers to a shako-plate of the Bengal Fusiliers and were ' agin the Govern- ment.' (The Company's Europeans were nearly all Irish, as the regimental memorials show). CHANGES OF ADDRESS. Will members who are changing their address please notify the Hon. Secretary, Kipling Society, 2, High Street, Thame Oxon ? December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 Wanted—A Man by CAPTAIN E. W. MARTINDELL DOUBTLESS owing to the stage of what, until recently, seemed to be almost total stagnation and inaction in our war effort—more noticeably in the field—it is apparent how great is the lack of some inspiring writer, whether in prose or verse, to stir us up to get rid of the feeling of ineptitude and apathy, nay, de- featism, that is slowly beginning to appear in our midst. In the loss of Kipling's vital force and clarion trumpet-call to deeds cf derring-do, the nation is gravely handicapped in the war against the barbaric Hun and his ape-like yellow accomplice. Unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less strongly, there is a feeling that we have been deprived of a great force in our public life, a great force for inspiration and encouragement in our war effort. Kipling's absence has left us all poorer in respect of what a people always needs most, an influence bright, living, concen- trated, attractive and inspiring, es- pecially in time of war. He once was the chief interpreter, who could make the country understand itself, its duties and its high destiny, and by the alchemy of his genius draw forth from the common the true gold. An Imperial nation, it has been said, is always an army on the march through an unknown and hostile country, and under such conditions and most of all in time of war, to be without its best interpreter is indeed a grievous loss, a veritable handicap. Kipling's own work was not wrought without a sense of personal responsibility to the Divine Creator of the Universe, as one can judge from an early poem of his :— Lo, I have wrought in common clay Rude figures of a rough-hewn race, Since pearls strew not the market place In this my town of banishment, Where with the shifting dust I play, And eat the bread of discontent. Yet is there life in that I make. O thou who knowest, turn and see— As thou has power over me So have I power over these, Because I wrought them for thy sake, And breathed in them my agonies. "It is this poem," said Professor Norton, " that gave more than any other the key to the interpretation of Kipling's work in general and displayed its controlling aims." Kip- ling's patriotism, his love of Britain and his pride in her great Empire are not disassociated from her re- sponsibility to God, who has com- mitted to her care her world Empire. Accordingly she must honour and obey the laws of the Power who has made her what she is, and her domin- ion must be based on right and estab- lished in justice and truth. This lesson is enforced in that poem, which at the time was characterised as " the greatest poem written by any living man,"—that is Kipling's Recessional. We want something more today than " blood, suffering and tears " constantly being dinned into our ears. Bernard Shaw, Bennett, Wells and Hardy have been described as " undisguised pessimists," and their work has been mainly a work of demolition. Kipling, on the other hand, says with Browning :— " The world's no blot to us Nor blank : it means intensely, and means good." Kipling's verse is imbued with splendid vitality, as he was full of energy. With what splendid vigour has he not led us hitherto ! Through the gorge that gives the stars at noon-day clear— Up the pass that packs the sand beneath our wheel— Round the bluff that sinks her thousand fathom sheer— Down the valley with our guttering brakes a-squeal : 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 Where the trestle groans and quivers in the snow, Where the many-shedded levels loop and twine So I lead my reckless children from below Till we sing the Song of Roland to the pine. * * * Let the organ moan her sorrow to the roof— I have told the naked stars the grief of man ! Let the trumpet snare the foeman to the proof— I have known Defeat, and mocked it as we ran ! * * * By the wisdom of the centuries I speak— To the tune of yestermorn I set the truth— I, the joy of life unquestioned— I, the Greek— I, the everlasting Wonder-song of Youth ! Let us then one and all, sink self and be up and doing all we know in our stern fight against all the evil forces assailing us, remembering what the Master said in 1914. Stand up and take the War. The Hun is at the gate ! * * * In courage keep your heart, In strength lift up your hand." One Good Thing The War has Done By ST. JOHN ERVINE the well known novelist, dramatist and critic THE war is having one good effect; it is clearing away un- healthy criticism and replacing it with criticism that is sound. Before it began, a crowd of owl- faced young men, who thought they were serious when they were only solemn, began to criticise authors on party political lines. A writer, they said, was good or bad according to his political opinions. If he agreed with them on the need to nationalize the manufacture of drain pipes, he was a good author. If he thought that drain pipes might better be made by private manufactur- ers, he was a bad author. If he refused to fight for his king and country, but was willing to fight for republicans elsewhere, he was a genius; but if he persisted in think- ing that his king and country had some claim to his support, then he was a negligible hack and unworthy of any intelligent person's respect. WHEN THEY BOAST. The war has, I hope and believe, ended, or is ending, that form of puerility, which is, of course, a species of Hitlerism. A spell of soldiering is wonder- fully effective in clearing a man's mind of prejudices and prepossessions. A good soldier appreciates and admits skill and efficiency in his enemy. Incompetent soldiers always belittle and deride their foes, who, they brag, will bite the dust at the mere sight of them. When I hear a boxer boasting that he will make a mess of his oppon- ent three seconds after he has entered the ring, I know, beyond a doubt, which of them will take up a hori- zontal position on the floor. There was once a general who reported to his Government that he had attacked the enemy that morning and was now moving back according to plan, followed by the foe in the greatest disorder ! It is, no doubt, well to put a good face on things, but it is better not to put a false face on them. And the plain fact about authorship is that its genius blows where it listeth and will not be restricted to this party or that group. December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 An author is a man who is endeavour- ing to portray people and express his personal vision of life. He is not a man who is trying to portray reflections of his prejudices and express an opinion which he has just formed. He realises that all men are fallible, and that any man may, therefore, be right, just as any man may, there- fore, be wrong. Realising that fact, he guards himself, as best he can, against the human habit of assuming that only those people are right who agree with us. The new kind of critic who was appearing too often before the be- ginning of the war went about assert- ing that all who were in step with him were the only people who knew how to march. His enemies were fools. They could neither write nor think. A single contemptuous word from him laid them out for ever, though what credit there was in defeating a puny and effete foe was not apparent. A Hackenschmidt does not run round the world boasting that he once knocked the stuffing out of a dwarf. Kipling suffered severely from critics of this sort. He was a wretched writer because he was an Imperialist. Wells, on the contrary, was a genius because of his Socialism, though he came in for good hard knocks when he dared to suggest that his comrades sometimes made mistakes. A CONCESSION ! Mr. W. H. Auden—where, by the way, is Mr. Auden ?—went so far in partisan belittlement as to write of " horrible old Kipling." A reaction against this sort of puerility was certain to set in, and it has ; and one hears some of Kipling's detractors now admitting that he could write quite a good short story. They are right : he could. Quite ! I should go farther than that and say that his short stories are among the greatest that have ever been written. He had colour and force and strength of speech and a high sense of people. It is a singular fact that two of the greatest short- story writers in twentieth-century Eng- land were antipathetic to each other politically; Kipling and H. G. Wells. These two men have written numerous short tales that will last as long as English lasts. Kipling's " An Habita- tion Enforced," and Wells's " The Door in the Wall," are only two of a great collection of brilliant stories, beautiful in conception and in exe- cution, which they have produced. Kipling's " Kim " and Wells's " Kipps " were published about the same time. They have yet to be surpassed. Kipling is the poet and the prophet of the proletariat more than Wells ; for Wells has always disliked the democratic ideal, whereas Kipling, even when he denounced it, was still under its thrall. He takes the part of the private soldier against the officer and the N.C.O. He supports the able-bodied seaman against the shipowner. His chief praise is for the skilled workman and the man without in- fluence or authority. His " Captains Courageous " are ordinary fishermen who have undauntable hearts. In " His Private Honour " it is the private soldier who teaches the young officer how a gentleman should behave. Kipling liked efficient men. He detested idlers and incompetent people. GREAT ARTIST. He loved his country, but he did not love it blindly, and when it needed chastisement he gave it chastisement in good and hard measure. He believed in the high purpose of the English-speaking people, but he did not limit his belief to those of them who live in the selecter parts of East- bourne and Hove. He was a great artist whose mastery of words was supreme and, in many respects, unmatchable. He saw poetry and romance in machinery and oily rags, and heroes where other people saw only working-men. Many people professed surprise because East Enders could take it. Kipling, had he lived to see them taking it, would not have felt the slightest surprise. He would have been very surprised if they had failed to take it. Reprinted from the London Daily Mail, by permission of that news- paper and of the author. 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 The Wound and the Bow THE WOUND AND THE BOW— Seven Studies in Literature by Edmund Wilson. (Secker and Warburg, 15/6d.) THESE remarks about Kipling (76 pages out of 295) were apparently written ten or more years ago, so they do not present an absolutely complete picture. There is, however, sufficient space for the author to develop his thesis—that, for a period from 1910 onwards, Kipling suffered from an eclipse; as Mr. Wilson says, " he has in a sense been dropped out of modern literature." That modern ' literature ' is the poorer for this, no person of taste will deny; but the fact remains, in spite of the equally evident fact that Kipling's sales—always at top prices—have been the envy of every other contemporary writer. This lack of cheap editions, which may be a legitimate policy for a writer like the late George Moore, whose circle of readers was relatively small, had a deplorable effect on the popular appeal so essential to a man who was writing for a wider, though equally intelligent, public. It is probably obvious to most of us that there are two Kiplings. There is the Kipling who sought and achieved success in verse and in the short story, whose whole effort was to produce something worthy of permanence : there is another and intensely patriotic Kipling who sacrifices his artistic reputation by his endeavour to get his countrymen of Island and of Empire to be alive to the ever-threatening danger. In this latter phase he wrote topically, so an opinion perfectly correct at the time, may be equally wrong when humanity thinks differently; one does not damn democratic ideals because democracy expressed itself badly from 1904 to 1914. It always seems to me that many critics, good as well as bad, make the mistake of over-praising his early work, say, to 1900, and undervaluing his sub- sequent works. Mr. Wilson in his original and clever study says much on the early period, and seems in- clined to estimate Kipling mainly in terms of Kim and Stalky & Co. I must dissent from the remark :— " And actually the whole work of Kipling's life is to be shot through with hatred." All the foregoing does not mean that Mr. Wilson's critical essay is to be brushed away. There has been a lack of Kipling valuations going deeper than the surface; Mr. Wilson's work is worthy of careful reading, even if it offends those who only like adulation, or the ignorant who criticise without knowledge. I think there is too much stress in this study on the Balestier incident; to Kipling the unpleasant part must have been the undesirable publicity and distraction from his work. Again, it is wrong to take Stalky & Co., too seriously; as its author says, the book is not a picture of a typical England school ; it is a series of incidents about certain individuals. These in- cidents are not impossible; the im- probability of the book as a whole consists in the number, not the nature, of the successes of the chief characters. It is, however, intended to be funny; if you like that humour, you will laugh; if you don't, you will be left wondering, and this applies to all humorous work. Mr. Wilson comments on the tragic note in Kipling's later work; he ascribes this to the effect on the author caused by the horrors of the 1914-18 war, particularly to the loss of his son, " qui ante diem periit," like many other beloved sons of English parents. Still, there is a gleam of quiet joy in pieces like " On The Gate," " The Rabbi's Song," and that exquisite poem, " Our Lady of the Sackcloth." It is to be hoped that Mr. Wilson will go a little more deeply and widely into Kipling's work, and give us a work of some length, a task for which he is eminently fitted. That he possesses the critical faculty is well shown by this comment :—" The Paul of these final stories, so different from his early heroes, may evidently tell us something about Kipling's changed conception of himself." Basil M. Bazley. December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 Kipling—Poet of Empire—IL The Second part of an Address to the Auckland, N.Z., Branch of the Kipling Society—by Dr. NORMAN BOYES. IT seemed to Kipling, as he sang, that there was much room for improvement to-day. He spoke of our fathers of old, of the Gods of the Market Place who had ousted in some quarters the Gods of the Copy-Book Headings, the old gods, the true gods that stood for duty and loyalty, who represented truth, righteousness and discipline, courage and faith, " faith that the white men held when they built their homes afar .... freedom for ourselves and freedom for our sons and failing freedom, war." How he must have chafed under the policy of appease- ment. He had already written a poem about that sort of thing called " Danegeld " in which he said :— It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say :— " Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away." And that is called paying the Dane- geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane. The late King George V is said to have uttered during one of the lucid periods of his last illness : " How's the Empire ?" as if, with the prescience of death, he sensed the dark shadow of calamity which hung over it .... Such a thought would scarcely have entered the mind of Kipling. Whatever he wrote by way of rebuke or reprimand, what- ever he told us about our fathers' greatness in relation to our own, was set forth in the same spirit as ministers chasten their flock. He believed in England and the Empire, no man more. There was nothing wrong with the Empire .... except an inherent mental laziness, a desire to postpone the consideration of potent facts until another day. The most independent-minded nation in the world, a nation prepared to take a King to Runnymede .... What does he say ? .... And still when Mob or Monarch lays Too rude a hand on English ways, The whisper wakes, the shudder plays, Across the reeds at Runnymede. And Thames, that knows the moods of kings, And crowds and priests and such- like things, Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings Their warning down from Runny- mede ! Yes, a nation prepared to take a king to Runnymede to preserve its right to think for itself, had the weakness of too many ideas .... thinking some of them the wrong ideas from a national standpoint .... He saw in England a nation that sometimes succeeded in making friends of its enemies, but more often succeeded in making enemies of its friends .... a nation that had sent its ideals and ethics to the four corners of the earth, leavening the spiritual bread of the whole world, yet so tragically boyish in its belief in human nature as to be caught unprepared time and again, only to succeed in muddling through to some kind of final victory and a peace in which you picked up your adversary, dusted him down, shook him by the hand, and gave him a present, possibly his sword, which he could, and often did use against you another time. Even Kipling's great and optimistic soul felt disappointment at the after- math of the last war. Although his ideas for us and his faith in us did not fail, there were times when he seemed to feel that whatever the result of the war, and we had indeed won it, we had just as surely 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 lost the peace. Speaking of the dead of 1914-18 he said in "The King's Pilgrimage " : All that they had they gave— they gave— In sure and single faith. There can no knowledge reach the grave To make them grudge their death Save only if they understood That, after all was done, We they redeemed denied their blood And mocked the gains it won. God knows, we could do with Kipling today; though this war must have shaken even him, so sensitively alive to our greatness and our honour, had he perceived us driven back to our island fortress, humbled before a tyrant, and watched the sad years of preparation, the weary waiting for an offensive. There is some- thing prophetic in his poem written in 1914 : " For all we have and are," For all we have and are, For all our children's fate, Stand up and take the war, The Hun is at the gate! There is also something dreadfully topical in his poem " Russia to the Pacifists " God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, but give us leave to pass. We go to dig a nation's grave as great as England was. For this Kingdom and this Glory and this Power and this Pride, Three hundred years it flourished— in three hundred days it died. I set out to tell you something about Kipling as the poet of Empire, to tell you a story which begins with a little island among the fogs of the North Sea and ends with a federation of free states on which the sun never sets. I was to tell you something of an epic which begins with Chaucer, develops through Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth and ends with Kip- ling, a fabulous tale from the Arabian Nights, of a nation conceived in ignorance and adversity, reared in courage and fortitude and dedicated to industry, faith and honour, a nation that believed above all things in the sacred rights of the individual and the destiny of the man in the street. It is a glorious story, this pageant of history, a thing that dazzles like the shield of Achilles; it does not end with cottages and castles, nor the red earth of Devon, nor with the spires of Cambridge and the frowning citadel of Edinburgh, neither with Botany Bay, nor the Waitemata. It speaks of the grace and glory of human endeavour. And of the find- ing of a way through the woods of adversity, misunderstanding and pre- judice to a larger nationhood as citizens of the world. England's on the anvil ! Heavy are the blows ! (But the work will be a marvel when it's done) Little bits of kingdoms cannot stand against their foes. England's being hammered, hammer- ed, hammered into one. But what can I write, or speak about, when it is all in this volume of Kipling ? .... He says :— If England was what England seems, An' not the England of our dreams, But only putty, brass, an' paint, 'Ow quick we'd chuck 'er ! But she aint ! What is there left to add to that ? Speak as we will about our slowness and our slackness, the Empire's heart and the heart of the democratic peoples of the world go out to England as the seat of government by the people, the land where men can breath freely and serenely. Whatever else we cannot do, we at least have the right to think, to speak, to pray and to vote without duress. Many platitudes and much nonsense could be written about the Empire. Some of us have come to see that the future of mankind will depend on more than one Empire, that English ideals plus something on which the world has not yet agreed, must inspire not one nation but many free-born nations. Perhaps the U.S.A. will be of the number, if only we can come to understand each other. It is not enough to say "we can take it"; we must be able to give it, as well : December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 to give strong blows while the war lasts, and when it is over, to give some hope to the world other than trade barriers and balances of power. England and America form an interesting comparison, the one having reached out to the ends of the earth and formed at widely separated places a comity of nations of common blood; the other having drawn into its bosom all the nations of the world and welded them together by the title of citizens of America. There is much food for thought in both these great ex- periments, for surely from a scientific standpoint they become an experiment in human progress and achievement. The future may require the adoption of some plan like the American ex- periment. Who can say ? It may be a long time yet .... perhaps not in our era; but while there are vast spaces owning none or only a few inhabitants, and overcrowded lands elsewhere, what other remedy can there be, short of war ? But these things we leave to the future and the will of God—the Empire as we know it has been the greatest cause for good in the affairs of mankind since the birth of Christ. This is not to say we have no stains on our record; it is to affirm that there was everywhere in the dealings of our just men, and they were many, the desire to do right and to play fair. I have said that the Empire's is a great story, I wish I could do it justice. I wish I could read all the poems that Kipling wrote round this theme—for most have the touch of the master .... Out of Egypt unto Troy— Over Himalaya— Far and sure our bands have gone— Hy-Brazil or Babylon, Islands of the Southern Run, And Cities of Cathaia ! So Kipling wrote of famous Empire- builders. In much the same spirit he wrote of the Voortrekker, or pioneer The gull shall whistle in his wake, the blind wave break in fire. He shall fulfil God's utmost will, unknowing his desire. And he shall see old planets change and alien stars arise, And give the gale his sea-worn sail in shadow of new skies. There he shall blaze a nation's ways with hatchet and with brand, Till on his last-won wilderness an Empire's outposts stand ! He was among the first to see that the Empire represented a great brother- hood of fine men and women, nurtured in a common faith and democratic ideal and it is on this note that we shall leave him. Although he loved England, as we all do, he recognised the fact that each country in the Empire was a free and independent unit with local attachments, customs, habits and background. In conclusion, I shall read a favourite poem of K's which illustrates this truth. Need I say that just as there was only one Shakespeare, there was and will be only one Kipling, and he shall be remembered as long as there remains an England and an Empire. 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." 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 The Homes of Rudyard Kipling by COLONEL C. H. MILBURN, O.B.E. IT may be remembered that on page 17 of number 56 of this Journal, (December, 1940), in the first of three articles on the " Homes of Rudyard Kipling " which I had prepared, I wrote that " I was pre- pared (and hoped) for additions and possible corrections " but up to Jan- uary of this year I had received none. In that month, however, I received a most kindly letter from Mrs. Flem- ing, (Kipling's sister), accompanied by what she called " Rough Notes," and promising more. This kindly contribution was all the more valuable, as for most of the Winter, she had been contending with the anxieties and worries of very serious illness in her family. I am sure that all members of the Kipling Society will extend their sympathy to her, and feel grateful for the further light shed upon the career of her famous brother. In addition to the " Homes " details which Mrs. Fleming has supplied, and in answer to certain questions which I asked, she has supplemented these particulars by interesting matter bearing on Kipling's home life, and his method of working. I propose, therefore, in this additional article on the " Homes of Rudyard Kipling " to quote Mrs. Fleming's ' Rough Notes ' literally, and on a similar plan to that of the original articles. " My brother left Bombay for the second time, when he was 6 years old, in the Spring of 1871. The first time was in 1868, when he accom- panied our mother home, that her second child might be born in England. The ' House of Desolation ' in Southsea still stands. I had a kind letter from the present owner after my first " Memories " article in Cham- bers'—saying that she did not like to think that what was now, after alterations, a pleasant breakfast room, had once been a damp dreary ' play- room ' where two little children had been so unhappy. It is 5, Campbell Road, Havelock Park. During 6 wretched years, 1872 onward, I never left Southsea, nor had a day's respite from " Auntie Rosa." The ' House of Enchantment ' where the Burne-Jones' lived is The Grange, North End Road, Fulham. A full description of it and of the North End House, Rottingdean, is given by Angela Thirkell, (Sir Edward Burne-Jones' grand-daughter) in ' Three Houses.' The Rottingdean house which they bought about 1880, has a tablet on it with Sir Edward's name. " The three kind ladies "—Miss Winnard, Miss Mary and Miss Georgiana Craik—lived at 26, War- wick Gardens, Kensington, at the top of Addison Road. The house has now been pulled down, and replaced by a block of flats ; however, the three-storied basement houses which still stand on either side are exactly what No. 26 used to be. My mother had the good fortune to hear of them from her friends the George Hoopers, (' Waterloo ' Hooper), for Miss Winnard was Mrs. Hooper's sister. She lived with her lifelong friends, the Misses Craik; the younger one ultimately became Mrs. May. They took charge of schoolgirls and young students, and were amazingly patient and under- standing with young people. Their father, Professor George Lillie Craik—author of that once well known book " English Literature and Language " had been a friend of Carlyle's. He records with un- usual gratitude, in his " Reminiscenc- es " that when Mrs. Carlyle was terribly ill—and hating all her nurses —her sudden inspiration—" send for Mary Craik "—had brought help and skill and unfailing gentleness to soothe her troubles. A handsome desk, suit- ably inscribed, was treasured in the book-filled drawing room as " poor Mr. Carlyle's gift." Sir Henry Craik was a cousin of theirs, and a frequent visitor ; and beautiful Lady Craik, with her three fine small boys, the eldest then about six, was very kind to me, and encouraged me to become, from the age of 13, a kind of junior December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 mistress of the ceremonies at her delightful children's parties. They lived on Campden Hill. I went daily to the Notting Hill High School in Norland Square, and boarded with them altogether. ' Ruddy ' was only there in the holidays, and some- times we spent these in the country with them. One Easter we went to Witley, and R. complained that the nightingales kept him awake ! Miss Georgie, who wrote novels, was a very sympathetic listener to all our experiments in prose and verse. Another London house we fre- quented in childhood was in Knights- bridge, 28, Albert Gate—Sir Edward Poynter's home for many years. The long slim garden at the back opened on the park, and ended in a summer- house with a peaked roof, which it was a good joy to slide down. We only stayed there as small children, 1871-1872 ; but we often went to tea there in childhood to play with Ambrose, who was a year my senior. It has been under sentence of demo- lition for a long time ; but when I was last in London, it was there— lonely and shabby now—behind its pear tree. My memories of it extend from 1878 to 1883, when I went to India. Wilden House, Stourport, was the Baldwins' house, now, alas, pulled down, how I loved it and its big garden, that ran up hill to a birchwood cop- pice—full of bogies in the twilight ! I remember that one of the wills ' Ruddy ' was fond of making when he was about 12, opened with the somewhat grim clause that his body was to be cremated, and the ashes to be forwarded to his cousin Stanley Baldwin of Wilden, with the request that he would throw them into his largest pond. R. K. lived in 101, Earls Court Road in 1890, with our parents. We were all four (the family square) together again for a short time, and we occupied the whole house. R. wrote much verse there, including The Flag of England, and so much enjoyed my Mother's comments and help when he was writing verse, that I have known him to run up a double flight of stairs, especially to read a single couplet, or even a line ! His big desk, on which he had carved, " Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee," was in the front room downstairs, and that was nominally his work- room ; but when he was writing verse, my Mother and I found it saved time to go down and sit with him, for he would run up to us in the drawing room on the floor above, with almost each couplet, eager for approval or criticism, and the latter seemed the more welcome. Some- times he was a little impatient when we were unable to foresee a complete poem from a few brief phrases of explanation and a finished line or two. I remember my Mother say- ing once, " No, Ruddy, it's no use you bringing me a brick and asking me to admire the whole facade of your house—I must have more before I can take in your design." He turned indignantly to me and I said pertly, "That, though I looked forward to seeing the Mastodon when com- pleted, I could not visualise him from two trotters and, one tooth !" Besides The Flag of England, which was written in the dining room look- ing on the street, he wrote the Dis- turber of Traffic, laughing so much at the delightful names he found in the Admiralty maps he was consult- ing—such as Loby-Toby, the volcano —that he could hardly write. His bedroom was on the top floor at the front. In India, our house in Lahore, where he lived from 1882 to 1888, was on the Mozung Road—opposite a seldom occupied house belonging to the Nawab of Mundot. The road had a reputation for being haunted and R. could imitate perfectly the quavering song with which a be- nighted coolie would try to scare away the bhuts and keep his spirits up. One day at lunchtime my Mother and I and the khansamah who waited on us, had a curious experience of the poltergeist character, which was never explained, but happily this was the only one. Our friends called it derisively " Bikanir House," for my Father would never have bullock gearing fitted to the well,— he thought the risk cf fever for his young people too great, so the com- pound grew chiefly dusty ferash 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 trees with a few flowers round the verandahs. It was the usual square white bungalow—with four big centre rooms and smaller rooms at each corner— and wide verandahs. My brother's room turned out of the dining room at the front of the house, and as his work deepened, part of the next room (an entrance hall) was partitioned off to make a writing room for him ; he called it his duftur in emulation of my Father's big room—and was delighted with it. On the partition above the Indian dado, with which my Mother beauti- fied it, he inscribed in twisted ornate black and yellow characters, "obviously Chinese to the meanest capacity," as he told me, " RESPECT THE APART- MENTS OF THE GREAT." I wonder if many families laugh as much together now, as we did in those days ? The Lahore house was a real home for 6 years." I think the above ' Notes ' will be of interest to our members; and I am still hoping that further Notes may be sent in, which may help to complete the record. THE WORLD'S DESIRE. A correspondent draws our attention to the reference to The World's Desire, on page 7 of Journal No. 63 (October, 1942). He points out that The World's Desire was written by Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang jointly. Kipling Olla Podrida THE following verses, which come to us from Mr. T. E. Elwell, provide a new kind of pastime for Kipling enthusiasts, in the collection of lines of verse which are similar in rhyme and metre but interestingly opposite in subject and sense. To those who may trace the origins of these lines the sum of Five Guineas is offered by a member of the Council, to be dealt with as follows :— A Guinea each to the two United Kingdom members of the Kipling Society whose correct replies are received first. A Guinea each to the first three Dominions, Colonial and Foreign mem- bers, whose postmark date would indicate priority. Though any number of members may combine to trace these lines, only one entry should be sent from such a unit. No copying therefore is permitted. All correspondence relating to this competition (and entries) should be addressed to the Chairman of the Kipling Society, R. E. Harbord, Esq., 68, Warwick Square, London, S.W.1. It is suggested that the prize money be spent on doing something of value or interest to the Society, and proposals as to such good work might be sent with the list of origins. A MARINE MIX-UP. The word came down to Dives, in torment where he lay " How far is St. Helena from a little child at play ?" We'll take one stretch—three weeks and odd by ony road ye steer And low blue naked hills beyond. And what is that to fear ? There's a pasture in a valley where the hanging woods divide And there were men of all the ports from Mississip to Clyde The summer sun was setting, and the summer air was still And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill. I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down To a surf that drove unsparing at the brown walled town And through the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring along the hidden beach. By eyes grown old with staring through the sunwash on the brine Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 We'll never read the papers now without inquirin' first *Of somewheres East of Suez, where the best is like the worst. T'would make a monkey cough to see our way o' doin' things And horrid tumblings down from Heaven, and flights with wheels and wings Above undreamed of planets rise, the stars we know are gone And they that found fair plunder, they told us every one. . By open speech and simple, an hundred times made plain The furrows of far off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main From Panifair to Delhi Town, but not alone were we Who heard the silly sailor folk, and gave them back their sea. Now we count new keels afloat, and new hosts on land Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand On the Downs, in the Weald, in the Marshes, I heard the Old Gods say " How far is St. Helena from a little child at play ?" *Mr. Elwell points out that the last line of the fourth verse is the only one differing from its original, which should be " Ship me," instead of " Of." " I changed it," he writes, " because the line was too good to lose." A Snap-shot of R.K. by VICTORIAN A WRITER in the Evening News of February 20th, 1901, recalled how some time ago he had spent six weeks in the company of Rudyard Kipling, whose aversion to the re- porter amounted to a harmless mania. Kipling, he states, is not to be inter- viewed, and he quotes some senti- ments, which Kipling expressed one day when seated alongside a trout stream in the Canadian Rockies. " I am always attracted to people with ink-fever," said Kipling, " it is irresistible while the temperature remains high, but how rarely it lasts !" Not one in fifty of those who make the trial tide over the often unbearable beginning. It wants grit—an essential quality in a journalist. Editors as a rule are very good fellows ; the yarns about their desire to crush new talent is unmitigated rot. But journalists are dangerous ! They may be the most kindly and honourable members of society in other relations, but the moment it is a question of copy they are without principles. A journalist myself ? " Ah," with a chuckle, " that is, of course, another story." The writer goes on to say that there does not exist a person below the 'teens, who can resist Kipling. He remem- bered a case when a delicate, fretful, baby of ten months or so, on board ship, whom even the mother could not comfort, at the sight of Kipling at the far end of the deck would cease wailing and, as Kipling drew near, the poor mite would stretch out his arms to him and sit quite satisfied resting against his knee. On another occasion he mentions that Kipling made a brief address and appealed for support for the widow and family of a deceased sailor. It was a most eloquent " sermon," to use his own title, and the result in pounds sterling would have aroused the envy of a professional preacher. Finally the writer stated that Kipling had one parlour trick—dancing—and one super- stition—palmistry. In respect of the ballroom, he tells how in Yokohama a young girl to whom Kipling had just been introduced showed the writer her programme and said " His (Kipling's) dance is the next, and I can't imagine what to say. For goodness sake, tell me something learned to talk about." "KIPLING AT HOME." We understand from Miss Dorothy Ponton, who contributed the three articles " Kipling at Home " in the April, July and October, 1942, issues of the "Kipling Journal," that a reprint of the three articles in pamphlet form is available at sixpence per copy. Applications for copies should be addressed to :—Miss D. Ponton, 11, Churchfield Road, Poole, Dorset, with remittance of 8d. to cover postage. 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 Kipling Awakes by CECIL O. HULL [The following note by Miss Cecil Hull is reproduced from the " New Zealand Herald " by permission of that newspaper.] A FEW months ago, after St. Paul's had been bombed, Clemence Dane wrote a stirring poem in commemoration of Trafalgar Day (Oct. 21) called It is Dangerous to Wake the Dead. She tells how when waves of thunder and dust broke against Nelson's tomb the spirit of Nelson awoke, " slipped easily out of the shroud," and made its way among the crowded streets, whispering courage and resolution, endurance and audacity : Nelson—in London—awake He stands in the wreck of the road. He sweeps up the broken glass. He fights with fire and despair, he feels with his fingers your heart, Till it beats in your breast like a drum. This is the Nelson touch. And at last " they, for their name shall not live " find too late how dangerous it is to wake the dead. Rudyard Kipling's death five years ago was overshadowed by the passing of the King, and though many tributes were paid to his genius, many literary jackals lifted their heads in the still- ness to yelp at the dead lion. Branches of the Kipling Society scattered over the Seven Seas from Vancouver to Melbourne, from Capetown to Auck- land, did their loyal best to keep the master's teachings alive in British hearts, but for the nation as a whole, Kipling lay buried in the shadow of a temporary eclipse. Then came the war, and Kipling, like Nelson, awoke. Before a bomb had touched St. Paul's, Rudyard Kipling was alive again. His words, prophetic, ringing and unafraid, were on the lips of orators, statesmen, soldiers and civilians. Mr. Noel Coward defied the pink intelli- gentsia by quoting that bold reminder of the democratic ideal :— At Runnymede, at Runnymede Your rights were won at Runny- mede ! No free man shall be fined or bound, Or dispossessed of freehold ground, Except by lawful judgment found, And passed upon him by his peers. Forget not, after all these years, The charter signed at Runnymede. From the evidence of his own words, Kipling was proved no brazen- tongued Jingoist, indiscriminately laud- ing his country, but a stern, wise counsellor who never feared to risk his popularity by saying hard things of the land he loved so well. So Mr. Coward reminded us of his terse comment on the Boer War : " We have had no end of a lesson, it will do us no end of good." Mr. Winston Churchill himself has quoted from that fine poem For All We Have and Are which, written at the beginning of the last war, is even more poignantly appropriate to-day. What could more aptly sum up and condemn the Nazi creed than : Once more we hear the word, That sickened earth of old :— " No law, except the Sword Unsheathed and uncontrolled." Once more it knits mankind, Once more the nations go To meet and break and bind A crazed and driven foe. Yet these words, miraculously apropos as they are, were after all written of another war against the arrogant Prussian spirit of world domination. A far more wonderful instance of prophetic wisdom occurs in the Jungle Book, published years before 1914. The " bad man " of the jungle is Shere Khan, the tiger, and his ambition is to dominate the Pack. The others are cowed, but Mowgli, unafraid cries out, " Free People, does Shere Khan lead the Pack ? What has a tiger to do with our leader- ship ? .... Are we all jackals, to fawn on this cattle-butcher ?" December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 So the apparently unequal fight was joined, and when it was over "Shere Khan needed no more trampling. He was dead, and the kites were coming for him already." After the fall of Bardia, members of the Kipling Society in England cabled " Good Hunting !" to their famous fellow-member General Wavell. The General, in thanking them, declared that he would not rest till he had stretched out the hide of Shere Khan upon the Council Rock. So the eclipse has passed and Rudyard Kipling stands in the light once more as prophet and patriot. Like Winston Churchill he trusts the British common man. He is not afraid to prophesy hard things, but like Churchill too he sees light at the end of the long road. England's on the anvil ! Heavy are the blows ! But the work will be a marvel when it's done. Letter Bag Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication ad short as possible. THE enclosed cutting from the Edinburgh Evening News may I think, be of interest to readers of the Kipling Journal. I hope a place may be found for it in the " Letter Bag."—Edinburgh Member. EXTRACT. " One who " had a lifelong know- ledge of Rudyard Kipling " makes some pungent comments on a magazine article which attempted an analysis of the author's life and character. According to my correspondent, the article contrives a picture that is far removed from reality. Exception is taken to this description " stunted, swarthy, half-blind, and uncouth." It is pointed out that Rudyard Kipling was over 5ft. 6 in., with broad shoulders and a well-developed head, and that his cousin, Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, who is but an inch or so taller, is not habitually described as " stunted." The magazine writer proceeded : " Whether one reads his autobiography or his Indian stories, one must be blind not to see that he fell under the spell of the Anglo-Indian ad- ministrators. He thought them the salt of the earth. He did open- mouthedly revere what must have been a very ordinary collection of Anglo-Indian officials, and the more they snubbed him the more he wor- shipped." " Kipling's friend replies that the critic's standard must be unusually high for his " very ordinary collection " included Lord Roberts— whose " snubbing " of Kipling took the curious form of becoming his life-long friend—of sundry Lieutenant- Governors, Aitchison, Lyall, Sir Denzil Ibbertson, none of whom can justly claim to be " very ordinary," and Sir W. W. Hunter, whose social brilliance was matched only by his scholarship. The long list would culminate fitly in Lord Dufferin whose " severe rebuff " took the quaint course of having inscribed in letters of gold " The Song of the Women " on an inside wall in Helen's Tower at Clandeboye. And as the scholarly person who replies to the writer of the magazine myth really knew Rud- yard Kipling very well, it would appear that the critic has been more than " half-blind " to the facts." KIPLING'S WAR POEMS. Though Kipling wrote so appropriate- ly for the moment, many of his writ- ings will be quoted for all time. This is exemplified in the Press daily, by leader-writers particularly, in quota- tions from his poems relating to the Last Great War, written not only during its progress, but in previous prophetical anticipation of it. Sir George MacMunn wrote in- terestingly in our Journal of October, 1939 on this subject (Some Kipling War Warnings); and his article con- 18 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 tained a scathing reference to Kipling's own cousin (" long before Baldwin and Blum had come together to let the world down ") whereby the strange fact of the extremes of patriotism, energy, commonsense and their opposites were shewn to be possessed by these so-closely related men. The following is an alphabetical list of 52 poems written before, during and after 1914-1918, which have some, and in many cases, very close reference to 1939 ?—J. H. C. Brook- ing, London. THE LIST The Beginnings, Big Steamers, Bon- fires on the Ice, The Covenant, The Choice, City of Brass, Cold Iron, The Changelings, The Children, Cruisers, The Clerks and the Bells, Dane-geld, The Destroyers, A De- parture, England's Answer, Epitaphs of the War, The Eggshell, The Expert, For all we have and are, Fringes of the Fleet, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, The Houses, Hymn before Action, The Holy War, Hymn of the Triumphant Airman, The King's Pilgrimage, The Lowestoft Boat, The Lesson, The Last Lap, London Stone, My Boy Jack, Mine Sweepers, The North Sea Patrol, The Nursing Sister, •The Old Issue, The Outlaws, The Return, The Reformers, The Rowers, Recessional, A Recantation, The Re- call, Song of the Lathes, A Song in Storm, The Storm Cone, The Sons of the Suburbs (not collected), Such as in Ships, The Scholars, Together, The Trade, The Verdicts, The Vine- yard. SHAKESPEARE AND KIPLING. Many books recognise and establish the influence of the Bible in Shakes- peare's plays, but the story by Kipling is possibly the only notable writing that speaks of the influence of Shakes- peare on our Authorised Version. The title is probably from Othello, III, 3, line 320 in which ' proofs of holy writ' is found. Miles Smith, who in the story sends the draft of his translation to Shakespeare, is stated by D. N. B. to have been a distinguished classical scholar and orientalist at Oxford (1) and appointed to make the final revision of the text of the Old Testament. The Psalms are the most quoted of the Scriptures by Shakespeare. In ' Shakespeare's Biblical Know- ledge,' 1935, by Richmond Noble, the chapter on ' Other General Con- siderations ' closes as follows : ' Lord, then Mr. Gerald, Balfour once men- tioned that some industrious student had made an extraordinary discovery in one of the Psalms in the Authorised Version. In that version (2) (which was in course of printing when Shakes- peare was forty-six years of age), and in no other version previously, in the 46th Psalm, the 46th word from the beginning combined with the 46th word from the end (not counting the direction Selah which is no part of the text) makes the name Shakespeare. These researches perhaps support Kipling's supposition that the great master of the English language (3) might well have been consulted by Miles Smith, who for his labour was appoint- ed Bishop of Gloucester in 1612 by the King, a special patron too, of Shakespeare and his plays (4)—The Rev. H. M. Larner, The Royal Hotel, Cambridge. (1) In 1610 Shakespeare with his com- pany was again at Oxford, while between his touring dates of that year he stayed at his house in Stratford. (Hesketh Pearson, 1942). (2) Published in 1611. ' The actual work of revision occupied about two years and nine months, an additional nine months being required for the final preparation for the press.' (Ency. Brit.) (3) A well-educated person in England who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare . . seldom uses more than about 3,000 or 4,000 words in actual conversation. The Hebrew Testament says all it has to say with 5,642 words .... Shakespeare .... produced all his plays with about 15,000 words. (Max Muller in his " Science of Language," 1891). (4) ' The Bible alone has been trans- lated into a greater number of languages than the works of Shakespeare.' (Sid- ney Lee, 1898). December, 1942 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 19 Kiplingiana Press and other comment on Kipling and his work " RECESSIONAL " IN PRISON CAMP. " GOOD has been done," writes the Sunday Times, "by a series of newspaper articles by Harold Denny, the well-known correspondent of the New York Times describing his capture in Libya and imprisonment in Germany and Italy, and giving impressions of both the officers and the rank and file of the British Army highly favourable to their qualities alike of head and of heart. At the officers' prison camp in Italy, largely inhabited by New Zea- landers and South Africans, where he spent the last two months of his captivity, it is interesting to find that the weekly gala dinner and sing- song was invariably opened by Kip- ling's ' Recessional,' sung standing, and ' Land of Hope and Glory.' " MOVING POEMS. " Skimming Kipling yesterday," writes William Hickey in the Daily Express, " I found this admirable quatrain. Ah ! What avails the classic bent And what the cultured word, Against the undoctored incident That actually occurred ? All who compete with censorships will agree. There has lately been some re- habilitation of Kipling among readers of poetry. Last Christmas T. S. Eliot, greatest of living English poets and most sensitive and classical of critics, published a selection of Kipling verse with a long prefatory essay. Eliot sees Kipling as a superb craftsman, a ballad-maker who wrote great verse that often breaks into real poetry. It is in a way humiliating to realise how powerfully we are all apt to be swayed by fashion. In my youth I should have expected social and intellectual ostracism if I had admitted to owning or opening a volume of Kipling's. Now I find such poems as Danny Deever and McAndrew's Hymn moving and technically brilliant : and I am astonished to learn that Kipling was not a mere tub-thumping jingoist. His satire must have been distinctly uncomfortable to the blimps and sahibs of his day. If the terms had been invented then, I am sure the big shots in India would have called him ' Red ' or ' Bolshie ' ; more, worst of all ' Pro-Indian.' " THE SEVEN SEAS. A correspondent wants to know which are " the seven seas " referred to by Lord Trenchard in his recent letter to The Daily Telegraph on air strategy. I suppose he meant the whole of the world's salt water. The phrase has been constantly used in that sense since Kipling gave one of his books that title in 1896, but FitzGerald, I remember, makes Omar Khayyam say : "As the seven seas should heed a pebble cast." FitzGerald's Rubaiyat goes back an- other 40 years. " If the ' sad-glad old Persian ' actually did write of seven seas, which I doubt," says a writer in The Daily Telegraph, " they can hardly have been the same seas that Kipling had in mind. For Kipling did once explain that they were the North and South Atlantic, the North and South Pacific, the Arctic, the Antarctic and the Indian Oceans, ' which seas include all the lesser ones.' Omar, in the 12th century, never heard of most of these seven. Any- one who prefers his oceans undivided is free to think of a better list than Kipling's." HOLLAND'S " KIPLING " A HOSTAGE. Holland's " Kipling "—Anton Von Duinkerton—-is one of seven writers and singers who have been seized as hostages for their compatriots' acts of sabotage.—From the Daily Sketch. KIPLING'S OLD SCHOOL. From a former pupil of The Im- 20 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1942 perial Service College, Windsor, to- day, I learn that boys of Kipling's old school have settled down re- markably well at Haileybury, with which their school is now amalgamated. I.S.C. have two of the large houses at Haileybury, one of which, by a curious coincidence, is named after the soldier-administrator, Lord Law- rence. I.S.C. also had a Lord Law- rence House. Major G. B. T. Nichols, for more than 20 years a housemaster at I.S.C, is head of Lord Lawrence House. The other house is named after Kipling.—From the London Evening News. " R.K.'s N.S.W. TROOPER." " Thirty days hath September, April, June and November"; but there is one day that for me belongs to November alone. That is the day with a west wind and sun after rain, when I go into the kitchen garden and there comes to me for the first time the scent of celery. No other scent brings round the year more certainly. Once more the garden beds have put on their winter clothes. There are the savoy cabbages round as footballs, there are the leeks, the kale, the parsley; above all the long mounds beaten flat with the spade— how familiar the sound !—topped with their green foliage and uncovered at one end to lay bare to the November air, for the gardener's wooden trug and the scullery water-tap, those white etiolated stems, and the scent of them ! Like Rudyard Kipling's New South Wales trooper : And I saw Sydney the same as ever, The picnics and brass bands; And the little homestead on Hunter River, And my new vines joining hands. It all came over me in one act Quick as a shot through the brain— With the smell of the wattle round Lichtenberg, Riding in, in the rain. —From Country Life. MANDALAY. Kipling undoubtedly was respon- sible for creating the impression in English minds that Mandalay is a city hoary with history. Actually it was founded in 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, and was the Burmese capital for only 28 years. It was the last of the capitals of the Burmese kings, who were in the habit of giving expression to the saying, " A new king, a new capital." Only two kings reigned in Mandalay— Mindon, who founded the city, and his son Thibaw, the last of the Bur- mese monarchs. The foundation was attended with the customary human sacrifices. A woman was offered up to be the guardian spirit of the new city, and four of the people were buried alive at the four corners of the city walls. Mindon died in 1878. Thibaw fell in 1885, when Kipling's old flotilla went chunking from Rangoon up the road to Mandalay, carrying Gen. Prendergast's expeditionary force. —From The Daily Telegraph. TO OUR MEMBERS WE wish to thank all those members, at home and abroad, who have written to us during the past few months, and have given practical support to the Society in various ways. We highly appreciate their interest, and, with their help, we hope to continue to publish the "Journal" regularly each quarter without interruption. We invite every member in- dividually to help by enrolling one friend as a member of the Society, and those who for any reason are unable to do so, are asked to send an equivalent donation to be allocated to the "Journal" fund. Applications for membership (or donations) should be sent to the Hon. 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