CONTENTS PAGE Notes—J. P. Collins -------- 1 A Goodly Heritage—Captain E. W. Martindell - 3 Memories of Rudyard Kipling, II—Madame Taufflieb - 4 Kipling and His Time—Dr. F. W. Payne - 6 Horse and Hound in Kipling's Works— Colonel F. S. Kennedy-Shaw 7 The Philosophy of Rudyard Kipling, II—J. V. Carlson - 9 Kipling and His Critics, II—Cecil Hull - - - - 11 Kipling's Tales - - - - - - - - - 13 Letter Bag . - - ... - - 15 Kiplingiana ---------- 17 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, 100, Gower Street London, W.C.l THE KIPLING JOURNAL published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. X. No. 68. December, 1943 Notes THE TURN OF THE TIDE. THERE is something intensely satisfying to Kipling-lovers about the way in which this tempestuous age of ours is doing him justice in spite of itself. Hardly a day passes but some notable author or pronounce- ment brings him back to memory by enunciating some deep home- truth, or decking an otherwise insipid passage with some jewel or other of his phraseology. It may be a war commentator enforcing something weighty or prophetic, or else a travel- lecturer breaking through a jungle of descriptive upon a flash of scenery he has fixed for ever with his pen. Politics and polemics, it is all one— there surges up a quotation or a memory that bears the unmistakable impress, and we recognise, as ever, that nobody else could have said it half as well. Time after time the Editor produces a budget of cuttings that flow in continually from all parts of the world—a leading article from New Zealand, a magazine story from California with a Kipling distich at the head of it, a ringing dispatch from some general in the field, or a presidential address from one of our provincial colleges or learned societies, refreshing all and sundry with a cup of wine and wisdom from that ripe vintage of Kipling's, so generous and unfailing. THANKS TO THE SEERS. One of the best of our causeries— in the Times Literary Supplement— started off lately with a snatch of dialogue from a haunting story in which Kipling drew back the veil of the future and showed what science was brewing for us in her witch's cauldron. Some of us may readily confess that when those strange pre- visions appeared about the air-mail or the navigation of the future, they baffled our imagination until we re- called the bold anticipations of Jules Verne. Blank cheques they all seemed upon the bank of impossibility at first, and yet the arch-financier, Time, has honoured some of the unlikeliest. Today we are flying in vast swoops all over the globe, burrowing through mountains in spirals, and submarining not only the Amazon, but the seven seas as well. So it is a truism to say that the " guesses " of yesterday are the operations of today and the triumphs of tomorrow. ART AND ITS METHODS. Someone will interpose and say— " Yes, you are talking about that quaint story, Wireless, where the wave-tests are continually interrupted by the inconsequential babble of a doddering old apothecary, and it's inartistic, according to the standards of today." Waiving the existence of standards of any sort in this age of impromptu pontification, I would join issue here and answer that Kipling wrote that yarn in the form he did with the most deliberate intention. Kipling we must remember, was boiling down into a few crisp pages his idea of what the pioneers of wireless were about. The best offset he could find against the tickings and defects of a queer science in its in- fancy was a gem of literature like Keats's ballad, " The Eve of St. Agnes," seen in facets through an old and failing memory. Note the way he works up to it by so many delicate scents and touches. Such a course needs no defence, because many a reader has come to realise the glory of pure poetry by seeing an example teased into lines like this. And I shall always think, as I read that story, of the great Darwin himself almost weeping in old age to find that through over-addiction to the facts and causation of nature, he had lost the power of reading Shakes- 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1943 peare and enjoying him. THE LITTLE WORD "IT." The death of Elinor Glyn—-and of Radclyffe Hall since—(R.I.P.) moves a writer in the Daily Mail to recall a link which shows how even the " advanced " school of feminine fiction owed Kipling something, especially the knowledge how to tell a story. Mrs. Glyn's book " Three Weeks," made such a stir forty years ago that fiction readers credited her with con- densing the essential quality of woman- hood into the little word " it." But Kipling had led the way in his story of " Mrs. Bathurst " which occurs in the same volume as " Wireless," by the way— Traffics and Discoveries." There in the course of convivial intimacy Sergeant Pritchard confides to his friend Pyecroft :— " 'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women '11 stay in a man's memory if they once walk down a street; but most of 'em," etc. In those same days when this century was new, there was another occurrence of that tiny monosyllable with some literary prominence. This was when Barry Pain or somebody parodied Rider Haggard's " She," and added under the title, " By the Author of ' King Solomon's Wives,' ' It,' " etc. Which all goes to show that in the era when Kipling was making his name, authorship was no less acute and penetrating than it commonly is today; but what it had to say was better worth saying, as a rule, and expressed with wit and economy of words. FORTY YEARS BACK. A recollection of those stirring times may serve to illustrate the Glyn furore just mentioned. The opening ceremony at the first premises of the Times Book Club—in Bond Street, if I remember rightly—was performed by the late Lady Randolph Churchill, our Premier's mother— one of the handsomest women in the country, and certainly one of the most self-possessed. She delivered a speech of the sort that helped to show where the nation's leader got his unfailing mother-wit, and a sen- tence will illustrate its point and humour. She was asking her hearers to become subscribers, but to moderate their demands to the limits of the possible. Because from experience she had to admit human expectation was apt to resent disappointment, how- ever brief, when we wanted something in a hurry. To take an instance, she said, it was rather trying to ask for " Forty-One Years in India " and only get " Three Weeks." This juxtaposition of Lord Roberts and Elinor Glyn was so abrupt but effective that it set everybody laughing, and it was said at the time that nobody enjoyed the jest more than the veteran " Bobs " himself. R. K. AND H. G. W. A writer in the New Statesman comes to our assistance by recalling an excellent sentence—-it is the open- ing one of " The War of the Worlds," —which voices a similar idea in the flamboyant spirit of the period. " No one would have believed," wrote Mr. Wells, " in the last years 'of the 19th century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own." Des- cending from the pseudo-supernatural, it may be added that the critic dips into Wells pretty freely and not un- handsomely, though of course, as might have been expected, he gives him the advantage over Kipling with luscious partiality. He casually cedes to both authors the faculty of " fore- seeing the conditions of our age," and traces the Beast-Men in " The Island of Dr. Moreau " to Kipling's jungle-world, which no one will object to, if the dates agree. CHARACTER CONQUEST. But he has surely never read the Jungle-Books as they deserve if he is serious in his declaration that Kipling " relies on cunning in the end " and " believes in the morbid and defeated mind." Surely Mowgli ranks with R.K.'s many other heroes by the way he masters environment and develops character into an honourable success. Some of us verily believe that this is why Kipling's writings are invading Russia as they have never done before, with every chance of banishing some of its age-long bogeys of frustration, fatalism and despair. J. P. Collins. December, 1943 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 A Goodly Heritage by CAPTAIN E. FACTS speak for themselves. Ab uno disce omnia. A few weeks ago I met a small boy of nine years old of my acquaintance, who seemed somewhat disconsolate, and on my asking him what was the matter, he told me that his father, a Gunner now stationed in India, had sent him a copy of Puck of Pook's Hill from South Africa some months ago, but week after week he had waited in vain, for the book had not arrived, and he feared that it had gone to the bottom of the sea, thanks to enemy action. He then told me that he liked Puck of Pook's Hill better than any book he had ever read, and longed to possess a copy of his own. This lad is just an ordinary boy, going to the public elementary school and not a high class ' prep ' school run by wearers of what is spoken of with such unwarrantable contempt by the ignorant as ' the old school tie.' So much, then, for those' who say that Kipling is out of date and never read now by young people. If Kipling is so out of date, why is it that nearly every week one either reads in the press, or hears on the wireless, speeches in which quotations from Kipling occur over and over again, made by the most prominent men in literature, politics and science ? The reason is not far to seek, as Kipling is so versatile a writer that one can find something either in his prose or verse that aptly fits almost every subject or situation. Nor is he quoted only in this country; his admirers are world-wide. Times, of course, change and events with them. The India of which Kipling wrote more than fifty years ago is not the India of today, nor is the Army of today the Army which he described in Soldiers Three or Barrack Room Ballads; both have fundamentally altered; but that is only the topical or ephemeral side of his work. When we come down to bed rock, the essentials of his teachings, " Law, Orrder, Duty an' Restraint, Obedience, Discipline," as mentioned by McAndrew, then we appreciate how invaluable Kipling's W. MARTINDELL moral influence is to our youth, nay, to us all if we only followed its example as set forth in his numerous works. What a pity it is that there is no cheap popular edition of his stories and poems available to further inculcate his teachings and familiarise them even more than they are ! Per- adventure, if such a popular edition were forthcoming, we should not have so many strikes for non-essentials at a time when strikes are criminal in so far as they hamper our war effort, which is vital to our very existence. From Kipling we learn what every man's duty is—something far more important than the assertion of one's rights. It ought to be con- tinually dinned into everyone's ears that though citizens possess rights, these rights entail corresponding duties, and the most important of these duties today is that of fighting—whether it be on the field of battle, on the farm, in the mine or in the factory, or even in the home—to preserve these very rights which are denied to all men by our present enemies be they in Europe or Asia. If only Kipling's idea of the duty of the citizen were better grasped, we might be spared the pitiful exhibitions of cowardice displayed by our con- scientious objectors and pacifists in their efforts to dodge their elementary lawful duties to their Motherland, to whom they are so deeply indebted for all they have. Our Fathers in a wondrous age, Ere yet the Earth was small, Ensured to us our heritage, And doubted not at all That we, the children of their heart, Which then did beat so high, In later time should play like part For our posterity. Let us conclude with the words of George Savile :—" We are an island, confined to it by God Al- mighty, not as a penalty but as a grace, and one of the greatest that can be given to mankind. Happy confinement that hath made us free ! A fair portion in this world, and very well worth the preserving." 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1943 Memories of Rudyard Kipling—II by MADAME TAUFFLIEB [Madame la Generale Taufflieb here contributes the second and concluding instalment of her reminiscences of Rud- yard Kipling]. WE often went to stay at Bate- man's, where life was delightful. Every morning after breakfast Rud's study door would be shut, and no one was allowed even to knock. No !—one person was allowed to sit in one corner of the room and paint, and that was General Taufflieb. Rud said " The General is the only person in my life that I have ever allowed in the room when I am writing. I seem to work better when I feel his presence there." Luncheon at one o'clock was always a cheery meal, and in the afternoon we generally took a walk to see Carrie's cows and pigs. After tea Rud would say, Well, Julia, how about a story ?" and we would go up to his study and he would light the fire. I stretched out on the settle and in truth it could never have been any other piece of furniture, so hard was it. But what did I care ! Rud would take up one of his manuscripts, and read aloud one of his latest stories. He read delightfully, and lost himself com- pletely in his reading. When he came to some pathetic passage he would " choke up " and when there was a funny part, how he would laugh ! These hours were precious, and I appreciated them; few people had the rare privilege that I enjoyed. HIS SPECIAL PLAYFELLOWS. After an eight o'clock dinner, we would adjourn to the drawing room. Rud's special playfellows, his dogs, were ready for their game. The child-like side of Rud was very strong, and it enabled one to understand his wonderful impersonations of child- ren. " Mike," I think, was his pet Scotty, and down on the floor in front of the fire Rud would throw himself, and the dogs always knew it was their hour. The rugs were turned up and a game of ball with Rud and his dogs was on the programme. What a room when the fun was ended ! Then there would always be interest- ing discussions. In the last few years of Rud's life he had serious stomach trouble which eventually caused his death, but which was kept in check, he thought, by the French doctors. In those years the Kiplings spent most of their winters in Cannes. There Dr. Brea, the celebrated physician, looked after Rud with a never-tiring devotion. We saw the Kiplings daily, and Rud's patience and courage under the attacks of pain which assailed him from time to time, were almost super-human. He would even joke when suffering agonies. Rud had always liked good food, but when he was obliged to forego certain dishes he would always pass them off with a joke. In 1920 when we first went to Strasburg to live, we sent him a pâté-de-fois gras for Christmas, and in a letter dated January 25, 1920, he writes to me " a man's heart, as you know, is in his stomach, but in this particular case although my stomach rejoiced in the freshness of that paté, and although Carrie and Elsie ate far too much of that paté, as I told them, my heart rejoices much more in addressing for the first time a letter to Alsace, France. I was hoping and praying for the chance, and I am glad it is to you that my first letter goes." When in November, 1935, we went to Bateman's we found Rud better than he had been for a long time. I rarely saw him when he acknowledged that he was ill. Our visit was a singularly happy one, and we expected them both out at Cannes for January. The morning we were to leave, Rud said to my husband, " Mon General, I have called you General for so many years, may I call you Emil ?" Alas, that was the last time that we ever saw our dear friend. ETERNAL YOUTH. Rud never seemed to change, or really grow old. He had eternal youth, which bars all changes. When I last saw him he walked with the spring that he had when I first knew him. He never was really young- looking ; he had such a look of wisdom. He naturally had some faults, but in all the years that I knew him it would December, 1943 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 be difficult for me to name one. Per- haps he was not always diplomatic in his veiled allusions to some highly placed people, but truth, loyalty and patriotism surrounded the flame of genius burning in him. What can one say more ? He never wished nor sought honours; in fact he de- clined them. He was taken ill in London on a Sunday. Captain Bambridge tele- phoned to me the terrible news Mon- day morning : that an emergency operation had been performed, and that Kipling's condition was grave. Then followed three days of suspense, and on Thursday morning I received a wire saying " He is making a splendid fight, if his heart holds out he may pull through." But alas, he passed away on Saturday, January 18th, 1936. One day I asked Rud why he had refused the honours offered him. He said " I prefer to live and die just Rudyard Kipling." Some months later, when I stood in Westminster Abbey, and saw the simple slab with " Rudyard Kipling " on it, I felt that Rud had been right. The Ameri- can writer who after Rud's death said that the works of Kipling would live as long as those of the Bible and Shakespeare, and that he would be known for generations to come as " The Immortal," understood also. The Meaning of " They " COLONEL B. S. Browne (now Pilot Officer) a valued member of the Kipling Society, writes from Canada as follows :— " Mr. Tingey's article in the July Journal gives us a very interesting disquisition on " The Egg," an im- portant incident in They, (one of the finest stories in the world) though it still remains difficult to see how anything properly called an egg could have a sufficiently definite shape to be recognizably traced by a finger on a rug. But Mr. Tingey's ex- planation may well be the true one, and for this we must be grateful, for Kipling obviously meant the incident to be very significant. But it remains an incident only, and when Mr. Tingey tries to make it into the main theme of the story one must join issue with him. If he finds the ghost children uncon- vincing, then he must find the story unconvincing, for the story is about the ghost children. The difficulties about They would largely vanish if only people would read what Kipling wrote, instead of skimming it over and then meditat- ing on confused recollections. Begin with the poem that ushers in the story; it gives in the simplest and clearest language the subject of the narrative to follow. Next take the title : who are " They ?" Not Delphic oracles, but ghost children. Why are we told that we never see the faces of our dead in dreams, except as an explanation of the fact that the children are allowed to come to the woman because she cannot see their faces ? Of what is the cheating tenant afraid ? Not of a clairvoyant, but of ghosts. What is the point of all those wonderful descriptions of house and grounds if they are only to house a modern sibyl ? She would show up better in a poor cottage on a blasted heath. And then the climax of the story comes when the Narrator discovers that his own dead child is among the ghosts. After that he says that he must not come again, that it would be wrong For him to* do so, but that it is right for the Blind Woman to remain. That is not because she can see the " Egg," but because he must not see the ghosts. I submit that, take it or leave it, the ghost children are the subject of They, and that, if you don't like it, you don't like what Kipling wrote." 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1943 Kipling and His Time * A TALK on " Rudyard Kipling," which Dr. F. W. Payne, head- master of the Rochdale Muni- cipal High School for Boys, gave to fellow members of the Rotary Club was notable for a somewhat striking contrast of the Britain of yesterday and to-day. Dr. Payne spoke in particular of Kipling's occasional verse, and by way of introduction clothed his subject in a word-picture of the outlook of the middle nineteenth century and the emphasis which it gave to Empire which, incidentally, was the heart of much of Kipling's writings. The middle of the nineteenth cen- tury and its later decades, he said, was a period when Britain had not only a very real domination in the world but also one so brilliant as to be almost theatrical. Its solidity was due to predominance in trade; its brilliance to a virtual monopoly of trade to a vast Empire; and its glamour was largely created by Dis- raeli, whose Eastern blood demanded not only reality of power but also its pomp and pageantry. In this way Queen Victoria and, what was of more importance, the masses of her people, were thoroughly imbued with the romance of Empire, and Kipling was the interpreter par excel- lence of that Empire. THE YOUNG PEOPLE. All the young people of that time who could read saw themselves as empire builders—directing campaigns against troops with amazing efficiency, ruling native populations with tact and skill, sailing the China Seas, bearing the burden and tasting the sweets of empire, and seeing them- selves as administrators just, stern and quite infallible. Kipling was responsible for a good deal of that dreaming towards the end of the last century and that part of the outlook of the age had gone from the outlook of to-day, which was drab by com- parison. *Reproduced by courtesy of the "Roch- dale Observer." Perhaps it was that the background of the nineteenth century was one of a long period of peace and com- mercial prosperity which made for a cheerful outlook. Our century had to look back on a different picture. We dared scarcely think how many men had died on the battlefields since the beginning of it and such a background of slaughter necessarily produced an outlook which was essen- tially drab. Disillusion was largely the keynote of the minds of the people to-day as they grew up and began to examine their surroundings. But he was not suggesting that this dis- illusion was pessimism; he did not suggest that the age in which we were living was in a hopeless state, and indeed there seemed to be arriving a promise of some considerable shin- ing hope. PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. Dr. Payne pointed to the influence of Arnold of Rugby—from whose vision sprang the public school system —on the upper middle-class mind of the day. Whilst the system pro- duced curious results as compared with Arnold's original intention, it was accepted by the rulers of the day that the qualifications of men for the Civil Service, leaders of the fighting services and of business should be high-minded, strictly honest and loyal. By the time Kipling came on the scene this idea had been widely established and Kipling had a huge public. He had, too, special quali- fications of interpretation. He had himself been at a well-known English school and went to India to become a journalist. Whilst Dr. Payne did not think that Kipling had much originality or critical power in the strict sense, he could focus in the most vigorous verse the feelings and sentiments of the people of his own time ; he had great qualities of obser- vance; his phrasing was inimitable and his fancy equally good. Nevertheless, it was by his prose that he would ultimately live. December, 1943 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 Horse and Hound in Kipling's Works by COLONEL F. S. KENNEDY-SHAW C.B.E., D.L., J.P. THERE is probably nothing which impresses the average reader more than Kipling's capacity for getting inside the other man's job, unless it be the facility he has for using the technicalities connected with it. But he has not always escaped the inevitable pitfalls. Readers of the Journal have learnt from those that go down to the sea in ships that his sailing directions would some- times have ended in shipwreck al- though they pass muster with lands- men. A distinguished shipbuilder, who was a warm admirer of The Maltese Cat and loved all that Kipling wrote, once told me that The Ship that Found Herself would satisfy any one except a marine engineer. But after all, Shakespeare blundered at times and we read in Something of Myself that the worst mistake is yet to be discovered. On the subject with which this article attempts to deal, however, it is, curiously enough, very difficult —in fact almost impossible, to find Kipling at fault. Curiously enough, because from what we know of his life he could have had little personal experience of horses until he went to India on leaving school, and of hounds and foxhunting none until he settled in Sussex in later life. And by then he had become a confirmed motorist. R. K.'s ACCURACY. I think it was Charles Kingsley who said that the world was peopled with men, women and foxhunters, and that no one of the three could understand the other two. More than fifty years of foxhunting have taught me that nothing holds more traps for the ignorant than the language of the chase and the stable, and I have naturally always been on the look out for errors in my favourite author. But how very seldom does one find him tripping. Of his earlier Indian writings, I heartily agree with the vet who is quoted in No. 54 of the Journal as remarking " Where does the youngster pick it all up ?" The details of "At The Distance " in that number are accurate to a degree—he even knew that Swaine and Adeney of Piccadilly have pro- vided us with our whips since time was. The Broken Link Handicap is one of the best racing stories I have ever met. The opening paragraphs might have been written by an old and experienced " turfite " for the warning of the young. Probably Kip- ling reported race meetings for his paper; how well he drew his own conclusions. But the very mention of the roar of the wind in a jockey's ears would lead one to think he had ridden in a racing gallop. When one comes to The Story of the Gadsbys he has got under the other man's skin marvellously. He cannot him- self have been on parade with a cavalry regiment, but Gadsby's failing nerve is described as one would think only a horse soldier could have felt it. " The roar of the squadron behind turns you all cold up your back !" Many of us have known it desirable, as Gadsby did, to shorten one's leathers and get the knees under the wallets when riding an awkward one in the old pattern military saddle. And every horse lover has felt with Lowndes in The End of the Passage— " I hate a horse when I have to use him as a necessity." The poem The Centaurs shows a close observation of colt breaking ; the light web cavesson and the mouthing-bit are tools of the other man's trade again. I suppose The Maltese Cat is the most popular of all his horse stories, but it never appeals much to me as I dislike tales in which animals are made to speak, even in the Jungle Books. I have lived too much with animals and love them too well to attribute human processes of thought to them, and for the same reason I can never like A Walking Delegate 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1943 or The Great Play Hunt—of which latter more anon. I admit The Maltese Cat is sentimentally appealing but it is bad polo by modern standards. " THE LITTLE FOXES." But it is when one comes to the later works written after the author had settled in England that one begins to marvel at the accuracy of detail in matters of horse and hound ; hounds more especially. I am not alluding to the dog stories and poems—they are self-evident of the dog lover— but to the occult lore of the chase itself. That inimitable story of the Little Foxes, which my friends of the old Egyptian Army tell me is founded on fact, might but for one error have been written by a life-long foxhunter. And that error, to call a hound Beagle-Boy, is so blatant that one thinks it must have been intentional. For the rest, the phraseology is perfect. Does not the Governor at the outset rebuke Farag for calling hounds, dogs ? An unpardonable crime. And how did Kipling know that in the south of Ireland a bank is always a " ditch ?" Often have English visitors been puzzled at being told that " I seen Patsy sitting on the ditch." And there are scores of folks who go a-hunting without ever learning that the right way to stop an earth is with a faggot-thorn for choice—but Kipling knew some- how, as he knew that a whipper-in- holloas a fox with his finger in his ear. Why, I have never yet dis- covered. And he knew also all about walking hound puppies. By the way, how truly the Governor spoke when he said that one gets at the truth quicker in the hunting field than in the law courts. Well do I know that society in which " they make much of horses, more of hounds, and are tolerably civil to men who can ride." But when did Kipling move in it and where ? I wonder. (To be continued). Auckland, New Zealand THE Hon. Secretary of the Auck- land, New Zealand, Branch of the Kipling Society, Mrs. Edith M. Buchanan, sends us a welcome letter, enclosing a full list of members of the Branch up to date. She writes : " The Kipling Journal is much appre- ciated by all members, and several donations for it are included. We are glad to hear that you are now at 100, Gower Street, London, and we are all filled with admiration at your courage and tenacity in carrying on the Society as usual during those years which we think of as ' England's finest hour.' " We thank Mrs. Buchanan for the support which she and her friends in Auckland are giving to the Society at the present time, and we send by this medium a message of greeting to the Auckland Branch. Bequests MAY we again remind those of our readers who are unable in these difficult times to help us as much as they would wish, that a practical way of assisting us to keep the memory of Rudyard Kipling green and to bring his great ideals before the coming generations of young people is for them to remember the Kipling Society in their Wills ? Such legacies afford proof of a desire that our work should go on beyond the span of the donor's lifetime and afford great encouragement to those who believe that the creed of Kipling is eternal. The following simple form of bequest should be used : " I bequeath to The Kipling Society, 100, Gower Street, London, W.C.l. 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 Exe- cutors." December, 1943 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 The Philosophy of Rudyard Kipling—II by J. V. CARLSON The second part of an address to the Melbourne, Australia, Branch of the Society. RUDYARD Kipling was initiated into Freemasonry at the age of twenty, and the impact of the Ancient and Honourable Institution at such an early age cannot be under- estimated. Masonic ritual consists of beautiful rhetoric and lofty ideals formed by moralising on the working tools of the operative mason. It carries with it a scent of the glories of the Renaissance, as beautiful as the Cathedrals of the mason, with archaic words and phrasing, and its influence must have been considerable. Perhaps these quotations from the Masonic writings show where his character was moulded. " Such is the nature of our Constitution that as some must of necessity rule and teach, so others of course must learn to submit and obey. Humility in each is an essential qualification," and " a freemason ought to make his passions and prejudices coincide with the just line of his conduct.'' " For I make Honour wi' muckle mouth, As I make Shame wi' mincin' feet, To sing wi' the priests at the market-cross Or run wi' the dogs in the naked street." There is no doubt that the Last Rhyme of True Thomas gives the clue to much of Kipling's philosophy about the power of a singer and his responsibility for a faithful discharge of his talents. TIMELY TEACHING. He had timely teaching for a young man about to bring " the world to his feet." Kipling could not be said to be a follower of any particular school of philosophy. Perhaps like Plato he sees a community of intelli- gence throughout creation and that man should reflect divinity. As Aris- totle was more concerned with the individual so was he, and as Aristotle said " wonder is philosophy," so he saw " naught common on Thine earth." Like Socrates he sought to lead people to see the truth by teaching them to think. Socrates was put to death, but Kipling is just called names by people whose atrophied intellects resent any semblance of unwonted stimulation. The discipline of virtue taught by the Stoics appeals to him most. His respect is for things rational. Passions, pains and pleasures never moved his pen into action. As Eliot says, " no writer has been more re- ticent about himself." He certainly gave to the world nothing of his own sorrows or personal feelings. Only understanding of human nature, and desire that men should know each other better and realise their common humanity. His early life in India gave him a wide experience of men of many races, colours, and creeds, and he called them all brothers. The insular outlook of ignorance and the bracket- ing together of all coloured people as heathen and not worthy of real consideration particularly roused his feelings. His own great tolerance and respect for all true believers of almost any religion helped him to make the edu- cation of the stay-at-home British a personal affair. You remember that he taught us "to be gentle when the heathen pray to Buddha at Kama- kura," and that " Kabir's prayers are all the world's and mine." In the Rhyme of the Three Sealers (the omission of which from Eliot's selection indicates something—I am not sure what) there are these lines : " And one called out on a heathen joss and one on the Virgin's Name, And the schooling bullet leaped across and led them whence they came." In the Hymn before Action : For those who kneel beside us at altars not Thine own, Who lack the lights that guide us, Lord, let their faith atone! His feelings for mankind were never better expressed than in A Pilgrim's Way. (Here the poem was read in full). Surely it could be the battle cry of a new sect or the in- spiration of a revival. But his love of his fellow-men did not by any means blind him to our 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1943 faults. Sloth and lies roused him perhaps more than anything else : " No easy hope or lies will bring us to our goal, But iron sacrifice of body, mind, and soul." He gives us a true perspective of our place in creation by telling us that : " Cities and Thrones and Powers, stand in Time's eye Almost as long as flowers, which daily die." The man who could tell himself never to repeat a success must necessar- ily teach a certain hardiness of spirit. THE POEM " IF." The poem If has been so much broadcast and parodied that we are apt to miss the lessons it teaches. One of the most important is to avoid safety first if you would save your soul. It teaches that possessions, friends and foes hold a man in chains. To reach the maximum of efficiency one must be self-sufficient and yet make full allowances in judgment on the effect your actions have on others. A companion piece is The Wishing Caps : " Life's all getting and giving, I've only myself to give. What shall I do for a living? I've only one life to live. End it ? I'll not find another. Spend it? but how shall I best ? Sure the wise plan is to live like a man, and Luck may look after the rest! " Poetry and Philosophy are usually as humourless as eggs, but it is not surprising to find in Kipling a love of humour. Humour is the salt of life, the antidote to smugness and the purgative of self-esteem. In The Necessitarian he shows that he knows in " Whose hands are laid to empty upon earth, from unsuspected ambuscade, the very Urns of Mirth.' The Legend of Mirth is perhaps one of his most remarkable verses. It tells of the Four Archangels : ' For Honour's sake perfecting every task Beyond what e'en Perfection's self could ask And Allah, Who created Zeal and Pride, Knows how the twain are perilous—near allied." By command the Seraph of Mirth comes to where they laboured with " the tedious generations of mankind" : " By precept and example, prayer and law, Advice, reproof, and rule, but, labouring, saw Each in his fellow's countenance confessed, The Doubt that sickens : ' Have I done my best V " The Seraph : " Touched tentative on mundane happenings. These he rehearsed with artful pause and halt, And such pretence of memory at fault, That soon the Four—so well the bait was thrown—- Came to his aid with memories of their own— Until—the gates of Laughter opened wide— While they recalled, compared, and amplified, In utter mirth forgot both Zeal and Pride." and then " O sweeter than their zealous fellowship, The wise half-smile that passed from lip to lip! O well and roundly, when Command was given, They told their tale against themselves to Heaven, And in the silence, waiting on The Word, Received the Peace and Pardon of The Lord." How much we owe to the saving grace of humour, which may justly be claimed as a characteristic of the British race. A recurring theme in Kipling's philosophy is his praise of the pride in one's work. You find it in many of his stories, and we remember in his verse such lines as these : " And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, But each for the joy of working, and each in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!" , ( To be concluded) To New Readers THE Kipling Society exists to honour and extend the influence of Rudyard Kipling in upholding the ideals of the English Speaking World. We invite all readers of Kipling who are not yet members to join our Society. Membership is open to men and women of every nationality, wherever resident, who are genuinely interested in the war k of Rudyard Kipling. The ordinary membership Subscription is Home Rate One Guinea per annum. Readers to whom these lines bring news of the activities of our Society for the first time, are especially invited to correspond with us at 100, Gower Street, London, W.C.l. December, 1943 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 Kipling and His Critics—II By CECIL HULL (AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND). The second part of a broadcast talk from IYA, Auckland, N.Z. VERSES like The Masque of Plenty—and there are many of them—prove that it is ridiculous to regard Kipling as a hide-bound Tory. To quote Mr. Shanks once more : "In fact, he never belonged to any party. It is surely of high significance that, though on several occasions he might have had any honour that it was in the power of a Government to bestow, he always refused to accept any honour on the ground that he must remain free to criticise the Government." Nowadays, then, Kipling's enemies attack him on two fronts. On the literary front they deny his eminence as an artist, either in prose or verse, and on the political front they denounce him as a ranting Jingo. But the military metaphor becomes difficult to sustain, for sooner or later in a curious way the two fronts merge. As I suggested before, his opponents are incapable of judging his work with detachment. They begin as literary critics, then perhaps we might say they ' see red,' and they end as furious political partisans. I sometimes wonder if their shrill spitefulness has not been accentuated by the fact that Kipling steadfastly and good-temperedly refused to de- fend himself from abuse. His de- clared attitude was : " Attacking or attacked, on no provocation explain." In his anxiety to blast Kipling root and branch as a stylist and a man, Mr. Bates loses—or perhaps he never possessed—the saving sense of humour. For instance, he denounces Kipling for exhibiting no " embracing toler- ance, no benevolence, no good-hearted friendliness " and so on. One is tempted to answer him in an adaptation of the classic parliamentary retort : " The honourable member is a good judge of intolerance.' Before I go on to speak of the latest and, in some ways, most important writers on Kipling, a word must be said of what Kipling's reputation has suffered from the uncritical out- pourings of fervent admirers. Some of these writers are gallant soldiers, and in their hands the sword is un- doubtedly mightier than the pen. Indiscriminate eulogy expressed in slovenly English does more harm than good to the cause it espouses. But Mr. Shanks is in a very different class. I have already quoted from his recent book, Rudyard Kipling A Study in Literature and Political Ideas. Edward Shanks is a literary figure of wide and varied achievement. He is therefore well qualified to assess Kipling's stature in literature, and his book is distinguished by its fair and temperate judgments. Last in time, though perhaps first in importance, comes the critical study written by T. S. Eliot as a preface to his own interesting selection of Kipling's verse. Now Mr. Eliot is, I suppose, with the possible exception of the late W. B. Yeats, often ack- nowledged as the greatest figure in English poetry of, say, the last thirty years. He is so unlike Kipling in his style, matter, and manner of approach to his subjects that it wouldn't be surprising to find him inappre- ciative of Kipling's excellences. But herein he differs from Mr. Bates who declares roundly " The notion that Kipling was a great writer is a myth, " and concludes by defiantly classing himself " among the heretics to whom no single syllable of Kipling has ever given a moment's pleasure." Well, well, Mr. Bates, isn't that just too bad ? Now let us listen to what Mr. Eliot has to say : " One might expect that a poet who appeared to communicate so little of his private ecstasies and despairs would be dull; one might expect that a poet who had given so much time to the service of the political imagination would be ephemeral; one might expect that a poet so constantly occupied with the appearance of things would be shallow. We know that he is not dull, because we have all, at one time or another, by one poem or 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1943 another, been thrilled; we know that he is not ephemeral, because we remember so much of what we have read. As for shallowness, that is a charge which can only be brought by those who have continued to read him with only a boyish interest." Reading this essay, one can hardly escape the conclusion that the author is replying specifically to Mr. Bates's charges. Mr. Bates talks of Kipling's rabid imperialism, and his racial prejudice : Mr. Eliot says, " No attentive reader of Kipling " (and perhaps ' attentive ' is the operative word here) " can maintain that he was unaware of the faults of British rule " and again, " I cannot find any justification for the charge that he held a doctrine of race superiority . . . He cannot be accused of holding that any Briton, simply because of his British race, is necessarily in any way the superior, or even the equal, of an individual of another race. The types of men which he admits are unlimited by any prejudice ; his maturest work on India—and his greatest book—is Kim." Mr. Bates calls Kipling " the most execrable famous poet the language has ever produced." Mr. Eliot, in an interesting passage, classes him as a great verse-writer, if not a great poet. As he sees it, Kipling, while capable of handling complicated metri- cal forms with perfect competence, deliberately subordinates the musical interest to the content. " More poetry," he says, " would interfere with his purpose .... I can think, he con- tinues, of a number of poets who have written great poetry, only of a very few whom I should call great verse-writers. And unless I am mis- taken, Kipling's position in this class is not only high, but unique." With such a subject as " Kipling and his Critics " there are so many critics and so much to quote that the task of selection is a hard one. But I cannot omit a tribute from a Frenchman who, by the way, doesn't seem to have noted Kipling's racial prejudices. This M. Louis Fabulet, who translated many of Kipling's works into French, also criticises the critics : " Certain critics," he says, " have treated as a reactionary this admirer of the soldier, of war, of property rights, and human energy. They have pretended that his in- fluence would serve only to retard the march of the world. For me this work could never be reactionary nor could it retard the march of the world. .... a work that approaches so closely to the cinema and that diffuses so widely an acquaintance with man- kind .... Ah, I know what the intellectuals carp at ! It is because Mr. Kipling lends himself neither to paradox nor to utopianism; it is because he carries no stock of sweet- meats into the prisons; it is because he finds that man was created for action and struggle rather than lazi- ness." So the conflict of opinion rages— and will rage. Except for a Shake- speare, the literary reputations of the great do abide our question. They change with the changing years. Sometimes they are on the crest of the wave, sometimes in its trough. But, high or low, they are alive and buoyant. Time is the test of great- ness. The mediocre, the second- rate soon disappear beneath the waves of oblivion. Rudyard Kipling has been ful- somely belauded and cruelly maligned, but the blame, even more than the praise, proves him to be still a vital force. Members of the Kipling Society who possess letters, press cuttings, photographs or sketches associated with Rudyard Kipling and his works, which they think might be suitable for publication in the Journal, are invited to send particulars to the Hon. Editor, The Kipling Journal, Lincoln House, Harrow-on-the-Hill. In the case of cuttings from overseas publications, senders are asked to obtain formal permission to reprint from the editors of the journals concerned, for which due acknowledgment will be made in " The Kipling Journal." December 1943, THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 Kipling's Tales [A correspondent sends us the follow- ing note from " The Guardian " of March 21st, 1941, which is reprinted here by courtesy of that paper}. THE time is not yet ripe for a revised estimate of Kipling's work as a whole. Much tumult and shouting must die before his place in English literature can be truly assessed. Meanwhile it is of interest to re-examine the stories here collected* (the editor's name is not given), undazzled by their original appearance, by the sudden flaring of Kipling's young genius, by the shape and colour of the books that we remember at the time when they first came out. It would be an advantage if the Table of Contents gave the date of each book from which a story or the interleaved poem is taken, for there is a dividing line during the 'nineties (" enemy action " makes it difficult for us to verify the exact date) when Kipling's illness kept the whole world in suspense and something went from him that all his genius could not replace. In that genius was something of the prophet. It is still too early to know whether he prophesied truly, but what he has to say is worth re- flection. The first half-dozen pages of " The Drums of the Fore and Aft " consist of a " homily " upon the British Army (then serving the Em- press) in which the rank and file " armed with imperfect knowledge, cursed with the rudiments of an imagination, hampered by the intense selfishness of the lower classes," is little above Wellington's scum. " About thirty years from this date " (1889) " when we have succeeded in half-educating everything that wears trousers, our Army will be a beauti- fully unreliable machine. It will know too much and it will do too little. Later still, when all men are at the mental level of the officer of to-day it will sweep the earth." And on the heels of this follow the words : " Speaking roughly, you must Collected Stories. By Rudyard Kipling. Macmillan, 3 s. 6d. employ either blackguards or gentle- men, or, best of all, blackguards com- manded by gentlemen, to do butcher's work with efficiency and despatch." A reasoned essay on these quotations would be of great interest, especially in the light of certain questions un- fortunately raised not long ago. How can anyone who first read " Brugglesmith " in the impression- able 'teens, criticize it at all ? Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, and we laughed then till we could have prayed for kindly death to ease our pain. How do the 'teens of to-day, so hard-boiled as to the shell compared with us, react to Brugglesmith, at last at a price within their reach ? " Wireless," a story of the middle period, may seem to us something musty in its science, but the parallel of the consumptive chemist who, under the strain of love and the light of the Rosamond purple jars, becomes temporarily an induced Keats," keeps its thrill, and the " near-Keats " lines that Mr. Shaynor unconsciously produces are written by a poet who knows a poet's searching mind. "The Bull that Thought," " An Unquali- fied Pilot," and " The Debt," are Kipling working to Kipling's pattern. As for " The Puzzler," it was perhaps right to include it as an example of how an artist can parody him- self—every trick is there, the elan vital is not. Some believe, and we often share the belief, that Kipling's final survival will be as a poet. In his enormous body of verse there is so much to quicken the pulse; so much that after the lapse of so many years one still does not dare to read aloud for fear of a betraying catch in the voice. Britannia and Kipling too often swapped hats and waved their flags : when they were again cool and austere, each gave glory to the other. And for tenderness he can be near the best, and for poetry of the earth (" The Land ") and of virtue (" The Gods of the Copybooks ") he stands high. " McAndrew's Hymn," which is well-placed after " The Ship that Found Herself," remains a noble 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1943 tribute to God with the Machine : " Law, Orrder, Duty an' Restraint, Obedience, Discipline ! Mill, forge an' try-pit taught them that when roarin' they arose, An' whiles I wonder if a soul was gied them wi' the blows." As for " If," it is time it was allowed to rest. A poem which contains lines of supreme ethical wisdom has been tossed about too much in the market-place. It has been printed in art-lettering, framed in passe- partout, and hung in too many spare rooms. It has been recited, with a hideous gulp at the end, by far too many women and also men. It has been treated as a lesson for boy scouts, with no realization that only one man in ten thousand, in a hundred thousand, is likely to meet more than a few of its contingencies. It should be allowed to rest. And then re- studied as a magnificent apologia for a very great man; for we believe that one of Kipling's Imperial heroes was in his mind when he wrote it, not a child, and that in his hero he had seen (whether others saw it or not is immaterial, since it produced the poem) everything that he re- hearses. " If you can wait and not be tired by waiting "—here is material for any number of sermons, lay and secular, and a warning, in the words of the Arabian Nights, to him who would be admonished. Our present history—and how passionately the old, the real, Kipling would have felt it !—has forcibly been one of waiting lately. If that waiting has meant force stored up and brain kept alert, as we hope and pray it has, not force dissipated, we shall not lose by it. And we believe that the " Will which says : ' Hold on ' " abides with us. The Boy Who Criticised Kipling THE following note appeared in the Manchester Evening News : After nearly half a century, a letter which Rudyard Kipling wrote from America to a young but un- known admirer in East London has been published for the first time. It contained great news for this 16-year-old member of the Rose and Ring Club and for his compan- ions. For in it Kipling told that a second Jungle Book might be expected. He also said : " After that, I expect to try my hand at a series of engineer tales—about marine engines, and such like." Writing a foreword to the letter, Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith, who was then connected with the Rose and Ring Club in East London, ex- plains that the boy, " greatly daring, had poured out his gratitude in a long letter." Apparently, however his outpouring was not entirely of praise for the author's work, for in his reply Kipling says : "As to my female characters, I admit your charge, but I am doing my best to remedy it. In either the Graphic or the Illustrated Christ- mas number this year you'll find a tale that may perhaps interest your brother the engineer (it's all about steam-engines), and an attempt to draw a rather nice woman." Then the author, too, makes a return criticism of this boy, who as he acknowledges, seems "to have gone through about everything that I have ever written and to like it." For he continues : " But let me point out that you are a deal too young to bother your head about women-folk—in books or out of them. Your spelling for one thing is nearly as bad as mine used to be when I was about your age, and you must get hold of it and repair it." Appearing for the first time in " The Boy," which is published by the National Association of Boys' Clubs, the letter concludes : " Again thanking you for your kind letter (I wonder what you'll think of things ten years hence). Believe me, Very sincerely yours, Rudyard Kipling." December, 1943 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 Kiplingiana Press and other comments on Kipling and his work TWO books which I have re- cently read, have references to Rudyard Kipling; I enclose the extracts," writes Mr. Richard B. Philipps, of Cambridge, New Zealand. " I am rather proud of having a complete set of the Journals, numbers 1 to 65. Congratulations on keeping things going in these difficult times." The extracts are as follows :— 300,000 Sea Miles, by Admiral Sir Henry Pelly, K.C.V.O., C.B. (Chatto & Windus, 1938, page 58). (Extract No. 1.) " The outstanding points of interest in ' Pelorus ' were two visits from Rudyard Kipling, who came as the guest of the Captain. The evenings when he was on board were thrills and no one wanted to turn in, for both Kipling and the Captain were wonderful story-tellers. They kept us all entertained nightly for hours. Whilst with us Kipling wrote The Fleet in Being, in which he described me on a coaling-day as ' the First Lieutenant, carved in jet, saying precisely what occurred to him.' He also wrote an ode entitled The Seven Stages of Sea Sickness, which has never been published." The exact quotation from A Fleet in Being, page 10, is—" the First Lieutenant, carved in pure jet, said precisely what occurred to him. A Fleet in Being was first published in December, 1898. The Pelorus was commissioned in 1897. She was a light cruiser, one of the first to be fitted with water-tube boilers, which, incidentally, were an endless source of trouble." Desert and Delta, by Major C. S. Jarvis. 1st Ed. 1938, p. 45-47. (Extract No. 2.) Kipling came through Sinai during "an inspection of the war graves in the mid-East, and the idea of this big peninsula with its Arab popu- lation being run by one solitary Briton was the sort of thing that intrigued his very busy and inquiring mind —it was so entirely Kiplingesque. He got out at El Arish Station and had a look at the barren sand country, peering at it from under his jutting eyebrows. ' Yes ' he said in his brisk manner, ' and I suppose most of your troubles here are in connection with land ownership—that and smugg- ling.' This, to my mind, was a fairly good testimonial and proof, if it were needed, that Kipling was not only a great writer, but also a man of more than ordinary insight and intelligence. In one minute he had grasped the innermost details of my job. Most men, on seeing Sinai and its picturesque nomads with their big, curved swords and fast-trotting camels, might have thought my time was occupied with fighting recalcitrant tribesmen or pre- venting raids and pillage; but Kipling in his wisdom and wide knowledge saw that it was land and ' my neigh- bour's land mark ' that proved the bone of contention. And though the land is nearly worthless he was right. He was a great student of the Old Testament, and on the principle that there was nothing new under the sun held the view that most of the world situations of to-day were really wider repetitions of those re- corded in one or other of the books of the Bible, and that our various leaders and soldiers had their counter- parts in the kings and patriarchs mentioned in Joshua, Judges and Samuel. Once when I was puzzling over the title of a book, he said, pick- ing up the Bible, ' This is the best place to look for one,' and promptly read out half a dozen in as many minutes. My friendship with Kipling lasted till his death. Every summer during my leave I used to motor 130 miles to lunch with him at Batemans, and I cannot think of anyone else for whom I would drive through two counties for a single meal. One of my most pleasant recollections is walking with him beside the little brook at Batemans and having the various fields and fords pointed out 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL December, 1943 to me by the author of those two wonderful books, Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies. I saw where the Centurion met the children, where the Norman knight spurred his horse across the ford, and the house without iron. I remember commenting on the life-like picture he had drawn of the two Roman Centurions on the Great Wall, and he said, ' Oh, that was quite easy. I merely took the subalterns who serve on the North- West Frontier of India as my charact- ers. The type has not changed in any detail.' It is the fashion to-day to decry Kipling and his works, the reason being, apparently, that it is now considered bad form to mention the Empire which the past generation won for us so hardly, so naturally a poet and writer who sang and wrote of the Empire before all things must bear the blame for the change of thought. It riles me, however, to hear the younger generation, who do not understand the outlook of the late eighties and nineties, scoff at him as a jingoist, a war-monger, and worst of all, an Imperialist. Kip- ling at least dealt with, and wrote of, men, and his works will live and be remembered. HALF A LIFE. Many readers familiar with the ex-Governor of Sinai's entertaining books, concerned mainly with his experiences there and in Egypt, may be surprised to learn from his latest work— Half a Life. By Major C. S. Jarvis, C.M.G. Illustrated (Murray; 15s.)—that he began life as a seaman in the Merchant Navy, and voyaged to Australia and back in a sailing- ship. On his return he joined the Yeomanry and served in the South African war. These phases of his earlier career are recorded in detail in the first two parts of the present volume, while a third describes soldier- ing and sport (chiefly fishing) in Ireland. Having already covered his subsequent career in the Middle East in several books, including "Yester- day and To-day in Sinai," " The Back Garden of Allah," "Scattered Shots " and " Three Deserts," he finds a complete autobiography im- practicable. It was on the advice of Rudyard Kipling, to whose per- sonality he pays admiring tribute in various references and quotations, that he avoided the mistake of putting all his literary eggs in one basket. Like its predecessors, this new book is permeated with the author's de- lightful humour, vivid descriptive power, and sound judgment on matters of serious importance.—-From the Illustrated London News. " THE SCHOLARS." When those fighting the sea war return to their homes in the British Islands, Canada, Australia, New Zea- land, India, Newfoundland, South Africa or in our Colonies, the words Kipling wrote of those who bore the brunt in the first world war will truly apply : " They have learned great faith and little fear and a high heart in distress, And how to suffer each sodden year of heaped-up weariness. They have borne the bridle upon their lips and the yoke upon their neck, Since they went down to the sea in ships to save the world from wreck. Far have they steamed and much have they known, and most would they fain forget; But now they are come to their joyous own with all the world in their debt." —Admiral Sir William James, in the Royal Empire Society Journal. "LOVELY MEMORIES." The following extract from the Yorkshire Evening News was sent by Colonel C. H. Milburn. " The revival of interest in Kipling's work has delighted one person above all others. This is his only sister, Mrs. J. M. Fleming. She was de- voted to her brother. Mrs. Fleming's home is in Edinburgh. She was one of the Victorian beauties; now at 75, she is a vivacious and charming person. Her husband, Lieutenant- Colonel Fleming, a retired Indian Army officer, died last year. ' Now I am rather lonely,' she says, ' but I have so many lovely memories. Girls today have no idea what fun life was.' In her view ' Ruddy ' was a genius. People who say he is a back number, December, 1943 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 annoy her. She is angry with Captain Gammans, M.P., for saying that ' Kipling is dead and all that he stood for, is dead.' Lord Baldwin is Mrs. Fleming's cousin. As young children they had pillow fights in the Baldwin nursery. For years she lived with her husband in India. Kitchener was Commander- in-Chief there for part of the time. She knew him well. ' People think he was a woman-hater. They're quite wrong, she said. ' He was merely a shy man.' " THE £ S. D. OF THE WEST END. The West End of London has always had a deserved reputation for being expensive. Today it de- serves it more than ever.—Try and buy any bound set of the classics, such as Kipling's works or the En- cyclopaedia Britannica. You will re- ceive an electric shock.—Charles Graves in The Star, London. THE BOMBAY EDITION. Much of the vivid personality of the authoress was revealed in the items for the second day's sale at Marie Corelli's house, Mason Croft. The complete set of the novelists' works in rich blue leather presented to her life-long companion and friend, Miss Vyver, was bought by a dealer for £29. The Bombay edition of the works of Rudyard Kipling went at £20.—From The Daily Telegraph. Letter Bag Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication as short as possible. THE CHRISTIAN NAME " RUD- YARD." SOME time ago, there was corre- spondence over the Christian name " Rudyard." The following extract from Pyn Yeatman's Feudal History of Derby- shire Vol. III, Sect. V., may be of interest. Dronfield Register 1560-1660. 1562 Nov. Rudiard Jonathan fil. Wm. bap. 8th.—Hilda M. Evans, The Vicarage, Sutton-on-the-Hill, Derby. " FIRST HUNDRED MEMBERS." On looking through No. 1 of the Kipling Journal, I find on page 33, under the title " First Hundred Mem- bers," the name of Colonel A. P. Wavell, whose membership number is 19. Is this the present Viceroy of India ?—J. H. C. B. ( Yes : Field Marshal Viscount Wavell, Viceroy and Governor General of India was one of the earliest members of the Kipling Society.—Ed.) "INSIDE AND OUT." As a life member of the Kipling Society, I have really done my best here—in Partibus infidelium—to obtain new members for the Society but, so far, without success. I have not of course, lost hope; but in the mean- time, as suggested in the July number of the Journal, I send a substitute which may be credited to the account of the Journal or used for any other purpose. I enjoy the Kipling Journal immensely, and the moment it arrives all other reading is set aside until it is read carefully from start to finish —and that means both covers, inside and out, as well as the regular pages of text.—N. Lawson Lewis, The Rowfant Club, 3028, Prospect Avenue, Cleveland. (We are grateful to Mr. Lawson Lewis and to a number of other members who have so kindly supported our "Journal" Fund. Their help and co-operation are very much appreciated at Headquarters.—Ed.) FROM CANADA. Members of the Kipling Society who have been in touch with Captain M. P. Tuteur, R.A., will be interested to hear that he has been elected President of the Imperial Officers Association of Canada. Captain Tuteur served in the last Great War with the Indian Expeditionary Force, and as Liaison Officer to Marshal Foch, and with the 17th Divisional Artillery, B.E.F.—D. E., Toronto, Canada.