CONTENTS PAGE Notes—J. P. Collins......--1 Stalky's Apologia—Major-General L. C. Dunsterville, C.B., C.S.I. 3 Goodbye to Gunga Din—Harold Stewart - - - - 6 R.K. : His Autograph --------- 8 Kipling and Home Influences—Pt.1—Sir Stephen Allen, K.B.E. C.M.G,, D.S.O. 10 Some Kipling Backgrounds—Pt.III—Major Irving Mansback 13 Kipling and the English Country Life—Pt.III—Mrs. Grace Broughton 15 Letter Bag - - - - - - - - - -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. Book Plates : 1d. 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. All the above are sent post free. Correspondence should be addressed Lo The Hon. Secretary, The Kipling Society, 105, Gower Street London, W.C.l Tel. Euston 7117 published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. XII. No. 73. April, 1945 Notes HOW often the " never " of the anecdotal gossip is reduced to the " hardly ever " of Gilbert- ian disillusion. Our last number's notes on Kipling and Jane Austen had hardly gone to press when the Sunday Times weighed in with a neat explanation of the "anachronism" that was surely nothing of the kind. It was pointed out that Kipling could not be pinned down to the cold se- quence of dates in the matter of Jane's entrance into her reward above. (Who ever heard of clocks in Heaven ?) Next came a letter from Mr. Harbord, the Deputy Chairman of the Kipling Council, to point out the fact that this detail had been discussed in our own publication (see Kipling Journal Nos. 24 and 27 for December, 1932 and September, 1933). And Sir George MacMunn has dealt with it fully in his invaluable Kipling monograph. Finally the Editor is permitted to print a delightful letter from one of our Vice-Presidents, Mr. S. A. Courtauld. It was written to him by R. K. himself, and sets the matter back amid the mysteries and refine- ments of orthodox eschatology. We poor mortals are bidden to remember that beyond the veil there is a half- way house called Limbo, and that Jane was probably quartered there in the ladies' section until she was qualified for what a Parliamentarian would call the Upper House. There, with her Wentworth, free to observe the pick of mankind with the angels thrown in, we may be sure that her life would be a blissful and busy one. And if she still writes books, they will at least be free from the earthly plague of dilatory publishers and irresponsible reviewers. SIMLA MEMORIES. I listened lately to an interesting argument between two Kipling men about the attitude our members adopt towards our author. One held that his work is so rich in point and flavour that it needs no annotation : the other's retort was that his wealth of elision made him, like Horace, apt for dis- cussion and verbal illustration. He instanced a book like Sir Edward Buck's Simla Past and Present and contended—rightly, I thought—-that it appealed far more to readers who knew their Kipling than to the rest of mankind. Naturally, as was ulti- mately pointed out, it depended how far the reader was acquainted with that paradise of hilltop hamlets years ago and knew the throng of celebrities and ghosts it can always bring before the curtain. SALLY GRAHAM. Who, for instance, would not wish to have seen the fair Sally Graham, long the heroine of many reminiscent tongues ? and consequently ten times welcome now that Sir Ian Hamilton has given us her portrait in his recent book Listening to the Drums. I fancy her photo might not appeal to our pessimist friend in the aforesaid argu- ment, but to those who know how to fill out a faded carte de visite, and invest it with the youth and bloom of " sixty years since," the glimpse is precious and will long continue so. Besides, think of the degree to which her radiant girlishness must have tinged the complexions and rounded the contours of many a Kipling heroine in the sentimental passages of Departmental Ditties and Plain Tales. TWO ADVERSE CRITICS. To take Sir Ian's capital book again, apart from the wealth of interest attaching to the question whether and how far the poet accepted re- muneration for his verses, and re- fused it for the patriotic ones—a question settled for ever by his sister's letter—there is the story of his first MS. adventure among the lions of Paternoster Row. Sir Ian says that THE KIPLING JOURNAL 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1945 after returning from India he re- ceived one of Kipling's stories in manuscript and sent it to two eminent lights in the magazine world of London. Naturally, they were Scotsmen, and both broke down. Andrew Lang sent the MS. back saying he would rather forfeit a five-pun note, etc., and he lived long enough to change his mind, or at least his tone. The other, William Sharp, who flirted with a bogus Highland Mary he called " Fiona Macleod," delivered an equally adverse judgment. He added that the author would probably go mad and perish before he was thirty; and with this sorry breakdown of our literary jury system, the experi- ment closed. The result was that the world had to wait so much the longer before Kipling broke upon it in all his fire and lustre. The story was The Mark of the Beast, reprinted in Life's Handicap, and no more macabre than half a dozen others within the same pair of covers. Those two Caledonians missed en- tirely the artistry which had led the author to relieve his grim narrative with evasions and suppressions. But it repays one to go through the book today and note how crowded the second half is with stories that seem to have been compressed, while the first half basks in the fullness of half a dozen yarns that are all full length. It seems a marvellous opportunity to gauge his sense of space at that particular period, when length must have been one of the touchstones of his writing career. GUNGA DIN, R.I.P. Mr. Harold Stewart's article on the abolition of the water-carrier from the Indian Army seems to call for a touch of annotation. Few people here in the West are aware of the degree to which creed enters into the entire scheme of Indian army life. Even if they did, they might not realise that Gunga Din—the regi- mental '' bhisti," or " heavenly one," catered only for the Muslim side of the forces, and that the Hindu com- munity would require their own particular functionary, or perish to a man. Even then there were rigid rules to decide the make of the water- container—goatskin only (because pig- skin would be taboo for the Muslim, as calfskin would be for the Hindu. Much of this appears between the lines of the poem, especially in the alternate curses and blessings showered on this brave non-combatant scurry- ing about the field so unselfishly under a deadly fire. Ralph Durand in his admirable " Handbook " mentions how a " bhisti" at the siege of Delhi so distinguished himself by his valour that the regi- ment he attended, the Corps of Guides, not content with his star " For Valour," petitioned for him to join their ranks. The request was granted, and thus this lowly menial was raised to a noble unit; what is more, he justified his promotion by gaining a com- mission and won the Valour decoration a second time. There were no V.C.'s for Indian troops in those days, as there are so illustriously now. So much seems necessary by way of amplifying the poet's fervour, and enabling us to express a hope that poor Gunga will be worthily replaced. In any case, it only needs an amend- ment of social taste for the recitation to return to public favour, and then poor brave Gunga will come back into his own. KIPLING AND THE SORBONNE. The Sorbonne now crops up into the news because, after its war-time torpor, it has re-opened its doors and resumed something of its ancient life. It will go on hammering at many themes and will honour many men, but I doubt if it ever welcomed a truer adherent of France than when it bestowed its doctorate on Rudyard Kipling. It certainly inspired two of his best speeches—both reproduced in A Book of Words—and the second, delivered at a Sorbonne banquet nearly a quarter of a century ago, showed his subtlety and mastery of thought. For he allowed himself as a self-confessed "teller of tales " to trace the folk-yarn through the were-wolf myth up to the emergence of the deadly Teuton enemy, who has since fulfilled Kipling's prophecy and is now to suffer the greatest and most de- served defeat on record. But it also led the Poet to prefigure the day when England and France shall " re-estab- lish the peace of the world on those ancient virtues of logic, sanity and laboriousness with which her history and her own indomitable genius have dowered France."—J. P. Collins. April, 1945 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 Stalky's Apologia. by MAJOR-GENERAL L. C. DUNSTERVILLE, C.B., C.S.I. (The President of the Kipling Society allows us to make a selection of passages front an unpublished book entitled " Stalky Settles Up," and has generous- ly passed the following for the " Kip- ling Journal " . as likely to interest our readers and to set " Stalky and Co." in a new and accurate light). I LIKE to think that before his death my old friend and school- fellow had forgiven the Kipling Society. At the outset he begged me to try and put a stop to it, and I replied that although I could see his point of view and sympathised most heartily with it, the idea was taking shape and nothing could prevent its realisation. Some members used to express disappointment at the fact that he never attended any of their functions; but no high-minded man could ever submit to the direct adula- tion of almost hysterical adorers, and so he remained aloof. Time eventually soothed the rankle, and shortly before his death he wrote expressing his gratitude for our birth- day greetings. We had always sent them and generally got snubbed for our temerity; but this time he sent a direct reply in a letter of his own handwriting, instead of the usual acknowledgment from his private secre- tary. Then when the end came, it meant to me the severance of a life- long friendship dating back to our school days together. Yet this was tempered by the reflection that his remarkable recovery from a serious illness in the United States in 1899 had spared him to continue a splendid output of original works for another thirty-seven years. What the Empire and the world in general would have lost had he not been saved from that attack, is quite beyond the reach of any sort of calculation. As for my- self I could not help feeling grateful to Providence for bringing me back to England at the moment of his death in so unforeseen a way, and so enabling me to pay my last tribute to his memory. RECOLLECTIONS. I have devoted a chapter of my book, Stalky's Reminiscences, to my recollections of those early days, and between this and Beresford's book on the subject, you will get pretty near the truth. I remember that when Beresford asked me to write a preface, I sent him a not very kind one, never thinking he would accept it, but he did. The book, I thought, was quite a fine piece of writing, but I doubt if Kipling himself would ever have considered it as coming under the heading of literature. Kip- ling only wrote Stalky and Co., to amuse himself, and to " get a bit of his own back " on some of the masters especially Crofts (King) and Pugh (Prout), so that he must himself have been astonished at the reception it was accorded by the public. It is obviously not a book that would appeal to everybody. Edmund Wilson, who includes a study of Kipling in his recent book The Wound and the Bow, has strong opinions and expresses them in a very forthright manner. He says :—¦" Certainly the worst of Kipling's books; crude in writing, trashy in feeling, implausible in a series of contrivances which resemble moving picture ' gags ' in the nature of an hysterical outpouring of emotions kept over from schooldays." Edward Shanks's book, Rudyard Kipling, can be recommended to anyone desiring to appraise the genius of our great writer. Apropos of the three bad boys he says :— " There are, however, certain con- clusions which we can accept with confidence. One is that there never were any such schoolboys as Stalky, Turkey and Beetle." There he is wrong, for certainly there were boys of those types in the school at Westward Ho. But the public make a great mistake when they regard this amusing book of pure fiction as being an historical novel. For many years I have en- deavoured to impress this on friends 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1945 and on the general public, both in speaking and in writing, but without success. It is very certain that the majority of the incidents depicted never took place at all as described, but in each case there was a good foundation, and the rest is what I suppose a journalist would call " writ- ing up." Like all good fiction, how- ever, the impression given is not a false one, for it presents a very fair, if highly coloured, picture of actual events. ENTHUSIASTS. I suffer a great deal from Kipling enthusiasts who look on the book as pure and reliable history, and you can imagine the agony of having to submit to a serious cross-examination regarding events that either never happened, or, if they did, have quite faded from my mind. Fors Clavigera, Uncle Remus and Browning were certainly the three most-thumbed books in our small library, and this shows at least a pronouncedly catholic taste in literature. We did smoke a good deal, and suffered " inconvenience " as a natural result. Catapults, fas- cinating and handy weapons easily concealed, were almost universally carried. We were frequently caned, and bore no grudge on that score, knowing well that we deserved far more than we were getting. Bullying at one time was rampant, but both masters and boys united in devising checks for this unpleasing natural tendency. At a time when our small funds had entirely given out, we did pawn Kipling's clothes. We did join the Natural History Society out of pure humbug, in order to get the privileg- es pertaining to the pursuit of science. Out of evil cometh forth good, and this piece of intended foolery imbued me with a lifelong interest in botany which survives to this day, but I do not think that Beresford in his later years was often to be seen chasing round the countryside with his butterfly-net, nor did I ever meet Kipling with a geological hammer in his hand. It is quite time that " Stalky" himself should be " debunked." I am sure several people are ready to undertake that easy task, but with their nice kind hearts they refrain from taking any action that might hurt my feelings, and are politely waiting till I am dead. Please tell them not to wait. I will stand up cheerfully to all their blows, and bear them no grudge. My interlocutors register dismay when I suggest that at my age they could hardly expect me to take any interest in dead cats. They would apparently like to believe that I always keep one in hand in case of emergency, but I must state most emphatically that I do not. On the other hand, they reveal an amazing scepticism now and then, and one old lady acquaint- ance declined to believe that I could ever have had the sacrilegious temerity to bestow kicks on our great Poet of Empire. Well, he didn't know he was going to be that, nor did I, so I must crave your forgiveness. Stalky and Co., has been translated into many languages, and I have a copy in French given me many years ago by Kipling. It is hard to under- stand how "such a book written mostly in a very special kind of schoolboy slang, with many expressions un- intelligible even to English readers, can possibly be rendered into any foreign language, or how the readers, to whom the whole idea is strange, can make head or tail of it. 1 am hoping some day to meet a French- man who has read it, and hear at first hand his immediate impressions. THE WORD " FIDS." For instance, Kipling makes Stalky say, after the successful adventures with Colonel Dabney :—" Fids ! Fids ! Oh fids ! I gloat ! Hear me gloat !" which sounds rather tame in French as " Quelle veine ! Oh, quelle veine ! Ecoutez mon chant de victoire !" The difficulty of trans- lating the silly word " fids " is well overcome, but I think they might have done better with the word " gloat," which readers know we were very fond of using, and which is not really slang but a good old English word, which still holds an important place in my vocabulary as a fine expressive word with no real equivalent—in short, an expression of joy very much tinged with malignity. The trans- lators did the best they could. My French dictionary says " Couver les yeux," which is a very mild affair. " Couver " apparently describes the joy a hen feels when sitting on a April, 1945 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 clutch of eggs, and the joy we felt was something much livelier than that. The translators were wise to keep well away from a literal equiva- lent, and not make Stalky voice his triumph in the manner of a broody hen. The Danes call the hero of the book " Stilk " and the Germans " Lange Latte," both of which suggest a tall and slender youth, which Corkran never was. My dictionary gives the meaning that Kipling had in his mind as " pursuing game by approach- ing "behind cover;" and as a matter of fact, our use of the word was chiefly due to reading Fenimore Cooper's exciting tales of Red Indians and scalps and the white settlers' en- deavours to approach the enemy from " behind cover." My German copy, " Lange Latte und Genossen " has an interesting history. During the last war we drove the enemy out of German East Africa, and the capital town of Dar-es-Salaam was occupied by our troops under the command of an old friend of mine, General Sir Richard Ewart. After the war was over he sent me the book with a note saying, " It struck me you might like to have the enclosed. When we occupied Dar-es-Salaam in 1916 I found this book in the Officers' Mess, and was so glad to see the Hun appreciated Kipling, that I kept it." The book is No. 269 and being a library book, should be returned. But I don't know whom to return it to, and anyway I mean to keep it. And now I feel I risk pursuing this subject ad nauseam, so I close with a quotation from my own book of reminiscences :—" Stalky and Co. is a work of fiction and not an histori- cal record. Stalky himself was never quite so clever as the character por- trayed in the book, and no mention is made of the many times he was let down. He represents, not an individual—though his character may be based on that of an individual— but the medium of one of the pre- vailing spirits of this untypical school." (To be continued) " Never Out Of Date " UNDER the heading " Two Minute Talks—A Daily Tonic " in the Edinburgh Evening Dis- patch, Robert Power writes : " As a lover of Rudyard Kipling's work I have been greatly interested in a letter of Kipling which, hitherto unpublished, appears in the organ of the National Association of Boys' Clubs. In it we find Kipling confessing that, besides being novelist and poet, he had earnestly striven to be a teacher. He wrote this letter forty-five years ago, to a sixteen-years-old boy in the East End of London, and in the course of it he says :—' If you have found out from one of my tales that wickedness of any kind does not pay, you've learned something. I've been trying to teach very hard. Of course, I can't go about and cram a sermon into a tale, but I try to get the same effect obliquely—and, so far, no one has found me out.' The old way of pointing a moral was to cram in a sermon. Kipling's is the better, certainly the more artistic, way. But as to the success of his method, he would appear to have had doubts. Still, the theme of Kipling's " ser- mon " can never be out of date. As he says, sooner or later there has to be a reckoning for wickedness, and the defaulter has to pay up with com- pound interest for every day he has let his sin master him. Social workers, especially those who work among youth, are saying that young delinquents treat judicial pun- ishments lightly. There is abroad a feeling that one can get off easily for follies. It is, therefore, necessary to keep clearly before the minds of the inexperienced that all errors have to be paid for; it may be in health, in loss of character or position, in failure or disappointment. The wrongdoer believes, invariably, that he can " get away with it." Kip- ling, like all men of experience, knew that such a belief showed the wrong- doer to be a fool, as well as a knave." 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1945 Goodbye to Gunga Din By HAROLD STEWART [The end of the water-carrier as an active unit of the Indian Army reminds Mr. Harold Stewart that rarely is Kipling's poem recited nowa- days. But, all in all, it is one of the credit items of this war that marks the last of Gunga Din. The follow- ing article and sketch are reprinted from the " Daily Record" Glasgow, by per- mission] . AN Indian Army Order abolishes the employment of water-carriers in active units. The carrying of water thus ceases to be a task for non-combatants. Which means good-bye to Gunga Din, the " limpin' lump o' brick- dust " immortalised by Kipling. The dis- missal of the regimental bhisti may mean no more than that the In- dian Army is getting rid of some of its hide-bound traditions and bringing its domestic arrange- ments up to date; or it may be that Gunga Din n ow a d a y s prefers less risky and exacting jobs than hover- ing 50 paces in the rear of the firing- line with his goatskin water-bag. The official announce- ment makes no disclos- ures, and my acquaintance with current military con- ditions in " Injia's sunny clime " is too slight to prompt speculation. What struck me when I read the news item was that nobody, or hardly anybody, recites Gunga Din to-day. The poem used to be a sure hit at dinners and concerts of the smokier sort in an earlier day, and it set the pattern for a lengthy procession of monologues in which green-eyed idols, Yellow Mandarins, Scarlet Riders, Doom-Ridden Beachcombers and Ladies known as Lou played sinister or sensational parts. How often do we hear these full- blooded narrations nowadays ? Not often, and I find this change in public taste interest- ing. It began, I think, after the last war, and was due to the broad- ening of ex- perience which that war brought to millions of us. We tasted life in the raw for ourselves, and found that it did'nt much resem- ble the pict- ures so pow- erfully pres- ented by the authors of the platform " piece." This war has com- pleted the process. Life has provided so much real melodrama that the pho- ney sort sim- April, 1945 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 ply hasn't a chance. I was convinced of that at a social gathering recently, when a couple of " straight " monologues of the good old vintage, ably delivered, brought but tepid applause, whereas another artiste's parody, beginning some- thing like, " There's a bowly-leggit plumber livin' doon by Govan Cross," fairly brought down the house. And the experiences of the past 30 years have had another effect. War has taken multitudes of us abroad to see something of other lands and their peoples. As a result, we've learned quite a lot about " subject races " and " lesser breeds without the Law." We've learned that all Indians aren't " Lazarushian—leather," that all dagoes aren't greasy cads who knife you in the back, that all Chinese aren't malevolent mandarins or the ghoulish henchmen hereof. My own first inkling of that truth came from meeting the plainly arro- gant and superior gaze of an elderly Moor, mounted on a superb white mule, in a place where Africa and Europe meet. Obviously, the old gentleman wasn't greatly impressed by this particular bearer of the White Man's Burden. Nor, to all appearances, was the mule. I brooded a bit about it at the time. When big percentages of whole populations are forced to such re- adjustments of fixed ideas, there may be a considerable loss of illusion and romantic misconception. But there is a more than compen- sating gain in understanding and proper humility. Let's put that down among war's scanty credit items. The peoples of the British Empire have, I think, grown out of the com- fortable assumption that it was per- missible to belt and flay its Gunga Dins so long as you were prepared to admit, on special occasions, that some of the black-faced crew might be white inside. One of the reasons why we're fighting the Germans is that they haven't got that length yet. Meanwhile, these are lean times for the elocutionist with the sombre scowl, the menacing eye and the snarl in his repertoire. Maybe he'll have to learn to croon. 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, 105, 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," 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1945 R.K. his Autograph ONE of the volumes recently presented to the Kipling Society's Library in London by the Row- fant Club, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., is a copy of Among My Books, by Paul Lemperly. It contains, among other good things, an interesting reference to inscribed volumes, and includes the following extract : " (Andrew) Lang once wrote : One kind of signature, to my mind, gives little value or none; that is, the signature of a poet in a presenta- tion copy of his own effusions. Every- one who turns over a volume on a stall, knows that all the minor poetry bears the minstrel's signature, and has been given by him to a friend or critic. For my own part, all poetry books from strangers, with inscriptions, are cast into a huge waste-paper basket— what becomes of them after the basket is emptied, I have no idea." " That Lang's omniscience forsook him on at least one occasion," writes Paul Lemperly, " his own statement shows : " Some years ago, among the books that came in battalions to a reviewer, I found an odd little volume of verses, bound like an official report. Where is the volume now ? It has gone the way of first editions; a thing to re- gret, as it was an example of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's Departmental Ditties." " TRUTHFULLY HIS AUTO- GRAPH." " Here is a copy of this now famous first edition, Lahore, 1886 which fortunately escaped the fate of Lang's copy. Inserted is a three-page auto- graph letter from the author : Naulakha, Waite, Vermont. May 14, '96. Dear Sir : I am in receipt of yours of the 12th instant. Please do not forward me the copy of the first edition D. Ds. —if that copy be in the original long paper cover with the tape attached. My reason for asking this is because I have only one worn copy myself without the red tape; and urgently want another. Besides which I have seen the book listed at $75(!) in a recent Dodd Mead catalogue of the Pope Library. I am afraid therefore, that you would never get your copy returned as I really want the copy very badly. However, overleaf I have written my name so that you can paste it into the poems. If after this warning you should insist on sending the book you will only have yourself to thank if it is "missing." Would it be asking too much of you to send five dollars to the Tribune Fresh Air Fund ? It is getting warm in New York and the children are already beginning to feel it. Very sincerely yours, Rudyard Kipling. " The ' overleaf ' inscription to which Mr. Kipling refers, and which forms the third and concluding page of his letter, is as follows : " This book was written by Rudyard Kipling and the above is truthfully his autograph (sd) Rudyard Kipling : For Paul Lemperly, Esq." The book was afterwards autographed on the first page, " Rudyard Kipling sd. : June 6, 1896," and again on the following leaf : underneath the printed title, " by Rudyard Kipling, Brattle- boro, Vt., June, 1896." (See next page) " But that is another story," to quote Mr. Kipling. In all, his sig- nature thus appears five times. HATED PUBLICITY. A question may arise in your mind, writes Mr. N. Lawson Lewis, the Secretary of the Rowfant Club, as it has in those of others : If Mr. Lemperly was such a Kipling enthusiast and had so many Kipling books, letters, etc., why did he not have more Kipling references in his books ? The answer, which I had from Mr. Lemperly is two-fold : (a) He knew Kipling hated pub- licity and he feared he might print something that Kipling might feel was in bad taste. Unlike many" of his literary contemporaries, Kipling hated self-advertising. We remember that one of the chief virtues he re- ferred to in his fine poem on Lord Roberts was— An' 'e does not advertise. April, 1945 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 This line is very much emphasized and we feel Kipling is speaking for himself too. Notice that the " Dry Cow " letter* is endorsed by Kipling Private. (b) The second and practical reason was, as Mr. Lemperly said to me : " I have such a mass of Kipling material and the subject is so near to my heart that if I began on it I wouldn't find room for anyone else. Some day I'll do a Kipling paper if he will let me." But Mr. Lemperly never did, un- fortunately. "POKER FACE." " In the matter of his autograph," writes Mr. Lawson Lewis in a cover- ing letter, " a friend of mine, George E. Gage, used about every Saturday night to play poker with Kipling and some friends at Brattleboro. Mr. Gage said that Kipling had the most wonderful ' poker face ' he ever met and usually ' skinned us alive.' Once, when Kipling complained of the increasing demands for his autograph, Gage said : ' Before you get to the point of refusing everybody, suppose you give me a sample.' Kipling took a sheet of paper and wrote his signature under a number of headings such as ' How I sign my name to a cheque —R—K;' ' How I sign my name to a love letter —R—K;' ' How I sign my name saying I can't pay a bill —R—K; and half a dozen others. Mr. Gage unfortunately gave away this priceless document to a young and pretty girl, and where it is now, no one knows." *A facsimile of the ' Dry Cow ' letter appeared on page 6 of the December 1944 number of this Journal. The Kipling Anniversary ON the 9th anniversary, our usual wreath of Remembrance was placed on the grave in Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey, the in- scription reading as follows : We remember today and mourn for RUDYARD KIPLING Britain's Patriot-Poet and Prophet. Kipling Society, Gower Street, London. Jan. 18, 1945. " 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." One of the Abbey guides, when shewing a party of American soldiers round, was heard to say : " This is Kipling's grave. He was the author of that great poem Gunga Din." 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1945 Kipling and Home Influences by SIR STEPHEN ALLEN, K.B.E., C.M.G., D S.O. President of the Auckland, N.Z. Branch of the Kipling Society (Part 1 of an address to the members of the Auckland, N.Z. Branch). KIPLING'S works deal with very many aspects of life. He was not so much a prolific author as a keen student of nature and human- ity, noting and recording the things he saw in all their varying phases, and expressing them in masterly prose or poetry. The casual reader of one or two of his works only, might obtain quite a wrong idea of the nature of his writings and might never realise the versatility of the author or his remarkable and usually accurate knowledge and understand- ing of the finer details covered by his many-sided writings. As we read more of his works, or read them again, we generally discover some new point of view that we have missed before. A FEW ILLUSTRATIONS. Take a few obvious illustrations of the great variety of subjects with which Kipling was familiar and about which he wrote. There are the Jungle Books written probably for the young but capable of being en- joyed by people of all ages and all show such intimate knowledge of the Indian jungle, its inmates and their habits. There are his stories of India not only Kim—one of the best books written in the opinion of some competent judges—but many short stories also which illustrate life in the East among all classes from the official to the lowliest native of the country. His sea stories show a real insight into life at sea both in H.M. Navy—in such tales as The Bonds of Discipline and Their Lawful Occasions—and in the merchant ser- vice also, as for instance in that inimit- able story Bread Upon the Waters. The British soldier is revealed in many tales under all kinds of con- ditions. Even motorists may read and ponder on the early trials of their tribe in Steam Tactics. In Rewards and Fairies and in Puck of Pook's Hill he teaches English history—and very good history too—in the guise of tales written for the young, covering most of the critical periods through which England passed in bygone days. Then in the Stalky series he gives a somewhat unconventional account of school life about which a certain amount of controversy took place when this series was first published. Even Freemasonry has been intro- duced into more than one story, and there are few in which there does not occur some allusion under- stood only by the initiated. Today, however, I want to deal very shortly with one facet of Kipling's works, which I am inclined to believe has not received the attention it deserves and may have been over- looked by some of his readers. I refer to the emphasis which he lays, in so many of his stories, on the strength and value of home influences and family life. It is what we should expect to find in the writings of one whose own life in its early stages passed through such changes of en- vironment. In his autobiography Something of Myself he has given a full account of his early life. A happy childhood in India in the home of kind and understanding parents was followed by six years of acute misery at the house of the woman in Southsea. The cruelty and bleak desolation of those six years left an enduring mark on him, and was such that, in his own words, after des- cribing his treatment there, he says " In the long run these things, and many more of the like, drained me of any capacity for real personal hate for the rest of my days. So close must any life-filling passion lie to its opposite. ' Who having known the diamond will concern himself with glass.' " This wretched period of his life at least must have taught Kipling that appreciation of home life and influences which makes an impression in so many of his April, 1945 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 writings, and although I cannot re- member seeing the point stressed in any review, or even in the Society's Journal, I think it is just this particular point which makes many of the stories so effective. After all, in the experience of everyone, there is nothing that has influenced life so profoundly as the influence of home. A man's origin and early life are main factors in shaping and moulding his character and subse- quent career. SOME EXAMPLES. I want now to select a few of the many passages in Kipling's own works which illustrate what I am trying to say and from them endeavour to make clear what I am hardly com- petent to do in my own words. Take first the Jungle Books. It may seem strange to look in these for examples of the influence of home, but the wolves into whose family Mowgli is adopted are a prototype of human parents and the wolf tribe of a group of men. Mother wolf shows natural maternal instincts and feelings. "Oh! mother, mother," says Mowgli " if thou hadst seen .... when the Man Pack flung stones at me." " I am glad I did not see that last " said Mother Wolf stiffly, " It is not my custom to suffer my cubs to be driven to and fro like jackals. I would have taken a price from the Man Pack." Father Wolf, after the manner of men, is inclined to keep in the background. He was doubtful about adopting Mowgli into his family, but " Keep him; assuredly I will keep him " says Raksha the mother wolf. " What will our pack say ?" says the father. But, as is the way of mankind, he lets Raksha have what she wants, and so Mowgli is brought up by the wolves and we get a picture of a little intimate family circle setting an example of kindness and harmony, of forbearance and order and a high standard for the human family to live up to and emulate. As Mowgli grows he learns from Baloo and Bagheera, as in a sort of kindergarten or preparatory school, and above all he is instructed in discipline and self control of which Kipling always realised the over- whelming importance. When Mowgli at last leaves the family circle and the wolf pack, for a time, and goes to the village, it is there that he meets with jealousy, superstition, cruelty and abuse—though not for the first time because even among the wolves and with his foster parents there was always Shere Khan in the back- ground, but then he had his foster family to protect and shield him. I believe that in the contrast between the wolf family and the villagers Kipling must have thought of his own early experiences and the trans - sition from the home in India to the house of the woman in South- sea. The whole plot of the story of Mowgli, though I do not suggest it was written for that purpose, is so designed as to show the effect of home influence on character and the development of higher standards and ideals under the effects of home, good order and discipline. We are in fact given a type and example of a happy family and we see the far reaching consequences of the influence it exerts. Of course Mowgli must ultimately grow up, and here again, in the story In the Rukh in Many Inventions, we find him. He has the qualities and characteristics which his early life and training have instilled into him and which will always be his. He acquires a wife and is left in a little family circle of his own, and no doubt transmitting the same powerful in- fluences to the next and succeeding generations. The influence of his former home among the wolves, his upbringing and training, is supreme over any future environment and will determine all his later life. Now let us turn from the jungle to its antithesis, the countryside of England. I want to direct your attention to An Habitation Enforced in Actions and Reactions. If their quality can be tested by the number of times they can be re-read, this must be one of the best of the short stories. The complete naturalness with which events occur and the emergence of the facts in somewhat unexpected sequence, combine with the setting of the story to give it great attraction. The story is an example of the influence of a home, coming back to a representative of the family after several generations 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1945 and becoming dominant in the lives of its latest possessors. You will remember the story. It is of a wealthy American and his wife. The husband, George, has broken down through overwork in his business and at length they stay in England, in the neighbourhood where, unknown to them, his wife's family, the Lashmars, used to live. The old house of the Lashmars is standing empty and has a strong appeal for them. They amuse themselves at first by planning what they would do with it and at last the call of the house is so strong that they buy it and live there. The story develops as they grow into the English countryside, its influence is exerted on them and they become a part of it. "It is not our land," says George, " we've only paid for it. We belong to it, and it belongs to the people—our people they cal them." So the old house becomes more than a house to them; it be- comes a true home and those subtle but strong influences it has exerted on them since they first entered its door, are continued until they them- selves are completely absorbed. The influence of the house proves stronger than the call of business and the strenuous activity of their native America. (To be continued) "The Prophetess" Someone, so I observe, has been interviewing Rudyard Kipling's only sister, Mrs. J. M. Fleming, particu- larly upon the subject as to whether " the Poet of Empire " is dead or alive. Of course he is not dead. Many of us knew both Kipper and this charming lady in old days in India, the latter particularly temp : Curzon of Kedleston and K. of K., a rather tempestuous and not un- amusing epoch. Mrs. Fleming did not, I see, tell her interviewer of her adventures as a reader of the future in the lines on the palms of men's hands. She only did it at fancy fetes, so far as my own experience went, but she went so uncomfortably near the mark in one instance that it made even this sceptic think a bit. I had never met her before I paid my five rupees, or whatever it was, to have my fortune told by " The Prophetess " at a big charity fete in Calcutta, and I know that she had never even heard of me. She said—or words to that effect—that within the next forty-eight hours I should very nearly lose my life. It was about the time of the big cold weather steeple-chase meeting, at which I had, as I knew, at least one rather rocky ride, and a fall on Mother India's unyielding bosom meant that you got hurt. So I thought nothing of it; but the very next morning, when I was out hacking on the course watching the gallops, the scary brute I was riding suddenly went off her tail as if a wasp had stung her, the thin snaffle I had on her snapped, and she went away bare-headed for home. There were telegraph-posts on the side of the road which (of course) she chose, and I kept lifting one knee after the other for the smash, but eventually she came to a main road where there were tram-lines, and as she tried to turn sharp left, down she came. I was shot on to the footpath between a telegraph- pole and a pillar-box. The space between, subsequently measured, was under 4ft. I wrote and thanked " The Prophetess," and I expect she remembers a further caution she gave me about not riding an animal with two -white socks behind. That also came off, but ended harmlessly, as another chap, Roly Pugh, and I were only chucked out of a cart when the thing bolted, and eventually came down. What a lot of jolly fun we used to have, to be sure ! The Tatler and Bystander. April, 1945 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 Some Kipling Backgrounds (III) by MAJOR IRVING MANSBACK (Easton, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.) (This is the third and concluding instalment of the series of notes by Major Mansback, on the backgrounds of Kipling's two stories " Brother Square Toes " and " A Priest in Spite of Himself" and the poem " Phila- delphia." Instalments I and II appeared in " The Kipling Journal " of October and December, 1944. In order to appreciate the value of Major Mans- back's researches into the backgrounds of this Kipling material, readers are recommended to read the stories and poem, and then the biographical and explanatory passages in the notes). THE oldest coaching house in Philadelphia was known as the George and Dragon; it stood at the southwest corner of Second and Arch Street, and it was removed about twelve or thirteen years ago. It was erected in 1700, and was stand- ing when Penn last visited Philadelphia. In its early days it was an Inn; during the Revolution it became a coaching house. In 1794, Robert Bicknell ran stages from New York and Baltimore from this Headquarters and this fact is mentioned in Philadelphia. The name Swankfelder is still very common among the Pennsylvania Dutch. At the time of the stories, there was a sizeable French group located around Second and Market Street. Talleyrand, after being discredited at the Court of St. James's, came to America and sold buttons to Phila- delphia gentry. In the early days of Philadelphia, the blocks of Race Street from Front to Sixth Street were used to test the speed of horses, hence the name Race Street. TALLEYRAND IN PHILADELPHIA. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Peri- gord, once Bishop of Autun, having been requested to leave England, to which country he had fled from the French Revolution, arrived in Phila- delphia in 1794. For over two years he made his headquarters there. During this period, he made a trip west of the Alleghanies and spent some time in New York. Talleyrand took the oath of allegiance to the State of Pennsylvania. He was about forty years old at this time. He exerted great pressure through in- fluential friends to be presented to Washington, but the President re- fused to see him. He was very friendly with Alexander Hamilton. While in Philadelphia, Talleyrand lived at the corner of Drinker's Alley and Second Street. OLD MAPS. The trail described in Brother Square Toes was probably laid out from information on the following maps : 1. Map No. 5 in " Lewis Evans, his maps, 1749 to 1755." Map No. 5 circa 1760 (?) is an anony- mous Piracy " from the Kitchen— Jeffery's Piracy." 2. " Map of Penn- sylvania exhibiting not only Improved Parts of the Province but also Its Extensive Frontiers—William Scull Map of 1770 "—1755 edition. London 3. Map in Pennsylvania Archives, 2nd series, Linn and Egle. Harris- burg. 1890. " The Lake " is Seneca or Canasa- dego Lake " the modern city of Geneva is situated here." It is in the " country occupied by the Indians call'd by the English Senecas " so noted on map No. 5 (above). The East (North) Susquehanna River rises a short distance south of this lake and flows through the Nantego Country. Fort Shamokin, is the city of Sunbury, Fort Granville, the town of Lewistown, the Ochwick (on all maps spelled Aughwich) trail, Shippensburg being the city of the same name today. Williams Ferry, Shandore and Ashby's Gap are all clearly shown on the maps. The final directions " south- east by south " would bring one out at approximately the present location of Mt. Vernon, Virginia. A passable trail might be recon- structed between the places as set 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1945 down, but even today certain passes and mountain paths on the trail would be extremely difficult to traverse. KIPLING IN PHILADELPHIA. Kipling visited Philadelphia once in his travels, and had no cause to feel kindly towards the city, and its people. Ellis Ames Ballard re- lated an interesting anecdote about Kipling. He said, "A number of years ago, Kipling visited Philadelphia and wrote to the secretary of the Uni- versity Club asking for the privileges of the organization so that he might consult the English magazines and papers. The secretary, however took offence at the request and called the writer " a cheeky Englishman." The letter went unanswered. Some time later, when the name of Kipling had become famous, the secretary found the letter, which had been thrown into a littered desk." (Kip- lingiana of Irving E. Mansback, vol. 6, page 16). According to another authority, Kipling visited Philadelphia in the spring of 1889, and again briefly in 1900. It is also claimed that he visited Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsyl- vania at which time it is thought he might have written Philadelphia, (From an article by Asa K. McIlhaney in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call, Sept. 6, 1936 in the Kiplingiana of Irving E. Mansback. Nothing can be found to confirm the statement that Kipling visited Easton, Penn- sylvania). * * * * BIBLIOGRAPHY READERS who wish to pursue the subject of Major Mansback's articles on the backgrounds of Kipling's Brother Square Toes, A Priest in Spite of Himself, and the poem Philadelphia, may find the following bibliography of interest :— Old Churches and Meeting Houses In and Around Philadelphia—John T. Fatis., Lives and Times—Minnigerode. Indian Chiefs of Pennsylvania— C. H. Sipe. Hand Book of American Indians, U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, Bulletin 30. History of the Early Settlement of the Juniata Valley, 1855 Pennsylvania Magazine, Vol. 4— 1880. American Magazine, No. 4, 1758 Reminiscences of the Old First Moravian Church of Philadelphia.— William H. Jordan. History of the Moravian Church of Philadelphia—A. Ritter—1857. The Encyclopedia of Philadelphia— Harrisburg. Kiplingiana, original sources, maga- zines, maps, etc., in the Library of Irving E. Mansback. ' R.K. as a Jane-ite ' REFERRING to the paragraph under this heading which appears on page 2 of the December, 1944, number of the Journal, one of our Vice-Presidents, Mr. S. A. Court- auld, sends us the following copy of a letter from Rudyard Kipling to him as to Jane's Marriage : Extract from a letter from Rudyard Kipling to S. A. C. Bateman's, Burwash, Sussex, dated Dec. 30th, 1932. "As to the late Miss Austen (have you looked at the Oxford Press Edition of her letters ?) the explanation is simple. No date in time is given for her entry into Paradise, or Sir Walter's. There is a period of preparation and squaring of accounts. Sir Walter, when he wasn't with Marjorie—spent that time trying to give Hogg some idea of his waggish- ness, and listening to all the world's best ballads from the mouths of their makers. This took time. No one knows how Jane occupied her- self. She was on the Ladies' Side of Limbo. At the fit hour, she made her entry, just as she was used to make it at the little dances which she loved, and was, as I have described, met with some circumstance. But if people will go by almanacks and dates and things—what can you expect ?" April, 1945 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 Kipling and the English Country Life by GRACE BROUGHTON (Melbourne, Australia) Hon. Secretary of the Melbourne Branch of the Kipling Society (This is the third and concluding part of a paper read to members of the Melbourne Branch. The first and second parts appeared in the October and December, 1944 issues of the Kip- ling Journal") KIPLING does not keep to the best side of country life and scenery all the time, for in Friendly Brook he gives a vivid description of a flood and all the damage it can do, as also the work of the hedgers and ditchers in re- pairing that damage. I learnt when in England that hedging and ditching are really special trades in farm life of that country, for in going through the country in the winter time I was amazed to see all the hedges' main stems bent over as if a storm had laid them so. I wondered if the prevailing wind of the district had had that effect, so made enquiries and found that when a hedge is plant- ed and reached a certain height all the stems are bent over and tied down, the branches then making an impenetrable wall to keep the stock in the fields and forming an effective barrier to trespassing animals. I think the professional term for this work must be " swapping " for we get that phrase in the poem " The Land " where he says " since a Hobden swapped a hedge." Perhaps an Eng- lish-born member can enlighten me. Again in My Son's Wife we see a flood at work and come into very different country from that of southern England, Essex, possibly or even Suffolk. For the owner of the land describes it as :— " Brown and green in alternate slabs like chocolate and pistachio cakes, speckled with occasional peasants who do not utter. In case it should not be wet enough there is a wet brook in the middle of it." which wet brook rose later on in flood and, in the words of an old song, " High tide on the coast of Lincolnshire," that the girl in the tale was always humming, " That flood strewed wrecks upon the grass, That ebb swept out the flocks to sea." AN HISTORICAL ATMOSPHERE I have referred to Kipling's know- ledge of the bleak moors of Yorkshire already, and we have no other des- criptions of central or northern Eng- land in any of his stories except the wonderful account of the march of Parnesius and his troop on their way to the Wall, and of course those descriptions are of Early Britain and not of England as it is known now. Those who hold that the history was Kipling's first aim when writing of the country-side claim this account of the journey as plain proof that he was most concerned in creating an historical atmosphere. For that we may grant them this one story perhaps, for all the guide books I studied when tramping along the Wall myself asserted that if we wanted to get a true picture of Roman Eng- land we should read Kipling's Cen- turion tales. So taking it all round we find that Kipling knows the English country side as few other writers do. Hardy and Meredith kept to their own corners of the southern counties but Kipling goes farther afield and takes us through all that part of England where the history that matters most in the formation of the English race was lived. The Roman Centurion who lived in Vectis and finished by keeping the Wall no matter who was Emperor at Rome, the Normans who hammered England into one in the south, the men of Elizabeth's time who fared all round the world with Drake, and who came from Bideford, where Kipling himself was to receive the grounding for his life work; he 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1945 knew their surroundings and has described them in prose and verse unequalled by any other English writer, because he wanted us to see, and know, and love, all that English country-side that had made these men what they were, apart from any historical value they may have had in themselves; and that we would realise that England's greatness lies not with " the great nor well-be- spoke, but the mere uncounted folk," who cherished the land in their life- time and were now lying quietly beneath it. He shows this very clearly in his poem The Land, which tells of all the legal owners of the Land down through the ages, who have one and all to refer in any difficulty to one of the " uncounted folk," whose ancestors had lived and farmed and loved the Land from time im- memorial and whose descendants follow- ed in their footsteps as advisers to the Owners on any question referring to the treatment of the Land .... He says— " .... I turn to him again With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne, ' Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but'— and here he takes command For whoever pays the taxes, old Mus' Hobden owns the Land." DESCRIPTION IN VERSE. So far I have only touched on his prose descriptions, but there are equally lovely ones in his verse, which I think my supporters are to tell of, but I am going to claim for myself the two best of all, which express his own feelings so wonder- fully. The first is' Alnaschar and the Oxen, a description of what one sees when strolling over the farm on a peaceful Sunday afternoon, which is a truly English custom :— " There's a pasture in the valley where the hanging woods divide And a herd lies down and ruminates in peace, Where the pheasant rules the noon- ing, and the owl the twilight tide, And the war cries of our world die out and cease. Here I cast aside the burden that each weary week day brings, And delivered from the shadows I pursue, On peaceful postless Sabbaths I consider weighty things, Such as Sussex cattle feeding in the dew." The second, and my last, is the very perfect Sussex, which is a com- plete summing up of Kipling's very own love for that " fair ground by the sea," apart from any connection it might have with the history of Eng- land, as well as a very beautiful picture of Sussex county itself. In this we find :— "So to the land our hearts we give, Till the sure magic strike, And memory, use and love make live, Us and our fields alike, That deeper than our speech and thought, Beyond our reason's sway Clay of the pit whence we were wrought, Yearns to its fellow clay." which line is a clear proof that it is the country and not its history that calls him always first .... " God gives all men all earth to love, But since man's heart is small Ordains for each one spot shall prove Beloved over all Each to his choice, and I rejoice The lot has fallen to me In a fair ground, in a fairground—Yea, Sussex by the Sea !" 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. The ordinary membership Subscription is One Guinea per annum. New readers are especially invited to cor- respond with us at 105, Gower Street, London, W.C.L April, 1944 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 Letter Bag Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication as short as possible. THE GREATEST SHORT STORY SOME months ago the Brains Trust was asked to decide on the greatest short story. Kip- ling was not mentioned till the question had gone some way down the Trust, and then the member mentioning him could not make even a distant shot at which was his greatest story. Well, I suppose that there would be wide differences of opinion on the subject of which was actually the greatest story, but it struck me that one might make a short list of stories which might command pretty general agreement as containing the greatest, without specifying which came first. I therefore submit a short list which I hope will be an occasion for dis- cussion among my fellow members of the Society. My list comprises The Man Who Would be King, They and The Janeites—which list has the advantage of taking one story from the early, one from the middle, and one from the final periods; which periods are, I suggest, very clearly demarcated in Kipling's work.—B. S. BROWNE. ANSWERS TO TWO CORRE- SPONDENTS. Referring to Kipling Journal No. 71 —October, 1944, page 15—and the letter from T. E. Elwell, of Drew's Court, Churchdown, Gloucester, head- ed " The King's Ankus," the passage he quotes comes about two pages from the end of the story in the Uni- form Edition. Will Mr. Elwell com- pare the end of the story as it appears in the "St. Nicholas " rendering with that in the more usual versions ? In the same number a letter appears from B. Ten Broeke, D.I.G. Police, Hazaribagh, headed " In the Regi- mental Volapuk." Many of us have typescripts of " A Campaigning Phrase Book " taken direct from The Pioneer, 23rd October, 1888. It is uncollected, and I doubt whether we should be allowed to reprint, but it is amusing to those who know some Hindustani and how the Tommy used to speak that camp language.—R. E. HAR- BORD, Deputy Chairman. THE YOUNG MAN OF QUEBEC. It may be of interest that I have in my possession a cutting from The Ontario Sentinel of October, 1910, containing Rudyard Kipling's If. With a few variations in punctuation it is the same as that printed in the Inclusive Edition of his Verse 1885- 1926. In this connection I have never seen in print the limerick which Kipling composed when in Canada, at a time when someone there took exception to his remarking on the coldness of the weather, and which ran as follows :— " There was a young man of Quebec Who stood in the snow to his neck. F said ' Are you friz ' He replied ' Yes I is ' But we don't call this cold in Quebec. —J. M. SILVESTER, Nairobi, Kenya Colony. A TRANSLATION. May I draw your attention to the following paragraph which I copied from the book " Greece." A Pan- orama (Cross-Roads series), by Demet- rius Caclamanos. Page 19. Pub- lished London, 1942. " The first among these poems of a revived nation, composed during the Greek war of Independence, is our National Anthem .... This poem by Solomos, an Ionian poet, had a rare fortune. It was translated into English by a great English poet— Rudyard Kipling himself. Its first verses in the English translation which it was the present author's privilege to obtain from Mr. Kipling himself as a personal favour, are as follows :— We knew thee of old O divinely restored, etc. —EDITH M. BUCHANAN, Auck- land, N.Z. Printed by H. F. Lucas & Co. 151, North Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex.