CONTENTS PAGE Notes—J. P. Collins -------- 1 Bonfires on the Ice—Lt.-Gen. Sib George MacMunn, k.c.b., k.c.s.i., d.s.o....... 4 The Kipling Society in the U.S.A...... 6 Rudyard Kipling the Tribal Singer—Gerard E. Fox M', Mac or McAndrew?....... 9 Bateman's, Burwash -------- 9 Some Lesser-Known Aspects of Kipling in the East— Lt.Col. J. K. Stanford, o.b.e., m.c. (I.C.S., Retd.) 10 Victoria, B.C., Canada....... 12 The Ephemeral, The Passing and the Recondite II— Victor Bonney, f.r.c.s. - - - - - 13 "Our Future"—T. C. Angus, d.f.c., D.S.C, a.m.i.e.e. 15 Tribute To Rudyard Kipling--Kyrle Symons 16 Presentation of Pictures - - - - - - - 17 THE KIPLING SOCIETY SALES DEPARTMENT 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. List of Members : Extra copies for members only, 6d. Society s Show Card : Free, where a member can have it displayed in any club, hotel, etc. Journals : Extra copies for members only, 6d. each. Special prices which may be obtained from the Secretary, apply however to those numbers which are nearly out of print. All the above are sent post free. Correspondence should be addressed to The Hon. Secretary The Kipling Society 105, Gower Street London, W.C.l. __ Tel.: Euston 7117 — published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. XIV. No. 82. July, 1947. Notes THE VICEROY'S WIN. RELIEF rather than rejoicing pervades the air, because of the marked approach to a settle- ment of the Indian constitutional question, and here it can do no harm to add the name of our President to the list for congratulation. Lord Wavell showed no reluctance to go to India when he was asked by Mr. Churchill, though it meant tackling an undertaking where everybody seemed to fail till then ; and when his time came to return, it was noted on every hand that he had beaten the record in one or two important respects. He had never rested until he had brought the chief contestants into a line of potential agreement, and he had never let the question fade for long out of the public mind. Over and over again, in his talks with Pandit Nehru, Mr. Gandhi, Mr. Jinnah or the other leaders, he allowed no hesitation or disappointment or weari- ness to appear, and he maintained throughout their transactions those soldierly and manly virtues which pervade his books, and make him the exemplary Kipling lover that he is. LORD WAVELL'S SHARE. Consequently, when his successor, Lord Mountbatten, came upon the scene, he evoked applause when he took a public vow that he would carry on Lord Wavell's tradition, and to his lasting credit and deserved success he has made this true. Lord Mountbatten has put a briskness and earnestness into the negotiations which have banished, as Lord Wavell's power- ful drive had done, any suggestion that the British offers were insincere, and once this unworthy rumour was removed, refusals began to disappear. The result has been a gratifying degree of concurrence on the part of the Indian leaders, and a speeding-up of the subsequent procedure arrange- ments which has taken everybody's breath away. The change of atmos- phere does not stop anyone asking what Kipling would have had to say, had he survived ; but the fact that so great a Kiplingite as Mr. Churchill has shaken hands cordially with the Premier on the stage of progress so far reached is at least a very sub- stantial point of reassurance. Further, one cannot safely go, so without lapsing into politics in any way, we can repeat our hearty sentiment of thanks and congratulations to our President for the big share he has taken towards a presumptive settle- ment of a vast problem which a month or two ago looked so menacing and hopeless. TANGLED TRINITIES. The comments of Sir George Mac- Munn on the situation are those of a loyal Kipling-lover of the older school, and they are bound to set all our readers thinking hard. Roughly speaking, these may be ranged into three classes : the few who, like the General himself, have had the privilege for years of keeping India on a level keel and preparing her (more or less consciously) for the present launch ; those who look objectively at India as a vast complexity of races and tongues which Providence has committed to our care for certain centuries ; and those who derive their interest in India and her peoples mainly or solely from Kipling's writings. In this, and their common absorption in serious study of the question of the moment, there is a curious parallel with the three main races involved in the new turn of affairs ; and the readers, like the divided groups of disputants, are bound to mingle some measure of disillusion with their acceptance and consent. THE KIPLING JOURNAL 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1947 "C.B." AND HIS DAY. If one could hold a sort of im- promptu brains trust between the six groups, a mixed attention would be accorded to remonstrances from the die-hard school, but probably one rejoinder would proceed on more or less obvious lines like this : some- one with a memory would note the scorn he expresses for the late Camp- bell-Bannerman, and would counter it with a mild reminder that "C-B." after all, did a service to South Africa and the Empire which he seemed to think was reserved for him alone. It was a case of his being far in advance of his party and his time. That is how he incurred an abysmal un- popularity when he insisted against the bulk of his own colleagues on bestowing autonomy on the defeated Cape " rebels," as they were called here in England ; and yet if there was one eminent man who lived to withdraw his disapproval, it was the Conservative leader, Earl Balfour, who lived to admit the daring move had justified itself after all. Nor has time neglected to endorse this all over again, for South African troops of all parties have fought in both wars with the best of our forces, and if only for General Smuts and his visions of world-statesman- ship over and over again, there is reason to be grateful all round. Therefore, there is no perversity or break with tradition in hoping for the best, even in this Indian deal ; and though some of us may not see the day, yet we may descry its coming, when Gandhi's dream of reconciliation may arrive, even for India and her race divisions, and Lord Wavell and Lord Mountbatten should be more than warranted by events in the end. THE MANDALAY TRADITION. Lt.-Colonel Stanford in his contri- bution to the present number, seems to have done supremely well what many have attempted at one time or another, and that is to furnish a real analysis of Kipling as a serious narrator and a romantic poet. Here we get it in regard to a land like Burma, of which the poet saw really little in his early days, and never went back, so far as we can ascertain. It is true that the Colonel is an exact- ing critic in details of geography and the rest ; he might easily show him- self a more glowing expositor of the poet's efforts in his Burmese ballads and the rest. But he has paid his enemy a tribute well worth having. After all, we have long been familiar with the fact that Mandalay's business in the poem is not to " look eastward to the sea," but to afford a musical murmur and a picturesque back- cloth to one of the most delicious idylls that any man ever conceived in singable verse around the lights o' love of a British Tommy on service whole generations ago. It never occurred to the present writer, in fact, that any of the tunes to which the ballad has been set were ever really worthy of the occasion. For the best-known one is little more than a pleasant jingle, and the other merely spends its sweetness on the gloomy dissatisfaction of an irrecover- able memory. Neither of these com- posers has succeeded in echoing the exquisite humour embodied in the poet's verses, and indeed this knack of blending a glamour of climate, was a secret that died with him, and there is nothing more to be said we may be sure, or else the gentry who have written so many monographs and studies of Kipling's writings, would have said it long ere this. LESS AND LESS. Our illustration presents another aspect of the poet's humour and fancy. Nobody ever drew more in- spiration from the right source in regard to things venerable and sacred ; and few men in a long line of genera- tions have expressed a sounder ideal of Christian chivalry, whether in the Roman legions invading this island, or the romantic periods of our history, or in these later days of science and invention, and the fusion which travel supplies as a wholesome leaven for the betterment of man. But it looks as if the vein of human eloquence and depth in this region of thought is going to dwindle in future, rather than increase. Meanwhile, the old Viceroy has warmly congratulated his successor at a Royal India Society's meeting here in London, and those who know him best will say that this is characteristic of the man. J. P. Collins. July, 1947 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 "RUDDY'S IDEA OF HEAVEN." This illustration, from Colonel Rivett-Carnac's book " Many Memories," lent by Miss Florence Macdonald, M.B.E., was given to her by the author in 1912. The drawing was by John Lockwood Kipling 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1947 Bonfires on the Ice LT. GENERAL SIR GEORGE MacMUNN, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., D.S.O. AMONG the most striking of Kipling's verses have been those that almost from the start of his career, he had launched to remind us of our national duty— that the most prosperous and humane Empire that the world has ever seen cannot be held by " killing Kruger with your mouth." This is a moment in our history when his efforts might well be recalled. We have seen a Labour Government compelled to bring in a ' National Service Bill.' We cannot honour them for it, because, however much we dislike the necessity, it is sheer stark necessity. We have to occupy Germany for a long period of years, lest she prepare for another orgy of conquest. The inducements offered for voluntary service—good though they are—have not induced the young men of the country and the " good-time " boy to come forward in sufficient numbers. Liabili- ties must be met, and we have the Russian facade of arrogance, whose meaning cannot be fathomed, to think of, and to see that we are not faced with ' rough stuff. '. The Labour Government have emas- culated their original plan of a year and a half, to one year to please their supporters despite the protest of the Service Chiefs, that even if you can train them in the time, you cannot use them. To which the frightened minority have replied ' Oh, we will send them half-trained as sheep to the slaughter.' Now there are two sets of govern- ment opponents. Those who have compelled the Cabinet to go back on their carefully considered minimum of a year and a half, and accepted that, and those who have voted against fulfilling our obligations at all. INTERIM COVER. Yet this is the spirit that deprived us of a million stout lives in the First World War and nearly as many in the second, with our cities in ruins and our old folk and children slain in their homes—all to make a Peace- pledgers' holiday ! The City of London has perhaps learnt the old lesson ' si vis pacem praepara bellum ' but there are obviously a good many who have not. UNO may save the world yet, if Uncle Joe Will change his Tartar methods, but what we all want is interim cover. It is' true that by pouring the Empire down the drain, and allowing those we are sworn to protect to massacre each other by the tens of thousands, we do save a few thousands of garrison troops, amid the prayers and curses of millions. Even now, a British battalion marching through Lahore city, alone revives hope and con- fidence. At Amritsar the slaughter of Sikhs and Moslems—the very folk who stormed the Apennines for us—goes on, only to be stemmed when a British battalion is hurried in! So it is pretty obvious that what a good many folk need is a dose, a daily dose, covering a sixpence, of Kipling's salts. Let us turn the pages of the last half century and see what our seer said. He first let himself go in the Boer War, when he wrote that line that rankled, when county cricket and football was put before, not after, duty and service, when everyone, or most everyone, enjoyed the pros- perity of the Empire, but to the scorn of the Continent; were not inclined to pay for it in money and service. So he hit the sore with ' the flannelled fools at the wicket, the muddied oafs at the goal ' when Lords came before Ladysmith. Then came The Absent-Minded Beggar " When you've shouted ' Rule Brit- tania ' When you've sung ' God Save the Queen ' When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth." TEN YEARS ON. Let us pass on ten years, not far from the Great War, when our Territorials could not by law serve abroad, and Lord Kitchener could July, 1947 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 not use them to save the " Old Con- temptibles." Fourteen Divisions and Fourteen mounted Brigades, that could not be sent abroad, yet men said that had that force been known to be' available, after a few months intensive training, the Kaiser would have thought a bit harder and have saved the German Reich. The people of England were deep in prosperity ; if wages were lower, prices were absurdly low and the country needed a nasty one. They got it in the City of Brass published in the Morning Post on the 28th June, 1909 when ' D ' day (1) was only five years off. There was a quotation from the Arabian Nights at the head that ran :— " Here was a people whom after their works Thou shall see wept over for their lost dominion." Verse 2 will be enough, talking of the Government :— " Swiftly these pulled down the walls that their fathers had made them, The impregnable ramparts of old, they razed and relaid them. As playgrounds of pleasure and leisure, with limitless entries, And havens of rest for the wastrels where once walked the sentries; And because there was need of more pay for the shouters and marchers, They disbanded in face of their foemen their yeomen and archers." A little bit of verse 3 :— " They replied to their well-wishers, fears—to their enemies' laughter, Saying : ' Peace ! we have fashioned a God Which shall save us here- after.' " THE HOT AIR MERCHANT. Bon ! So now let us turn to Bon- fires on the Ice ! which was published in 1933 and repeated in 1935 at the Dinner of the Royal Society of St. George. It is especially an attack on his old enemy ' the hot air mer- chant.' The heading is a jumble of the phrases used by folk of this kidney. " gesture . . . outlook . . . vision . . . avenue example . . . achievement appeasement . . . limit of risk . . . Common Political form." This, too, was when Hitler had marched into the Rhineland, when Mussolini was slaughtering Abyssin- ians and no one had the guts to say him nay. These were the days of the abiding shame of the Peace- pledgers—who had not the courage to say their piece in the streets of Berlin, but must bring on the Second World War by saying it to this unarmed country. " We know the Pie—likewise the crust— We know a Bonfire on the Ice." and then :— " We know the Father to the Thought, Which argues Babe and cockatrice Would play together, were they taught. (Like Moslem and Hindu) We know that Bonfire on the ice.', There was plenty more, and Munich and the second World War inter- vened, with all its tragedy and horror. The young men of both World Wars were superb, but their leaders brought them to the colours too late, and this was what Kipling and Lord Roberts tried so hard to save. And now that we have lost two million of our best and no sign yet of UNO being effective, there are members of Parliament who vote against the force that must garrison Germany, and more who have made their Government's Bill ineffective. It is that, that this tirade is aimed at, the Peace pledger spirit that survives among the yaller folk, and all the little yaller boys whose fathers died to save them, yelp delight. If their fathers waged five years of war and gave their lives, they might well give eighteen months of Peace to save what their fathers fought for. Then there is that incorrigibly British tendency when trouble is over, to return to their work and their strikes and their football pools, be- lieving once again that " it aint gonna rain no more," and there is now no Kipling to chastise them with jibe and scorpion, and none on whom his mantle has descended. 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1947 You may say with the Jew eating in the thunderstorm—" All this fuss about a little bit of ham "—but it is more than that. It is the old yaller spirit of our lesser intelligentzia reviving in our legislators—and those who have frightened them. GREAT INDIA. But while we may repeat what he has said of pacifists and shirkers, and would say more vividly were he still with us, these can be nothing to the spectacle of great India going down the drain, with 30,000 folk, men, women and children whom we are sworn to protect, slaughtered to make a politicians' holiday, six- penny little Burma to go the same road, by way of lawyers' parlours— our friends deserted, the Indian frontier of 200,000 extremely well armed men hidden by some ridiculous facade of words, the Pamir passes open once again to the Cossack. Whether it be good, or whether it be supremely and faithlessly evil, Kipling would have had strong words. What they would have been we may perhaps gather if we turn to that pitiful ballad of 1918. "Russia to the Pacifists " " God rest you Merry Gentlemen and keep you in your mirth ! Was ever kingdom turned so soon to ashes, blood and earth? .... arms and victual, hope and counsel, name and country lost !" Singing :— Let down by the foot and the head— Shovel and smooth it all ! So do we bury a Nation dead And who shall be next to fall, good sirs, With your good help to fall ? The Kipling Society in the U.S.A RE-ESTABLISHMENT. OF THE U.S.A. OFFICE OUR members in the United States have been advised of the re-establishment of an office in the U.S.A. which will be under the direction of Mr. Carl T. Naum- burg, 210 West 90th Street, New York 24, N.Y., one of our vice presidents, who has been appointed Honorary Secretary for the U.S.A. The war years have, of necessity, resulted in a very definite hiatus insofar as the activities of The Kipling Society in the United States are concerned, especially in maintaining and adding to our membership in " the States." Every effort will be made to increase our present member- ship and to persuade former members to rejoin. In setting up the United States' own organization for the Society, which it is hoped will prove a con- venience for our members, the Council hope that Mr. Naumburg may have their full support in furthering its interests in their country. In the present state of the world, we in the British section of the Society, feel that our American members will agree with us that Kipling's teachings —unselfishness, discipline and service to the community—are far from being out of place. It is, we think, a sign of the times that the interest in Kipling is less than it was. We want to increase that interest. We believe that the best method of adding to our membership will be to most earnestly request each and every member to aid Mr. Naum- burg by proposing at least one new member and submitting additional names of individuals who might become members. Mr. Naumburg will be very glad to correspond with our U.S.A. members with this thought in mind. A leaflet has been prepared out- lining the aims and purposes of the Society which he will be delighted to forward to our present membership or to their interested friends. The effort on the part of the individual members is slight in this regard and the Council will be most appreciative of all efforts on behalf of the Society. It is hoped that branches may be ultimately established and group meet- ings arranged as soon as a sufficient membership is established. The Council is certain that Mr. Naumburg will welcome all suggestions submitted to him henceforth. July, 1947 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 Rudyard Kipling the Tribal Singer By GERARD E. FOX. There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, And — every — single — one — of — them—is—right !" WHAT a fund of autobiography and self-revelation we may find in Kipling's poetry if we have ears to hear ! It will be remembered how, in the Neolithic age he was singer to his clan, and when a rival dared to criticise—" 'neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell." It seems legitimate to surmise that our singer was also a maker of pictures, and that his name was Ung. Had he been merely a singer he would scarcely have troubled to leave his " views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle." Like so many other poets and artists, he knew his work was right and theirs was wrong, but his Totem showed him he still had a lot to learn. Later we find our hero again emerging as a tribal singer and a minor poet certified by no less a critic than Mr. Traill. This poem is filled with R.K.'s wisdom and, like so much else in our poet's verse, must be committed to memory and assimilated before its full significance is appre- ciated. We referred above to Ung, the picture man. Is it fanciful to suggest that his story too is auto- biographical ? Mulvaney always spoke of " Misther Kiplung ", did he not ? Remember what some short-sighted critics said of the Jungle Books on their first appearance, and how mad it made R.K. because ordinary folk had not his powers of vision, until his father, " maker of pictures aforetime," pointed out that possibly it was just as well for him that his tribe was blind ! ORIGINALITY. It has always amused me that R.K. made no pretensions to originality. In his first volume he wrote :— " Thus the artless songs I sing do not deal with anything new or never said before," and it is unnecessary to remind my readers of 'Omer and 'is bloomin' lyre. In the heading to that striking poem The Last Department he enquires sarcastically " when You and I are dead, What will those luckless millions do ?" Again in the last verse :— " Trust me, Today's Most Indis- pensables, Five hundred men can take your place, or mine !" Truly R.K. was a realist and this is why he is able so powerfully to influence and impress those of us who wish to draw the thing as we see it for the God of things as they are. In the prelude to Departmental Ditties he writes :— " I have written the tale of our life, For a sheltered people's mirth, In jesting guise—but ye are wise, And ye know what the jest is worth !" Another example is the well known heading to Pagett, M.P.— " The toad beneath the harrow knows exactly where each tooth point goes ; The butterfly upon the road preaches contentment to that toad !" and the final verse of the story :— " And I laughed as I drove from the station but the mirth died out on my lips As I thought of the fools like Pagett who write of their Eastern trips, And the sneers of the travelled idiots who duly mis-govern the land, And I prayed to the Lord to deliver another one into my hand !" More realism ! In the same wonderful volume we get One Viceroy resigns, and we are tempted to wonder whether our President, sixty-two years after, in taking leave of his successor, told him not to dream ! To the True Romance was another piece of insight from a young man of twenty. The mention of romance, brings me to the poem somewhat mystically entitled The King, better known by its opening words " Fare-' 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1947 well Romance." I love this poem for its prophetic vision and that oft-quoted line—" Romance brought up the 9-15." The last verse speaks of " unconsidered miracle, hedged in a backward-gazing world." The same idea recurs in The Hymn of Breaking Strain to which I will refer later—" too wonder-stale to wonder at each new miracle !" "THE PALACE." How R.K. does shake us up out of our inclination to accept every- thing as a matter of course ; would he were here now to shake us up over the atomic bomb ! Indeed Romance is as alive as ever and it is not a case of our King being with us yesterday, but what in blazes is he going to do tomorrow ? ! Another great favourite of many of us is The Palace (" When I was a King and a Mason ") which shows how R.K. could fling himself into past ages with the sure vision of a genius. Perhaps these lines appeal more to the older among us, who have received the order " The end is for- bidden ; thy use is fulfilled " than it can possibly do to the young man who tumbles our quoins and our ashlars into his groundworks, and cannot understand why we should long to cut on the timber or carve on the stone a message to those who come after. I have against this poem in my volume a striking cutting from " The Times " about the unearthing of such groundworks at Canterbury recently. But I digress. I would now call attention to The Gods of the Copy-book Headings. Some folk seem to be just waking up to the fact that Kipling was not only a Tribal Singer, or even a Poet, but that he was a Seer, a Prophet, a Visionary, with all his realism. They will scarcely believe that the line, " But though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money would buy," was written, not in 1947 but in 1920. In times to come it may be discovered that :— " As surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, The Gods of the Copy-book Headings with terror and slaughter return." Natural Theology is another poem worth pondering over :— " As was the sowing so the reaping is now and ever more shall be ; Thou art delivered to thine own keeping, only Thyself hath afflicted Thee." WORTH MEMORISING. Who but a poet could have given us The Way Through the Woods or The Secret of the Machines, The Glory of the Garden or The Sons of Martha ? As to the latter, it strikes me that there must be a lot of the sons of Mary in our Civil Service. " They have cast their burden upon the Lord, And the Lord he lays it on Martha's sons." This is a poem worth memorising as indeed are so many others. Why have I left" My New Cut Ashlar all this time ? Well, maybe all our members have it by heart :— " Help me to need no aid from men, That I may help such men as need." For how many of us has that prayer been answered ? Well, he has helped me for one, and some fools sneer at R.K. as a Jingo. How maddening it all is to those who have ears to hear. I must also mention those other lines in this poem " One instant's toil to Thee denied stands all Eternity's offence," which may be compared with " If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run." By the way, I notice that in the fourth impression of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations there are ten pages, twenty columns devoted to our poet, of which only two columns are from the prose. The Land refers, as we know, to R.K.'s estate at Burwash. Did Kipling really mean it when he asserted that although he held the title-deeds guaranteeing all sorts of powers and profits to his Executors and heirs, these were in fact neither his nor theirs, but that " whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land." Now was this communism or poetic licence or exuberance of spirits ? "THE QUEEN'S MEN." We must not forget The Queen's Men though I must resist the temptation to quote. This whole lovely poem is, I believe, engraved on more than one Regimental tablet to the memory of the fallen in two July, 1947 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 wars. Paper shortage forbids more than a passing reference to The Smoke Upon, Your Altar Dies, or to those studies in fatalism, By the Hoof of the Wild Goat Up-tossed, A Rose In Tatters on the Garden Path and Seven Watchmen Sitting in a Tower. To how many of us has not R.K. brought help in The Comforters—" I never worried you at all—For God's sake GO AWAY !" Finally we come to the Hymn of Breaking Strain. This poem will be found, for some inexplicable reason, somewhere near the middle of the " Definitive " edition. I suggest it should come at the end of any future edition because it is the last poem R.K. published, and some three months later he was dead. He must have been dying when he wrote it. I remember opening my copy of the " Engineer " one day and finding there, to my surprise, this new Kipling poem. I quote the last verse :— " Oh veiled and secret Power whose paths we seek in vain, Be with us in our hour of over- throw and pain ; That we—by which sure token we know Thy ways are true— In spite of being broken, because of being broken, May rise and build anew. Stand up and build anew ! " M', Mac or Mc Andrew ? THE following note reaches us from Mr. T. E. Elwell, of Regent House, Ramsey, Isle of Man :— " On pp. 10-11 of the April Journal, Mr. W. G. B. Maitland says that in the Definitive Edition " the original ' M'Andrews ' is changed to ' Mc Andrews.' " But many members have not seen the original name, which was first given to the world as " Mc Andrews " in Scribner's Magazine for Dec. 1894, where the poem was well illustrated by Howard Pyle. It was also " McAndrews " in the first American Edition, in the Tauch- nitz edition it was " M'Andrews " and I have somewhere seen " Mac Andrews," but cannot trace it. But the name was " Mac " in sound, however it appeared to sight. A more interesting point is that in the text of the poem in the Def. Edn., "Andrews" has become "An- drew." This was probably intended from the first, the mistake having arisen through the practice of placing the apostrophe behind a single " s " for possessive case. In " Rules for Compositors and Readers " Oxford University Press, the use of a double " s " with the apostrophe between in such names as " Charles's," " Thomas's," and " Jones's " is ad- vocated. Had the title been printed " The Hymn of Mc Andrew " no sibilant, double or single, would have led readers astray. The final revision by Kipling makes it appear that the original name to the creator of the engineer had but six letters, excluding the prefix." Bateman's Burwash ARRANGEMENTS FOR VISITORS KIPLING'S old house at Bate- man's is open to visitors on Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sun- days and Bank Holidays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. during the months of May to September both inclusive. The same arrangements apply from October to April except that the hours of admission are from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The price of admission is 1/- which includes a visit to Mr. Kipling's Study and certain other rooms, after which, the visitors are free to wander as long as they will in the garden. 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1947 Some Lesser-Known Aspects of Kipling in the East By Lt. Col. J. K. STANFORD, O.B.E., M.C, (I.C.S. Retired). MY qualifications for reading this paper to you are almost negli- gible. I served in the Indian Civil for eighteen years between the wars, mainly in Burma. Looking back on my service, I cannot help thinking it remarkable how Kipling, with a comparatively local know- ledge of N.W. and Central India, should have again and again in his stories interpreted to me and opened my eyes to what went on around me continually in Burma. I found that I could read him a score of times with the certainty of finding some- thing new and superbly accurate, thanks to his vividness, his grasp of detail and his insight. One found oneself constantly say- ing, when it was a fashion in England and India to deride him, " Here is something not that Kipling might have written of, but which he actually did write of, forty years ago." AT ROTTINGDEAN. My personal acquaintance with him was confined to a glimpse of him walking up the steep down at Rotting- dean in 1901. He has set down imperishably in Something of Myself what those of us who knew Sussex in those days must feel now : " Today from Rottingdean to Newhaven is almost fully developed suburb, of great horror." I am sure that he, with his hatred of the Germans, so soon to be justified, would have chuckled to know that in 1911 I found in Germany a yellow- back translation of Stalky & Co., and used it as a ' crib ' to learn that uncouth language. My subject is mainly what Kipling wrote about Burma and the I.C.S. I think I knew both fairly well for a longish period, and if Kipling was, as critics have hinted, always ' writing with his tongue in his check,' I ought to have detected it. There are astonishingly few identifiable errors in what he wrote about Burma, though Burma has not always been treated fairly by her imaginative writers. They range from one—a most distinguished one—Edward Thompson, whose Burmese Silver con- tained some astounding geographical errors about the Upper Chindwin, down to a magazine story-writer of the 1920's whose hero, in his house- boat at Mandalay, looked wistfully at the lights of Rangoon gleaming 380 miles away ! With Kipling one might have expected some errors, for his stay in Burma was only of a few days duration. From Sea to Sea makes it clear that he stopped long enough in Rangoon to visit the Shwe Dagon, the Victoria Lakes and the Pegu Club, and then called in at Moulmein on his way to Penang. But brief though his visit was, he certainly made the most of it. " MANDALAY." He wrote three poems and three stories about Burma and referred to her in one or two more. One could have wished for more about one of the most colourful provinces of India, and his quotation from Tennyson in From Sea to Sea suggests he realized how brightly its ' un- travelled world ' gleamed through the arch of his experience. He uses one unforgettable phrase, " the River of the Lost Footsteps," for the Irrawaddy, in his day the great high- way of Burma, up which have gone since, a staggering number of English- men never to return. That noble and picturesque river, navigable for over 800 miles, well deserves the fame which Mandalay gave it. One acute observation occurs in his description of the Shwe Dagon. No other writer that I know has remarked it. He describes ascending the great stair to the pagoda and ' wishing to understand ' how such a pleasant people ' could produce the dacoit of the newspaper.' He then sees the face of a man descending the stair, ' the chin, jowl, lips and neck July, 1947 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 1l modelled faithfully on the lines of the worst of the Roman Empresses . . . Above this gross perfection of form came the Mongoloid nose, narrow fore- head and flaring pigs' eyes. He decided that this was ' the proper dacoit type ' who could ' crucify on occasion,' and the crime statistics of Burma both before and since that day show clearly that the type is far from uncommon. It is Mandalay which has, of course, excited the critics for years by its palpable inaccuracies. Our Journal shows that Kipling once confessed to a Chinese that he must be " allowed some poetic licence," but this is hardly the full explanation. The inaccuracies are well-known : there are no flying-fish in the Irrawaddy ; no pagoda in Moulmein looks eastwards to the sea ; there is nowhere in Burma where China is just across the Bay ; Burmese girls do not wear caps or have a name like " Supi-yaw-lat " (which is a royal title ); Moulmein is not on the ordinary road from India to Mandalay ; Buddhist idols are not made of mud ; Burmese women would hardly sing : " Kala- lo-lo," (I love a foreigner), kala being a derogatory term for foreigners and usually applied to Indians. NOSTALGIC MEMORIES. With all their mistakes these lines had magic and perhaps it is simplest to suppose that they were meant to convey the muddled nostalgic memories of a private soldier in the Third Burmese war, who was think- ing of his journey across the Bay of Bengal where he would see flying fish and the dawn rising from the direction of China. He may well, too, as in later wars, have had to take a rather round-about route by way of Moulmein. I possess two tenth-century idols made of laterite soil excavated in Prome, but the " green cap " and the girl's name are certainly mistakes. Other equally unforgettable lines in our poetry do not always bear too critical a scrutiny, from Chesterton on the ' rolling English drunkard ' to Rupert Brooke on the bathers of Grant- chester. Kipling's three stories all deal with the early days after the Annex- ation of Upper Burma, when we were trying to pacify a most difficult country. The Taking of Lungtungpen is his version of an incident which, according to our Journal befell a company of the Hampshire Regi- ment. One or two phrases make it clear that he had the story from an eyewitness, e.g., the remark that without a dah and a Snider a dacoit is " a peaceful cultivator and felony for to shoot "—a thing many district officers have since learnt to their cost in the rebellion and at other times. The second is the detail of the women laughing when the troops paraded naked after the assault. In Burma very angry people sometimes " rend their garments," as the Bible says; that is, they stamp and rave naked in front of other people, a phenomenon which excites unholy mirth in the rest of the village. Georgie Porgie deals with a civil servant who lived with a Burmese girl, a custom which became so common after the Annexation that it led to a famous minute by Sir Frederick Fryer. It is a sad little story, told with Kipling's typical insight, of the way Upper Burma was brought under control by men who " could not pass examinations " and were too " pronounced in their ideas " for bureaucracy, many of whom became famous in their time. " Georgie Porgie " derived his name from the words of a Burmese song " Puff, puff, puff, great steamboat." I never met anyone who knew that refrain but it probably had the words " thimbawgyi bawgyi" in it.† Kipling's notable tribute to the thrift and affection of Burmese house- keepers you will also find stressed in the Indian tale Without Benefit of Clergy. " A CONFERENCE OF THE POWERS" A Conference of the Powers is a story cf dacoit-hunting on the Hiding datalone, probably the Hlaingdet river east of Meiktila on the edge of the Shan States. (Major S. F. Hop- wood, M.C, in discussion after the paper, stated that this was a place where the Queen's Bays fought an action in the Third Burmese War). It is a slangy first-hand account of † " On the great steamer." 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1947 the petty incongruities which make up active service, contrasted with the life of a stay-at-home novelist, and it contains an apt two-line des- cription of the old Burmese pony- saddlery. It is also one of the few occasions where Kipling runs down an officer (in this case a civil officer) for cowardice and inefficiency. There are many other memorable touches in From Sea to Sea of the spirit of Burma (" The Lord of the Earth is Idleness, thick slab idleness with a little religion mixed into it ") an unforgettable description of the view from a pagoda in Moulmein, and of the Salween in its estuary as " a river which ought to flow through South America." In One Viceroy Resigns Kipling makes Lord Dufferin stress three or four times the size and riches of Burma, " a country twice the size of France,"' one, alas, which we are now about to abandon, it seems, for ever. Next to Mandalay comes the well- known Ballad of Boh Dah Thone. My main criticism of it is in its geography as " the princely pest of the Chindwin " apparently ranged from there to the Salween, in those days an even more superhuman under- taking than it would be now. The names, Da Thone, Kuttamow, Malun, Tsalir, Kathun, are all made up to suit the rhyme, as Masefield did in Reynard the Fox, and we need not take them too seriously, though Alalone is probably Alon, then a district headquarters on the Chindwin. Here again there are unforgettable touches, which must particularly appeal to all who have hunted Burmese, or Japanese, a quarry elusive as trout, in the jungle, But ever a blight on their labours lay And ever their quarry would vanish away. And the Bengali babu—non-mili- tant and home-loving— Who thought of his wife and his high school son, He thought but abandoned the thought of a gun. The climax of that poem, (hinted at even more grimly in The Grave of a Hundred Head), when the Boh's head is sent VPP to Simoorie and opened at the breakfast-table, may be thought by some extravagant. But an almost exactly similar incident occurred after a police patrol had shot up some Siamese dacoits in Thaton, to a D.S.P.'s wife of my acquaintance in 1925, when first six heads, and, an hour later, twelve hands were brought in for identifi- cation by eager sepoys. This was one of the many occasions when I found myself appreciating some incident much more because of what Kipling had written, and wishing he could have told the tale himself. (To be continued) Victoria, B.C., Canada WE have received from the Hon. Secretary and Treasurer of the Victoria Branch, (Mrs. Maud Barclay), reports of meetings held during the current season, and an account of the Annual Dinner held by the Branch in honour of the memory of Rudyard Kipling. The chief guest at that function was Mrs. Guy Goddard, who read a paper entitled Rudyard Kipling the Uni- versal—Our Fellow-man, which we hope to reproduce in an early number of this Journal. The members of the Victoria Branch are to be congratulated on their activities. Members living overseas are asked to note that, owing to currency difficulties the Society cannot accept cheques or bills on overseas Banks (unless payable at a Branch in the United Kingdom). Ordinary currency notes, however, can be easily negotiated in London. July, 1947 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 The Ephemeral, the Passing and the Recondite IN THE WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING By VICTOR BONNEY, F.R.C.S. (The second part of an address to Members of the Kipling Society in London. The first part appeared in the April, 1947 issue of the " Kipling Journal"—No. 81). PASSING THINGS H.M.S. " Pedantie " spoken of in "Their Lawful Occasions " con- notes a battleship of a class launched in 1898. Their tonnage was 15000 and their main armament four 12-inch guns. They were the largest battleships of their time, but the tonnage of to-day's big battle- ships is three times greater. The ship Moorshed commanded was an obsolete destroyer, relegated to the status of a 1st class torpedo boat. Her displacement was probably not more than 170 tons, and most likely she was built by Thornycroft at Chiswick. I remember the yard well, and once made a trip in one of these boats when she was doing her steam trials. The space below deck, which was very small, was crammed with jingling, rattling and roaring machin- ery. To attain top speed these early destroyers used what was called " forced-draught " and to obtain it the manholes into the stokehold were fastened down, so that if the boiler- room had been hit in an action there was no escape for those inside it. This explains the line in The Des- troyers, " and God for all ! Shut down." The modern destroyer (like our own " Kipling," lost in the war) has ten times the displacement of Moorshed's boat. PROPHECIES. But the most remarkable reference in this story concerns the " Cryptic " and " Devolution ", for Kipling was exactly describing the armoured cruisers Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue, launched in 1898. You remember Moorshed claimed to have torpedoed them. They were torpedoed—all three of them, one after the other, in the North Sea on Sept. 22nd, 1914. " I remembered this was only play and caught myself wondering with what keener agony comes the real defeat." Prophetic ! alas ! And a propos of prophecies let me give you another. In the " Captive," that most lovable American, Zigler, speaking of the gun he had invented, says : " But I'll build my next Zigler fifteen hundred pounds heavier ; might work in a gasoline motor under the axles. I must think that up." That was written in 1903 but we had to wait till the war just ended before the mechanically-propelled gun made its appearance. THE BOER WAR. Take now " The Comprehension of Private Copper." How much do you think the reader of fifty years hence will know of the first Boer War (Majuba) ; the bitter contempt in which the Boer held the English- man after it ; or the unhappy lot of loyalists to England resident in the Transvaal and abandoned there ? Will they know that the leader of His Majesty's Opposition, Campbell Bannerman, applied the words, " methods of barbarism " to the necessary and humanely-run camps in which we had to segregate persons who over and over again, had broken the oath of neutrality ; and that our deficiency in cordite ammunition was due to him ? If this gentleman's spirit is still cognizant of this world, I wonder what he says about Belsen ? He must be hard put to it to find stronger words than those he used to denounce the British army. SOCIAL CONDITIONS. Turn now to The Mary Gloster : " I've seen your carriages blocking the half o' the Cromwell Road." When I was a boy the large houses there were all occupied by rich people, 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1947 and walking along it of a fine summer evening, you saw the runner-carpet stretching from front-door to kerb ; the carriage and pair ; the waiting footman ; mamma, tremendous with her bustle, train, diamonds and fan ; her two daughters, similarly attired, and looking very charming, and papa with an Inverness cape, gardenia and opera-hat bringing up the rear ! Compare this with the Cromwell Road of to-day.—It gives me the feeling of walking through a cemetery ! In a few years more it will, I expect, be lined with communal flats ! The herd existence to which we seem to be tending looms dreary and monotonous to those of us who have known more spacious times. Doubtless there will be more certainty in the future ; but /excepting for politicians) no big prizes to strive for and very little privacy. The individualistic world imagined in " As Easy as A.B.C." as the ideal of civilization, seems further off than ever. The point of view and the diction of the Mulvaney tales and Barrack- room Ballads will not be understand- able to future readers, unless they know from what class Kipling's soldiers were recruited : its educational level, and its manner of speech Of all his writings the charge of vulgarity has most often been levelled against these stories and poems. But Kipling, like all great imaginative writers, had the power of sinking his own personality in those of the characters he depicted, and we who were grown up when these stories and poems were written can vouch for the truth of his word-pictures : but we are a rapidly diminishing band. COUNTRY LIFE. He described country life with great sympathy, understanding and zest, and even the impact of modern ideas will take a long time to alter essentially the character of those who work on the land, but the old county class of gentry with its pride, gracious kindliness and sense of duty is going to become extinct. What then will the future make out of An Habitation Enforced, in which these traits are so delightfully drawn ? MOTOR CARS. I have only time to cite you one more instance of passing things : " But now poor John sleeps very sound, And neither hears nor smells the fuss Of the young squire's nine hundred pound Et—mors communis omnibus." I expect that some of us have already forgotten that the Mors car was a popular French make before the 1914.-18 war. Certainly no one in the future will know it, and this very clever double entendre will pass unnoticed. THE RECONDITE And now for the recondite. You can read through most of the great imaginative prose writings from Field- ing to the present day, and rarely have need to ask : What is the meaning of that ?—and the same is true of most of the great poetry, dictional difficulties excepted. But with Kipling it is different, for his field of thought and interest was co-extensive with mankind in relation to Work and Nature, and he was the first writer to perceive and voice the romance and glory in that relationship. From his view point he " saw naught common on Thy Earth ;" not even the local train : " . . . . and all unseen. Romance brought up the nine- fifteen." Pitted against such catholicity, it is no wonder that the ordinary reader of ordinary education sometimes finds himself puzzled. His reaction may be that what he doesn't understand can't be of much worth or interest ; or he may humbly acknowledge his deficiency and seek to rectify it. It is to the latter class of reader that the work of the Kipling Society has been so helpful. (To be continued) July, 1947 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 Our Future BY T. C. ANGUS, D.F.C., D.Sc, A.M.I.E.E. AT two of our meetings last year the view was expressed that the Kipling Society may be approaching its end, and one of the reasons advanced to support this view was, that Rudyard Kipling's era is now so far removed from our own, that his writings have no interest for the present generation. This is very difficult to believe, in view of the return to popularity at the present time of some much earlier writers. Bloomsbury book-sellers tell me that it is now most difficult to obtain books by Jane Austen, or Anthony Trollope, so great is the demand for these authors. The B.B.C. seems to hold the same view, since for over a year now, we have been given a delightful series of readings from Trollope. If Kipling's light is temporarily eclipsed (and surely any such eclipse is only partial), may not the cause be exactly the reverse : Kipling's era is so close to our own that the great mass of his disregarded warn- ings still casts a shadow ? It may be due to either some more obscure reaction, or to the after-effect of a systematic campaign that Kipling's work is still held at a discount in certain quarters. That this last may not be an unreasonable view is suggested by Kipling's own rather impish ad- mission : " —as soon as the bloom had faded off my work, my normal output seemed to have the gift of arriding per se the very people I most disliked." In conversing with University men, and I am glad to say at other times there now and then comes into my mind a line of Kipling's verse fitting the occasion so perfectly that it has to come out ; but no sooner is the author mentioned than in most instances an immediate and unmistak- able revulsion is produced, entirely spoiling any satisfaction which either party to the conversation might have enjoyed. This " R. K. conditioned reflex," as one may call it, seems to be as. unfailing (and just as illogical) as those which Pavlov succeeded in setting up in his experimental dogs. I have found that there is but one way to avoid stimulating this reflex mechanism and, incredible as it may . seem, it works ! When quoting Kip- ling to an intellectual type, attribute the quotation to some more acceptable author ; such as .... I then make a mental apology to the Shade, and hope to be forgiven. But at less lofty levels there is some evidence that Kipling's doctrine is much to the fore just now. Not long before the war, I was present at a lecture to doctors and engineers who were in training to take up work in industry. The lecturer was an officer high up in the Factory Depart- ment of the Home Office (as it was at that time), and he began by showing on the screen these lines from " The Secret of the Machines "; " But remember, please, the Law by which we live, We are not built to comprehend a lie, We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die !" During the last few weeks I, as a very casual reader of the daily Press, have come across three separate Kipling quotations in the news column and letters. At the request of a reader, the " Daily Mail " printed two stanzas of " The Reeds of Runny- mede." In to-day's paper Mr. Walter Elliott, M.P., is quoted as having spoken of " .... The old-fashioned virtues, what Kipling called the " Gods of the Copy-book Headings "— work, thrift and good will. The same most appropriate poem is again quoted at some length in a privately circulated news bulletin this month. The last seven years have not been a good time to cultivate our favourite authors or to do anything else of a very agreeable nature—but need the Kipling Society be despondent as 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1947 to the future ? Perhaps an account of my own good fortune in joining the Kipling Society may not be without interest at this time. From my earliest days Kipling's works had given me so much delight and, I like to believe, no little inspiration, that no sooner did I see in the daily Press that there was a Kipling Society which held functions in London, that I lost no time in finding Mr. Brooking. Tribute to Rudyard Kipling By KYRLE SYMONS, St. Michael's School, Victoria, B.C., Canada, who proposed the Toast to the memory of Rudyard Kipling at the Annual Dinner of the Victoria Branch of the Society HIS range is as wide as the Seven Seas. He changes his metre with perfect ease. There isn't a subject one can find That is not well known to his Master mind. His moods are as varied as you can tell. He can show you Heaven, and paint you Hell. " Department Ditties," he early wrote Have a distinctly cynical note. You'll find it clear if you look, I think, In his " Elevation in Indian Ink," He can be bitter as bitter can be, See the tale of " Uriah " or " Pagett, M.P." Again he's dramatic and at his best In that wonderful " Ballad of East and West." You'll see him grim—in prose and verse— If " Fultah Fisher " you'll just re- hearse. To the other extreme we'll pass along He's rollicking in the " Banjo Song " Reverend I would say is the word For " Mulholland's Contract," of which you've heard. I think there's a deep religious note In many a poem which he wrote. Through every emotion, grave and gay, His genius shines in a wonderful way. He can make you laugh, he can make you weep, Raise you up to the skies, take you down to the deep. And now, lest this theme should begin to pall, Let us look at his knowledge trans- cending all. The Army he knows as a gambler his cards, From the " Soldiers Three " to the " Irish Guards." The Navy he paints with his artist's pen From the ships of war to the merchant- men. He knows machines from A to Z In ships, in cars, in planes overhead. He can give you pictures of famous men, Kitchener, Roberts, Rhodes—then The humble bhisti called Gunga Din Or Private Mulvaney, as smart as a pin. With equal skill he'll sketch for you Every beast you can see at the Zoo: In their native wilds—snakes—tigers —bears, Elephants, jackals, wolves in their lairs. Read your two Jungle books, life- like they seem, But, I'm sure, in his heart the dog reigns supreme. Now turn we to history—there he's at home With the Pict, with the Dane, with the Legions of Rome. Monk's Kings, good and bad, and our great Queen Eliza. July, 1947 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 He has even a poem about the late Kaiser ! (And here's an interruption which I'm sure that you will pardon— Have you read a thing more lovely than " The Glory of the Garden " ?) And also in geography he's equally at ease, He can paint you vivid pictures of all the Seven Seas. He has songs for schools and school boys that you can read about, And it wouldn't hurt to follow his " Instructions to a Scout." He can tell you tales of Fairies, and he must have had the luck To have held some conversations with that most illusive " Puck." He has rhymes for every game of note A Christmas carol too, he wrote. Read " Eddi's Service "—it's a gem That brings one close to Bethlehem. " Christmas in India " strikes a note That brings one's heart into one's throat. Freemasons' Lodges he knows well, Of bees the " Mother Hive " will tell, Of " Fuzzies " in the Egyptian war, Of Africa and Brother Boer. He'll translate a Latin Ode, Tell you how slaves in galleys rowed. How Nursing Sisters in the war Gave comfort and discomfort bore. A journalist in early days He knows the Press and all its ways. In fact, like old Professor Jowett, Whatever there is he's sure to know it. I'm certain you have had enough Of listening to such doggerel stuff But now, I hope, perhaps you'll see What Rudyard Kipling means to me. The whole wide world is in his reach His verses noble lessons teach, Instruct, delight, amuse, enthrall. Yet, in his scope embracing all His heart, I feel, is ever turning With loyal love and spirit burning To England, north, south, east and west, The land he knew and loved the best. So, without any more delay, I bid you stand, and toast R. K. Presentation of Pictures MR. FREDERICK HASLER'S GIFT. MR. Frederick Hasler, of New York City, has made the Society a most generous and valuable present of a series of original paintings by Heath Robinson, of illustrations to Kipling's The Song of the Cities. These pictures were on show at the Society's Annual Conference this year, when members had the oppor- tunity of seeing them, and of appreci- ating this delightful gift, for which we all owe Mr. Hasler our best thanks. IMPRIMATUR A NEW LITERARY QUARTERLY FOR BIBLIOPHILES SUBSCRIPTION - FOUR ISSUES - TEN SHILLINGS Remit by International Money Order to — LLOYD EMERSON SIBERELL, P.O. Box 51, EVANSTON STATION, CINCINNATI, 7, OHIO. U.S.A. W. H. Houldershaw, Ltd., Printers, 49-55, London Road, Southend-on-Sea.