CONTENTS PAGE Notes—J. P. Collins ... ... ... ... ... ... 1 Rudyard Kipling—Major-General Ian Hay Beith, C.B.E., M.C......................... 3 In Memoriam, Mrs. Alice Macdonald Fleming—Florence Macdonald, M.B.E................... 7 "Trix"—Hilton Brown ... ... ... ... ... ... 9 Boyhood Days Recalled—the late Nelson Doubleday 10 Could it be Bateman's? ... ... ... ... ... ... 11 Kipling and France—Part IV—Basil M. Bazley ... 13 Col. C. H. Milburn—Dr. Alfred Cox ... ... ... 15 Letter Bag ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 16 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. Journals : Extra copies for members only, 1/- 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 98, Gower Street London, W.C.l. — Tel.: Euston 7117 — THE KIPLING JOURNAL published quarterly by THE KIPLING SOCIETY Vol. XVI. No. 89 April, 1949 Notes IAN HAY'S LECTURE. THERE were many points for mutual congratulation about the annual autumn meeting of the Society, as Miss Macdonald suggests in a graceful note to the Editor. There was a fifty-fifty balance between the sexes ; the talk was preceded (or sampled) by a most delectable tea; and our President, Field-Marshal Lord Wavell, made everybody feel at home. Also the surroundings might well be described in Tennysonian vein as breathing the calm of Vere de Vere, for it was in the large drawing-room of that Kensingtonian hotel where one recalls pleasant celebrations years ago. Speaking easily, as he did, from the advantage of a sheaf of loose notes, Major-General Ian Hay Beith took us roving through a storied Avalon, not merely of the poet's schooldays and Westward Ho, but through all the chief passages and triumphs of his career. Personally, I relished his furtive touches of disagreement in matters of politics, and still more, the crumbs we were spared of intimacies gathered in a certain private post-war club which the lecturer had shared with the poet behind the hush-hush of velvet cur- tains and world strategy. But where he had to touch on the back-draught of policy, especially the die-hard sort of years ago, I bethought me of the characteristic way in which R. K. championed his old friends, Jameson and Rhodes, in the days of slump and vilification. (On a later page, the first part of the lecture is reproduced, and the con- cluding part will appear in the next number of the Journal). " RUD " AND SISTER TRIX. The hand of the reaper is officiously busy in the winter season, and hand- some obituary notices of the sort that appear in this issue are no more consolation than the ceremonial splen- dours and " noble ossuaries " of old sententious Sir Thomas Browne. But they serve to awaken memories from the pages of this Journal, where names like Fleming and Milburn are solid guarantee for good Kiplingiana. In the case of that vivacious and dainty soul, Mrs Alice Fleming (Kipling's sister, Trix) it is no slight tribute to R. K. that his fame has so far eclipsed her and all those around him. We members of the Society in London must always remember her delightful freshets of recollection, de- livered with half-surprise and pleasure at her own temerity, and her ventur- ing on further escapades of retrospec- tion with the same half-titter over again. I said to her once, after one of our meetings, that she seemed to me born for something better than books and spooks; and then with an admonitory finger, she remarked that one genius in the family was surely enough. I told her without insincerity how much pleasure (and very much more promise) I had derived from her half-forgotten novel, " A Pinchbeck Goddess," especially the girlish con- fidences of the early chapters. Besides, there are the glimpses of landscape beauty and glory like Madeline's vision across the desert by night, as seen from the moonlit deck of a liner in the Suez Canal, during the intervals of a passengers' dance. One sentence alone is worth quoting:—- " A string of camels, roped nose to tail, festooned like a decorative frieze against the pale sky; the tall, soft-footed creatures looped along with the leisurely, reluctant shuffle that has never willingly quickened 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1949 since the slow descent from Mount Ararat." Nor need we indulge any suspicions of a fraternal touch in this haunting picture. We have only to realise that she, too, was transparently the child of a master-artist, craftsman, and ob- server, John Lockwood Kipling. A JUST-SO LEGEND. By the way, there is an interesting attribution with Kipling interest in the news obituaries of Mr Nelson Double- day, chairman of the U.S. publishing firm with whom he long had such extremely friendly dealings. The de- ceased, as a few enthusiasts may know, printed a foreword to a boxed illustrated edition of the Jungle Books last August, in which he told how, as a child, he grew interested in a story in St. Nicholas explaining how the whale got his tiny throat. Aware that his father knew the author, he asked if Mr. Kipling might be induced to write more stories in this vein, to put into a book. Father recom- mended young Hopeful to write him- self, and couched in careful and. approved schoolboy language, the letter went. But even at that early stage, there was the demon of business at work, and young Doubleday gained an easy promise that if the idea came to anything, he should have " a penny (a cent.) for every copy sold." As the Just So stories since have sold over half a million copies in the U.S.A. alone, this made a modest addition to that youngster's income for life. IN NEW ENGLAND. Nelson Doubleday was not only proud of this early evidence of a sound life interest in the firm's con- cerns, but for many a year he arranged a succession of first-class fishing and hunting parties in New England, whenever R.K. happened to be in the western world. Moreover, he listened to the poet reading original verses which, to his regret, were never to see the light; and when Kipling lay ill in New York in 1899, it was Mr. Doubleday's pride and pleasure to take him invalid soup and other creature consolations at a useful time. It was from Oyster Bay, that pleasant water- side resort on the " inside " shore of Long Island, that these death-notices were dispatched, and it was there that Nelson Doubleday had concentrated so many branch enterprises which in 1947 brought the firm's total pro- duction of publications to over thirty millions. After which, it is good to draw one's breath, and thank the friends who have sent this budget of interesting reprint, including Mr. Paul Vernon a well-known American reader, and our good founder, Mr J. H. C. Brooking. R. K. AMERICANA. Other Kiplingiana that surge into attention include Sir Stephen Allen's scholarly lecture around that favourite yarn, " The Church That Was at Antioch " (to appear in the Journal later), and one that must have given the profoundest satisfaction to the members of the Auckland Branch (N.Z.). Here one may add a word of acknowledgment to the " New York Times Book Review," for print- ing a casual reminder of some of the unnoted workers who go to make up the populations of bailiwicks and continents alike, all the world over. It reprints a few lines of dialogue and descriptive from the Letters of Travel, and then leaves these non- descripts to relapse into oblivion, " silent, indirect of speech, and im- penetrable." The cutting comes from our esteemed friend Mr. Carl Naumburg, the Society's Secretary for the U.S.A. Another western item contributed by our member Captain Brock, (H.M.S. Phoenicia, stationed at Malta) con- sists of an interesting excerpt from the Vancouver Daily Province. In it an excellent and welcome photo is re- produced showing Kipling visiting Vancouver about 1889 for the first time. It shows him slim, graceful, shy, and deferential. He stands smiling, with his bowler hat raised in a gloved hand, and his moustache still has an elegant curl which was to disappear in his maturity. He stands alongside his friend, tall and stately, the city solicitor, the late A. St. G. Hamersley, and it would be a pity to encroach on the refreshing reminiscences the article contains,—one which we hope to republish later. J. P. Collins. April, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 Rudyard Kipling By MAJOR-GENERAL TAN HAY BEITH, C.B.E., M.C. [The first part of an address to Mem- bers of the Kipling Society in London.'] YOU will not expect me this evening to attempt the impos- sible ; in other words, to give you a complete picture of Rudyard Kipling—of the man himself, of his work, or of his exact place in Litera- ture—within the time at our disposal. All I can do will be to give you some sort of sketchy outline of his career, of his impact upon his own generation, and of his actual personal- ity as an individual. I knew him fairly intimately, I may say, during the last twenty years of his life. Rudyard Kipling was born in Bom- bay on December 30th, 1865. I came into this world (though this is not of the slightest interest to any- one but myself) about ten years later ; which means that I was a boy at school when he began to achieve world-wide fame in his early twenties ; and from that time, as I say, in com- pany with thousands of my generation, I was his ardent and insatiable fol- lower and disciple. THE VICTORIAN ERA I do not quite know how Kipling stands today in general estimation— we have set up so many new and strange gods of late—and that is why I should be greatly interested to know how the present generation feel about him ; and I hope before this even- ing is out that I shall. I am quite aware that his reputation has passed through more than one period of eclipse. But in those far-off days he held us all in the hollow of his hand. He came upon us like a fresh gale out of the ocean, and blew away the last vestiges of the prim, formal, highly chaperoned habit of mind and point of view of the Victorian era. Speaking of the Victorian era, consider the moment at which Kipling broke upon the world. As a people we were just becoming conscious of the fact that we were responsible for the good government and well-being of something like one fifth of the world's population—in other words, that we had become the controllers, for good or ill, of an Empire—an Empire which, to quote a cynical remark of the time, appeared to have been acquired in a fit of absence of mind, and to have been governed ever since by a policy of salutary neglect. That comment contained a lot of truth. Study the early history of the British Empire without bias one way or the other, and you will find that never once has a British Govern- ment attempted to acquire new ter- ritories by a policy of deliberate aggression or planned conquest. Our Dominions, the Indian Empire it- self, were established in the first instance by our merchant venturers, our roving seamen, our young men seeking escape from an island that had grown too small to hold them and their enterprise. They got no encouragement from the authorities at home : as a rule these recoiled in horror from the idea of incurring external responsibilities of any kind. It has always been so. When the East India Company set up a trading station in India in 1600, Queen Eliza- beth only granted them a charter upon the distinct understanding that if they got into trouble they could expect no sort of help from her. And so on down the centuries. Indeed it was only when, with the passage of time, these colonies and settle- ments grew too important, too un- wieldy, for private control, that the British Government reached out a reluctant hand and took over offi- cially. IMPERIAL AWAKENING And now all these scattered ele- ments seemed suddenly to have coal- esced into an Empire. One of the first statesmen to draw our attention to the fact was Joseph Chamberlain, who, at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, instead of accepting the office of Chancellor of the Ex- chequer in Lord Salisbury's new Government, preferred to go to the Colonial Office, then a very minor 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1949 appointment. Note that we called our greatest Dominions Colonies in those days. This Imperial awakening was stim- ulated, furthermore, by the emergence of Queen Victoria herself from years of self-imposed, widowed, solitude and aloofness. She suddenly revealed herself to her people, at the time of her first Jubilee, no longer as the Widow of Windsor, but as a Queen Empress, and the whole country became, as it were, Empire-conscious. And then, as so often happens, the occasion produced its herald and trumpeter in the person of a flaming genius of twenty-one called Rudyard Kipling. For ten years his influence and prestige grew steadily, until he reached his zenith about the time of the Diamond Jubilee in 1897. So great was that prestige, and so im- pregnable his position, that when in due course the British people began to exhibit unmistakable signs of arrogant and boastful pride in their Empire—swelled head, in fact—he did not hesitate to administer to them, though indirectly, a solemn warning and a stinging rebuke in one. This was in his tremendous poem ' Reces- sional ', published right on top of the pageantry and exultation of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. I shall quote from it in a moment; never shall I forget its effect at the time. R.K.—THE MAN Now, before we consider Kipling's actual work, whether in prose or verse, let us for a moment consider the man himself, and the equipment which he brought to his astonishing achievement. First, Heredity. Here he was doubly fortunate. He came of our soundest stock. His father, Lockwood Kip- ling, was the son of a humble and devout Wesleyan preacher from North Yorkshire, the Rev. Joseph Kipling ; his mother was one of the five lovely and highly accomplished daughters of another Wesleyan Methodist preach- er, the Rev. George MacDonald, a Scotsman this time. Of these sisters, one married Lockwood Kipling ; an- other married Sir Edward Poynter, afterwards President of the Royal Academy ; another married Sir Ed- ward Burne-Jones, the leader of the pre-Raphaelites, and another became the mother of Stanley Baldwin, him- self destined to be Prime Minister of England. From that happily blended an- cestry Rudyard Kipling derived on the one hand his amazing creative and artistic genius—it has been said of him that his was the richest and most inventive literary imagination since Shakespeare-—and on the other a strong strain of Puritanism, as his constant employment in all his writ- ings of the language of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, indi- cates. Consider the wording of one stanza of ' Recessional ' : " The tumult and the shouting dies, The Captains and the Kings depart ; Remains Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart, Lord God of Hosts be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget !" The whole thing might have come straight out of the Psalms of David. After Heredity, Environment. Well, he had a full and variegated assignment of that. His childhood was unhappy, for he was sent home from India at a tender age, as all Anglo-Indian children must be—in fact he could speak Hindustani at that time more easily than English—while his parents remained in India. He found him- self put under the care of a woman in Southsea, who must have been a confirmed sadist. She beat him, bul- lied him, and almost broke his spirit. He became an habitual liar, he tells us, just to avoid a beating. You can read about that child's sufferings in the early part of his own auto- biography, and also in a grim little story called Baa, Baa, Black Sheep. AT WESTWARD HO Later he found himself a pupil in the United Services College at Westward Ho, immortalised in the pages of Stalky and Co. We should note here the beginnings of Kipling's almost invariable habit of founding his fiction on fact, sometimes of course in a heavily embroidered form. For instance, we know from the evidence of their contemporaries, that Stalky and Co. were not nearly such idle rapscallions as Kipling made them out to be. Indeed Kipling himself edited the School magazine and won the first prize for literature. April, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 But that is a common practice among all novelists who put real people, including themselves, into their books —as most of us do. Dickens did it all the time : the portrait of Mr. Micawber in " David Copperfield " was taken from his own father. At the age of seventeen Kipling left school and found himself back in India, where he lived for seven years, and for seven years only. At the end of that time, at the age of twenty-four, he left India, and never lived there again. That is a most astonishing fact. It brings home to us Kipling's capacity for the complete absorption of a subject or theme. He brought back to England in that capacious brain enough material to enable him to go on writing, for years after, about India, its people, its atmosphere, even its animals—just as if he were still looking out of a window into the jungle. PLAIN TALES. Not that he did not write while he was actually in India. Being what he was, he set to work as soon as he arrived, and he never stopped. He started as sub-editor of the Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore ; later of the Pioneer, Allahabad. On top of his editorial duties, which seem to have ranged from writing leading articles to helping to put the paper to bed at printing-time—the entire staff, he tells us, consisted of the editor and himself, one of them usually incapacitated by heat-stroke or malar- ia—he found time to write short stories and poems. Much of this work was immature, and a good deal of it was downright vulgar ; but the power was there all the time. He wrote ' Plain Tales from the Hills' before he was twenty-one—note here his unfailing gift for selecting a neat title—also ' Soldiers Three,' which gave to the world not only the early Mulvaney stories, but that little classic ' The Man Who Would be King,'—considered by many to be the best story he ever wrote—before he was twenty-four. By 1889 he was back in England, where a tremendous reputation had preceded him. But to be a social lion was no ambition of his. He was shy, he was very short-sighted, he hated crowds and publicity ; he pre- ferred to keep himself to himself— a preference which grew on him all his life. He lodged at this time—very mod- estly, for he was not yet well-off—in Villiers Street, which runs down to the river, by Charing Cross Station. The house still stands, and you can see the commemorative plaque over the door, with his name on it, just opposite what was once Gatti's Music Hall, in one of the arches under Charing Cross Station. Here he wrote his first long, and least successful novel, ' The Light that Failed.' But he was never happy in London, and in 1891, having now made some money, he entered on a prolonged and leisurely trip round the world, where, as ever, he saw everything and forgot nothing. FIRST VISIT TO THE U.S.A. In 1892 he came for the first time to the United States of America, where in due course he founded his second kingdom. He lived there for four years, in the most rural sur- roundings imaginable, the little town of Brattleboro, in Vermont. He had married Caroline Balestier, who ulti- mately bore him three children, a son and two daughters, upon whom his entire life seems thereafter to have centred. Indeed, if you study his output during the early 1900's you will notice that he is writing chiefly for their education and amusement. He starts with ' Just So Stories" eminently suited to the unfolding of a child's intelligence, proceeding in course of time to those glorious child- ren's stories—children of all ages, incidentally—' Puck of Pook's Hill ' and ' Rewards and Fairies.' Dan and Una, the two children in the book, were his own son and daughter. But that is to anticipate. In 1898 he returned to England, for the most part still a completely strange country to him. Here he discovered Sussex, and with Sussex he fell in love, and there lived, except for a prolonged absence in South Africa during the Boer War, and for holiday excursions thereafter, for the rest of his life, first in Rottingdean, and then, when his presence had rendered Rotting- dean the haunt of motor-coaches and 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1949 autograph-hunters, from Brighton, to a remote fastness at Burwash. Such were the various and widely contrasted surroundings in which Kip- ling was born, brought up, and achieved immortality. Immortality is a big word, but there are people who say, and I am inclined to agree with them that to have written ' The Jungle Book ' alone would confer immortal- ity on any man. But heredity and environment are not everything. A man, especially a great man, must add to these con- tributing agencies certain definite characteristics all his own. And these, both good and less good, Kipling possessed in overflowing measure. POWER OF OBSERVATION His first was his penetrating power of observation, arising from his in- satiable interest in all about him. This enabled him to vitalise every- thing he touched, especially in his fervent youth. Nothing was be- neath his notice : he could write a story or a poem round a man, an ele- phant, or a mechanical gadget. Every- thing held romance for him, from a British regiment on the march to a suburban train bringing in the 9.15. Secondly, he was a master of words : his vocabulary seemed boundless. George Moore, no slight master him- self, wrote of him :—' Who else since the Elizabethans has written with our whole language?' Who indeed? He had humour, too, of a slightly sardonic kind. It crops out all the time in the course of his narrative, often in the form of some quip or epigram. He once began a story— it was called ' The Man Who Was,' and dealt with certain aspects of Russian mentality—like this : " Let it be clearly understood that the Rus- sian is a delightful person—until he tucks in his shirt." That was Kip- ling's way of reminding us that the heavily bearded Russian of Tolstoy's day, with his blouse worn outside his baggy trousers, was an Oriental—a much more agreeable person to deal with than the modern Moscow bureau- crat in a business suit. Where Kipling seems to fail some- times as a humorist is when he sets out to be deliberately funny. He tells us, in effect :—¦" I'm going to write something now that will make you split your sides." And he employs a sledge-hammer to do it. He has little of the priceless gift of under- statement which characterises his con- temporary, that master of English humour, W. W. Jacobs. Most of Kipling's deliberately funny stories, too, deal with revenge—comic revenge —so brutal at times as to incline one's sympathies towards the victim. Take that outrageous tale, ' The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat ' ; or the episode in ' Stalky,' when the famous trio, to avenge themselves for some act of tyranny on the part of Mr. King, buried a dead cat under the floor of one of his house-dormitor- ies, with malodorous results. When he keeps away from the hate motif, however, he can be riotously funny, as in ' Brugglesmith,' an epic narrative of how R.K. once wheeled an intoxi- cated Scots engineer in a police ambu- lance from East India Dock to Brook Green, Hammersmith, through one long summer night, (To be concluded). WE regret that an error appeared in the notice to new readers in the December 1948 issue of the Journal, No. 88. The sub- scription was wrongly stated to be 10/6 per annum. It is, in fact, 25/- for Home and 15/- for Overseas members. Membership is open to men and women of every nationality, wherever resident, who are genuinely To New Readers interested in the works of Rudyard Kipling. Correspondence from new readers is invited, and will be wel- comed at the Society's office at 98, Gower Street, London, W.C.l. (Tele- phone : Euston 7117). The principal object of the Kipling Society is to honour and extend the influence of Rudyard Kipling in upholding the ideals of the English-Speaking World. A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CORRECTION. Captain E. W. Martindell writes: " The Bell Buoy', which was collected in The Five Nations in 1903, first appeared in The Saturday Review (First illustrated Supplement) Christmas 1896, and not, as hitherto recorded, in McClure's Magazine, February, 1897." April, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 In Memoriam Mrs, Alice Macdonald Fleming By FLORENCE MACDONALD, M.B.E., BY the death of Mrs. Fleming, only sister of Rudyard Kipling, the Society has lost a valuable and keenly interested member. She was a woman of rare gifts and accomplish- ments. She and Rudyard were lucky in their parents, for both Mr. and Mrs. Lockwood Kipling were highly gifted, and their two children inherited their qualities. Their mother, Alice Mac- donald, had a strong literary turn, and wrote poems, stories and articles from her girlhood. She was also a witty conversationalist, with a swift insight and vision that could only be compared to flashes of lightning. John Lockwood Kipling was an artist and sculptor, with a knack of acquiring and retaining knowledge that was extra- ordinary. He had a phenomenal memory and seem- ed to know some- thing about every- thing. With such a heritage it is hardly to be won- dered that their children were re- markable. LITERARY GIFTS. Alice or Trix— which was a pet name given by her brother, be- cause as a baby she was " such a tricksy little thing " — had marked literary gifts, and stories and verse were a natural outlet from her child- hood. As an infant she literally " lisped in num- bers," and picked up Hindustani " TRIX " Mrs. Alice Macdonald Fleming, the only sister of Rudyard Kipling, photographed at the age of eighteen. (Photo by courtesy of Miss F. Macdonald). as quickly as English. She was never idle, and her mother writes of her at that time as showing " constant industry and unremitting application, with an amazing gift for quotation," a characteristic she never lost. I remember when as children we shared a night nursery, one of my amusements as we lay in bed, was to suggest a subject for a poem, and almost instantly the verse was forth- coming. Doubtless if she hadn't had a genius for a brother she would have made a name for herself in literature. She published one novel, " The Pinchbeck Goddess," long out of print, and numberless stories and articles in the Indian and English Press. She also contributed a story to a unique publication, " The Quartette " pub- lished in India, and containing stories, poems and articles by the four Kiplings. She and her mother published a volume of verse called " Hand in Hand, Verses by a mother and daughter," and Trix contributed sixty three of them. Her memory was extraordinary, and everything she read was re- tained, pigeon- holed and produc- ed at will. One family amusement was to give a quotation from Shakespeare, and she would im- 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1949 mediately continue it till the scene or play was finished. IN INDIA When her education in England was finished and she rejoined her family in India, she at once became a real asset in the English society there. She was a beautiful girl, and her amiability of character as well as her brilliant conversational powers made quite a sensation. Even that mis- ogynist, Lord Kitchener, paid tribute to her beauty, and remarked that she had " the whitest shoulders and arms in Calcutta, and she didn't need to powder them " adding " I have seen her across the dinner table, and she was actually luminous and would have shone in a dark room." She was an excellent dancer and a fearless rider, and often rode with Lord Roberts who was a close friend of the family. Lord Curzon spoke of her as fol- lows : " Mrs. Fleming was the one lady in India with whom I could really converse," and he added " she was also distinguished by beauty and personal charm, which rarely go to- gether, and are almost irresistible when the twain meet." The Kipling quartet were a happy family with similar interests and vocations, and if one was writing, and was short of a word or phrase, and asked for help, it could always be supplied by one or the other, and the brother and sister with their quick wits often mutually supplemented the other's need. A LETTER-WRITER. Trix was a superb letter writer as her numerous correspondents can testify. In Sir Ian Hamilton's auto- biography, " The Following of the Drums," two good specimens of her letters are given. Strangely enough, music was entirely lacking in her mental equipment. She had no ear for tune, and couldn't distinguish between " God Save The King " and " Home Sweet Home." As a child I tried in vain to teach her nursery rhymes, with lamentable results. SECOND SIGHT. Another gift Trix possessed, and this was a doubtful blessing. She in- herited from her Highland forbears, the gift of second sight—her mother possessed it also in a lesser degree. From early girlhood she saw ghosts or spirits, and in her later years the gift developed considerably, so that she was able to converse with many who had passed into the spirit world. These experiences had no terror for her, but were only of intense interest, and she wondered why others couldn't see what she saw. She had a swift intuitive knowledge of the characters of those she came into con- tact with, and with the use of a crystal globe foretold many interesting events. Once at a house-party where she met the late Lord Balfour and Sir Oliver Lodge—both keenly interested in psychic matters, she gave a lengthy proof of her skill as a crystal gazer, while the two sat spellbound or taking notes of what she said. She was a member of the Edinburgh Psychic College, and her knowledge of Yoga acquired in India, was of great interest and benefit to the members. For some years she was a regular con- tributor—under a pseudonym—to the Psychic Press. Of her life in India after her marriage to Colonel Fleming I know little, but I have heard much from friends in Calcutta and Simla of her brilliant career and also of her kind generous heart and sympathetic understanding, equally ready to help anyone in need., either nursing the sick or packing boxes for tired mothers returning to England. She had a passion for children and animals, and could control both. In the Edinburgh Zoo she had many friends among the wild animals, and one Indian elephant always salaamed at her approach because she spoke to him in Hindu- stani—the language he was used to in his early days. Naturally a highly strung and delicately balanced nature such as hers, was over-sensitive, and when she lost both parents within two months of each other, the result was a bad nervous breakdown ; for some years her brilliance seemed eclipsed, and her facile pen and felicitous speech were in abeyance. IN EDINBURGH. After her husband's retirement they settled in Edinburgh, and we resumed the friendship of our earlier days, which continued intimate and close to the end of her life. And now she has passed out of this life, but she lives still in the hearts of those who knew and loved her. April, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 " Trix " By HILTON BROWN. IT may seem absurd that one should try to write of " Trix " who knew her only during the last three years of her life. On the other hand, I perhaps worked more closely with her in those years than had anyone else for some time past— first over my book about her brother, next over her proposed London broad- cast in 1946 and lastly over her highly successful broadcast from Edinburgh in 1947, a transcript of which has appeared in this Journal. (The cold print gives but a poor idea of how good she was). I have heard it suggested that in her last years she had lost something of her keenness and vitality ; that the flame of her intellect—if it had not exactly dimmed —had perhaps flickered. Nothing— in my experience could be wider of the fact. It is true she was not an altogether easy person to work with ; to pin her down to the exigencies of a broadcast script, for instance, which must be compassed within an exacti- tude of minutes and almost of seconds, was not the simplest of tasks. But this was so, not from any deficiency on her part but from the very richness of her mental store ; you could not say a word to her without firing a train of recollection, a mine of associations ; and her own delight and interest in these must be com- municated immediately to you. I have never met a finer or more exact memory ; she was minute on detail and particular on substance ; under test, she never contradicted herself. I do not think she could ever, of herself, have written a book of her memories ; but it seems to me a lamentable pity that no one ever took the trouble to sit down with her and—by a process, I admit, of elimin- ation—evolve what would have been a shining record of two interwoven and outstanding lives, her own and her brother's. Of her personal charm I need say nothing ; it is sufficiently known to many readers of these words. Like her gaiety and her commonsense, it did not flag. How, then, was she not better known ? Perhaps the com- bination of physical attractions and brilliance of mind was—as it has been to so many women—fatal to her suc- cess ; perhaps she was overshadowed always by her brother ; one feels at any rate that her contemporaries did not make all of her that should have been made. To the last—or the last I saw of her—she was stimulating and delightful ; she captivated everyone at both Broadcasting Houses, Edin- burgh and London. I am rejoiced to learn that up to within a short time of her death, she was still storming the heights of the Edinburgh Zoo on Corstorphine Hill—this at a pace which would test an able-bodied man—: and discoursing with her old vivacity on all her friends in the paddocks and caves and cages. As I have said, I knew her only in the very last years of her life and I must therefore have missed a great deal ; but at least I have the consolation—and it is a solid one—that I did not miss her altogether. New Members THE following new members have been enrolled since the last issue of the Journal appeared : LONDON.—Mr. C. T. Nightingale; Mrs. Valentine Bennett ; Miss Gladys Milburn; Lieut-Col. W. N. Pettigrew; Major D. W. James ; Captain A. W. Goodinge and Mrs. E. Cowper Tamplin. VICTORIA, B.C.—Captain J. D. Prentice ; Mrs. J. D. Prentice ; Mr. Arthur Fryer, Miss Edwards and Miss Ewing. 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1949 Boyhood Days Recalled By the late NELSON DOUBLEDAY. SHORTLY before the death of the late Nelson Doubleday, we received from the Honorary Secre- tary of the Kipling Society in the United States, Mr. Carl T. Naumburg, of New York City, the following notable extract from the American Saturday Review of Literature, dated October 23rd, 1948 : BACK-STAGE GLIMPSE In his foreword for a handsome, new two-volume edition of Rudyard Kipling's immortal " Jungle Books," Nelson Doubleday recalls his boyhood days, and gives an interesting back- stage glimpse of an unusual publisher- author relationship : About my earliest recollection is my avid interest in any story writ- ten by Rudyard Kipling. My father had many friends in the magazine business and he frequently brought home advance copies. In one of these magazines, St. Nicholas, I read Kipling's story about " how the whale got his tiny throat," which im- pressed me enormously. I went to my father—who was just starting his own book publishing business— and asked, " If I write to Mr. Kip- ling and get him to do some more stories like this, will you publish them in a book ?" My father re- plied that he would be glad to con- sider such a project, but that I would have to be careful about my letter. I sat down at my desk and in my best schoolboy language composed a letter suggesting that Mr. Kipling write other stories like this about animals, such as how the leopard got his spots, how the ele- phant got his trunk, about the croco- dile, and so on. I showed the letter to my father and mother and they both thought it was fine. Then I said, " Dad, if you publish this book, shouldn't I get a share in the royal- ties for suggesting the idea ?" In a burst of generosity my father said that if the book were written and published, he'd give me a penny for every copy sold. My final request was for an " advance " on my royal- ties of a five-cent stamp with which to post the letter to England. My father again agreed, but stipulated that the first five cents earned would have to go to repay the postage—and when the " Just-So Stories " came out in book form, it did. . . . HOME-MADE SOUP It was my privilege to know " R.K." very well not long after he wrote " The Jungle Book " stories while living in Vermont. When he was ill at the Hotel Grenoble in New York City in 1899 I used to carry home-made soup from our house at East Sixteenth Street to Mr. Kipling at the now-vanished hotel. When he recovered, he came to our house for dinner, along with Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, for a memorable evening. Later, when I was twelve or fourteen, my mother and father took me and my brother and sister to visit the Kip- ling home, Bateman's, at Burwash, Surrey. I remember how the im- pish " R.K." used to encourage me to escape from the schoolroom in the house, by a ladder which the gar- dener conveniently left outside the window. " Uncle Rud " would meet me behind a haystack some dis- tance from the house and we would go fishing, or go hunting rabbits, or sometimes just hiking across the fields. " RATTLE OFF A VERSE " On some of these walks, I recall clearly, Kipling would hum to him- self in a rhythmic way, and then pretty soon he would ask, " How does this sound ?" and rattle off a verse his ever-busy mind had com- posed. Most of these were never written down and never published in any form. There was much mat- erial, too, that reposed for years in the big lower-right-hand drawer of Kipling's enormous work desk. He would write stories and poems on envelopes or odd bits of paper April, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 and thrust them in his drawer. Some incidents he made use of, others remained in the drawer until the day of his death and unfortu- nately were destroyed. . . . Could it be Bateman's ? MR. Somerset de Chair in his book "A Mind on the March "* includes the following inter- esting reference to Rudyard Kipling : " I have made a lazy perusal of innumerable cardboard boxes of pap- ers—the accumulated trash of my affairs during two years' absence. My wife has had them out on the nursery bed in the blissful absence of the children at school. The letters are far too formidable to study, but there is a box, containing, oddly enough, some old framed photographs. I was at once intrigued. They de- picted the outside and inside of an attractive stone manor house, with the date 1634 in old stone over the modest porch. I turned the faded pictures over and saw that they had been framed at a shop in Ashford, Kent. Perhaps I had rediscovered some old English manor house, by- passed by the hurrying centuries. Yet the house was oddly familiar. Could it be Bateman's ? Yes, there on the back of the last frame was the pencilled name. What memories that one word Bateman's evoked. I was twelve years old again and walking up the short stone flagged path to jangle the wrought iron bell-handle. I walked into the porch without waiting for results, and there was Rudyard Kip- ling in the low-beamed hall, looking up from under his shaggy eyebrows with a twinkling expression. ' I'll bet ' says he, ' that is Enid Struben's son.' How did he know ? He had never seen me before and we had come with- out warning. My mother, with more reserve than her son, was still out- side in the road. Elsie Kipling was *Published by Messrs. Faber and Faber, 24 Russell Square, London. Mr. Somerset de Chair's latest novel on the Middle East, " The Dome of the Rock," was published in February, 1949. (Falcon Press, 8s. 6d.) there—and of course Mrs. Kipling. Kipling showed us the house. ' There ought to be farthing rush-lights,' he said, ' But I couldn't afford them.' He refused to have a telephone. Now Kipling is dead and the house belongs to the Nation. You can visit it on appropriate days, and see the room where he used to write undisturbed. I wrote to him once from Australia about the sunshine. He wrote back in his own hand (he took to a type- writer in later years) ' Wish I could see some son.' Was it a slip of the pen ? Pathetic, if so. He had lost his own in the last war. The father's wound never healed. I met him at a lunch in London when I returned ; one of those social affairs with a dozen or more guests. I was eighteen and delighted to be sitting next to Barry Jackson, a producer of plays, to whom I tried ineffectually to sell Peter Public (which Cape published anonymously for me). I talked to Kipling after lunch, told him of The Impending Storm, which was just about to break. ' My God,! he ejaculated. ' Have you taken to that already?' He spoke of writing as if it were a dangerous drug, which, perhaps, it is. Later still I sent him my first novel, with apologies, and expecting the worst. I got it. He was anxious perhaps to prevent such adolescent steps straying into dangerous ways : He wrote, 17 May 1935, from Bate- mans, ' Dear Somerset, You are quite right. I've read your Enter Napoleon and, as you say, it is pretty bad. But, if the root of the matter is in you you will continue to go on and work yourself into shape. ' Publishers are not very wise. The only test of a book is how it is received : and all the " Opinions " and " Forewords " in the world are not any good whatever. One finds out 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1949 by failing—as one does in pretty nearly everything in life. Therefore go on and fail.' I showed myself willing and he said ' That is excellent. Now take a period—Napoleonic, if you like— of personal crisis for Napoleon him- self (the night before he left Elba or the camp on the Route Napoleon above Grasse when everything was in the balance for him) and sweat it out five times longer than you mean to print it. Then cut down and cut down and see if you can turn it inside of 10,000 words. Set it aside to drain like cheese till it don't shrink any more and—see what comes of it. It won't be lost work and it may be a success.' There was one final word of advice, longer, with R.K. in the corner of the envelope and the Silver Jubilee Stamp upside down, with its Sussex postmark. ' If you ask your Papa how he learned to bring his picket-boat along- side his ship, he will probably tell you that it was by beating her nose once or twice on the gangways, and her stem against the landing-steps. That is all that there is in Literature. But, seriously, if you want an episode of about your own age, take the old School-tale of Napoleon and the snow- fight at some school or other when, I believe, he held some boys in reserve, and launched 'em at a critical stage of the action. ' In all probability (and it's your job to make it look probable) he had the whole of his young soul and mind given away to anyone who could look into the future, and see how he handled his resources. Or try out in an imaginary episode, how the notion of increased mobility of Artillery came to him. Only keep it as short as you can. ' Always yours, ' Rudyard Kipling '† I attended his funeral in West- minster Abbey and saw him laid, at last, in Poets' Corner. Out of one corner of my eye I watched Neville Chamberlain's predatory profile, like something on a bas-relief at Nineveh or Babylon. Possibly Hammurabi. I was sitting opposite him under the Lantern, but my mind was prop- erly with Kipling going down in Poets' Corner. Yet it is really as a prose writer that Kipling excelled. Few people realised the intensity of the technique. The use of slang deluded them with an impression of casualness. ' Poke the fire ' was his motto. ' It is difficult to say exactly what happens, but everybody feels the effect.' Kipling's death seemed to bring down a whole edifice of great names—the King fol- lowed. Then the great figures of the war, Jellicoe, Beatty, Allenby—they all died out of England, it seemed, in a night." † Note—Copyright of this letter is strictly reserved Book Prices MESSRS. J. A. Allen & Co., (1, Lower Grosvenor Place, Buckingham Palace Road, Lon- don, S.W.I.) in their recent catalogue No. 90 entitled " A Miscellany of Interesting Books " list the follow- ing works of Rudyard Kipling, with their prices : No. 278 " Life's Handicap," FIRST EDITION, 1891, orig. cl., GOOD COPY. 21/- No. 279 " The Second Jungle Book," FIRST EDITION, 1895, illus. by J. Lockwood Kipling, orig. cl., NICE COPY. £3. No. 280 " Stalky & Co.," FIRST EDITION, 1899, orig. cl., NICE COPY. 21/- No. 281 " The Absent-Minded Beggar" 6 pp., folio sheet, with illus. by R. Caton Woodville, FINE CONDITION, 1899. 10/6. No. 282 " Kim," FIRST EDITION, 1901, illus., orig. cl., NICE COPY. £1 10s. 0d. No. 283 " They," FIRST EDITION (first state) 1905, illus. in col. by F. H. Townsend, orig. cl., GOOD CONDITION. £1 10s. 0d. April, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 Kipling and France by BASIL M. BAZLEY [This is the concluding part of Mr. Bazley's address to members of the Kip- ling Society in London, on " Kipling and France ".] IN 1911 Kipling contributed one of his most delightful humorous pieces called, " Why Snow falls at Vernet." It was written for " The Merry Thought," a monthly local paper published at Vernet-les-Bains, near Perpignan in the Department des Pyrénées-Orientales. It is a slight satire on the English habit of talking about the weather, in the form of a dialogue between St. Sat- urnia, the local priest, and two English knights who have retired after the First Crusade. The knights never speak to each other, until there is a most unexpected fall of snow out of season ; the inhabitants see them in animated conversation and come to the Saint in alarm :—' " My children," said Saturnia, with the benignity of apprehension, " it is neither. It is the weather of which the English speak. Be silent, and you will hear them speaking." Indeed at that very moment both knights ascended the hill, and, panting but still eloquent, hailed the venerable man. " Did you ever," they cried in chorus, " did you ever see such abominable weather ? We were just speaking about it." And their faces shone with amity and an indescribable happiness." ' This little sketch is not well-known, as it has not been collected into the ordinary editions yet—a pity ! THE VISIT OF A POET In his book on this part of the world an American, Mr. Francis Miltoun remarks :— " Each of the thermal stations in these parts poss- esses its own special peak of the Pyrénées. Luchon has the Nethou . . . Vernet the Canigou." Mr. V. C. Scott O'Connor in " Travels in the Pyrénées" tells us of Kipling's de- light in this mountain, chronicled in a letter to M. George Auriol of Perpig- nan :- " This letter is already well known in its French version all over the Pyrénées-Orientales ; for in France such things are held of much account, and the visit of a Poet, of a man pre- eminent in letters, appeals more to the Department than any of all the crowds of distinguished and titled people who now frequent the Vernet waters." I quote from this book a small bit of Kipling's letter :—" I came here in search of nothing more than a little sunshine. But I found Canigou, whom I discovered to be a magician among mountains, and I submitted myself to his power . . . But this year he has taken to himself his own place in my mind and heart, and I watch him with wonder and delight. Nothing that he could do or give birth to would surprise me, whether I met Don Quixote himself riding in from the Spanish side, or all the chivalry of ancient France watering their horses at his streams, or saw (which each twilight seems quite possible) gnomes and kobolds swarm- ing out of the mines and tunnels of his flanks. That is the reason, my dear Monsieur Auriol, that I venture to subscribe myself among the number of the loyal subjects of Canigou." Brief mention must be made of Kipling's addresses given in November 1921, two at the Sorbonne, and two at Strasbourg. In the first (they are all taken from " A Book of Words ") he runs over his long acquaintance with the French and ends with a graceful tribute of thanks :—" It is for that reason, Masters, Doctors, my brothers, that I thank you, very humbly but very proudly, that you should have associated my name even for my moment, with the august succession of frank, joyous, and wise writers who ever since the Sorbonne introduced here the art of printing, have revealed and glorified the unde- feated soul of your race." In the second he refers to France and Eng- land as the twin fortresses of European civilisation of to-day, and hopes that they will " re-establish together the foundations of the peace of the world, not on pious dreams or amiable hopes, but on those ancient virtues of logic, sanity and laboriousness with which 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1949 her history and her own indomitable genius have dowered France." In the third—very short—he speaks of the oppressions of the past ; and in the fourth, also at Strasbourg, he makes a poignant reference to the 1914-18 war:—"We English have left there (between Calais and Reims), a larger army than Napoleon led into Russia—four hundred thousand of the bodies of our own sons, besides a multitude of whom no trace remains. They died with your sons . . . They (these Englishmen) will tell you too of the hundreds of kindly, patient French villages behind the lines where your people were so good to our people, not for a little time, but devotedly and continuously, through all those terrible years when yours and ours suffered and toiled together." He concludes with a warning, unheeded as his St. George's Day Speech in 1935, of a future German attack. SOUVENIRS OF FRANCE Let us now return to Souvenirs of France. On a motor-car tour in some year before 1914, probably, we read this :—" Then was revealed to us, season after season, the immense and amazing beauty of France ; the laborious thrift of her people, and a little of their hard philosophy ; the excellence of her agriculture and. the forethought and system of her fores- try. Some of our Indian forestry officials had had their training at Nancy, and had always told me about it." Here is a tribute to the kindliness that most English people experience in France :—" With one exception— and he was a douanier fortified with brandy against the terrible rain of the Nord—I have in twenty-five years' road-travel met nothing but kindness and prompt help from every one—even from my ancient friends, the gendarmes." The French repay Kipling's love for them by the respect in which they hold him. The number of his per- sonal friends, eminent and unknown to fame, must have been enormous ; we get some evidence of this from letters that passed between him and some of the great ones of France. In this connection we may mention Clemenceau, Chevrillon, Henri Bord- eaux, Vicomte d'Humières, and many others. It is hardly possible to go into any respectable bookshop with- out finding several Kipling books prominently displayed ; these, of course, are in French, for the number of his translators is legion. Among them are many names well known on this side of the Channel : André Chevrillon, whom we must thank for the best criticism of Kipling's work that has so far appeared in any lang- uage ; the Vicomte d'Humières, Louis Fabulet, Henry Davray, Madeleine Vernon, Albert Savine, Michel Georges- Miche], Ernest Cavaillès, Antoinette Soulas, Louis Gillet, Henry Borjane, Theo Varlet, René Lecuyer, Claude et Joël Ritt, to name only some of them. Space will not permit me to speak of the innumerable articles in the literary reviews, " Mercure de France," that pay tribute to Kipling ; many care- ful studies of his work have been published. I have spoken of that by M. Chevrillon ; M. Abel Chevalley and M. Marcel Brion have also pro- duced work about him rather better than anything his own country has to offer. BALLADS IN RHYMED FRENCH SLANG We ought to be grateful to M. Brion, not only for his clever appreciation but for including some of the Barrack- Room Ballads, translated into rhymed French slang in a marvellous way by M. L. H. Nouveau. Here is "Tommy"— the first two lines in English run thus :- I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o'beer, The publican 'e up an' sez, " We serve no red-coats here." Here is M. Nouveau's rendering :— Je suis entré d1 dans un bistro pour boire un' chope d' bière—- L'patron s'a l'vé pis y a dit " On sert pas l'militaire." Les bonich's derrièr'e l'comptoir, riaient à en crever. Je r'sors dans l'rue encore une fois. " Tout d'même " que je me disais : C'est Tommy ceci, Tommy cela et— Tommy va t'promener— Mais c'est " Merci Monsieur Atkins " quand la clique commence à jouer. La cliqu' commence à jouer, hé les gars, La cliqu' commence à jouer. Oh c'est " Merci Monsieur Atkins " quand la clique commence à jouer. April, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 M. Nouveau also translates "Shillin' a Day," and in M. Brion's book are some others, as " The Song of the English " done by Maud Handall and Daniel Rosé. M. Louis Fabulet and M. le Vicomte Robert d'Humières in the same book give an admirable rendering of the introductory song to " The White Seal : "— Oh ! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. In French it runs :— Dors, mon baby, la nuit est derrière nous, Et noires sont les eaux qui luisaient si vertes ; Par-dessus les brisants la lune nous cherche Au repos entre leurs seins soyeux et doux. Ou flot touche flot, fais là ton nid clos, Roule ton corps las, mon petit nageur, Ni vent, ni requin t'éveille ou te blesse Dormant dans les bras des lents flots berceurs. With these tributes to a poet and prose writer of another nation we may fitly close. As M. Chevrillon has shown us in his masterly study, the French have developed analysis of an author's meaning to a fine art ; Kipling has returned the compliment by analysing their ideas and acts. He concludes his Souvenirs of France with the words :—" And these are some of the reasons why I love France." From the small number of instances that I have had space to give, it would seem that that love is fully returned. I feel sure that Kipling, proud as he was of being English, would have been glad to know that he was also, AMI de la FRANCE. Col. C. H. Milburn [The following note is contributed by Dr. Alfred Cox]. AS an old friend of nearly 50 years standing it is an honour to be asked to commemorate Charles Henry Milburn in the Kipling Journal, a most appropriate place. It would be difficult to find a man who more faithfully filled " the unforgiving min- ute with sixty seconds worth of distance run." Milburn was very versatile, but unlike many versatile people his motto was " thorough." I knew him best as a competent surgeon who took an active part in the British Medical Association, of which I was at one time Medical Secretary. As a keen soldier he was particularly useful in the long battle with the War Office which ended in the conferring of military rank* on Army doctors, and the eventual establishment of the R.A.M.C, which has just seen its Jubilee. MANY ACTIVITIES Though a very busy doctor, he took every qualification open to him as a combatant Territorial Artilleryman. He was appointed Lieut.-Colonel Com- manding, 2nd Northumbrian Bri- gade, Royal Field Artillery, (T) and retired " With Rank and Uniform " on termination of 4 years command. He was awarded the Volunteer Decor- ation in 1906, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, (Military Division) in 1919. How he managed all this when, to- gether with his practice, he was ex- ceedingly active in all public affairs in Hull, is a mystery only solved by those busy people who can always find time to be useful. He was a Justice of the Peace for Kingston- upon-Hull, and a Deputy-Lieutenant for the East Riding of Yorkshire. His activities also included the Boy Scouts, the Church Lads Brigade, St. John Ambulance Association (he was elected an Esquire of the Order in 1902) ; British Legion and the Empire movement. He served in France from 1915 to 1917 ; and in 1918 was appointed the first Commissioner of Health Services for Yorkshire, by the Min- istry of Health. He then took up 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL April, 1949 residence in Harrogate, where he resumed many of his old activities, and took on others ; one being an interest in archaeology, which led him to collaborate in a history of one of the Harrogate Churches. The members of the Kipling Society know much more about his interest in their movement than I do, but his Mends were never allowed to forget that among his literary affections, R.K. stood very high. Letter Bag Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication as short as possible. LISTS OF FAVOURITE STORIES I HAVE just received my copy of the Journal for July 1948 and have read with great interest the letter on the above subject from Lt.-Col. Bagwell-Purefoy. As a de- votee of Kipling for the past 50 years— ever since, as a small boy I obtained and treasured a shilling paper-covered copy of " Departmental Ditties "— I consider that it would be difficult to better your correspondent's Lists A and B. But I wonder why he describes as " Abominable Stories " " The Incarnation of Krishna Mul- vaney," " The Horse Marines," " Steam Tactics," " The Honours of War " and " The Captive." These are, in my opinion, some of the best stories that Kipling wrote. His greatest admirers will admit that a vein of cruelty runs through a number of the stories, the result, I always feel, of his experiences at Southsea as described in " Baa, Baa, Blacksheep." This does not, however, detract from their value and never appears, so far as I am aware, in any stories con- cerned with children or animals except perhaps in the case of Shere Khan. Mostyn Silvester, East African Pro- fessional Hunters' Assn., Box 825, Nairobi, Kenya Colony. "BOOK ILLUSTRATION" While in broad agreement with Mr. J. P. Collins' opinion re " book- illustration " in K.J. No. 88, I would regretfully remark that the U.S.A. has been more fortunate in this respect than ourselves. I think most leaders would agree that illustrations tend either to make or mar a story, there is no middle way. Kipling himself was so sure of the marring of his " My Sunday At Home " in the " Idler," that he stipulated "No illustrations!" " But I think he ap- proved of those to " The Edge of the Evening" by Maurice Greiffenhagen in the Pall Mall Magazine Xmas No. for 1913. The full-page in colour of the examination of the spy's plans in Flora's Temple could hardly be better- ed. Quite as good too, are the black and whites by C. E. Brock, R.I. illustrating " Fairy Kist " in the February, 1928 Strand, the f p. of Wollin in the cellar is of the " make " kind. Then we have the stories " The Devil And The Deep Sea " and " Bread Upon the Waters" in the Graphic Xmas No. for 1895 and 1896 res- pectively with two full page illustrations by Frank Brangwyn. But these three are giants, and there are many dwarfs. Also the recompense for second- raters, who may become firsts, is greater in the U.S.A. than here. André Castaigne's pictures to " Puck of Pooks Hill " in " St. Paul's Magazine " in 1906, there called "Robin Goodfellow—His Friends" could hardly be improved upon, but he was not the man to depict fairies, so the American publishers of the book wisely commissioned our Arthur Rackham to increase its charm by four full-page colour plates. Those readers who collected most of the " Debits and Credits " stories from Good Housekeeping and Nash's Pall Mall Magazine of 1924-5 dates will, I think agree, that many of the illustrations are good. Edmund Dulac is responsible for those to " The Enemies to each Other " (Good Housekeeping August 1924), and those to " A Madonna of the Trenches " by H. M. Stoops (Nash's September 1924) if grim, have the right atmosphere. I consider the worst Kipling illustra- tion is one to "The Last Relief" in April, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 the 1st No. of the Ludgate Monthly for May 1891. I welcome Mr. Collins' suggestion of the formation of a Committee on Kipling Illustrations, and wonder it has not been mooted earlier. Should one be formed I would compile a list—no small one—of all I have, in chronological order. And one of them would, I think appear in no other list. G. E. Elwell, Regent House, Ramsey, Isle Of Man. LIFE'S SOURCE Replying to " Heron " and his inquiry about " They " and the " Egg", the story was discussed on both sides of the Atlantic, almost ad nauseam, from its first appearance in Scribners Magazine, to years after its appearance in book form. For months in 1906 the comments on, and explanations of, the story practically monopolised the correspondence columns of T.P's Weekly. The plot of the story should have been clear to all, and they were many— who knew of Kipling's illness and bereavement in New York. " Seeing the Egg " was and is claimed to be the special gift of Rosicrucians, Mys- tics, Theosophists, etc. Seeing is believing, and if you don't see it ... ? It is supposed to be the symbol of all creation and life's source, which, biologically of course, sans mysticism, it is. Northern Member. THE EGG Your correspondent " Heron " is mistaken in thinking that no one has dealt with this subject in the Kipling Journal. The Egg whence all creation issued is alluded to in ' They,' and also in ' The King's Ankus.' I wrote an explanatory article which, by courtesy of the Editor, was pub- lished in No. 66 of the Journal, July, 1943. It is quite likely that no more copies of this number are available. If this actually is the case I shall be pleased to let " Heron " have my copy on loan, if he (or she) wishes to pur- sue the enquiry further. A. J. C. Tingey, " Maryland," 55, Church Street, Epsom, Surrey. "Heron" writes: "I am sorry to have troubled you for I was recently re-reading Journal No. 66 (July, 1943) and then remembered Mr. Tingey's letter. I am most grateful to him and to Northern Member for their new letters, which are between them just what I have been wanting. I have had no difficulty with the story " They " at any time, but "Seeing the Egg" is quite a distinct thing of itself."—Ed. Kipling's Dogs AN interesting letter appeared in a recent issue of the Estate Magazine, sent by Mr. R. E. Harbord, on the subject of Kipling's dogs. The letter runs as follows :— " How could Mr. James E. Carver write an article with " Writers Who Loved Dogs," in the June Estate Magazine, without mentioning Kip- ling's many dogs ? I know of over 50 in prose alone. Kipling men- tions his own dogs—(a) Vixen (or Vicy) Terrier bitch, (b) Malachi (or Mike), (c) Mr. Wardle a Terrier, and we know Kipling had a much- loved Scottie, but there are more famous dogs in his stories. Here is a list of a few of them : Strickland's Rampur bitch, Tietjens : Ortheris' Bull terrier, Garm ; Farmer Cloke's "Hound," Rambler; Old Iggulden's Sheep dog, Scottie ; Colonel's Wife's Fox terrier, Rip ; Learoyd's Mongrel, Blast ; Learoyd's Rampur, Jock ; Or- theris' Rampur, Blue Rot ; Gihon Hunt' Hounds, Royal ; May Queen ; Beagle Boy ; Miss Sichliffe's Dog, Hervey ; Mr. Attley's Bettina ; Kotuko's Sleigh dog, Kotuko ; Hunt Foxhound, Rava- gar ; Scottie, Boots ; Scottie, Slippers ; and others." To this the Editor of the Estate Magazine in a footnote replied : " Thank you for the interest which you have taken in the article " Writers Who Loved Dogs." It was necessary for me to cut out one or two things from this article owing to the paper shortage, but even so, Mr. Carver did not refer to any of Kipling's many dogs. Kipling almost needs a special article to do the job properly, for he had much to say about dogs, including " Your Servant," and the ever famous quotation : " Never give your heart to a dog to tear." When at some future date we have another article upon writers who loved dogs, Kipling will most certainly be included" W. H. Houldershaw. Ltd.. Printers, 49-55, London Road, Southend-on-Sea.