CONTENTS PAGE Notes—J.P.Collins ......... ... ... ... 1 Rudyard Kipling—Major-General Ian Hay Beith C.B.E., M.C......................... 3 Simla Players—Captain E. W. Martindell ... ... ... 7 Burma—Outside the Empire—Basil M. Bazley ... ... 9 What Happened in " Mrs. Bathurst ? "—Lt.-Col. Barwick Browne ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 10 " Intolerable If ?" ... ... ... ... ... ... 11 A Schoolboy's Prize Essay ... ... ... ... ... 13 Library Note.— W. G. B. Maitland ... ... ... ... 15 Letter Bag ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 15 Kiplingiana ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 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 * * * 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. 90 July, 1949 Notes KIPLING AND BOZ. MR. Edward Shanks's talk to the Society's members on April 26 at the De Vere Hotel, Kensington, W.8., had the conver- sational note that prior compilation too often lacks. There was, to be sure, an occasional strain on hearers at a distance in catching sentence-ends, for lecturers must ruffle their notes, and if they look down, alas, there may be pearls of moment for ever lost ! But the lecturer, speaking on " Kipling's Later Poetry," woke us up to co-operation in the way of murmurs and. remarks when he touched on Kipling's affinities with Dickens, an aspect he recognised from the first. And save with our modernists eager to cover their lack of acquain- tance with Victorian classics, such affinity could hardly be questioned by anyone alive to the breezy humanity of Boz. WHAT SAYS R.K. ? Some fifty authors, publishers, and journalists are mentioned by name in " Something of Myself," and most of them in friendly relation, more or less. Curiously enough, Dickens is omitted from the index (a rare feature with Kipling) and yet in speech or interview, one recalls Kipling's repeated allusion to his name and work in terms of indebtedness and admiration. For one thing, Dickens afforded the only precedent for Kipling's comet-like arrival and success, just as he was his fore-runner in story-telling, in character creation, in his universal interest in men and women and children, and in his consuming passion for dogs and railways, energy and speed. Unfortunately, Dickens never learned the Phil-May knack of striking out every non-essential line, and doing the work over again. But he had Kip- ling's other virtue, a burning devotion at his task, to the extent of using his last ounce of self in the process. SOUTHSEA AND PORTSEA. Next to heredity and natal endow- ment, I would cite certain marked resemblances in their boyhood ex- perience,-absence of wealth or oppor- tunity, nearness to the sea, provincial surroundings, and rapid turns of fortune. The more you think of it, the nearer Dickens's drudgery of bottle-washing in the blacking factory approaches Kipling's childish misery under that vile old hell-cat, Tanty Rosa, at Dachau-on-Sea. How fate schemed such a juxtaposition must remain a mystery, but at any rate it involved a serious risk of Kipling's health and sanity and sight. THE LIGHTNING MIND Turn once more to " Something of Myself " Nearly at the end of the first chapter you find the emanci- pated lad ensconced among his kins- folk at Kensington, visiting the Museum and staring at " a big bluish book " containing the MS of a Dickens novel. To a youngster who notoriously devoured all the print within reach, there was here something more than wriggly writing. " That man," he noted, " seemed to have written carelessly, leaving out lots which he had to squeeze in between the lines afterwards." Here was an ob- servant virtuosity already at work, in a lightning mind where afterthoughts came too late, and went into a kind of bus-ticket bin, under the airy slogan, " but that is another story." And as a rule, so it proved, thanks be. SELF-DISCIPLINE A luxuriant and retentive mind like Kipling's, I often think, had to lop hard and heavily at the habit of quotation. It was much the same with Barrie, when he used to hunt up his pet lines in the familiar "Bailey," make a note à la Cap'n Cuttle, and banish them for ever. But when for once in a way the exception escaped into favour, how gaily Kipling could 2 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1949 play with it ! Think of the page or more he makes of that amiable noodle, Mr. Toots, from "Dombey and Son," when he transfers him (or the name, rather) to that exquisite yarn, " In the Same Boat," in " A Diversity of Creatures." That yarn I have read scores of times, and always with some fresh glint of meaning possibly because of the wistful verses, " Helen All Alone," that come as a sort of moral in its wake. Again, think how the fiction world of a century ago was a mere cabbage- patch compared (in extent, of course, not quality) with what it is today. Dickens's indebtedness to his prede- cessors would go into a vanity-bag, whereas the only way to pre-eminence for a new comer like R.K. lay through a vista of libraries, and Kipling threaded them from end to end before he was done. A WESTERN VERDICT For those who desire to pursue this line of enquiry, and trace the influences of voracious reading among the fictional giants of Kipling's youth, one can heartily commend a book which was dealt with in these pages when it appeared ten years ago. Our worthy Treasurer, Mr. Harbord, spoke to good effect and drew attention to this excellent study of our author by an American scholar, Ann M. Weygandt. This was the searching treatise she called "Kipling's Reading and its In- fluence on his Poetry" (University of Pennsylvania Press). In a chapter on Kipling's knowledge of Victorian literature, she recognises Dickens as the dominant spell, if any ; she also cites half her available quotations to prove that Boz was R.K's favourite romancer in that susceptible period. RICH RESEARCH Dickens, Miss Weygandt, adds, in a burst of enthusiasm, " was always at the back of Kipling's mind," but if we reduce this dictum to its right dimensions, there was certainly the flattery of imitation in the younger man's bent for humour, caricature, and pardonable exaggeration. She concludes with the fair proposition that " he owes more to Dickens than a handy collection of quotations fitted to embellish his style." MAGAZINE HARVEST One thing about Kipling that bothered the critics and took their breath away was the coolness with which he invaded the reading world at a time when it was novel-mad, and crammed it full of short stories for a change. Poe and Bret Harte had done as much, and with success, where anything is permissible. With the century-end even flourishing novelists turned experimentally to the short story now and then as a relaxation, and nobody was any the worse. But for a new comer to alight on a carpet from Asia, and stuff the maw of the magazines with stories so perfect in form that they seemed like novels in brief,-this was the daring informality that took the public by storm. Nor have the numskulls of to-day forgiven it yet. Those of them who take their criticism seriously, ape the phraseology of their betters, and coin epigrams in form if not in sense. One of them lately declared that the modernist sculptor's mission was to teach the public " the stoniness of stone." But why do these preacher practitioners limit their job to illustrating the pappiness of paper ? A GAIETY GEM Our readers will heartily welcome from our unfailing friend, Captain Martin- dell, the verses written by Kipling, and recited by his sister, at a Simla Gaiety charity show, in the autumn of 1887. Different entirely from the prologue he had previously written for the theatre's opening, and quoted by Sir Edward Buck in his racy volume "Simla, Past and Present," it shows a striking advance in wit and finish and allusiveness. It reminds one of the prologue written by the late Arthur Waugh, father of the two novelist brothers, for a famous revival of " She Stoops to Conquer " in Covent Garden half a century ago. But of course, we have to realise that Kipling was hardly in his twenties. Truly those amateur actors little realised what treasures they were conjuring out of that youngster of so many parts and gifts ! J. P. Collins. July, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 3 Rudyard Kipling By MAJOR-GENERAL IAN HAY BEITH, C.B.E., M.C. (This is the second part of an address to members of the Kipling Society in London. The first part appeared in the April, 1949 issue of the Journal). AT the other end of the scale Kipling always exhibited a strong leaning towards the occult and supernatural, especially in his later years. He had shed much of his youthful frivolity by that time ; he was disposed now to plunge deep into the mysteries and dark places of the human spirit—some of them almost pathological studies. This, inci- dentally, made his later work much more difficult to follow, for so im- mersed was he in his researches, and so deeply interested in what he was studying, that he did not always trouble to make himself clear. Much of what he wrote then, it was said, remained a private joke between himself and his Muse. " HIS DAEMON " He certainly believed in that Muse, or his Daemon, as he called it ; an inward monitor which from time to time impelled him, from no conscious volition of his own, to write some- thing peculiarly outstanding. It was his Daemon, he said, which dictated to him the two Jungle Books, Kim, and all the Puck of Pook's Hill stories; and perhaps he was right. Some of his deeper fancies too—in the days before they got too deep—were very beautiful. There was ' The Brush- wood Boy,' for instance—the tale of two lovers who, on their first en- counter, realised that they had been sharing the same dreams almost nightly since their earliest childhood, and already knew each other's ap- pearance and inmost thoughts. Then, that strangely moving tale ' They,' about a blind woman who kept house for the ghosts of dead children, whose presence, incidentally, could only be detected by those who had themselves lost a child. Kipling himself was one of the elect there, for his elder daughter Josephine had died at the age of seven. Sometimes he favoured the grue- some and horrific—as in ' The Mark of the Beast,' ' The End of the Pas- age,' and other terrifying pictures of the effect of overwork, or solitude, or sickness upon the white man plunged for months into the atmosphere of the jungle—stories of which a woman once said to me that to have a son serving in India in those days was enough to keep any mother awake at night. But whatever, and however, he wrote, there was no doubting the almost boundless range and fertility of his imagination. One of the great- est tributes to his many-sidedness is the fact that no two people have ever quite agreed as to which is his best story, or best half-dozen stories. I expect many of you have your own preference in the matter. For my own part I would select practically anything in the two Jungle Books or the Puck of Pook's Hill books, and the whole of ' Kim.' As for the short stories, my final choice would be :—' Bread Upon the Waters' and ' William the Conqueror ' from ' The Day's Work,' ' My Lord the Elephant,' from ' Life's Handicap,' ' The Man Who Would be King,' from ' Soldiers Three,' and ' On Greenhow Hill,' from ' Many Inventions.' THE CRITICS On the other hand it must be admitted that many critics, some of them highly qualified, could perceive no sort of merit in Kipling's work at all, even at the height of his fame ; And in this view they persisted all through his life. In fact they took a very superior line about him. They described him, variously, as an over- grown schoolboy ; as a flashy ex- hibitionist ; as a retailer of backstairs gossip—that was in the days of Plain Tales and Departmental Ditties ; as a ' banjo ' poet ; or later, as a kind of literary bounder, who had somehow been responsible for the South African War. Others condemned his pre- occupation with machinery—' M' Andrew's Hymn ' and ' The Ship that Found Herself,' for instance. This they called ' technical spoof,' Others 4 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1949 denounced him, quite simply, as a reactionary and a snob. Some of this was Kipling's own fault. He was reactionary, in his reverence, for instance, for such a magnificent piece of machinery as the Indian Civil Service, —now no more— and he disliked people who tried to monkey with it. He also objected to the sweeping campaign of social reform—Old Age Pensions, National Insurance, and the like—which set in when the liberals returned to power in 1906. A passionate individualist himself, he held that Englishmen should be encouraged to stand on their own feet, and never, never allow themselves to become pensioners of the State. OPINIONS Of course we are all entitled to our opinions, but the mistake Kipling made was to incorporate these opinions in his stories. During the South African War he wrote some pretty hard things about His Majesty's Opposition, and some harder things still after they became His Majesty's Government a few years later. Today ? Heaven knows when a writer is reck- less enough to do that, the conse- quences are inevitable : his work is no longer judged by ordinary literary standards, but from the point of view of party politics ; and for a novelist or poet that is simple suicide. Moreover, the South African War was then but recently over, and the country had entered upon the usual period of post-war reaction. Every- body was sick of the sound of such words as Preparedness and Efficiency. The Imperial idea was a drug in the market, and so far as the prophet and priest of Imperialism himself was concerned, a good many people con- sidered that his career was ended, and forthwith consigned him to the shelf. In fact, Max Beerbohm drew a cartoon of him squatting there, like a small disgruntled Buddha. But Kipling made it quite clear that he was by no means done with. He kept on writing steadily. The pundits and the intellectuals ignored him, but people went on buying his books, on both sides of the Atlantic. As already noted, he had modified his style : it was less exuberant and more mellow now. What was more, he had discovered fresh fields of inspir- ation. His stories centred less upon the Empire and the Army and more upon England—the English tradition and the English countryside, which latter he was discovering for the first time. The two Puck books are a case in point ; or if you want a per- fect and most moving example of his new style, read ' An Habitation En- forced,' the opening story in ' A Diversity of Creatures,' about a young American couple who came and settled in the heart of England. In 1907 a significant thing happened. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and that confounded the critics and gave him his permanent place in the hierarchy of letters. The First World War, when it came, was an unhappy time for him. We were utterly unprepared for it, as he had long warned us we would be, and until we could take the field in full force, thousands of young and useful lives were wasted. His only son, John Kipling, who had joined the Irish Guards at the outbreak of the War, was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915, a most unnecessary battle. I was there, and I know. It was not until the early ' twenties ' that he could bring himself round to regular writing again. His two next books were ' Debits and Credits ' and ' Limits and Renewals.' It should be ob- served here that he had by this time almost entirely given up writing in the first person, as if each tale had been some joyous personal adventure of his own. These two books are not so easy to read as ' Plain Tales ' or ' Life's Handicap. ' They demand closer atten- tion—but they reward it. Consider a story called ' The Gardener ' in ' Debits and Credits.' I had to read it through three times before I grasped its full significance—and then it was only early familiarity with the New Testament that gave me the key. " A man knelt behind a line of headstones—evidently a gardener. She went towards him. He rose at her approach, and without pre- lude or salutation asked :— " Who are you looking for ?" " Lieut. Michael Turrell, my nep- hew," she replied, slowly. The man lifted his eyes, and July, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 5 looked at her with infinite compas- sion. " Come with me," he said, " and I will show you where your son lies." When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants ; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener." (A deeply moving and unforgettable story). THE LAST BOOK The last book he wrote was a short volume of autobiography, called ' Something of Myself.' It gives us only a few tantalising glimpses, but all who wish to know the real Kip- ling should read it. He died on January 18th, 1936, two days before King George V. I remem- ber it was said then that the King had died and taken his trumpeter with him. As chairman of the Society of Authors at that time, I was one of the vast throng who saw him laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. Now, let me conclude this rambling and most inadequate narrative with a few random reminiscences and reflections, such as might be ascribed in a news reel to ' Our Roving Camera.' I saw a good deal of Kipling during his later years. He was at his best sitting at table in his Club, with one or two congenial spirits about him. He always held that the table-talk of Englishmen was the best in the world. Americans, he said, told too many stories, and Frenchmen always settled down to oratory. Englishmen could toss the ball to one another with effortless dexterity and impart- iality, and no one was left out. Kip- ling himself, needless to say, was the life and soul of such conversations. AN OMNIVOROUS READER He was always an omnivorous reader, and in his later and idler years he sometimes read a couple of books in a single day—and he seemed to remember every word. He sat down beside me one evening and said :—I read a novel of yours this afternoon : it would make a good play—like this." He then sketched out the play as he saw it, in three acts, with all the characters given their proper im- portance, both in plot and dialogue. It was an astonishing feat of memory. What he did not know was that I had originally written my story as a play, and turned it into a novel afterwards, publishing the novel first and presenting the play afterwards as an adaptation—a thrifty habit of mine, for with me ideas are always in short supply. But I did not tell him this, as I thought it might spoil the fun he had had in doing it for himself ! Well, that was the Kipling I knew. Let me try to sum him up. First of all, I think, he was one of the first men to inject romance into human toil—to put sheer hard work on the map. Not spectacular achieve- ment—nothing like that—but hum- drum routine duty—the work of the man who knows his job and whose work is its own reward, whether he is dispensing justice under a tree in an Indian village, or minding the donkey-engine in a tramp steamer. In his stories of soldiers and sailors the people who interest him most are the private soldier or the lower deck rating. In his tales of English country life he is more concerned with the mysteries of the craft of the wood-cutter and the ditcher than with his economic status. In India his heroes are not connected with the Viceroy's Court ; they are obscure officials in some remote district ; or over-worked engineers forcing a nar- row-gauge railway through a teak forest ; or entirely anonymous individ- uals risking life and limb in the Gov- ernment Intelligence Service, like the immortal Babu in ' Kim.' " ITS OTHER RANKS " In fact Kipling discovered, or at least made clear, that the strength of our country lies in the middle—in what the Army would call its Other Ranks—-and that the English char- acter and training produce a type which is particularly fitted for reliable work in a subordinate position, with- out any particular supervision or encouragement from people higher up, but which at the same time is not afraid of assuming responsibility in the face of difficulty or crisis. Speaking of difficulties, I wonder if you remember how, and à propos of what, that immortal jingle—that grand summary, now sadly hackneyed, 6 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1949 of the essential ingredients of man- hood—a poem called ' If '—came to be written, and where you will find it. You will find ' If ' in the second volume of the Puck Stories, where it appears as a tail-piece to a story called ' Brother Square-Toes '; and the man it describes is none other than George Washington himself, en- gaged in a stern struggle, not with his ancestral opponents overseas, but with his own native-born detractors and backbiters in Philadelphia. That was Kipling's tribute to the Father of Mrs. Kipling's country. Well, such was the spirit that he breathed into us forty, fifty years ago. No wonder our stay-at-home, insular young men began to see visions and dream dreams. We sud- denly realised that all over the world, wherever our flag flew, there were men like ourselves, and women too, fulfilling this gospel of work—work for its own sake, and not for any glory or distinction that it was going to bring them—for ever tackling jobs, devising expedients, making quick decisions, getting the machine to function somehow. Did you ever read his poem, ' The English Flag ?' In it the four winds of heaven speak of that Flag in turn. THE APOSTLE OF DUTY That at any rate was the Kipling whom we saw and read when we were young, and that was the Kipling whom I met and knew in later life. He was many other things, of course, he was, above all, a story teller : a supreme spinner of yarns, if you like—but what yarns ! He was a poet : though he once said that he had only written half a dozen real poems in his life : the rest were just verses. He was a pioneer and a crusader, and every inch a fighter. He was a mystic and a dreamer ; he was a husband and a father ; and beneath it all, to the end of his life, he was an eager, inquisitive, impetuous, and very lovable school- boy. But in the main be was the apostle of work, or if you like, duty. We come back to that again and again in the closing lines of " The Seven Seas ' he wrote what might have been his own epitaph, and with those lines I will end. " And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame, And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame ; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star Shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They Are. " That is the gospel of work for its own sake, set forth, by its most famous exponent, in words which I hope will never fade from our memories. Parody FROM " POETS IN THE NURSERY " by CHARLES POWELL. JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD—MCMXX. LITTLE BO-PEEP by RUDYARD KIPLING THERE'S a whimper in the field where a shepherdess has squealed For her sheep that are off on the run : " Hi ! Rover there, come over, for the flock has quit the clover, And we've lost them, every one." You can hear the beat of the youngest ewe As she seeks her roving dam : You can see the tail—how frail ! how frail !— That hangs from the smallest ram. Ha' done with the tears that are vain, dear lass, Cast out the fear that is blind ; For they'll each come back with a whole tail, its own tail, its sole tail, They'll all come home with a Plain Tale —a tail that is worn behind. July, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 7 Simla Players By Captain E. W. MARTINDELL " SMALL changes will sometimes bring out more poignantly than high official ceremonies that the curtain has gone down on some act of history. The handing over of pictures and other souvenirs of the Simla Amateur Dramatic Club to safe keeping in London is small change of that kind, for it stirs memories, drawn from ex- perience or from hearsay and reading, of more than a century of the social life of British exiles in India." Vide " The Times " March 7th, 1949. In The Pioneer (Allahabad) of August 1st, 18S7, there appeared an account of a theatrical performance at the Gaiety Theatre at Simla in aid of Summer Homes for Nursing Sisters, who were, under Lady Roberts' scheme, to be brought to military hospitals in India. The Pioneer says " The per- formance was a great success. There was a very large attendance, including the Viceroy and Lady Dufferin. The following prologue, spoken by Miss Kipling, will well bear reproduction :— So please you, Gentlefolk, a drama slight Awaits your verdict on our opening night. But ere the call-bell rings, we pray you take In all good part the humble plea we make For mercy at the hands of those who know Exactly how a comedy should go. And there are many and their cold, grey eyes Note every weakness from the curtain's rise. They scoff at halting bye-play and rejoice To hear the agonising Prompter's voice ; Mark how the hare's-foot trenches on the crow's And damn an actor for too red a nose ; Then, where the rickshaws block Peliti's door, Remark : " We never saw such stuff before." To these stern critics we appeal for ruth, By virtue, not of excellence, but youth. For we are young—behold the paint still new Shows that but yesterday our play- house grew. Forgive us then if side-slips slide uncertain, Or all too hasty falls the half-raised curtain ; Or from your eyes by unrehearsed mishap, Our leading ladies vanish down a trap. Such little accidents, it stands to reason Might mar the first performance of the season. Thus having met all possible de- tractors, We will not ask you to excuse our actors. Some you know well : their art in bye-gone years Has moved the Gaiety to mirth and tears, Brought as the " act-drop " closed upon the scene, To English lips, the Moslem cry of Din ! We borrowed them—we glory in the crime— And hope to play—giarize a second time. The others, who portray poor Lucia's griefs, Are all in their respective lines,— the Chief's ! The Army List eluciadates this fact. And now to tell you how we came to act. Who said—" To please yourselves ?" No ! I deny it. Who ever acts for pleasure ? Just you try it ! Men say, who simmer in the Plains below That Simla people frivol. Be it so, Let us admit that, as the Plains assert, The maidens of the Mountain some- times . . . flirt, While matrons dance, and others wilder still 8 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1949 Give picnics at the back of Summer Hill. And bold, bad sportsmen on a lottery night Sit up till morning dims the candle- light. But we are good. We scorn the flighty crew. We frivol with a serious end in view : And here forgive me if my trifling rhyme Take graver accents for a little time. * * * You know, who know the Army, first of those Strong lines that wall the Empire from her foes Stands—" to attention " ready for the sign— One Thomas Atkins, Private of the Line. His business is—well never mind the rest ; You men who lead him know his business best ! But ere that work begins, 'neath Indian skies Too oft, alas ! our faithful warder dies. The chill of night, the fever of the town, The sickness of the noon day strikes him down, Nor him alone. The leaders and the led Swell that great army of the un- timely dead, Who know no battle save one hope- less fight With Death, beneath the punkah in the night. * * * Is this an idle story in your ears ? Look back ! How reads the record of past years ? Think for a moment, while your memory traces The long procession of the dear dead faces. See ! Year on year this dreary record runs— Strong men and boys—friends, lovers husbands, sons, Cut down upon the threshold of Life's Gate Who might have lived, but that help came too late. Help came too late—The care sad comrades gave Was rough and ready, and unskilled to save. And O ! it asks the tenderest care to stay The spirit poised between the Night and Day. That care, if woman's skill and woman's toil May from the Slayer wrench the destined spoil— That care is theirs by right, who freely give Their lives to guard the land wherein we live. Let be the Dead gone down beyond recall : Turn to the Living. Help them lest they fall ! Fight Death with money—money that can buy The soft cool soothing touch, the sleepless eye, The woman's art that coaxes and commands The fevered mouth and weak and trembling hands. Buy these—for all the healing love men know Fails, lacking these, to bind the Soul below. Help us herein, who strive in some small measure To weave a purpose in the threads of Pleasure— To meet both Simla's and the Soldier's needs And make light Mirth the handmaid of Kind Deeds. * * * But here some justly wearied man may say :— " We didn't want a sermon. Where's your play ? " So I, who trespass on your patience, cease, Ohé ! Behind there ! Psst ! Ring on the piece ! In August 1945, when I had the privilege of meeting Mrs. Fleming, I recalled this prologue spoken by her at Simla and asked her if she remembered the incident. " Quite well," she re- plied " and what is more I can recite that whole Prologue," and straightway she recited the opening lines. She was gifted with a marvellous memory and wonderful vitality—added to most winning ways. July, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 9 Burma—Outside the Empire By BASIL M. BAZLEY KIPLING is rightly known as the Singer of our Empire—the poet, though his prose tales and speeches must not be omitted,—who inspired that wonderful spiritual unity of free men under one King and Flag ; the man who interpreted the idea and ideal of the British Empire to the world at large ; it may also be said that he " introduced " the Empire to itself. Being a practical man as well as a poet, he laid before us the manner in which a great association of free nations could work together ; at the same time he expounded an ideal of conduct which spiritualized the material side of the administration. The Pax Britannica thus created was no mere empty phase ; in plain language, it worked. In the course of years a flexible form of government was evolved ; wisely, there was no attempt to impose a uniform legal or political code on the many races under the British Flag. Nothing in this world is perfect, but all fair- minded people must admit that the British Empire, on the whole, pro- vided a workable and satisfactory form of rule suited to the varied mentalities of its members. As education and conditions progressed, the local func- tions of the administration were adapted to meet these changes. A SAD TYPE. The various members of the British group of nations were generally con- tented and happy, but this absence of friction only seemed to annoy the genus Little Englander, a sad type which has been in existence for some eighty years, becoming aggressive about 1900. The essence of true democracy is freedom, but the democratic way of life is a gradual growth ; it is not brought into being by imposing the forms of self- government on peoples who are not ready for these responsibilities. Here, in parenthesis, we may remember that Mr. Stalin told Churchill at one of their meetings that the Russians were not ready for the kind of government enjoyed by Britain. Change for the sake of change, however futile, was in the air after the second Great War ; people who only asked to be treated with fairness were untruthfully told that they had been grossly exploited and that they must at once begin to be democratic. Most of these advocates of " Freedom for the Subject Races " were not very clear about the way in which schemes of self-government were to operate ; they were even less clear about the consequences of abandoning the wise policy of Festina Lente. MODERN FOLLIES. We have no Kipling with us to-day to denounce these modern follies in ringing tone and apposite phrase, but the old Empire spirit — tolerant, firm, and wise—is not yet dead, as the fol- lowing lines from the Yorkshire Post & Leeds Mercury of the 15th March, 1949 will show :— By the old Moulmein Pagoda, that the 14th Army know, There's a Burma girl a-settin', as she sat so long ago ; An' I wonder if she's thinkin', what she will not dare to say : " Come you back, you British soldier ; come you back to Manda- lay ! " They are fighting in the rice-fields, and they cannot understand Why peace comes down so slowly on that torn and tortured land, Where there ain't no Ten Command- ments and their friends are far away. Did they miss us at our going, when we went from Mandalay ? In 1893 Kipling wrote :—" Fair is our lot—O goodly is our heritage ! " I wonder what language he would use to describe the present unhappy state of affairs ? 10 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1949 What Happened in "Mrs. Bathurst?" By Lt.-Col. BARWICK BROWNE I SEE that once again the puzzle of " Mrs. Bathurst " is being mooted in the Journal and I should like, with the Editor's permission, to have a shot at unravelling it, more especially since Mr. C. S. Lewis, in his lecture to the English Association on " The Kipling World," instances it as an example of Kipling's over-compression and said " I still don't know what happened in " Mrs. Bathurst." So that the problem is well worth tackling. The story is meant to portray a remarkable, and remarkably good, woman as seen thro' the eyes of the men who knew her, a difficult enough feat to accomplish ; but that object seems to get put into the background at times by interest in the cinema, which was then so new that it had to be carefully explained. And I commend to our younger members, who have no re- collection of a world without the talkies, the description of Mr. Pye- croft's wonder and interest at the simplest first feats of the silent film. But come to the story itself (refer- ences are to the pages in the ordinary Macmillan edition) Pyecroft tells us on p. 349 that Mrs. B. was left a widow very young, but from Pritchard's story on p. 351 she had been keeping her little pub for well over five years, so that she was no longer an impression- able girl, liable to be swept off her feet by a love affair. Further, her constant contact with men in her bar and the descriptions which we get of her all suggest a very stable character, which makes her subsequent conduct all the more improbable. VICKERY'S MARRIAGE. The history of Vickery's marriage seems to have been highly unusual. He had a fifteen-year-old daughter, for Pyecroft had seen her photograph, p. 348, which suggests that she was an only child, for parents do not usually carry about a photograph of only one child out of several. Yet we hear, p. 362, that his wife died in childbed just after he sailed on his last voyage, Well, well! Pyecroft never found out what the relations were between V. and Mrs. B., p. 361, so that his assertion on p. 349 that it was none of Mrs. B's. fault rested on no foundation of fact, tho' we may accept his statement as being true, and I suggest that the only possible explanation is that they both fell violently in love in Auckland, and that, in order to get her, V. persuaded her into a secret marriage, which was of course bigamous on his part. Then, when he was sent home, he simply deserted her. There can have been no children of the marriage, and the public house must have paid well, so that Mrs. B. was quite free, and followed him first to England, then to South Africa, where she caught him up. V. is over- come and tells the whole story to his captain, who apparently connives at his desertion, p. 360-362. But why? His wife being dead, there was nothing to stop V. from having a valid mar- riage celebrated in Cape Town. True, he would have had to confess to his former bigamy, but that would have been a defence for his otherwise indefen- sible conduct in deserting her in Auck- land. It is all most unconvincing. " DOWN-AND-OUTS " And the subsequent conduct of the pair is even more inexplicable. Even if Mrs. B. had come to the end of her resources at just this dramatic moment, Naval Warrant Officers, tho' not rich men, are by no means destitute. Further, they are men who have won success in managing other men and machinery, so that V. should have had no difficulty in getting lucrative em- ployment in the Rand mines and sup- porting his wife in comfort in Johannes- burg. Yet we find them as a pair of down-and-outs trying to get to the Nyassa Lakes on foot and depending on charity for food, p. 364. They are killed by lightning in a forest. Hooper finds them and buries them, but removes the man's false teeth and habitually carries them about in his waistcoat pocket ; disgusting and hard- ly credible, but suggested all thro' the final pages of the story. And he is all the time just about to bring them out and show them, but finally does not do so. Again, why ? July, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 11 If my readers agree that my deduc- tions are justified and that my theory as to " What Happened in Mrs. Bathurst " is correct, what are we to think of it ? Mrs. B. herself is quite an inconsistent character and the under- lying incidents are almost incredible. Well, of course Shakespeare, es- pecially in " The Merchant of Venice " sets a pretty good precedent for this sort of thing. The story and characters don't hang together, but each separate scene is magnificent theatre. But Kipling had not Shakespeare's excuse that he was always having to produce plays in a hurry, and that anyhow, being plays, they did not count as literature according to the standards of the day. Kipling, we know, worked over his script again and again and was always conscious of writing literature. Indeed, if you compare the text of " Mrs. Bathurst " as it originally appeared in the Windsor Magazine for March, 1904 with the text as it appears in " Traffics & Discoveries," you will find small alterations in almost every sentence. Can we say that at times he entirely failed to see the wood for the trees : i.e. that he was so preoccupied in getting the utmost dramatic and descriptive effect from each page, that he was quite careless as to whether it matched with the pages that had gone before it ? Like an artist who should produce a picture in which beautifully drawn oaks, pines, and coconut palms all appeared growing together. What do my fellow members think ? I hope that someone will produce a more con- sistent account of " What Happened in ' Mrs. Bathurst ' " than I have been able to do. The study of this story has brought me once again up against a question that I have asked before in the Journal : does anyone know what governs the order of the stories in the books ? It is certainly not chronological, as a reference to the dates in which they first appeared in magazines will show. " Mrs. Bathurst " is sandwiched be- tween " They " and " Below the Mill Dam," those two perfect descriptions of the English country-side. It certainly affords a violent contrast to these, and it is well separated from the other ' Pyecroft ' stories in the book. Were " They " and " Below the Mill Dam " ever published in magazine form, does anyone know ? (" They " originally appeared in " Scribner's Magazine, " August, 1904, and " Below the Mill Dam " in The Monthly Review, September, 1902, Ed.). "Intolerable If ?" In THE SPECTATOR A REVIEW by Mr. C. E. Vulliamy of Mr. Derek Hudson's book, Martin Tupper : His Rise and Fall contained these words :— " Martin Tupper, to-day unknown, was the author of Proverbial Philos- ophy, first published in 1838 . His poem, " Never Give Up," had a reputation equal to, and as well deserved as, that of Kipling's intolerable " If "..... The following lively correspondence in The Spectator ensued. (The first letter is from the Founder of The Kipling Society :) The Spectator, February 25th 1949. Sir,—Mr. Vulliamy's epithet in his review of Martin Tupper seems to imply that he has not read Kipling's " If " carefully, or he would surely agree that, for its purpose of educating the young, it is one of the most helpful and interesting of its kind, and not only to the young. There are two lines, however, which may be considered of doubtful value :— " If you can make a heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss." Perhaps Mr. Vulliamy will state the lines in the poem to which his epithet applies ? In case this suggestion is not accepted, I might add that, if " imita- tion is the Sincerest form of flattery," 12 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1949 what other poet's verse has been parodied a score or so times, as is the case with " If " ?—Yours truly, J. H. C. Brooking, 7 Tryon House, Mallord Street, S.W.3. Sir,—In his review in the Spectator of February 18th of the Life of Martin Tupper, Mr. Vulliamy stigmatises Kipling's poem " If " as " intolerable." One at least of your readers would be grateful if he would explain why he takes this view.—-Your obedient ser- vant, R. E. Martin, The Brand, near Loughborough. The Spectator, March 4th 1949. Sir,—The answer to your corres- pondents, J. H. C. Brooking and R. E. Martin, is quite obvious. There were two Kiplings : one of them was the great master of the short stories, of Kim and the Barrack-Room Ballads, and the other wrote intolerable jingles in which an unctuous morality was often united with a penny-whistle patriotism. (Many of your readers will recall Sir Max Beerbohm's delightful cartoon). A parody does not imply literary excellence in the original but, on the contrary, has the reverse implication. When Kipling sank to the level of Tupper he, like Tupper, was an easy prey for the parodist. Imitation is another matter. I do not, of course, deny the value of " If " in the Scouts' hut or the parish hall.—Yours faith- fully, C. E. VULLIAMY, Lollesworth Cottage, West Horsley. The Spectator, March 11th 1949. Sir,—I was very glad to see the last sentence of Mr. Vulliamy's letter. I would not pretend to discuss with him the respective merits of the rhymed stanza and free verse, but if he regards the standards which Kipling sets out in this poem as being suitable for the Scout hut and parish hall, one may conclude that there cannot be much wrong with them.—Your obedient servant, R. E. Martin, The Brand, Loughborough. * * * FINAL COMMENT Mr. Brooking sends us the following comment on the matter : Mr. Vulliamy's explanation of the phrase (Kipling's " intolerable ' If '? ") now makes clear the extent of his knowledge of Kipling's writings, by the details of his division of them into two Groups. In one Group " Kipling was the great master of short stories, of Kim and the Barrack-Room Ballads." (These Ballads contain the "Intolerable If") Therefore his reference to " intolerable jingles in which an unctuous morality was often united to a penny-whistle patriotism " must apply to the second Group including over 500 published poems—many of which have been quoted by the world's greatest men, and, next to the Bible and Shakespeare, are still quoted, by the spoken or printed word, on almost every subject. Many of these " jingles " have been set to music by such talented composers as Elgar, Grainger, Boult, Cyril Scott and Sullivan, etc. Mr. Vulliamy's opinion, that parodies of poems imply the reverse of literary excellence in such poems, has the merit of originality. Briefly, Mr. Vulliamy has convicted himself by his remarks ! New Members THE following new members of the Kipling Society have re- cently been enrolled :— U.S.A. Mr. I. Edwin Goldwasser. The University of Kentucky. The Century Association. The Ames Library of India and The Orient. Mrs. John Hunsicker. Melbourne. Mrs. M. M. Stanley. London. Mr. John Ehrman. Mrs. H. A. Lake Barnett. Mr. George Burnett. France. Mr. W. E. Weld. July, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 13 A Schoolboy s Prize Essay On the question; " What are the chief characteristics of Kipling's prose and verse which appeal to you ?" By " Pedagogue " (As many of our readers know, for some years Captain E. W. Martindell has presented a prize in a Kipling Prize Essay Competition for boys at his old school, Victoria College, Jersey. This year the winner of the prize, whose essay appears below, is D. W. Miles, aged 18½, who is in the Upper Sixth Form). OH for a book and a shady nook ! a man cried long ago and in truth there is nothing to equal a book. Nothing has been able to stop the men who write books. Tyrants have burned their books and writers have been tortured by fire, but books have spread themselves throughout the world so that there is no land on earth without them now. They are the only things that live for ever, for new copies are made as old ones pass away, and so through all the ages of time a book carries down the thoughts of men. A thought put into a book is stronger than a statue carved in marble, and in the story of mankind the book has been the mightiest and noblest invention con- ceived by the human mind. The man who writes a book can laugh at Caesar and Napoleon ; they perish while he lives on. VITAL TALES. During the later years of the Victorian period and the earlier years of Edward the Seventh, there emerged many weavers of tales—tales which were vital in style and subject; but the writer most prominent in the public eye during the latter part of this period was Rudyard Kipling, chiefly as a poet and writer of short stories. His fine Indian story, " Kim," the longest of his pen , however, amply justified the public view of his literary power. No other story has so satisfactorily reproduced the atmosphere of native life and thought. The characteristics of Mr. Kipling's works which appeal to me most are numerous. The " Jungle Books," the " Just-So Stories " and " Kim " are perhaps, the most widely read, and as these stories are really typical of Kipling's style, it will be well to probe into them rather deeper than we have done before. Taking the " Jungle Books " first, I think that with these inspired beast stories he must have conquered a new world and a new audience, and indeed they are his most flawless work. He aimed at inter- preting the mode of reasoning and actual character of animals, and in this he succeeded beyond any doubt, at the same time throwing a side glance on human morals. This method of writing had never been approached before, and possibly that is mainly the reason why I liked it. When reading these books we realize at once that he was alive to the pitiful tragedies of life and to the beauty and mystery that lies outside material things. When given a country full of magic and superstition, jungle life and drama, such as India, he seems most happy. He takes us at once right into Anglo-Indian life and we suddenly become aware of its struggles, failures and glories. Such is my experience when reading Kipling and no doubt his stories affect many others in the same manner. Possibly it is his vital treatment of the subject that keeps me most interested. Obviously the study of animals and their peculiar habits and human sociability for beasts was no new thing. The nurture of Mowgli had a legendary precedent in Roman History with the upbringing of Romulus and Remus, and yet a vaguely historical one is hinted at in the history of Peter, the Wild Boy, while the philosophy of Uncle Remus now and then flickers up in our lives to-day and teaches us a lesson or two. FRESHNESS. But none of these stories has the freshness of style, colour and vision that Kipling's books have, and that is probably the greatest characteristic which appeals to me most of all. In the "Jungle Book," Kipling draws our attention to the fact that the moral qualities of the Jungle Laws were not just an unfolding of the ways of Providence ; they were more than that, they were what life had reached by 14 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1949 social development. With any story of his we can read between the lines and find a true hidden meaning behind his frank actuality and somewhat coarse language. Before I ever read the " Jungle Books," courage, endurance, observation, dexterity and physical and mental fitness all seemed to be just ordinary romantic virtues, but after- wards they changed into an eager inspiration. Kipling has made these stories more than romance, more than fiction even ; he made them young life which had become conscious of itself and of the stimulating world around it. In practically all his stories the author and the reader are as nearly as possible the same person and while reading his stories you are suddenly transformed into the world he is describing. You begin to live inside the hero, his weak- nesses are our weaknesses ; his pleas- ures are our pleasures ; his thoughts are our thoughts. Undoubtedly that is an essential factor if a book is to be successful and widely read. TWO ELEMENTS. These ever-popular books and poems contain two elements which strike me as good. First, the qualities of un- limited range for the imagination which is very evident in " Kim," and in isolated scenes in his other works and secondly of packed comprehensive thoughtfulness, for indeed Mowgli and Kim are thinking hard and vitally throughout. These two elements have grown stronger in juvenile literature during these last few years and con- sequently Kipling has helped enor- mously in doing this. The master impulse of youth is curiosity—to see and hear and know more about the world into which it has been born, and hour by hour take to itself a larger share of life. This is done first, as a child, by observation and then by activity and widening ex- perience. But soon the child finds or should find, that through books it can reach out, by its mind, far beyond the pleasures and knowledge it can attain through its bodily activities. In chil- dren's books there is always a battle between instruction and amusement, between restraint and freedom. My answer to this call of youth is Kipling, for while boys and girls and grown-ups could enjoy his works, still younger children could find them, after a little practice in the language perhaps (as the Uncle Remus stories had proved) enchanting fairy-stories. That is where Mr. Kipling scores over so many other authors and poets and, in this respect, his works have no predecessors of their kind. When I was very young I can remember that I liked the " Just-So Stories " very much, and I think their main characteristic is that they serve as a useful stepping-stone to harder and more advanced literature. Because Kipling began rhyming with trifling ditties and went on to the use of the raw material of humanity in the soldiers of the line, and sailor-men rolling down the Ratcliffe Road, some have doubted whether his writings could be pure poetry. After a time, however, when great doings stirred the hearts of the British people as they had never been stirred before, I am sure people came to realise that poetry had not spoken the national mind until Kipling had spoken it. His frank attitude towards his subject ; his trifling and somewhat crude rhyme-scheme ; and the in- teresting and entrancing phases of his works have conquered the hearts of many hundreds of people. Through his books and poems, nature-study and human life have become, to me at least, a kind of intimate romance. Kipling really knew his subject and his works are interesting and kept alive throughout. Alas ! Kipling has passed away but his thoughts and ideas will live with us always. However, he can truly laugh heartily at Caesar and Napoleon. AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND. We thank Mrs. Buchanan, the Hon. Secretary of the Auckland, N.Z. Branch of the Kipling Society, for her interesting Report of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Branch, (year 1948-49). During the season the Branch held nine well-attended meetings. July, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 15 Library Note HUMOROUS TALES By W. G. B. MAITLAND SCATTERED throughout Kipling's prose are many gems of humour and a selection of these has been gathered together by Pan Books Ltd. under the title, Humorous Tales. Commencing with Plain Tales From The Hills and ending with Limits and Renewals the reader is taken from the Alpha to the Omega of Kipling's humour. To select the best of his humorous tales is by no means an easy task, for what amuses one reader will fail to do so with another, Tastes vary with the individual and his mood, but the publishers have succeeded in com- pressing into a dozen tales some of the best of Kipling's humour. Who can fail to smile at the grim jest which routed a whole regiment of cavalry in The Rout of the White Hussars ?—or at that priceless gem My Sunday ai Hornet Brugglesmith, surely the most delightful concertina word ever uttered by a drunken man, is included. The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat is there to remind us of a curious body of people who once held that strange belief. The Puzzler rubs shoulders with The Vortex and The Bull That Thought. Private Learoyd—one of the Three Immortals—appears before us in all his Yorkshire canniness in Private Learoyd's Story, wherein, as everyone knows, he gives some useful hints on dog-stealing and dog-faking. Back and forth across the world these twelve stories carry us—India, France, Egypt and the English country- side all have their place. We move from Empire-building with "Bai Jove" Judson into the champagne country of France, where besides vineyards are produced bulls for the Spanish national sport ; to India where we sample a little Irish blarney in Namgay Doola, and so home again to Twentieth Century England and the final story, Aunt Ellen from Limits and Renewals. Mordant wit, humour grim or gay, or just pure fun for fun's sake, all are represented. With this little volume the publishers have undoubtedly re- peated their earlier successes which they achieved with Ten Stories and The Mowgli Stories. (Humorous Tales, 2/-. Pain Books Ltd., 8 Headfort Place, S.W.I. Letter Bag Correspondents are asked to keep letters for publication as short as possible. " UP " OR " DOWN " THE letter concerning Wilton Sar- gent and the train in the Kipling Journal for Dec. 1948 caused me to re-examine the story in question, and I noticed that in the edition consulted (Scribner, 1899) Sargent requested his butler to " signal the next train " which, it seems, was the "three-forty Northern down." Per- haps in another edition the passage reads as reported in the December letter: " the first down train," but the former version puts it in a little different light. A point I would like to bring out, how- ever, is that, whatever the reading, if Sargent's English estate lay north of London it would be most natural for an American to think of running " down " to the metropolis. It takes some training to remember that London is situated on a conceptual elevation whither the people go up and whence they come down. In this country the common orientation, with a few exceptions, is more cartographic in its expression. We may go " up to Boston " from New York or " down to Washington ; " and, further afield, " up to Canada " or " down to Florida" or South America. Though Wilton 16 THE KIPLING JOURNAL July, 1949 Sargent had been pretty well Anglified by that time, the veneer seems to have been particularly weak in times of stress, and he might well have in- structed his butler to flag the first " down " train. Whether or not he did seems open to some question as above, but he apparently thought in such terms as shown by his remark that after judgment was rendered in court he came up to his estate before noon. Of course, if Holt Hangars lay south of London my little theory would be scuttled, but the narrator's reference to the " three-forty Northern down " would seem to show that it probably lay " up country."—Joseph R. Dunlap, 478 Broad Avenue, Leonia, N.J., U.S.A. April 9, 1949. (We thank our correspondent for his interesting note. It has long been the English way to say " up to the Capital " and " down to the Country." Ed.). MARITIME MATTERS. We all seem to be thinking of Kipling's " Something of Myself " chapter VII—" my worst slip is still underided." It seems probable that he was thinking of the whole story— " Bread upon the Waters." Perhaps he realised that in this case he had not verified his references." In the story the S.S. Grotkau broke down, not under control. She signalled to a liner which took off the captain, engineer and crew, leaving her, presumably, sinking. I do not know much of maritime law or customs but I feel sure the crew would have had to sink her before leaving the spot. True the story adds :— " they went aboard the liner cryin' that the " Grotkau was sinkin' " but surely the liner's captain would have had to send a party on board unless she was obviously going down. The one thing to be avoided is the leaving of a derelict drifting about the ocean. This seems to be a slip, but Mr. T. E. Elwell writing in Journal No. 65 and subsequently, points out another which I will summarise if I may—The " Kite" was " squattering in the wake " of the " Grotkau " steaming south in a S. W. gale, so the leeward side of leading ship would be the port side (red light). But McPhee says " Ye canna see green as far as red or we'd ha' kept to leeward." In any case a ship in the wake of an- other would not be able to see the side lights. I agree with Mr. Elwell that Kipling must have been thinking of this story. —Heron. A PROVOCATIVE WORD. Mr. Silvester, in his letter in the Journal for April, 1949, reproves me —by implication—for describing cert- ain of Kipling's stories as " abomin- able." Of course using such a word in connection with any story of Kipling's is asking for trouble, but I have an excuse for thus classifying the few stories which I, personally, avoid reading—although I must admit that if the book opens accidentally in the middle of one I have to struggle not to be mesmerised into reading on and on. My excuse is that my own lists, by themselves, can be of little interest, but I hoped that the use of a slightly provocative word might call forth retaliatory action, in the form of rival lists and comments. Besides Mr. Silvester, only Mr. Hallings has re- sponded so far. May we not hope for more ?—A. S. Bagwell Purefoy, 80 Riddlesdown Road, Purley, Surrey. INFORMATION WANTED. A few days ago I purchased from a London bookseller " Departmental Dit- ties " 3rd edition 1888 and was in- terested to find pasted on one of the advertisement pages a poem, 5 verses in length, entitled " A Job Lot," obviously based on a cutting from "The Pioneer " and signed with the initials R. K. Can you give me any informa- tion about this poem ? I cannot find any person of this title in any of my " Collected Poems," — J. S. I. McGregor, 78 Meade Street, George, Cape Province, South Africa. (Captain E. W. Martindell reminds us that " this poem was a scathing attack on Lady Roberts' bestowal of patronage on her protégés, which Lord Roberts had to endorse, sad to relate." ' A Job Lot ' appeared in " The Pioneer " on Sept. 1, 1888, "The Pioneer Mail." Sept. 2, 1888, and in " The Civil and Military Gazette," Sept, 4, 1888, signed R.K. Ed.). July, 1949 THE KIPLING JOURNAL 17 Kiplingiana READERS may be interested in two small Kipling items which I quote below. The first is a letter I acquired recently. It is typewritten on headed paper similar to that of the letter repro- duced in the Journal No. 77, April, 1946 (page 12), and is signed in ink. This also is addressed to a Mason— " J. W. Thompson, Esq.,"—but is earlier in date. In 1903, when, in- cidentally, Kipling had not lived very long at Bateman's, " The Palace " first appeared in The Five Nations. This note is evidently a reply to a letter about that poem :—Bateman's Burwash, Sussex. Oct. 6th 1903. Dear Sir and Brother, Very many thanks for your letter of the 3rd inst. I am glad you liked " The Palace " for it is always pleasant to hear from one of the craft when one's Masonic verses are appreciated. Faithfully and fraternally yours, Rudyard Kipling. The second item is part of an advertisement of novels by Guy Boothby, published by Ward, Lock, which I found at the end of a book, unfortunately undated, by Whyte- Melville. It is headed " Mr. Rudyard Kipling says :" and runs :— " Mr. Guy Boothby has come to great honours now. His name is large upon hoardings, his books sell like hot cakes, and he keeps a level head through it all. I've met him several times in England, and he added to my already large respect for him." This appears to have been written or spoken abroad ; probably, judging from the book, in the early 'nineties. It would be interesting to discover the occasion and reason, as making such a statement seems opposed to Kipling's usual practice and is cer- tainly contrary to ideas expressed, much later, in his Autobiography. Somewhere there must be information about the actual meetings —Reader. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ? The following bibliographical (?) note appears on an end-paper of " The Light That Failed," published in America by " Pocket Books, Inc." of 1230, Sixth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, New York. " The Light That Failed " was originally published by Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., in 1899. Unfortunately, it is impossible to give here, as is usual in Pocket Book editions a list of the various printings of this classic, since it was published so long ago that the old records no longer exist (my italics.) For the same reason it is not possible to estimate the number of copies sold, although it is known that the sale has considerably exceeded 250,000. The issue is No. 45 in the list, dated Sept., 1943, and is the fourth printing. It has enamelled paper pictorial wrappers, showing Dick painting with Bessie as model. Price, 25 cents. Also, the late C. L. Graves was at fault in the letter he wrote to a friend of S. A. Courtauld's, reprinted on the inside of the back cover of the current " Kipling Journal." He wrote " He " (Kipling) only wrote one himself (I contributed a dozen) . . —A.C. THE DEATHLESS EAST. To the soft and deathless impeach- ment that I am " no mechanic," there is but one rejoinder, and this is the old reservation ' ' except with a corkscrew." But often I wish I had a camera with the handiness of using it. It was a broiling afternoon in the City years ago when I caught sight of a passer-by who made me stop and stare at him, as he had halted to stare at space. It was the hey-day of barrel- organs, even in the City's one square mile, and the strains of a romantic waltz-tune had transported the sun- burnt stranger, like a magic carpet, to scenes and scents many thousand miles away. There were certainly no buses runnin' anywhere so far, far East, and that was that. But for the moment, or as long as the dream and vision lasted, I will venture a bet that Swiss Cottage and the Elephant, and even the Bank itself were infinitely further off. than Mandalay. Was there ever a better song or a sweeter air ?—J. P. Collins. W. H. Houldershaw. Ltd.. Printers, 49-55, London Road, Southend-on-Sea.