June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________1 2___________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________3 THE KIPLING SOCIETY Registered Charity No. 278885 PRESIDENT Sir George Engle, K.C.B., Q.C. PAST PRESIDENT Dr Michael G. Brock, C.B.E. VICE-PRESIDENTS Joseph R. Dunlap, D.L.S. Mrs Margaret Newsom Mrs L.A.F. Lewis Professor Thomas Pinney, Ph.D. Mrs Rosalind Kennedy Mrs Anne Shelford J.H. McGivering, R.D. J.W. Michael Smith David Alan Richards COUNCIL: ELECTED AND CO-OPTED MEMBERS Cdr Alastair Wilson (Chairman) Prof Leeonee Ormond Sharad Keskar (Deputy Chairman) Charles Allen Dr Mary Hamer Clive Bettington Ms Anne Harcombe COUNCIL: HONORARY OFFICE-BEARERS Lt-Colonel R.C. Ayers, O.B.E. (Membership Secretary) [his e-mail address is: roger295@ntlworld.com] Frank Noah (Treasurer) Jane Keskar (Secretary) [her address is: 6 Clifton Road, London W9 1SS; Tel & Fax 020 7286 0194; her e-mail address is: jane@keskar.fsworld.co.uk] Andrew Lycett (Meetings Secretary) Sir Derek Oulton, G.C.B., Q.C. (Legal Adviser) John Radcliffe (On Line Editor) [his e-mail address is: johnradcliffe@blueyonder.co.uk] John Walker (Librarian) Roy Slade (Publicity Officer) Robin Mitchell (Bateman's Liaison Officer) David Page, B.Sc. (Editor, Kipling Journal) [his e-mail address is: davpag@yahoo.co.uk] Independent Financial Examiner Professor G.M. Selim, M.Com., Ph.D., F.I.I.A. THE SOCIETY'S ADDRESS Postal: 6 Clifton Road, London W9 1SS; Fax: 020 7286 0194; Web-site: www.kipling.org.uk THE SOCIETY'S NORTH AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE David Alan Richards, 18 Forest Lane, Scarsdale, New York, NY 10583, U.S.A. Tel: (212) 609-6817. Fax: (212) 593-4517. e-mail: drichards@mccarter.com THE RUDYARD KIPLING SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA David Watts, Box 421, Wyong, NSW 2259, Australia Tel: 02 43927180. Fax: 02 43511109. e-mail: dwatts@pacificlabels.com.au Website: www.kiplingsocietyaustralia.com 4___________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 SECRETARY'S ANNOUNCEMENTS SOME FORTHCOMING EVENTS Tuesday 17 June 2008, members are invited to Bateman's as part of a Kipling week, when Society members will be con- tributing readings. Volunteer's welcome! Please contact the Secretary. Wednesday 9 July 2008, 4.30 p.m., in the Mountbatten Room, Royal Over-Seas League, the Society's A.G.M. after which (5.30 for 6 p.m.) Lorraine Bowsher will give her talk on " 'Uncle Crom' and 'Uncle Rud' – Kipling and the Price family". Wednesday 10 September 2008, 5.30 for 6 p.m., in the Mountbatten Room, Royal Over-Seas League, Speaker to be announced. Wednesday 12 November 2008, 5.30 for 6 p.m., in the Mountbatten Room, Royal Over-Seas League, Tim Connell "Kipling and Saki Compared". June 2008 JANE KESKAR & ANDREW LYCETT The Kipling Journal is now made available to subscribers to the EBSCO Literary Database on the internet. Contributors are advised that this does not affect their individual copyright. THE KIPLING JOURNAL published quarterly since 1927 by the Kipling Society (6 Clifton Road, London W9 1SS) and sent free to all members worldwide Volume 82 June 2008 Number 327 CONTENTS THE KIPLING SOCIETY: OFFICERS, ETC. 3 SECRETARY'S ANNOUNCEMENTS 4 "TO PROTEUS, ON READING HIS LOVE SONNETS" by Mrs Lockwood Kipling 6 EDITORIAL – A GIFT FROM MR TOM AITKEN 7-9 MY QUEST FOR MAHBUB ALI by Omer S.K. Tarin 10-22 "NAULAKHA" IN VERMONT by Thomas Pinney 22 "REFERENCES", "CROSS-REFERENCES", AND NOTIONS OF HISTORY IN KIPLING'S PUCK OF POOK'S HILL AND REWARDS AND FAIRIES by Lisa A.F. Lewis 23-39 "EPISTLE TO THE EUROPEANS (ON NOT READING KIPLING)" by Ortwin de Graef 39 WHO WAS THE BETTER POET? KIPLING OR WILLIAM MCGONAGALL? By Shamus O.D. Wade 40-49 BOOK REVIEWS by Dr Kate Macdonald and The Editor POLITICS AND A WE IN RUDYARD KIPLING'S FICTION by Peter Havholm 50-52 THE WINTER OF THE WORLD ed. by Dominic Hibberd and John Onions 52 MEMBERSHIP NOTES by Roger Ayers 53 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 54-55 REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR 2007 56-58 MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2007 58-64 THE SOCIETY'S FINANCIAL STATEMENT 2007 65-67 ABOUT THE KIPLING SOCIETY 68 Rudyard Kipling Copyright by The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. Cover Image with Acknowledgements to Macmillan & Co Ltd All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the Kipling Society, London. 6___________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL____________________7 EDITORIAL "TO PROTEUS, ON READING HIS LOVE SONNETS" A GIFT TO THE SOCIETY BY MR TOM AITKEN, PERTH At the end of last year I was contacted by Mr Tom Aitken, the owner of a copy of The Love Sonnets of Proteus by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 2nd ed., published 1882. He asked if I could throw any light on the likely circumstances surrounding this book and its contents. The volume had originally belonged to "Elsie Kipling, Lahore, 1882", the full inscrip- tion being: Handwritten on the flyleaf is the sonnet to Proteus which is printed opposite, signed "E.K. / Lahore Ap: 1882." Mr Aitken had already contacted Special Collections at the University of Sussex who confirmed that the handwriting was that of Lockwood Kipling's wife Alice, and that she was known to have signed herself as "Elsie" on occasion. They also referred him to Andrew Lycett's Rudyard Kipling where (p.383, Phoenix Paperback) he wrote that 8___________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 . . . the Kiplings' second daughter, Elsie, was born at Naulakha. Weighing a healthy nine and a half pounds, she was (in accordance with Kipling family tradition) given a name sometimes used by her grandmother Alice. The inscription with its subsequent donation to "Trix" documents this "Elsie / Alice" usage very clearly. A transcription of "To Proteus, on reading his Love Sonnets" is: I will not tell you which I love the best Of all your sonnets, for, on telling this I should tell more, & all would be confest Which I so long have hidden in my breast, My soul's sad secret, my heart's poisoned bliss. Nor will I whisper tho' you bend your ear To catch my murmured words, yet fearing lest This silence seem ungrateful, you shall hear That one there was, that with regretful pain As of a mem'ry wakened from its sleep Filled both mine Eyes with tears, and once again I wept, who for so long has ceased to weep. Take back the book. I am grown calm and sage, There is no telltale teardrop on the page. If one looks in the book of verse, Hand in Hand: Verses by a Mother and Daughter which was published in 1902 as a compilation of work by Alice (Elsie) Kipling and Alice (Trix) Fleming, you will find a slightly edited version of this sonnet followed by a second one on the same theme in the section dedicated 'To My Daughter'. For anyone who has not looked at this volume, the title page is a delightful photo- graph of a clay bas-relief executed by Lockwood Kipling using the same technique as that for the plates in Kim, so this was indeed a fam- ily collaboration. Turning now to Proteus and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, it should be pointed out that the book was published anonymously, and it was not until some years after publication that Blunt acknowledged his author- ship. It is clear that he and the Kipling's had acquaintances in common, and also met at some point. Jane Morris, wife of William Morris, became Blunt's mistress after her previous lover, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, died (ODNB). William Morris was called "Uncle Topsy" by Rudyard Kipling (Something of Myself, p.12) and Kipling's U.S.C. June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL____________________9 headmaster, Cormell Price, was also one of the Pre-Raphaelites which included Edward Burne-Jones, one of Rudyard's uncles. Blunt's pub- lished Diaries for 30 June 1893 (vol.1) record that: With Judith [his daughter] to lunch with Burne-Jones, where he had asked her to sit to him. His wife and son, and sister-in-law, Mrs Kipling, were there. In volume 2 of the Diaries for 22 August 1908 Blunt wrote that Today old Kipling, Rudyard's father, came to dinner and I had a long talk to him about India. I wanted to find out from him, a typi- cal Anglo-Indian, what remedy he would apply to the present condition of things. Like all the rest, however, he has no remedy to propose beyond 'severe repression' for the time being. Unfortunately Blunt's Diaries were only published for the period 1888-1914, so when he and the Kiplings might first have met is uncer- tain. The Kiplings moved from Bombay to Lahore in April/May 1875, and in late 1876 the Viceroy Lord Lytton called Lockwood to Simla and commissioned him to produce a series of banners for use at the 1877 "Imperial Assemblage" in Delhi (Kipling Sahib, Charles Allen, p.89). Lord Lytton was a friend of Blunt's who visited him in Simla (ODNB) sometime during Lytton's tenure from April 1876 to March 1880 so that is one possibility. Rudyard Kipling's work was also known to Blunt. The Diaries record that he read The Second Jungle Book in 1896, and Stalky & Co. in November 1900, commenting that "Here, at least, we have vigour and wit, though it is brutal in its realism and displays the seamy side of our British schoolboy life without mercy. It needed courage to print it." Mr Aitken inherited the book from his father who had been a book- seller in Edinburgh after the war. Since the book had belonged to Mrs Fleming, who lived in Edinburgh after her husband's retirement, it seems most likely to me that after her death in 1949, the book had found its way to Mr Aitken's father. On sending the book to me, Mr Aitken commented that: As to the book itself I think the most appropriate home for it would be your Society: like all of us, books and pictures should finish up where they most belong. Please accept it as a gift. My father would have liked that. The Society is most grateful to Mr Aitken for his very generous gift. 10__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 MY QUEST FOR MAHBUB ALI By OMER S.K.TARIN [The author of this article is a former university lecturer and now an associate director of the Sophia Institute in Pakistan, which promotes cultural and literary studies and spe- cializes in their colonial experience. He was brought up in Abbottabad and educated there at the Burn Hall School. Due to this connection, and coming from a family which had produced many army officers from even before WWI to the present (they sent up 11 great-uncles during WWI and 7 during WWII), so he has always had access to whatever Kipling-related lore existed in the Pakistan army in the 1960s and 70s, but which gradu- ally died out after 1977. Readers will soon see from the information in his article that Omer S.K. Tarin is uniquely qualified to arrive at the most probable answer to his "Quest for Mahbub Ali". Maps and illustrations on pp. 18-21. – Ed.] My quest for Mahbub Ali began with my love for Kim. It was an "inherited love", in the first place, as my late father was, from his own schooldays, a devotee of three great writers of English literature – Kipling, J.R.R. Tolkien and P.G. Wodehouse. I was presented with my first copies of Kim and The Jungle Book at the age often or eleven and have been 'hooked' ever since. I am not a "Kipling scholar" and I'm afraid to say, at the risk of being blasphemous, that I do not always like all of Kipling's works. But Kim is, and always will be special. It has a magic of its own that is universal and timeless and inexplicable by rational standards. I think that it appeals to some part of us that transcends words and forms into a deeper reality that is wordless and formless. Even though, ostensibly, it is "about" Kimball O'Hara and India at a particular historical time and about what is termed the Great Game, one can enjoy reading about these things, and still "benefit" from the underlying journey, or quest, that is not only the lama's or Kim's, but our own, too, into the core of our own Being. For me, Kim was doubly alive, because for many years I lived in a famous Frontier cantonment as a child, and my father's family belonged to the Tarin tribe of Pathans/Afghans, which had fought the British from the 1840s well into the 1880s-90s. We had our own his- torical traditions and lore about this period, which certainly did not accord with Kipling's views but this did not lessen my fascination with Kim. My mother's family belonged to the Punjab and were largely set- tled in Lahore, and I have also been acquainted with this great city since early childhood. I remember, as a child, when we used to visit Lahore for our annual winter holidays, I would always sit up when we passed the (present) Lahore Museum and the National College of Arts (formerly the Mayo School), and try to see if Kim was there, among the June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________11 street urchins, clambering all over Zam-Zammah, still in 'defiance of municipal orders' (Kim, p.l). Many people, from all over the world, have expressed their love for this wonderful novel and for some of its memorable characters. Martin N. Cohen, in the Introduction to the 1988 Bantam Classic edition of the novel, speaks volumes when he praises Kipling's craftsmanship and artistry in this work, 'Kipling ... gives much more than the young man Kim. If we consider Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, Mahbub Ali, Lurgan, and certainly, the lama, we see that each is a stroke of genius in him- self. . .' (xii). For me, Mahbub Ali represented the best expression of this Kiplingesque "genius". I knew people like him, had met tribesmen of the old school, who not only looked like the portrait that Kipling had given us, but who were also very "sympathetic" to me, often being of my own blood and kin. I felt, therefore, a kinship for this horse-trader, with his long, silver hookah, his Khyber knife (like the two that sat on our mantelpiece at home) and his blood feuds. He had the ring of authenticity about him, he symbolized Pukthunwali, the way of the Pathan/Afghan. I remember wondering, from a very young age, whether Kipling had met or known a Pathan like Mahbub Ali? I came across Mahbub Ali in a number of earlier works of Kipling's, too. In the short story, "Dray Wara Yow Dee" (from Soldiers Three, 1888); and in the poem, "The Ballad of the King's Jest" (from Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, 1892). Many of the lines spoken by Mahbub Ali, or referring to him in these works, were polished and "rebuilt" into the finished version of Kim, as became obvious. Indeed, in it, Kipling also removed some basic mistakes and anomalies about Pathans/the Frontier,1 for he probably knew better by the time he sat down to write Kim.2 In any case, fired by these "encoun- ters", by the late-1980s, I was well on my way looking for a prototype for Mahbub Ali, convinced by then that there must have been someone, a real-life Pathan/Afghan, on whom Kipling modelled the essentials of 'C.25'. It was impossible looking for a Pathan "needle" in the Frontier "haystack", since there were about 25 million of them living there who were and are notably peripatetic. Going to India, to cover Kipling's time in Allahabad, was also out of the question for a Pakistani citizen at that time. Therefore, only two options were open to me. Firstly, to try to find out as much as I could about Kipling and Mahbub Ali in Lahore, where there might be some documentation or someone still liv- ing who remembered something. Secondly, to try to read up all I could find on Kipling, especially Kim. I was immediately confronted by difficulties. The major ones were: (a) how to go about identifying a Pathan who had lived a hundred years ago, when there existed very few public records and even these were 12__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 not very regularly or well-maintained?; (b) how to obtain access to any records that still existed, some forty years or more after Partition/Independence in 1947, given the state of our bureaucratic institutions in Pakistan?; and (c) how to go about tracking down any old/aged people, who still lived in Lahore, and were either of Pathan/Afghan origin themselves or remembered something about the old Pathan/Afghan families, who once inhabited the Old or Walled City of Lahore, c. 1840s to the turn of the century? This was a tall order by any standards – Lahore was already a city of some 40 million or more inhabitants, with a notoriously inefficient municipality, and with thousands of Pathans, who had settled there before and after 1947. Nevertheless, I spent the years between 1987-1988 and 1996-1997 in a very engrossing quest for Mahbub Ali. Luckily, I was able to gain access to some main libraries and archives in the Punjab's capital city. I was also able to pick the brains of all the professors, research schol- ars and/or historians of old Lahore, especially "British Lahore", that I could find or contact. While I was unable to "find" Mahbub Ali during these years, here are the main findings from the that period of my quest, which might be of some interest: 1. Lahore had grown almost beyond recognition since Kipling's time and even then, when Kipling was here (1882-1887), Lahore had already expanded considerably beyond what it had been say, for example, dur- ing the time of the great Mughal Akbar in the 16th century. I am appending two maps here (please see Annexes A and B), which are extremely simplified ones, made by myself, to explain this growth/expansion and to facilitate readers, who in my experience, are often confused about the localities and places mentioned in Kipling's works, including Kim. In these maps I have removed all superfluous information and detail, such as civic and municipal delineations, many, many small streets, byways, alleys etc, and just left the bare essentials. If you look at Annexe A, that is Mughal Lahore, you will see it basically centred around the Old/Walled medieval City-Fortress. The River Ravi flowed much closer to the city walls and probably served an additional defensive purpose and there was only one main link road or highway, the Grand Trunk Road, running from Bihar and Delhi via Lahore, all the way to Kabul. And the access points into Lahore were the great Gates leading into various quarters or parts of the city. I have listed ten of these, although, according to historians and archaeologists, there once were either 12 or 13 such gates. The ones I've listed are the known ones, some of which, or parts of which, still stand. At No.6 you will see the Delhi Gate, which was the one used by most people who were coming from the East, from Delhi, but not always by the Royal Family or the June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________13 Mughals themselves, who went on to No. 10, the Masti Gate, usually, for direct access to the Fort/Citadel and their palace complex within. Gate No.9, the Kashmir, or "Kashmiri" Gate, was the one generally used by the caravans from Kashmir, Afghanistan and Central Asia, which entered this way, after paying their cesses and tolls, then camping at or around the Sultan-ki-Serai (The Sultan's Serai – built much earlier in pre-Mughal days) – which is also referred to as "Sultan Serai", and which Kipling calls the 'Kashmir Serai' in Kim. The approximate loca- tion of what is left of this Serai is shown by a star on my map. The paths from here led to the famous 'Kashmir Bazaar', nearby (hence Kipling's connecting it with the Gate and Serai), where the goods and merchan- dize from these caravans were sold. This bazaar still exists today, though it is no longer exclusively a "Central Asian" or Kashmiri bazaar — you are more likely to find cheap Chinese copies of almost anything here! Very few old Pathan/Afghan families still live there. 2. In the second map, of Lahore during British times, you will already note the difference – how the city had changed even then. The Old/Walled City was marginalized, with the new British Mall, secre- tariat, cantonment, railway station, hospitals, colleges, and so on, dominating the "new dispensation". The Ravi was also contained beyond flood embankments. And many new roads and bridges, over and across the Ravi and in a number of other directions, linked the cap- ital to the rest of the Punjab and the Frontier. The Grand Trunk Road was still the main road running through this part of India (and Kipling depicts its teeming variety so wonderfully in Kim) but not the only alternative. The "Great Game", the "Forward Policy" and all that had irrevocably changed this position. For most ordinary Indians, the Lahore central railway station and its immediate environs were the hub of general activity. The Mall was comparatively more exclusive, with few Indian shops or businesses. For a young reporter like Kipling, on the Civil and Military Gazette staff, the station would have been a pri- mary "beat" for everyday news. And this is the side he probably used whenever he entered the Old/Walled City. He would probably go up towards the Kashmiri Gate, to see the Afghan/Central Asian traders and get "border news", through the Landa Bazaar (old clothes/rag mar- ket), and the Kashmir Bazaar. He could also walk around on the British "Circular Road" now circumscribing the Old City, to gain access to any of the other gates/points of entry. For example, towards the left, on the lower side of the Old City, is the Shrine of Hazrat (Saint) Al-Hajveri, Data Ganj Buksh, the Patron Saint of Lahore. Opposite this, is the Bhaati, or Bhatti Gate, and inside it, the Shahi Mohallah (Neighbourhood), within which is located the world-renowned Hira 14__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 Mandi (literally "Diamond/Jewel Market"), sometimes also referred to as the Bazaar-I-Husn ("the Bazaar of Beauty") – in effect, the "the Gate of the Harpies who paint their eyes to trap the stranger" where Mahbub Ali 'rolled across' (Kim, p.21), to call, quite deliberately, on the treacherous 'Flower of Delight' and her 'smooth-faced Kashmiri pundit' (ibid.). Even from within the Old City of Lahore, there is a con- siderable distance between the Kashmiri Gate and the Bhaati/Bhatti Gate, although they are almost exactly "across" from each other. Maybe, Kipling reduced this distance in the novel for dramatic effect? 3. Coming to Mahbub Ali, now. I was able, ultimately, to interview and meet many scores of people up until 1997. There were a number of families of Pathan/Afghan origin, mostly "Punjabized" by now, who were still living in Lahore. Some of them had settled in Lahore and other parts of the Punjab, c.1841-42, close to the end of the disastrous First Afghan War, mostly belonging to the Abdali/Durrani tribe (Saddozai, Barakzai clans), and had been among the nobility which had supported the British and escaped with the Amir Shah Shujah.3 There were some representatives of other tribes, too, including a very few Ghilzai families.4 1 could not find any trace of 'Mahbub Ali' or his chil- dren/family, as mentioned by MacMunn,5 among all these. I did find the families of two separate 'Mahbub Alis', however, both living c.1890s or the 1900s, in/near Lahore, but they did not have children with the names given by MacMunn, nor were they connected with either the horse-trade or the British Secret Service in India, as far as their descendants knew. Besides, neither was a Ghilzai – one was a Yusufzai (the ancestor of a very prominent family in Lahore now) and another was a Durrani. 4. One old bookbinder near Anarkali market, however, said that he remembered something about this – that, when he was a child and a young man in the 1920s, living in the Old City, there used to be a family of Pathans probably called the "Mahboob, or Mir Alam Khan family", who were quite well-known and whose ancestor, the above Mahboob or Mir Alam, had been reputed to have been "put in a book" by some famous English writer. This lead seemed quite good but nothing came out of it. The bookbinder didn't remember much more about the family, except that they lived in their neighbourhood and spoke Pushto among themselves but Punjabi with the locals. The Lahore municipal records, such as they were from those days, did not reveal anything about this family, or any other either, nor did a search of other libraries/archives in the province. Alas, many older records had been destroyed at the time of Partition, which, in my estimation, is an irreparable loss. I also learnt that June 2008______________KIPLING JOURNAL_____________________15 many Pathan families had shifted elsewhere over the years, some to other parts of India and Pakistan during the 1930s and '40s and some even abroad, to Australia, Canada, the U.K. and U.S.A. How could I possibly trace them down? I nearly gave up then. Yet, the hope of finding Mahbub Ali one day never really died. From 2002, I became increasingly preoccupied with numerous other projects but would, from time to time, go through all my notes and research that I had held on to. Over the years, living and working in Lahore, I have also tried to keep my search alive, as much as possible. While I still haven't found my Mahbub Ali, I have a number of "likely suspects" and one in particular, who comes very close to what I imag- ine this enigmatic Pathan to be like. Indeed, this particular Pathan is pointed out to us by J. Lockwood Kipling himself, in his illustrations to E.E. Oliver's Across the Border (1890), as already mentioned in a previous footnote. As I see it, the Afghan/Pathan depicted here is the strongest contender for the coveted position of Mahbub Ali. I don't know if this book is still to be found in libraries in Britain, or if it has ever been reprinted there or not. It is certainly not commonly available in libraries in Pakistan. It is not a "great" book on the Frontier, or the Pathan/Afghan and Baloch people/tribes – certainly not to be compared with works by the likes of Burnes, Edwardes, Bellew, Warburton, Hyat-Khan, Caroe and a few others – and its chief attraction is in the fine illustrations by J. Lockwood Kipling, who made studies of many folk from various parts of India and its surrounding regions, espe- cially the Frontier, the Northern Himalayas, the Karakoram, Ladakh and Tibet. Who can ever forget him in Kim, in that loving portrayal by his son? The wise, gentle and knowledgeable Englishman, talking avidly and learnedly with the 'Red' lama (pp.6-11)? Here, if anywhere, East and West 'meet', in this benevolent exchange. We know, too, from var- ious sources, that Kipling relied heavily on his father for a lot of information, the fruit of his many years in India, especially appertaining to Frontier matters. No doubt, Lockwood also introduced the young Kipling to many interesting people there, both Englishmen and natives. Why could it not be, then, that 'Mahbub Ali', Ghilzai, Afghan/Pathan horse-trader, jolly ruffian and C.25, was also introduced by Lockwood to his son? Or even vice-versa? Later maintaining contact with the father, once the son had gone from India? In his book, Oliver talks about various tribes and, among them, mentions the Ghilzai (or "Khiljai/Khilji", as they are sometimes called) and their main clans/septs. Some of these clans were reputed to be great travellers and merchants, and '[In every Indian bazaar] ... the Afghan merchant is [known] ... by his strange appearance, his great stature, 16__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 physical strength, and rude independence of mind' (p.79). He goes on to tell us how they trade in a wide variety of things, ranging from camels and horses, to a host of commodities. Of this tribe, living mostly in Afghanistan, The Sulaiman Khels are the most numerous, the most powerful and the most warlike. . . They, with their allied clans, are scattered over a great extent of the territory from Peshin nearly as far as Jelalabad. Of those who come down into British territory ... many are brokers and merchants on some scale, travelling as far as Calcutta, buying wholesale and selling to other[s]. . . Probably the richest [among them] are the Mian Khels . . . Most of the Bukhara trade—silk, sheep-skin coats and rugs—is in their hands. . . They dress better, look better [than other clansmen]—having often quite ruddy com- plexions ..." (pp.83-84, with ellipsis)) On page 103 of the book, we have a sketch of 'Sulaiman Khel (Ghilzai) horse-dealers', sketched 'from life' (see Annexe C, Fig./Illustration 1), probably at the "Sultan Serai", or "Kashmir Serai", in Old Lahore! And on page 84, another life-sketch, of one 'Mir Alam Khan—A Mian Khel Ghilzai' (see Annexe C, Fig/Illustration 2). The typical, voluminous turban, the stern and dignified appearance are to be particularly noted. It reminds one that Hopkirk quotes another witness, Kipling's CMG editor, E. Kay Robinson, as saying that the 'real' Mahbub Ali was a Pathan of 'magnificent mien and features' (p.60). This was an exciting rediscovery for me. Although not as corpulent as our Mahbub Ali, nor exactly a graybeard dying his hair, this figure still resembles him a lot. Could this Mir Alam [Khan] be, after all, the main/central model for our elusive 'Mahbub Ali'? He is (a) a Mian Khel Ghilzai Afghan/Pathan; (b) one of a recognized community of merchants and traders with interests extending into Central Asia; (c) involved intimately with horse/cattle-dealing; (d) frequently crossing the Afghan border, and with relations on both sides of the Durand Line; (e) with the same initials M and A, which, given the nature of Afghan revenge, could easily have covered up his real identity at that time—a legitimate bit of deception that General MacMunn and Robinson might have both supported, even later, especially if he had indeed been a British agent; and (f) there being a more than coincidental similarity between the name that was given me by the old Anarkali bookbinder many years ago and Mir Alam's. My instincts support this view. While, of course, this is in no way conclusive evidence, and my search for Mahbub Ali is in no way over, I am now trying to discover more about this Mir Alam Khan, who seems so tantalizingly like him. Perhaps, I can find some trace of him here in Lahore. Perhaps not. I June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________17 don't know where this search will lead me and what will come along the way. But like the lama, and like Kim, and Mahbub Ali himself, to some extent, I too am looking for something at the end of my road – relishing the journey and its manifold, enthralling dimensions as I walk along in search of enlightenment. NOTES 1. For instance, in "Dray Wara Yow Dee", the supposed Afridi swears by the 'Imams', which only a Muslim of the Shiah persuasion would do. Very few Pathan tribes are Shiah, and almost all the Afridis are Sunnis. They would never use such an oath. There is also considerable confusion about places/localities and place-names, in rela- tion to their geography. If the Afridi was a Tirahwal, a man from Tirah, in the "Tribal Belt" of the British Indian Frontier, he would be nowhere near 'Ghor', which is in Afghanistan, well on the other side of the Durand Line. Similarly, 'Pubbi' is a village or hamlet in the Peshawar area. 'Ismail-ki-Dhera' should be Dera Ismail Khan, or simply 'Dera' and so on. One mistake that Kipling makes in this story, as well as in Kim, is insisting that older Pathan men dyed their beards/hair with 'lime'. This is not true, as they generally use Henna, in the formal tradition or Sunnah, of the Prophet Muhammad. 2. I am convinced that Kipling either benefited from a reading of Sir Robert Warburton's posthumous memoirs, Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879-1898, (John Murray, London, 1900) when he was writing/revising Kim, or met/knew him in per- son earlier in India. Many of the events and actions that he mentions in his works are too similar to events narrated by Warburton to be coincidental. Warburton himself was also a very interesting person, the son of a British soldier and an Afghan lady, he served with considerable distinction on the Frontier. He was just the sort of fig- ure to bring out the romantic streak in Kipling's nature, and to inspire him with details and information about the "wild" and "savage" Frontier service perspectives which were not always available in distant Lahore. Another person who was quite close to the Kiplings, especially Lockwood, was Edward E. Oliver, who also wrote a book entitled Across the Border, or Pathan and Biloch (Chapman and Hall, London, 1890) – but more about this later. 3. Warburton tells us that a large number settled in Ludhiana, now in Indian Punjab, as well as Lahore, Peshawar and elsewhere in India. See Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879-1898, John Murray, London, 1900. O.U.P., Karachi ed., 1970. Chap.l, pp.2-8; and Chap.7, pp.104-105. 4. See Peter Hopkirk, on General MacMunn's recollections of the "real" Mahbub Ali, who said he was a Ghilzai Pathan. In Quest for Kim, John Murray, London, 1996. Chap.3, pp.51-67. MacMunn remembered the person on whom Kipling had mod- elled his creation, and who had been around in the 1890s when MacMunn himself was a young subaltern in Lahore. Hopkirk's quest for Mahbub Ali was quite inspi- rational and I tried to utilize some of its hints/clues, with little effect, sadly. In 2002, I wrote to Peter Hopkirk personally, with details of my research, and then again in 2003-2004, and he very kindly wrote back words of considerable encouragement. I don't know where Peter Hopkirk is now, we didn't keep in touch, but I would like to thank him for his kind words and sympathy. 5. In Hopkirk, pp.61. MacMunn named Mahbub Ali's three sons as Wazir, Afzul and Aslam. 18____________________KIPLING JOURNAL______________June 2008 MAP A. OLD LAHORE (MUGHAL PERIOD c1560s - 70s): The Walled City June 2008______________KIPLING JOURNAL_____________________19 MAP B. LAHORE DURING BRITISH TIMES (c1901) 20__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 EXPLANATION OF OTHER SYMBOLS MAP A. MAP B. Villages/settlements in the countryside around Lahore. Shrine of Hazrat Sheikh Ali Usman, al-Hajweri, "Data Ganj Baksh"; Sufi sage and Chief Patron Saint of the city Kashmir/Sultan-ki-serai. The Hira Mundi ("Diamond Market"), or Bazaar of the Courtesans and Prostitutes, in the Shahi-Mahallah / neighbourhood, inside the Bha'ati Gate. Original compounds, the Lahore fort and Royal Palaces. Various 'satellite towns' and new urban settlements. Lahore (Ravi) Protective Flood Embankment. Shrine of "Data Ganj Baksh". Mayo College of Arts (now N.C.A. and the Lahore Museum. "Zamzama" where Kim sat in front of the Lahore Museum. June 2008_______________KIPLING JOURNAL_______________________21 KHEL GHILZAI DRAWINGS Mir Alam Khan—A Mian Khel Ghilzai. Sulaiman Khel (Ghilzai) Horse-dealers.. 22_________________________KIPLING JOURNAL________________June 2008 WORKS CITED Hopkirk, Peter. Quest for Kim. John Murray, London, 1996. Kipling, Rudyard. Kim. Orig. 1901. Bantam Classic ed., New York, 1988. Also, Martin N. Cohen's Introduction to this edition. Oliver, Edward E. Across the Border, or Pathan and Biloch. London: Chapman & Hall, 1890. With illustrations by John Lockwood Kipling. Warburton, Sir Robert. Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879-1898. Orig. John Murray, London, 1900. O.U.P. ed., Karachi, 1970. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY Bayly, C.A. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996. Bloom, Harold. (Ed). Rudyard Kipling's Kim: Modern Critical Interpretations. Chelsea House, New York, 1987. Carrington, Charles. Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Works. Macmillan, London, 1955. Greenberg, Alan. The British Image of India. O.U.P., London, 1969. Hyat-Khan, Nawab Muhammad. Afghanistan and its Inhabitants. Orig. in Persian, Hayat-I-Afghan, 1865. Trans. H.B. Priestley, 1874. Sang-e-Meel ed., Lahore, 1981. Jamiluddin, K. The Tropic Sun: Rudyard Kipling and the Raj. n.p., Lucknow, India, 1974. Lee, Harold. Brothers in the Raj: The Lives of John and Henry Lawrence. O.U.P., Karachi., 2004. Swanson, Arthur. North-West Frontier. Hutchinson, London, 1967. Talbot, Ian. Punjab and the Raj, 1849-1947. Manohar, Delhi, 1988. Wilson, Angus. The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling. Granada/Panther Books, London, 1979. "NAULAKHA" IN VERMONT An article on "Seeking inspiration where writers lived" (International Herald Tribune, 27 February 2008) was brought to my attention by Prof T. Pinney. Two short paragraphs in the article describe the Kiplings' first home outside Brattleboro, and make the state- ment that 'the house is still full of Kipling's own furniture and paintings and books'. Prof Pinney points out that this is quite wrong in that Kipling left nothing behind in "Naulakha". He adds, however, that the Landmark Trust (the current owners of the house) did a very careful work of restoration, and there was much local information that was available to guide the them. – Ed. June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL__________________23 "REFERENCES", "CROSS-REFERENCES", AND NOTIONS OF HISTORY IN KIPLING'S PUCK OF POOK'S HILL and REWARDS AND FAIRIES By LISA A.F. LEWIS [This article by Lisa Lewis, one of our Vice-Presidents and a regular contributor to the Journal, first appeared in English Literature in Transition 1880-1920, Vol.50, No.2, 2007 as part of the celebration of its 50th year of publication. I am extremely grateful to Prof Robert Langenfeld, Editor of ELT for permission to reprint it. – Ed.] On 13 December 1910, Kipling wrote to his friend Edward Lucas White that in Rewards and Fairies (1910), sequel to his historical fantasy Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), there were "references and cross-references".1 In his autobiography Something of Myself he would say of the book: since the tales had to be read by children, before people realised that they were meant for grown-ups; and since they had to be a sort of balance to, as well as a seal upon, some aspects of my 'Imperialistic' output in the past, I worked the material in three or four overlaid tints and textures, which might or might not reveal themselves according to the shifting light of sex, youth, and expe- rience. It was like working lacquer and mother o' pearl, a natural combination, into the same scheme as niello and grisaille, and try- ing not to let the joins show.2 Writing in 1912, Dixon Scott saw the two books as a welcome new development in Kipling's work: "a wonderful attempt to make his qual- ities cure their natural defects—to make sharpness and bright neatness produce their natural opposites—depth and shimmer and bloom". Scott judged Rewards and Fairies to be the best example of this new man- ner, seeing the stories as "a complex tissue" in several layers.3 Despite the critical attention that has already been paid to these lay- ers and textures, there are still discoveries in the two books to be made. Close reading reveals how subtly Kipling insinuates opinions that are much more complex than those usually attributed to him as "bard of empire" and glorifier of war. When he writes of empires, it is not of the glories and rewards of conquest, but of how such empires may be ruled or lost. Power and wealth are less important than culture for Edwardian children to inherit, and history is an important part of that culture. But recorded history and commentary on that history can be misleading or deceptive. Kipling empowers his readers to use their own perceptions to seek out historical truths, suggesting ways in which this might be 24__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 achieved. As examples to be followed, he shows many kinds of hero- ism, but the heroes' victories are over themselves. This article will examine the methods by which he plants these ideas, some in one book, some in the other, and some in both, all adding "depth" as well as "shimmer and bloom". One method he uses is "cross-references" between story and story, or between a story and a poem attached to it. T.S. Eliot, who included more poems from the Puck books in his A Choice of Kipling's Verse than from any of Kipling's other collections, observed that the rela- tionships between poems and stories in his books are important to the various layers of meaning: "we must finally judge him, not separately as poet and as a writer of prose fiction, but as the inventor of a mixed form".4 In this way, Kipling creates running subtexts throughout each book. Another method is linking images and motifs. Both are tech- niques he would use again.5 It could be thought that the various images and motifs that will be described here were part of a subconscious process, but his description of the writing of Rewards and Fairies, quoted above, suggests otherwise. § § § Philip Mason perceived the image of iron in Rewards and Fairies as having three meanings: "the power of redemptive suffering", "the power of the sword", and "custom and drudgery". "Here are three kinds of power", he says, "that may affect a man's life. The link between these three odd bedfellows is the compulsion that is exercised on a man by his own sense of his own honesty and duty".6 The weight of this image is manifest in the title of the first story in Rewards and Fairies, "Cold Iron", which is also the title of its following poem. While the importance of iron in the book is generally accepted, no one to my knowledge has examined the equally important image of wood, as exemplified in the title of the final story, "The Tree of Justice". One aspect of this has been carried over from Puck of Pook's Hill, where trees stand for secrets and the access to a historical world. Oak, ash, and thorn leaves take away the children's memories. They come out from the trees to meet Sir Richard in "The Joyous Venture", while Una is concealed by trees when Parnesius appears in "A Centurion of the Thirtieth". Trees have the same meaning in Rewards and Fairies. The Indian chiefs eavesdrop secretly on Washington's conference with his advisers, though Washington himself is not fooled: 'You taught me to look behind trees when we were both young'.7 Philadelphia, the narrator in "Marklake Witches", hides in a tree to play the eavesdropper. In the poem "The Way through the Woods" the image of trees as guardians of secrets is further expanded. While the placing of the poem before "Marklake Witches" tends to identify the ghostly rider, unseen June 2008______________KIPLING JOURNAL______________________25_ and heard only as 'the beat of a horse's feet / And the swish of a skirt in the dew',8 with Philadelphia, this poem also encapsulates Kipling's vision of history: living in the present, all we can hope to catch is an echo from past lives based on what little we know of them. In the soli- tude of the woods, the observer is taken out of time and these echoes can be heard. It is around such echoes that Kipling builds what John Bayley has called "brilliant structures and compulsively gripping moments of detail". Bayley points out that many of these are demon- strably "false", but suggests that this does not detract from "the mystery behind them".9 At another level wood stands for craftsmanship, especially carpen- try, which is central to the frame stories of "The Wrong Thing" and "The Conversion of St. Wilfrid". In "Simple Simon", the children meet a lumber team in the woods; the narrator of the story builds wooden ships to fight the Armada and keep England safe from invasion. At a third level, wooden structures also stand for man-made systems of gov- ernment and law. In "The Tree of Justice", King Henry I is only safe within the wooden stand that Sir Richard (who, with precautions, can walk in the woods because he is a good landlord) has had built for him. The opening paragraphs of the story describe a tree as a crucifix or gal- lows to which vermin may be nailed and from which men may be hanged. In Sir Richard's narrative, however, it becomes an image of justice, something that cannot be imposed in a newly conquered coun- try, but needs trust in order to grow. The Saxon state has been defeated, ex-King Harold's heart has broken, and he is no longer fit to rule. In "A Carol", the poem at the end of the book, a tree 'breaks her heart in the cold': 'Her wood is crazed and little worth / Excepting as to burn'.10 Harold's appearance among the living trees – where the new King dare not walk – and his death in the arms of his faithful kinsman Hugh can light a fire in the heart of the Norman King, who attracts no such devo- tion, but who would govern England according to Saxon as well as Norman law. The three meanings all involve people's relationships with each other and with society in general. Secrets are revealed to the innocent and well intentioned, but not (in " 'A Priest in Spite of Himself ") to would-be profiteers. True craftsmanship is honest and committed ('do your work with your heart's blood' 11). Justice and the people's consent are as essential to the ideal state as the firm hand of power. Reviewing the previous collection, Alfred Noyes wrote that in "Puck of Pook's Hill we suspect that Mr. Kipling has for the first time dug through the silt of modern Imperialism... let popular Imperialists beware of him. The day may come when he will turn and rend them".12 This link- ing theme in the first book is obvious. England is shown as colonised by the Saxons, Normans and Romans, a reversal of the contemporary 26__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 situation in which the British dominate other peoples. Between the Norman and Roman cycles, the poem "Cities and Thrones and Powers" points out the ephemeral nature of empires, however powerful they may look. While thus undermining any notion the young reader of 1906 might have that the British ruled by God-given right, Kipling suggests what will consolidate an imperial regime and what is likely to destroy it. Good local administration and respect for people's customs (as typified by Sir Richard and his overlord) lead to stability. Central power struggles are dangerous: Maximus's failed rebellion encourages the downtrodden Picts to ally with the invading Vikings in "The Winged Hats". In Rewards and Fairies, the poem "A St. Helena Lullaby" drives home the message that imperial ambitions can go badly wrong. Both books include a theme of law. In Puck of Pook's Hill, there are the rules Sir Richard and De Aquila impose (or relax) on their Saxon peasants, and Hal o' the Draft's frustration by smugglers. This theme culminates in the final story, "The Treasure and the Law", which con- cerns how King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta. In Rewards and Fairies, the problems of law in a conquered country are aired in "The Tree of Justice". William the Conqueror's eldest son Robert of Normandy was supplanted when first William II, and then at the lat- ter's death Henry I, seized the English throne. Henry's court is therefore full of divided loyalties, which only Rahere the jester, whom no one has to take seriously, dares to mention. Robert comes across as a weak character who is, claims Henry, being manipulated into war by 'his cursed barons'.13 'Hard, dark Henry', by contrast, is a fighter and intriguer, an autocrat whose momentary whim can have a man hanged or pardoned, but his followers will only be loyal so long as he is win- ning. The barons care for nothing but their own advancement. The young knights from Normandy are hoping for lands in England, but think it amusing to fire arrows and insults at the Saxons whom they hope to rule, risking a violent response that their fellow Norman Sir Richard must avert. These divisions are foreshadowed at the beginning of the story, when the two children – who come of a landowning family – find their sympathies are not with the gamekeeper Ridley, but with Hobden the poacher. Most divided of all is Saxon Hugh. 'Poor Hugh!' says Una. 'Was he so tired?'14 But Dan understands that there is more than fatigue behind his depression. Though he has Norman friends and holds land under De Aquila, the reappearance of the Saxon king reminds him of his true allegiance. All he can do is hold and comfort the dying man, and in doing so he risks everything. Rahere the jester dominates the scene, manipulating the new King's mood so that Harold can die in peace and Henry can see what true June 2008_______________KIPLING JOURNAL_______________________27_ loyalty means. This appeals to his better nature, to the side of him that dreams of establishing a stable society in which assassinations do not lead to anarchy, but the King's peace shall hold 'though King, son and grand-son were all slain in one day'.15 History tells us that it would be a long, bloodstained time before his great-grandson John would be forced to sign the Magna Carta and so establish the rights of individu- als under the law. If, in seeking to build his ideal state, Henry is chiefly thinking to establish his bloodline, Rahere (who is "half priest" and his- torically may have been wholly so) shows him, through Harold and Hugh, a better and more humane objective. True justice requires the consent of the governed. In Kipling's metaphor, there are better uses for trees than as improvised gallows. In the final story of Puck of Pook's Hill, "The Treasure and the Law", Kadmiel tells how Magna Carta would never have been signed if he had not prevented King John from acquiring Sir Richard's trea- sure. As Puck sums it up: "Weland gave the Sword! The Sword gave the Treasure, and the Treasure gave the Law".16 In the poem at the end of the Norman cycle, "The Runes on Weland's Sword", the voice is Weland's, speaking as the sword on which he carves the verses: The Gold I gather Comes into England Out of deep Water. Like a shining Fish Then it descends Into deep Water. It is not given For goods or gear But for The Thing.17 Magna Carta is seen as the foundation of parliamentary democracy. This is "The Thing" (in the ancient sense of an assembly) referred to in the runes. The fact that the gold comes from Africa would have had special resonance in 1906, since British gold- and diamond-mining interests had been one reason for the recently concluded South African war. The poem is attached to "Old Men at Pevensey", in which a mix- ture of blackmail and bribery induces the treacherous Fulke to change sides. The combination works better than violence would have done: 'I could never have fetched that grunt out of thee with any sword', says De Aquila.18 This is the only time the treasure is actually used. Although, as Kadmiel shows in "The Treasure and the Law", without 28__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 gold a regime is powerless, neither armies nor treasure can ensure free- dom; since England was at the height of her wealth and power when the book first appeared, this was something that needed saying. Kipling underscores that the true heritage of Dan and Una is a cultural heritage, of which history is an essential part. The many ways history is recorded and interpreted are another major theme that permeates Puck of Pook's Hill. Written evidence is shown as less reliable than it seems. In "Old Men at Pevensey" an ambitious monk deliberately slants the record for political reasons. The manor rolls can also be falsified – De Aquila says of a girl 'write her free',19 yielding to her family's importunity without examining the facts. In "Hal o' the Draft" a magistrate decides not to prosecute vil- lagers guilty of gun running, so that this crime would not be listed in the trial records for Henry VII's reign. A letter written by one charac- ter to another, but which may be read by hostile eyes on the road, carries an opposite message between the lines. When Maximus writes to Parnesius that he should not heed defeatist rumours, Pertinax com- ments: 'He writes as a man without hope'.20 The oral tradition represented by old Hobden, though it may seem full of superstitious nonsense, contains hints and suggestions that can carry more than symbolic meaning, as the Marsh, which looks so flat and plain, is full of hidden dykes.21 The land itself, with its traditional place names, its hills, fords and pathways, bears true witness to the past. Little Lindens farm, the parish church and the ruins of the old forge each contribute to the unspoken record. The children's emergence from the house and their exploration of the countryside can also be seen as a reaching out beyond parental con- trol. At the beginning of the first story their games are still organised by their father; by the end of it they are returning from a world at which he can only guess. As the book goes on they move more freely about the landscape, making their own friendships and discovering its history (with help from Puck) for themselves. "Puck's Song" introduces the theme of historical research, connecting it with the physical features and institutions of the valley: See you the dimpled track that runs All hollow through the wheat? O that was where they hauled the guns That smote King Philip's fleet. See you our little mill that clacks, So busy by the brook? She has ground her corn and paid her tax Ever since Domesday Book.22 June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL__________________29 The theme of history is connected in the last verse to another aspect of the children's cultural heritage, literature and folk tradition: "Merlin's Isle of Gramarye". Most of the texts mentioned or quoted involve folk tales, myth or magic. In the first story, Shakespeare's poetry is the key that unlocks the secret, but it is A Midsummer Night's Dream, not the historical plays with their Tudor propaganda, that will put the children in touch with the living past. The scenes in which Bottom visits the fairy world, repeated three times in the right spirit and place at the right time, prove to have 'broken the Hills' and summoned Puck to appear. Bishop Corbett's "Farewell Rewards and Fairies" con- firms their friendship. This poem can be found in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, of which there is a copy in Kipling's study. Other references to poems in Percy include "The Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton", which Dan is reading in "Hal o' the Draft", and "Mary Ambree", played by Drake's trumpets in "Simple Simon"; "Robin Goodfellow" may have been a source for the charac- ter of Puck, while the eponymous "Glasgerion" swears by "oak and ash and thorn". A reference to The Arabian Nights with their Djinns and Afrits helps Puck explain his attitude to conventional descriptions of fairies. Una finds a further point of reference in Heroes of Asgard, a retelling for children of the Norse legends from which the character of Weland originally derives. The story ends with the children's father reciting a verse from Hogg's "Kilmeny", another poem about fairies in which a girl visits and then returns from a magic world. Literature is less evident in Rewards and Fairies. The name Gloriana (like Una) comes from Spenser's The Faerie Queene. In his letter to Lucas White, Kipling wrote that Rewards and Fairies included 'thefts and plagiarisms and ploughing with other folks' heifers'.23 The image of cold iron as a symbol of captivity can be found in The Faerie Queene, where the threat of Artegall's imprisonment by the Amazon climaxes: "And lay vpon him, for his greater dread / Cold yron chaines, with which let him be tide; / And let, what euer he desires, be him denide".24 The raising of the Boy by the fairies in the first story echoes Prince Arthur's upbringing: "From mothers pap I taken was vnfit: /And streight delivered to a Faery knight / To be vpbrought in gentle thewes and martiall might".25 But he too must bow his head to the burden of cold iron. Another Spenserian trope is echoed in the wood image: trees as a symbol of nationhood, whereby Merlin tells Britomart that her marriage will produce "a famous Progenie", a race that is compared to a "Tree, / Whose big embodied braunches shall not lin, / Till they to heauens hight forth stretched bee".26 Among more recent literary references in Puck of Pook's Hill, in "The Knights of the Joyous Venture" Sir Richard recognises Longfellow's "Othere", a retelling of a traditional saga, as a story he 30__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 has heard. At the end Dan refers to G. M. Ballantyne's adventure sto- ries, in which he found his information about gorillas, offering an explication of the "Devils". 'All people can be wise by reading of books', comments Puck. 'But are the books true?' asks the knight.27 Puck then leads him on to tell the third story in his cycle, "Old Men at Pevensey", in which writing is used to deceive: 'tricked out and twisted from its true meaning, yet withal so cunningly that none could deny who knew him that De Aquila had in some sort spoken those words'.28 The Roman stories which follow are introduced by quotations from Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, another retelling of old stories for children to read. This cycle too builds to a story in which the truth or otherwise of writing matters. Parnesius's letters home are more reliable than official reports. Maximus's last despatch writes of his defeat and certain death; the letter falls by chance into the hands of the enemy and is delivered by them for their own ends, but on the outer roll Parnesius sees a stain that 'my heavy heart perceived was the valiant blood of Maximus'.29 The bloodstain both foretells and authenticates the news. Perception is important in this book. Puck promises the children: 'By right of Oak, Ash and Thorn are you free to come and go and look and know where I shall show or best you please. You shall see What you shall see and you shall hear What you shall hear. . .'.30 But they are not allowed to understand everything. Sometimes they and Puck know more than the other characters, but at others Puck and a character, or Kipling and the reader, will talk over their heads. The book is full of ambiguities and deceptions, belief in what is false, doubt of what is true. Finding that the children seem to know more than he does about gorillas, although he has seen them and they have not, Sir Richard comments: 'Is there no sorcery left in the world?' 'I don't know', answered Dan, uncomfortably. 'I've seen a man take rabbits out of a hat, and he told us we could see how he did it, if we watched hard. And we did.' 'But we didn't,' said Una, sighing.31 Puck allows himself to be visible and audible to the children, but their parents never see him. Old Hobden sees something, but the exact nature of his vision is left in doubt. Is he seeing a 'magnificent dog-fox' with something uncanny about it at the end of "The Winged Hats", or does he know it is Puck in disguise, while the children, bemused by the magic leaves, can only see a fox? This prepares readers for " 'Dymchurch Flit' ", in which Puck will appear and talk to Hobden in the semblance of his old friend Tom Shoesmith, who tells Mrs. June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL__________________31 Hobden's family story about the tradition behind "Farewell Rewards and Fairies". The extent to which Hobden understands or believes in the story is again left obscure. The Bee Boy, who comes into the oast- house as Puck's voice is heard outside, is probably in on the secret, as one who can 'see further into a millstone than most'. But then he is something between a child and an adult, since he is 'not quite right in the head'.32 The following collection, Rewards and Fairies, is also full of ambi- guities about history. Whereas in Puck of Pook's Hill only old Hobden and his son represented the living countryside in its relation to the past, now two other characters play a similarly equivocal role between the children, Puck and the historical narrators. Mr. Dudeney tells the chil- dren that they have been asleep as they sat with him on the downs. If he is telling the truth, they were dreaming while they eavesdropped on Puck and the flintworker, but there are other possibilities. Dan meets Hal in Mr. Springett's company, without Puck's appearing at all; at the end, the old man seems to wake and to believe their meeting was only a dream. Gloriana speaks of the deceits that are played on her and the cost of keeping up a front: " 'She can only see darkly some dark motion mov- ing in Philip's dark mind, for he hath never written before in this fashion. She must smile above the letter as though it were good news from her ministers—the smile that tires the mouth and the poor heart' ".33 She is also self-deceived, telling herself that men love her for her beauty and not for her power; just how far the young men react to the sexual stimulus she feels remains unclear. In "Marklake Witches", Philadelphia's nurse steals the family silver (then a hanging offence) to pay for a "cure" for her charge's cough, after the old Witchmaster has pretended to demand it. Philadelphia herself compounds the crime by covering it up. Religious belief of various kinds and at various historical periods is an important theme in Rewards and Fairies. Sandra Kemp has looked in detail at the treatment of Christianity, showing how it fits with other, earlier Kipling stories that "question nineteenth-century Evangelical Christianity, and challenge the proselytising, educational and philan- thropic motives of Church missions".34 In "The Conversion of St. Wilfrid", both the saint and his chaplain Eddi learn "a spiritually richer, more tolerant belief'.35 John Coates has argued that Norse gods such as Thor here represent hard work and sacrifice. The emphasis on Thor, he suggests, is "interesting": "Thor was not, like Odin, the champion of kings and nobles, but of craftsmen, peasants, and those who had to work. He was the maintainer of oaths and contracts". Coates points out that Kipling conflates "the worker-god Thor and the self-sacrificing 32__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 Tyr", who could only conquer the Fenris-Wolf at the cost of his own hand.36 Of the god-hero tradition in "The Knife and the Naked Chalk", Kipling wrote to a friend: Put the Flint age, as we honestly can, some few score thousand years back—before Norse Mythology had grown. . . I assume that the Flintworkers had legends of one dim and distant hero (always "up yonder" as heroes are) who in binding The Beast, the incarna- tion of all evil—lost his hand. Naturally when my man parts with his eye he is compared to Thor-Tyr-Tir-Thu—the Great one up North—and when he also produces a veritable knife that goes through and into the Beast like a pin into a pat of butter, the next most obvious step is to cry:— 'This is Tyr himself!' 37 Kipling's attitude to religion was unorthodox, but the Archbishop of Canterbury recently called him a "necessary" and "an exhilarating partner for people who like to think of themselves as more orthodox in their faith".38 Among the chapter headings in Kim are "Buddha at Kamakura" and "The Prayer", suggesting that all faiths are valid for their believers, and all must be respected. None of the various beliefs in Rewards and Fairies is pre-eminent; though Christianity seems to be the most strongly endorsed, in the very story where it is central, "The Conversion of St. Wilfrid", the saint's respect for other beliefs is con- trasted with his subordinate's more conventional, less flexible attitude. The church as institution is not necessarily a good influence. The Catholic Spanish deny religious freedom, hanging and burning "heretics" in the Elizabethan stories. In "The Tree of Justice", the church authorities are among King Henry Ps enemies, since he is in dispute with the Vatican over his 'home-brewed Bishops', whom he has appointed without papal approval in order to gain a "blessing" for his war against Robert of Normandy. But implicit in the story is the notion that Henry, usurper though he may be, is on the right side, since he seeks to limit the power of the Norman barons. They prefer anarchy to peace, finding a permanent system of justice 'clean against their stomachs' 39 because it will limit their opportunities of increasing their lands and wealth. This looks back to the poem "Cold Iron", in which a rebellious Baron is defeated, first by cannonballs and then by the nails that fastened Christ (the King against whom he fought) to the cross. " 'Iron, out of Calvary, is Master of man all!' " admits the Baron in the last line.40 There are other beliefs in the book besides Christianity and the Nordic aesir. Hal o' the Draft and Mr. Springett converse in the lan- guage of Freemasonry. The poem "The Mother Lodge" (1895) June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________33 suggests that it was through his multiracial Masonic Lodge in Lahore that Kipling learned to value different religions. Superstition also has its place in the book's scheme. There are fairies in "Brookland Road" and "The Ballad of Minepit Shaw". As a descendant of the family in " 'Dymchurch Flit' ", Widow Whitgift in "Simple Simon" has the sec- ond sight and can foretell the future. Culpeper in "A Doctor of Medicine" believes in astrology, personalising the planets as Graeco- Roman gods – Jupiter, Mars, Venus. This belief combines with his medical experience to modify the harshness of his Puritanism. In the last line of the final poem of the book, Kipling seems to appeal to a supreme God over the heads of all the churches: 'And who shall judge the Lord?' 41 Culpeper is not the only healer in the book. Jerry Gamm, the "witch-master" in "Marklake Witches", can cure more people with his "charms" and herbal remedies than can the local doctor. Rene Laennec's invention of the stethoscope, though it comes too late to help Philadelphia, will lead to a better understanding of the tuberculosis that is killing her. In the Pharaoh Lee stories, Toby Hirte uses Native American as well as European remedies. He is a dedicated healer who, when an epidemic of yellow fever strikes, rushes to treat the sufferers. Like Culpeper, he is one of Kipling's hero-physicians, who are described as "nobly bold" in the poem " 'Our Fathers of Old' ". What other kinds of hero are we (and the children) being asked to admire in these books? The Jew Kadmiel deliberately provokes a Christian mob, enabling him to find the treasure unobserved and then sink it in the sea, so that eventually "the Law" will protect them all. Military heroes include Parnesius, who is told that he will never be a general because he is not ruthless enough: 'but my Father seemed pleased'.42 He fights for his country to exhaustion and beyond, even when all seems hopeless. Sir Richard is the Norman conqueror who allows himself to be barred from his Great Hall by the previous owner's daughter, rather than exert his newly won power and alienate both her and the local population. He joins with his Saxon serfs to fight off Norman raiders. In "The Tree of Justice", he does not hang poachers as the law requires because he 'cannot abide to hear their widows screech'.43 Then there are rulers, present and past. Washington refuses public pressure to declare a war the newly founded United States can- not win; the rightness of his decision is underlined in the following poem, "If—". Ex-King Harold vowed to give way to Norman William although he had no intention of keeping his vow, since it meant submit- ting his country to a foreign dominance. Each of them asks what else he could have done, the phrase that Kipling described as 'the plinth of all structures' in Rewards and Fairies.44 It refers therefore to hard choices 34__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 that can lead to unpopularity or loss. It is spoken by the flintworker, who sacrificed his eye and his chances of earthly happiness to save his peo- ple from the wolves. Equally courageous is the jester Rahere, who risks his life when he dares the wrath of King and barons to show what no one else will speak of. The smuggler Pharaoh Lee also shows courage in " 'A Priest in Spite of Himself ", but in the following poem, " 'Poor Honest Men' ", smugglers reveal themselves as having courage, but no heroism. Theirs is not an example to be followed. The best-selling children's writer Rosemary Sutcliff once called old Hobden "the true hero" of these books.45 He is a steadfast presence in the background, the most important human friend the children make. In the opening story in Puck of Pook's Hill, their relationship with him is explicitly compared to their friendship with Puck. He is linked with the history of the land: Puck has known his family since before the Norman conquest. His importance keeps growing until in " 'Dymchurch Flit' " he is present throughout, eliciting the tale from Tom Shoesmith, who is also Puck. Thus at his own, different level he shares the daemonic func- tion as intermediary between the worlds. In Rewards and Fairies, Hobden retains control of the framing action at the beginning and end of the book. It is he who sends the children out to look for an otter in "Cold Iron", while in the last paragraph of "The Tree of Justice" he replaces the dormouse in the hedgerow for a safe resurrection next spring, concluding, " 'An' now we'll go home.' " 46 The series is fin- ished, and the children will have no more historical visions. History at ground level is evoked in "A Charm", the introductory poem to Rewards and Fairies, where Kipling employs motifs to carry the undercurrent of his views on history: Take of English earth as much As either hand may rightly clutch. In the taking of it breathe Prayer for all who lie beneath—47 It goes on to recommend working in a flower garden as a cure for men- tal problems. A flower motif becomes a symbol of domesticity. Gloriana the Virgin Queen's 'flowers all withered'.48 She tears a flower to pieces as she speaks of King Philip's unwanted courtship. The expert teenage housewife Philadelphia Bucksteed is 'a flower' 49 whose impending death makes strong men weep as she sings. Homesick Pharaoh Lee is lured ashore in an American port by the smell of lilacs, taken in by the Moravian Brethren and given a room 'looking on the flower garden'.50 Such motifs are another way in which Kipling quietly conveys his ideas. For example, a stirring of wind in the trees implies June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL_______________ 35 the necessity of forestalling a threatened invasion. In "Cold Iron" it is a northeast wind, because the threat is from Thor's Scandinavian wor- shippers. In "Gloriana" "the wind blows through Brickwall Oak" as she reads the letter in which King Philip threatens her with "destruction".51 In the opening sentence of "The Tree of Justice", a southwest wind is blowing through Dallington forest — much of Normandy lies southwest of Bateman's, and King Henry's rule is menaced from Normandy. In Puck of Pook's Hill, the word "paint" and its derivatives become a motif for deception, how the surface of things may be misleading. The Picts or 'Painted People', trapped between two strong nations, are forced to practise deceit in order to survive. 'Painty-winged' fairies are 'made-up things' — a 'set of impostors',52 as opposed to Puck, who rep- resents a genuine supernatural force. The children's dinghy has a 'painted name' 53 which they never use; they prefer to call it the Golden Hind or the Long Serpent, because to them the boat means adventure. Parnesius calls a pheasant a " 'painted, clucking fool.. . just like some Romans!' "54 This is picked up when the neighbour's pheasants, falsely believing in their safety, are ritually slaughtered in the last chapter; a wounded one falls 'like a shell' 55 almost on top of the children. Flying insects flit about the frames of the stories. They act as another motif that signals the transition to the secret world. There is a 'big Red Admiral' by the stream that frames "The Joyous Venture". Even at the end of the first tale a 'big white moth' flies 'unsteadily from the alders and flapped round the children's heads',56 as Puck agrees to let them hear the rest of the story about Weland's sword. In Rewards and Fairies, Una is recalled to the present when 'a big blundering cockchafer' 57 flies into her cheek at the end of "Marklake Witches". In "The Knife and the Naked Chalk" she and Dan hear 'the hum of insects in thyme' 58 just before Puck and the flintworker appear to them. "The Bee Boy's Song" introduces the story " 'Dymchurch Flit' ", suggesting that the bees must be told all a family's secrets, for 'if you don't deceive your Bees / Your Bees will not deceive you.' 59 Bees are flying in the garden at Little Lindens farm when Hal o' the Draft, revisiting his birthplace, settles on a bench before he starts his tale. There are not unexpectedly autobiographical suggestions. The Bee Boy is said to have had an original in real life. Hobden had at least one. The children are the same ages and sexes as Kipling's own, as the house and grounds in the stories are his recently purchased estate of Bateman's. A trace of autobiography has further been noticed in the stories "Cold Iron", in which an imaginative boy is bound to a life of humdrum service to others, and "The Wrong Thing", where a knight- hood is bestowed on a craftsman, not for his best work, but for an inferior piece that has saved the government money.60 One strand in 36__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 Rewards and Fairies, dealing with the historical tensions and bonds among England, the United States and France, seems to connect with Kipling's wife, who was descended from a Frenchman and from old New England families, which were thus part of his children's heritage. More importantly, this element in the book seems to be aimed at an American readership since their opinions of England had been a cause of dissent between him and his American friends.61 "Gloriana" fore- shadows the earliest colonies in Virginia. Three stories, "Marklake Witches", "Brother Square-Toes" and " 'A Priest in Spite of Himself ", have as background the Napoleonic wars. The narrator of "Marklake Witches" is a young English girl half in love with a French prisoner of war. In the other two Napoleonic stories U.S. sympathies are strongly pro-French. The gypsy narrator Pharaoh Lee is half- English and half-French, but becomes an American immigrant. With his background among Sussex smugglers, he exploits this triple iden- tity as a transatlantic blockade-runner. In the final story, "The Tree of Justice", England and Normandy are in the process of separation, as the conquerors of 1066 lose their identities with their roots, comparable to the separation between Britain and the United States in the War of Independence. § § § Kipling wrote to Edward Bok, the magazine editor who would publish the first four stories in Puck of Pook's Hill,62 that they were 'part of a scheme of mine for trying to give children not a notion of history but a notion of the time sense which is at the bottom of all knowledge of his- tory and history rightly understanded means love of one's fellow men and the lands one lives in.' Kipling further explained that 'the actual background of the English stories is—the actual English background hereabouts.' 63 As has been rightly pointed out, Kipling, a much-trav- elled, rootless man, is trying in these books "to assimilate a homeland", to prove himself a "true-born Englishman".64 But there is more to the books than that. Parallels have often been drawn between Parnesius and his friend Pertinax in Puck of Pook's Hill and British subalterns on the Indian frontier. In that book, as we saw earlier, Kipling attacks the more complacent forms of patriotism, influ- encing his readers not to take present supremacy for granted. Since this is a book about local history, it is history they are encouraged to research; but such fruitful curiosity could apply to contemporary mat- ters as well – matters such as how to govern an empire, the need for religious tolerance, as well as the uses and limitations of law. As we have seen, Kipling meant Rewards and Fairies to be both a "balance to" and a "seal upon" his imperial writings. Though a keen advocate of the British Empire, he was conscious of its flaws. In his June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL__________________37 early Indian writings, he had often been critical of the Raj. Frivolous Simla ladies scheme for their friends' promotion in "The Education of Otis Yeere" (Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories). He wrote of cor- ruption in "A General Summary" (Departmental Ditties): Who shall doubt the "secret hid Under Cheops' pyramid" Was that the contractor did Cheops out of several millions? . . . ... As it was in the beginning Is to-day official sinning,. . .65 He would still be writing about corruption in "The Bridge-Builders" (The Day's Work), as well as interference from ignorant bureaucrats 'under the impression that bridges were cut out of paper'.66 But as Edward Said wrote, "Kipling would no more have questioned [racial] difference, and the right of the white European to rule, than he would have argued with the Himalayas".67 He believed the British Empire was a force for good in the world and supported Cecil Rhodes's plans to extend it. On the other hand, he campaigned anxiously for it to be governed justly and well. His view of the ideal imperial administrator can be found in the poem "If—". Though such administrators are rare beings, if indeed they exist at all, the poem retains its popularity while the story to which it originally referred is almost forgotten. The Puck series is now comparatively neglected, but it is important to an appreciation both of Kipling's literary gifts and of his opinions. The subtexts, images and motifs examined here show how cleverly he can put across his subliminal messages. As we now know, his dream of a vast, peaceful empire, led by the type of man he admired and closely allied to the United States and France, would never – could never — be realised. But these two books, once so widely read and enjoyed, tell us how he thought it might be made to work. Any useful and fair evalua- tion of Kipling's place in literature and history will need to include them. NOTES 1. Letter to Edward Lucas White, 13 December 1910. The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Pinney, ed. (London: Macmillan, 1996), vol.3, p.467. 2. Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself'(London: Penguin Books, 1987), p.145. 3. Dixon Scott, "Rudyard Kipling", Bookman, 47 (December 1912); repr. in Roger Lancelyn Green, ed., Kipling: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), p.316. 4. T. S. Eliot, A Choice of Kipling's Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1941), p.5. 38__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 5. For example, in the story collection Debits and Credits. See Lisa A.F. Lewis, "Some Links between the Stories in Kipling's Debits and Credits", English Literature in Transition, vol.26.2 (1982) pp.74-85. 6. Philip Mason, The Glass, the Shadow and the Fire (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971), p.178. 7. Rudyard Kipling, Rewards and Fairies (London: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 162. 8. ibid., p.106. 9. John Bayley, The Short Story: Henry James to Elizabeth Bowen (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1988), pp.68-69, 73. 10. Rewards and Fairies, p.264. 11. ibid., p.96. 12. Alfred Noyes, "Kipling the Mystic", Bookman, 31 (November 1906); repr. in Kipling: The Critical Heritage, pp.300-301. 13. Rewards and Fairies, p.259. 14. ibid., p.254. 15. ibid., p.256. 16. Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987), p.208. 17. ibid., p.116. 18. ibid., p.113. 19. ibid., p.103. 20. ibid., p.156. 21. It has been suggested that the book belongs to a contemporary tradition of a pre- industrial, pastoral golden age, in which "the rural poor were the real bearers of English culture". See Alun Howkins, "Kipling, Englishness and History", in Angus Ross, ed., Kipling 86 (Sussex: University of Sussex Library, 1987), p.27. 22. Puck of Pook 's Hill, p.41. 23. Letter to Lucas White, 13 December 1910, The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, vol.3, p.467. 24. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V, v, 50, lines 7-9. 25. ibid., I, ix, 3, lines 7-9. 26. ibid., III, iii, 22, lines 2-5. 27. Puck of Pook's Hill, p.96. 28. ibid., p.104. 29. ibid., p.159. 30. ibid., p.48. 31. ibid., p.96. 32. ibid., p.182. 33. Rewards and Fairies, p.76. 34. Sandra Kemp, Kipling's Hidden Narratives (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p.85. 35. ibid.,p.86. 36. John Coates, The Day's Work: Kipling and the Idea of Sacrifice (Madison: Associated University Presses, 1997), pp.47ff. 37. Letter to Margaret Hooper, March 1910. The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, vol.3, p.414. 38. Rowan Williams, "The Address at the Service of Commemoration, Burwash, 26 January 2006", Kipling Journal, No.318 (June 2006), p.12. June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________39 39. Rewards and Fairies, p.257. 40. ibid., p.69. 41. ibid., p.264. 42. Puck of Pook's Hill. p.129. 43. Rewards and Fairies, p.248. 44. Something of Myself, p.145. 45. Rosemary Sutcliff, "Kipling for Children", Kipling Journal, No.150 (December 1965), p.27. 46. Rewards and Fairies, p.263. 47. ibid., p.49. 48. ibid., p.73. 49. ibid.,p.l2l. 50. ibid., p.153. 51. ibid., p.76. 52. Puck of Pook's Hill, p.49. 53. ibid.,p.79. 54. ibid., p.120. 55. ibid., p.208. 56. ibid., p.56.. 57. Rewards and Fairies, p.122. 58. ibid., p.128. 59. Puck of Pook's Hill. p.181. 60. In Something of Myself, Kipling describes his spell as a newspaper editor as "Seven years hard" (chapter III), his equivalent of the slave ring. He was offered a knight- hood for writing "The Absent-Minded Beggar" in aid of army charities, but refused it; this was not a poem of which he was proud. 61. Something of Myself, pp. 105-106. 62. Ladies' Home Journal, January-April 1906. 63. Letter to Edward Bok, 28 July 1905, The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, vol.3, p.189. 64. Roger Lewis, introduction to Rewards and Fairies, pp.3-4. 65. The Definitive Edition of Rudyard Kipling's Verse (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1940), p.4. 66. Rudyard Kipling, The Day's Work (London: Penguin Books, 1988), p.33. 67. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto & Windus, 1993), pp.162-63. "EPISTLE TO THE EUROPEANS (ON NOT READING KIPLING)" An article by Ortwin de Graef (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium) has just been published in Re-Thinking Europe, (Textxet 55, 2008, ISBN 978-90-420-2352-9). The essay is built around "Recessional" with suggestions as to just what Kipling was meaning in this poem, and what it could teach Europe today. It will certainly be of interest to Academic members, and probably to others as well. – Ed. 40__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 WHO WAS THE BETTER POET? KIPLING OR WILLIAM MCGONAGALL? By SHAMUS O.D. WADE [Shamus Wade is a very long-serving member of our Society, and a regular at the London meetings. Over the years he has contributed many letters to the Journal, written reviews, chaired discussion groups, and eventually in issue No.284 we printed his article based on an unrecorded address on the subject of "Kipling, Robeson, Zilliacus's Dog and an Elephant". He claimed that he only wrote it in order to see his name in the Journal Index following his disappointment at finding that the authors of "Letters to the Editor" were not then being recorded. On the assumption that members will have copies of Kipling's verse readily acces- sible, only one stanza from his quoted works is given in full. – Ed.] At the Kipling Society's Annual General Meeting on July 6, 2005, I nearly did another member a serious injury. But to begin at the beginning. I have been a member of the Kipling Society since the year dot. I was on the Council in the days when the Journal had fewer pages than it has today. Until recently I was also a member of the Literature Circle of the Ealing [London] House of Arts, This was formed by ex-service men and women at the end of the Second World War. Originally there were Art, Music and Drama Circles as well. The Literature Circle was the last to survive. It came to an end shortly before our 2005 A.G.M.. Everyone used to read from whatever poet or poets they chose for seven minutes. More often than not I would read from the same three poets – Kipling, Betjeman and McGonagall. I always read McGonagall straight and the membership listened to him straight (no one had told them they were supposed to giggle). At the Kipling Society's 2005 A.G.M. I overheard someone talking about a group reading the works of McGonagall. "Great!" I thought. "There is a McGonagall Society that I can join." But it turned out to be just the usual exam-passing classes making mock of the heroic William. The son of Irish immigrants, William McGonagall was a Scottish hand-loom weaver, born in 1825, whose only schooling was a mere eighteen months before the age of seven. Yet at the age of fifty he decided to become a poet. A full time poet – not writing a bit of poetry on the side, while working at some other job. Not writing short stories and throwing in a few poems for good measure. 25 years later he was still alive, not dying until 1902 (he thus lived longer than Kipling). This achievement alone is worthy of respect. June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL_______________ 41 Who was the better poet? Kipling or William McGonagall? Anyone who works full time at a specific job and manages to fill the family rice bowl is better at that job than someone who only works part time. The only way McGonagall had of filling the family rice bowl was by poetry and poetry alone. With five children to feed (Mary, Jamie, Charlie, Jock and Willie) his rice bowl was larger than Kipling's. McGonagall's sole source of income was poetry. Kipling had vari- ous sources of income of which poetry was certainly not the largest. McGonagall's tragedy was that his public appreciation came only after his death, after all those years of hunger, rock-bottom debt and public humiliation. But appreciation did come. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) took him very seriously indeed (he warranted almost a full page). Here are two excerpts: McGonagall's triumph was to forge by some unfathomable alchemy the commonplace effects of popular-print rhetoric into an unmistakably personal style. Nobody had ever sounded quite like him. And he had positive strengths: a sense of wonder, a childlike ability to enter absolutely into what he depicted, and a real gift for narrative that could shape appropriate material into racy little verse- novellas with a rough but genuine graphic power. A number of strands of Scottish popular culture came together in McGonagall – the bellowing street-corner elocutionists, the urban broadsheet and song-slip patterers, the penny readings, which mixed entertainment with self-improvement, and, most of all, per- haps, a line of genuinely popular poetry. He was the heir not of Burns and Hogg and Lady Nairne, but of chapbook writers such as Claudero and Dougal Graham, and through them a tradition of met- rical journalism going back to the broadsheet poets of the seventeenth century. Peter Pindar's poems in the Sunday Telegraph and William Rees- Mogg's in Private Eye were not making mock of McGonagall but rather recruiting him as an ally in making mock of the rich and the powerful – Tony Blair (4 times), Cherie Blair, George Brown, John Prescott, President Chirac, the G8 leaders and John Major, most "With apologies to William McGonagall". Amongst them are: "The Mound": On the opening of the new Scottish Parliament. Sunday Telegraph, 4 July 1999. 42__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 "Safe mitts": John Prescott looks after the shop Sunday Telegraph, 4 November 2001. "The G8 disaster": G8 leaders are upstaged by tragic reality Sunday Telegraph, 10 July 2005. "The Last of Scotland": The Blairs make their final visit to Balmoral Sunday Telegraph, 3 September 2006. "Lines On The Historic Return Of The Stone of Destiny To Its Rightful Resting Place In Bonnie Scotland": By Sir William Rees- McGonagall Private Eye, 12 July 1996 When this splendid poem was published, written, as was their cus- tom by The Queen and a group of those on board H.M. Yacht Britannia, in praise of the hospitality received during a three-day visit to the Castle of Mey, a correspondent in the Daily Telegraph (not me) wrote "I strongly suspect that Her Majesty was paying a witty tribute to the great William McGonagall". Although we must leave you, Fair Castle of Mey, We shall never forget, Nor could ever repay, A meal of such splendor. Repast of such zest, It will take us to Sunday, Just to digest, To leafy Balmoral, We're now on our way, But our hearts will remain, At the Castle of Mey. With your gardens and ranges, And all your good cheer, We will be back again soon, So roll on next year. [Printed with the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II] I would not for one minute suggest that Her Majesty belongs to the "School of McGonagall" but this poem and some of McGonagall's June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL__________________43 have one thing in common. They are both writing about something they want recorded, and, to make it easier to remember, writing it in rhyme. In fact they are acting as bards. In The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, the country's favourite author, there is a major character William the gonnagle, a battle poet. Battle poets do not make up heroic songs about famous battles. They recite poems that frighten the enemy. One of the most important differences between Kipling and McGonagall is that McGonagall is impossible to fake. It has been tried. There is a squalid little attempt in Arnold Silcock's Verse and Worse (Faber and Faber, 1952) but this was written by a someone called John Wilcocks after McGonagall was dead. Wilcocks also published a false autobiography of McGonagall in which his sober God-fearing parents are described as "poor but bibulous". There exist poems that nobody is quite certain whether they are by Kipling or not. A recent speaker at a Royal Over-Seas League meeting mentioned how Kipling (for a perfectly respectable reason) claimed to have written a poem written by somebody else. , Once, when opening a new issue of Durbar, the Journal of the Indian Military Historical Society, I thought that I had discovered a hitherto, undiscovered McGonagall poem. I will quote the first stanza: THE WAR WITH BABA SAHIB (THE CHIEF OF NURGOOND) AND THE CAPTURE OF THAT TOWN BY THE ENGLISH, A.D. 1858 The brave English, the great kings, took Nurgoond on earth; The wicked chieftains were taken prisoners from their hearth; The bad rebels were broken and fled in the midst of their mirth. Have the English their equals? To their power must stoop even Lady earth! Strife rose in the North; searching swords, daggers, and diverse arms Throughout the Empire in towns, villages, and farms, Besieging houses and creating alarms, They came to Dharwar, with a great force collecting arms. It was pure McGonagall and ran to 87 verses. Sadly it turned out to be a Canarese epic translated into English by Mr Kies, a German mis- sionary. It describes events in the Dharwar Collectorate of the Southern 44__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 Maratha country of the Bombay Presidency, now part of Karnataka State. It is included in Western India, Before and During the Mutinies by Major-General Sir George Le Grand Jacob K.C.S.I., C.B. (Henry S. King & Co, 1871). There are a few other comparisons that could be made between Kipling and McGonagall. According to the Dictionary of National Biography "an estimated 200,000 people were regularly writing poetry in Victorian Scotland". If poetry were Kipling's sole source of income, how well would he compete? Most books about Kipling provide a great deal of information about all of his useful relations. Margaret Jean (nee King) of Edinburgh, McGonagall's wife was a splendid lady but she could not read. To be fair to Kipling, he was probably better at hatchet jobs than McGonagall. However "Lines in Praise of Tommy Atkins", McGonagall's hatchet job on Kipling, read by Roger Ayers at the 2005 A.G.M., is quite effective, the first stanza of which runs: Success to Tommy Atkins, he's a very brave man, And to deny it there's few people can; And to face his foreign foes he's never afraid, Therefore he's not a beggar, as Rudyard Kipling has said. The last of the 10 verses does rather echo Kipling however: And in conclusion I will say, Don't forget his wife and children when he's far away; But try and help them all you can, For remember Tommy Atkins is a very useful man. McGonagall provides a voice for Colour-Sergeant J. Sheldon Reading of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and all the other British soldiers in South Africa, who did not feel grateful to rich Mr Kipling with his begging bowl. (see Kipling Journal, No.316, Dec 2005, pp.48-50). This was not petty spite (McGonagall was not Max Beerbohm) but just a job that needed to be done. It has been said that McGonagall recorded events and facts, Kipling the colour and ambience. It is interesting to compare poems on roughly the same subject by the two poets. June 2008________________KIPLING JOURNAL________________________45 ON ROYAL OCCASIONS THE ROYAL REVIEW, 25 AUGUST 1881 By WILLIAM MCGONAGALL All hail to the Empress of India, Great Britain's Queen— Long may she live in health, happy and serene— That came from London, far away, To review the Scottish Volunteers in grand array: Most magnificent to be seen, Near by Salisbury Crags and its pastures green, Which will long be remembered by our gracious Queen— And by the Volunteers, that came from far away, Because it rain'd most of the day. And with the rain their clothes were wet all through, On the 25th day of August, at the Royal Review. And to the Volunteers it was no lark, Because they were ankle deep in mud in the Queen's Park, Which proved to the Queen they were loyal and true, To endure such hardships at the Royal Review. Oh! it was a most beautiful scene To see the Forfarshire Artillery marching past the Queen: Her Majesty with their steady marching felt content, Especially when their arms to her they did present. And the Inverness Highland Volunteers seemed very gran', And marched by steady to a man Amongst the mud without dismay, And the rain pouring down on them all the way. And the bands they did play, God Save the Queen, Near by Holyrood Palace and the Queen's Park so green. Success to our noble Scottish Volunteers! I hope they will be spared for many long years, And to Her Majesty always prove loyal and true, As they have done for the second time at the Royal Review. To take them in general, they behaved very well, The more that the rain fell on them pell-mell. They marched by Her Majesty in very grand array, Which will be remembered for many a long day, 46__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 Bidding defiance to wind and rain, Which adds the more fame to their name. And I hope none of them will have cause to rue The day that they went to the Royal Review. And I'm sure Her Majesty ought to feel proud, And in her praise she cannot speak too loud, Because the more that it did rain they did not mourn, Which caused Her Majesty's heart with joy to burn, Because she knew they were loyal and true For enduring such hardships at the Royal Review. RECESSIONAL (1897) By RUDYARD KIPLING God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle line, Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine— Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget! However, two of Kipling's prose pieces about Military Reviews are closer to McGonagall, at least in climatic terms – "To Meet the Ameer" (C&MG, 1885) and "Her Majesty's Servants" (The Jungle Book, 1894). EARLY SOUDAN CAMPAIGNS THE REBEL SURPRISE NEAR TAMAI By WILLIAM MCGONAGALL 'Twas on the 22nd of March, in the year 1885, That the Arabs rushed like a mountain torrent in full drive, And quickly attacked General M'Neill's transport-zereba, But in a short time they were forced to withdraw. And in the suddenness of surprise the men were carried away, Also camels, mules, and horses were thrown into wild disarray, By thousands of the Arabs that in ambush lay, But our brave British heroes held the enemy at bay. There was a multitude of camels heaped upon one another, Kicking and screaming, while many of them did smother, June 2008_______________KIPLING JOURNAL_______________________47 Owing to the heavy pressure of the entangled mass, That were tramping o'er one another as they lay on the grass. The scene was indescribable, and sickening to behold, To see the mass of innocent brutes lying stiff and cold, And the moaning cries of them were pitiful to hear, Likewise the cries of the dying men that lay wounded in the rear. Then General M'Neill ordered his men to form in solid square, Whilst deafening shouts and shrieks of animals did rend the air, And the rush of stampeded camels made a fearful din, While the Arabs they did yell, and fiendishly did grin. Then the gallant Marines formed the east side of the square, While clouds of dust and smoke did darken the air, And on the west side the Berkshire were engaged in the fight, Firing steadily and coolly with all their might. Still camp followers were carried along by the huge animal mass, And along the face of the zereba 'twas difficult to pass, Because the mass of brutes swept on in wild dismay, Which caused the troops to be thrown into disorderly array. Then Indians and Bluejackets were all mixed together back to back, And for half-an-hour the fire and din didn't slack; And none but steady troops could have stood that fearful shock, Because against overwhelming numbers they stood as firm as a rock. The Arabs crept among the legs of the animals without any dread, But by the British bullets many were killed dead, And left dead on the field and weltering in their gore, Whilst the dying moans of the camels made a hideous roar. Then General M'Neill to his men did say, Forward! my lads, and keep them at bay! Come, make ready, my men, and stand to your arms, And don't be afraid of war's alarms. 48__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 So forward! and charge them in front and rear, And remember you are fighting for your Queen and country dear, Therefore, charge them with your bayonets, left and right, And we'll soon put this rebel horde to flight. Then forward at the bayonet-charge they did rush, And the rebel horde they soon did crush; And by the charge of the bayonet they kept them at bay, And in confusion and terror they all fled away. The Marines held their own while engaged hand-to-hand, And the courage they displayed was really very grand; But it would be unfair to praise one corps more than another, Because each man fought as if he'd been avenging the death of a brother. The Berkshire men and the Naval Brigade fought with might and main, And, thank God! the British have defeated the Arabs again, And have added fresh laurels to their name, Which will be enrolled in the book of fame. 'Tis lamentable to think of the horrors of war, That men must leave their homes and go abroad afar, To fight for their Queen and country in a foreign land, Beneath the whirlwind's drifting scorching sand. But whatsoever God wills must come to pass, The fall of a sparrow, or a tiny blade of grass; Also, man must fall at home by His command, Just equally the same as in a foreign land. "FUZZY-WUZZY" By RUDYARD KIPLING 'E 'asn't got no papers of 'is own, 'E 'asn't got no medals nor rewards, So we must certify the skill 'e's shown In usin' of 'is long two-'anded swords: When 'e's 'oppin' in an' out among the bush With 'is coffin-'eaded shield an' shovel-spear, An 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________49 Will last an 'ealthy Tommy for a year. So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an' your friends which are no more, If we 'adn't lost some messmates we would 'elp you to deplore; But give an' take's the gospel, an' we'll call the bargain fair, For if you 'ave lost more than us, you crumpled up the square! Many more examples from the works of both poets could be given but, regrettably, lack of space means that these must be left to members to investigate for themselves. There is a very comprehensive website devoted to William McGonagall and his Works at http://www. mcgonagall-online.org.uk/, which reports that a new paperback of William McGonagall Collected Poems was published in 2006 (ISBN 1841584770). At the 2007 Annual Luncheon I was talking about McGonagall to Julia Hett. She very kindly sent me a photocopy of an interview with the eighty-five year old Willie Smith in the Scotsman of 1902. He was the former managing director of David Winter & Son Ltd., the company who published the original broadsheets of McGonagall's work, sold in the streets at a penny each, and also No Poets' Corner in the Abbey, McGonagall's biography. He had lectured on McGonagall all over the world and once addressed an audience of 3,000 McGonagall enthusi- asts in Manchuria. Does anyone know what was the largest live audience that ever listened appreciatively to the poems of Rudyard Kipling? On a personal note, I am a member of the Labour Party, which I first joined in 1948. When Enoch Powell, the Conservative politician, died and his library came up for sale, I found that my library and his had only two books in common: Wanderings among South Sea Savages by H. Wilfrid Walker. No Poets' Corner in the Abbey McGonagall's biography by David Phillips. 50__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 BOOK REVIEWS POLITICS AND AWE IN RUDYARD KIPLING'S FICTION by Peter Havholm, pub- lished by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Aldershot, January 2008 (ISBN: 978-0-7546-61641, hardback, $99.95 / £55), 204 pages including illustrations, Works Cited, Bibliography and Index. The flyer enclosed with the March 2008 Journal offers the book for £37.50 in the U.K. Reviewed by Dr KATE MACDONALD It isn't clear where the awe comes in. This book tries to identify the young Kipling's politics in 1883, and how the influence of his parents set a pattern of determining beliefs derived from facts which suffused Kipling's fiction and poetry for the rest of his life. Prof Havholm has fixed on 1883 as a formative year in Kipling's political education, because this was the year of furious resistance in India to the Ilbert Bill, which would have allowed Indian judges to try European British subjects without a jury. Naturally, the European British subjects were having none of this, and Havholm has produced an impressive array of information, documentary evidence, and back- ground detail to fill us in on what the young Kipling would have been reading, writing and thinking about during this turbulent year, his first as sub-editor of the Civil and Military Gazette. This book is also a manifesto stating that it is acceptable to enjoy and admire Kipling's writing while not sharing his politics. Clearly, Kipling is still an embarrassing subject in academic circles, and the amount of postcolonial and deconstructionist discussion Havholm pours into his arguments indicates which audience he is hoping to con- vince. The jargon is bearable, only occasionally bewildering (I had to look up 'aporias' and 'eudaimonist'.) His starting point is that there are three audiences to be considered when thinking about Kipling's early stories: the Anglo-Indian colonialists, the native Indian populace, and ourselves, the modern reader. By inserting the readers of our own time into the imaginative space that he suggests would have been occupied by the native Indian readers, Havholm asserts that the modern reader has 'a closeness [...] to the world of educated Indians' which 'made the Anglo-Indian world' of Kipling 'even more strange'. This alignment puts the modern reader safely in the opposite camp to the colonialists. Aside from doubting whether this can actually be done, the exercise also seems partially redundant. Readers of this review are likely to be already convinced of the enjoyment of Kipling's fictions, and are also likely to be perfectly aware of the nuances of racist assumptions writ- ten in these stories from another age. His contortions to prove that "Kidnapped" and other stories dealing with, say, the prevention of half- castes from penetrating Anglo-Indian society, are actually OK to enjoy, June 2008___________KIPLING JOURNAL_________________51 may be received with a sense of 'well, yes, but we already know this'. However, Havholm is writing to convert, so such careful positioning is desirable, and probably necessary to suggest that it possible to read and enjoy Kipling without flying a pre-emptive flag that says 'I am not a racist'. Prof Havholm does make this clear at the start: his preface states that Kipling's early writing ought to have been considerably less beau- tiful and admirable precisely because of its birth in the racism surrounding the political furore of 1883. Ethical criticism is important to him, and he carefully leads us through a dense undergrowth of liter- ary theory, explaining context and values, looking for the ethical judgments made by Kipling and finding many of them tainted. In his discussion of the fiction, he is working hard to reconcile opposites. We are to remember that the British Empire is bad through- out, and that 'the rhetoric of imperialism [is] a source of norms in Kipling's fiction'. However, empires are tricky things to interpret. Kipling writes about empire so persuasively that Havholm is honest to acknowledge that 'if one comes away from Kim with the idea that lov- ing service deserves loving fealty, one has not come away with a bad idea'. This moral dilemma drives him to tackle the complex situation of colonial beliefs about the colonial mission, and the people being colonised. By his close analysis of the newspaper debates throughout 1883, Havholm shows that the 'powerful and dangerous forces leagued against Britain's commitment to the progress of the Indian people' were rejected by the Anglo-Indians, including the Kiplings, in argu- ments defending Britain's 'despotic' rule, because at bottom these were founded on the basic assumption of the British in India that European (and probably British) values were superior to any Indian values. With this in mind, we embark on a revised interpretation of the early Kipling stories which increases in complexity when the truly valuable evidence of Kipling's own journalism is shown to contain the source material for many of his stories. Havholm spends a lot of time deconstructing the short stories, and is particularly strong on interpre- tations of "The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows", "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes", "The Man Who Would be King", and "The Phantom 'Rickshaw". "Dray Wara Yow Dee" is referred to throughout as an example of Kipling's gothic, and shares the honours for illustrat- ing Kipling's grasp of the narrative of cruelty and revenge with "In the House of Suddhoo" and "Dayspring Mishandled". Prof Havholm does a fine job in working though his essential prob- lem of liking something so much that is yet so interlaced with an ethos he rejects. His arguments occasionally go a little deeper than the reader might wish, but his expression is clear and lucid, and only once uses 'intuited' as a verb, for which we should be thankful. For all that, it is 52__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 still not clear where the awe comes into his arguments, unless it is awe at the effort taken to arrive at the thought that 'understanding is not the same as approval'. THE WINTER OF THE WORLD: Poems of the First World War, ed. Dominic Hibberd and John Onions, published by Constable and Robinson, December 2007 (ISBN: 978-1-84529-515-8, Hardback, £25), xxxvii+362 pages, including Biographical Notes, Suggestions for Further Reading, and two Indexes. The postcard enclosed with the December 2007 Journal offers the book for £20 with free p+p in the U.K. Reviewed by THE EDITOR This anthology of 273 poems written during, or resulting from, the First World War includes the work of 129 poets. There are a significant number of the poems that I am not aware of having been anthologised before, including the closing work – "Memories" by Rudyard Kipling. Rather than grouping all of the works by Poet or separating "ser- vicemen" from "civilians", the two Editors have organised their selection, as they declare in the Introduction, in such a way as to be 'the first anthology of Great War poetry to make a serious attempt to pre- sent poems in chronological order.' The Introduction at the beginning of the book gives an excellent description of the developments in War Poetry as the conflict pro- gressed, pointing out that 'Satire directed at the war and its supporters did not begin with Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen or any other poet who had seen the trenches'. The Editors identify the development and interactions of the Georgian and Modernist poets whilst pointing out that the older poets, Hardy and Kipling, 'need to be counted among the leading "war poets", writing in support of the war yet showing that they were well aware of the suffering and loss that it caused', despite there being some reservations about Kipling's politics. This is followed by six sections, one for each of the years 1914 to 1918, ending with a final section for all the years 1919-1930 for the poetry which was generated after the conflict was over. Each of these six sections has a short overview covering the military, political and sociological situation as a lead-in to the poems themselves. The chronological approach has enabled the Editors to identify a 'mythification' that has taken place since the 1960s about the poetry and poets of the Great War in which the poems in anthologies have been arranged to 'tell a story of idealism turning to realism, satire, protest and pity', and which they have attempted to rectify. The bibli- ographical data provided for each of the poems as well as notes on allusions in the verses and on relevant historical events makes the anthology even more useful. Finally, the printing and layout of the book is so clear that it is a pleasure to use. June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL__________________53 MEMBERSHIP NOTES NEW MEMBERS Professor Miriam Bailin (St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.) Mr I.K. Campbell (London, SE22) Mr Donald Caskie (Bearsden, Glasgow) Mr Lars Dyrud (Mount Vernon, Illinois, U.S.A.) Ms Maria Paola Frattolin (Udine, ITALY) Mr Andrew Gee (Brighton, East Sussex) Mrs M.R. Gillum (Rye, East Sussex) Mr Steve Hendon (Newport, Gwent) Mr L.G. Hill (Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire) Mr D.M. Holdroyd (Northallerton, North Yorkshire) Mr Jack Howard (Sutton Woodbridge, Suffolk) Mrs Janette Kay-Robinson (Middleton-in-Teesdale, Co. Durham) Dr Klaus Kocks (Horbach, Westerwald, GERMANY) Mr & Mrs J.C.A. Madgwick (Richmond, Surrey) Mrs Pamela Morgan (Sutton, Surrey) Mr David Ogilvy (Bruton, Somerset) Ms Harriet Rafter (San Francisco, California, U.S.A.) Miss Jean Robinson (Embsay, Skipton, North Yorkshire) Mr George Simmers (Brackley, Northamptonshire) Mr Max Waterman (Rigby, Idaho, U.S.A.) Mr Martin J. Watts (Turners Hill, West Sussex) Ms Naoko Yamamoto (Ginowan City, Okinawa, Japan) CHANGE OF MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY At the time of writing (24 March) arrangements for my handover to my successor, John Lambert, as Honorary Membership Secretary have not been completed but the details, together with his address, are to be found in the flyer accompanying this issue of the Journal. One aspect in which I will continue to be involved after the A.G.M. in July is the completion of updating all Standing Orders to match the new subscription rates. I would like to achieve this as soon as possible and would appreciate it if any member who has not yet returned the new mandate sent out earlier this year would do so as soon as possible to the address on the form. Roger Ayers, Hon. Membership Secretary 54__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR CONRAD AND KIPLING – "ULTIMATE BREAKING STRAIN" From: Mr John West, 'Norwood', Green Lane, Exton, Exeter EX3 OPW Dear Sir, This is the second time I have invited myself into your columns with enquiries, the first being in March 1997 concerning the theme of Kipling, Judas Iscariot and forgiveness ["On The Gate" – Ed.]. Herewith my second enquiry which concerns Kipling and Conrad. The general public tend to group these two great, and roughly contem- porary writers together. Both are strongly associated with the Sea, the East and the former British Empire. Both were at their peak during the turn of the 20th Century and both were concerned with the idea of "breaking strain". Moreover, for many years they lived closely in neighbouring counties. And yet I cannot find whether they ever met, still less discussed these powerful ideas together. It seems from articles about "Ultimate Breaking Strain" by Fred Cherry, that were published in a series up to September 1996, that the subject prepossessed Kipling in his latter years, although possibly the greatest novel on the subject was Lord Jim published by Conrad in 1900. However, the theme is carried in several other of Conrad's novels, and both were familiar with this crucial theme as a subject of their writing. Can some sympathetic scholar cast light on the "distance" that apparently existed between these two men, bearing in mind that Conrad had a large circle of literary friends? It does not seem fully explained by their slightly different time-frames. I would be obliged to receive enlightenment. Yours truly JOHN WEST "OF THOSE CALLED" From: Cdr A.J.W. Wilson RN, Jolyon, Salthill Road, Fishbourne, Chichester PO19 3PY Dear Sir I much enjoyed reading "Of Those Called", and despite its shortness, found it full of interesting pointers, and one or two errors. First of all, it shows his continuing interest in the supernatural or paranormal which was to be repeated throughout Kipling's writing, although he never went to the lengths that his contemporary, Conan Doyle did. Secondly, it shows a remarkable degree of compression, which must have been the result of his journalistic training on the CMG, and can, one must assume, only have come from Wheeler. June 2008______________KIPLING JOURNAL_____________________55_ (Though one remembers in Stalky and Co. that the Head made him write precis) In this context, it is hardly surprising that such tales as "Mrs. Bathurst" reveal such an extra-ordinary amount of compression – it would have been second nature to him. It seems highly likely that your assessment of the source of the tale and the date of its writing are correct, and although it is not specified, it seems likely that Kipling had the South China Sea or thereabouts in mind as the setting. As he says, 'thirty feet of bowsprit, Sir, doesn't belong to anything that sails the sea except a sailing ship or a man-of- war'. It transpires that it is a man-of-war, from an English-speaking nation (which we may assume is a Royal Navy ship), and by 1889, it was only on foreign stations that British warships still carried masts- and-yards. It could have been on the Cape station or the East Indies, but since he was passing through the China station (he called at Hong Kong, the British naval base, on his way up to Yokohama), it may be suggested that this would have been the setting, and that in Hong Kong he saw the Audacious, the station flagship, an old-fashioned ironclad with a ram, which he thought of as the fictional warship which sank the Hespa. That is mere speculation (interesting, it is to be hoped). But there are some petty errors. The original narrator of the tale talks of the colliding ship as being of 'soft wood or steel plate'. At that date there were very few steel-hulled ships in existence – iron was still the great ship-build- ing material, though from 1890 onwards, steel became the material most used. (The Audacious was iron-built, having been completed in 1870 – the first British steel-hulled battleship was completed in 1886.). The narrator says that he 'went forward of the bridge, and leaned over the side', and in due course was joined by the ship's boy, and the engineer. Yet, when they are joined by 'our skipper', he 'came aft' to join them: in such a fog, the captain's place would have been on the bridge, as is indicated by the fact that, in the tale, he then is on his way 'back to the chart-room' (an integral part of the bridge). One may suggest that Kipling didn't allow himself the luxury of laying the tale aside to be revised later – perhaps he had not the time. The timing suggest that the tale was sent from Japan, which he left on 11 May His next opportunity to send mail to India came when they reached San Francisco on 28 May, which would not have allowed enough time for publication on 13 July. But the description of the Third Mate's frozen picture ('I speculated quite a long time' – probably about three seconds) is marvel- lous – rather like the supposed passing of one's whole life before one's eyes while one drowns. Yours faithfully ALASTAIR WILSON 56__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES FOR 2007 The Kipling Society whose postal address is 6 Clifton Road, London W9 1SS, was founded in 1927. The Society is registered with the Charity Commissioners (No. 278885) and is constituted under rules approved in July 1999. As stated in the Rules, the object of the Society is the advancement of pub- lic education by the promotion of the study and appreciation of the life and works of Rudyard Kipling. The Society is administered by a Council comprising Honorary Executive Officers and elected ordinary members. Those serving during the year under review are listed below: EXECUTIVE OFFICERS Chairman Deputy Chairman Secretary Treasurer Journal Editor Membership Secretary Meetings Secretary Librarian On Line Editor Publicity Officer Bateman's Liaison Officer ORDINARY MEMBERS Mr Robin Mitchell Mr Sharad Keskar Mr Bryan Diamond Ms Anne Harcombe Dr Mary Hamer Prof Leonee Ormond Mr Charles Allen Mr Clive Bettington Mr J. Radcliffe (to September 2007) Cdr A. J. W. Wilson (from September 2007) Cdr A. J. W. Wilson (to September 2007) Mr S. Keskar (from September 2007) Mrs J. Keskar Mr F. Noah Mr D. Page Lt-Colonel R.C. Ayers, O.B.E. Mr A. Lycett Mr J. Walker Mr J. Radcliffe Mr R. Slade Mr R. Mitchell (from November 2007) 2004-2007 2004-2007 2004-2007 2006-2008 2006-2008 2007-2009 2007-2009 2007-2009 (retired July 2007) (retired July 2007) (retired July 2007) (from July 2007) (from July 2007) (from July 2007) In furtherance of its object, and on an ongoing basis, the Society: Publishes the quarterly Kipling Journal that is distributed to all individual members and subscribing 'Journal-only' institutions, dealing with matters of interest to readers and students of Rudyard Kipling. Promotes and holds meetings, film shows, visits, discussions and readings in order to stimulate and encourage the study of Rudyard Kipling's works. Maintains in City University, London, an extensive library of books, ephem- era and reference material available to members and literary researchers. June 2008________________KIPLING JOURNAL_______________________57_ 4. Maintains a Kipling Room at The Grange Museum, in Rottingdean, Sussex. 5. Maintains a world-wide-web site (www.kipling.org.uk) containing infor- mation and pictorial material about the Society, about Kipling's prose and poetry and about his life and times, including the Society's expanding "New Readers' Guide to Rudyard Kipling's Works" (see below). There is also the catalogue of the Society's library and a comprehensive Index to the Kipling Journal from its inception in 1927. The web-site attracts requests for information from both members and non-members and is a good source for recruitment of new members from all over the world. The Society also, in association with the University of Newcastle, provides an email discus- sion forum on which questions relating to Kipling are canvassed and discussed. State of the Society and Specific activities in 2007 Four issues of the Kipling Journal were published during the year. The web-site continues to attract considerable interest from both members and the general public, and there were nearly 85,000 visitors to the site in the course of the year. Of these nearly 30,000 visited the on line New Readers' Guide pages. The revision and updating of the 1950s 8-volume Readers' Guide to the Works of Rudyard Kipling is well under way, incorporating much new work. The responsible sub-committee have made good progress in the fifth year; over 250 of the stories and over 170 of the poems have so far been anno- tated and published on the Society's web-site. The web-site continues to be a prime means of contact with our members and the general public: in particular, open access to the New Readers' Guide is a major resource for the public, of which increasing use is made. Our programme of meetings has followed its normal pattern: we have examined the address-distribution of the membership, to see if it would be effective to hold a meeting outside London. As a result, it is hoped to hold a meeting combined with a small conference in Sheffield in 2009. During the year there were five meetings, inclusive of the Annual General Meeting, at each of which there was a lecture given by a guest speaker. At the Annual Luncheon the Guest of Honour was Sir Mark Tully who spoke on the subject of "Kipling and Modern India". We also provided a financial guaran- tee, and contributed papers to a successful conference at Kent University in September 2007. At the end of 2007 the Society had 505 individual, 5 life and 5 honorary members, 515 in all, and 89 'Journal-only' member universities and libraries. In addition, 6 legal deposit copies went to the British Library and leading U.K. and Irish universities and 8 Journals were provided free of charge to educa- tional institutions at home and abroad. On the financial front, our Bank Balance increased by £3,930 in 2007. The continued savings made by the reduction in Journal production costs, generous individual donations (included in subscriptions), and the British income tax recovered through the Gift Aid Scheme on subscriptions and donations have 58___________________KIPLING JOURNAL_____________June 2008 enabled the Society to keep pace with inflation. To support future develop- ments, the Council implemented a modest increase in the rate of subscriptions effective from the end of 2007. The total Assets of the Society increased by £2,442 to £97,321 which includes a value of £14,602 for our Library. Reserves The Council has given consideration to the amount of reserves it is proper to keep, and have agreed that we should maintain reserves at a level of about three times the current rate of annual expenditure. At present, they are about four times that amount, and Council have a number of initiatives in hand to reduce them. I shall report formally on them next year, but in broad terms they involve supporting educational initiatives (including helping Sussex University with the purchase of the Baldwin papers), and support for a translator/publisher of Kipling's works in Poland. Risk The Council has also given consideration to the matter of 'risk' as it affects the achievement of the Society's aims. The financial risk is assessed as being low, so long as we continue to generate a modest surplus of income over expendi- ture. The question of risk due to the possibility of an action for libel or for, say, breach of copyright was considered, but it was agreed that, so long as the offi- cers remained aware of the possibility, the likelihood remained low. [Signed] A. J. W. Wilson (Chairman) MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2007 1. Chairman's Opening Remarks The Chairman, John Radcliffe, welcomed members to the 80th Annual General Meeting of the Society, held on 4 July 2007, Royal Over-Seas League, London. 2. Apologies for Absence Roger Ayers, Andrew Lycett, John Walker and Roy Slade. 3. Minutes of the 79th A.G.M., 12 July 2006 The minutes (summarised in the Kipling Journal No.322, June 2007) were agreed and signed. 4. Matters Arising Jane Keskar explained that the Council had agreed to an amendment to the Constitution to allow the Society to fix different rates of subscription for dif- ferent age brackets. Copies of the necessary changes were available and the President, George Engle, explained the new wording. June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL__________________59 5. Election of three 'elected' members The Chairman expressed his gratitude to Robin Mitchell and Bryan Diamond. It had been most useful to have Robin's contacts at Bateman's, where he had arranged splendid poetry readings for the past 2 years. He was of course, also central to the arrangements for the Memorial Service at Burwash last year. Bryan, with his long experience, had been an active member of the Council and had kept us abreast of a great many Kipling related events which might otherwise have passed us by. The Chairman thanked them both. He was delighted to report that Clive Bettington, Charles Allen and Leonee Ormond had agreed to serve as members of the Council. 6. Election of Officers (who serve as ex-officio Members of the Council) Re-election of Hon. Executive Officers and nomination of Alastair Wilson as Chairman, and Sharad Keskar as Deputy Chairman. Honorary Secretary Mrs Jane Keskar Honorary Treasurer Mr Frank Noah Honorary Membership Secretary Lt-Col R. C. Ayers Honorary Editor Mr David Page Honorary On Line Editor Mr John Radcliffe Honorary Librarian Mr John Walker Honorary Meetings Secretary Mr Andrew Lycett Honorary Publicity Officer Mr Roy Slade 7. Approval of Independent Financial Examiner and Legal Advisor The Council approved the re-appointment of Professor G. M. Selim as Hon. Independent Financial Examiner and Sir Derek Oulton as Hon. Legal Adviser respectively. 8. Honorary Officer's Reports a) Secretary Jane Keskar began by showing everyone the Library's autographed copy of David Alan Richard's catalogue for the exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale The Books I Leave Behind. This was to be published here on 9 July and members could pick up a flyer to order a copy at the special price of £15.00. In the centenary year of Kipling's Nobel Prize a Kipling exhibition was being held at the Nobelmuseet in Stockholm in September. Nearer to home, a few Council Members visited a delightful exhibition on 26 May, celebrating Kipling and Westward Ho! at Haileybury, where the central exhibit was the well known etching by William Strang, one of 60 signed copies. Bryan Diamond had drawn our attention to another interesting exhibition (until 6 July), of photographs by Brian Harris, commissioned by the War Grave Commission, and held at Canada House, Trafalgar Square. Two of the pho- tographs had quotes from Kipling underneath and amongst the letters there were at least two from Kipling about the work of the Commission. The Imperial War Museum planned an exhibition about John Kipling which is to coincide with the TV production of "My Boy Jack". 60__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 Jane reported that our Annual Luncheon had been held at the Royal Over- Seas League on 2 May, when a record attendance of 134 guests heard Sir Mark Tully speak on India and Kipling and enjoyed an excellent lunch. She was delighted to announce that Rear-Admiral Guy Liardet had accepted our invita- tion to speak at next year's Annual Lunch, which will be held on Wednesday 7 May. In June the Society held another Kipling Society day at Bateman's, as part of their Kipling week. Robin Mitchell had arranged a selection of splendid readings on the theme of the Nobel citation. John Walker and John Radcliffe were among the readers. Jane reported that there was now a new Kipling Society of Australia. Their first meeting was in February with a splendidly varied programme, and an attendance of over 50. David Watts, the President was keeping us informed and a few copies of their newsletter were available for people to see. Jane thanked the Chairman and all her colleagues for their continued support throughout the year. b) Membership Secretary John Radcliffe read Roger Ayers' report, who apologised to the Meeting for being unable to present his report in person. He reported that there had been a slight fall in all categories of individual membership over the year to June 2007, from 508 last year to 499 – the same figure as for 30 June 2005. The number of new members recruited had been 39, as opposed to 57 last year, so retention had improved slightly but it was clear that we needed to make more effort to attract new members. One opportunity this year should be the University of Kent conference in September, for which Roger was preparing a membership pack for each non-member attending. The number of institu- tional members had increased by 2 to 105. The total membership of 604 included 125 individuals and 74 institutions in 21 countries outside the United Kingdom. As notified in the June issue of the Kipling Journal, the Council had decided on a general rise of 10% in the subscription rate. The UK basic sub- scription was last raised in 2000 but the UK rate for members paying by Standing Order and overseas sterling rates had remained unchanged since 1992. In addition, various differential increases in inland and overseas postage rates in the last two years had resulted in an imbalance in our inland and over- seas subscriptions which the new rates would correct. From 1 January 2008 the new rates would be: UK (payment by Standing Order) £22 Joint £32 UK (payment by cheque) £24 Joint £34 (Joint Members are two members at one address receiving one copy of the Journal) Surface mail, worldwide £26 Europe (airmail) £26 Airmail worldwide £30 June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________61 Universities and libraries, where membership includes multiple access to the Members Pages of the website, would be £2 more than the individual rates. This would require new Standing Orders from most who use them, which would be sent out towards the end of 2007. Prompt completion and return would be most appreciated. US dollar cheques would continue to be accepted and, from 1 January 2008, cheques in Euros would also be accepted. If the recent questionnaire showed that there was a sufficient demand for credit card or electronic pay- ment, then that would also be introduced. Having been Membership Secretary since 1998, Roger felt that it was time to hand over to a younger member at the end of the financial year. It had been a most rewarding job, particularly in having contact with the many members who shared something of their interest in Rudyard Kipling with me when they joined, paid their subscriptions or responded to my reminders. Something he would miss – the contact, that is, not the reminders! The Chairman explained that Roger had noted that the basic subscription was last raised in 2000, but the UK rate for members paying by Standing Order and overseas sterling rates had remained unchanged since 1992. In addition, over the last 2 years, various differential increases in inland and overseas postage rates, had resulted in an imbalance in our inland and overseas sub- scriptions which the new rates would correct. He also wished to explain that since the rates were set the costs of room hire, postage etc had tended to increase, and would continue to do so. On the income side, we were very conscious that our membership is pretty old and get- ting older. If we did not take energetic action immediately to bring in new and younger members, which would involve extra expenditure on marketing our- selves, diversifying our activities, and generally achieving a higher public profile, the membership and the subscription income seemed likely to ebb away as the years went by. Council takes the view that taken together, these considerations support a modest increase of some £2 a year. c) Treasurer Frank Noah drew member's attention to the Financial Report which showed that the Society's position remained strong: at December 2006, the Society had £78,000 with £12,500 in cash and £65,000 on deposit and $117 in the dollar account. Professor George Selim had approved the accounts. In 2007 we had increased the deposit account to £75,000 with £5,000 in the current account. In 2007 we had agreed to support a conference at Kent University. Around 50 papers had been submitted but, as yet we did not have up to date numbers for delegates. The Society was taking the financial risk as part of its strategy to widen awareness of and interest in Kipling. Jan Montefiore had secured a grant of £1,113 from the British Academy for which the Society would like to thank Hugh Brogan, who had acted as referee. £150 from publishers would also help reduce our exposure. Frank Noah also reported that the Society was considering a donation to Sussex University Library to assist in the digitalisation of images. He was to review their costings with them prior to making a recommendation to Council. 62__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 The maximum grant would be £5,000. The Society had heard that University of Cape Town were also seeking to digitalise their images, but there had been no formal request as yet. Frank continued that the Society was also considering funding a lecture with the Stamers-Smith donation. The Society had resisted the urge to help fund the purchase of letters already in the Library at Sussex on "permanent" loan, which the Baldwin fam- ily now wished to sell. Other grants £100 to the Southern Philharmonia Orchestra who had recorded "Fringes of the Fleet" with Hinckley sp Wood schools in September 2006. 500 euros in 2006 to Mr K. Rafalski in Poland to help towards the publication of a 2nd volume of Kipling's stories in Polish. Frank said that the Chairman would deal with the issue of increasing the sub- scriptions but that one of the issues facing the Society was the age profile of members which required us to seek to boost membership in all areas, but in par- ticular to bring in younger members. This would require considerable effort and of course cash. Finally, Frank expressed his thanks for all the hard work put in by Anna Lonsdale in keeping the books and producing the accounts. d) Editor The Chairman reported that it had been another excellent year for the Journal which had been well spoken of by members in the survey of member's views. 1. First of all, David Page wished to thank our printer, 4word Ltd, for doing such a sterling job of producing the Journal for us. In the year-and-a-half since they took over the work, he had not had a single problem, and he wished to add that, for the last two issues, the only proofing corrections required had been to mistakes that David had left in the files which he had sent to them. 2. The content of the September 2007 issue of the Journal was now fixed and should have arrived at 4word. 3. David was happy to report that currently we had a very satisfactory amount of material in hand, not even counting Kipling's uncollected works which he intended to mine whenever possible or necessary. Articles for the December 2008 issue were now being pencilled into the schedule, but he did not want that to put anyone off sending him an article. Council had ten- tatively suggested that we might stretch to an occasional supplementary issue each year depending upon what is in hand, so he hoped that members would keep the material flowing. e) Librarian Research and support: Research visits had continued to grow in number from 2004/5, now averaging three a month. Since many of these were full day ses- sions, this could be reflecting a real growth in interest. The Just So Stories June 2008____________KIPLING JOURNAL________________ 63 continued to be a popular choice, with two new MA dissertations on the sub- ject under way since 2006. Television and Radio researchers also used the Library quite frequently. The range of questions through email and the post had widened slightly, with indications that publishers in many languages are working on new edi- tions. A good example was the recent completion of O Elefante Infante in Portuguese (MUSA Publisher Co. 2007). Otherwise, there were always requests for sources of half remembered fragments (as received by all of the Society's officers) and valuations of all kinds. Incidentally, the source of the name "Evarra" (for "Evarra and his Gods") still remained a mystery. Specialist Libraries Group (GLAM): The Kipling Library has a policy of transferring Kipling's own manuscript material to the Kipling Archive at Sussex University. However, we have a collection of literary papers for which copyright and conservation are issues. These include, for example, Charles Carrington's working notes for the standard biography. On Monday 10th September, at 1.30 p.m. at the British Library, there would be a discussion on copyright and care for papers like these, led by Tim Padfield and Susan Healy. Members who might be interested in attending should let John know by 1st August. Donations: Recent donations to the collection included a number of first editions from John Slater, and a substantial collection of cuttings and notes, as well as some rare editions, from Lisa Lewis. Both were Honorary Librarians to the Society in the past. Bookplates were being inserted to record these gener- ous gifts. Ephemera Catalogue: Through eighty years of the Library's existence, cuttings, correspondence, photographs and notes have been stored in file boxes. With the help of members of the Society, we have embarked on a full cata- logue. Items are stored separately, in acid-free paper, within manila envelopes, which are then filed. This has brought a wealth of interesting items to light, and should ensure that they are safe, but readily accessible. Library Surplus Sale: Over one hundred volumes from the Library sur- plus stock were offered for sale. An elaborate system was set up to ensure fairness, and members bought over six hundred pounds worth of volumes. A further sale is proposed for next year. Radio and Television Programming: This year's most important produc- tion was likely to be the TV screen version of David Haig's play "My Boy Jack". With recognised stars (Daniel Radcliffe from "Harry Potter" as John, Kim Cattrall from "Sex and the City" as Carrie, and David Haig as Kipling), this has been bought for international distribution by Granada, and would pre- miere at MIPCOM in Cannes. New Acquisitions: We have continued to build up the stock of biographies of contemporaries, and a range of illustrated editions, as well as our foreign language section. The Chairman explained that John Walker was the main person working on the forthcoming conference in Kent, which would be a good launching pad to make us better known to the Universities. He also reminded members of John's excellent index to Kipling's verse. 64__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 f) On Line Editor John Radcliffe reported that the Society's website had been visited in the win- ter by between two and three hundred people a day, and in the summer by between 100 and 200. We have had some 95,000 visitors in the course of the last year. A growing number of visitors, now some 35%, were using our New Readers' Guide to Kipling's works, the update of the Harbord guide, which we hoped to complete by 2009. We have so far covered 240 of the tales including three of the novels, and some 120 of the poems. He reported that we now had all the Journal back-numbers available to members on line, in a form in which they could be searched, an on-line data- base of themes in Kipling's works, in which you can, for example, find all the stories which in any way are to do with the Royal Navy, or the Army, and an index of the poetry. The survey suggested that people are generally happy with the website, although we have had a number of suggestions for improving it. g) Meetings Secretary The Secretary read Andrew Lycett's report. Andrew reported that he had taken office at the start of 2007. He was grateful for the work carried out by his pre- decessor Dr Jeffery Lewins. The Society had put on a full programme of meetings during the year with an average attendance of around 30 members. Questions about the timing and frequency of meetings had been raised both in Council and with members, but no decision has been taken on these matters. Andrew was arranging a pro- gramme of meetings for 2008. h) Publicity Officer Nothing to report. 9. Any Other Business Chairman: The Kipling Society Membership Survey. John Radcliffe reported that there had been 110 questionnaire forms returned so far. Whilst they had not yet been fully analysed, the main conclusions were that we were generally getting it right, members were broadly satisfied with the Journal, with the timings and frequency of meetings, and with the web-site. We have also had a lot of useful suggestions, which we will implement. It is also clear that none of us were getting any younger. There was an urgent need to get in new and younger members, and Council would be addressing this problem vigorously over the next year, by a combination of bet- ter publicity to give us a higher profile, a wider range of activities, and a campaign to establish better contacts with Universities, Schools, and the Examination Boards. Members agreed that there was a need to be more proac- tive in attracting new members, and in promoting the study of Kipling in schools and universities, perhaps through packs for schools and essay prizes. The Society could also consider advertising in the Saga and Oldie magazines. June 2008 __________KIPLING JOURNAL___________________65 ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR TO 31 DECEMBER 2007 The Accounts for the year to 31 December, 2007 which follow have been prepared under the simplified format as the Society qualifies as a Small Charity under the Charity Commission's rules. These Accounts have not yet been scrutinised by the Society's Independent Financial Examiner. NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS 1) The Society employs no paid staff, but the Society has engaged a professional accountant to provide accounting services to the Society. The fee paid for accoun- tancy services included in the Administration costs for 2007 amounted to £473. The Society does not have a permanent office. All overhead costs are included as Administration expenses. 2) This includes miscellaneous receipts from sales of the Journal, advertising, etc. 3) A small amount of Subscription income has been received in advance, but this fig- ure has not been included in "Creditors" as subscriptions received are not refundable to members. No amounts have been included in Subscriptions and Donations in respect of income tax recoverable on amounts which members have paid under "Gift Aid" rules. Tax claims are submitted for relevant tax years, and tax refunds will be included in each Receipts and Payments Account and identified separately when the refunds are received. 4) Payments for reimbursements of administration costs and other expenses of lectures and functions, etc., were made during the year to the Trustees: J Radcliffe £212; Mrs J.M. Keskar £1,090; R.C. Ayers £140; D. Page £173; A. Lycett £119; J. Walker £441, F. Noah £253. Amounts owing to Trustees at 31 December 2007 for other expenses incurred during 2007 are not included. 5) There were no sundry purchases or donations in 2007 6) Costs of programme of lectures and A.G.M. £ 1,858 Costs of special lectures, functions and events £______4,662 £ 6,520 7) Fixed assets are depreciated over 5 years at 20% p.a. pro rata, except that Library bookcases are depreciated at 10% pro rata. During 2007, the Council agreed to delete from the accounting records the costs of certain items of furniture and equipment which were purchased during the years from 1985 to 1993 and which have been written off as now being beyond use. The costs of these items had been fully depreciated in the Accounts for previous years. The figures for cost and depreciation of these items are accordingly not included in the figures for Fixtures, furniture and equipment set out in this Note. Note 7 continued on page 67. 66__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 KIPLING SOCIETY YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2007 RECEIPTS AND PAYMENTS ACCOUNT 2007 2006 £ £ £ £ June 2008______________KIPLING JOURNAL______________________67 KIPLING SOCIETY YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2007 STATEMENTS OF ASSETS AND LIABILITIES 2007 2006 £ £ 68__________________KIPLING JOURNAL____________June 2008 ABOUT THE KIPLING SOCIETY The Kipling Society is for anyone interested in the prose and verse, and the life and times, of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). It is one of the most active and enduring literary societies in Britain and, as the only one which focuses on Kipling and his place in English Literature, attracts a world-wide membership. (Details from the Society's web-site and membership forms from the Membership Secretary, Kipling Society, 295 Castle Road, Salisbury, Wilts SP1 3SB. The forms quote the minimum annual subscription rates. Some members con- tribute a little more.) The Society is a Registered Charity and a voluntary, non-profit- making organisation. Its activities, which are controlled by a Council and run by the Secretary and honorary officials, include: • maintaining a specialised Library in City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V OHB, • answering enquiries from the public (schools, publishers, writers and the media), and providing speakers on request, • arranging a regular programme of lectures, and a formal Annual Luncheon with a Guest Speaker, • running the web-site at www.kipling.org.uk for members of the Society and anyone else around the world with an interest in the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, • and publishing the Kipling Journal, every quarter. The Journal of the Society aims to entertain and inform. It is sent to subscribing paying members all over the world free of charge. This includes libraries, English Faculties, and 'Journal – only' members. Since 1927, the Journal has published important items by Kipling, not readily found elsewhere, valuable historical information, and literary comment by authorities in their field. By not being wholly academic, the Journal is representative of Kipling, whose own diverse interests and versatile talent covered a wide range of literary writing – letters, travel, prose and verse. For the serious scholar of Kipling, who cannot afford to overlook the Journal, a comprehensive index of the entire run since 1927 is available online to members or in our Library. Apply to: The Librarian, Kipling Society, 72 Millbank, Headcorn, Ashford, Kent TN27 9RG, England or email to jwawalker@gmail.com The Editor of the Kipling Journal publishes membership news, Society events, and the texts of talks given by invited speakers. In addi- tion, he is happy to receive letters and articles from readers. These may be edited and publication is not guaranteed. Letters of crisp comment, under 1000 words, and articles between 1000–4000 are especially wel- come. Write to: The Editor, Kipling Journal, 32 Merton Road, Harrow HA2 OAB, England or email to davpag@yahoo.co.uk