Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1286 page)

Mr Kipling has been writing short stories for nearly thirty years. His tales are too numerous for disparate discussion. It will be necessary to take them in groups. One or two stories in each group will be taken as typical of the rest. Thereby we shall avoid repetition and be able to show some sort of plan to the maze of Mr Kipling’s diversity of subjects and manners.

II

SIMLA

Mr Kipling’s Indian stories fall into three groups. There are (1) the tales of Simla, (2) the Anglo-Indian tales, and (3) the tales of native India. There is also
Kim
, which is more — much more — than a tale of India.

Mr Kipling’s Indian stories necessarily tend to fill a disproportionate amount of space. They are of less account than their number or the attention they have received would seem to imply. Their discussion in this and the two following chapters will be more of a political than a literary discussion. Mr Kipling as journalist and very efficient colourman in words has made much of India in his time. He has perceived in India a subject susceptible of being profitably worked upon. Here was a vast continent, the particular concern of the English, where all kinds of interesting work was being done, where stories grew too thickly for counting, and where there was, ready to the teller’s eye, a richness and diversity of setting which beggared the most eager penmanship. Moreover, this continent was virtually untouched in the popular literature of the day. Naturally Mr Kipling made full use of his opportunity. He did not write of India because India was essential to his genius, but because he was shrewd enough to realise that nothing could better serve the purpose of a young author than to exploit his first-hand acquisition of an inexhaustible store of fresh and excellent material. India was annexed by Mr Kipling at twenty-two for his own literary purposes. He was not born to interpret India, nor does he throw his literary heart and soul into the business. When, in the Indian stories, we meet with pages sincerely inspired we discover that their inspiration has very little to do with India and a great deal to do with Mr Kipling’s impulse to celebrate the work of the world, and even more to do with his impulse to escape the intellectual casuistry of his generation in a region where life is simple and intense. These aspects of his work will be more clearly revealed at a later stage. For the moment we are considering the Indian tales simply as tales of India; and from this point of view they obviously belong to the journalist rather than to the author who has helped to make the English short story respectable. Mr Kipling simply gets out of India the maximum of literary effect as a teller of tales. India, for example, is mysterious. Mr Kipling exploits her mystery competently and coolly, making his points with the precision, clarity and force of one to whom the enterprise begins and ends as an affair of technical adequacy. The point is made with equal ability that India is not without peril and difficulty ruled and administered by the sahibs; or that India has a complicated history; or that India is thickly peopled. Mr Kipling in his Indian tales makes the most of his talent for observing things, always with a keen eye for their effective literary employment. His Indian tales are descriptive journalism of a high quality; and, being journalism, their matter and their doctrine have hit hard the attention of their particular day.

This reduces us to the necessity of considering not so much their form and quality as the ideas and doctrines they contain — a barren task but necessary in order to clear away many misconceptions with regard to Mr Kipling’s work. Regarded as literature, Mr Kipling’s Indian tales are mainly of note as preparing in him that enthusiasm for the work of the world which, later, was to inspire his greatest pages; as finally leading him in
Kim
to a door whereby he was able to pass into the region of pure fancy where alone he is supremely happy, and as prompting in him the instinct to simplify which urged him into the jungle and into the minds of children. But all this has very little to do with India. So long as we are dealing with Mr Kipling’s Indian stories as in themselves finished and intrinsic studies of India, we remain only in the suburbs of Mr Kipling’s merit as an author. The Simla tales are not more than a skilful employment of a literary convention which Mr Kipling did not inherit. The Anglo-Indian and native tales are the not less skilful work of a young newspaper man breaking into a storehouse of new material. We are interested firstly in Mr Kipling’s craft as a technician, as one who makes the most of his theme deliberately and self-consciously; and secondly in Mr Kipling’s point of view, in the impressions and ideas he has collected concerning the country of which he writes. Until we arrive at
The Day’s Work
we shall be mainly occupied in clearing the ground of impertinent prejudices concerning Mr Kipling’s temperament and politics. For though the Indian and soldier tales are as literature not impregnable to criticism, they can at any rate be rescued from those who have annexed or repudiated them from motives which have little to do with their literary value.

We will begin with the Simla tales.

Characteristically the author who began virtually at the end of his career — proclaiming himself a finished virtuoso at the start — entered into prose with a volume of tales, radiating from Simla, which betray qualities that are usually associated with the later rather than with the early work of an author.
Plain Tales from the Hills
number more Simla stories to the square page than any other volume of Mr Kipling. Now Mr Kipling’s Simla stories are the least important, but in some ways the most significant of all the stories he wrote. They begin and they end in sheer literary virtuosity. We feel in reading Mr Kipling’s studies of the social world at Simla that he had no intuitive call to write them; that they are exercises in craft rather than genuine inspirations. Mrs Hawksbee stands for nothing in Mr Kipling’s achievement save only for his power to create an illusion of reality and enthusiasm by sheer finish of style. She is not a creation. She is only the best possible example of the clever sleight-of-hand of an accomplished artificer. She is in literary fiction cousin to the witty, flirtatious ladies of the modern English theatre. Her conversation is delightful, but it belongs to nobody. It does not even belong to her author. Mrs Hawksbee talks as all well-dressed women talk in the best books. She does it with a volubility and resourcefulness which almost disguises the fact that she lives only by hanging desperately to the end of her author’s pen; but she cannot deceive us always. Mr Kipling does not really believe in Mrs Hawksbee. He has no real sympathy or knowledge of the social undercrust where the tangle of three is a constant theme. The talk of Mrs Hawksbee and her circle is derived. Its conduct is fashionable light comedy in an Indian setting.

Simla really does not deserve to be known outside the Indian Empire. It is a comparatively cool place whither Indian soldier and civilians send their wives in the hot weather and whither they retire themselves under medical advice. It is not unlike any other warm and idle city of rest where there is every kind of expensive amusement provided for a migratory population. Mr Kipling has failed to make Simla interesting, because Simla is Biarritz and Monte Carlo or any place which in fiction is frequented by people who behave naughtily and enjoy themselves, and in real life is frequented by the upper middle classes mechanically passing the time. Mr Kipling’s ingenious pretences regarding Simla are amusing, but they cannot long conceal from his readers that these tales, apart from literary exhibition, were really not worth the telling. Mr Kipling pretends, of course, even at twenty-four, to know of all that passes between women unlacing after a ball; but Mr Kipling’s pretended omniscience is part of his literary method, and he does not quite carry it off in the Simla tales. He gives us not Simla or any place under the sun, but a sparkling stage version of Simla — all dancing and delight, a little intrigue, a touch of sentiment, patches of excellent fun, and now and then a streak of Indian mystery. But Mr Kipling’s heart is not really in this business. His Simla tales will not endure, and they have been given too much prominence in the popular idea of his work. They are not plain tales, but tales very artfully coloured. They fall far short of the standard to which Mr Kipling has raised the English short story. Yet even here we may note the skill with which the author has concealed his failure. Mrs Hawksbee may be taken as a symbol of the distinction between the work of an inspired author and the work of an author playing with his tools. Mr Kipling of
The Jungle Books
and
The Day’s Work
is an inspired author. Mr Kipling of the Simla tales, on the other hand, is simply concerned to show that he can work a conventional formula of the day as well as any man; that he can redeem the formula with individual touches beyond the reach of most; and can enliven it with impudent pretences which please by virtue of their being utterly preposterous. Take, for example, the pretence that Mrs Hawksbee is a charming woman. Mrs Hawksbee is really nothing of the kind. She is an anthology of witty phrases. She is the abstract perfection of what a clever head and a good heart is expected to be in a fashionable comedy. But Mr Kipling desires her to be accepted as a charming woman. His procedure, on a high and delicate plane, is precisely the procedure to which we are accustomed on a low and obvious plane in the majority of popular novels where the hero has to be accepted for a man of brilliant genius. We have to take the author’s word for it. The author who tells us that his hero is a genius usually requires us to believe it without further proof. He does not show us a page of the hero’s music or the hero’s poetry, but we must believe that it is very fine, even though the hero loves Pietro Mascagni and worships Martin Tupper. Similarly Mr Kipling, presenting us with Mrs Hawksbee, nowhere affords us direct evidence that she is a charming woman. He assumes it, gets everyone else in the story to assume it, and expects his readers to assume it — his cunning as a writer being of so remarkable a quality that there are very few of the Simla tales in which the reader is not prepared to assume it for the sake of the story.

Mrs Hawksbee is typical of the majority of Mr Kipling’s studies in social comedy. His success in this kind is remarkable, but it is barren. Mr Kipling realised this himself quite early, for he quite soon abandoned Simla. There are some sixteen stories in
Plain Tales from the Hills
into which the Simla motive is threaded. In the books immediately following, published in 1888 and 1889, Simla is not wholly abandoned, but the proportion of Simla stories is less.
The Phantom Rickshaw
(1889) is the last story which can fairly be brought within the list, and this story can only be included by straining its point to vanishing. Of all the groups of stories in
Plain Tales from the Hills
the Simla group, though it was largest, promised least for the future.

III

THE SAHIB

There is another group of Indian tales, a group which deals with the governance of India — with the men who are spent in the Imperial Service. The peculiar charm and merit of these tales is best considered as a special case of Mr Kipling’s delight in the world’s work — a subject which claims a chapter to itself. But apart from this, Mr Kipling’s Anglo-Indian tales — his presentation of the work of the Indian Empire, of the Anglo-Indian soldier and civilian — have an unfortunate interest of their own. They are mainly responsible for a misconception which has dogged Mr Kipling through all his career. This misconception consists in regarding Mr Kipling as primarily an Imperialist pamphleteer with a brief for the Services and a contempt for the Progressive Parties. It is an error which has acted mischievously upon all who share it — upon the reader who mechanically regrets that Mr Kipling’s work should be disfigured with fierce heresy; upon the reader who chuckles with sectarian glee when the “much talkers” are mocked and confounded; upon Mr Kipling himself who has been encouraged to mistake an accident of his career as the essence of his achievement and to regard himself as a sort of Imperial laureate. The origin of this misconception is not obscure. Mr Kipling has written intimate tales of the British Army: he is, therefore, a “militarist.” He has lived in India many years, and realised that men who live in India, and administer India, and come into personal contact with Hindus and Mohammedans, know more about India than Members of Parliament who run through the Indian continent between sessions: he is, therefore, a reviler of the free democratic institutions of Great Britain. He has realised that Government departments in Whitehall are not always thought to be very expeditious, well informed and devoted by men who are often confronted with matters that cannot afford to wait for a telegram: he is, therefore, a lover of the high hand and of courses brutal and irregular. He has celebrated the toil and the adventure of pioneers and of outposts: he is, therefore, one who brandishes unseasonably the Imperial sword.

The grain of truth in these deductions is heavily outweighed by the massive absurdity of regarding them as in any sense essential. Mr Kipling brings political prejudice into his work less than almost any living contemporary. At a time when there was hardly an English novel or an English play of consequence which was not also a political pamphlet it was completely false to regard Mr Kipling as a pamphleteer. When most of our English authors were talking from the platform, Mr Kipling — with a few, too few, others — remained apart. He is suspect, not because his Anglo-Indian tales or his army tales are political, but because they record much that is true of the English Services, which fails to square with much that once was popularly believed about them. The real reason of Mr Kipling’s false fame as a politician is, not that he is an Imperial pamphleteer, but that, writing of the Army and the Empire, he fails to be a pamphleteer on the other side. His detachment, not his partiality, is at fault.