Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1303 page)

FROM A LETTER TO VICOMTE D’HUMIERES, 1904.

“There exists — I am glad you did not see it — an England which, ruined by excess of comfort, has gone to sleep and, because it snores loudly, believes that it is thinking.

“Your comments on the Army seem to me very just. Above all, you have put your finger upon one vital point of our training when you speak of the men who * understand that they must not understand.’ I think that is at the bottom of many of our successes and our failures. It is the first thing which we teach our boys. . . . Believe me, I agree most cordially with all you say on the value of a good understanding between our countries; and this not only for the need of to-day, but for the hope of to-morrow. The two lands, so it seems to me, supplement each other in temperament and outlook, in logic and fact. Even if this were not the case, we must remember that there is not so much of liberty left in Eastern Europe that the two leaders of Freedom should dare to dispute between themselves. We both have to deal with the ‘unfrei’ peoples, the veiled and cramped lands where the word of a king is absolute power. If we should quarrel, who will profit? The Middle Ages with the modern guns, isn’t that true? . . . No, our ‘ chastity’ is not all cant. It is an administrative necessity forced upon us by the density of the population. Imagine a land with four hundred people to the square mile — if they were penetrated with a refined and enduring sensuality! It would be an orgy! It would impede traffic. Consequently we are brief and business-like in such matters. Also it is a meat-fed people of whom 6,000,000 (or more than one- seventh) live in a city which, for five months of the year, swims in semi-

obscurity alternating with profound darkness. We realise that this is exciting to certain wine-centres and we — the land — take exercise to counteract the stimulus.

“We understand that we must not understand.’ To understand everything may be to pardon everything, but it also means to commit everything . . .”

FROM A PREFATORY LETTER TO “THE COMPLETE MOTORIST,” 1904.

“Any fool can invent anything, as any fool can wait to buy the invention when it is thoroughly perfected; but the men to reverence, to admire, to write odes and erect statues to, are those Prometheuses and Ixions (maniacs you used to call us) who chase the inchoate idea of fixity up and down the King’s Highway ... It is the Car . . . that we have to thank for the quickened intellect, the alerter eye, the more agile limbs, and the less unquenchable thirst of our fellow-citizens ...”

RUDYARD KIPLING IN TRANSLATIONS.

A number of the twenty or so prose writings of Kipling have been translated into French by Count Robert d’Humieres and Monsieur L. Fabulet. They were most warmly welcomed. Very long and appreciative essays upon him have also appeared in France, notably in the Revue des Deux Mondes over the signature of Mon. Roz. I am not sure whether the three plays (“The Harbour Watch,” “The Light that Failed,” and “The Man Who Was”) have been produced upon French boards.

There have been Spanish, Dutch, and German translations of certain books. “ Captains Courageous “ has been published in Icelandic, at Reykjavik, and our old and esteemed little friend “Kim” would be proud and amused to know that he figures in one out-of-the-way translated form as “Prelo&la Pavla Mondra,” whatever that may completely and precisely mean!

The translations into French have been a great success, although it is rather a pity that many of the stories have been re-grouped. This mode of procedure makes it difficult or at least inconvenient to find certain of them.

RUDYARD KIPLING’S BOOKLET ENTITLED “DOCTORS.”

This booklet I here mention — published in 1908, bound in the familiar red, and adorned with the familiar svastika — as it does not seem to be as well known as it should be, and certainly has an especial interest at the present moment when those lords of life and death, the judges of our tongues and pulses, are so much demanded and honoured. “ Doctors” was an address delivered at the Middlesex Hospital. The booklet is packed with obiter dicta in the best, the most-admired mould and manner of the great author. By continuing to quote all the good things one would indubitably reprint the whole thing. But I do not wish to resist copying two paragraphs that linger in the honey of memory long after the eyes have done their duty. Paragraph One shows us that Kipling knows his Bishop Butler :

“You remain now perhaps the only class that dares to tell the world that we can get no more out of a machine than we put into it; that if the fathers have eaten forbidden fruit the children’s teeth are very liable to be affected. Your training shows you daily and directly that things are what they are, and that their consequences will be what they will be and that we deceive no one but ourselves when we pretend otherwise.”

“May I remind you of some of your privileges? You and kings are about the only people whose explanations the police will accept if you exceed the legal limit in your car. On presentation of your visiting card you can pass through the most turbulent crowd unmolested; even with applause. If you fly a yellow flag over a centre of population you can turn it into a desert. If you choose to fly a Red Cross flag over a desert you can turn it into a centre of population towards which, as I have seen, men will crawl on hands and knees. You can forbid any ship to enter any port in the world. If you think it necessary to the success of any operation in which you are interested, you can stop a 20,000 ton liner with her mails in mid-ocean till that operation is completed.”

A long, but deeply interesting, preface to “ Doctors “ was written by the late and deeply regretted author, Reginald Lucas. He was the able biographer of

the late Prince Francis of Teck, and also author of several books, half essay, half fancy, that were much appreciated by the Intelligentzia, here and elsewhere. A pathetic, and most ironic, fact is that this gentleman of letters took his own life in the Albany, Piccadilly, soon after the successful issue of his book entitled “The Cheerful Day”!

THE “MOTHER 0’ MINE” POEM.

I clearly recall the spring of 1901 and a certain charming drawing-room in the Parks, Oxford, when Kipling’s “ Light that Failed “ had just arrived. (Indeed I have especial memories connected with the appearance of certainly all the early volumes. What Kiplingite has not?) Some one read aloud the really beautiful Dedication to “ Mother o’ Mine.” “ Splendid! “ uttered fervently a scholar and man of letters who was being taught the Real Kipling. “ Splendid; it has that rare, clear-cut touch of the classic poets of emotion.” He continued in the drawling, convincing voice we loved to speak of Bion and Moschus and of what he called the Art of Perfect Presentation as seen in Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius. “ Mother o’ Mine,” he concluded, “is a pure gem of literature.” That appraiser has passed for ever. Some years later a much used copy of the book was found lying upon an Oxford book-stall. Upon one of the blank endpapers some one had attempted another verse of “ Mother o’ Mine.” I copy it here as a curiosity of the sincerest form of flattery :

“If I were damned for ever and aye,

I know that for ever you then would pray,

That my soul might be whole at the last

%dread day, Mother oy Mine, 0 Mother & Mine.”

“The Light that Failed” originally appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine with an engraved portrait of its author by an artist named Gribayedorff. In the cloth- bound book form, as issued by Ward, Lock & Co., it was a longer narrative, containing, for instance, more of the cunning and amusing chatter of the war correspondents.

LESS KNOWN KIPLING PARODIES.

A whole book and a big one could be compiled of parodies of Kipling’s verse alone. “ When in doubt, parody Kipling,” must have been a standing order issued by the editors of University papers to the brilliant young undergrads whose inklingerings helped to charm lotus days by Isis and Cam. I have met, and detained, two American parodies so good that it is surprising they are not better known. But I do not recall seeing either of them in English books or in Magazinedom. They were written by E. P. C. and G. W. Carryl respectively. The latter gentleman is an adroit and witty writer of books in belles-lettres.

AFTER KIPLING.

FUZZY WUZZY LEAVES US.

We’ve been visited by men across the seas,

And some of them could write, and some could not;

The English, French, and German — whom you please,

But Kipling was the finest of the lot.

In sooth, we’re loath to lose him from our list;

Though he’s not been wholly kind in all his dealings;

Indeed from first to last I must insist,

He has played the cat and banjo with our feelings.

But here’s to you, Mr. Kipling, with your comments and your slurs;

You’re a poor, benighted Briton, but the Prince of Raconteurs!

We’ll give you your certificate, and if you want it signed,

Come back and have a fling at us whenever you’re inclined!

You harrowed us with murder and with blood;

You dipped us deep in Simla’s petty guile;

Yet we have found ourselves misunderstood

When we served you a sensation in our style;

But here’s to you, Mr. Kipling, and the

boys of Lung-tung-pen, And all we have to ask you is, make ‘em kill again!

For though we’re crude in some things here, which fact I much deplore,

We know Genius when we see it, and we’re not afraid of gore.

And yet we love you best on Greenhough Hill,

By Bisesa and her sisters dark per- plext;

In your sermons which have power to lift and thrill

Just because they have the heart of man as text;

And when you bend, the little ones to please,

With Bagheera and Baloo at hide-and- seek,

Oh! a happy hour with Mowgli in the trees

Sets a little chap a-dreaming for a week.

So, here’s to you, Mr. Kipling, and to Mowgli and Old Kaa

And to her who loved and waited where the Gates of Sorrow are;

For where is brush more potent to

paint since Art began

The white love of a woman and the red blood of a man?

So, since to us you’ve given such delight,

We hope that you won’t think us quite so bad.

You’re all hot sand and ginger, when you write,

But we’re sure you’re only shamming when you’re “ mad.”

Yet so you leave us Gunga Din’s salaam,

So you incarnate Mulvaney on a spree;

Mr. Kipling, sir, we do not “ care a damn “

For the comments you may make on such as we!

Then here’s to you, Mr. Kipling, and

Columbia avers,

You’re a poor benighted Briton, but the Prince of Raconteurs.

You may scathe us, and may leave us;

still in our hearts will stay The man who made Mulvaney and the Road to Mandalay.

A BALLAD

(In the manner of R-dy-rd K-pl-ng).

As I was walkin’ the jungle round, a- killin’ of tigers and time;

I seed a kind of an author man a-writin’ a rousin’ rhyme;

‘E was writin’ a mile a minute an’ more, an’ I sez to ‘im, “ ‘Oo are you? “

Sez ‘e, “ I’m a poet — ’er Majesty’s poet — soldier an’ sailor, too! “

An’ ‘is poem began in Ispahan an’ ended in Kalamazoo,

It ‘ad Army in it, an’ Navy in it, an’ jungle sprinkled through,

For ‘e was a poet — ’er Majesty’s poet — soldier and sailor, too!

‘E’ll take you up to the Ar’tic zone, ‘e’ll

take you down to the Nile, ‘E’ll give you a barrack ballad in the

Tommy Atkins style, Or ‘e’ll sing you a Dipsy Chantey, as