XI
RUDYARD KIPLING
Mr. Rudyard Kipling is in the anomalous and fortunate position of havingenjoyed a prodigious reputation for twenty years, and being still ayoung man. Few writers in the world to-day are better known than he; andit is to be hoped and expected that he has before him over thirty yearsof active production. He has not yet attained the age of forty-five; buthis numerous stories, novels, and poems have reached the unquestioneddignity of "works," and in uniform binding they make on my libraryshelves a formidable and gallant display. Foreigners read them in theirown tongues; critical essays in various languages are steadilyaccumulating; and he has received the honour of being himself the heroof a strange French novel.[15] His popularity with the general mass ofreaders has been sufficient to satisfy the wildest dreams of an author'sambition; and his fame is, in a way, officially sanctioned by thereceipt of honorary degrees from McGill University, from Durham, fromOxford, and from Cambridge; and in 1907 he was given the Nobel Prize,with the ratifying applause of the whole world. There is no indicationthat either the shouts of the mob or the hoods of Doctorates have turnedhis head; he remains to-day what he always has been--a hard,conscientious workman, trying to do his best every time.
[15] A curious and ironical book, _Dingley_, by Tharaud.
Although Mr. Kipling is British to the core, there is nothing insularabout his experience; he is as much-travelled as Ulysses.
"For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known: cities of men, And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all."
Born in India, educated at an English school, circumnavigator of theglobe, he is equally at home in the snows of the Canadian Rockies, or inthe fierce heat east of Suez; in the fogs of the Channel, or under theSouthern Cross at Capetown. Nor is he a mere sojourner on the earth: hehas lived for years in his own house, in England, in Vermont, and inIndia, and has had abundant opportunity to compare the climate ofBrattleboro with that of Bombay.
A born journalist and reporter, his publications first saw the light inephemeral Indian sheets. In the late eighties he began to amuse himselfwith the composition of squibs of verse, which he printed in the localnewspaper; these became popular, and were cited and sung withenthusiasm. Emboldened by this first taste of success, he put together alittle volume bound like a Government report; he then sent around replypost-cards for cash orders, in the fashion already made famous by WaltWhitman. It is needless to say that copies of this book command a fancyprice to-day. He immediately contracted what Holmes used to call"lead-poisoning," and the sight of his work in type made a literarycareer certain. He produced volume after volume, in both prose andverse, with amazing rapidity, and his fame overflowed the world. ALondon periodical prophesied in 1888, "The book gives hope of a newliterary star of no mean magnitude rising in the East." The amount andexcellence of his output may be judged when we remember that in thethree years from 1886 to 1889 he published _Departmental Ditties_,_Plain Tales from the Hills_, _Soldiers Three_, _In Black and White_,_The Story of the Gadsbys_, _The Man Who Would Be King_, _The Phantom'Rickshaw_, _Wee Willie Winkie_, and other narratives.
The originality, freshness, and power of all this work made Europe stareand gasp. For some years he had as much notoriety as reputation. We usedto hear of the Kipling "craze," the Kipling "boom," the Kipling "fad,"and Kipling clubs sprang up like mushrooms. It was difficult to readhim in cool blood, because he was discussed pro and con with so muchpassion. He was fashionable, in the manner of ping-pong; and there werenot wanting pessimistic prophets who looked upon him as a comet ratherthan a fixed star. So late as 1895 a well-known American journal said ofhim: "Rudyard Kipling is supposed to be the cleverest man now handlingthe pen. The magazines accept everything he writes, and pay him fabulousprices. Kipling is now printing a series of Jungle Stories that are soweak and foolish that we have never been able to read them. They are notfables: they are stories of animals talking, and they are pointless, sofar as the average reader is able to judge. We have asked a good manymagazine editors about Kipling's Jungle Stories; they all express thesame astonishment that the magazine editors accept them. Kipling willsoon be dropped by the magazine editors; they will inevitably discoverthat his stories are not admired by the people. Robert Louis Stevensondied just in time to save him from the same fate."
Many honestly believed that Mr. Kipling could write only in flashes;that he was incapable of producing a complete novel. His answer to thiswas _The Light that Failed_, which, although he made the mistake ofgiving it a reversible ending, indicated that his own lamp had yetsufficient oil. In 1895 he added immensely to the solidity of his fameby printing _The Brushwood Boy_, the scenes of which he announcedpreviously would be laid in "England, India, and the world of dreams."Here he temporarily forsook the land of mysterious horror for the landof mysterious beauty, and many were grateful, and said so. In 1896 theappearance of _The Seven Seas_ proved beyond cavil that he was somethingmore than a music-hall rimester--that he was really among the Englishpoets. The very next year _The Recessional_ stirred the religiousconsciousness of the whole English-speaking race. And although much ofhis subsequent career seems to be a nullification of the sentiment ofthat poem, it will remain imperishable when the absent-minded beggarsand the flannelled fools have reached the oblivion they so richlydeserve.
In 1897 he tried his hand for the second time at a complete novel,_Captains Courageous_, and the result might safely be called a success.The moral of this story will be worth a word or two later on. The nextyear an important volume came from his pen, _The Day's Work_--importantbecause it is in this volume that the new Kipling is first plainly seen,and the mechanical engineer takes the place of the literary artist. Suchcuriosities as _The Ship that Found Herself_, _The Bridge-Builders_,_.007_, became anything but curiosities in his later work. Thiscollection was sadly marred by the inclusion of such wretched stuff as_My Sunday at Home_, and _An Error in the Fourth Dimension_; but it wasglorified by one of the most exquisitely tender and beautiful of all Mr.Kipling's tales, _William the Conqueror_. And it should not be forgottenthat the author saw fit to close this volume with the previously printedand universally popular _Brushwood Boy_. Then, at the very height of histen years' fame, Mr. Kipling came closer to death than almost any otherindividual has safely done. As he lay sick with pneumonia in New York,the American people, whom he has so frequently ridiculed, were moregenerally and profoundly affected than they have been at the bedside ofa dying President. The year 1899 marked the great physical crisis of hislife, and seems also to indicate a turning-point in his literary career.
Whatever may be thought of the relative merits of Mr. Kipling's earlyand later style, it is fortunate for him that the two decades ofcomposition were not transposed. We all read the early work because wecould not help it; we read his twentieth-century compositions because hewrote them. It is lucky that the _Plain Tales from the Hills_ preceded_Puck of Pook's Hill_, and that _The Light that Failed_ came before_Stalky and Co._ Whether these later productions could have got intoprint without the tremendous prestige of their author's name, is aquestion that has all the fascination and all the insolubility ofspeculative philosophy. The suddenness of his early popularity may beperhaps partly accounted for by the fact that he was working a newfield. The two authors who have most influenced Mr. Kipling's style areboth Americans--Bret Harte and Mark Twain; and the analogy between thesudden fame of Harte and the sudden fame of Mr. Kipling is too obviousto escape notice. Bret Harte found in California ore of a different kindthan his maddened contemporaries sought; his early tales had all thecharm of something new and strange. What Bret Harte made out ofCalifornia Mr. Kipling made out of India; at the beginning he was a"sectional writer," who, with the instinct of genius, made his literaryopportunity out of his environment. The material was at hand, the timewas ripe, and the man was on the spot. It was the strong "local colour"in these powerful Indian tales that captivated readers--who, in far-awaycentres of cul
ture and comfort, delighted to read of primitive passionsin savage surroundings. We had all the rest and change of air that wecould have obtained in a journey to the Orient, without any of theexpense, discomfort, and peril.
But after the spell of the wizard's imagination has left us, we cannothelp asking, after the manner of the small boy, Is it true? Are thesepictures of English and native life in India faithful reflexions offact? Can we depend on Mr. Kipling for India, as we can depend (let ussay) on Daudet for a picture of the _Rue de la Paix_? Now it is anotable fact that local colour seems most genuine to those who areunable to verify it. It is a melancholy truth that the communityportrayed by a novelist not only almost invariably deny the likeness ofthe portrait, but that they emphatically resent the liberty taken.Stories of college life are laughed to scorn by the young gentlemendescribed therein, no matter how fine the local colour may seem tooutsiders. The same is true of social strata in society, of provincialtowns, and Heaven only knows what the Slums would say to their depictionin novels, if only the Slums could read. One reason for this is that anovel or a short story must have a beginning and an end, and some kindof a plot; whereas life has no such thing, nor anything remotelyresembling it. When honest people see their daily lives, made up ofthousands of unrelated incidents, served up to remote readers in theform of an orderly progression of events, leading up to a proper climax,the whole thing seems monstrously unreal and untrue. "Why, we are not inthe least like that!" they cry. And I have purposely omitted the factorof exaggeration, absolutely essential to the realistic novelist orplaywright.
In a notice of the _Plain Tales from the Hills_, the London _SaturdayReview_ remarked, "Mr. Kipling knows and appreciates the English inIndia." But it is more interesting and profitable to see how his storieswere regarded in the country he described. In the _Calcutta Times_, for14 September, 1895, there was a long editorial which is valuable, at anyrate, for the point of view. After mentioning the _Plain Tales_,_Soldiers Three_, _Barrack-room Ballads_, etc., the _Times_ criticsaid:--
"Except in a few instances which might easily be numbered on the fingers of one hand, nothing in the books we have named is at all likely to live or deserves to live.... It will probably be answered that this sweeping condemnation is not of much value against the emphatic approval of the British public and the aforesaid chorus of critics in praise of the new Genius.... And the English critics have this to plead in excuse of their hyperbolical appreciation of the Stronger Dickens, that his first work came to them fathered with responsible guarantee from men who should have known better, that it was in the way of a revelation of Anglo-Indian society, a-letting in the light of truth on places which had been very dark indeed.
"Now the average English critic knows very little of the intricacies of social life in India, and in the enthusiasm which Mrs. Hauksbee and kindred creations inspired he accepted too readily as true types what are, in fact, caricatures, or distorted presentments, of some of the more poisonous social characteristics to be found in Anglo-Indian as well as in every other civilised society.... Do not let us be understood as recklessly running down Kipling and all his works.... He possesses in a high degree the power of describing a certain class of emotions, and the flights of his imagination in some directions are extremely bold and original. In such tales, for instance, as 'The Man who would be a King' (_sic_) and 'The Ride of Morrowby Jukes' (_sic_) there are qualities of the imagination which equal, if they do not surpass, anything in the same line with which we are acquainted.... The capital charge, in the opinion of many, the head and front of his offending, is that he has traduced a whole society, and has spread libels broadcast. Anglo-Indian society may in some respects be below the average level of the best society in the Western world, where the rush and stir of life and the collision of intellects combine to keep the atmosphere clearer and more bracing than in this land of tennis, office boxes, frontier wars, and enervation. But as far as it falls below what many would wish it to be, so far it rises above the description of it which now passes current at home under the sanction of Kipling's name.... For whether Kipling is treating of Indian subjects pure and simple, of Anglo-Indian subjects, or is attempting a Western theme, the personality of the writer is pervasive and intrusive everywhere, with all its limitations of vision and information, as well as with its eternal panoply of cheap smartness and spiced vulgarity.... Smartness is always first with him, and Truth may shift for herself."
Although the writer of the above article is somewhat blinded byprejudice and wrath, it is, nevertheless, interesting testimony from theparticular section of our planet which Mr. Kipling was at that timesupposed to know best. And out in San Francisco they are still talkingof Mr. Kipling's visit there, and the "abominable libel" of Californialife and customs he chose to publish in _From Sea to Sea_.
Apart from Mr. Kipling's good fortune in having fresh material to dealwith, the success of his early work lay chiefly in its dominantquality--Force. For the last thirty years, the world has been full ofliterary experts, professional story-writers, to whom the pen is a meansof livelihood. Our magazines are crowded with tales which are wellwritten, and nothing else. They say nothing, because their writers havenothing to say. The impression left on the mind by the great majority ofhandsomely bound novels is like that of a man who beholds his naturalface in a glass. The thing we miss is the thing we unconsciouslydemand--Vitality. In the rare instances where vitality is theground-quality, readers forgive all kinds of excrescences and defects,as they did twenty years ago in Mr. Kipling, and later, for example, inJack London. The original vigour and strength of Mr. Kipling's storieswere to the jaded reader a keen, refreshing breeze; like Marlowe inElizabethan days he seemed a towering, robust, masculine personality,who had at his command an inexhaustible supply of material absolutelynew. This undoubted vigour was naturally unaccompanied by moderation andgood taste; Mr. Kipling's sins against artistic proportion and the lawof subtle suggestion were black indeed. He simply had no reserve. In_The Man Who Would Be King_, which I have always regarded as hismasterpiece, the subject was so big that no reserve in handling it wasnecessary. The whole thing was an inspiration, of imagination allcompact. But in many other instances his style was altogether too loudfor his subject. One wearies of eternal fortissimo. Many of his talesshould have been printed throughout in italics. In examples of thisnature, which are all too frequent in the "Complete Works" of Mr.Kipling, the tragedy becomes melodrama; the humour becomes buffoonery;the picturesque becomes bizarre; the terrible becomes horrible; andvulgarity reigns supreme.
He is far better in depicting action than in portraying character. Thisis one reason why his short stories are better than his novels. In _TheLight that Failed_, with all its merits, he never realised the characterof Maisie; but in his tales of violent action, we feel the vividness ofthe scene, time and again. His work here is effective, because Mr.Kipling has an acute sense of the value of words, just as a greatmusician has a correct ear for the value of pitch. When one takes thetrouble to analyse his style in his most striking passages, it all comesdown to skill in the use of the specific word--the word that makes thepicture clear, sometimes intolerably clear. Look at the nouns andadjectives in this selection from _The Drums of the Fore and Aft_:
"They then selected their men, and slew them with deep gasps and short hacking coughs, and groanings of leather belts against strained bodies, and realised for the first time that an Afghan attacked is far less formidable than an Afghan attacking; which fact old soldiers might have told them.
"But they had no old soldiers in their ranks."
There are two defects in Mr. Kipling's earlier work that might perhapsbe classed as moral deficiencies. One is the almost ever presentcoarseness, which the author mistook for vigour. Now the tendency tocoarseness is inseparable from force, and needs to be held in check.Coarseness is th
e inevitable excrescence of superabundant vitality, justas effeminacy is the danger limit of delicacy and refinement. Swift andRabelais had the coarseness of a robust English sailor; at their worstthey are simply abominable, just as Tennyson at his worst is effeminateand silly. Mr. Kipling has that natural delight in coarseness that allstrong natures have, whether they are willing to admit it or not. Alarge proportion of his scenes of humour are devoted to drunkenness:"gloriously drunk" is a favourite phrase with him. The time may comewhen this sort of humour will be obsolete. We laugh at drunkenness, asthe Elizabethans laughed at insanity, but we are only somewhat nearerreal civilisation than they. At any rate, even those who delight inscenes of intoxication must find the theme rather overworked in Mr.Kipling. This same defect in him leads to indulgence in his passion forghastly detail. This is where he ceases to be a man of letters, andbecomes downright journalistic. It is easier to excite momentaryattention by physical horror than by any other device; and Mr. Kiplingis determined to leave nothing to the imagination. Many instances mightbe cited; we need only recall the gouging out of a man's eye in _TheLight that Failed_, and the human brains on the boot in _BadaliaHerodsfoot_.
The other moral defect in this early work was its world-weary cynicism,which was simply foolish in so young a writer. His treatment of women,for example, compares unfavourably with that shown in the frankest talesof Bret Harte. His attitude toward women in these youthful books hasbeen well described as "disillusioned gallantry." The author continuallygives the reader a "knowing wink," which, after a time, gets on one'snerves. These books, after all, were probably not meant for women toread, and perhaps no one was more surprised than Mr. Kipling himself atthe rapturous exclamations of the thousands of his feminine adorers. Awoman rejoicing in the perusal of these Indian tales seems as much outof place as she does in the office of a cheap country hotel, reekingwith the fumes of whiskey and stale tobacco, and adorned with men whospit with astonishing accuracy into distant receptacles.
Mr. Kipling doubtless knows more about his own faults than any of thecritics; and if after one has read _The Light that Failed_ for the sakeof the story, one rereads it attentively as an _Apologia Pro Vita Sua_,one will be surprised to see how many ideas about his art he has putinto the mouth of Dick. "Under any circumstances, remember, four-fifthsof everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the troublefor its own sake." "One must do something always. You hang your canvasup in a palm-tree and let the parrots criticise." "If we sit downquietly to work out notions that are sent to us, we may or we may not dosomething that isn't bad. A great deal depends on being master of thebricks and mortar of the trade. But the instant we begin to think aboutsuccess and the effect of our work--to play with one eye on thegallery--we lose power and touch and everything else.... I was told thatall the world was interested in my work, and everybody at Kami's talkedturpentine, and I honestly believed that the world needed elevating andinfluencing, and all manner of impertinences, by my brushes. By Jove, Iactually believed that!... And when it's done it's such a tiny thing,and the world's so big, and all but a millionth part of it doesn'tcare."
Fortunately, four-fifths of Kipling's work isn't bad. We are safe inascribing genius to the man who wrote _The Phantom 'Rickshaw_, _TheStrange Ride_, _The Man Who Would Be King_, _William the Conqueror_,_The Brushwood Boy_, and _The Jungle Book_. These, and many other tales,to say nothing of his poetry, constitute an astounding achievement for awriter under thirty-five.
But the Kipling of the last ten years is an Imperialist and a Mechanic,rather than a literary man. We need not classify _Stalky and Co._,except to say that it is probably the worst novel ever written by a manof genius. It is on a false pitch throughout, and the most rasping bookof recent times. The only good things in it are the quotations fromBrowning. The Jingo in Mr. Kipling was released by the outbreak of theSouth African War, and the author of _The Recessional_ forgot everythinghe had prayed God to remember. He became the voice of the BritishEmpire, and the man who had always ridiculed Americans for bunkumoratory, out-screamed us all. In this imperialistic verse and prosethere is not much literature, but there is a great deal of noise, whichhas occasionally deceived the public; just as an orator is sure of around of applause if his peroration is shouted at the top of his voice.His recent book, _Puck of Pook's Hill_, is written against the grain;painful effort has supplied the place of the old inspiration, and thesimplicity of true art is conspicuous by its absence. Of this volume,_The Athenaeum_, in general friendly to Kipling, remarks: "In his newpart--the missionary of empire--Mr. Kipling is living the strenuouslife. He has frankly abandoned story-telling, and is using his completeand powerful armory in the interest of patriotic zeal." On the otherhand, Mr. Owen Wister, whose opinion is valuable, thinks _Puck_ "thehighest plane that he has ever reached"--a judgement that I record withrespect, though to me it is incomprehensible.
Kipling the Mechanic is less useful than an encyclopaedia, and not anymore interesting. A comic paper describes him as "now a technicalexpert; at one time a popular writer. This young man was born in India,came to his promise in America, and lost himself in England. His _PlainTales of the Hills_ (_sic_) has been succeeded by _EnigmaticalExpositions from the Dark Valleys_.... Mr. Kipling has declared that theAmericans have never forgiven him for not dying in their country. On thecontrary, they have never forgiven him for not having written anythingbetter since he was here than he did before. But while there's Kipling,there's hope." It is to be earnestly hoped that he will ceasedescribing the machinery of automobiles, ships, locomotives, and flyingair-vessels, and once more look in his heart and write. His worst enemyis himself. He seems to be in terror lest he should say somethingordinary and commonplace. He has been so praised for his originality andpowerful imagination, that his later books give one the impression of aman writing in the sweat of his face, with the grim determination tomake every sentence a literary event. Such a tale as _Wireless_ showsthat the zeal for originality has eaten him up. One can feel on everypage the straining for effect, and it is as exhausting to read as it isto watch a wrestling-match, and not nearly so entertaining. If Mr.Kipling goes on in the vein of these later years, he may ultimatelysurvive his reputation, as many a good man has done before him. I shouldthink even now, when the author of _Puck of Pook's Hill_ turns over thepages of _The Man Who Would Be King_, he would say with Swift, "GoodGod! what a genius I had when I wrote that book!"
His latest collection of tales, with the significant title, _Actions andReactions_, is a particularly welcome volume to those of us who preferthe nineteenth century Kipling to the twentieth. To be sure, the story_With the Night Mail_, shows the new mechanical cleverness rather thanthe old inspiration; it is both ingenious and ephemeral, and shouldhave remained within the covers of the magazine where it first appeared.Furthermore, _A Deal in Cotton_, _The Puzzler_, and _Little Foxes_ areneither clever nor literary; they are merely irritating, and remind usof a book we would gladly forget, called _Traffics and Discoveries_. Butthe first narrative in this new volume, with the caption, _An HabitationEnforced_, is one of the most subtle, charming, and altogetherdelightful things that Mr. Kipling has ever given us; nor has he everbrought English and American people in conjunction with so much charityand good feeling. I do not think he has previously shown greaterpsychological power than in this beautiful story. In the second tale,_Garm--A Hostage_, Mr. Kipling joins the ranks of the dog worshippers;the exploits of this astonishing canine will please all dog-owners, andmany others as well. Naturally he has to exaggerate; instead of makinghis four-footed hero merely intelligent, he makes him noble in reason,infinite in faculty, in apprehension like a god, the paragon of animals.But it is a brilliant piece of work. The last story, _The HouseSurgeon_, takes us into the world of spirit, whither Mr. Kipling hassuccessfully conducted his readers before. This mysterious domain seemsto have a constantly increasing attraction for modern realistic writers,and has enormously enlarged the stock of material for contemporarynovelists. The field is the world, yes; but the world is bi
gger than itused to be, bigger than any boundaries indicated by maps or globes. Itwould be interesting to speculate just what the influence of all thesetranscendental excursions will be on modern fiction as an educationalforce. Mr. Kipling apparently writes with sincere conviction, and in apowerfully impressive manner. The poetic interludes in this volume, likethose in _Puck of Pook's Hill_, show that the author's skill in versehas not in the least abated; the lines on _The Power of the Dog_ aresimply irresistible. It is safe to say that _Actions and Reactions_ willreact favourably on all unprejudiced readers; and for this relief muchthanks. If one wishes to observe the difference between the inspired andthe ingenious Mr. Kipling, one has only to read this collection straightthrough.[16]
[16] I have not discussed a new collection of Mr. Kipling's stories,called _Abaft the Funnel_, consisting of reprints of early fugitivepieces; because there is not the slightest indication that this book isin any way authorised, or that its publication has the approval of theman who wrote it. Perhaps an authorised edition of it may now becomenecessary.
Like almost all Anglo-Saxon writers, Mr. Kipling is a moralist, and hisgospel is Work. He believes in the strenuous life as a cure-all. Heapparently does not agree with Goethe that To Be is greater than To Do.The moral of _Captains Courageous_ is the same moral contained in theingenious bee-hive story. The unpardonable sin is Idleness. Butalthough Work is good for humanity, it is rather limited as an ideal,and we cannot rate Mr. Kipling very high as a spiritual teacher. God isnot always in the wind, or in the earthquake, or in the fire. Theday-dreams of men like Stevenson and Thackeray sometimes bear more fruitthan the furious energy of Mr. Kipling.
But the consuming ambition of this man, and his honest desire to do hisbest, will, let us hope, spare him the humiliation of being beaten byhis own past. After all, Genius is the rarest article in the world, andone who undoubtedly has it is far more likely to reach the top of thehill than he is to take the road to Danger, which leads into a greatwood; or the road to Destruction, which leads into a wide field, full ofdark mountains.