CHAPTER VI

THE WRITINGS OF RUDYARD KIPLING BEFORE AND AFTER THE AWARD

The prize of 1907 has been awarded:

Kipling, Rudyard, born 1865: “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, and also the manly strength in the art of perception and delineation that characterize the writings of this world-renowned author.”[55]

Six years passed after the first prizes were given in literature from the Nobel fund; the countries honored thus far had been France, Germany, Norway, Spain, Italy, and Poland. “Where is Great Britain on the literary map?” asked certain speakers and writers. Names of British authors had been sent to the Committee of the Nobel Foundation and the Swedish Academy, with ardent commendation by individuals and academic circles. Prominent among such names, suggested in the press, had been Swinburne, George Meredith, John Morley, Thomas Hardy, Barrie, and Robert Bridges. One journal asked, “Why not Kipling?” The answer came in the announcement that the award for 1907 was given to Rudyard Kipling, poet and story-teller. Again the issue, “What is Idealism?” was raised and challenged by some opponents of this choice yet, on the whole, it met with wide favor. Kipling’s type of robust idealism was defended; said W. B. Parker, “His idealism needs no other evidence than the enthusiastic following he has had from boys.”[56]

Combined with this _robust idealism_ are two other qualities of Kipling as writer, that have given him “the enthusiastic following of boys”--his virility and courage. For adolescents and college youths he has upheld the ideals of vigorous action, of honor and bravery, of daring in speech and deed. In his dynamic poems and tales of _The Day’s Work_, _Kim_, _Life’s Handicap_, and the other volumes so familiar, he reflects his “gospel” of fearlessness, that does not hesitate to shock some who abide by the conventional standards of speech. Gilbert K. Chesterton has said forceful truths about this trait of Kipling in _Heretics_: he affirms that credit is due to Kipling for his appreciation of _slang_ and _steam_. He expands the thought thus: “Steam may be, if you like, a dirty by-product of science. Slang may be, if you like, a dirty by-product of language. But at least he has been among the few who saw the living parentage of these things and knew that where there is smoke, there is fire--that is, wherever there is the foulest of things there, also, is the purest.”[57] Mr. Chesterton declares that Kipling’s type of courage is not that of war, nor valor of the battle-field, but “that interdependence and efficiency which belongs quite as much to engineers, or sailors, or mules, or railway engineers.” Recurrent in memory are such tales as “The Bridge-Builders,” “The Ship That Found Herself,” “.007,” “With the Night Mail” and “Wireless.”

[Illustration:

_By courtesy of Doubleday, Page & Co._ _Photograph by E. O. Hoppe_

RUDYARD KIPLING]

One trait sharply differentiates Kipling from some of his colleagues among the Nobel prize winners. He is a patriot-poet but with less ardent tribute than is found in the verse of Mistral and Björnson and Heidenstam. Perhaps his open criticism of his country in certain political crises has barred him from the laureateship. His frank, democratic attitude in later years, somewhat in contrast with earlier utterances of imperialism, finds expression in every stanza of “A Pilgrim’s Way.” Few poets, however, have written such magnetic lines in urgence of “fitness,” honor and service for country as has Kipling, in the familiar words of “If,” “For All We Have and Are,” “The Children’s Song,” and the refrain in the poem in _Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Scoutmasters_--

Be fit--be fit--for honour’s sake be fit!

He is patriotic with the world knowledge of a traveled man; two examples in proof are found in “The Return” and “The English Flag,” with the pertinent query--

And what should they know of England who only England know?

In recent years it has been a “fad” in certain journals to depreciate Kipling and to charge against him faults of narrowness in outlook and lack of modernism. Especially during the years of the war and its immediate aftermath one found tones of sad, somewhat cynical writing. In large measure this was due to the personal trials of the time and the loss of his son. That elegiac poem, “My Boy Jack; 1914-1918,” will live as a heart-gripping memorial. In his speech at the Sorbonne, November 19, 1921, he gave evidences of spiritual recovery; he said, “One cannot resume a broken world as easily as one can resume a broken sentence. But before long our sons who have spent themselves in suffering and toiling to abolish the menace of barbarism will recover also from the menace of moral lassitude.” With old-time sprightliness and vigor he wrote, in the spring of 1924, the stanzas “A Song of the French Roads,” after a visit to France and the joyful experience of finding the roads to the border, that had been laid out by Napoleon and devastated by the war, were now repaired and open to traffic.[58]

It was the Kipling of the earlier years of writing who received the Nobel prize. He was forty-two years old, one of the youngest winners. He had already published volumes of prose and verse that would be creditable to a writer of twice his age. Born at Bombay, December 30, 1865, he inherited intellectual promise from both parents. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, an artist, was at that time Director of the Lahore School of Industrial Art. He was a delightful story-teller and expertly trained in technical and artistic knowledge. He illustrated some of his son’s earlier tales; a book by him, entitled _Beast and Man in India_, with unusual drawings, was attributed to Rudyard Kipling (London, 1891). Alice MacDonald, the mother, gave to her son a keen zest in life and a rare sense of humor. Her devotion has had many lines of commemoration, notably in such a poem as “Mother O’ Mine.”

The boy was named Joseph Rudyard but he seldom used the first name. The second, in memory of a lake in England where his father and mother had met, is so arresting and unique that it has been called one of the causes of his first appeal to the curious public. After his early boyhood in India, leaving with him strong impressions and love for the land, he was sent to Southsea, Devonshire, to school and later to the United Services College at Westward Ho. He was homesick for his mother and found it difficult to mix well with the English-born boys. _Stalky & Co._ is largely autobiographical of this period. In 1880 he returned to India, anxious to enter journalism and know the native people, especially in the army. The story runs that once, when Kipling was doing journalistic work in Lahore, the Duke of Connaught visited the place and asked the young man what he would prefer to do in India. The reply came promptly, “I would like, sir, to live with the army for a time, and go to the frontier to write up Tommy Atkins.” The request was granted and the literary results in later years are listed in _Department Ditties_, _Soldiers Three_, _Under the Deodars_, and many more stories in volumes, from _Plain Tales from the Hills_ to _Eyes of Asia_.

Much discussion has been rife about the truth or exaggeration of Kipling’s pictures of India, especially types of army men and officers’ wives. Many critics, who have traveled in India, affirm the photographic quality of the tales and verse but some raise the issue of the tone--is it sincere or sardonic? Others, who claim to have talked with certain “natives,” condemn both the spirit and the characterizations. To the charge of insincerity or disloyalty there seems to be a firm answer in the friendly Prelude to _Departmental Ditties_, which has a prominent place in the Inclusive Edition of _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_. He lays stress, in the last stanza, upon “the jesting guise” but he emphasizes, also, his loyalty to these people, especially in the second stanza:

Was there aught that I did not share In vigil or toil or ease,-- One joy or woe that I did not know, Dear hearts across the seas?[59]

During these years from 1882 to 1889, while he was doing journalistic work and associating with civil and military representatives in Lahore, Bombay, and Mandalay, he was writing stories and verses which appeared in the newspaper columns of India. The first issue in book form was by A. H. Wheeler & Co. of Allahabad, a little book in gray paper covers which was sold at railway stations. In his own hand and with striking illustrations, Kipling edited some of his early tales; one such, “Wee Willie Winkie,” dedicated to his mother, with others that formed “an illustrated set,” found a purchaser in J. Pierpont Morgan, in recent years at a price stated to be $17,000.[60]

When Kipling was twenty-five years old, with his memory packed with scenes of adventure and characters in India, and his pockets filled with unpublished tales and verse, he decided to try his literary fate in England. He traveled by way of the Pacific to California and reached New York with hopes of editorial encouragement because he had letters of introduction. He was not received with cordiality; perhaps in later years some of these editors and publishers regretted their lost chance to launch a new genius. In London, he attracted attention slowly but, with influence from family and officials, he won recognition by critics and reading-public. One of the first to appreciate Kipling’s unique work was Andrew Lang; later he was severe in criticism of certain faults. One of his essays upon Kipling of the earlier _Tales_ is included in _Essays in Little_ (Scribner’s, 1891). It has a prophetic note, an emphasis of “the brilliance of colour,” the strange, varied themes, the “perfume of the East.”

The Nobel prize was given to Kipling because of these qualities of his earlier work, as well as his more mature, potent messages. He had, from the first, rare ability to revivify, to secure for future generations of readers the real and the romantic in Anglo-India of the later nineteenth century. He preserved the landscapes, the customs, the ideals, the intrigues, the foibles, even the slang of the natives and the British soldiers. Just as Mistral saved the language and romances of Provence from oblivion, in his _Mireio_ and other poems; just as Björnson recorded the almost forgotten sagas of Norway and blended these with modern, peasant life; so Kipling made literary use of this unfamiliar material of India. His idealism converted the ordinary, often petty and rough aspects of life, into stories and verses of undying flavor, like “The Phantom Rickshaw,” _Soldiers Three_, “Drums of the Fore and Aft,” “On the City Wall,” “M’Andrew’s Hymn,” “Danny Deever,” “Mandalay,” and “The Lover’s Litany.” Here are recorded days of adventure and danger, nights of memory and longing. In 1902, more than ten years after he left India, he wrote one of his most appealing poems, “The Broken Men,” the exiles from England with their pluck and their pathos, which grips the sympathies like those tales of O. Henry about the American self-imposed “exiles” in Central America.

The later visit that Kipling made to the United States cheered his heart, in contrast to the earlier reception. He had met Caroline Balestier, sister of Wolcott Balestier, a young man with whom Kipling became intimate in London and with whom he collaborated in the novel, _The Naulahka_. Their home was in Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1892 Miss Balestier was married to Kipling in All Soul’s Church, Portland Place, London. They came to Vermont to live for a few years in the unique house, which Kipling built for his bride overlooking Brattleboro. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle accredits him with “chivalrous devotion” to his wife, which caused him to come to America lest she might miss her home and friends.[61] Before coming to America they took a journey “round the world,” or a segment of it. The death of Wolcott Balestier was a deep grief to his friend and a loss to American literature. In dedicatory elegy (_Barrack-Room Ballads_) Kipling wrote the lines of noble characterization:

E’en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth, In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth.[62]

For the little daughter, who died at an early age, Kipling wrote his first _Jungle Book_. In this American home he wrote, also, many of the poems collected in _The Seven Seas_ and the short stories, _Many Inventions_. In the latter book were the daring pictures of life like “The Disturber of Traffic,” the haunting tale of “The Lost Legion,” and the tragic “Love o’ Women.” The inspiration of Mrs. Kipling, her perfect appreciation of her husband’s gifts and moods, and her gracious influence have been attested by him in many tender words, as well as in the more impersonal tributes to womanhood of brains and heart, which one finds expressed in _From Sea to Sea_ or “His Chance in Life.” The world will never forget the persistent story that Mrs. Kipling saved, from the wastebasket, that grand hymn of all time, “The Recessional.” In some of his tales he antagonized Americans, notably in _The Light That Failed_ and “An Habitation Enforced” in _Actions and Reactions_; as compensation one recalls “An Error of the Fourth Dimension” from _Plain Tales_, the story of Wilton Sargent, American.

The writing of Kipling showed advance in form during the decade from 1890 to 1900. There was gradual elimination of the jingoism and cynicism which tainted some of his earlier work. In 1897 he visited South Africa again. He recounted an actual experience in riding on a Cape Government Railway in his tale “.007,” among the stories in _The Day’s Work_, published in 1898. In this same collection is found “The Brushwood Boy,” a masterpiece of mystic idealism which will stand beside his more poetic allegory, “They.” The year 1899 has been regarded sometimes as a crisis in the life of Kipling which affected his later writing. On his arrival in New York, in the late autumn of that year, he was attacked by a severe case of pneumonia and was desperately ill for many weeks. The press of America, England, and the Continent awaited the bulletins with anxiety. He recovered but some critics have affirmed that he lost his vigor and literary power. Looking over the dates of his poems, and recalling the books which have appeared since this crisis, such a surmise is not warranted. One could scarcely expect that any author could continue to write, on a level or ascending scale, many more books about India than he had already written or many more poems of vital spell like “If,” “When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted,” and “M’Andrew’s Hymn.”

He had already proved his ability to write for children and adolescents. Few books among juveniles surpass, in visualization and imaginative skill, _The Jungle Books_, _Just So Stories_, and that pioneer sea tale that has gained favor with the years, _Captains Courageous_. In the years that followed his serious illness, he wrote tales of clever inventiveness collected in _Puck of Pook’s Hill_, _Rewards and Fairies_, and _Kim_. To this period belong, also, many of the poems collected in the volume, _The Five Nations_. Who will say that there was decadence of literary power, any lapse of dramatic skill, in that story of _Kim_, or Kimball O’Hara, the orphan boy of Lahore? The boys of to-day--and normal girls--have wholesome “thrills” at this lad’s story, his pilgrimages over India with the Tibetan lama, and his final adoption by the regiment to which his father had belonged. Humor, adventure, vivid photographs of places and people--all are mingled in this tale. When it appeared in the London edition of 1901, the father of Kipling contributed some of the striking illustrations.

_The Five Nations_ of this later period gave permanence in form to such vital poems as “White Horses,” “Our Lady of the Snows” (the beautiful ode to Canada), “The Dykes,” “The Feet of the Young Men,” “Boots,” “The Explorer,” and “The Recessional.” “Buddha at Kamakura,” which first appeared in _Kim_, should be listed in this collection. Are there here traces of lapse in form or spontaneity compared with the earlier, less restrained verses in _Departmental Ditties_ or _Barrack-Room Ballads_? In _Traffics and Discoveries_, published in 1904, are found such literary achievements as “Wireless,” “They,” and “The Army of a Dream.” Kipling had shown his keen observation, humor, and appreciation of varied beauties of Nature in his volumes of travel-sketches and letters, _From Sea to Sea_ and _Letters of Travel_. “In Sight of Monadnock” contains a brief, fine description of that distant New Hampshire peak. With his long experience in travel and adjustment to diverse conditions of life, Kipling has ever been a poet of home, national and domestic. His poem, “Sussex,” written in 1902, has deep feeling as well as notable lines of description and a rhythmic swing.

New poets and story-writers came into prominence with the twentieth century. Although Kipling was in his full maturity and vigor when the Nobel prize was awarded, with years of promising, creative work before him, he had been so long before the public that it became the fashion, in some brilliant, cynical groups, to speak of him as belonging to the older generation. His volumes attracted less attention in competition with those of mere “modernism.” The announcement of the Nobel prize, in 1907, aroused interest anew in every country. In looking over the Kipling bibliographical cards, in the Widener Library at Harvard University, it is interesting to find records of translations of his books into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish. The journals took occasion to review what he had accomplished in literature before 1907, to commend or reprove the decision of the Swedish Academy in giving him a prize for “idealistic” literature. Some cited his imperialistic “complex” and quoted “The Man Who Would Be King.” In _Current Literature_ for October, 1908, are quotations from diverse opinions: Said the _London Nation_: “There is hardly any English writer more closely identified with the doctrine of force or a firmer believer that the Deity is to be found on the side of the big battalions.” The _New York World_ declared, “He sings of blood-lust, with a schoolboy’s disregard of consequences.” The _Chicago Post_ believed that his idealism was “the idealization of might” but it praised his strong, Biblical English.

Comments of this kind fail to recognize the _two_, paradoxical traits in Kipling’s nature and writings. There is stark realism, sometimes relentless, as in “The Courtship of Dinah Shadd,” “The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows,” “My Son’s Wife,” or poems like “The Galley-Slave,” “Danny Deever,” and “Kitchener’s School.” Close beside this realism, penetrating and often sordid, sounds a note of idealism, a promise of “a happy issue out of all troubles,” a vision that comes to an idealist. Recall that in _The Day’s Work_, there is the tense, realistic tale of “The Devil and the Deep Sea,” and, within a few pages, the idyll of “The Brushwood Boy.”

Since the Nobel prize was received, Kipling has written with less frequency and more unevenness of form. Some of the prose and verse reflects the war, like “Fringes of the Fleet,” “Sea Warfare,” “France,” and the “History of the Irish Guards.” Not soon forgotten will be that tribute to Roosevelt, tender and virile, “Great-Heart” (1919). In the collected poems, _The Years Between_, there are challenging war poems, “For All We Have and Are,” an appeal to England, and “The Choice, or The American Spirit Speaks,” for the United States. The elegy to “Lord Roberts,” less militant in tone, is true poetry in emotion and measure. Some stanzas are touched by irony, and have the sermonic quality which is characteristic--“The Sons of Martha,” “En-Dor” and “Russia to the Pacifists.” The juvenile of 1923, _Land and Sea Tales for Boys and Girls_ (or _for Scouts and Scoutmasters_) is uneven in quality but it has two dramatic sketches. _Eyes of Asia_, portraits of Europeans as seen by Oriental eyes, is more comparable to mediocre pages in _Actions and Reactions_ than it is to the more vital stories in _Plain Tales_ and _The Day’s Work_. “Fumes of the Heart” is the best of these later tales.

Mr. Kipling is reaping honors in educational and civic life. His reserve, which is sometimes rated as coldness, keeps him far from the limelight of publicity. He cannot be persuaded to “come to America” as lecturer or reader, in the train of many of his compatriots of far less worth or fame. In his Sussex home, with family and a few friends about him, he is a delightful _raconteur_ or conversationalist upon topics of world-wide politics. He is more amused than angered at some of the petty criticisms upon his writing, like the recent attack upon “Mandalay” for its anachronisms in geography, not unlike the charges against Shakespeare in _The Tempest_ and _The Winter’s Tale_. Arnold Bennett, in _Books and Persons_,[63] has some comments upon Kipling’s flaws in _Actions and Reactions_ and his “prejudices and clayey ideals,” but he ends with tribute to him as a painstaking artist, devoted to his craft.

Philip Guedalla, brilliant journalist and ironist, in his essays, _A Gallery_, under caption of “Mandalay,” says “much in little” about the “remoteness and antiquity” of Kipling; he finds him so “antiquated” that the “Dinosaurus” might give him “points in modernity.” Despite such witty extravagances, however, the critic admits that Kipling “has sharpened the English language to a knife-edge and with it has cut brilliant patterns on the surface of our prose literature.”[64] In both his prose and poetry he has “sharpened the English language to a knife-edge.” His verses may seem “antiquated” to the reader whose exclusive tastes welcome only “new poetry” and sneer at “lilting rhymes” and conventional meters. To broader minds, however, there is appreciation of the vibrant messages of spiritual courage, the bold and graphic excerpts from real life, in both the verse and the fiction of Kipling at his best.

One of the honors that came to this writer recently was an invitation to give the Rectorial Address at St. Andrews University, in 1923. This has been published in book form as _Independence_, similar in format to that of Barrie’s address, on a kindred occasion, entitled _Courage_. Mr. Kipling urges here the fundamental duty of developing one’s individuality: “After all,” he says, “yourself is the only person you can by no possibility get away from in this life, and maybe, in another. It is worth a little pains and money to do good to him.”[65]

His idealism is not that of mere sentiment, much less of sentimentality. It is the idealism of work, of action, of responsibility. It is the idealism even in the midst of misjudgments, of carrying “The White Man’s Burden,” of training youth towards clean, productive manhood. One grants that some of his writings, both prose and verse, might be eliminated from collections and memory, with an increase in his literary rank. He is uneven and was prone, in his earlier days, to mistake coarseness for vigor, yet he has been able to make his readers both _listen_ and _see_. Perhaps he has not maintained the almost unanimous favoritism among college youths that he had two decades ago--there have been competitors with “college stories” of rank realism--but it may be questioned if any author of our day is more often quoted among both educated and unlettered adults. Mr. Kipling has never been tempted to lower his standards for commercial ends; with fearless truth, he has spoken messages of uprightness and service. “A Song of the English” is national, perhaps imperialistic, but it has, like scores of his other stanzas, a catholic message to Christian nations everywhere:

Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience-- Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford. Make ye sure to each his own That he reap where he hath sown; By the peace among our peoples let men know we serve the Lord![66]

FOOTNOTES:

[55] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1907.

[56] _World’s Work_, February, 1908.

[57] _Heretics_ by Gilbert K. Chesterton, London and New York, 1915, 1919. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co.

[58] _Literary Digest_, July 5, 1924.

[59] _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_: Inclusive Edition, Garden City, N. Y., 1924, p. 3. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday, Page & Co.

[60] _Bookman_, 25: 561.

[61] _Memories and Adventures_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Boston, 1924.

[62] By permission of Mr. Kipling.

[63] George H. Doran, New York, 1917.

[64] _A Gallery_ by Philip Guedalla, New York, 1924. By permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

[65] _Independence_: Rectorial Address at St. Andrews by Rudyard Kipling, New York, 1924. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday, Page & Co.

[66] _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_: Inclusive Edition, Garden City, N. Y., 1924. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday, Page & Co.

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