"Where the red -mapped lands extend. u<««"l'2ii? z. KIPLINGIANA From " Vanity Fair." Kiplingiana BIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ANENT RUDYARD KIPLING WITH ILLUSTRATIONS M. F. Mansfield & A. Wessels NEW YORK Copyright M.F. Mansfield & A. Weitk I Apologia T OVERS of Mr. Kipling's work should in "^"^ the present series find much of interest rela- tive to this foremost figure now in the literary field. Mr. Kipling is a remarkable man and thereby it is allowable that references to his work should be treated if possible in a unique manner. This '* Note Book" then is produced as an attempt to glorify the genius of this now popular author, who scarcely more than a decade ago was hailed as ** a new star in the literary firma- ment, rising up out of the East. " The collection may in a measure be said to be eclectic inasmuch as it has been collated from various sources and while the editor has sought: A Kipling Note Book to eliminate the purely fictitious and exaggera- ted newspaper paragraphs which have gone the rounds, there will still be found herein many apt and pertinent anecdotes and facts bearing upon Mr. Kipling's notably strong and unique personality as evinced by the character and popularity of his work. These fugitive paragraphs would in many in- stances possibly be lost entirely were they not embodied in the present series of ** Notes" and it is to be hoped that the enthusiasts and collectors of Kiplingiana will derive as much gratification from the perusal of the same, as has the editor in the compiling of it. — Ed. A Kipling Note Book A Brief Biography to Date. RuDYARD Kipling was born in Bombay, India, 30th December, 1865, the son of John Lock- wood Kipling and Alice McDonald. He was educated in the United Services College at Westward Ho in North Devon. After his school-days he returned to India, and took up his labors in a sub-editorial capacity on "The Civil and Military Gazette" at Lahore, continuing this work in one form or another from 1882 to 1889, during which time amid a multiplicity of office duties he found the opportunity to write some of the verses and tales which are now to be found in the "Departmental Ditties," " Soldiers Three" and "Plain Tales from the Hills," The first when he was but twenty-one years of age. Briefly then his career may be said to have been made with the publishing of his first book, or rather the first of which he was the sole author, "Departmental Ditties in 1886." Of this book Sir William Hunter, then Chancellor of Bombay University said, writing in the London Academy : — " The book gives pro- 4 A Kipling Note Book mise or" a new lirerarv star rising in the East." Then followed rapidly " Soldiers Three," "The Gadsbys," "In Black and White," " Under the Deodars," " The Phantom 'Rick- shaw," "Wee Willie Winkie." These were ail issued by Indian publishing houses before he finally left the East in 1889 on his re- turn to England, \'ia China, Japan and America. His work in India evinced a strong individualit}', and his many duties, working side by side with the native, gave him the keen insight into nature which only those who are workers them- selves can ever hope to attain. He was not a theorist, but a practical hand, and if his reading public was at first limited, he certainly catered with a skilfiil, artful power, as well as infiising into the subject matter the wisdom and keenness of a strong and vigorous mind. In 1 89 1 he collaborated with Walcott Balestier in *' The Naulahka " which was published in London in 1892, during which year he married Miss Caroline Starr Balestier, the sister of his collaborator. His later work, of which more in future pages. A Kipling Note Book 5 is one long record of successes. Mr. Kipling is said, properly enough, to be of a modest retiring disposition, and it is not intended herein to deal vAxh. those personalities of his life in which the public has no moral or legitimate interest. Enough that this slight series of appre- ciations should deal with such facts of public interest as may be properly accredited, and such report as may have a possible bearing upon the work of the head and hand of this strong man. From 1892 to 1896 Mr. Kipling lived chiefly in the United States — building himself a home among the Green Mountains, at Brattleboro, Vt. — residing there until he returned to England. In I 898 he sailed for Cape Town, South Africa, accompanied by his family, returning during the autumn, and taking up his abode at Rottingdean on the south coast of England. His next journev was to America in Januar)', 1899, en route it was said to Mexico. Mr. Kipling, it is thus seen, has been a great traveller, and it is by this means possibly that the full vigor of a naturally strong and virile brain gives out only its best ; we have in Mr. Kipling, as evinced by his works, a true A Kipling Note Book exemplification of the virtue of turning occa- sionally to ** fresh fields and pastures new " for one's inspiration, a circumstance which is self- evident when one recounts the variety and scope of his recent work. A Biographical Note. *' Three different nationalities have gone to make up Kipling's complicated nature. On the mother's side Scotland and Ireland, on the father's England, though 400 years ago the Kiplings came from Holland. There is likewise a mix- ture of two different temperaments in the genealogy. Both grandfathers were clergymen, but the father is an artist, and the mother has throughout her life told stories in verse and prose. The same complexity existed in the early environment of the future author, spent in the wonderfiil world of India, midst the primi- tive culture of the East on the one hand and the most advanced civilization of the West on the other. The child could .hus see one family content with four clay walls under a straw thatch, with three earthen pots and a handfiil of rice. A Kipling Note Book 7 earned by hard work, while close by he could find himself surrounded by all the conveniences which Europeans find necessary to make their stay in India bearable. As the child began to talk he learned to call things by two different names, and learned to speak Hindustani as fluently as English." — London Dailjr News. A Kipling Romance. ** In a pottery at Burslem in Staffordshire, now Doulton's, was a young man, named John Kipling, a designer of decorations. He was a very clever, young man, although somewhat eccentric. ** One day at a picnic to the young people of the neighbourhood at a pretty little English lake between the villages o( Rudyard and Rushton, not far from Burslem John Kipling met a pretty English girl, Mary McDonald, the daughter of a Methodist minister at Endon. Kipling fell in love with her at once. They met very often, and it grew into a love affair on both sides. Then John Kipling went to the 8 A Kipling Note Book art schools in Kensington, and was afterwards sent out to direct the art schools of the Madras presidency in India. When he went to India he took pretty Mary McDonald along as his wife. *' In the flilness of time a son was born to the Kiplings in Bombay. Their first meeting at Rudyard La'^e must have been the pretty bit of sentiment of their lives, for, when they named the son, they took for him that of the little lake on the banks of which they first met each other." — K. C.Star. Kipling's First Book. In " My First Book," the experiences of various contemporary authors, published in London in 1894 ; Kipling gives credit to " De- partmental Ditties ' ' as being his first published book — as a matter of record three other volumes appeared before the date of the publication of "Departmental Ditties," to each of which Kipling had contributed "School Boy Lyrics," "Echoes," published in 1885, and "Quar- tette, the Christmas Annual of the Civil and Mili- tary Gazette," by Four Anglo-ladian Writers, the same year. A Kipling Note Book The First Indian Editions. The following advertisement appeared in the Indian Railway Library, No. 6 : NEW COPYRIGHT WORKS SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR A. H. Wheeler & Co.'s Indian Railway Library 1. — ** Soldiers Three," Stories of Barrack- Room Life. By Rudyard Kipling. 2. — *' The Story of the Gadsbys," A Tale Without a Plot." By Rudyard Kipling. 3. — ** In Black and White," Stories of Native Life. By Rudyard Kipling. 4. — "Under the Deodars," In Social By- ways. By Rudyard Kipling. 5. — ** The Phantom 'Rickshaw, and Other Eerie Tales." By Rudyard Kipling. 6. — ** Wee Willie Winkie, and other Child Stories." By Rudyard Kipling. lO A Kipling Note Book A Kipling Note Book ii 14. — ** The City of the Dreadful Night." In specially Designed Picture Covers. Price, One Rupee. The above are now procurable at all Railway bookstalls, or from A. H. Wheeler & Co., Allahabad. PUBLISHED ALSO BY A. H. Wheeler & Co. '♦Letters of Marque," By Rudyard Kip- ling. Cloth Cover, Rs. 2.8. An Indian Newspaper Office. This description is taken from *' The Man Who Would Be King.'' ** One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed. A king or courtier was dying at the other end of the world, and the paper was to be held until the last possible moment. ** It was a pitchy black, hot night, and raining — now and again a spot of almost boiling water 12 A Kipling Note Book would fall on the dust. ... It was a shade cooler in the press-room, so I sat there while the type clicked and the night jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads. ** The thing, whatever it was, was keeping us back. It would not come off. ... I drowsed off, and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man was aware of the inconvenience or delay he was causing. . . . The clock hands crept up to three o'clock, and the machines spun their fly wheels two or three times, to see if all was in order, before I said the word that would set them off; I could have shrieked aloud. Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little bits." Departmental Ditties. Such a night, as is above described, was ** the kind of a night ' Departmental Ditties ' and their younger brethren were born," says Rudyard Kipling in *' My First Book." A Kipling Note Book 13 ** Rukn Din the foreman approved of them im- mensely, for he was a cultured Muslim : * Your poetry very good, sir, just coming proper length to-day.' ** Mahmoud the *comp.' had an unpleasant way of referring to the poems as another of those things. ** There was built a sort of a book, a lean, oblong docket, to imitate a Government en- velope, bound in brown paper, and ded with red tape." Later there arose a demand for a new edition, and Kipling's " first book " was added to from time to time and subsequent editions were issued under a regular publisher's imprint and when the book finally blossomed out as a London publication it was as a much fatter cloth-bound volume with a gilt top. But Kipling himself has said that he "loved it best when it was a little brown baby with a pink string around his stomach. ' ' The first edition printed at Lahore by the Civil and Military Gazette Press, is now so scarce as 14 A Kipling Note Book to command from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars according to condition. A transcript of the wording on the tide page, or cover is as ftiUows : No. I OF 1886, ox Her Majesty's Service ONLY, Departmental Ditties and Other Verses, to all Heads of Departments and all Anglo-Indians. Rudyard Kipling, Assistant, Department of Public Journalism, Lahore District, 1886. The Barrack Room Ballads often attributed as work of the same period as that during which Departmental Ditties were issued, were not issued in book form until 1892 (London, Me- thuen & Co.,) many of the verses originally appeared in various English periodicals notably Macmillan's Magazine, St. James Gazette, and the volume included yet others which then saw the light of publicity for the first time. Out of India. Thus it was that Rudyard Kipling first entered literature. At the present day journalist is but another word for a literary man, or should be at A Kipling Note Book 15 least, as applied to those of the craft who stand at the head, and Kipling's heroic work on the Indian newspaper for the value of a very few hundred dollars per year gave his art the im- petus which he later turned so well to account. His travels led him to England, across the Pacific and through the United States, as the outcome of which he published through various newspapers a series of observations, or im- pressions, which might properly be called "American Notes." Therein he gave the free and democratic atti- tude of the masses, or such part of that body with whom he came in contact, some hard shocks. Entering the United States through the Golden Gate he journeyed first to the North-West, thence through Yellowstone Park, and Chicago to the East. His running comment was both apt and per- tinent, and to express the most and the least which can be said in their favor — he told some very evident truths. 1 6 A Kipling Note Book Kipling on Stevenson. ** There is a writer, called Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson who makes most delicate inlay-work in black and white, and files out to the fraction of a hair. He has written a story about a suicide club, wherein men gambled for death because other amusements did not bite suffi- ciently. " My friend. Private Mulvaney, knows nothing about Mr. Stevenson, but he once assisted in- formally at a meeting of almost such a club as that gentleman has described, and his words are true." — ''Soldiets Three." Fac-simile of Cover to First Edition A Kipling Note Book 17 Kipling's Early Books. In prose there appeared in 1888 stories mainly culled from the columns of The Civil and Military Gazette (Lahore). The volume was entitled " Plain Tales from the Hills,"and contained in all some forty tales. Then followed within a year " Soldiers Three," " The Story of the Gadsbys," " In Black and White," " Under the Deodars," "Wee Willie Winkie," and "The Phantom Rickshaw," — all of which, with the excep- tion of "Plain Tales from the Hills," ap- pearing in Wheeler's Indian Railway Li- brary. The first four titles above noted are illustrative of the four main features of Anglo-Indian life, viz., the Military, Do- mestic, Native, and Social. Suppressed Works. It is but natural that a popular author should at an advanced period in his career devoutly wish that some of his earlier prod- 1 8 A Kip ling Note Book uct might have died ere it was born. It is not known that this is the exact view held by Mr. Kipling in regard to his early work, but the fact remains that several volumes may practically be considered to have been withdrawn from public gaze or at least from the open market, among them "Departmental Ditties," which, it is re- called, is not to be found in the collective Outward Bound edition of his works. In view of recent light thrown upon the sub- ject, this is presumably for the reason that the 'author did not wish to preserve the verses in such enduring form. The contents of the volume entitled " Let- ters of Marque " is probably omitted for the same reason, and copies of the origi- nal edition are so uncommon as to already command inflated prices; and the '' Smith Administration," containing a contribution of Mr. Kipling to The Pioneer when he was drawing a regular salary, opens an interesting question in copyright law— Has a salaried contributor no interest in his A Kipling Note Book 19 copyright? The story goes that between Mr. Kipling and his superiors some dis- agreement developed, and that in revenge they swore they would never give their con- sent to republication. " The tale has been revived through the sale by Messrs. Sotheby of a copy of the " Smith Administration " for the startling sum of ;^2 6; and, owing possibly to the vogue which first editions of Kipling have in the United States, it was thought to have been purchased for some American collector. Only three copies of the book are supposed to be in existence — two in T/ie Pio7ieer office in London, and one in the Allahabad office; and as the latter is reported missing, the question of where the Sotheby copy originated has been of sufficient matter to interest the service of a firm of solicitors." Of an entirely different character are the still earlier volumes to which Mr. Kipling was in whole or in part a contributor — "Schoolboy Lyrics," "Quartette," and " Echoes." 20 A Kipling Note Book These are to be noted in a bibliography in the later pages of this work, and properly speaking should be considered as early editions merely, even though they be in many instances well-nigh inaccessible. Kipling on the Soudan. In " The Light that Failed " is given the most graphic pen-picture of the fighting qualities of the "British square" that has yet been written. It here follows in part: ". . . No need for any order; the men flung themselves panting against the sides of the square, for they had good reason to know that whoso was left outside when the fighting began would probably die in an extremely unpleasant fashion. . . . All had fought in this fashion many times be- fore, and there was no novelty in the entertainment — always the same hot and stifling formation, the smell of dust and leather, the same bolt-like rush of the enemy, the same pressure on the weakest A Kipling Note Book 21 side of the square, the few minutes of des- perate hand-to-hand scuffle, and then the silence of the desert, broken only by the yells of those whom the handful of cavalry attempted to pursue. . . . No civilized troops could have endured the hell through which they came — the living leaping high to avoid the dead clutching at their heels, the wounded cursing and staggering for- ward until they fell, a torrent black as the sliding water above a mill-dam, full on the right flank of the square. . . . No element of concerted fighting; for all the men knew, the enemy might be attacking all four sides of the square at once ; their bus- iness was to destroy what lay in front of them, to bayonet in the back those who passed over them, and, dying, to drag down the slayer till he could be knocked on the head by some avenging gun-butt. . . . There was a rush, . . . the right flank of the square sucked in after the invaders, and those who best knew that they had but a few hours more to live staggered to a dis- 22 A Kipling Note Book carded rifle and fired blindly into the scuffle that raged in the centre of the square. . . . The heart of the square became a shambles, the ground beyond, a butcher's shop. The remnant of the enemy were retiring, the few English cavalry were riding down the lag- gards. . . . Then Torpenhow sat down and worked up his account of what he was pleased to call * a sanguinary battle in which our arms had acquitted themselves,' etc. . . ." And in " Fuzzy- Wuzzy " Mr. Kipling eulo- gizes the Soudanese : ** So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy- Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan ; You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man; An' 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air — You big black boundin' beggar — for you bruk a British square." A Kipling Note Book 23 Dedication to " Soldiers Three." Zo THAT VERY STRONG MAN, T. ATKINS, PRIVATE OF THE LINE, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN ALL ADMIRATION AND GOOD FELLOWSHIP. Some Prefaces to Indian Editions. Preface to "Soldiers Three." "This small book contains, for the most part, the further adventures of my esteemed friends and sometime allies. Privates Mul- vaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd, who have already been introduced to the public. Those anxious to know how the three most 24 A Kipling Note Book cruelly maltreated a member of Parliament; how Ortheris went mad for a space; how Mulvaney and some friends took the town of Lungtunpen ; and how the little Jhansi McKenna helped the regiment when it was smitten with cholera, must refer to a book called * Plain Tales from the Hills.' I would have reprinted the four stories in this place, but Dinah Shadd says that ' tear- in' the tripes out av a book wid a pictur' on the back, all to make Terence proud past reasonin',' is wasteful, and Mulvaney himself says he prefers to have his fame ' dishpersed most notoriously in sev'ril volumes.' I can only hope that his desire will be gratified." RuDYARD Kipling. Preface to " Under the Deodars.'* "Strictly speaking, there should be no preface to this, because it deals with things A Kipling Note Book 25 that are not, and uglinesses that hurt. But it may be as well to try to assure the ill- informed that India is not entirely inhab- ited by men and women playing tennis with the Seventh Commandment; while it is a fact that many of the lads in the land can be trusted to bear themselves bravely, on occasion, as did my friend, the late Robert Hanna Wick. The drawback of collecting dirt in one corner is that it gives a false notion of the filth of the room. Folk who understand, and have a knowledge of their own, will be able to strike fair averages. The opinions of people who do not under- stand are somewhat less valuable. In re- gard to the idea of the book, I have no hope that the stories will be of the least service to any one. They are meant to be read in railway trains, and are arranged and adorned for that end. They ought to ex- plain that there is no particular profit in going wrong at any time, under any cir- cumstances, or for any consideration. But that is a large text to handle at popular pnces ; and if I have made the first rewards 26 A Kipling Note Book of folly seem too inviting, my inability and not my intention is to blame." ^ RuDYARD Kipling. Preface to "The Phantom 'Rickshaw." " This is not exactly a book of real ghost stories, as the cover makes believe, but rather a collection of facts that never quite explained themselves. All that the col- lector can be certain of is that one man insisted upon dying because he believed himself to be haunted, and another man either made up a wonderful fiction or vis- ited a very strange place, while the third man was indubitably crucified by some per- son or persons unknown, and gave an ex- traordinary account of himself. " Ghost stories are seldom told at first hand. I have managed with infinite trouble to se- cure one exception to this rule. It is not a very good specimen, but you can credit it from beginning to end. The other stories you must take on trust, as I did." RuDYARD Kipling. A Kipling Note Book 27 BY RUDYARD KIPLING. AHO Blnoe be cannot spend'nor nse arlgbti Tho little time licre given him in tros^ But waateth it in weary undelight Ot foollsli toil and trouble, strife and ln9t< He naturally clamours to inlierit 7£e Everlasting Future. that his merit £lBy baveluU &oope--a3 surely is most jasO TM City 0/ Oread/ut IfigKl, a. H.^W HEELER & CO., ALLAHABAD 1890. (ALL RIQBXS RESEBVEp.} 28 A Kipling Note Book Contents First Edition " Departmental Ditties." The writer is indebted to The Pioneer and The Civil and Military Gazette for per- mission to reprint the papers contained in this docket, as specified below : DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. General Summary. Army Headquarters. Study of an Elevation in Indian Ink. Legend of the F. O. The Story of Uriah, The Post that Fitted. Public Waste. Pink Dominoes. The Man Who Could Write. A Code of Morals. The Last Department. OTHER VERSES. To the Unknown Goddess. The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal'vin. My Rival. A Kipling Note Book 29 The Lovers' Litany. Divided Destinies. The Mare's Nest. Possibilities. Pagett, M.P. The Plea of Simla Dancers. Certain Maxims of Hafiz. The Moon of Other Days. The Undertaker's Horse. Arithmetic on the Frontier. Giffen's Debt. In Spring Time. " American Notes." When Mr. Kipling first came to America, in 1892, via the Golden Gate, he said some very complimentary things about the Bohe- mian Club of San Francisco; but as he journeyed eastward his comments in gen- eral were far less favorable. Much criticism was caused thereby. His manifest truths that be came home with such sledge-hammer force that a certain considerable element condemned anything 30 A Kip li fig Note Book and everything which emanated from the marvellously fresh mind of this writer. The subsequent attitude as expressed by the general sympathy during the famous author's illness — while these pages were being made ready for the press — would seem to disavow all such views among the fair-minded of the present day, who perforce must recognize ability at its full value sooner or later. Andrew Lang on Kipling. "I do not anticipate for Mr. Kipling a very popular popularity. He does not compete with Miss Braddon or Mr. E. P. Roe. His favorite subjects are too remote and unfamiliar for a world that likes to be amused with matters near home and pas- sions that do not stray far from the draw- ing-room or the parlor. In style, as has been said, he has brevity, brilliance, selec- tion ; he is always at the centre of the in- terest; he wastes no words, he knows not A Kipling Note Book 31 padding. He can understand passion, and makes us understand it. He has sympa- thies unusually wide, and can find the rare strange thing in the midst of the common- place. He has energy, spirit, vision. Re- finement he has not in an equal measure; perhaps he is too abrupt, too easily taken by a piece of slang, and one or two little mannerisms become provoking. It does not seem, as yet, that he very well under- stands, or can write very well about, ordi- nary English life. But he has so much to say that he might well afford to leave the ordinary to other writers. He has the alacrity of the French intellect, and often displays its literary moderation and re- serve. One may overestimate what is so new, what is so undeniably rich in many promises. This is a natural tendency in the critic. To myself, Mr. Kipling seems one of two, three, or four young men, and he is far the youngest, who flash out genius from some unexpected place, who are not academic, nor children of the old litera- 32 A Kipling Note Book ture of the world, but of their own works. What seems cynical, flighty, too brusque, and too familiar in him should mellow with years. I do not believe that Europe is the place for him ; there are three other continents where I can imagine that his genius would find a more exhilarating air and more congenial materials. He is an exotic romancer. His Muse needs the sun, the tramp of horses, the clash of swords, the jingling of bridle-reins; vast levels of sand, thick forests, wide-gleaming rivers, the temples of strange gods. This, at least, is a personal theory, which may read- ily be contradicted by experience. But I trust that it may not be contradicted, and that Mr. Kipling's youth and adventurous spirit may bring in tales and sketches and ballads from many shores not familiar, from many a home of Pathans, Kaffirs, Pawnees, from all natural men. He is not in tune with our modern civilization, whereof many a heart is sick; he is more at home in an Afghan pass than in the Strand." A. Lang. Ry""R.UDYARD KlPblNC 'A H W H E E.L E R 8c' C osr^^^j No A ii/wM^ ^p^<^ Lmp IAN RA [LW A Y \ I BRA R Y^ Fac-simile of Cover to First Edition. A Kipling Note Book 33 Some Early Press Opinions. "The foibles of Anglo-Indian society have frequently been sketched, and some full-blossomed incident of Indian life has budded into the three-volume novel before to-day; but we doubt if anything has ever been written about society in India which can compare in brilliancy and originality to the sketches of Rudyard Kipling, a new writer who is assuredly destined to make a mark in literature. " Mr. Kipling, who would doubtless come under Mr. Robert Buchanan's ban as a pessimistic young man, has a power of observation truly marvellous, and as this faculty is combined with another equally rare — that of recording what he observes with caustic and brilliant touches — the result is easy to imagine. It is true that Mr. Kipling lays himself open to the remark that he is a cynic as well as a humorist; but Thackeray came in for little compliments of this kind, and Mr. Kip- 34 ^ Kipling Note Book ling will no doubt endeavor to bear him- self with becoming modesty under such circumstances." — Home and Colonial Mail. Of " Barrack-Room Ballads. " " Some of the best work Mr. Kipling has ever done; superior to anything of the kind that English literature has pro- duced." — AthencBum. "Wonderful in their descriptive power; vigorous in dramatic force. There are few ballads in the English language more stir- ring than the ' Ballad of East and West,' worthy to stand by the border ballads of Scott." — Spectator. " Teeming with imagination, palpitating with emotion. We read with laughter and tears. ... If this be not poetry, what is.' " — Pall-Mall Gazette. A Kipling Note Book 35 Tommy Atkins. "When the Duke of Connaught was military commander of the north-western district of India, he would occasionally pay a visit to the Kiplings and spend an evening at their house. When he met Rudyard he became greatly interested in him, and in the course of conversation remarked : ' What are you going to do, Mr. Kipling, now that you aie in India again? ' " * Weil, sir, I have an ambition beyond the drudgery of working in the office of The Pioneer.'' " ' What would you like to do, then, Mr. Kipling? ' " ' I would like, sir, to live with the army for a time and go to the frontier to write up Tommy Atkins.' " The Duke considered the matter, and fi- nally gave him earie blanche to do whatever he liked: go to any military station in his command ; and if he wished, go to the fron- tier and live with officers or men ; and if at 36 A Kipling Note Book any time he required an escort he could have one. " Rudyard availed himself of the Duke's offer, and went off to make acquaintance with Tommy Atkins. At the same time he became a great student of nature, and of the life and character of the people." — Walter Paris, in Washingiofi Post. The English soldier, as drawn by Kip- ling, is a jolly good fellow, breaking the hearts of damsels in the barrack town, and then hieing himself away to some other station, to begin his heart-breaking, ballad- singing, tent-pegging, and other little di- vertisements over again. Occasionally he pokes fun; occasion- ally he pokes a bayonet at a Hottentot or a Kaffir, and then thinks it over and talks about it afterward. Kipling's soldier is certainly an attractive fellow of his class. A Kipling Note Book 37 Kipling in London. "In 1888 Kipling had chambers on Vil- liers Street, Strand, overlooking the Thames embankment. Balestier, his talented young American friend, whose sister Kipling af- terward married, was at the time lying on a sofa, and looked a very sick man. " Kipling at this time was all the rage; people were trying to lionize him, but he wouldn't be lionized. A vast number of invitations from the best representative people of England were lying on the table unanswered; but, like his father, he never coveted society patronage or affected the aristocrat. Mr. Kipling, Senior, was also there, and showed me some very beautiful and interesting designs for an Indian room at Osborne which he had been commanded to prepare by the Queen. He was then on his way to submit them to her Majesty. " Kipling has but one sister, now mar- ried to an English army officer in the staff corps, stationed somewhere in India. 38 A Kipling Note Book She is a great beauty and a very clever woman, and has written considerable," — Walter Paris, in Washington Post. Kipling a Moral Force. "Mr. Rudyard Kipling's books are a moral tonic to their generation. As an artist, there is much more to be said of him. He has caught the spirit of imperial- ism which is in the air, and touched it to finer issues. He has taught us all to be- lieve in the British navy and the British army and the future of the British race in a fashion to which, since the Elizabethan era, we had been strangers. His tales have revealed to us not only the working of a strong and confident genius, but something we had never apprehended about birds and beasts and the whole of the animal world. ' The Jungle Stories ' are a new and fruitful province added to the rich domain of Eng- lish literature. Of the dreamy and mys- A Kipling Note Book 39 tic East he can write as few men have ever done, for he makes us understand, and, even where knowledge may be wanting, at least sympathize." — Lofidon Telegraph. From " American Notes. " Mr. Rudyard Kipling tells us how in a concert hall in America he saw two young men get two girls drunk and then lead them reeling down a dark street. Mr. Kipling has not been a total abstainer, nor have his writings commended temperance, but of that scene he writes : " Then, recant- ing previous opinions, I became a prohi- bitionist. Better it is that a man should go with his beer in public places, and con- tent himself with swearing at the narrow- mindedness of the majority; better it is to poison the inside with very vile tem- perance drinks, and to buy lager furtively at back doors, than to bring temptation to lips of young fools, such as the four I had 40 A Kipling Note Book seen. I understand now why the preachers rage against drink. I have said, ' There is no harm in it taken moderately,' and yet my own demand for beer helped directly to send these two girls reeling down the dark street to — God alone knows what end ! If liquor is worth drinking, it is worth tak- ing a little trouble to come at — such trou- ble as a man will undergo to compass his own desires. It is not good that we should let it lie before the eyes of children, and I have been a fool in writing to the con- trary." Kipling's Best Story. Mr. S. R. Crockett, the novelist, tells the anecdote that he was one of a party including many English writers when a vote was taken for the six best stories Kip- ling had written. " The Man Who Would Be King " stood at the head — a story writ- ten before its modest author had reached the age of twenty-one. A Kipling Note Book 41 " Naulahka. " Dr. Theodore J^. Wolfe, in " Literary Haunts, ^^ makes the Jollowitig stateme?it : "Kipling's affectionate regard for his home upon this sunny mountain-side is expressed in the name he bestowed upon it, ' The Naulahka,' meaning the very dear or precious — literally, ' costing nine lahks.' It is the first and only habitation which he ever erected for himself ; here he dwelt for some years, and wrought much of his mar- vellous work; here one of his children was born ; and whether he is to return to abide beneath this roof -tree, as has been hoped, or whether his presence here is to remain but a memory, the spot must ever be re- garded with tender interest by reason of its association with a transcendent genius and a wondrous literary artist." 42 A Kipling Note Book A South African View. This brief description was written by a man in Cape Town at the time of Mr. Kipling's recent visit: " A small man, dressed to match his old pipe — and rather fond of cutting jokes at his own expense on both scores — with prominent spectacles and prominent chin, dark moustache, keen, dark eyes, keen ex- pression, quick movements and astonish- ingly quick rejoinders in talking; the dis- tinctive note of him was keenness altogether — but sympathetic keenness. Somehow, one began with an idea that he would be a rather cocksure and self-confident per- son. He is, of course, quite young; far younger than he looks — it was those long early years of hard, unrecognized news- paper work in India that ' knocked the youth out of him ' ; he is ridiculously young to be so famous and to have earned his fame by so much entirely solid work, polit- ical, or rather national, as well as literary. A Kipling Note Book 43 Nevertheless, as one enthusiast expressed it, ' He puts on the least side of any celeb- rity I ever met.'" Of " Letters of Marque. " Dr. Robertson Nicoll, in "Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century," says: " It is happily not our business to re- cord Mr. Kipling's contributions to Indian journalism. Many of them have not nor never will be reprinted. . . . ' Letters of Marque ' were issued by the publishers in perfect good faith, while Mr. Kipling was on his travels; but they, as well as some earlier articles, were thought by the author and his friends too immature for separate publication. " Many passages, however, show the writer at his best, though the whole has evidently been currente calamo." 44 A Kipling Note Book " The City of Dreadful Night." As the first edition of this book was going to press, the Indian publishers (Messrs. Wheeler & Co., of Allahabad) nearly over- looked the fact that a volume bearing the same title and written by James Thomson had previously been issued in England. The repetition was recalled in time, and permission was obtained from the pub- lishers of Mr. Thomson's book for the use of the same title on the volume from Mr. Kipling's pen. From a German Point of View. Dr. Leon Kellner, writing in a Viennese journal (1899), says: " To-day I have seen happiness face to face. The first impression upon me was striking in its diversity. Whenever Mr. Kipling speaks and turns his face full upon you, you would think you had before you a very wide-awake, lively, and harmless A Kipling Note Book 45 child; but the profile shows a strong man who has not grown up in the atmosphere of the study. I have seldom received two such different impressions from one and the same face. The work-room is of sur- prising simplicity; the north wall is cov- ered with books half its height; over the door hangs a portrait of the late Sir Burne- Jones (Mr. Kipling's uncle) ; to the right, near the window, stands a plain table — not a writing-table — on which lie a couple of pages containing verses. No works of art, no conveniences, no knickknacks — the un- adorned room simple and earnest like a Puritan chapeh " ' I much fear,' I began, ' that I have come too early, and that I have disturbed you in your work.' " ' No, no,' interrupted Kipling, ' I have done my daily task.' " I looked astonished at him. The late lamented Trollope came to my mind, who under all circumstances wrote his twenty 46 A Kipling Xote Book pages ever}- day — but TroUope and Kip- ling! " He guessed at once what had aston- ished me. ' I do my daily task con- scientiously, but not all that I write is printed ; most of it goes there.' The waste- paper basket under the table here received a vigorous kick, and a mass of torn-up papers rolled on the ground. " Kipling's movements are quick and lively, and perhaps somewhat ner\'ous; a thoroughly Southern temperament" A French Opinion. By M. Andrk de Cfievillon in the " Revue de Paris.'' **In all Kipling's tales one finds the short, measured gesture of a strong man relating great things in a calm, cool tone. What adds to the decisive superiorit}' of his manner is the comprehensiveness and minuteness of his impeccable information — the solidity of his universal knowledge. A Kipling Note Book . . . He speaks of the navigation of the Hoogley like a Calcutta pilot; of ele- phants like a comae; of the jungles, wild boars, and the nilghai — of the hours and reasons of their migrations — like a hun- ter; of the misery and crime of the East End like a superintendent of police or the president of a charitable society; and of beer and gin like an intelligent drunkard. He is omniscient and imperturbable." Versatility. Kipling writes of soldiers as he writes of men and beasts, and things inanimate. The soldier, sailor, engineer, sportsman, and civil servant, all recognize the art of one who has lived among them. His power is no less remarkable than is his fidelity to the details of environ- ment and scene. He has worked and played with them all, and his studies of dumb brutes mark the observation of more than a mere writer of stories. As a lin- 48 A Kipling Note Book guist and a student of Hindustani his ability is the more notable. He knows intimately all the various castes and creeds through- out the East. A Prophecy. Mr. E. Kay Robinson, a colleague of Kip- ling's in the early days of Indian journal- ism, has the following to say in Literature : "I told him (Kipling) that a man who could write such verse as his should go home to London where fame could be won; but he replied, 'I look forward to nothing but a career of Indian journal- ism ' . . . and further wrote : . . . ' Let us depart our several ways in amity, you to Fleet Street (where I shall come when I die if I'm good), and I to my own place where I find heat and smells of oil, and spices and puffs of temple incense, and sweat, and darkness, and dirt, and lust, and — above all — things wonderful and fascinating innumerable.' " BLACK \-^..... " Fac-simile of Ckjver to First Edition . A Kipling Note Book 49 The Laureateship. Previous to the appointment of Alfred Austin to this office in 1896, much com- ment was passed in respect to the qualifica- tions of the prospective appointee, The Bookmafi championing the cause of Mr. Kipling thus: " Mr. Kipling represents not only in his verse, but in his personality, at once the extension and unity of the race. " Born in India, of English stock, he is closely identified in his life and works with the greatest of England's possessions, whose strange life he, in many cases, first revealed to the wondering world; his knowledge of the other British colonies is almost equally minute. By ties of mar- riage he is in some degree American, and his home for a number of years has been in the most homogeneously English por- tion of America. He is not, therefore, a mere English- man, nor a mere Anglo-Indian, nor a mere A Kipling Note Book American, but something above and be- yond all these distinctions — an Anglo- Saxon. "... Altogether if the office of Laure- ate be something more than a petty insu- lar distinction, if it is to become one of. the innumerable symbols of Anglo-Saxon unity, a possession of Greater Britain, and if our whole race should choose its occu- pant, it is unthinkable that the choice should be a matter of doubt, or should single out any other name than that of JRudyard Kipling." A Kipling Note Book 51 STle "Rjuciifvkipple emu U^e J?nx7nalis ven/ ^b-oTv^auc? taifc cLn^ no(>oi V caTurxovc/i xh^t ettTier. )iu nose ttjwi' ScjvAs. '»ary- If ( ^lat 52 A Kipling Note Book Kipling's Women. A Bookman critic divides the women characters of Kipling into five classes, as follows : I. — His Married Flirts. II.— His Nice Girls. III.— His Women Who Suffer. IV. — His Barrack Heroines. V. — His Native Types. James Whitcomb Riley writes in the Philadelphia Press : " It is said by some that Kipling does not write for women. That, to ray mind, is not true. He has written of them, and consequently for them, magnificently. A seraphic prose poem is the ' Brushwood Boy.' It is one of the most beautiful con- ceptions I have ever read. It cannot fail to appeal to women." Of Chapter Headings. "When I first began to read Kipling, my curiosity was immensely piqued by the A Kipling Note Book 53 scraps of verse with which he usually headed his early stories. They were all credited to poems I had never heard of in my life, and were just such salient, strik- ing fragments as would naturally whet one's appetite for the remainder. For over a year I tried hard to locate those myste- rious poems, and enlisted half a dozen book-dealers in the search. At last one of them wrote me that I was wasting time, and that the alleged quotations were merely Mr. Kipling's little joke. " In other words, he manufactured 'em to order, and stuck them at the top of his tales for the sake of the odor of erudition they lent to the production. I was mad for a while, but when I cooled off I had a good, big laugh. Of course, you know, Scott used to do the same thing, and so for that matter did Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was really the worst quotation fakir of the lot. " He would write wise-sounding, de- tached sentences and credit them to imagi- 54 ^^ Kipling Note Book nary German philosophers, with long, out- landish, and impressive names. However, I don't know why the thing should be punishable. The business of a writer of fiction is to create an illusion, and as long as he does it I for one am not particular what means he employs to contribute to the end." — New Orleans Times- Democrat. As a Balladist. Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman has said that Mr. Kipling is "pre-eminently suc- cessful in the ballad poem, and is pos- sessed of a remarkably clear discernment of his own distinctive talent in that field. At this stage and as a poet he is a ballad- ist through and through." Mr. Stedman refers to " The Last Chan- tey " as " one of the purest examples since Coleridge's wondrous * Rime ' of the imagi- natively grotesque." A Kipling Note Book ^z^ His Hobby— Children. " The Drums of the Fore and Aft " and " Wee Willie Winkie " are considered the best of his child studies; the following is from the preface to " The Drums of the Fore and Aft " : " Only women understand children thor- oughly, but if a mere man keeps very quiet, and humbles himself properly, and refrains from talking down to his supe- riors, the children will sometimes be good to him, and let him see what they think about the world." Prices for Manuscript. The British Weekly has this to say : " Perhaps no one receives such large prices for his work as Mr. Rudyard Kip- ling. He has contracted to write eight stories for one of the magazines next year, for each of which he will receive about ;^24o. This is simply for the English serial rights of the stories. In addition 56 A Kipling Note Book Mr. Kipling receives payment from Amer- ica, India, and the Colonies. This will probably bring up the price of the stories to about ;^5oo each, making ^^4,000 for the year. In addition to this, Mr, Kipling receives the royalties for book publication in England and America. This will not amount to less than about ;!^4,ooo, so that for each story the author ultimately re- ceives not less than ;^i,ooo. Whether these high prices will be kept up is very doubtful. If the cheap magazinism suc- ceeds in injuring the older periodicals they cannot be maintained. It remains to be seen whether the public cares much for names, and it must be remembered that the papers with the largest circulation in this country do not depend upon names at all. I remember some years ago Mr. Kip- ling contributed one of his best pieces of work, better work by a great deal than he has been doing lately, to a monthly re- view. The editor informed me that not one extra copy of the periodical was sold." A Kipling Note Book SJ Kipling's Business Sagacity. Mr. A. P. Watt, o£ London, the doyen of all literary agents, and into whose hands Mr. Kipling has entrusted the placing of his manuscript, gives Mr. Kipling credit for remarkable shrewdness and perspicacity in accepting arrangements for the publica- tion of his stories and poems. Mr. Kip- ling's product is usually placed on the royalty plan, except for serial rights, which naturally are sold outright. The American Girl. " Sweet and comely are the maidens of Devonshire ; delicate and of gracious seem- ing those who lie in the pleasant places of London; fascinating for all their demure- ness the damsels of France, clinging closely to their mothers, with large eyes wonder- ing at the wicked world; excellent in her own place and to those who understand her is the Anglo-Indian ' spin ' in her sec- 58 A Kipling Note Book ond season ; but the girls of America are above and beyond them all. They are clever, they can talk — yea, they think. "They are original, and regard you be- tween the brows with unabashed eyes as a sister might look at her brother. They are instructed, too, in the folly and vanity of the male mind, for they have associated with ' the boys ' from babyhood, and can discerningly minister to both vices or pleasantly snub the possessor. They pos- sess, moreover, a life among themselves, independent of any masculine associa- tions. They have societies and clubs and unlimited tea-fights where all the guests are girls. They are self-possessed, with- out parting with any tenderness that is their sex-right; they understand; they can take care of themselves; they are superbly independent. When you ask them what makes them so charming, they say : '"It is because we are better educated than your girls, and — and we are more sensible in regard to men. We have good A Kipling Note Book 59 times all round, but we aren't taught to regard every man as a possible husband. Nor is he expected to marry the first girl he calls on regularly.' " Yes, they have good times, their free- dom is large, and they do not abuse it."* — From American Notes. The Bohemian Club. Here is an enthusiastic appreciation of a San Francisco club, written by Mr. Kip- ling in the early nineties: " Do you know the Bohemian Club of San Francisco? They say its fame ex- tends over the world. It was created, somewhat on the lines of the Savage, by men who wrote or drew things. The ruler of the place is an owl — an owl standing upon a skull and cross-bones, showing forth grimly the wisdom of the man of letters and the end of his hopes for immor- tality. Under his wing 'twas my privilege 6o A Kipling Note Book to meet with white men whose lives were not chained down to routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of reading them hurriedly in the pauses of office- work, who painted pictures instead of con- tenting themselves wdth cheap etchings picked up at another man's sale of effects. Mine were all the rights of social inter- course, craft by craft, that India, stony- hearted step-mother of collectors, has swindled us out of. Treading soft car- pets and breathing the incense of superior cigars, I wandered from room to room studying the paintings in which the mem- bers of the club had caricatured them- selves, their associates, and their aims. In this club were no amateurs spoiling canvas, because they fancied they could handle oils without knowledge of shadows or anatomy — no gentleman of leisure ruin- ing the temper of publishers and an already ruined market with attempts to write, ' be- cause everybody writes something these days.' " A Kipling Note Book 6i " Ballad of the East and West." The following sentiment by Mr. Kip- ling was the outcome of a friendly dis- cussion among a party of literary folk in London after Kipling's return from his first visit to America : " I think," said he, " men are much the same everywhere. A weak man in Amer- ica would be a weak man in London — or Zululand. And there are strong men East and West, and everywhere." This idea afterward took more perma- nent shape in one of the strongest poems that Mr. Kipling has yet produced, en- titled the " Ballad of the East and West," the opening lines of which are as fol- lows: " For there is neither East or West, Border, nor breed, nor birth, When two strong men stand face to face. Though they come from the ends of the earth. ' ' 62 A Kipling Note Book A Yale Literary Club. The following " regrets " were penned by Mr, Kipling, in acknowledgment of an invitation to dine with a club at Yale : MULVANEY REGRETS. Attind ye lasses av swate Pamasses, And woipe me bumin' tears away ; For I'm declinin' a chanst av dinin' W'id the boys at Vale on the fourteenth May. The leadin' fayture will be liter-ature (Av a moral nature, as is just an' right) , For their light an' leadin' are engaged in readin' Me immortal womiks from dawn till night. They've made a club there an' staked out grub there, Wid plates and dishes in a joyous row ; An' they'd think ut splindid if I attindid ; An' so would I — but I cannot go. The honest fact is that daily practise Av rowlin' ink-pots the same as me Conshumes me hours in the Muses' bowers, An' laves me divil a day to spree. Whin you grow oulder an' skin your shoulder At the world's great wheel in your chosen line. A Kipling Note Book 63 Ye' 11 find your chances as time advances For takin' a lark are as slim as mine. But I'm digressin' — accept my blessin' An' remimber what ould King Solomon said ; That youth is ructions an' whiskey's fluctious, An' there's nothin' certain but the momin' head. The Case of the " Cantab." Here is evidence of the admiration felt for him at Cambridge (England). The editor of the Cantab dared to write for a literary contribution from the Great Young Man's pen. Mr. Kipling replied quickly, displaying at one swoop his power both as " lightning " poet and artist : There once was a writer who wrote : " Dear Sir, in reply to your note Of yesterday's date, I am sorry to state It's no good — at the prices you quote." At the head of the letter was the follow- ing picture: 64 A Kipling Note Book ' Gold Cannot Bits' Me-' (.Draicn by Ur. Kipling) UNDER DEODA Fac-simile of Cover to First Edition. A Kipling Note Book 65 Not to be deterred, the editor wrote again, thanking Mr, Kipling for his reply, and adding : " But since you refer to our payments as unsatisfactory, I have con- sulted with my colleagues, and they join with me in desiring to know on what terms you would write us a brief article. So long as we have any garments left in our wardrobes, and an obliging avuncular rela- tive, we are prepared to make any sacri- fices to obtain some of your spirited lines." To this Mr. Kipling answered as follows, illustrating the letter with a picture from his own hand of an undergraduate dressed only in an umbrella : " Dear Sir : — Heaven forbid that the staff of the Cantab should go about pawning their raiment in a pub- lic-spirited attempt to secure a contribution from my pen ! The fact is that I can't do things to order with any satisfaction to myself or the buyer. Otherwise I would have sent you something." Mr. Kipling may have thought that then all was well, and he was entitled to a little 66 A Kipling Note Book peace. But no. The editor of the Cantab wrote again, asking for a photograph. The reply came quickly. Mr. Kipling said: " As to photos of myself, I have not one by me at present, but when I find one I will send it; but not for publication, be- cause my beauty is such that it fades like a flower if you expose it." The Horsmonden Affair. Whereas the schoolboys of Horsmon- den School, in Kent, England, had just be- come the founders, editors, and proprietors of the Horsmonden School Budget, they con- ceived the idea that the author of " Under the Deodars " ought to be open to any offer which might be made for the product of his facile pen. Accordingly it was resolved to write Mr. Kipling and offer him threepence per page for anything which he might send on, quot- ing the writer's own lines : A Kipling Note Book 67 " The song I sing for good red gold, The same I sing for the white money ; But the best I sing for a clout of meal That simple people give me" — and further stating that unless he chose to comply with their terms they might be led to stifle his next production which should appear elsewhere. Mr. Kipling was no doubt somewhat as- tonished at the offer and to realize the fate which might await him did he not comply; but he decided to send them a few hints upon schoolboy etiquette, which appeared in full in a later issue of the Budget, wherein he remarked that the said editors "seemed to be in possession of all the cheek that was in the least likely to do them any good in this world or the next." The "Hints" were duly received and printed, which caused the Academy to re- mark that just at that moment the most il- lustrious periodical in the world was the Horsmonden School Budget. Subsequently — in partial revenge, it is 68 A Kipling Note Book to be presumed — the editors of the Budget applied to Mr. Max Beerbohm for a carica- tiire of Mr, Kipling, to be reproduced in a subsequent issue, and were pleased to find in their letter-box just such a picture of the great man as they had wished for. Of course there was an immediate de- mand for the respective issues containing the valued contributions ; but it was impos- sible to reprint the original issues in fac- simile form, as they were issued in manu- script only, and for the few remaining copies in the personal possession of the editors payment to the value of their weight in gold was the price asked by the happy owners. One shudders to think of the deluge of appeals upon the good nature of our leading authors were school publications in general to adopt the course which proved so pro- ductive in the present instance. A Kipling Note Book 69 Clarke Russell's Appreciation. " To the Editor 0/ the Morning Post {Lon- don). "Sir: — I have been reading Mr. Kip- ling's contributions entitled ' A Fleet in Being' with the greatest enjoyment and profit. " A naval officer said to me : " 'If Rudyard Kipling had been born in a battle-ship, if all his life he had drilled with the marines, stoked with the stokers and hauled with the Jackies at the falls, loaded and fired every gun aboard ship, conned the vessel on the bridge, grasped the spokes of the wheel, chaffed and ar- gued in the gun-room, and in the wardroom listened with respectful countenance, he could not have known more about it.' " W. Clarke Russell. "9 Sydney Place, Bath, November nth, 1898." 7© A Kipling Note Book Mr. Kipling and the Royal Navy. In the fall of '98 Mr. Kipling went cruising with the Channel Squadron as the guest of Captain Bayley, of H, M. S. Pe- lorus. He joined the ship at Milford Haven, and proceeded with the fleet on a cruise round the coast of Ireland. The Felorus is a third-class cruiser. And in spite of heavy weather, which seemed to follow them from place to place, the op- portunity was made the most of by Mr. Kipling, who was very busy with his ob- servations and whose notebook was in con- stant requisition. On the last evening of the stay of the squadron in Bantry Bay an entertainment was given on board of the flagship Majes- tic, at which Mr. Kipling was present ; and, complying with a unanimous request, the author read one of his poems, " Soldier and Sailor Too." Another and yet an- A Kipling Note Book J\ other was called for, and lastly he gave "The Flag of England." At the conclusion, as the author was about to step from the platform, he was hoisted high upon the shoulders of some of the younger officers, and the band broke out with " For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," the chorus being taken up by the voices of the couple of hundred officers there assem- bled. Mr. G. Stewart Bowles, a young English naval officer and the author of "A Gun- Room Ditty- Box," whose stirring verses of ship and sailor are likened only to those of Mr. Kipling, wrote the following lines upon the incident: THE NAVY TO MR, KIPLING. He came to see us {Lord, but why ? There surely wasn't much to show). The signals fluttered broad and high, And mighty drinks were mixed below. He came to see us ( What were we?). We pointed out the Things we Knew, And told fierce stories of the Sea, Explaining how Promotion grew. A Kipling Note Book He came to see us ( That is old ! ). Ten thousand more have done the same. And, drunk with Power they couldn't hold. Have gone as empty as they came. He came to see us ( That was tiew ! ) ; He saw the Meaning through the Task ; Instinctive took the Larger View, And found the Brain behind the Mask ! A Fleet in Being. An event in the literary world was the publication, during the latter part of 1898, in the Morning Post (London), of the se- ries of articles entitled " A Fleet in Be- ing," the outcome of Mr. Kipling's cruise with the Channel Fleet before alluded to. Such a series could not have been printed at a more opportune time. Naval affairs of the Powers in general were at- tracting a more than ordinary amount of attention. Therein the author of "The Seven Seas" is seen in a high-spirited, holiday A Kipling Note Book 73 mood, recording with lightness and buoy- ancy, with no restraining influence of a literary style, whatever came before his eyes. It was a delicate compliment to Mr. Bowles, the author of " A Gun-Room Ditty- Box," for Mr. Kipling to have chosen the following lines to open the series : "... the sailor men That sail upon the seas, To fight the Wars and keep the Laws And eat the yellow peas. " In these sketches Mr. Kipling has man- ifestly returned to his first love, journal- ism, and he seems to enjoy her company wonderfully. One thing these sketches strikingly illustrate: the loss to descrip- tive journalism when Mr. Kipling took to literature. The description of the Channel Squad- ron's manoeuvres is a rattling, rollicking piece of work, hot from the pen and just the thing for the moment. 74 ^ Kipling Note Book Mr. Kipling and Medicine. Mr, Kipling's knowledge of medicine, it is said, is considerable. Speaking at a dinner given to Sir William Gowers, Mr. Kipling said that " but for the infinite mercy of Providence he would have been a doctor, for when he was about sixteen years of age he had intended to practise medicine. After a little time given to the Latin as set forth in Caesar he gave up the idea. But he was allowed to play about the outskirts of St. Mary's Hospital at Paddington, where he picked up a great deal of that half-knowledge which in medical matters is such a dangerous thing." "Manchester Goods and Poetry." With the above significant heading, or, to quote literally, " Cotonnade et Poesie," Arvede Barine, the well-known French A Kipling Note Book J^ writer, penned a long review of Mr. Kip- ling's " Seven Seas " (" Les Sept Mers ") in the Paris Figaro. From the first lines it gives a nev/ point of view. " At the first glance," she says, " there would seem to be nothing poetic in the selling of stuffs to the accompaniment of powder and shot," "The most popular of England's writ- ers, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, gives poetic consecration to her commerce and foreign and colonial competition. He translates politics into the lyrical tongue, and glori- fies in verse the conquest of English com- merce and cruisers." Her rendering of the following lines is given below as translated : " We have fed our sea for a thousand years, And she calls us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead ; We have strewed our best to the weeds' unrest. To the shark and the sheering gull. If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God; we ha' paid in full ! " 76 A Kipling Note Book " Voilh viille ans que nous donnons en pdture aux viers, Etelles nous appellent encore, encore inassouvies; De toutes leurs vagues il n' est pas une vague Qui nait rould un cadavre anglais. Les meilleurs d'entre nous ant cte ballotth dans ies algues totirbillonnantes , Sous la dent des requins et Ic bee des oiseaux de proie. Si le sang est le prix de Vetupire des mers, O Seigneur notre Dieu, nous Favons bienpayi ! " Our critic continues : " Never before has the beauty which underlies modern energy and activity been expressed with such elo- quence. The verses are the poetization of the imperial task and policy." And then she quotes from the " Hymn Before Action." " It is with this poem that one should leave the French reader. It trans- lates faithfully the feelings of millions of Englishmen. Short-sighted indeed are they who continue to doubt these feelings." On reading the above it might seem that a poet's word carried more weight than a prime minister's. A Kipling Note Book jj The Poet of Energy. Another French critic, M. Andre Che- villon, gives this brilliant risumi of Mr. Kipling's writings: "He is crisp, powerful, compact, and keen, like Merimee, but much more sin- ewy, instantaneous, and cruel. " Not like our Loti, with a passive and semi-neurasthenic melancholy, a shudder of pain and voluptuousness at the thought of death and the eternal forces; but like the man of action, who sees in those forces only obstacles to exercise his activities, whet his will, fortify his personality, define and harden his self-respect." The Literature of Action. The following is from an article by Ed- mund Gosse in the North Americati Re- view : "We have had the signal good fortune 78 A Kipling Note Book to see at this opportune hour the develop- ment of perhaps the most purely patriotic talent that ever flourished in England. The most powerful and distinguished Brit- ish author, under thirty-five years of age, is unquestionably Mr. Rudyard Kipling, and his whole literary career is one unflagging appeal to the fighting instincts of the race. . . . Mr. Kipling is not correctly styled a Jingo or a Chauvinist. He does not pro- voke war or underestimate its afflictions, but he preaches forever in our ears, ' Be ready.' . . . " The peculiar gravity of Mr. Kipling's appeal to the English-speaking races — for even America is surely not unaffected by his voice — has been met in Great Britain by the inevitable chorus of imitators. Every song-writer, every leader-writer, every story-teller has a little touch of his magic to-day, a little strain of what the Germans might call Kiplingismus. His appearance in our literature at this crisis, with its sweeping away of the graceful but A Kipling Note Book 79 slightly effeminate cult of beauty and har- mony which preceded it, is one of those extraordinary coincidences which occur in the history of the mind. For who shall say whether athleticism created Mr. Kip- ling or whether Mr. Kipling has encour- aged athleticism ? The two grow side by side, and to what harvest who can tell ? " Expansion and Imperialism. As Mr. Cecil Rhodes was the most typi- cal and practical of British empire-build- ers, so is Mr. Kipling the foremost literary exponent of the expansion of Greater Britain — the world-laureate as well. The German Kaiser has received Mr. Rhodes at Berlin, and has cabled to the United States his solicitous interest and sympathy during Mr. Kipling's illness — two signifi- cant items of news, which might seem to augur a new and closer kinship between nations. 8o A Kipling Note Book The Man Who Is. A relief it is not to be obliged to write of Mr. Kipling in the past tense; as The Man Who Was he would still be a striking figure. Death's known preference for the shin- ing mark made it seem likely that Mr. Kipling's illness during the early months of 1899 would terminate fatally. Never before has the illness of an author been treated as an event of international importance among all classes, from high and low, from emperor to commoner. Some writers give the impression that their best work will be done in their youth, Mr. Joaquin Miller is said to have made the following remark at the time : " Had I died at the present age of Kipling, the world Vi'ould never have heard of me" — a significant statement truly, and one which might well be applied to other literary lights whose successes and recognition came to them late in life. ^0/-l \ i\l K ^ f*A i^> ' ^ C-v l^ailwoy Lit)?ary }foS |0j^F\i)l3ec|}[oS Fac-simile of Cover to First Edition. A Kipling Note Book 8i In any estimate of Mr. Kipling's gifts his versatility must be given its due meas- ure of credit. It is this that has endeared him to all classes of readers. He is truly the author of many inventions and the possessor of an extraordinary power of making us believe in his creations. It is the people of action that appeal to Mr. Kipling — those who err, who may even sin, but at least have played their parts in life with courage and an attitude of responsi- bility. To quote from "Tomlinson," ob- serve this stern inquiry: " ' Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought,' he said ; ' and the talk is still to run ; By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer — What ha' ye done ? ' " Some Quotations. " Look to a man who has the counsel of a woman of or above the world to back him." — Under the Deodars. 82 A Kipling Note Book " Year by year England sends out fresh drafts for the first fighting-line, which is officially called the Indian Civil Service. These die, or kill themselves by overwork, or are worried to death, or are broken in health and hope, in order that the land may be protected from death and sickness, famine and war, and may eventually be- come capable of standing alone." — Black and White. " You may carve it on his tombstone, You may cut it on his card — That a young man married Is a young man marred." — The Story of the Gadsbys. A Compliment from Mr. Kipling. The following letter was received by Mr. Frank BuUen, the author of " The Cruise of the Cachelot," after his publishers had A Kipling Note Book 83 sent Mr. Kipling advance sheets of the forthcoming book : Rottingdean, November a2d, i8g8. Dear Mr. Bullen : — It is immense — there is no other word. I've never read anything that equals it in its deep-sea wonder and mystery, nor do I think that any book before has so completely covered the whole business of whale-fishing, and at the same time given such real and new sea-pictures. I con- gratulate you most Juartily, It 's a new world that you've opened the door to. RUDYARD KIPLING. Ships, Seas, and Sailors. Mr. Kipling's eternal ship is symbolic; so is his everlasting sea; but very real is his sailorman, whether he be at home on the fo'castle or quarter-deck. The ship is not merely a machine, but a congregation of machines, which must be carefully tal- lowed, riveted, exercised, and groomed. But does Mr. Kipling sit at a desk and write mere words about these pets of his, 84 A Kipling Note Book or does he dream them ? Neither, possibly. He trains for his work as would a profes- sional athlete. He keeps himself in the pink of condition by association with spindle-valves, spindrift, and tar. M'Andrews has predicted Mr. Kipling's unassailable position when he says : '^ Lord, send a man like Bobbie Burns to sing & song d steam." As an English review has it: "He writes in parables, whether he means it or not. He tells us we are like his symbolic ship — that we don't know whither we are going or why we are going, but that we must go; and that the question is not whither nor why, but how." The New Kipling. Mr. W. E. Henly writes in The Outlook (London) thus: " It is written, I am told, that Mr. Kip- A Kipling Note Book ling is ' played out,' that his imagination has departed him, that his invention is in a fair way of following his imagination, that he has no other God but facts, mis- takes an interest in technical terms (which he shares among other qualities with a cer- tain William Shakespeare) for inspiration, and that he has not the stuff of another notable book left in him. ... Of his last book (' The Day's Work ') the stories contained therein, including the worst, are better than most men's best, while it seems to me the best are as good as anything Mr. Kipling has done. . . . " Here, for instance, are half a dozen stories as good as any man need wish to read, and vastly better than any living man save Mr. Kipling can write. . . . " The old Kipling— the Kipling of ' The Man Who Would Be King' — was new once, and assuredly he being his own suc- cessor is as good a man as himself. . . . "I have done enough to show that in his case it is early — to say the least — though 86 A Kipling Note Book (it may be) natural enough, to begin to get tired of hearing Aristides called * the Just' " I also record my opinion that, so long as Mr, Kipling * declines and falls off,' those glories of our blood and state to whose increase he has contributed so po- tently will scarce be dwindled or dulled by him." A Coincidence or a Satire. The following is quoted from the Lon* don Academy : KIPLING'S ECHO OF EMERSON. An American. Brahma. BY RUDYARD KIPLING. BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON. If the led striker call it If the red slayer think a strike, he slays. Or the papers call it a Or if the slain think he war, is slain, They know not much They know not well the what I am like subtle ways, Nor what he is, my I keep, and pass, aad Avatar. turn again. A Kipling Note Book 87 Through many roads by They reckon ill who me possessed leave me out ; He shambles forth in When me they fly, I am cosmic guise ; the wings ; He is the jester and the I am the doubter and jest the doubt, And he the text himself And I the hymn the applies. Brahmin sings. " There is of course no plagiarism here. Emerson's poem is so well known that a satirist has no call to apologize for bor- rowing its formula." Kipling's English Home. In 1898 Mr. Kipling settled down under the same old-fashioned roof-tree at Rot- tingdean under which, as a smart youngster fresh from India, he had spent his holi- days not so very many years before. In this instance it was a case of a return to one's old love. Here he was among the friends of his boyhood days. Nearly every old villager remembers 88 A Kipling Note Book " the little Anglo-Indian," as they used to call Burne-Jones' nephew. Rottingdean is but four miles from the gay and festive Brighton, yet in spite of its neighbor the little village still remains a delightful Old- World spot. It is an ideal village, the sort which Caldecott and Hugh Thompson delight to figure in their sketches — an orthodox horse- trough, a conventional green, and the in- evitable inn, " The Plough," where 'tis said Kipling is wont to repair and discuss local politics with its genial host. Old-fash- ioned houses abound, among them a vicar- age with traditions of Wellington and Lyt- ton. The one with a studio skylight belonged to Sir Edward Burne-Jones; next comes Mr. Kipling's domicile, known as "The Elms." From its windows can be seen on a clear day Beechy Head, down channel to the westward some forty miles, and directly in front the choppy waves of the English Channel stretching away to- ward the French coast. A Kipling Note Book 90 A Kipling Note Book At the time this is written the chance visitor to Rottingdean is more than likely to encounter Mr. Kipling striding about the village or lounging on the sands at low tide. A Doubtful Prophecy. Mr. George Moore, he of " Esther Waters" and rabid art-criticism fame, is moved to write thus in a London review : " Mr, Kipling would not have written the most hideous verses ever written in a beautiful language if he had not lived in a specially hideous moment, the moment of the African millionaire, when England, gorged with wealth, lusted for more, when thousands of Arabs were shot in the desert with machine-guns — and the General who commanded in these shambles was greeted as a hero." Mr. Kipling, this writer further main- tains, will be forgotten ten years hence, by A Kipling Note Book 91 which time the Anglo-Saxon will have re- covered from his bout of blackguardism. Kipling's Rebuke. Mr. Kipling's jubilee ode " Recessional," which has spread broadcast on its own wings, and which has done much to stamp his power and ability indelibl)' upon our minds, was, after all, but a wonderfully subtle bit of satire. Its author has said and done many startling things, but this " Recessional " stands out over all the gush and twaddle attendant upon the Victorian Jubilee celebration of 1897, a calm and dignified rebuke to " frantic boast and fool- ish word." Its strength and quality indi- cate the mind of the master, and, aside from the occasion which called it forth, will take its place among the lasting works of the century. 92 A Kipling Note Book Difficult to Translate. When Dr. Leo Kellner, of "Vienna, the author of a monumental work on English literature, complained to Mr. Kipling of the difficulties he found in comparing the different values he found placed upon Eng- lish poets in England itself and among for- eign nations, Mr. Kipling remarked, says Dr. Kellner : " I perfectly understand the difference of taste, and therefore of judg- ment, on one and the same poet by two different people, I only ^^onder that now and then agreement does at all exist. You Germans may understand English as far as grammar and dictionary can convey it to you, but when you translate ' justice ' by ' gerechtigkeit,' or ' virtue ' by ' tugend,' you by no means call up by these words the same idea which the Englishman thought of when he wrote down these words. We write, it is true, in letters of the alphabet, but, psychologically regarded, every printed page is a picture-book, every word, concrete A Kipling Note Book 93 or abstract, a picture. The picture itself may never come to the reader's conscious- ness, but deep down below in the uncon- scious realms the picture works and influ- ences us, and that is where the difficulty lies. Every nation has its own picture for every word, and this is passed on uncon- sciously from generation to generation. The German has quite another kind of picture for ' gerechtigkeit,' as the English- man for ' justice,' Now, every poem con- tains hundreds of such pictures. It is rather to be wondered at that any nation can at all understand the poetry of another; and still," he added, reflectively, " the time is rapidly approaching that the nations will understand one another." Kipling on Shakespeare. Mr. Kipling recently wrote to The Spec- tator thus apropos of a discussion which was occupying its columns regarding " The Tempest" of Shakespeare: 94 A Kipling Note Book "May I cite Malone's suggestion con- necting the play with the casting away of Sir George Somers on the island of Ber- muda in 1609, and further, may I be' al- lowed to say how it seems to me possible that the vision was woven from the most prosaic material — from nothing more prom- ising, in fact, than the chatter of a half- tipsy sailor? . , . Accept this theory and you will concede that * The Tempest ' came sanely and normally. . . . Truly, there was a dream, but that there may be no doubt of its source or of his obligation Shakespeare has made the dreamer im- mortal." An Italian Review. In the Nuova Antologia of Rome is an enthusiastic appreciation of Mr. Kipling's work, under the title of " Rudyard Kip- ling, Poeta e Prosatore," by Signor Ales- sandro Bosdari of the Italian Embassy in London. Therein the reviewer comments A Kipling Note Book 95 on " The Recessional," the " Biblical ac- cents" of which he reproduces in a literal translation, which here follows : " Dio dei padri 7wstri no to dal tempo antico, Signore delle nostri schiere lanciate lontano — dalla cut Man terribile teniatno Vimperio sulla palma e il pino. — Dio Signor degli Eserciti sit ancora con noi, che non scordiatno, che non scordiamo. " II tumulto e gli spari tnoiono^ i duel e i re spariscono — perdura il tuo antico scuri- fizio un cuor contrito ed umiliato. — Dio Si- gnor, etc. " Si dissolvono le nostre flotte chiamate da lungi — Sulle dunne e i capi piomba il fuoco. Ahi che la nostra pompa di ieri e una sol ccsa con Ninive e con Tiro f Giiidice delle nazioni risparmiaci ancora, che non scordiamo, che non scordiamo. " Se ebbri alia vista del potere sciogliam selvaggi accenti senza il tuo timore — di quei vanti che usano i Gentili infime razze che non han la Legge. — Dio Signor, etc. 96 A Kipling Note Book ** Dal cuor pagano che pon suo appoggio net tubi fumanti e nelle ferree bombe. Polve valentt che fabbrica su polve, e, a guardia^ non invoca Te che guardi — Dal frenetico orgoglio e dai Jolli accenti, la tua pietcl pel tuo popolo O S ignore ! Amen." Here, in i.pite of the obduracy of his medium, the translator has bent it to his purpose, and reproduced the sense and feel- ing of the verse, and much of its beat and movement in his half -rhythmic prose. A Voice from South Africa. '- At Kimberley Mr, Kipling was asked by the South African League to suggest a form of coat of arms for the league. He advised a shield with four colors, representing the four great rivers, the Zambesi, the Lim- popo, the Vaal, and the Orange. Beneath was to be a scroll with the motto, " Not less than the greatest," — Londoti Academy. Fac-simile of Cover to First Edition. A Kipling Note Book 97 "The Dipsey Chantey." " Landlubbers may have wondered at the peculiar name given to one of Mr. Kip- ling's most famous songs of the sailor," says a London review. When sailors are about to do any work needing concerted action on the part of those engaged therein they sing or chant more or less melodiously, having usually a different chant for each kind of work. At certain words and in the chorus all join in together, the rhythm having up to that point been carried solely by some one individual. " The Dipsey Chantey " is that sung at the heaving of the lead. Navigators like to hear the men roaring their chanteys, it signifying content. When they are discon- tented they barely mutter the words, and when the sailor man raises not his voice look out for trouble. The chantey is even used when the wind is blowing so hard that the words are 98 A Kipling Note Book barely distinguishable. When reefing the sails of a "square rigger" the men will sing " Whiskey is the life of man," though the gale drown the words at their lips, but the rhythm being so well known and so in- spiring and stimulating to their best efforts that they pull and haul with an indomita- ble will. And thus it is that this simple act of the sailor's every-day life has been em- bodied in the poem referred to as " The Deep-Sea Chantey." The Minor Poet. (With an Acknowledgment to Mr. Kipling. ) I went into a publisher's as woful as a hearse, The publisher he ups and says, ' ' Why Tiill you chaps write verse ? " The girl behind the Remington she tittered fit to die, I outs into the street again and to myself says I : O it's verses this and verses that, and writing 'em is wrong ; But it's " special type and vellum " when you hit on something strong. A Kipling Note Book 99 You hit on something strong, my boys, you hit on something strong, O it's " signed large-paper copies" when you hit on something strong. I calls upon an editor — a very nice young man — Says he, " Send in your stanzas and we'll use 'em if we can. ' ' Of course I sends 'em to him in the usual bloomia' way, Of course he keeps and keeps 'em, and he's got 'em to this day ! And it's verses this, and verses that, and verses for to burn ; But they set 'em up in pica when the tide be- gins to turn. The tide begins to turn, my boys, the tide be- gins to turn, O it's "two-twelve-six a sonnet" when the tide begins to turn. I prints a little book and puts it round like, for review, Which — when you come to think of it — it's the proper thing to do : "We have upwn our table Mr. Blankey's Leaves that Fall." And "another little ship of song ! wants ballast," — that is all. lOO A Kipling Note Book And it's verses this, and verses that, and a par. to say you've sinned ; But it's a fine fat full-page notice when you've hit 'em in the wind. You've hit 'em in the wind, my boys, you've hit 'em in the wind, You're a 'owling, 'eavenly Milton when you've hit 'tm in the vrind. We ain't no 'eavenly Miltons, nor we ain't no idiots too, But "plodding men with famblies" and a pile to make like you ; And all the time you see us down at heel and look- ing weak We' re a casting of our bread upon the waters, so to speak. For it's verses this and verses that, and things run pretty rough. But there's bullion in the verses if you only write the stuff. If you only write the stuff, my boys, if you only write the stuff, lO it's yachts and rows of houses if you only write the stuff. — T. W. H. Crosland, in London Academy. A Kipling Note Book loi Of Sympathy. M. A. F., T. P. O'Connor's sprightly paper, tells the following of Mr. Kipling, which is especially interesting in view of the author's recent bereavement. It ap- pears that the little son of a gifted writer whom Mr. Kipling — generous to a fault in befriending the young author struggling to get on in the world of letters — had aided in gaining the ear of the public when all seemed against him, died on the very day the long struggle was over and his father's first book was published. Mr. Kipling promptly wrote a long let- ter to the sorrow-stricken father, " from which," says M. A. P., " we are permitted to quote the following: " ''As to the matter which you have done me the honor to tell me, I can only sympathize most deeply and sorrowfully. People say that that kind of wound heals. It doesn^t. It only skins over ; but there is at least some I02 A Kipling Note Book black consolation to be got from the old and bitter thought that the boy is safe from the chances of after years. I dotCt know that that helps ^ unless you happen to know some man who is under a deeper sorrow than yours — a man, say, who has watched the child of his begetting go body and soul to the devil, and feels that he is responsible. But it is the mother who bore him who suffers most whe?i the you?ig life goes out."" " Of Empire-Building. " Patriotism," said Johnson, " is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But when it is re- called of whom it was said and under what conditions, we estimate its value accord- ingly. Indifference to the doings of one's native land is often the result of sheer ignorance; and says Rudyard Kipling, "What should they know of England who only England know?" Thereupon he sets out to teach them of India, Canada, South Africa, Aus- A Kipling Note Book 103 tralia, New Zealand, and of the brother- hood of man. "The empire was a map; Rudyard Kip- ling made it a fact," says an apprecia- tive English writer, who continues: "The British possessions were marked in red — plebeian red: Rudyard Kipling colored them purple — imperial purple." Kipling — Maupassant. An English writer in a review ventures the following : " Rudyard Kipling has been called the * English Maupassant.' " This is the finest compliment ever paid to — " Maupassant, one third of whose work is unmitigated filth, another third out of all proportion, and the last third the result of a questionable talent. Kipling's work is always virile : sometimes brutal, but never base, and with an insight more keen and faithful than even that possessed by the author of 'Bel Ami.'" I04 A Kipling Note Book Writers Who Have Influenced Kipling. From " Rudyard Kipling the Man," by W. J. Clarke, is taken the following: "The writers who have influenced Rud- yard Kipling are, chiefly, William Ernest Henley, who * showed him the way to pro- motion and pay ' ; James Thomson, who brought home to him the suggestion of • The City of Dreadful Night ' , Bret Harte, who drew his attention to the literary pic- turesqueness of the vagabond; Macaulay, who flashed the spark which fired his genius for proper names ; Defoe, who taught him the trick of using minute detail and precise terminology; Dickens, who inspired him to sympathize with the lowly and to see the humor that dwelleth in small things ; the compilers of the Bible, who gave him a large share of his diction and showed him the value of simplicity; and Rudyard Kipling, who gave him his irony, his flash- A Kipling Note Book 105 light power, his craftsmanship, his indus- try, invention, insight, and ability to make a dream come true." From Robert Louis Stevenson. List to R. L. S., who once said: "There is a lot of the living devil in Kipling. It is his quick-beating pulse that gives him a position very much apart. Even with his love of journalistic effect there is the tide of life through it all." A Singer of Songs. It would be interesting to know what the average professor of poetics really thinks of Rudyard Kipling as a national balladist. In the eyes of the poetical academician your true poet rhymes bliss and kiss, and dove and love, and must or ought to treat of birds, bees, and butterflies, or possibly io6 A Kipling Note Book of souls and stars. As to form or style, Kipling has as yet written of none of these, nor An Epic of Hades, nor An Ode to a Patriot, and above all he has left his personal and private affairs generously alone. We have from his pen no Songs to My Wife or Lines to a Daughter to shatter our good feeling, and from the indications of past and present it is unlikely that we ever shall have. Some Ditties Analyzed. ^''General Summary. ^^ — A satirical ref- erence to existing similarities between the "official sinning" of the age that is past and gone and the present day. " The Story of Uriah" — A story of cov- etousness. " The Man Who Could Write:'— P^ Ben- gali Babu who is labelled as Boanerges Blitzen, a man who would write. " Rupdiyat oj Omar Kal 'vin" — First, A Kipling Note Book 107 a Persic pun; secondly, parodying the rhythm and metre of the Rubaiyat. " Fagett, M.Py — A satire on the globe- trotter who speaks of the heat of India as the Asian Solar Myth, and who ultimately falls a prey to sand-flies, mosquitoes, and fever, " La Nuit Blanche. " — A unique descrip- tion of the results accruing from a state of alcoholic saturation, " Divided jDesti?iicsy — A quaint philoso- phy which compares the ascent of man to the original status of the derided ape, " Certain Maxims of Uajiz'^ — Prophe- cies and teachings full of Eastern lore and learning, " The Unknown Goddess " and " A Bal- lad of Burial" — Light vers de societe ; locale, India. " Christinas in India.^^ — A satire of pro- found depth, but possessed of a tender pathos withal, " The Fall of Jock Gillespie."— A. humor- ous recital of moral backsliding. io8 A Kipling Note Book " The Lover's Litany^ — A tender senti- ment of the love passion such as is thought by some critics to be utterly beyond Mr. Kipling's grasp. " L" Envoi." — In this instance, as in every case where Mr. Kipling employs the term, highly to be commended. " The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding - House" — An exhibition of startling irony and " delicious brutality." " Ttie Grave of the Hundred Head," — A more or less bloodthirsty tale of Indian warfare. " The Galley-Slave" — Allegorical verses of a psychological and sociological import. " Sergeant What's-His-Name." A most appreciative compliment to Mr. Kipling is paid by Mr. G. W. Steevens in his recent volume "With Kitchener to Khartum," in the following words : " Finally we must not forget * Sergeant A Kipling Note Book 1 09 What's-His-Name,' as with grateful appre- ciation of fame at Rudyard Kipling's hand we are proud to call him. Each battalion of blacks has as an instructor a Brit- ish non-commissioned officer; he drills it, teaches it to shoot, and makes soldiers of it. Perhaps there is no body of men in the world who do more unalloyed and unlim- ited credit to their country than the ser- geants with the Egyptian army. " In many ways their position is a diffi- cult one. Technically they are subordinate to all the native officers down to the latest- joined sub-lieutenant. The slacker sort of native officer resents the presence of these keenly military subordinates and does his best to make them uncomfortable. But the white sergeant knows how not to see un- pleasantness till it is absolutely unavoid- able ; then he knows how to go quietly to his colonel and assert his position without publicly humiliating his superior. "When you hear that the sergeant in- structors are highly endowed with tact, you 1 1 o A Kipling Note Book will guess that in the virtues that come more naturally to the British sergeant they shine exceedingly. Their passionate de- votion to duty rises to a daily heroism. " Living year in and year out in a climate very hard upon Europeans, they are natu- rally unable to palliate it with the compar- ative luxuries of the officers, though it must be said that the consideration of the officer for his non-commissioned comrade is one of the kindliest of all the many kindly touches with which the British-Egyptian softens privation and war. But the white officer rides and ' Sergeant What's-His- Name ' marches. ' Where a nigger can go I can go,' he says, and tramps on through the sun. . . . He must needs be a keen sol- dier or he would not have volunteered for the post, and a good one or he would not have got it. . . . 'After Tel-el-Kebir,' said a captain in the British brigade, * one of my officers came to me and talked of joining the Egyptian army. "For God's sake, don't!" said I, "don't; you'll spend A Kipling Note Book 1 1 1 your life thrashing fellahin into action with a stick." ' " England, France, and America. The Bookman gives the following com- parative points of view of the Englishman, the Frenchman, and the American as laid down by Rudyard Kipling: "'The Englishman,' says Mr. Kipling, * will die for liberty, but cares not a jot for equality. The Frenchman, on the other hand, doesn't really know what liberty means, but he must have equality. As for the American, he is indifferent to both lib- erty and equality and goes in heart and soul for fraternity. This is really the bane of the American nation ; so long as a man is a " good fellow " he can do anything, and people will approve or at least tolerate it.' There is really," comments The Bookman, " a considerable amount of truth in these few sentences." 112 A Kipling Note Book The Original of Mulvaney. There appeared in 1895 a variously quoted newspaper story to the effect that "William McMann, the original of Mul- vaney," was then a resident of San Fran- cisco. The incidents of his life have been very similar to those related in " Soldiers Three," and he described Kipling as "a plucky, inquisitive little fellow in the civil service, who passed his bottle around among us privates and then got us to tell all the yarns of the barrack-room." Be this a record of a fact or be it not, and in spite of its semblance of plausi- bility to those who would like to believe it, it was of sufficient moment at the time for the editor of The Bookbuyer to seek to verify it from Mr. Kipling himself. Here- with is given his letter in reply: Naulakha, Brattleboro, Vt., June 14th, 1895. Dear Sir : In reply to your letter of the nth inst. I can only say that I know noth- Portrait Sketch of Rudyard Kipling By the Marchioness of Granby A Kipling Note Book 113 ing of Private McMann mentioned in the cutting you forward. At the same time I should be loath to interfere with a fellow-romancer's trade, and if there be such a person as Private McMann, and if he believes himself to be the original of Terence Mulvaney, and can tell tales to back his claim, we will allow he is a good enough Mulvaney for the Pacific Slope and wait develop- ments. At the same time I confess his seems a rather daring game to play, for Terence alone, of living men, knows the answer to the question, " How did Dearsley come by the palanquin ? " It is not one of the questions that agitate the civilized world, but for my own satisfaction I would give a good deal to have it an- swered. If Private McMann can answer it without evasions or reservations, he will prove he has some small right to be regarded as Mulvaney's successor. Mulvaney he cannot be. There is but 114 A Kipling Note Book one Terence, and he has never set foot in America and never will. Very sincerely, RuDYARD Kipling. On the circumstance and the letter itself The Bookbuyer commented at the time as follows : "This would seem to settle McMann. But if he or anybody else is by way of know- ing the rights about Dearsley's palanquin — which, it will be remembered, became the travelling shrine of Great Krishna Mulva- ney — he ought to tell us all he knows." A Later Comment. The following by W. L. Alden would seem to sustain the above-noted argument: " There are novelists who copy the pecul- iarities of persons whom they have met and ascribe them to the puppets of their stories. The man who imagines his hero makes him just what he wishes him to be, A Kipling Note Book 1 1 5 whereas if he copies him he is hampered by the facts of character. Shakespeare did not copy Hamlet, and Kipling's Mulvaney is vastly more true to life than he could have been if Kipling had simply painted a portrait of an Irish soldier whom he had met in India. The camera in fiction is an intolerable nuisance, though there will always be people who will please them- selves by fancying that Hamlet in real life played the violin in the Globe Theatre and that Mulvaney is still alive and keeps a corner grocery in San Francisco." Mark Twain on Kipling. From an interesting speech by Mark Twain as guest of the Authors' Club (Lon- don), June 12th, 1899: "... I am glad that the present feeling between England and America has received an added and powerful impulse from a lit- erary source, the handicraft of the pen, my 1 1 6 A Kipling Note Book guild — the English-speaking world's out- burst of sympathy when the life of Rud- yard Kipling was threatened, . . . " Last February, when Rudyard Kipling was ill in America, the sympathy which was poured out to him was genuine and sincere. And I believe that that which cost Kipling so dear will bring England and America closer together. " I have been proud and pleased to see this growing affection and respect between the two countries, and I hope it will continue to grow. I trust that we will leave to pos- terity, if we cannot leave anything else, a friendship between England and America that will count for much. " I have been engaged for the past eight days in compiling a pun and have brought it here to lay it at your feet, not to ask for your indulgence, but for your applause. It is in these words: " Since England and America have been joined together in Kipling, may they not be severed in Twain.'' A Kipling Note Book 1 1 7 Kipling (Limited). An improvisation on an amusing theme from the London Academy : ["A Syndicate, it is said, has been formed in America to get complete control in that country of all Mr. Kipling's writ- ings. In commenting thereupon a con- temporary asks. Why not Kipling (Lim- ited) ? Why not, indeed ? The prospectus, we imagine, might run somewhat on the following lines."] J^IPLING (Limited). (Incorporated under the Companies Acts, 1862 to 1898.) CAPITAL ;^i,ooo,ooo. DIRECTORS. Mr. A. p. Watt (King of Literary Agents), Lon- don. Messrs. Romeike & Curtis, Press-Cutting Agents, London. Mr. Doubleday, Publisher, New York. AUDITOR. Sir Walter Besant. ADVERTISING AGENT. Mr. Thomas Atkins. BREAKER. Mr. George Moore. OFFICES. Army and Navy Mansions, Victoria Street. 1 1 8 A Kipling Note Book TRIPLING (Limited). PROSPECTUS. This Company has been formed to acquire and traffic in all the writings — prose, verse, or private letters — of the celebrated author Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Mr. Kipling, who is at this moment the most famous writer now living, is still young, and there is promise that he has before him a consider- able period of a'^tive productivity. TRIPLING (Limited). The Company proposes to acquire not only Mr. Kipling's future works and the work on which he is at present engaged, but also everything that may already exist. Negotiations are now afoot for the acquisition of letters written by Mr. Kipling as a child, for copy-books containing his earliest at- tempts at pot-hooks and hangers, and for a vast amount of other immature penmanship. These will be from time to time facsimiled in the illustrated papers and in due course sold by public auction, at (the Company feels convinced) a greatly enhanced figure. J^IPLING (Limited). The Company will be vigilant that no imperial crisis shall pass without poetic comment from Mr. Kipling's pen. It trusts also that it will be suc- cessful in inducing Mr. Kipling to give to these political poems a form which shall be easily par- odied : thus providing for increased publicity. A Kipling Note Book 119 ^^^^ ' ■ " ■■i" - ■' y —■ll.ll ■ ■ .1 n il J^IPLING (Limited). The Company is delighted to observe that not only are there now before the public two or three monographs on Mr. Kipling's work, but others are in preparation. The Company also views with much satisfaction the circumstance that the action now being brought by Mr. Kipling against an American firm is not likely to be heard for eigh- teen months. This insures a continual succession of articles and paragraphs in the public press — during the early stages of the Company's career. TRIPLING (Limited). Arrangements have been made with the Biograph and Mutoscope Company to take living pictures of Mr. Kipling in a variety of daily actions, such as sitting down to his writing-table, alighting from a steamer, reading press notices, conversing with a recruiting sergeant, and filling in his income tax. These pictures will be exhibited in all the leading cities of England and America, both on the screen and in the penny-in-the-slot machines. TRIPLING (Limited). In addition to such ordinary literary work as novels, short stories, and verses, Mr. Kipling, it is hoped, will agree to write every year no fewer than six strictly private letters on debatable public ques- tions, which shall, in due course, find their way into the public press. 1 20 A Kipling Note Book TRIPLING (Limited). A private wire will be affixed between Potsdam and the Company's offices to facilitate the trans- mission of telegrams to Mr. Kipling from the Ger- man Emperor. The Royal Academy. In 1898 Mr. Kipling was expected to re- spond to the toast of *' Literature " at the Royal Academy banquet. Says report: Sir Edward Poynter, who is an uncle of Mr. Kipling, had a little shyness upon his in- stallation in the presidency in bringing a nephew so promptly forward. Commenting thereon, a literary journal said: "We read a great deal about nepotism and the like; but nobody has given names to the oppos- ing vices — the neglect of men of genius because they happen to be of kith — a crime which is everywhere written across the his- tory of achievement in the arts. Sir Ed- ward, I can assure him for his consolation, would sooner be accused of that if Mr. Kipling were not down for ' Literature ' than of any favoritism if he were. And A Kipling Note Book i 2 1 when people have heard Mr. Kipling at the Academy, and think of the occasions when they might have secured him, they will feel some of the chagrin over a neglected op- portunity which you can imagine they felt in Printing-House Square when they read the splendidly inspiriting series of articles on ' A Fleet in Being.' . . . " Mr. Kipling has done most things now, but he has yet to make his reputation as an after-dinner speaker. It is well within his own capabilities to make it, as any one who has heard him on his rarely venturing oc- casions. Even his nervousness gives him a force often denied to facility; and of late he has cultivated voice-production so well as to have astonished the navy — this when he recited his ' Ballads ' on the Pelorus in Eantry Bay." A Soldier's Compliment. The private soldier at the Cape who greeted Mr. Kipling so felicitously in 12 2 A Kipling Note Book verse upon his arrival in that part of the world has sent home to an English paper a Barrack-room Ballad of his own. It has merit enough to stand alone at least, and the subject, oddly enough, had been over- looked by Mr. Kipling — the death of a soldier and the regiment's sudden change of attitude toward him. Herewith are given two stanzas : GINGER JAMES. 'E'd little brains, I'll swear. Beneath 'is ginger 'air; 'Is personal attractions — well, they wasn't very large; ' E was first in evry mill. Art a foul-mouthed cur — but still We' II forgive 'im all 'is drawbacks — ' •■ Sekgeant What's Hi s-N am e" KiPL INDEX.— Continued England, France, and America The Original of Mulvaney A Later Comment Mark Twain on Kipling Kipling (Limited) . The Royal Academy . A Soldier's Compliment The Emperor of Germany "Our Lady of the Snows" The Small Boy of Quebec " The Blind Bug" . The Kipling Boom The New Poetry . Literary Productiveness The Kipling Collector Most Famous Man in the Wo " Academy " Anecdotes The Law of the Jungle Imperial Majesty . J. Rudyard Kipling The Ten-Inch Gun Courting of Dinah Shadd The Man of Muscle . A Protest .... Labouchere's Retort . The Valley of the Shadow of Death Thanksgiving Encyclical Bibliography Portraits of Rudyard Kipling Books about Rudyard Kipling Bibliography of Periodical Literature UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 891 108 3 J