child, placid and unwinking, lay in the hollow of her right arm,
gorgeous in silver-fringed muslin, with a small skull-cap on his head.
Ameera wore all that she valued most. The diamond nose-stud that takes
the place of the Western patch in drawing attention to the curve of
the nostril, the gold ornament in the centre of the forehead studded
with tallow-drop emeralds and flawed rubies, the heavy circlet of
beaten gold that was fastened round her neck by the softness of the
pure metal, and the clinking curb-patterned silver anklets hanging low
over the rosy ankle-bone. She was dressed in jade-green muslin, as
befitted a daughter of the Faith, and from shoulder to elbow and elbow
to wrist ran bracelets of silver tied with floss silk; frail glass
bangles slipped over the wrist in proof of the slenderness of the hand,
and certain heavy gold bracelets that had no part in her country's
ornaments, but, since they were Holden's gift, and fastened with a
cunning European snap, delighted her immensely.
"They sat down by the low white parapet of the roof, overlooking the
city and its lights."
What tragedy was in store for the gentle astrologer, or in what
darkness of waters the story ends, it is needless to repeat here.
In _The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes_ a civil engineer stumbles by
chance on a ghastly city of the dead who do not die, trapped into it,
down walls of shifting sand, on the same principle as the ant-lion
secures its prey, the parallel being so close that one half suspects
Mr. Kipling of having invented a human analogy to the myrmeleon. The
abominable settlement of living dead men is so vividly described,
and the wonders of it are so calmly, and, as it were, so temperately
discussed, that no one who possesses the happy gift of believing can
fail to be persuaded of the truth of the tale. The character of Gunga
Dass, a Deccanee Brahmin whom Jukes finds in this reeking village,
and who, reduced to the bare elements of life, preserves a little,
though exceedingly little, of his old traditional obsequiousness, is an
admirable study. But all such considerations are lost, as we read the
story first, in the overwhelming and Poe-like horror of the situation
and the extreme novelty of the conception.
A still higher place, however, I am inclined to claim for the daring
invention of _The Man who would be King_. This is a longer story than
is usual with Mr. Kipling, and it depends for its effect, not upon
any epigrammatic surprise or extravagant dénouement of the intrigue,
but on an imaginative effort brilliantly sustained through a detailed
succession of events. Two ignorant and disreputable Englishmen, exiles
from social life, determine to have done with the sordid struggle, and
to close with a try for nothing less than empire. They are seen by
the journalist who narrates the story to disappear northward from the
Kumharsan Serai disguised as a mad priest and his servant starting to
sell whirligigs to the Ameer of Kabul. Two years later there stumbles
into the newspaper office a human creature bent into a circle, and
moving his feet one over the other like a bear. This is the surviving
adventurer, who, half dead and half dazed, is roused by doses of raw
whisky into a condition which permits him to unravel the squalid and
splendid chronicle of adventures beyond the utmost rim of mountains,
adventures on the veritable throne of Kafiristan. The tale is recounted
with great skill as from the lips of a dying king. At first, to give
the needful impression of his faint, bewildered state, he mixes up
his narrative, whimpers, forgets, and repeats his phrases; but by
the time the curiosity of the reader is fully arrested, the tale has
become limpid and straightforward enough. When it has to be drawn to
a close, the symptoms of aphasia and brain-lesion are repeated. This
story is conceived and conducted in the finest spirit of an artist.
It is strange to the verge of being incredible, but it never outrages
possibility, and the severe moderation of the author preserves our
credence throughout.
It is in these Indian stories that Mr. Kipling displays more than
anywhere else the accuracy of his eye and the retentiveness of his
memory. No detail escapes him, and, without seeming to emphasise the
fact, he is always giving an exact feature where those who are in
possession of fewer facts or who see less vividly are satisfied with a
shrewd generality.
V
In Mr. Kipling's first volume there was one story which struck
quite a different note from all the others, and gave promise of a
new delineator of children. _Tods' Amendment_, which is a curiously
constructed piece of work, is in itself a political allegory. It is to
be noticed that when he warms to his theme the author puts aside the
trifling fact that Tods is an infant of six summers, and makes him give
a clear statement of collated native opinion worthy of a barrister in
ample practice. What led to the story, one sees without difficulty,
was the wish to emphasise the fact that unless the Indian Government
humbles itself, and becomes like Tods, it can never legislate with
efficiency, because it never can tell what all the _jhampanis_ and
_saises_ in the bazar really wish for. If this were all, Mr. Kipling in
creating Tods would have shown no more real acquaintance with children
than other political allegorists have shown with sylphs or Chinese
philosophers. But Mr. Kipling is always an artist, and in order to
make a setting for his child-professor of jurisprudence, he invented
a really convincing and delightful world of conquering infancy. Tods,
who lives up at Simla with Tods' mamma, and knows everybody, is "an
utterly fearless young pagan," who pursues his favourite kid even into
the sacred presence of the Supreme Legislative Council, and is on terms
of equally well-bred familiarity with the Viceroy and with Futteh Khan,
the villainous loafer _khit_ from Mussoorie.
To prove that _Tods' Amendment_ was not an accident, and also,
perhaps, to show that he could write about children purely and simply,
without any after-thought of allegory, he brought out, as the sixth
instalment of the _Indian Railway Library_, a little volume entirely
devoted to child-life. Of the four stories contained in this book one
is among the finest productions of its author, while two others are
very good indeed. There are also, of course, the children in _The Light
that Failed_, although they are too closely copied from the author's
previous creations in _Baa, Baa, Black Sheep_; and in other writings of
his, children take a position sufficiently prominent to justify us in
considering this as one of the main divisions of his work.
In his preface to _Wee Willie Winkie_, Mr. Kipling has sketched for us
the attitude which he adopts towards babies. "Only women," he says, but
we may doubt if he means it, "understand children thoroughly; but if a
mere man keeps very quiet, and humbles himself properly, and refrains
from talking down to his superiors, the children will sometimes be
good to him, and let him see what they think about the world." This is
a curious form of expression, and suggests the naturalist more than
the lover of children. So might we conceive a successful zoologist
affirming that the way to note the habits of wild animals and birds
is by keeping very quiet, and lying low in the grass, and refraining
from making sudden noises. This is, indeed, the note by which we may
distinguish Mr. Kipling from such true lovers of childhood as Mrs.
Ewing. He has no very strong emotion in the matter, but he patiently
and carefully collects data, partly out of his own faithful and
capacious personal memory, partly out of what he still observes.
The Tods type he would probably insist that he has observed. A finer
and more highly developed specimen of it is given in _Wee Willie
Winkie_, the hero of which is a noble infant of overpowering vitality,
who has to be put under military discipline to keep him in any sort of
domestic order, and who, while suffering under two days' confinement to
barracks (the house and verandah), saves the life of a headstrong girl.
The way in which Wee Willie Winkie--who is of Mr. Kipling's favourite
age, six--does this is at once wholly delightful and a terrible strain
to credence. The baby sees Miss Allardyce cross the river, which he has
always been forbidden to do, because the river is the frontier, and
beyond it are bad men, goblins, Afghans, and the like. He feels that
she is in danger, he breaks mutinously out of barracks on his pony and
follows her, and when she has an accident, and is surrounded by twenty
hill-men, he saves her by his spirit and by his complicated display of
resource. To criticise this story, which is told with infinite zest
and picturesqueness, seems merely priggish. Yet it is contrary to Mr.
Kipling's whole intellectual attitude to suppose him capable of writing
what he knows to be supernatural romance. We have therefore to suppose
that in India infants "of the dominant race" are so highly developed at
six, physically and intellectually, as to be able to ride hard, alone,
across a difficult river, and up pathless hilly country, to contrive
a plan for succouring a hapless lady, and to hold a little regiment
of savages at bay by mere force of eye. If Wee Willie Winkie had been
twelve instead of six, the feat would have been just possible. But
then the romantic contrast between the baby and his virile deeds would
not have been nearly so piquant. In all this Mr. Kipling, led away by
sentiment and a false ideal, is not quite the honest craftsman that he
should be.
But when, instead of romancing and creating, he is content to observe
children, he is excellent in this as in other branches of careful
natural history. But the children he observes, are, or we much misjudge
him, himself. _Baa, Baa, Black Sheep_ is a strange compound of work at
first and at second hand. Aunty Rosa (delightfully known, without a
suspicion of supposed relationship, as "Antirosa"), the Mrs. Squeers
of the Rocklington lodgings, is a sub-Dickensian creature, tricked out
with a few touches of reality, but mainly a survival of early literary
hatreds. The boy Harry and the soft little sister of Punch are rather
shadowy. But Punch lives with an intense vitality, and here, without
any indiscretion, we may be sure that Mr. Kipling has looked inside
his own heart and drawn from memory. Nothing in the autobiographies
of their childhood by Tolstoi and Pierre Loti, nothing in Mr. R. L.
Stevenson's _Child's Garden of Verses_, is more valuable as a record of
the development of childhood than the account of how Punch learned to
read, moved by curiosity to know what the "falchion" was with which the
German man split the Griffin open. Very nice, also, is the reference to
the mysterious rune, called "Sonny, my Soul," with which mamma used to
sing Punch to sleep.
By far the most powerful and ingenious story, however, which Mr.
Kipling has yet dedicated to a study of childhood is _The Drums of the
Fore and Aft_. "The Fore and Aft" is a nickname given in derision to a
crack regiment, whose real title is "The Fore and Fit," in memory of a
sudden calamity which befell them on a certain day in an Afghan pass,
when, if it had not been for two little blackguard drummer-boys, they
would have been wofully and contemptibly cut to pieces, as they were
routed by a dashing troop of Ghazis. The two little heroes, who only
conquer to die, are called Jakin and Lew, stunted children of fourteen,
"gutter-birds" who drink and smoke and "do everything but lie," and are
the disgrace of the regiment. In their little souls, however, there
burns what Mr. Pater would call a "hard, gem-like flame" of patriotism,
and they are willing to undergo any privation, if only they may wipe
away the stigma of being "bloomin' non-combatants."
In the intervals of showing us how that stain was completely removed,
Mr. Kipling gives us not merely one of the most thrilling and effective
battles in fiction, but a singularly delicate portrait of two grubby
little souls turned white and splendid by an element of native
greatness. It would be difficult to point to a page of modern English
more poignant than that which describes how "the only acting-drummers
who were took along," and--left behind, moved forward across the pass
alone to the enemy's front, and sounded on drum and fife the return of
the regiment to duty. But perhaps the most remarkable feature of the
whole story is that a record of shocking British retreat and failure is
so treated as to flatter in its tenderest susceptibilities the pride of
British patriotism.
_1891._
AN ELECTION AT THE ENGLISH ACADEMY
An Election at the English Academy
ATHENÆUM CLUB, PALL MALL, S.W.
TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, R.E.A., Samoa
DEAR MR. STEVENSON,--Last night I think that even you must
have regretted being a beachcomber. Even the society of your friend
Ori-a-Ori and the delights of kava and bread-fruit can hardly make up
to you for what you lost in Piccadilly. It was the first occasion, as
you are aware, upon which we have been called upon to fill up a vacancy
in the Forty. You know, long before this letter reaches you, that we
have already lost one of our original members. Poor Kinglake! I thought
at the time that it was a barren honour, but it was one which his fame
imperatively demanded. I can't say I knew him: a single introduction,
a few gracious words in a low voice, a grave and sad presence--that
is all I retain of him personally. I shall know more when our new
Academician has to deliver the eulogium on his predecessor. What an
intellectual treat it will be!
We had a splendid gathering. Do you recollect that when the papers
discussed us, before our foundation, one thing they said was that
there never would be a decent attendance? I must confess our
business meetings have been rather sparsely filled up. Besant is
invariably there, Lecky generally, a few others. There has always
been a quorum--not much more. But between you and me and those other
palms--the feathery palms of your cabin--there has not been much
business to transact; not much more than might have been left to
assiduous Mr. Robinson, our paid secretary. But last night the clan was
all but complete. There were thirty-seven of us, nobody missing but Mr.
Ruskin and yourself. Ruskin, by the way, wrote a letter to be read at
the meeting, and then sent on to the _Pall Mall Gazette_--so diverting!
I must cut it out and enclose it. But his style, if this is to be taken
as an example, is not quite what it was.[2]
Well, I am still so excited that I hardly know where to begin. To
me, a real country bumpkin, the whole thing was such an occasion!
Such a _social_ occasion! I must begin from the beginning. I came
all the way up from Luxilian, my green uniform, with the golden
palm-shoots embroidered on it, safely packed in my portmanteau under my
dress-clothes. To my great annoyance the children had been wearing it
in Christmas charades. My dear wife, ay me, has so little firmness of
character. By-the-by, I hope you wear yours on official occasions in
Samoa? The whole costume, I should fancy, must be quite in a Polynesian
taste. I was more "up" in the candidates and their characteristics
than you would expect. Ah! I know you think me rather a Philistine--but
can an Academician be a Philistine? That is a question that might be
started when next the big gooseberry season begins. I was "up" in the
candidates because, as good luck would have it, Sala had been spending
a week with me in the country. Delightful companion, but scarcely
fitted for rural pleasures. He mentioned such a great number of eminent
literary persons whom I had never heard of--mostly rather occasional
writers, I gathered. He has an extraordinarily wide circle, I find:
it makes me feel quite the Country Mouse. He did not seem to know
much about Gardiner, it is true, but then he could tell me all that
Hardy had written--or pretty nearly all; and, of course, as you know,
Gardiner is my own hobby.
The moment I got to Paddington I foolishly began looking hither and
thither for fellow-"immortals." Rather absurd, but not so absurd as
you might suppose, for there, daintily stepping out of a first-class
carriage, whom should I see but Max Müller. I scarcely know him, and
should not have ventured to address him, but he called out: "Ah! my
dear friend, we come, I suspect, on the same interesting, the same
patriotic errand!" I had felt a few qualms of conscience about my own
excitement in the election; we are so quiet at Luxilian that we can
scarcely measure the relative importance of events. But Max Müller
completely reassured me. It was delightful to me to see how seriously
he regarded the event. "Europe," he said, "is not inattentive to such
a voice as the unanimity of the English Academy may--may wield." I
could not help smiling at the last word, and reflecting how carelessly
the most careful of us professional writers expresses himself in
conversation. But his enthusiasm was very beautiful, and I found myself
more elevated than ever. "It is permitted to us," he went on, "to
whisper among ourselves what the world must not hear--the unthinking
world--that the social status of English Academician adds not a
little dignity to literature. One hopes that, whoever may be added
to our number to-night, the social----eh?" I had formulated just the
same feeling myself. "Only in so far," he went on, "as is strictly
consistent with the interests of literature and scholarship--of course?
Good-bye!" and he left me with an impression that he wanted to vote for
both candidates.
There was a little shopping I had to do in Regent Street, after I
had left my costume at the Academy, and I called in at Mudie's for a
moment on my way to the British Museum. To give you an idea of the
mental disturbance I was suffering from, I asked the very polite
young man at the counter for my own _Mayors of Woodshire_--you know,
my seventeenth-century book--instead of _The Mayor of Casterbridge_,
which my wife wanted to read. I did not realise my mistake till I saw
the imprint of the Clarendon Press. At last I got to the manuscript
room, made my references, and found that our early dinner hour was
approaching. I walked westward down Oxford Street, enjoying the
animation and colour of the lovely evening, and then, suddenly,
realising what the hour was, turned and took a hansom to the Athenæum.
Who should meet me in the vestibule but Seeley? Less and less often
do I find my way to Cambridge, and I hesitated about addressing him,
although I used to know him so well. He was buried in a reverie,
and slowly moving to the steps. I suppose I involuntarily slackened
my speed also, and he looked up. He was most cordial, and almost
immediately began to talk to me about those notes on the commercial
relations of the Woodshire ports with Poland which I printed in the
_English Historical_ two (or perhaps three) years ago. I daresay you
never heard of them. I promised to send him some transcripts I have
since made of the harbour laws of Luxilian itself--most important.
I longed to ask Seeley whether we might be sure of his support for
Gardiner, but I hardly liked to do so, he seemed so much more absorbed
in the past. I took for granted it was all right, and when we parted,
as he left the Club, he said, "We meet later on this evening, I
suppose?" and that was his only reference to the election.
I am hardly at home yet at the Athenæum, and I was therefore delighted
to put myself under Lecky's wing. I soon saw that quite a muster of
Academicians was preparing to dine, for when we entered the Coffee Room
we found Mr. Walter Besant already seated, and before we could join him
Mr. Black and Mr. Herbert Spencer came in together and approached us.
We had two small tables placed together, and just as we were sitting
down, Lord Lytton, who was so extremely kind to me in Paris last autumn
when I left my umbrella in the Eiffel Tower, made his appearance. We
all seemed studiously to make no reference, at first, to the great
event of the day, while Mr. Spencer diverted us with several anecdotes
which he had just brought from a family in the country--not at all, of
course, of a puerile description, but throwing a singular light upon
the development of infant mind. After this the conversation flagged a
little. I suppose we were all thinking of the same thing. I was quite
relieved when a remark of Lecky's introduced the general topic.
Our discussion began by Lord Lytton's giving us some very interesting
particulars of the election of Pierre Loti (M. Viaud) into the French
Academy last week, and of the social impression produced by these
contests. I had no idea of the pushing, the intriguing, the unworthy
anxiety which are shown by some people in Paris who wish to be of the
Forty. Lord Lytton says that there is a story by M. Daudet which,
although it is petulant and exaggerated, gives a very graphic picture
of the seamy side of the French Academy. I must read this novel, for I
feel that we, as a new body destined to wield a vast influence in this
country, ought to be forewarned. I ventured to say that I did not think
that English people, with our honest and wholesome traditions, and the
blessings of a Protestant religion, would be in any danger of falling
into these excesses. Nobody responded to this; I am afraid the London
writers are dreadfully cynical, and Black remarked that we six, at all
events, were poachers turned inside out. They laughed at this, and I
was quite glad when the subject was changed.
Lord Lytton asked Mr. Besant whether he was still as eager as ever
about his Club of Authors, or whether he considered that the English
Academy covered the ground. He replied that he had wholly relinquished
that project for the present. His only wish had been to advocate union
among authors, on a basis of mutual esteem and encouragement, and
he thought that the Academy would be quite enough to do that, if it
secured for itself the building which is now being talked about, as
a central point for consultation on all matters connected with the
literary life and profession. But this notion did not seem to command
itself to Mr. Spencer, who said that it seemed to him that the Forty
were precisely those whom success or the indulgence of the public had
raised above the need or the desire of consultation. "I am very glad
to have the pleasure of playing a game of billiards with you, Mr.
Besant, but why should I consult you about my writings? I conceive that
the duty of our Academy is solely to insist on a public recognition of
the dignity of literature, and that if we go a step beyond that aim, we
prepare nothing but snares for our feet."
"Whom, then, do you propose," continued Lecky to Besant, "to summon to
your consultations?"
"Surely," was the reply, "any respectable authors."
"Outsiders, then," said Mr. Spencer, "a few possible and a multitude of
impossible candidates?"
"Female writers as well as male?" asked Black; "are we to have the
literary Daphne at our conversaziones--
_With legs toss'd high on her sophee she sits,_
_Vouchsafing audience to contending wits?_
How do you like that prospect, Lecky?"
"But poorly, I must confess. We have tiresome institutions enough
in London without adding to them a sort of Ptolemaic Mouseion, for
us to strut about on the steps of, in our palm-costume, attended by
dialectical ladies and troops of intriguing pupils. Though that,
I am sure," he added courteously, "is the last thing our friend
Besant desires, yet I conceive it would tend to be the result of such
consultation."
"What then," said the novelist, "is to be the practical service of the
English Academy to life and literature?"
At this we all put on a grave and yet animated expression, for
certainly, to each of us, this was a very important consideration.
"Putting on one side," began Mr. Spencer, "the social advantage, the
unquestionable dignity and importance given to individual literary
accomplishment at a time when the purer parts of writing--I mean no
disrespect to you novelists--are greatly neglected in the general
hurly-burly; putting on one side this function of the English Academy,
there remains, of course----"
But, at this precise moment, when I was literally hanging on the lips
of our eminent philosopher, the door opened with a considerable noise
of gaiety, and Mr. Arthur Balfour entered, in company with a gentleman,
who was introduced to me presently as Mr. Andrew Lang.
"Two more Academicians, and this time neither novelists nor
philosophers," said Black.
They sat down close to us, so that the conversation was still general.
"We were discussing the Academy," said Lord Lytton. "And we," replied
Mr. Balfour, "were comparing notes about rackets. Lang tells me he has
found a complete description of the game in one of the Icelandic sagas."