The wind bloweth where it listeth. But the wind of literary inspiration
has rarely shaken the bungalows of India, as, in the tales of the old
Jesuit missionaries, the magical air shook the frail "medicine tents,"
where Huron conjurors practised their mysteries. With a world of romance
and of character at their doors, Englishmen in India have seen as if they
saw it not. They have been busy in governing, in making war, making
peace, building bridges, laying down roads, and writing official reports.
Our literature from that continent of our conquest has been sparse
indeed, except in the way of biographies, of histories, and of rather
local and unintelligible _facetiae_. Except the novels by the author of
"Tara," and Sir Henry Cunningham's brilliant sketches, such as
"Dustypore," and Sir Alfred Lyall's poems, we might almost say that India
has contributed nothing to our finer literature. That old haunt of
history, the wealth of character brought out in that confusion of races,
of religions, and the old and new, has been wealth untouched, a treasure-
house sealed: those pagoda trees have never been shaken. At last there
comes an Englishman with eyes, with a pen extraordinarily deft, an
observation marvellously rapid and keen; and, by good luck, this
Englishman has no official duties: he is neither a soldier, nor a judge;
he is merely a man of letters. He has leisure to look around him, he has
the power of making us see what he sees; and, when we have lost India,
when some new power is ruling where we ruled, when our empire has
followed that of the Moguls, future generations will learn from Mr.
Kipling's works what India was under English sway.
It is one of the surprises of literature that these tiny masterpieces in
prose and verse were poured, "as rich men give that care not for their
gifts," into the columns of Anglo-Indian journals. There they were
thought clever and ephemeral--part of the chatter of the week. The
subjects, no doubt, seemed so familiar, that the strength of the
handling, the brilliance of the colour, were scarcely recognised. But
Mr. Kipling's volumes no sooner reached England than the people into
whose hands they fell were certain that here were the beginnings of a new
literary force. The books had the strangeness, the colour, the variety,
the perfume of the East. Thus it is no wonder that Mr. Kipling's repute
grew up as rapidly as the mysterious mango tree of the conjurors. There
were critics, of course, ready to say that the thing was merely a trick,
and had nothing of the supernatural. That opinion is not likely to hold
its ground. Perhaps the most severe of the critics has been a young
Scotch gentleman, writing French, and writing it wonderfully well, in a
Parisian review. He chose to regard Mr. Kipling as little but an
imitator of Bret Harte, deriving his popularity mainly from the novel and
exotic character of his subjects. No doubt, if Mr. Kipling has a
literary progenitor, it is Mr. Bret Harte. Among his earlier verses a
few are what an imitator of the American might have written in India. But
it is a wild judgment which traces Mr. Kipling's success to his use, for
example, of Anglo-Indian phrases and scraps of native dialects. The
presence of these elements is among the causes which have made Englishmen
think Anglo-Indian literature tediously provincial, and India a bore. Mr.
Kipling, on the other hand, makes us regard the continent which was a
bore an enchanted land, full of marvels and magic which are real. There
has, indeed, arisen a taste for exotic literature: people have become
alive to the strangeness and fascination of the world beyond the bounds
of Europe and the United States. But that is only because men of
imagination and literary skill have been the new conquerors--the Corteses
and Balboas of India, Africa, Australia, Japan, and the isles of the
southern seas. All such conquerors, whether they write with the polish
of M. Pierre Loti, or with the carelessness of Mr. Boldrewood, have, at
least, seen new worlds for themselves; have gone out of the streets of
the over-populated lands into the open air; have sailed and ridden,
walked and hunted; have escaped from the fog and smoke of towns. New
strength has come from fresher air into their brains and blood; hence the
novelty and buoyancy of the stories which they tell. Hence, too, they
are rather to be counted among romanticists than realists, however real
is the essential truth of their books. They have found so much to see
and to record, that they are not tempted to use the microscope, and pore
for ever on the minute in character. A great deal of realism, especially
in France, attracts because it is novel, because M. Zola and others have
also found new worlds to conquer. But certain provinces in those worlds
were not unknown to, but were voluntarily neglected by, earlier
explorers. They were the "Bad Lands" of life and character: surely it is
wiser to seek quite new realms than to build mud huts and dunghills on
the "Bad Lands."
Mr. Kipling's work, like all good work, is both real and romantic. It is
real because he sees and feels very swiftly and keenly; it is romantic,
again, because he has a sharp eye for the reality of romance, for the
attraction and possibility of adventure, and because he is young. If a
reader wants to see petty characters displayed in all their meannesses,
if this be realism, surely certain of Mr. Kipling's painted and frisky
matrons are realistic enough. The seamy side of Anglo-Indian life: the
intrigues, amorous or semi-political--the slang of people who describe
dining as "mangling garbage" the "games of tennis with the seventh
commandment"--he has not neglected any of these. Probably the sketches
are true enough, and pity 'tis true: for example, the sketches in "Under
the Deodars" and in "The Gadsbys." That worthy pair, with their friends,
are to myself as unsympathetic, almost, as the characters in "La Conquete
de Plassans." But Mr. Kipling is too much a true realist to make their
selfishness and pettiness unbroken, unceasing. We know that "Gaddy" is a
brave, modest, and hard-working soldier; and, when his little silly bride
(who prefers being kissed by a man with waxed moustaches) lies near to
death, certainly I am nearer to tears than when I am obliged to attend
the bed of Little Dombey or of Little Nell. Probably there is a great
deal of slangy and unrefined Anglo-Indian society; and, no doubt, to
sketch it in its true colours is not beyond the province of art. At
worst it is redeemed, in part, by its constancy in the presence of
various perils--from disease, and from "the bullet flying down the pass."
Mr. Kipling may not be, and very probably is not, a reader of "Gyp"; but
"The Gadsbys," especially, reads like the work of an Anglo-Indian
disciple, trammelled by certain English conventions. The more Pharisaic
realists--those of the strictest sect--would probably welcome Mr. Kipling
as a younger brother, so far as "Under the Deodars" and "The Gadsbys" are
concerned, if he were not occasionally witty and even flippant, as well
as realistic. But, very fortunately, he has not confined his observation
to the leisures and pleasures of Simla; he has looked out also on war and
on sport, on the life of all native tribes and castes; and has even
glanced across the borders of "The Undiscovered Country."
Among Mr. Kipling's discoveries of new kinds of characters, probably the
most popular is his invention of the British soldier in India. He avers
that he "loves that very strong man, Thomas Atkins"; but his affection
has not blinded him to the faults of the beloved. Mr. Atkins drinks too
much, is too careless a gallant in love, has been educated either too
much or too little, and has other faults, partly due, apparently, to
recent military organisation, partly to the feverish and unsettled state
of the civilised world. But he is still brave, when he is well led;
still loyal, above all, to his "trusty chum." Every Englishman must hope
that, if Terence Mulvaney did not take the city of Lungtung Pen as
described, yet he is ready, and willing so to take it. Mr. Mulvaney is
as humorous as Micky Free, but more melancholy and more truculent. He
has, perhaps, "won his way to the mythical" already, and is not so much a
soldier, as an incarnation, not of Krishna, but of many soldierly
qualities. On the other hand, Private Ortheris, especially in his
frenzy, seems to shew all the truth, and much more than the life of, a
photograph. Such, we presume, is the soldier, and such are his
experiences and temptations and repentance. But nobody ever dreamed of
telling us all this, till Mr. Kipling came. As for the soldier in
action, the "Taking of Lungtung Pen," and the "Drums of the Fore and
Aft," and that other tale of the battle with the Pathans in the gorge,
are among the good fights of fiction. They stir the spirit, and they
should be distributed (in addition, of course, to the "Soldier's Pocket
Book") in the ranks of the British army. Mr. Kipling is as well informed
about the soldier's women-kind as about the soldier: about Dinah Shadd as
about Terence Mulvaney. Lever never instructed us on these matters:
Micky Free, if he loves, rides away; but Terence Mulvaney is true to his
old woman. Gallant, loyal, reckless, vain, swaggering, and
tender-hearted, Terence Mulvaney, if there were enough of him, "would
take St. Petersburg in his drawers." Can we be too grateful to an author
who has extended, as Mr. Kipling in his military sketches has extended,
the frontiers of our knowledge and sympathy?
It is a mere question of individual taste; but, for my own part, had I to
make a small selection from Mr. Kipling's tales, I would include more of
his studies in Black than in White, and many of his excursions beyond the
probable and natural. It is difficult to have one special favourite in
this kind; but perhaps the story of the two English adventurers among the
freemasons of unknown Kafiristan (in the "Phantom Rickshaw") would take a
very high place. The gas-heated air of the Indian newspaper office is so
real, and into it comes a wanderer who has seen new faces of death, and
who carries with him a head that has worn a royal crown. The contrasts
are of brutal force; the legend is among the best of such strange
fancies. Then there is, in the same volume, "The Strange Ride of
Morrowbie Jukes," the most dreadful nightmare of the most awful Bunker in
the realms of fancy. This is a very early work; if nothing else of Mr.
Kipling's existed, his memory might live by it, as does the memory of the
American Irishman by the "Diamond Lens." The sham magic of "In the House
of Suddhu" is as terrible as true necromancy could be, and I have a
_faiblesse_ for the "Bisara of Pooree." "The Gate of the Hundred
Sorrows" is a realistic version of "The English Opium Eater," and more
powerful by dint of less rhetoric. As for the sketches of native
life--for example, "On the City Wall"--to English readers they are no
less than revelations. They testify, more even than the military
stories, to the author's swift and certain vision, his certainty in his
effects. In brief, Mr. Kipling has conquered worlds, of which, as it
were, we knew not the existence.
His faults are so conspicuous, so much on the surface, that they hardly
need to be named. They are curiously visible to some readers who are
blind to his merits. There is a false air of hardness (quite in
contradiction to the sentiment in his tales of childish life); there is a
knowing air; there are mannerisms, such as "But that is another story";
there is a display of slang; there is the too obtrusive knocking of the
nail on the head. Everybody can mark these errors; a few cannot overcome
their antipathy, and so lose a great deal of pleasure.
It is impossible to guess how Mr. Kipling will fare if he ventures on one
of the usual novels, of the orthodox length. Few men have succeeded both
in the _conte_ and the novel. Mr. Bret Harte is limited to the _conte_;
M. Guy de Maupassant is probably at his best in it. Scott wrote but
three or four short tales, and only one of these is a masterpiece. Poe
never attempted a novel. Hawthorne is almost alone in his command of
both kinds. We can live only in the hope that Mr. Kipling, so skilled in
so many species of the _conte_, so vigorous in so many kinds of verse,
will also be triumphant in the novel: though it seems unlikely that its
scene can be in England, and though it is certain that a writer who so
cuts to the quick will not be happy with the novel's almost inevitable
"padding." Mr. Kipling's longest effort, "The Light which Failed," can,
perhaps, hardly be considered a test or touchstone of his powers as a
novelist. The central interest is not powerful enough; the characters
are not so sympathetic, as are the interest and the characters of his
short pieces. Many of these persons we have met so often that they are
not mere passing acquaintances, but already find in us the loyalty due to
old friends.