Mr Kipling's Indian stories fall into three groups. There are (1) the
tales of Simla, (2) the Anglo-Indian tales, and (3) the tales of native
India. There is also _Kim_, which is more--much more--than a tale of
India.
Mr Kipling's Indian stories necessarily tend to fill a disproportionate
amount of space. They are of less account than their number or the
attention they have received would seem to imply. Their discussion in
this and the two following chapters will be more of a political than a
literary discussion. Mr Kipling as journalist and very efficient
colourman in words has made much of India in his time. He has
perceived in India a subject susceptible of being profitably worked
upon. Here was a vast continent, the particular concern of the
English, where all kinds of interesting work was being done, where
stories grew too thickly for counting, and where there was, ready to
the teller's eye, a richness and diversity of setting which beggared
the most eager penmanship. Moreover, this continent was virtually
untouched in the popular literature of the day. Naturally Mr Kipling
made full use of his opportunity. He did not write of India because
India was essential to his genius, but because he was shrewd enough to
realise that nothing could better serve the purpose of a young author
than to exploit his first-hand acquisition of an inexhaustible store of
fresh and excellent material. India was annexed by Mr Kipling at
twenty-two for his own literary purposes. He was not born to interpret
India, nor does he throw his literary heart and soul into the business.
When, in the Indian stories, we meet with pages sincerely inspired we
discover that their inspiration has very little to do with India and a
great deal to do with Mr Kipling's impulse to celebrate the work of the
world, and even more to do with his impulse to escape the intellectual
casuistry of his generation in a region where life is simple and
intense. These aspects of his work will be more clearly revealed at a
later stage. For the moment we are considering the Indian tales simply
as tales of India; and from this point of view they obviously belong to
the journalist rather than to the author who has helped to make the
English short story respectable. Mr Kipling simply gets out of India
the maximum of literary effect as a teller of tales. India, for
example, is mysterious. Mr Kipling exploits her mystery competently
and coolly, making his points with the precision, clarity and force of
one to whom the enterprise begins and ends as an affair of technical
adequacy. The point is made with equal ability that India is not
without peril and difficulty ruled and administered by the sahibs; or
that India has a complicated history; or that India is thickly peopled.
Mr Kipling in his Indian tales makes the most of his talent for
observing things, always with a keen eye for their effective literary
employment. His Indian tales are descriptive journalism of a high
quality; and, being journalism, their matter and their doctrine have
hit hard the attention of their particular day.
This reduces us to the necessity of considering not so much their form
and quality as the ideas and doctrines they contain--a barren task but
necessary in order to clear away many misconceptions with regard to Mr
Kipling's work. Regarded as literature, Mr Kipling's Indian tales are
mainly of note as preparing in him that enthusiasm for the work of the
world which, later, was to inspire his greatest pages; as finally
leading him in _Kim_ to a door whereby he was able to pass into the
region of pure fancy where alone he is supremely happy, and as
prompting in him the instinct to simplify which urged him into the
jungle and into the minds of children. But all this has very little to
do with India. So long as we are dealing with Mr Kipling's Indian
stories as in themselves finished and intrinsic studies of India, we
remain only in the suburbs of Mr Kipling's merit as an author. The
Simla tales are not more than a skilful employment of a literary
convention which Mr Kipling did not inherit. The Anglo-Indian and
native tales are the not less skilful work of a young newspaper man
breaking into a storehouse of new material. We are interested firstly
in Mr Kipling's craft as a technician, as one who makes the most of his
theme deliberately and self-consciously; and secondly in Mr Kipling's
point of view, in the impressions and ideas he has collected concerning
the country of which he writes. Until we arrive at _The Day's Work_ we
shall be mainly occupied in clearing the ground of impertinent
prejudices concerning Mr Kipling's temperament and politics. For
though the Indian and soldier tales are as literature not impregnable
to criticism, they can at any rate be rescued from those who have
annexed or repudiated them from motives which have little to do with
their literary value.
We will begin with the Simla tales.
Characteristically the author who began virtually at the end of his
career--proclaiming himself a finished virtuoso at the start--entered
into prose with a volume of tales, radiating from Simla, which betray
qualities that are usually associated with the later rather than with
the early work of an author. _Plain Tales from the Hills_ number more
Simla stories to the square page than any other volume of Mr Kipling.
Now Mr Kipling's Simla stories are the least important, but in some
ways the most significant of all the stories he wrote. They begin and
they end in sheer literary virtuosity. We feel in reading Mr Kipling's
studies of the social world at Simla that he had no intuitive call to
write them; that they are exercises in craft rather than genuine
inspirations. Mrs Hawksbee stands for nothing in Mr Kipling's
achievement save only for his power to create an illusion of reality
and enthusiasm by sheer finish of style. She is not a creation. She
is only the best possible example of the clever sleight-of-hand of an
accomplished artificer. She is in literary fiction cousin to the
witty, flirtatious ladies of the modern English theatre. Her
conversation is delightful, but it belongs to nobody. It does not even
belong to her author. Mrs Hawksbee talks as all well-dressed women
talk in the best books. She does it with a volubility and
resourcefulness which almost disguises the fact that she lives only by
hanging desperately to the end of her author's pen; but she cannot
deceive us always. Mr Kipling does not really believe in Mrs Hawksbee.
He has no real sympathy or knowledge of the social undercrust where the
tangle of three is a constant theme. The talk of Mrs Hawksbee and her
circle is derived. Its conduct is fashionable light comedy in an
Indian setting.
Simla really does not deserve to be known outside the Indian Empire.
It is a comparatively cool place whither Indian soldier and civilians
send their wives in the hot weather and whither they retire themselves
under medical advice. It is not unlike any other warm and idle city of
rest where there is every kind of expensive amusement provided for a
migratory population. Mr Kipling has failed to make Simla interesting,
because Simla is Biarritz and Monte Carlo or any place which in fiction
is frequented by people who behave naughtily and enjoy themselves, and
in real life is frequented by the upper middle classes mechanically
passing the time. Mr Kipling's ingenious pretences regarding Simla are
amusing, but they cannot long conceal from his readers that these
tales, apart from literary exhibition, were really not worth the
telling. Mr Kipling pretends, of course, even at twenty-four, to know
of all that passes between women unlacing after a ball; but Mr
Kipling's pretended omniscience is part of his literary method, and he
does not quite carry it off in the Simla tales. He gives us not Simla
or any place under the sun, but a sparkling stage version of Simla--all
dancing and delight, a little intrigue, a touch of sentiment, patches
of excellent fun, and now and then a streak of Indian mystery. But Mr
Kipling's heart is not really in this business. His Simla tales will
not endure, and they have been given too much prominence in the popular
idea of his work. They are not plain tales, but tales very artfully
coloured. They fall far short of the standard to which Mr Kipling has
raised the English short story. Yet even here we may note the skill
with which the author has concealed his failure. Mrs Hawksbee may be
taken as a symbol of the distinction between the work of an inspired
author and the work of an author playing with his tools. Mr Kipling of
_The Jungle Books_ and _The Day's Work_ is an inspired author. Mr
Kipling of the Simla tales, on the other hand, is simply concerned to
show that he can work a conventional formula of the day as well as any
man; that he can redeem the formula with individual touches beyond the
reach of most; and can enliven it with impudent pretences which please
by virtue of their being utterly preposterous. Take, for example, the
pretence that Mrs Hawksbee is a charming woman. Mrs Hawksbee is really
nothing of the kind. She is an anthology of witty phrases. She is the
abstract perfection of what a clever head and a good heart is expected
to be in a fashionable comedy. But Mr Kipling desires her to be
accepted as a charming woman. His procedure, on a high and delicate
plane, is precisely the procedure to which we are accustomed on a low
and obvious plane in the majority of popular novels where the hero has
to be accepted for a man of brilliant genius. We have to take the
author's word for it. The author who tells us that his hero is a
genius usually requires us to believe it without further proof. He
does not show us a page of the hero's music or the hero's poetry, but
we must believe that it is very fine, even though the hero loves Pietro
Mascagni and worships Martin Tupper. Similarly Mr Kipling, presenting
us with Mrs Hawksbee, nowhere affords us direct evidence that she is a
charming woman. He assumes it, gets everyone else in the story to
assume it, and expects his readers to assume it--his cunning as a
writer being of so remarkable a quality that there are very few of the
Simla tales in which the reader is not prepared to assume it for the
sake of the story.
Mrs Hawksbee is typical of the majority of Mr Kipling's studies in
social comedy. His success in this kind is remarkable, but it is
barren. Mr Kipling realised this himself quite early, for he quite
soon abandoned Simla. There are some sixteen stories in _Plain Tales
from the Hills_ into which the Simla motive is threaded. In the books
immediately following, published in 1888 and 1889, Simla is not wholly
abandoned, but the proportion of Simla stories is less. _The Phantom
Rickshaw_ (1889) is the last story which can fairly be brought within
the list, and this story can only be included by straining its point to
vanishing. Of all the groups of stories in _Plain Tales from the
Hills_ the Simla group, though it was largest, promised least for the
future.