[_4 Nov. '09_]
After a long period of abstention from Rudyard Kipling, I have just read
"Actions and Reactions." It has induced gloom in me; yet a modified gloom.
Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since "Plain Tales from the
Hills" delighted first Anglo-Indian, and then English society. There was
nothing of permanent value in that book, and in my extremest youth I never
imagined otherwise. But "The Story of the Gadsbys" impressed me. So did
"Barrack-room Ballads." So did pieces of "Soldiers Three." So did "Life's
Handicap" and "Many Inventions." So did "The Jungle Book," despite its
wild natural history. And I remember my eagerness for the publication of
"The Seven Seas." I remember going early in the morning to Denny's
bookshop to buy it. I remember the crimson piles of it in every bookshop
in London. And I remember that I perused it, gulped it down, with deep
joy. And I remember the personal anxiety which I felt when Kipling lay
very dangerously ill in New York. For a fortnight, then, Kipling's
temperature was the most important news of the day. I remember giving a
party with a programme of music, in that fortnight, and I began the
proceedings by reading aloud the programme, and at the end of the
programme instead of "God Save the Queen," I read, "God Save Kipling," and
everybody cheered. "Stalky and Co." cooled me, and "Kim" chilled me. At
intervals, since, Kipling's astounding political manifestations, chiefly
in verse, have shocked and angered me. As time has elapsed it has become
more and more clear that his output was sharply divided into two parts by
his visit to New York, and that the second half is inferior in quantity,
in quality, in everything, to the first. It has been too plain now for
years that he is against progress, that he is the shrill champion of
things that are rightly doomed, that his vogue among the hordes of the
respectable was due to political reasons, and that he retains his
authority over the said hordes because he is the bard of their prejudices
and of their clayey ideals. A democrat of ten times Kipling's gift and
power could never have charmed and held the governing classes as Kipling
has done. Nevertheless, I for one cannot, except in anger, go back on a
genuine admiration. I cannot forget a benefit. If in quick resentment I
have ever written of Kipling with less than the respect which is
eternally due to an artist who has once excited in the heart a generous
and beautiful emotion, and has remained honest, I regret it. And this is
to be said: at his worst Kipling is an honest and painstaking artist. No
work of his but has obviously been lingered over with a craftsman's
devotion! He has never spoken when he had nothing to say--though probably
no artist was ever more seductively tempted by publishers and editors to
do so. And he has done more than shun notoriety--Miss Marie Corelli does
that--he has succeeded in avoiding it.
* * * * *
The first story, and the best, in "Actions and Reactions" is entitled "An
Habitation Enforced," and it displays the amused but genuine awe of a
couple of decent rich Americans confronted by the sæcular wonders of the
English land system. It depends for its sharp point on a terrific
coincidence, as do many of Kipling's tales, for instance, "The Man Who
Was"--the mere chance that these Americans should tumble upon the very
ground and estate that had belonged to the English ancestors of one of
them. It is written in a curiously tortured idiom, largely borrowed from
the Bible, and all the characters are continually given to verbal
smartness or peculiarity of one kind or another. The characters are not
individualized. Each is a type, smoothed out by sentimental handling into
something meant to be sympathetic. Moreover, the real difficulties of the
narrative are consistently, though I believe unconsciously, shirked. The
result, if speciously pretty, is not a bit convincing. But the gravest,
and the entirely fatal fault, is the painting of the English land system.
To read this story one could never guess that the English land system is
not absolutely ideal, that tenants and hereditary owners do not live
always in a delightful patriarchal relation, content. There are no shadows
whatever. The English land system is perfect, and no accusation could
possibly be breathed against it. And the worst is that for Kipling the
English land system probably _is_ perfect. He is incapable of perceiving
that it can be otherwise. He would not desire it to be otherwise. His
sentimentalization of it is gross--there is no other word--and at bottom
the story is as wildly untrue to life as the most arrant Sunday-school
prize ever published by the Religious Tract Society. Let it be admitted
that the romantic, fine side of the English land system is rendered with
distinction and effectiveness; and that the puzzled, unwilling admiration
of the Americans is well done, though less well than in a somewhat similar
earlier story, "An Error in the Fourth Dimension."
* * * * *
An example of another familiar aspect of Kipling is "With the Night Mail."
This is a story of 2000 A.D., and describes the crossing of the Atlantic
by the aerial mail. It is a glittering essay in the sham-technical; and
real imagination, together with a tremendous play of fancy, is shown in
the invention of illustrative detail. But the whole effort is centred on
the mechanics of the affair. Human evolution has stood stock-still save in
the department of engineering. The men are exactly the same semi-divine
civil service men that sit equal with British military and naval officers
on the highest throne in the kingdom of Kipling's esteem. Nothing
interests him but the mechanics and the bureaucratic organization and the
_esprit de corps_. Nor does he conceive that the current psychology of
ruling and managing the earth will ever be modified. His simplicity, his
naïveté, his enthusiasms, his prejudices, his blindness, and his vanities
are those of Stalky. And, after all, even the effect he aims at is not
got. It is nearly got, but never quite. There is a tireless effort, but
the effort is too plain and fatigues the reader, forcing him to share it.
A thin powder of dullness lies everywhere.
* * * * *
When I had read these stories, I took out "Life's Handicap," and tasted
again the flavour of "On Greenhow Hill," which I have always considered to
be among the very best of Kipling's stories. It would be too much to say
that I liked it as well as ever. I did not. Time has staled it. The
author's constitutional sentimentality has corroded it in parts. But it is
still a very impressive and a fundamentally true thing. It was done in the
rich flush of power, long before its creator had even suspected his hidden
weaknesses, long before his implacable limitations had begun to compel him
to imitate himself. It was done in the days when he could throw off
exquisite jewels like this, to deck the tale:
_To Love's low voice she lent a careless ear;_
_Her band within his rosy fingers lay,_
_A chilling weight. She would, not turn or hear;_
_But with averted, face went on her way._
_But when pale Death, all featureless and grim,_
_Lifted his bony hand, and beckoning_
_Held out his cypress-wreath, she followed him,_
_And Love was left forlorn and wondering,_
_That she who for his bidding would not stay,_
_At Death's first whisper rose and went away_.