THE WRITINGS OF RUDYARD KIPLING BEFORE AND AFTER THE AWARD
The prize of 1907 has been awarded:
Kipling, Rudyard, born 1865: “in consideration of the power of
observation, originality of imagination, and also the manly strength
in the art of perception and delineation that characterize the
writings of this world-renowned author.”[55]
Six years passed after the first prizes were given in literature
from the Nobel fund; the countries honored thus far had been France,
Germany, Norway, Spain, Italy, and Poland. “Where is Great Britain
on the literary map?” asked certain speakers and writers. Names of
British authors had been sent to the Committee of the Nobel Foundation
and the Swedish Academy, with ardent commendation by individuals and
academic circles. Prominent among such names, suggested in the press,
had been Swinburne, George Meredith, John Morley, Thomas Hardy, Barrie,
and Robert Bridges. One journal asked, “Why not Kipling?” The answer
came in the announcement that the award for 1907 was given to Rudyard
Kipling, poet and story-teller. Again the issue, “What is Idealism?”
was raised and challenged by some opponents of this choice yet, on the
whole, it met with wide favor. Kipling’s type of robust idealism was
defended; said W. B. Parker, “His idealism needs no other evidence than
the enthusiastic following he has had from boys.”[56]
Combined with this _robust idealism_ are two other qualities of
Kipling as writer, that have given him “the enthusiastic following of
boys”--his virility and courage. For adolescents and college youths
he has upheld the ideals of vigorous action, of honor and bravery, of
daring in speech and deed. In his dynamic poems and tales of _The Day’s
Work_, _Kim_, _Life’s Handicap_, and the other volumes so familiar,
he reflects his “gospel” of fearlessness, that does not hesitate
to shock some who abide by the conventional standards of speech.
Gilbert K. Chesterton has said forceful truths about this trait of
Kipling in _Heretics_: he affirms that credit is due to Kipling for
his appreciation of _slang_ and _steam_. He expands the thought thus:
“Steam may be, if you like, a dirty by-product of science. Slang may
be, if you like, a dirty by-product of language. But at least he has
been among the few who saw the living parentage of these things and
knew that where there is smoke, there is fire--that is, wherever
there is the foulest of things there, also, is the purest.”[57] Mr.
Chesterton declares that Kipling’s type of courage is not that of
war, nor valor of the battle-field, but “that interdependence and
efficiency which belongs quite as much to engineers, or sailors, or
mules, or railway engineers.” Recurrent in memory are such tales as
“The Bridge-Builders,” “The Ship That Found Herself,” “.007,” “With the
Night Mail” and “Wireless.”
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of Doubleday, Page & Co._
_Photograph by E. O. Hoppe_
RUDYARD KIPLING]
One trait sharply differentiates Kipling from some of his colleagues
among the Nobel prize winners. He is a patriot-poet but with less
ardent tribute than is found in the verse of Mistral and Björnson
and Heidenstam. Perhaps his open criticism of his country in certain
political crises has barred him from the laureateship. His frank,
democratic attitude in later years, somewhat in contrast with earlier
utterances of imperialism, finds expression in every stanza of “A
Pilgrim’s Way.” Few poets, however, have written such magnetic lines in
urgence of “fitness,” honor and service for country as has Kipling, in
the familiar words of “If,” “For All We Have and Are,” “The Children’s
Song,” and the refrain in the poem in _Land and Sea Tales for Scouts
and Scoutmasters_--
Be fit--be fit--for honour’s sake be fit!
He is patriotic with the world knowledge of a traveled man; two
examples in proof are found in “The Return” and “The English Flag,”
with the pertinent query--
And what should they know of England who only England know?
In recent years it has been a “fad” in certain journals to depreciate
Kipling and to charge against him faults of narrowness in outlook and
lack of modernism. Especially during the years of the war and its
immediate aftermath one found tones of sad, somewhat cynical writing.
In large measure this was due to the personal trials of the time and
the loss of his son. That elegiac poem, “My Boy Jack; 1914-1918,” will
live as a heart-gripping memorial. In his speech at the Sorbonne,
November 19, 1921, he gave evidences of spiritual recovery; he said,
“One cannot resume a broken world as easily as one can resume a broken
sentence. But before long our sons who have spent themselves in
suffering and toiling to abolish the menace of barbarism will recover
also from the menace of moral lassitude.” With old-time sprightliness
and vigor he wrote, in the spring of 1924, the stanzas “A Song of the
French Roads,” after a visit to France and the joyful experience of
finding the roads to the border, that had been laid out by Napoleon
and devastated by the war, were now repaired and open to traffic.[58]
It was the Kipling of the earlier years of writing who received the
Nobel prize. He was forty-two years old, one of the youngest winners.
He had already published volumes of prose and verse that would be
creditable to a writer of twice his age. Born at Bombay, December 30,
1865, he inherited intellectual promise from both parents. His father,
John Lockwood Kipling, an artist, was at that time Director of the
Lahore School of Industrial Art. He was a delightful story-teller and
expertly trained in technical and artistic knowledge. He illustrated
some of his son’s earlier tales; a book by him, entitled _Beast and Man
in India_, with unusual drawings, was attributed to Rudyard Kipling
(London, 1891). Alice MacDonald, the mother, gave to her son a keen
zest in life and a rare sense of humor. Her devotion has had many lines
of commemoration, notably in such a poem as “Mother O’ Mine.”
The boy was named Joseph Rudyard but he seldom used the first name.
The second, in memory of a lake in England where his father and mother
had met, is so arresting and unique that it has been called one of the
causes of his first appeal to the curious public. After his early
boyhood in India, leaving with him strong impressions and love for
the land, he was sent to Southsea, Devonshire, to school and later to
the United Services College at Westward Ho. He was homesick for his
mother and found it difficult to mix well with the English-born boys.
_Stalky & Co._ is largely autobiographical of this period. In 1880 he
returned to India, anxious to enter journalism and know the native
people, especially in the army. The story runs that once, when Kipling
was doing journalistic work in Lahore, the Duke of Connaught visited
the place and asked the young man what he would prefer to do in India.
The reply came promptly, “I would like, sir, to live with the army for
a time, and go to the frontier to write up Tommy Atkins.” The request
was granted and the literary results in later years are listed in
_Department Ditties_, _Soldiers Three_, _Under the Deodars_, and many
more stories in volumes, from _Plain Tales from the Hills_ to _Eyes of
Asia_.
Much discussion has been rife about the truth or exaggeration of
Kipling’s pictures of India, especially types of army men and
officers’ wives. Many critics, who have traveled in India, affirm
the photographic quality of the tales and verse but some raise the
issue of the tone--is it sincere or sardonic? Others, who claim to
have talked with certain “natives,” condemn both the spirit and the
characterizations. To the charge of insincerity or disloyalty there
seems to be a firm answer in the friendly Prelude to _Departmental
Ditties_, which has a prominent place in the Inclusive Edition of
_Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_. He lays stress, in the last stanza, upon
“the jesting guise” but he emphasizes, also, his loyalty to these
people, especially in the second stanza:
Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,--
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?[59]
During these years from 1882 to 1889, while he was doing journalistic
work and associating with civil and military representatives in Lahore,
Bombay, and Mandalay, he was writing stories and verses which appeared
in the newspaper columns of India. The first issue in book form was by
A. H. Wheeler & Co. of Allahabad, a little book in gray paper covers
which was sold at railway stations. In his own hand and with striking
illustrations, Kipling edited some of his early tales; one such, “Wee
Willie Winkie,” dedicated to his mother, with others that formed “an
illustrated set,” found a purchaser in J. Pierpont Morgan, in recent
years at a price stated to be $17,000.[60]
When Kipling was twenty-five years old, with his memory packed with
scenes of adventure and characters in India, and his pockets filled
with unpublished tales and verse, he decided to try his literary fate
in England. He traveled by way of the Pacific to California and reached
New York with hopes of editorial encouragement because he had letters
of introduction. He was not received with cordiality; perhaps in later
years some of these editors and publishers regretted their lost chance
to launch a new genius. In London, he attracted attention slowly but,
with influence from family and officials, he won recognition by critics
and reading-public. One of the first to appreciate Kipling’s unique
work was Andrew Lang; later he was severe in criticism of certain
faults. One of his essays upon Kipling of the earlier _Tales_ is
included in _Essays in Little_ (Scribner’s, 1891). It has a prophetic
note, an emphasis of “the brilliance of colour,” the strange, varied
themes, the “perfume of the East.”
The Nobel prize was given to Kipling because of these qualities of
his earlier work, as well as his more mature, potent messages. He
had, from the first, rare ability to revivify, to secure for future
generations of readers the real and the romantic in Anglo-India of the
later nineteenth century. He preserved the landscapes, the customs, the
ideals, the intrigues, the foibles, even the slang of the natives and
the British soldiers. Just as Mistral saved the language and romances
of Provence from oblivion, in his _Mireio_ and other poems; just as
Björnson recorded the almost forgotten sagas of Norway and blended
these with modern, peasant life; so Kipling made literary use of this
unfamiliar material of India. His idealism converted the ordinary,
often petty and rough aspects of life, into stories and verses of
undying flavor, like “The Phantom Rickshaw,” _Soldiers Three_, “Drums
of the Fore and Aft,” “On the City Wall,” “M’Andrew’s Hymn,” “Danny
Deever,” “Mandalay,” and “The Lover’s Litany.” Here are recorded days
of adventure and danger, nights of memory and longing. In 1902, more
than ten years after he left India, he wrote one of his most appealing
poems, “The Broken Men,” the exiles from England with their pluck and
their pathos, which grips the sympathies like those tales of O. Henry
about the American self-imposed “exiles” in Central America.
The later visit that Kipling made to the United States cheered his
heart, in contrast to the earlier reception. He had met Caroline
Balestier, sister of Wolcott Balestier, a young man with whom Kipling
became intimate in London and with whom he collaborated in the novel,
_The Naulahka_. Their home was in Brattleboro, Vermont. In 1892 Miss
Balestier was married to Kipling in All Soul’s Church, Portland Place,
London. They came to Vermont to live for a few years in the unique
house, which Kipling built for his bride overlooking Brattleboro. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle accredits him with “chivalrous devotion” to his
wife, which caused him to come to America lest she might miss her
home and friends.[61] Before coming to America they took a journey
“round the world,” or a segment of it. The death of Wolcott Balestier
was a deep grief to his friend and a loss to American literature. In
dedicatory elegy (_Barrack-Room Ballads_) Kipling wrote the lines of
noble characterization:
E’en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,
In simpleness and gentleness and honour and clean mirth.[62]
For the little daughter, who died at an early age, Kipling wrote his
first _Jungle Book_. In this American home he wrote, also, many of
the poems collected in _The Seven Seas_ and the short stories, _Many
Inventions_. In the latter book were the daring pictures of life like
“The Disturber of Traffic,” the haunting tale of “The Lost Legion,”
and the tragic “Love o’ Women.” The inspiration of Mrs. Kipling, her
perfect appreciation of her husband’s gifts and moods, and her gracious
influence have been attested by him in many tender words, as well as
in the more impersonal tributes to womanhood of brains and heart, which
one finds expressed in _From Sea to Sea_ or “His Chance in Life.” The
world will never forget the persistent story that Mrs. Kipling saved,
from the wastebasket, that grand hymn of all time, “The Recessional.”
In some of his tales he antagonized Americans, notably in _The Light
That Failed_ and “An Habitation Enforced” in _Actions and Reactions_;
as compensation one recalls “An Error of the Fourth Dimension” from
_Plain Tales_, the story of Wilton Sargent, American.
The writing of Kipling showed advance in form during the decade from
1890 to 1900. There was gradual elimination of the jingoism and
cynicism which tainted some of his earlier work. In 1897 he visited
South Africa again. He recounted an actual experience in riding on
a Cape Government Railway in his tale “.007,” among the stories in
_The Day’s Work_, published in 1898. In this same collection is found
“The Brushwood Boy,” a masterpiece of mystic idealism which will
stand beside his more poetic allegory, “They.” The year 1899 has been
regarded sometimes as a crisis in the life of Kipling which affected
his later writing. On his arrival in New York, in the late autumn
of that year, he was attacked by a severe case of pneumonia and was
desperately ill for many weeks. The press of America, England, and
the Continent awaited the bulletins with anxiety. He recovered but
some critics have affirmed that he lost his vigor and literary power.
Looking over the dates of his poems, and recalling the books which have
appeared since this crisis, such a surmise is not warranted. One could
scarcely expect that any author could continue to write, on a level
or ascending scale, many more books about India than he had already
written or many more poems of vital spell like “If,” “When Earth’s Last
Picture is Painted,” and “M’Andrew’s Hymn.”
He had already proved his ability to write for children and
adolescents. Few books among juveniles surpass, in visualization and
imaginative skill, _The Jungle Books_, _Just So Stories_, and that
pioneer sea tale that has gained favor with the years, _Captains
Courageous_. In the years that followed his serious illness, he wrote
tales of clever inventiveness collected in _Puck of Pook’s Hill_,
_Rewards and Fairies_, and _Kim_. To this period belong, also, many
of the poems collected in the volume, _The Five Nations_. Who will
say that there was decadence of literary power, any lapse of dramatic
skill, in that story of _Kim_, or Kimball O’Hara, the orphan boy of
Lahore? The boys of to-day--and normal girls--have wholesome “thrills”
at this lad’s story, his pilgrimages over India with the Tibetan
lama, and his final adoption by the regiment to which his father had
belonged. Humor, adventure, vivid photographs of places and people--all
are mingled in this tale. When it appeared in the London edition
of 1901, the father of Kipling contributed some of the striking
illustrations.
_The Five Nations_ of this later period gave permanence in form to such
vital poems as “White Horses,” “Our Lady of the Snows” (the beautiful
ode to Canada), “The Dykes,” “The Feet of the Young Men,” “Boots,”
“The Explorer,” and “The Recessional.” “Buddha at Kamakura,” which
first appeared in _Kim_, should be listed in this collection. Are there
here traces of lapse in form or spontaneity compared with the earlier,
less restrained verses in _Departmental Ditties_ or _Barrack-Room
Ballads_? In _Traffics and Discoveries_, published in 1904, are found
such literary achievements as “Wireless,” “They,” and “The Army of a
Dream.” Kipling had shown his keen observation, humor, and appreciation
of varied beauties of Nature in his volumes of travel-sketches and
letters, _From Sea to Sea_ and _Letters of Travel_. “In Sight of
Monadnock” contains a brief, fine description of that distant New
Hampshire peak. With his long experience in travel and adjustment to
diverse conditions of life, Kipling has ever been a poet of home,
national and domestic. His poem, “Sussex,” written in 1902, has deep
feeling as well as notable lines of description and a rhythmic swing.
New poets and story-writers came into prominence with the twentieth
century. Although Kipling was in his full maturity and vigor when the
Nobel prize was awarded, with years of promising, creative work before
him, he had been so long before the public that it became the fashion,
in some brilliant, cynical groups, to speak of him as belonging to the
older generation. His volumes attracted less attention in competition
with those of mere “modernism.” The announcement of the Nobel prize,
in 1907, aroused interest anew in every country. In looking over the
Kipling bibliographical cards, in the Widener Library at Harvard
University, it is interesting to find records of translations of his
books into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish,
Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish. The journals took occasion to
review what he had accomplished in literature before 1907, to commend
or reprove the decision of the Swedish Academy in giving him a prize
for “idealistic” literature. Some cited his imperialistic “complex”
and quoted “The Man Who Would Be King.” In _Current Literature_ for
October, 1908, are quotations from diverse opinions: Said the _London
Nation_: “There is hardly any English writer more closely identified
with the doctrine of force or a firmer believer that the Deity is
to be found on the side of the big battalions.” The _New York World_
declared, “He sings of blood-lust, with a schoolboy’s disregard of
consequences.” The _Chicago Post_ believed that his idealism was “the
idealization of might” but it praised his strong, Biblical English.
Comments of this kind fail to recognize the _two_, paradoxical traits
in Kipling’s nature and writings. There is stark realism, sometimes
relentless, as in “The Courtship of Dinah Shadd,” “The Gate of a
Hundred Sorrows,” “My Son’s Wife,” or poems like “The Galley-Slave,”
“Danny Deever,” and “Kitchener’s School.” Close beside this realism,
penetrating and often sordid, sounds a note of idealism, a promise
of “a happy issue out of all troubles,” a vision that comes to an
idealist. Recall that in _The Day’s Work_, there is the tense,
realistic tale of “The Devil and the Deep Sea,” and, within a few
pages, the idyll of “The Brushwood Boy.”
Since the Nobel prize was received, Kipling has written with less
frequency and more unevenness of form. Some of the prose and verse
reflects the war, like “Fringes of the Fleet,” “Sea Warfare,” “France,”
and the “History of the Irish Guards.” Not soon forgotten will be that
tribute to Roosevelt, tender and virile, “Great-Heart” (1919). In the
collected poems, _The Years Between_, there are challenging war poems,
“For All We Have and Are,” an appeal to England, and “The Choice, or
The American Spirit Speaks,” for the United States. The elegy to “Lord
Roberts,” less militant in tone, is true poetry in emotion and measure.
Some stanzas are touched by irony, and have the sermonic quality which
is characteristic--“The Sons of Martha,” “En-Dor” and “Russia to the
Pacifists.” The juvenile of 1923, _Land and Sea Tales for Boys and
Girls_ (or _for Scouts and Scoutmasters_) is uneven in quality but it
has two dramatic sketches. _Eyes of Asia_, portraits of Europeans as
seen by Oriental eyes, is more comparable to mediocre pages in _Actions
and Reactions_ than it is to the more vital stories in _Plain Tales_
and _The Day’s Work_. “Fumes of the Heart” is the best of these later
tales.
Mr. Kipling is reaping honors in educational and civic life. His
reserve, which is sometimes rated as coldness, keeps him far from the
limelight of publicity. He cannot be persuaded to “come to America”
as lecturer or reader, in the train of many of his compatriots of far
less worth or fame. In his Sussex home, with family and a few friends
about him, he is a delightful _raconteur_ or conversationalist upon
topics of world-wide politics. He is more amused than angered at some
of the petty criticisms upon his writing, like the recent attack upon
“Mandalay” for its anachronisms in geography, not unlike the charges
against Shakespeare in _The Tempest_ and _The Winter’s Tale_. Arnold
Bennett, in _Books and Persons_,[63] has some comments upon Kipling’s
flaws in _Actions and Reactions_ and his “prejudices and clayey
ideals,” but he ends with tribute to him as a painstaking artist,
devoted to his craft.
Philip Guedalla, brilliant journalist and ironist, in his essays, _A
Gallery_, under caption of “Mandalay,” says “much in little” about the
“remoteness and antiquity” of Kipling; he finds him so “antiquated”
that the “Dinosaurus” might give him “points in modernity.” Despite
such witty extravagances, however, the critic admits that Kipling “has
sharpened the English language to a knife-edge and with it has cut
brilliant patterns on the surface of our prose literature.”[64] In
both his prose and poetry he has “sharpened the English language to
a knife-edge.” His verses may seem “antiquated” to the reader whose
exclusive tastes welcome only “new poetry” and sneer at “lilting
rhymes” and conventional meters. To broader minds, however, there is
appreciation of the vibrant messages of spiritual courage, the bold and
graphic excerpts from real life, in both the verse and the fiction of
Kipling at his best.
One of the honors that came to this writer recently was an invitation
to give the Rectorial Address at St. Andrews University, in 1923.
This has been published in book form as _Independence_, similar in
format to that of Barrie’s address, on a kindred occasion, entitled
_Courage_. Mr. Kipling urges here the fundamental duty of developing
one’s individuality: “After all,” he says, “yourself is the only person
you can by no possibility get away from in this life, and maybe, in
another. It is worth a little pains and money to do good to him.”[65]
His idealism is not that of mere sentiment, much less of
sentimentality. It is the idealism of work, of action, of
responsibility. It is the idealism even in the midst of misjudgments,
of carrying “The White Man’s Burden,” of training youth towards clean,
productive manhood. One grants that some of his writings, both prose
and verse, might be eliminated from collections and memory, with an
increase in his literary rank. He is uneven and was prone, in his
earlier days, to mistake coarseness for vigor, yet he has been able to
make his readers both _listen_ and _see_. Perhaps he has not maintained
the almost unanimous favoritism among college youths that he had two
decades ago--there have been competitors with “college stories” of
rank realism--but it may be questioned if any author of our day is more
often quoted among both educated and unlettered adults. Mr. Kipling has
never been tempted to lower his standards for commercial ends; with
fearless truth, he has spoken messages of uprightness and service. “A
Song of the English” is national, perhaps imperialistic, but it has,
like scores of his other stanzas, a catholic message to Christian
nations everywhere:
Keep ye the Law--be swift in all obedience--
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap where he hath sown;
By the peace among our peoples let men know we serve the Lord![66]
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Inscription with the Nobel Prize Award in Literature, 1907.
[56] _World’s Work_, February, 1908.
[57] _Heretics_ by Gilbert K. Chesterton, London and New York, 1915,
1919. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co.
[58] _Literary Digest_, July 5, 1924.
[59] _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_: Inclusive Edition, Garden City, N. Y.,
1924, p. 3. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday, Page & Co.
[60] _Bookman_, 25: 561.
[61] _Memories and Adventures_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Boston, 1924.
[62] By permission of Mr. Kipling.
[63] George H. Doran, New York, 1917.
[64] _A Gallery_ by Philip Guedalla, New York, 1924. By permission of
G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
[65] _Independence_: Rectorial Address at St. Andrews by Rudyard
Kipling, New York, 1924. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday,
Page & Co.
[66] _Rudyard Kipling’s Verse_: Inclusive Edition, Garden City, N. Y.,
1924. By permission of Mr. Kipling and Doubleday, Page & Co.