amazingly sheltered condition has made him inconsequent. I don't like
inconsequent lawlessness. I've seen it down at Bow Street, at the
docks, by the G.P.O., and elsewhere. Its chief home, of course, is in
that queer place called the House of Commons, but no one goes there who
isn't forced by business. It's shut up at present, and the persons
who belong to it are loose all over the face of the country. I don't
think--but I won't swear--that any of them are spitting at policemen.
One man appears to have been poaching, others are advocating various
forms of murder and outrage--and nobody seems to care. The residue
talk--just heavens, how they talk, and what wonderful fictions they
tell! And they firmly believe, being ignorant of the mechanism of
Government, that they administer the country. In addition, certain of
their newspapers have elaborately worked up a famine in Ireland that
could be engineered by two Deputy Commissioners and four average Stunts
into a "woe" and a "calamity" that is going to overshadow the peace of
the nation--even the Empire. I suppose they have their own sense of
proportion, but they manage to keep it to themselves very successfully.
What do you, who have seen half a countryside in deadly fear of its
life, suppose that this people would do if they were _chukkered_ and
_gabraowed_? If they really knew what the fear of death and the dread
of injury implied? If they died very swiftly, indeed, and could not
count their futile lives enduring beyond next sundown? Some of the men
from your--I mean our--part of the world say that they would be afraid
and break and scatter and run. But there is no room in the island to
run. The sea catches you, midwaist, at the third step. I am curious to
see if the cholera, of which these people stand in most lively dread,
gets a firm foothold in London. In that case I have a notion that
there will be scenes and panics. They live too well here, and have too
much to make life worth clinging to--clubs, and shop fronts, and gas,
and theatres, and so forth--things that they affect to despise, and
whereon and whereby they live like leeches. But I have written enough.
It doesn't exhaust the subject; but you won't be grateful for other
epistles. De Vitre of the Poona Irregular Moguls will have it that
they are a tiddy-iddy people. He says that all their visible use is
to produce loans for the colonies and men to be used up in developing
India. I honestly believe that the average Englishman would faint
if you told him it was lawful to use up human life for any purpose
whatever. He believes that it has to be developed and made beautiful
for the possessor, and in that belief talkatively perpetrates cruelties
that would make Torquemada jump in his grave. Go to Alipur if you want
to see. I am off to foreign parts--forty miles away--to catch fish for
my friend the char-cat; also to shoot a little bird if I have luck.
Yours,
Rudyard Kipling.
II
To Captain J. McHail,
151st (Kumharsen) N.I.,
_Hakaiti via Tharanda_.
Captain Sahib Bahadur! The last _Pi_ gives me news of your step, and
I'm more pleased about it than many. You've been "cavalry quick" in
your promotion. Eight years and your company! Allahu! But it must have
been that long, lean horse-head of yours that looks so wise and says so
little that has imposed upon the authorities. My best congratulations.
Let out your belt two holes, and be happy, as I am not.
Did I tell you in my last about going to Woking in search of a grave?
The dust and the grime and the grey and the sausage-shop told on
my spirits to such an extent that I solemnly took a train and went
grave-hunting through the Necropolis--locally called the Necrapolis.
I wanted an eligible, entirely detached site in a commanding
position--six by three and bricked throughout. I found it, but the only
drawback was that I must go back to town to the head office to buy it.
One doesn't go to town to haggle for tomb-space, so I deferred the
matter and went fishing. All the same, there are very nice graves at
Woking, and I shall keep my eye on one of 'em.
Since that date I seem to have been in four or five places, because
there are labels on the bag. One of the places was Plymouth, where
I found half a regiment at field exercises on the Hoe. They were
practising the attack in three lines with the mixed rush at the end,
even as it is laid down in the drill-book, and they charged subduedly
across the Hoe. The people laughed. I was much more inclined to cry.
Except the Major, there didn't seem to be anything more than twenty
years old in the regiment; and oh! but it was pink and white and chubby
and undersized--just made to die succulently of disease. I fancied
that some of our battalions out with you were more or less young and
exposed, but a home battalion is a _crêche_, and it scares one to
watch it. Eminent and distinguished Generals get up after dinner--I've
listened to two of 'em--and explain that though the home battalion can
only be regarded as a feeder to the foreign, yet all our battalions can
be regarded as efficient; and if they aren't efficient we shall find
in our military reserve the nucleus--how I loath that lying word!--of
the Lord knows what, but the speeches always end with allusions to the
spirit of the English, their glorious past, and the certainty that when
the hour of need comes the nation will "emerge victorious." If (_sic_)
the Engineer of the Hungerford Bridge told the Southeastern Railway
that because a main girder had stood for thirty years without need of
renewal it was therefore sure to stand for another fifty, he would
probably get the sack. Our military authorities don't get the sack.
They are allowed to make speeches in public. Some day, if we live long
enough, we shall see the glories of the past and the "sublime instinct
of an ancient people" without one complete army corps, pitted against
a few unsentimental long-range guns and some efficiently organised
troops. Then the band will begin to play, and it will not play _Rule
Britannia_ until it has played some funny tunes first.
Do you remember Tighe? He was in the Deccan Lancers and retired because
he got married. He is in Ireland now, and I met him the other day,
idle, unhappy and dying for some work to do. Mrs. Tighe is equally
miserable. She wants to go back to Poona instead of administering a
big barrack of a house somewhere at the back of a bog. I quote Tighe
here. He has, you may remember, a pretty tongue about him, and he was
describing to me at length how a home regiment behaves when it is
solemnly turned out for a week or a month training under canvas:
"About four in the mornin', me dear boy, they begin pitchin' their
tents for the next day--four hours to pitch it, and the tent ropes a
howlin' tangle when all's said and sworn. Then they tie their horses
with strings to their big toes and go to bed in hollows and caves in
the earth till the rain falls and the tents are flooded, and then, me
dear boy, the men and the horses and the ropes and the vegetation of
the country cuddle each other till the morning for the company's sake.
And next day it all begins again. Just when they are beginning to
understand how to camp they are all put back into their boxes, and half
of 'em have lung disease."
But what is the use of snarling and grumbling? The matter will adjust
itself later on, and the one nation on earth that talks and thinks most
of the sanctity of human life will be a little astonished at the waste
of life for which it will be responsible. In those days, my captain,
the man who can command seasoned troops and have made the best use of
those troops will be sought after and petted and will rise to honour.
Remember the Hakaiti when next you measure the naked recruit.
Let us revisit calmer scenes. I've been down for three perfect days
to the seaside. Don't you remember what a really fine day means? A
milk-white sea, as smooth as glass, with blue-white heat haze hanging
over it, one little wave talking to itself on the sand, warm shingle,
four bathing machines, cliff in the background, and half the babies
in Christendom paddling and yelling. It was a queer little place,
just near enough to the main line of traffic to be overlooked from
morning till night. There was a baby--an Ollendorfian baby--with whom
I fell madly in love. She lived down at the bottom of a great white
sun-bonnet; talked French and English in a clear, bell-like voice, and
of such I fervently hope will the Kingdom of Heaven be. When she found
that my French wasn't equal to hers she condescendingly talked English
and bade me build her houses of stones and draw cats for her through
half the day. After I had done everything that she ordered she went
off to talk to some one else. The beach belonged to that baby, and
every soul on it was her servant, for I know that we rose with shouts
when she paddled into three inches of water and sat down, gasping:
"_Mon Dieu! Je suis mort!_" I know you like the little ones, so I
don't apologise for yarning about them. She had a sister aged seven
and one-half--a lovely child, without a scrap of self-consciousness,
and enormous eyes. Here comes a real tragedy. The girl--and her name
was Violet--had fallen wildly in love with a little fellow of nine.
They used to walk up the single street of the village with their arms
round each other's necks. Naturally, she did all the little wooings,
and Hugh submitted quietly. Then devotion began to pall, and he didn't
care to paddle with Violet. Hereupon, as far as I can gather, she
smote him on the head and threw him against a wall. Anyhow, it was
very sweet and natural, and Hugh told me about it when I came down.
"She's so unrulable," he said. "I didn't hit her back, but I was very
angry." Of course, Violet repented, but Hugh grew suspicious, and at
the psychological moment there came down from town a destroyer of
delights and a separator of companions in the shape of a tricycle.
Also there were many little boys on the beach--rude, shouting, romping
little chaps--who said: "Come along!" "Hullo!" and used the wicked word
"beastly!" Among these Hugh became a person of importance and began to
realise that he was a man who could say "beastly," and "Come on!" with
the best of 'em. He preferred to run about with the little boys on wars
and expeditions, and he wriggled away when Violet put her arm round
his waist. Violet was hurt and angry, and I think she slapped Hugh.
Relations were strained when I arrived because one morning Violet,
after asking permission, invited Hugh to come to lunch. And that bad,
Spanish-eyed boy deliberately filled his bucket with the cold sea-water
and dashed it over Violet's pink ankles. (Joking apart, this seems to
be about the best way of refusing an invitation that civilisation can
invent. Try it on your Colonel.) She was madly angry for a moment, and
then she said: "Let me carry you up the beach, 'cause of the shingles
in your toes." This was divine, but it didn't move Hugh, and Violet
went off to her mother. She sat down with her chin in her hand, looking
out at the sea for a long time very sorrowfully. Then she said, and
it was her first experience: "I know that Hugh cares more for his
horrid bicycle than he does for me, and if he said he didn't I wouldn't
believe him."
Up to date Hugh has said nothing. He is running about playing with the
bold, bad little boys, and Violet is sitting on a breakwater, trying
to find out why things are as they are. It's a nice tale, and tales
are scarce these days. Have you noticed how small and elemental is the
stock of them at the world's disposal? Men foregathered at that little
seaside place, and, manlike, exchanged stories. They were all the same
stories. One had heard 'em in the East with Eastern variations, and in
the West with Western extravagances tacked on. Only one thing seemed
new, and it was merely a phrase used by a groom in speaking of an
ill-conditioned horse: "No, sir; he's not ill in a manner o' speaking,
but he's so to speak generally unfriendly with his innards as a usual
thing."
I entrust this to you as a sacred gift. See that it takes root in the
land. "Unfriendly with his innards as a usual thing." Remember. It's
better than laboured explanations in the rains. And I fancy it's raw.
And now. But I had nearly forgotten. We're a nation of grumblers, and
that's why other people call Anglo-Indians bores. I write feelingly
because M----, just home on long leave, has for the second time sat on
my devoted head for two hours simply and solely for the purpose of
swearing at the Accountant-General. He has given me the whole history
of his pay, prospects and promotion twice over, and in case I should
misunderstand wants me to dine with him and hear it all for the third
time. If M---- would leave the A.-G. alone he is a delightful man,
as we all know; but he's loose in London now, button-holing English
friends and quoting leave and pay-codes to them. He wants to see
a Member of Parliament about something or other, and I believe he
spends his nights rolled up in a _rezai_ on the stairs of the India
Office waiting to catch a secretary. I like the India Office. They
are so beautifully casual and lazy, and their rooms look out over the
Green Park, and they are never tired of admiring the view. Now and
then a man comes in to report himself, and the secretaries and the
under-secretaries and the _chaprassies_ play battledore and shuttlecock
with him until they are tired.
Some time since, when I was better, more serious and earnest than I
am now, I preached a _jehad_ up and down those echoing corridors,
and suggested the abolition of the India Office and the purchase of a
four-pound-ten American revolving bookcase to hold all the documents on
India that were of public value or could be comprehended by the public.
Now I am more frivolous because I am dropping gently into that grave at
Woking; and yet I believe in the bookcase. India is bowed down with too
much _duftar_ as it is, and the House of Correction, Revision, Division
and Supervision cannot do her much good. I saw a committee or a council
file in the other day. Only one desirable tale came to me out of that
office. If you've heard it before stop me. It began with a cutting
from an obscure Welsh paper, I think. A man--a gardener--went mad,
announced that Lord Cross was the Messiah and burned himself alive on a
pile of garden refuse. That's the first part. I never could get at the
second, but I am credibly informed that the work of the India Office
stood still for three weeks, while the entire staff took council how to
break the news to the Secretary of State. I believe it still remains
unbroken.
* * * * *
Decidedly, leave in England is a disappointing thing. I've wandered
into two stations since I wrote the last. Nothing but the labels on the
bag remain--oh, and a memory of a weighing-in at an East End fishing
club. That was an experience. I foregathered with a man on the top
of a 'bus, and we became great friends because we both agreed that
gorge-tackle for pike was only permissible in very weedy streams. He
repeated his views, which were my views, nearly ten times, and in
the evening invited me to this weighing-in, at, we'll say, rooms of
the Lea and Chertsey Piscatorial Anglers' Benevolent Brotherhood. We
assembled in a room at the top of a public-house, the walls ornamented
with stuffed fish and water-birds, and the anglers came in by twos and
threes, and I was introduced to all of 'em as "the gen'elman I met just
now." This seemed to be good enough for all practical purposes. There
were ten and five shilling prizes, and the affable and energetic clerk
of the scales behaved as though he were weighing-in for the Lucknow
races. The take of the day was one pound fifteen ounces of dace and
roach, about twenty fingerlings, and the winner, who is in charge of a
railway book-stall, described minutely how he had caught each fish. As
a matter of fact, roach-fishing in the Lea and Thames is a fine art.
Then there were drinks--modest little drinks--and they called upon me
for a sentiment. You know how things go at the sergeants' messes and
some of the lodges. In a moment of brilliant inspiration I gave "free
fishing in the parks" and brought down the whole house. Sah! free
fishing for coarse fish in the Serpentine and the Green Park water
would hurt nobody and do a great deal of good to many. The stocking
of the water--but what does this interest you? The Englishman moves
slowly. He is just beginning to understand that it is not sufficient
to set apart a certain amount of land for a lung of London and to turn
people into it with "There, get along and play," unless he gives 'em
something to play with. Thirty years hence he will almost allow _cafés_
and hired bands in Hyde Park.
To return for a moment to the fish club. I got away at eleven, and in
darkness and despair had to make my way west for leagues and leagues
across London. I was on the Mile End Road at midnight and there lost
myself, and learned something more about the policeman. He is haughty
in the East and always afraid that he is being chaffed. I honestly
only wanted sailing directions to get homeward. One policeman said:
"Get along. You know your way as well as I do." And yet another: "You
go back to the country where you comed from. You ain't doin' no good
'ere!" It was so deadly true that I couldn't answer back, and there
wasn't an expensive cab handy to prove my virtue and respectability.
Next time I visit the Lea and Chertsey Affabilities I'll find out
something about trains. Meantime I keep holiday dolefully. There is not
anybody to play with me. They have all gone away to their own places.
Even the Infant, who is generally the idlest man in the world, writes
me that he is helping to steer a ten-ton yacht in Scottish seas. When
she heels over too much the Infant is driven to the O.P. side and she
rights herself. The Infant's host says: "Isn't this bracing? Isn't this
delightful?" And the Infant, who lives in dread of a chill bringing
back his Indian fever, has to say "Ye-es," and pretend to despise
overcoats.
Wallah! This is a cheerful world.
Rudyard Kipling.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: The "Pioneer Mail," Vol. XVII, No. 40, Oct. 2, 1890, page
436.]
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGE[22]
This is a slim, thin little story, but it serves to explain a great
many things. I picked it up in a four-wheeler in the company of an
eminent novelist, a pink-eyed young gentleman who lived on his income,
and a gentleman who knew more than he ought; and I preserved it,
thinking it would serve to interest you. It may be an old story, but
the G.W.K.T.H.O., whom, for the sake of brevity, we will call Captain
Kydd, declared that his best friend had heard it himself. Consequently,
I doubted its newness more than ever. For when a man raises his voice
and vows that the incident occurred opposite his own Club window, all
the listening world know that they are about to hear what is vulgarly
called a cracker. This rule holds good in London as well as in Lahore.
When we left the house of the highly distinguished politician who had
been entertaining us, we stepped into a London Particular, which has
nothing whatever to do with the story, but was interesting from the
little fact that we could not see our hands before our faces. The
black, brutal fog had turned each gas-jet into a pin-prick of light,
visible only at six inches range. There were no houses, there were no
pavements. There were no points of the compass. There were only the
eminent novelist, the young gentleman with the pink eyes, Captain Kydd
and myself, holding each other's shoulders in the gloom of Tophet. Then
the eminent novelist delivered himself of an epigram.
"Let's go home," said he.
"Let us try," said Captain Kydd, and incontinently fell down an area
into somebody's kitchen yard and disappeared into chaos. When he
had climbed out again we heard a something on wheels swearing even
worse than Captain Kydd was, all among the railings of a square. So
we shouted, and presently a four-wheeler drove gracefully on to the
pavement.
"I'm trying to get 'ome," said the cabby. "But if you gents make it
worth while ... though heaven knows 'ow we ever shall. Guess 'arf
a crown apiece might ... and any'ow I won't promise anywheres in
particular."
The cabby kept his word nobly. He did not find anywheres in particular,
but he found several places. First he discovered a pavement kerb and
drove pressing his wheel against it till we came to a lamp-post,
and that we hit grievously. Then he came to what ought to have been
a corner, but was a 'bus, and we embraced the thing amid terrific
language. Then he sailed out into nothing at all--blank fog--and there
he commended himself to heaven and his horse to the other place,
while the eminent novelist put his head out of the window and gave
directions. I begin to understand now why the eminent novelist's
villains are so lifelike and his plots so obscure. He has a marvellous
breadth of speech, but no ingenuity in directing the course of events.
We drove into the island of refuge near the Brompton Oratory just when
he was telling the cabby to be sure and avoid the Regents' Park Canal.
Then we began to talk about the weather and Mister Gladstone.
If an Englishman is unhappy he always talks about Mister
Gladstone in terms of reproof. The eminent novelist was a
socialistic-Neo-Plastic-Unionistic-Demagoglot Radical of the Extreme
Left, and that is the latest novelty of the thing yet invented. He
withdrew his head to answer Captain Kydd's arguments, which were
forcible. "Well, you'll admit he's all sorts of a madman," said Captain
Kydd sweetly.
"He's a saint," said the eminent novelist, "and he moves in an
atmosphere that you and those like you cannot breathe."
"Yes, I always said it was a pretty thick fog. Now I know it's as thick
as this one. I say, we're on the pavement again; we shall be in a shop
in a minute," said Captain Kydd.
But I wanted to see the eminent novelist fight, so I reintroduced
Mister Gladstone while the cab crawled up a wall.
"It's not exactly a wholesome atmosphere," said Captain Kydd when the
novelist had finished speaking. "That reminds me of a story--perfectly
true story. In the old days, before he went off his chump--"
"Yah-h-h!" said the eminent novelist, wrapping himself in his Inverness.
"--went off his nut, he used to consort a good deal with his friends
on his own side--visit 'em, y' know, and deliver addresses out of
their own bedroom windows, and steal their postcards, and generally be
friendly. Well, one man he stayed with had a house, a country house, y'
know, and in the garden there was a path which was supposed to divide
Kent and Surrey or some counties. They led the old man forth for his
walk, y' know, and followed him in gangs to hear that the weather was
fine, and of course his host pointed out the path, the old man took in
the situation, and put one I daresay they had strewn rose-leaves on it,
or spread it with homespun trousers. Anyhow, one leg on one side of
the path and the other on the other, and with one of those wonderful
flashes of humour that come to him when he chooses to frisk among his
friends, he said: 'Now I am in Kent and in Surrey at the same time.'"
Captain Kydd ceased speaking as the cab tried to force a way into the
South Kensington Museum.
"Well, what's there in that?" said the eminent novelist.
"Oh, nothing much. Let's see how it goes afterwards. Mrs. Gladstone,
who was close behind him, turned round and whispered to the hostess in
an ecstatic shriek: 'Oh, Mrs. Whateverhernamewas, you _will_ plant a
tree there, won't you?'"
"By Jove!" said the young gentleman with the pink eyes.
"I don't believe it," said the eminent novelist.
I said nothing, but it seemed very likely. Captain Kydd laughed: "Well,
I don't consider that sort of atmosphere exactly wholesome, y' know."
And when the cab had landed us in the drinking-fountain in High Street,
Kensington, and the horse fell down, and the cabby collected our
half-crowns and gave us his beery blessing, and I had to grope my way
home on foot, it occurred to me that perhaps you might be interested
in that anecdote. As I have said, it explains a great deal more than
appears at first sight.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 22: "Turnovers," No. IX.]
A DEATH IN THE CAMP[23]
Two awful catastrophes have occurred. One Englishman in London is dead,
and I have scandalised about twenty of his nearest and dearest friends.
He was a man nearly seventy years old, engaged in the business of an
architect, and immensely respected. That was all I knew about him till
I began to circulate among his friends in these parts, trying to cheer
them up and make them forget the fog.
"Hush!" said a man and his wife. "Don't you know he died yesterday of a
sudden attack of pneumonia? Isn't it shocking?"
"Yes," said I vaguely. "Aw'fly shocking. Has he left his wife provided
for?"
"Oh, he's very well off indeed, and his wife is quite old. But just
think--it was only in the next street it happened!" Then I saw that
their grief was not for Strangeways, deceased, but for themselves.
"How old was he?" I said.
"Nearly seventy, or maybe a little over."