There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only
thing that can exist is an uninterested person. Nothing is more keenly
required than a defence of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the
bores and bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist
entirely in the bores, the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he
counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn
happiness, may, in some sense, have proved himself poetical. The bored
has certainly proved himself prosaic.
We might, no doubt, find it a nuisance to count all the blades of grass
or all the leaves of the trees; but this would not be because of our
boldness or gaiety, but because of our lack of boldness and gaiety. The
bore would go onward, bold and gay, and find the blades of grass as
splendid as the swords of an army. The bore is stronger and more
joyous than we are; he is a demigod—nay, he is a god. For it is the
gods who do not tire of the iteration of things; to them the nightfall
is always new, and the last rose as red as the first.
The sense that everything is poetical is a thing solid and absolute; it
is not a mere matter of phraseology or persuasion. It is not merely
true, it is ascertainable. Men may be challenged to deny it; men may
be challenged to mention anything that is not a matter of poetry. I
remember a long time ago a sensible sub-editor coming up to me with a
book in his hand, called “Mr. Smith,” or “The Smith Family,” or some
such thing. He said, “Well, you won’t get any of your damned mysticism
out of this,” or words to that effect. I am happy to say that I
undeceived him; but the victory was too obvious and easy. In most cases
the name is unpoetical, although the fact is poetical. In the case of
Smith, the name is so poetical that it must be an arduous and heroic
matter for the man to live up to it. The name of Smith is the name of
the one trade that even kings respected, it could claim half the glory
of that arma virumque which all epics acclaimed. The spirit of the
smithy is so close to the spirit of song that it has mixed in a million
poems, and every blacksmith is a harmonious blacksmith.
Even the village children feel that in some dim way the smith is
poetic, as the grocer and the cobbler are not poetic, when they feast
on the dancing sparks and deafening blows in the cavern of that
creative violence. The brute repose of Nature, the passionate cunning
of man, the strongest of earthly metals, the wierdest of earthly
elements, the unconquerable iron subdued by its only conqueror, the
wheel and the ploughshare, the sword and the steam-hammer, the arraying
of armies and the whole legend of arms, all these things are written,
briefly indeed, but quite legibly, on the visiting-card of Mr. Smith.
Yet our novelists call their hero “Aylmer Valence,” which means
nothing, or “Vernon Raymond,” which means nothing, when it is in their
power to give him this sacred name of Smith—this name made of iron and
flame. It would be very natural if a certain hauteur, a certain
carriage of the head, a certain curl of the lip, distinguished every
one whose name is Smith. Perhaps it does; I trust so. Whoever else are
parvenus, the Smiths are not parvenus. From the darkest dawn of history
this clan has gone forth to battle; its trophies are on every hand; its
name is everywhere; it is older than the nations, and its sign is the
Hammer of Thor. But as I also remarked, it is not quite the usual case.
It is common enough that common things should be poetical; it is not so
common that common names should be poetical. In most cases it is the
name that is the obstacle. A great many people talk as if this claim of
ours, that all things are poetical, were a mere literary ingenuity, a
play on words. Precisely the contrary is true. It is the idea that
some things are not poetical which is literary, which is a mere product
of words. The word “signal-box” is unpoetical. But the thing
signal-box is not unpoetical; it is a place where men, in an agony of
vigilance, light blood-red and sea-green fires to keep other men from
death. That is the plain, genuine description of what it is; the prose
only comes in with what it is called. The word “pillar-box” is
unpoetical. But the thing pillar-box is not unpoetical; it is the place
to which friends and lovers commit their messages, conscious that when
they have done so they are sacred, and not to be touched, not only by
others, but even (religious touch!) by themselves. That red turret is
one of the last of the temples. Posting a letter and getting married
are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be
entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable. We think a pillar-box
prosaic, because there is no rhyme to it. We think a pillar-box
unpoetical, because we have never seen it in a poem. But the bold fact
is entirely on the side of poetry. A signal-box is only called a
signal-box; it is a house of life and death. A pillar-box is only
called a pillar-box; it is a sanctuary of human words. If you think
the name of “Smith” prosaic, it is not because you are practical and
sensible; it is because you are too much affected with literary
refinements. The name shouts poetry at you. If you think of it
otherwise, it is because you are steeped and sodden with verbal
reminiscences, because you remember everything in Punch or Comic Cuts
about Mr. Smith being drunk or Mr. Smith being henpecked. All these
things were given to you poetical. It is only by a long and elaborate
process of literary effort that you have made them prosaic.
Now, the first and fairest thing to say about Rudyard Kipling is that
he has borne a brilliant part in thus recovering the lost provinces of
poetry. He has not been frightened by that brutal materialistic air
which clings only to words; he has pierced through to the romantic,
imaginative matter of the things themselves. He has perceived the
significance and philosophy of steam and of slang. 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 divine parentage of these things, and knew that where there is
smoke there is fire—that is, that wherever there is the foulest of
things, there also is the purest. Above all, he has had something to
say, a definite view of things to utter, and that always means that a
man is fearless and faces everything. For the moment we have a view of
the universe, we possess it.
Now, the message of Rudyard Kipling, that upon which he has really
concentrated, is the only thing worth worrying about in him or in any
other man. He has often written bad poetry, like Wordsworth. He has
often said silly things, like Plato. He has often given way to mere
political hysteria, like Gladstone. But no one can reasonably doubt
that he means steadily and sincerely to say something, and the only
serious question is, What is that which he has tried to say? Perhaps
the best way of stating this fairly will be to begin with that element
which has been most insisted by himself and by his opponents—I mean
his interest in militarism. But when we are seeking for the real merits
of a man it is unwise to go to his enemies, and much more foolish to go
to himself.
Now, Mr. Kipling is certainly wrong in his worship of militarism, but
his opponents are, generally speaking, quite as wrong as he. The evil
of militarism is not that it shows certain men to be fierce and haughty
and excessively warlike. The evil of militarism is that it shows most
men to be tame and timid and excessively peaceable. The professional
soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community
declines. Thus the Pretorian guard became more and more important in
Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. The military
man gains the civil power in proportion as the civilian loses the
military virtues. And as it was in ancient Rome so it is in
contemporary Europe. There never was a time when nations were more
militarist. There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages
and all epics have sung of arms and the man; but we have effected
simultaneously the deterioration of the man and the fantastic
perfection of the arms. Militarism demonstrated the decadence of Rome,
and it demonstrates the decadence of Prussia.
And unconsciously Mr. Kipling has proved this, and proved it admirably.
For in so far as his work is earnestly understood the military trade
does not by any means emerge as the most important or attractive. He
has not written so well about soldiers as he has about railway men or
bridge builders, or even journalists. The fact is that what attracts
Mr. Kipling to militarism is not the idea of courage, but the idea of
discipline. There was far more courage to the square mile in the Middle
Ages, when no king had a standing army, but every man had a bow or
sword. But the fascination of the standing army upon Mr. Kipling is not
courage, which scarcely interests him, but discipline, which is, when
all is said and done, his primary theme. The modern army is not a
miracle of courage; it has not enough opportunities, owing to the
cowardice of everybody else. But it is really a miracle of
organization, and that is the truly Kiplingite ideal. Kipling’s subject
is not that valour which properly belongs to war, but that
interdependence and efficiency which belongs quite as much to
engineers, or sailors, or mules, or railway engines. And thus it is
that when he writes of engineers, or sailors, or mules, or
steam-engines, he writes at his best. The real poetry, the “true
romance” which Mr. Kipling has taught, is the romance of the division
of labour and the discipline of all the trades. He sings the arts of
peace much more accurately than the arts of war. And his main
contention is vital and valuable. Every thing is military in the sense
that everything depends upon obedience. There is no perfectly
epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place. Everywhere
men have made the way for us with sweat and submission. We may fling
ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness. But we are
glad that the net-maker did not make the hammock in a fit of divine
carelessness. We may jump upon a child’s rocking-horse for a joke. But
we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of it unglued for
a joke. So far from having merely preached that a soldier cleaning his
side-arm is to be adored because he is military, Kipling at his best
and clearest has preached that the baker baking loaves and the tailor
cutting coats is as military as anybody.
Being devoted to this multitudinous vision of duty, Mr. Kipling is
naturally a cosmopolitan. He happens to find his examples in the
British Empire, but almost any other empire would do as well, or,
indeed, any other highly civilized country. That which he admires in
the British army he would find even more apparent in the German army;
that which he desires in the British police he would find flourishing,
in the French police. The ideal of discipline is not the whole of life,
but it is spread over the whole of the world. And the worship of it
tends to confirm in Mr. Kipling a certain note of worldly wisdom, of
the experience of the wanderer, which is one of the genuine charms of
his best work.
The great gap in his mind is what may be roughly called the lack of
patriotism—that is to say, he lacks altogether the faculty of
attaching himself to any cause or community finally and tragically; for
all finality must be tragic. He admires England, but he does not love
her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons.
He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.
There is no harshness in saying this, for, to do him justice, he avows
it with his usual picturesque candour. In a very interesting poem, he
says that—
“If England was what England seems”
—that is, weak and inefficient; if England were not what (as he
believes) she is—that is, powerful and practical—
“How quick we’d chuck ’er! But she ain’t!”
He admits, that is, that his devotion is the result of a criticism, and
this is quite enough to put it in another category altogether from the
patriotism of the Boers, whom he hounded down in South Africa. In
speaking of the really patriotic peoples, such as the Irish, he has
some difficulty in keeping a shrill irritation out of his language. The
frame of mind which he really describes with beauty and nobility is the
frame of mind of the cosmopolitan man who has seen men and cities.
“For to admire and for to see,
For to be’old this world so wide.”
He is a perfect master of that light melancholy with which a man looks
back on having been the citizen of many communities, of that light
melancholy with which a man looks back on having been the lover of many
women. He is the philanderer of the nations. But a man may have learnt
much about women in flirtations, and still be ignorant of first love; a
man may have known as many lands as Ulysses, and still be ignorant of
patriotism.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in a celebrated epigram what they can
know of England who know England only. It is a far deeper and sharper
question to ask, “What can they know of England who know only the
world?” for the world does not include England any more than it
includes the Church. The moment we care for anything deeply, the
world—that is, all the other miscellaneous interests—becomes our
enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one’s self
“unspotted from the world;” but lovers talk of it just as much when
they talk of the “world well lost.” Astronomically speaking, I
understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose
that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers
inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth—the truth
that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe. Thus Mr.
Kipling does certainly know the world; he is a man of the world, with
all the narrowness that belongs to those imprisoned in that planet. He
knows England as an intelligent English gentleman knows Venice. He has
been to England a great many times; he has stopped there for long
visits. But he does not belong to it, or to any place; and the proof
of it is this, that he thinks of England as a place. The moment we are
rooted in a place, the place vanishes. We live like a tree with the
whole strength of the universe.
The globe-trotter lives in a smaller world than the peasant. He is
always breathing, an air of locality. London is a place, to be
compared to Chicago; Chicago is a place, to be compared to Timbuctoo.
But Timbuctoo is not a place, since there, at least, live men who
regard it as the universe, and breathe, not an air of locality, but the
winds of the world. The man in the saloon steamer has seen all the
races of men, and he is thinking of the things that divide men—diet,
dress, decorum, rings in the nose as in Africa, or in the ears as in
Europe, blue paint among the ancients, or red paint among the modern
Britons. The man in the cabbage field has seen nothing at all; but he
is thinking of the things that unite men—hunger and babies, and the
beauty of women, and the promise or menace of the sky. Mr. Kipling,
with all his merits, is the globe-trotter; he has not the patience to
become part of anything. So great and genuine a man is not to be
accused of a merely cynical cosmopolitanism; still, his cosmopolitanism
is his weakness. That weakness is splendidly expressed in one of his
finest poems, “The Sestina of the Tramp Royal,” in which a man declares
that he can endure anything in the way of hunger or horror, but not
permanent presence in one place. In this there is certainly danger.
The more dead and dry and dusty a thing is the more it travels about;
dust is like this and the thistle-down and the High Commissioner in
South Africa. Fertile things are somewhat heavier, like the heavy
fruit trees on the pregnant mud of the Nile. In the heated idleness of
youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implication of
that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We were
inclined to ask, “Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?”
But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right. The
rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is
dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.
The truth is that exploration and enlargement make the world smaller.
The telegraph and the steamboat make the world smaller. The telescope
makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it
larger. Before long the world will be cloven with a war between the
telescopists and the microscopists. The first study large things and
live in a small world; the second study small things and live in a
large world. It is inspiriting without doubt to whizz in a motor-car
round the earth, to feel Arabia as a whirl of sand or China as a flash
of rice-fields. But Arabia is not a whirl of sand and China is not a
flash of rice-fields. They are ancient civilizations with strange
virtues buried like treasures. If we wish to understand them it must
not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of
children and the great patience of poets. To conquer these places is to
lose them. The man standing in his own kitchen-garden, with fairyland
opening at the gate, is the man with large ideas. His mind creates
distance; the motor-car stupidly destroys it. Moderns think of the
earth as a globe, as something one can easily get round, the spirit of
a schoolmistress. This is shown in the odd mistake perpetually made
about Cecil Rhodes. His enemies say that he may have had large ideas,
but he was a bad man. His friends say that he may have been a bad man,
but he certainly had large ideas. The truth is that he was not a man
essentially bad, he was a man of much geniality and many good
intentions, but a man with singularly small views. There is nothing
large about painting the map red; it is an innocent game for children.
It is just as easy to think in continents as to think in cobble-stones.
The difficulty comes in when we seek to know the substance of either of
them. Rhodes’ prophecies about the Boer resistance are an admirable
comment on how the “large ideas” prosper when it is not a question of
thinking in continents but of understanding a few two-legged men. And
under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its
empires and its Reuter’s agency, the real life of man goes on concerned
with this tree or that temple, with this harvest or that drinking-song,
totally uncomprehended, totally untouched. And it watches from its
splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car
civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming
space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture
of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars
suburban.