Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1281 page)

In “The Gadsbys “ was some of the most brilliant!v exact social dialogue written in recent years.

Then there were touching child-stories, which you fancied or not; there were the two “ Jungle Books,” not unlikely the most enduring things Mr. Kipling has written: and, if the stories had left us with no other gain, thev had given us one lifelong companion, Terence Mulvaney.

Scattered here and there among the stories were remarkable descriptions, pictures, and picturesque phrases, much wit, and many kinds of wisdom. Such was our first, and, in many respects, lasting impression.

II

In speaking of the remarkable sense of reality conveyed by Mr. Kipling’s stories, I added, “while you read them”; and, gratefully recording the one impression, I must be allowed also to record that which, unexpectedly enough, is its complement. The stories are full of surprises, but one great and disappointing surprise is the facility with which we forget them. Paper and print have seldom, if ever, produced so magic-lantern-like an impression of reality. One is the more surprised to find how skilfully they elude the memory. Out of all these one hundred and thirty-one stories, there is not more than a dozen of which a normal memory can recall the features, and, numerous as are the characters to which we have been introduced, there are certainly not half-a-dozen whom we can differentiate. I think that one reason for this in the case of many of the stories, is to be found in the slightness of narrative motive. They are glorified anecdotes, for the most part, and, as in the case of those oral raconteurs to whom I have referred, they exist only in the skilful telling. But there is still another, and, perhaps, more important, reason.

Is it not a question of methods, and are not the stories that most live with us just those that are less markedly “ Kipling- esque,” and more related to traditional methods of storv-telling? Broadly speaking, it is the Mulvanev stories that we remember best; those, and two or three pictures written in comparatively classical English, such as “ The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows” and “The City of Dreadful Night.”

Now, limited as a medium as is the Irish dialect, it is classical compared with the idiom in which most of Mr. Kipling’s stories are told. There are English dialects for which so far even conspicuous literary talent has failed to win permanent acceptance in serious literature. William Barnes would have been recognised as a poet of considerable importance had he not chosen to write in Dorsetshire; and Edwin Waugh was a humourist of genius and a poet of real charm, who has taken the consequences of hiding his light under the bushel of the Lancashire dialect. Nor is the Welsh way of breaking English acceptable in literature. What we call “ Irish “ and “ Scotch,” however, have managed to win recognition for themselves as literary media; it remains to be seen whether Mr. Kipling will be able to win like permanent recognition for “ Cockney.” It will surely be posterity’s loss rather than his if it should prove otherwise.

An Irishman’s way of telling a story is among the accepted traditional forms of story-telling, like the manner of the Arabian Nights. Also, however original an Irish character may be, he is already more than half made with his dialect. Thus Mulvaney may be the most delightful Irishman who ever lived in a book, but, whether that is so or not, his road to our hearts has already been more than half made by many a delightful forerunner in Lever or Lover. He is a development, a variation of a traditional type, rather than a creation. And, perhaps, one may as well say here, once for all, that Mr. Kipling possesses but little power of creating character. He is deft at giving you sufficient notion of this man or that woman to last out their story. But mainly the story is the thing, and the characters are little more than pegs on which to hang an anecdote.

One’s memory of a novelist’s names and one’s memory of his characters go together. One never forgets the name of a really memorable figure in a book. All the lasting story-tellers will bear this test. Of living men take George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, and J. M. Barrie; and, out of England, Tolstoi, Zola, and Ibsen. Or take the novelist with whose name Mr. Kipling’s is so often mentioned, Dickens. Perhaps no other novelist has ever created so many living names. The names, some may say, are more real than the people. But that depends on one’s test of reality. If one’s test is the test of the occurrence of Dicken- sonian characters in what we call real life, it is narrow and irrelevant; for some of the most living creations of literature have never existed, nor ever will exist anywhere but in the imagination of novelist and reader. Is anyone going to deny the reality of Mr. Micawber on anv such shallow grounds? His name comes so readily to one’s lips because he is so imaginative a reality. Have we a friend of whose identity we are so absolutely sure? Maybe he has never yet been met in the Strand, nor shall we meet him; but were we to do so, should we have a moment’s doubt as to his identity? “Why, it’s Mr. Micawber!” we would exclaim excitedly, as though it were the ghost of Mr. Gladstone.

We might recognise Mulvaney in the same way, but of all Mr. Kipling’s dramatis persona, he is the one alone, and very genuinely isolated, of whom we would thus be sure: and then it would not be so much because he was Mulvaney, as because he was an unmistakable Irishman. And yet, if that be true, is there any other Irishman in fiction we would more gladly meet? How fascinating he is, with all his contrasts of nature; his blackguardism, his chivalry, his gallantry, his folly, his wisdom, his never-failing humour, and his ever- lurking melancholy. It is of such contrasts that the true human clay is kneaded. Someone should make a “ Book of the Wisdom of Terence Mulvaney.” It would take a high place in pens’ee literature. I append a small collection towards it.

This self-picture might be included by way of introducing the sage: “ I’m a born scutt av the barrick-room! The Army’s mate an’ dhrink to me, bekaze I’m wan av the few that can’t quit ut. I’ve put in siv- inteen years, an’ the pipeclay’s in the marrow av me. Av I cud have kept out av wan big dhrink a month, I wud have been a Hon’rv Lift’nint by this time — a nuisince to my betthers, a laughin’-shtock to my equils, an’ a curse to meself. Bein’ fwhat I am, I’m Privit Mulvaney, wid no good- conduc’ pay an’ a devourin’ thirst. Always barrin’ me little frind Bobs Bahadur, I know as much about the Army as most men.”

Here beginneth the Wisdom, etc.: u Hit a man an’ help a woman, an’ ye can’t be far wrong anyways; “ — ” But I’ve had my day — I’ve had my day, an’ nothin’ can take away the taste av that! O my time past, whin I put me fut through ivry livin’ wan av the Tin Commandmints between Revelly and Lights Out, blew the froth off a pewter, wiped me moustache wid the back av me hand, an’ slept on ut all as quiet as a little child! But ut’s over — ut’s over, an’ ‘twill niver come back to me; not though I prayed for a week av Sundavs; “ — ” Kape out av the Married Quarters, I say, as I did not. ‘Tis onwholcsim, ‘tis dangerous, an’ ‘tis ivrything else that’s bad, but — O my sowl, ‘tis swate while ut lasts! “ — ” Watch the hand: av she shuts her hand tight, thumb down over the knuckle, take up your hat an’ go. You’ll only make a fool av voursilf av you shtav. But av the hand lies opin on the lap, or av you see her thry- in’ to shut ut, an’ she can’t, — go on. She’s not past reason’ wid; “ — Afther thev was all gone, I wint back to Canteen an’ called for a quart to put a thought in me; “ — ” I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he said, Don’t hght wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av hghtin’, but if you do, knock the nose av him first an’ frequint; “ — ” Good cause the reg’ment has to know me for the best soldier in ut. Better cause have I to know mesilf for the worst man. I’m only fit to tache the new drafts what I’ll niver learn myself;” — ”Niver show a woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an’ begad she’ll come bleatin’ to your boot- heels! “ — ” I kissed her on the tip av the nose an’ undher the eye; an’ a girl that lets a kiss come tumbleways like that has never been kissed before. Take note av that, sorr; “ — ” They’ll take the airs an’ the graces instid av the man nine times out av ten, an’ they only find the blunder later — the wimmen; “ — ” Whin liquor does not take hould, the sowl av a man is rotten in him.”

Mulvaney’s is that effortless life which belongs to all really vital creations of fiction. It would seem that the more pains Mr. Kipling takes with his characters the less they live. For example, take the fishermen in “ Captains Courageous.” How hard Mr. Kipling strove to distinguish and vitalise them is written all over them, and yet, with the partial exception of the cap tain, the most careful reading has failed to fix them in the memory.

“Soldiers Three” then (and I include under that head all the Alulvaney stories), in mv opinion, represents Mr. Kipling’s most important achievement in prose; and it will be observed that once more, as in his verse, the achievement is in dialect. Yet it is a dialect which, it is important to insist, is more “ classical “ as a medium than the journalistic, mess-room, public-school English in which the majority of Mr. Kipling’s stories are written. In the Mulvaney stories the reality is that of a more universal humanity. The humour and wit and pathos are concerned with the general heart of man. Lasting art (and Mr. Kipling must forgive the term) is concerned rather with generals than particulars, or only such particulars, so to speak, as are general. True imaginative literature is symbolic rather than scientific. The best of Mr. Kipling’s stories are symbolic; the major ity are scientific. Contrast, say, “The Courting of Dinah Shadd “ and “The Bridge-Builders,” both good things in their way. One is a genre painting rich in the humour and romance of a broad, enduring humanity; the other is a brilliant cinematographic reproduction of a specialised ambition in action.

In the latter case (leaving out of account the clumsy and long-drawn mythologising at the end) we see a bridge and a bridge- builder with daylight clearness. It is what the man in the street would call as “ true to life” as writing can be. But can anyone, not morbidly memorial, tell me the name of the bridge-builder, or, with or without a name, will he think of him as the bridge-builder, as one thinks of the “Master-Builder” out of Ibsen, or such a type of that modern commercial romance Mr. Kipling essays to write as John Gabriel Borkman?

Yes, most of Mr. Kipling’s stories (and probably those which have most advanced his general reputation) belong to science rather than to art. If I say that they are the product of the literary faculty anticipating the cinematograph, it is by no means with the intention of minimising their won- derfulness, but rather that I may the more clearly indicate the kind of wonderfulncss that really belongs to them. They belong to the wonders of science rather than the wonders of art — that science of instinctive human faculty which anticipates all inventions; that marvellous science of literal mimicry and piquantly faithful record which finds its most attractive expression, perhaps, on the music-hall stage. It is only those who have not realised the wonderfulncss of Yvettc Guilbert or of Mr. Arthur Roberts who will think my comparison of Mr. Kipling to those artists frivolous or disrespectful. I am sure that Mr. Kipling himself will make no such mistake. So, curiously enough, and without premedi tation, I find that Mr. Kipling’s prose as well as his verse sends me to the music- halls for final illustration.

I have not meant in these remarks merely to repeat a familiar criticism of Mr. Kipling that his work is “ photographic,” for, while in one sense the criticism is true, in another it is unjust. And the distinction is an interesting one. In his effects Mr. Kipling is usually photographic (“ cinematographic “ is better), but his methods are almost invariably, for want of a better word, “artistic.” I mean that whereas the principle of selection, which is a vital principle of art, can operate but little in photography, it is seen to be remarkably active in all Mr. Kipling’s best work. His stories, so to speak, represent the epigram of action, the epigram of a given situation. One thinks of a Phil May — a Phil May, however, whose line is not merely marvellously selected from a hundred other irrelevant lines, but is also subtly charged with an experience, a poetry, and a general suggestiveness, which Mr. Phil May’s line does not possess.

I am thrown upon analogies to other arts and sciences in writing of Mr. Kipling, because literary analogies are difficult. Speaking merely of his literary method, he belongs to the same modern, rebellious school as Carlyle or Browning, a school determined to say the eternal thing in the contemporary way, and yet say it eternally too. On the other side are the more traditional methods of Tennyson and Arnold. How far Carlyle or Browning will be able to force understanding of their brusque and piquant nineteenth-century slang, upon a posterity thrilling to the brusquerie and piquancy of its own momentary manner of speech, is a question impossible to answer; but it is obvious that, if the primal force in Carlyle or Browning is greater than in Tennyson or Arnold, they will surely need it all.

But to return to my first analogy. It is among the anomalies and ironies of art that Mr. Kipling thus uses so brilliantly, often so masterly, the methods of art for the production of work which, in the end, affects us mainly as photography. Place a story of his and a story, say, of Stevenson’s before an audience, as one might place a cinematograph impression and an old master, and who can doubt whose story would win applause for the sense of immediate reality, of literality of impression?

Or to take another writer from whom Mr. Kipling has learned much, and with whom, perhaps, he is more appropriately compared, Mr. Bret Harte. Bear in mind, I am not talking of posterity, but of contemporary judgments and memories. At the moment Mr. Kipling may seem so much more vivid and “ true to life”; and yet, while it is, at most, ten years since we began to read him, and more than ten since we left off reading Bret Harte, it is not deniable that we remember the first story we read by Bret Harte better than the last read story of Rudyard Kipling. Both men are artists in their methods, but one gave us pictures, and the other, mainly, cinematography. Mr. Kipling is a great man at sentiment (though we hear more of his anti-sentimental side), but has he written a child-story we can remember as well as “ The Luck of Roaring Camp,” or anything we shall remember as long as “ The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” or “Tennessee’s Pardner “? These things are not so exact in their “business” (to borrow a term from still another art), but, perhaps on that very account, they remain symbols of the human heart. They have the simplicity of classics, a simplicity in which all unnecessary subtleties are dissolved; and simplicity is the quality which, out of all the seething elements of creation, the brilliant observation, the subtle charging with modern moods, the various miracles of pros cess, Mr. Kipling is too clever to capture except in one or two supreme moments.