Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated), page 970
“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.
Seeing that the essence of Mr. Kipling’s method is his unerring choice of the telling characteristic, and, so to say, the poster word, his robust rejection of all but the essential, it is surprising to notice in his more recent work, side by side with the same keen eye and sure hand, a curious, but perhaps not incomprehensible, tendency to debauch on the part of one of his most notable gifts. His “ mastery of detail,” as we say, has been one of his marvels from the beginning; but, though in some of his ballads, as I have remarked, his gift sometimes escaped control in a riot of technicalities, for the most part in his early best stories (and nearly all his best work was done at the beginning), it was a magical servant. Of late, however, it is unmistakably becoming a dreary master. In writing of India, or soldiers, Mr. Kipling was often necessarily “ departmental,” but he was seldom, if ever, microscopically technical, as he has suddenly become in attempting to fulfil that second half or nis programme, “to celebrate the romance of commerce throughout the world.”
In spite of Learoyd’s occasional suspicious allusions to the note-book, there is little untransniuted note-book in the Indian stories. There is more of it in the “ Barrack-Room Ballads.” On the other hand, in his stories of the sea, or, say, merchant shipping, undigested note-book is everywhere in evidence. For Mr. Kipling to write a story without some firm human touch, however slight, would be impossible. I have read all he has printed either with pleasure, or pleasurable irritation, and I am not ungrateful for the crumbs which fall from the master’s table even at his most meagre banquets. But if Mr. Kipling is never quite dull or unprofitable, he comes perilously near to it in such stories as “ Captains Courageous,” “ Bread Upon the Wa ters,” “The Ship that Found Herself,” and “ -007.”
“Captains Courageous” is Mr. Kipling’s second attempt (or, if we count the collaborated “ Naulahka “) the third to oblige those critics who always egg a writer on to do just that for which he has little gift and less inclination. I suppose it was because Mr. Kipling’s narrative genius was so evidently created for the short story, that those critics immediately cried out for a novel. One might hazard that Mr. Kipling has never really wished to write a novel, perhaps has never confidently believed that he could, or clearly seen why he should. But the barren critic, with his cuckoo cry, insisted; said that the public expected it; and Mr. Kipling obliged with “ The Light that Failed “ — a novel which, in spite of Mr. Kipling’s evident uneasiness at having to use so many words where he could have told the whole thing in at least five thousand, is more of an achieve ment than has yet been sufficiently recognised. In “ Maisie “ and the red-haired girl it gives us the two most living women Mr. Kipling has drawn — the first another bitter — tender studv for “ The Vampire “; and the description of Dick Heldar’s blindness was a masterpiece of the dramatic imagination. Milton has put his blindness into a few famous lines, and there arc pages of “ Jane Eyre.” Nowhere else that I know of has the hopelessness of blindness been so brought home to us; and, one may pertinently add, a modern blindness. For Dick Heldar was one of those for whom, as Gautier said, the visible world exists — and that only; he had not Milton’s advantage of believing in an invisible world as well — an advantage impossible to exaggerate for the blind. “ The Light that Failed” is, perhaps, the story of all Mr. Kipling’s stories that strikes the most universal note of human pathos.
“Captains Courageous,” Mr. Kipling’s first really determined attempt to write the prose epic of merchant shipping, is “ another story.” Here, to begin with, Mr. Kipling is, for once, dramatically unequal to his central motive — a failure seldom known of him. Given an objectionable American youngster millionnaire crossing to England on a liner, entirely foolish with wealth and the electro-plated snobbery of his country — sweep him overboard one rough day on to the deck of one of those Newfoundland cod-fishers, which (with those tendencies to spectacular butchery which wealth seems to have engendered in all civilisations) he had been hoping they might run down for an excitement-, confront him with a stern old Ironsides of a skipper, who cares nothing about his fine airs, and isn’t worldly enough to see the money behind his swagger: well, if not thrilling, it was an allowably interesting situation. The testing of the lad’s mettle might have made an interesting study in human training. Unfortunately, how ever, Mr. Kipling begs the question with a knock-down blow on the part of the captain, from which the boy staggers up — “sugar and spice and all things nice.” That blow is no more explanatory than the rubbing of Aladdin’s lamp; and thenceforward the story becomes part fairy-tale, part laborious, and mostly unconvincing realism; with a scented finish of sentimental snobbery — not to speak of the strong smell of codfish all the way through.
Now, we haven’t waited for Mr. Kipling to hear about the heroism of the sea. There is a be ok of Victor Hugo’s, at least. As against liners and millionnaircs, our interests are entirely with cod-fishers. Only, vou must make the cod-fishers as interesting as, say, Mr. Barric has made his Scotch weavers. Mr. Kipling works very hard to do so, but nothing he does makes his men live. That he records the various processes of “ cod “ from catching to curing, leaves us cold. Any man on the New York Journal could do that — much more imaginatively. All he does is to give us two or three pictures of the sea, beautiful pictures, one of which I will quote:
“... since there was no fishing, Harvey had time to look at the sea from another point of view. The low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her surroundings. They saw little of the horizon save when she topped a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coaxing her steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam; or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger water-hill. It was as if she said: ‘You wouldn’t hurt me, surely? I’m only the little We’re Here.’ Then she would slide away chuckling softly to herself till she was brought up by some fresh obstacle. The dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing hour after hour through long days without noticing it; and Harvey, being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wave-tops turning over with a sound of incessant tearing; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the splendid upheaval of the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors; the salty glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over thousands of dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of everything at the day’s end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under the moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and Harvey went down to get a doughnut from the cook.”
But there has been worse than “ Captains Courageous.” In “The Day’s Work,” the title of which is a resolute text, Mr. Kipling has given intemperate rein to a boyish passion for machinery which we have all had once, or have seen possessing others. Anyone who knows anything of English seaports knows the boy who prides himself on knowing the particular flag, funnel, and tonnage of every vessel in the river. “ It’s the signal of the Cross Keys Line running to Australia. I wonder which steamer it is,” said Dick Heldar proudly to Maisie. How one sympathises with his pride, for who has not known the boy who swelled with just that knowledge of forgotten steam-ship lore? Yet such lore, while it may be useful in a shipping office, is very rarely entertaining in general conversation; and must be used very sparingly indeed in literature. Mr. Kipling, however, has of late veritably debauched in it. To use an Americanism, he has just wallowed in technical terms, as a miser bathes himself in gold pieces. No engineer was ever so technical as A4r. Kipling. His technicalities would be more generalised, worn by use into pocket-slang. Let us take an example from “ The Devil and the Deep Sea “:
“The forward engine had no more work to do. Its released piston-rod, therefore, drove up fiercely, with nothing to check it, and started most of the nuts of the cylinder- cover. It came down again, the full weight of the steam behind it, and the foot of the disconnected connecting-rod, useless as the leg of a man with a sprained ankle, flung out to the right and struck the starboard, or right-hand, cast-iron supporting column of the forward engine, cracking it clean through about six inches above the base, and wedging the upper portion outwards three inches towards the ship’s side. There the connecting-rod jammed. Meantime, the after engine, being as yet unembarrassed, went on with its work, and in so doing brought round at its next revolution the crank of the forward engine, which smote the already jammed connecting-rod, bending it and therewith the piston-rod cross-head — the big cross-piece that slides up and down so smoothly.
The cross-head jammed sideways in the guides, and, in addition to putting further pressure on the already broken starboard supporting column, cracked the port, or left-hand, supporting column in two or three places. There being nothing more that could be made to move, the engines brought up, all standing, with a hiccup that seemed to lift the Haliotis a foot out of the water; and the engine-room staff, opening every steam outlet that they could find in the confusion, arrived on deck somewhat scalded, but calm.”
To write thus is as though a man should undertake to translate a Greek poem and leave three-quarters of it in Greek. This is certainly not the way to sing the song of steam.
It was just such an obsession of technical terminology that possessed Rabelais; but his terms were more universal. Walt Whitman’s catalogues even are more justifiable, for they are more imaginatively character istic in their particularity, and it must always be remembered, in criticising Whitman, that he, confessedly, aimed to suggest, rather than to sing, “ the song of steam.”
In “To be Filed for Reference” (the last story of “ Plain Tales “) Mr. Kipling, speaking of the Verlaine-like Englishman of learning whom he patronised and dowered with tobacco, says: “... he did most of his ravings in Greek or German. The man’s mind was a perfect rag-bag of useless things.” I venture to think that a “ rag-bag “ of Greek and German poets and philosophers would be a much more truly valuable tool-basket than those details of evanescent engineering which have covered so much of two recent pages. To be able to quote Horace is more important, from any broad human standpoint, than to be an initiate of the engine-room of the greatest liner afloat or to be floated.
As for “ The Ship that Found Herself” or “ -007,” all that needs to be said of them is that they are exceedingly tedious Hans Andersen. “ The Ship that Found Herself” has amusing touches and an excellent moral, but “ -ooj “ is, we shall hope, the reductio ad absurdum of Mr. Kipling’s later method. His sympathy with all manufactured things is beautiful in itself. We all have that sympathy. We have not waited for him to realise that engineers and mechanics are heroes in their way. But it is one thing to realise a truth philosophically and another to embody it in literature. This Mr. Kipling has not done.
CHAPTER III
MR. KIPLING’S GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE AND INFLUENCE
Were Mr.. Kipling to be considered as a writer of ballads and a teller of tales, and nothing besides, it had hardly seemed necessary to write a book about him; at all events, in the present stage of his career. Since the Recessional,” however, he has been definitely more than that; while, long before it, if less explicitly, he was no less virtually a national influence. His Indian stories and songs did just that service for the Imperialistic idea which the imaginative man can do. They made us realise, as we had never done before, what a great dependency like India means, and what it means to maintain it; and, by this extensive object-lesson, made us sensitive as never be fore of the organic relation between us and our possessions in the furthest seas. Mr. Kipling, so to speak, roused the sleeping nerve centres of Imperialism. So much we may gladly and gratefully admit, without, it is to be hoped, seeming to imply, as certain enthusiasts suffering from acute Kiplingitis do all but state, that Mr. Kipling is little short of the Saviour of the / British Empire. Lovers of that beautiful phrase “ Unification “ really seem to think that all our Imperial sentries slept till Mr. Kipling blew his reveille of Imperialism. But is it not one of the morals of Mr. Kipling’s writings that the quiet, inglorious, strong men whom he nobly celebrates are at their posts as of old tirelessly watching? The men who won India may be trusted to keep it even without literary assistance.
