My Contemporaries In Fiction Read online

  V.--LIVING MASTERS--RUDYARD KIPLING

  I was 'up in the back blocks' of Victoria when I lighted upon some straycopies of the weekly edition of the 'Melbourne Argus,' and became awareof the fact that we had amongst us a new teller of stories, with a voiceand a physiognomy of his own. The 'Argus' had copied from some journalin far-away India a poem and a story, each unsigned, and each bearingevidence of the same hand. A year later I came back to England, andfound everybody talking about 'The Man from Nowhere,' who had just takenLondon by storm. Rudyard Kipling's best work was not as yet before us,but there was no room for doubt as to the newcomer's quality, and theonly question possible was as to whether he had come to stay. Thatinquiry has now been satisfactorily answered. The new man of half adozen years ago is one of England's properties, and not the one of whichshe is least proud. About midway in his brief and brilliant career,counting from his emergence until now, people began to be afraid that hehad emptied his sack. Partly because he had lost the spell of novelty,and partly because he did too much to be always at his best, there camea time when we thought we saw him sinking to a place with the ruck.

  Sudden popularity carries with it many grave dangers, but the gravestof all is the temptation to produce careless and unripe work. To thistemptation the new man succumbed, but only for awhile. Like the candidfriend of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, he saw the snare, and he retired. Butat the time when, instead of handing out the bread of life in generousslices, he took to giving us the sweepings of the basket I wrote a setof verses, which I called 'The Ballad of the Rudyard Kipling.' I neverprinted it, because by the time it was fairly written.

  Kipling's work had not merely gone back to its first quality, but seemedbrighter and finer than before, and the poor thing, such as it was, wasin the nature of a satire. I venture to write down the opening verseshere, since they express the feeling with which at least one writer ofEnglish fiction hailed his first appearance.

  I Oh, we be master mariners that sail the snorting seas, Right red-plucked mariners that dare the peril of the storm But we be old and worn and cold, and far from rest and ease, And only love and brotherhood can keep our tired hearts warm.

  II We were a noble company in days not long gone by, And mighty craft our elders sailed to every earthly shore. Men of worship, and dauntless soul, that feared nor sea nor sky; But God's hand stilled the valiant hearts, and the masters sail no more.

  III And for awhile, though we be brave and handy of our trade, We sailed no master-galleon, but wrought in cockboats all, Slight craft and manned with a single hand; yet many a trip we made, Though we but crept from port to port with cargoes scant and small.

  IV But on a day of wonder came ashining on the deep, A royal Splendour, proud with sail, and generous roar of guns; She passed us, and we gaped and stared. Her lofty bows were steep, And deep she rode the waters deep with a weight of countless tons.

  V Her rig was strange, her name unknown, she came we knew not whence, But on the flag at her peak we read 'The Drums of the Fore and Aft.' And--I speak for one--my breath came thick and my pulse beat hard and tense, And we cheered with tears of splendid joy at sight of the splendid craft.

  VI She swept us by; her master came and spoke us from the side; We knew our elder, though his beard was scarce yet fully grown; She spanked for home through churning foam with favouring wind and tide, And while we hailed like mad he sailed, a King, to take his own.

  Some men are born rich, and some are born lucky, and some are born bothto luck and riches. Kipling is one of the last. Nature endowed him withuncommon qualities, and circumstances sent him into the sphere in whichthose qualities could be most fortunately exercised. It seems strangethat the great store of treasure which he opened to us should havebeen unhandled and unknown so long. His Indian pictures came like arevelation. It is always so when a man of real genius dawns upon theworld. It was so when Scott showed men and women the jewelled mines ofromance which lay in the highways and byways of homely Scotland. It wasso when Dickens bared the Cockney hearth to the sight of all men. MegMerrilies, and Rob Roy, and Edie Ochiltree were all _there_--the wild,the romantic, the humorous were at the doors of millions of men beforeScott saw them. In London, in the early days of Dickens, there werehordes of capable writers eager for something new. Not one of them sawBob Cratchit, or Fagin, or the Marchioness until Dickens saw them. So,in India, the British Tommy had lived for many a year, and the junglebeasts were there, and Government House and its society were there,and capable men went up and down the land, sensible of its charm, itswonder, its remoteness from themselves, and yet not discerning truly.At last, when a thousand feet have trodden upon a thing of inestimableprice, there comes along a newspaper man, doing the driest kind ofhackwork, bound to a drudgery as stale and dreary as any in life, and hesees what no man has ever seen before him, though it has been plain inview for years and years. Through scorn and discouragement and contumelyhe polishes his treasure, in painful hours snatched from distastefullabour, and at last he brings it where it can be seen and known for whatit is.*

  * I learn, on the very best authority, that Mr. Kipling regards his early and unrecognised days in India with much kindlier eyes than this would seem to indicate. It may be thought that, knowing this, I should amend or delete the passage. I let it stand, however, with this note as a qualification, because I think it possible that he, like the rest of us, looks on the past through tinted spectacles.

  It is only genius which owns the seeing eye. There are in Great Britainto-day a dozen writers of fine faculty, trained to observe, trainedto give to observation its fullest artistic result; and they are allpanting for something new. The something new is under their noses. Theysee it and touch it every day. If I could find it, my name in a yearwould sail over the seas, and I should be a great personage. But Ishall not find it. None of the men who are now known will find it. It isalways the unknown man who makes that sort of discovery. He will come intime, and when he comes we shall wonder and admire, and say: 'How new!How true!' Why, in that very matter of Tommy Atkins, whose manifoldportraits have done as much as anything to endear Kipling to the Englishpeople--it is known to many that in my own foolish youth I enlisted inthe Army. I lived with Tommy. I fought and chaffed and drank and drilledand marched, and went 'up tahn' with him, and did pack drill, and hadC.B. with him. I turned novel-writer afterwards, and never so much asdreamt of giving Tommy a place in my pages. Then comes Kipling, notknowing him one-half as well in one way, and knowing him a thousandtimes better in another way, and makes a noble and beautiful and meritedreputation out of him; shows the man inside the military toggery, andmakes us laugh and cry, and exult with feeling. There was a man in NewSouth Wales--a shepherd--who went raving mad when he learnt that theheavy black dust which spoilt his pasture was tin, and that he had wakedand slept for years without discovering the gigantic fortune which wasall about him. I will not go mad, if I can help it, but I do think itrather hard lines on me that I hadn't the simple genius to see what layin Tommy.

  A good deal has been said of the occasional coarseness of Kipling'spages. There are readers who find it offensive, and they have everyright to the expression of their feelings. I confess to havingbeen startled once or twice, but never in a wholly disagreeablefashion--never as 'Jude the Obscure' startled. Poor Captain Mayne Reid,who is still beloved by here and there a schoolboy, wrote a preface toone of his books--I think 'The Rifle Rangers,' but it is years on yearssince I saw it--in order to put forth his defence for the introductionof an occasional oath or impious expletive in the conversation of hismen of the prairies. He pleaded necessity. It was impossible to portrayhis men without it. And he argued that an oath does not soil the mind'like the clinging immorality of an unchaste episode.' The majorityof Englishmen will agree with the gallant Captain. Kipling is roughat times, and daring, but he is always clean and honest. There are nohermaphroditic cravings after sexual excitement in him. He is too muchof a man to care for that kind of thing.

  What
a benefactor an honest laughter-maker is! Since Dickens there hasbeen nobody to fill our lungs like Kipling. Is it not better that thepublic should have 'My Lord the Elephant' and 'Brugglesmith' tolaugh outright at than that they should be feebly sniggering over thejest-books begotten on English Dulness by Yankee humour, as they wereeight or nine years ago? That jugful of Cockney sky-blue, with a feebledash of Mark Twain in it, which was called 'Three Men in a Boat' was nota cheerful tipple for a mental bank-holiday, but we poor moderns got nobetter till the coming of Kipling. We have a right to be grateful to theman who can make us laugh.

  The thing which strikes everybody who reads Kipling--and who doesnot?--is the truly astonishing range of his knowledge of technicalities.He is very often beyond me altogether, but I presume him to be accurate,because nobody finds him out, and that is a thing which specialists areso fond of doing that we may be sure they would have been about him inclouds if he had been vulnerable. He gives one the impression at timesof being arrogant about this special fund of knowledge. But henowhere cares to make his modesty conspicuous to the reader, and hiscocksureness is only the obverse of his best literary virtue. It comesfrom the very crispness and definiteness with which he sees things.There are no clouds about the edges of his perceptions. They are allclear and _nette_, Things observed by such a man dogmatise to the mind,and it is natural that he should dogmatise as to what he sees with suchapparent precision and completeness.

  A recent writer, anonymous, but speaking from a respectable vehicleas platform, has told us that the short story is the highest form intowhich any expression of the art of fiction can be cast. This to me looksvery like nonsense. I do not know any short story which can take rankwith 'Pere Goriot,' or 'Vanity Fair,' or 'David Copper-field.' The shortstory has charms of its own, and makes demands of its own. What thosedemands are only the writers who have subjected themselves to itstyranny can know. The ordinary man who tries this form of art findsearly that he is emptying his mental pockets. Kipling's riches in thisrespect have looked as if they were without end, and no man before himhas paid away so much. But it has to be remembered here that in manyexamples of his power in this way he has been purely episodic, and thediscovery or creation of an episode is a much simpler thing than thediscovery or creation of a story proper, which is a collection ofepisodes, arranged in close sequence, and leading to a catastrophe,tragic or comic, as the theme may determine.

  In estimating the value of any writer's work you must take his rangeinto consideration. Kipling stretches, in emotion, from deep seriousnessto exuberant laughter; and his grasp of character is quite firm andsure, whether he deal with Mrs. Hawksbee or with Dinah Shadd; witha field officer or with Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd; with theInspector of Forests or with Mowgli. He knows the ways of thinkingof them all, and he knows the tricks of speech of all, and the outergarniture and daily habitudes of all. His mind seems furnished with aninstantaneous camera and a phonographic recorder in combination; andkeeping guard over this rare mental mechanism is a spirit of catholicaffection and understanding.

  Finally, he is an explorer, one of the original discoverers, one of themen who open new regions to our view. A revelation has waited for him.He is as much the master of his English compeers in originality asStevenson was their master in finished craftsmanship.