MR. KIPLING'S COLLEGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 137, 11 June 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR. KIPLING'S COLLEGE.

Mr. (wo should say Dr.) Rudyard Kipling lias honorary doctorates in eight universities in England, Scotland, Canada, France, and Greece; but it must be rather a lonely thing being a Doctor but having no college to call one's own, no quadrangle or hall in which one may feel oneself at home (says "The Times"). And now it is announced that Magdalene College, Cambridge, has filled that hick in the life of her Litt.D., Rudyard Kipling, by electing him to an honorary Fellowship. Magdalene is the college of Samuel JVpys, who entered it as a sizar in 11131. When his shade and Mr. Kipling get together—as certainly they will— between midnight and dawn, what, glorious yarning there will be about .ships and shipping, and books and ciphers, and workers and shirkers, and a. seme of other subjects of interest to these In .I lovers of. life and of the men and thiiigti that lill it,! Charles Kingsley nitty look in too, and perhaps pass a word or two about, horses and dogs and rhymes; but the new Fellow is not likely to let talk with the former Rector of Eversley prevent his having a chat with the shade of the Vicar of Koinsey, tho inventive Mr. ISerthon, who gave us. with much else, the collapsible boat. There will be others eager to welcome the great poet and prose writer who has won what Charles Lamb would call his "collegiate worth" without tho usual approach through undergraduate life. And Magdalene College has not only done an honour to itself and to its new member which will make many thousands of far from Cantabrigian people glad. The College may have done

—something to express the modern university spirit by drawing into an academic fold the almost. \ iolently uuaeademic master of all tho arts of writing, who has enriched the English language with a manifold and multicoloured treasury, heaped up from all parts of the British Empire.