KIPLING INTERVIEWED.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14916, 14 March 1914, Page 9

KIPLING INTERVIEWED.

AMERICAN SUCCEEDS AVHERE MANY HAVE FAlLn>.

MULVANEY NOT TO BE REVIVED.

(From the New York "Literary

Digest.")

Sherlock Holmes came hack, and so also did the Brigadier Gerard, and doubtless many other living and dead heroes of fiction. But Mulvaney, whether or no he be dead already, and Dinah Shadd's tears dried, will never como back. So Mr Kipling recently declared to Mr Irvin Cobb, who has achieved the nearest known approach to an interview with the man supposed to be non-interviewable. Mr Cobb has been making his first journey to Europe, touching "all the high spots in just two months," with tho idea of writing a "Cobb's Baedeker." But "Mr Kipling won't be in it at all." Still, he visited Mr Kipling and heard many interesting things from him which Theodore D. Rousseau has put into thnoe columns of the New York "Evening Post." He asked somewhat cautiously about insinuating that that personage was not in the class with "Huckleberry Finn" and "Henry Esmond" —"so rounded out and complete that no one thinks of meeting them again." Mr Kipling replied:—

''Yes, to the best of my knowledge— tho best of my memory, I might say, Mulvaney is dead. The last mental picture I had of him was on tho edge of a cut in India, where he was directing a gang of coulies building a railroad extension. There is no doubt that he was a bit seedy and dcwn-at-heel. So I am sure that if he has not already passed away, he" soon will, and Dinah Shadd will "bury him. No, he cannot come back. It won't do, you know. A character is born in your thought, aud grows and is developed, and takes on virtues and vices, aud becomes old, and then —weli .|ust, fades away, 1 take it. And that is the way with Mulvaney. 1 couldn't revive him—l could only galvanise him. He would be a stuffed figure with straw for bowels and glass balls for eyes the people could see the brings I polled him with, No, he is grne "

Mr Cobb says of Mr Kipling:—"lt didn't take mo two minutes in that walk through tho orarden, up to the house, to find out that in spite of his great work and his experience, he feels a tremendous enthusiasm about everything that is worth while. lie's not a bit blase, he isn't Enplishy Englishthat is, not in an unplpasant sense — but is a cosmopolitan in tho real meaning of the word. And the littlo details of life in general and in nature attract, him surprisingly." On the point of Mr Kiplinc's literary likes and dislikes we are told "he doesn't care for the ultramoderns of his craft in England." and his "disfavour fall* most heavily" upon one of them—"nerhnps tho most widely known;" says Mr Cobb, without mentioning Shaw. The new generation in this country have escaped him but the mention of Mr Dooley broucht a quick exclamation of praise:

" 'Ah, Dunne!' ho said. 'There you have a great man—one of the greatest of tho writers of English of this century! Tt is an extraordinary combination. There is an Irishman writing as an Irishman, yet if I were asked to pick four samples of literary achievement that most fitly typified the impulse and the humour of your American life, three of mv selections would be from "Mr Dooiey." This from Kioling —with a reputation for being so chary with his praise—it wax one of the surprises of the day to his visitor." Mi- Kipling's description of modern war is a "mathematical problem, with some of the asnects of a surgical operation by the highest paid specialists." He pees "no more romance or glamour," On this theme he is interesting: "I have seen very, very little fijrhting in India. I wrote mostly of what I had been told. But I did see war in South. Africa. I said to myself beforo I went out, 'I'll see the dash and get the rattling inspiration of it. I'll see charges, and thin red lines, and hear hoarse commands and stand silent and thrilled in that.dread hush before the battle.' But what a disillusion! The hush before the battle was like tho quietness of surgeons and nurses before they go into tho operating-room. Nobody galloped tin on a lathered horse and fell unconscious after handing the general the long-waited despatch. The general himself bestrode no charger, but sat in a comfortable camp-chair beside a neatly spread tea-table. You heard a few tick-ticks and somebody handed him a slip—the substitute for tlie despatch—and he read it and drank his tea and said. 'Um-m-m, good. Woi-kin' out just as I thought. Wire Binks to bring up that battery, etc., etc.'

And all that method and precision and application of modern efficiency ideas makes the carnage that follows all tbe more ghastly. You don't know in advance just what is going to happen, you don't know.how it happened; you just look at the dreadful dead men and the shrieking wounded men. and they seem to you like innocent bystanders who have got in the way of somo great civil-engineering scheme and been torn and blown up." The American Civil War Kiplinc cnlls 'tho great epic of the Anglo-Saxon breed—more, it was the greatesS epic in the history of mankind": "And it hasn't been written—no nobody has written it yet. It is not vet far enough-in the past; you can't get the perspective. But it will he written, and when it is written a.s it should be a masterwork will be bom." '

The talk from here fell away to pastoral affairs: •On a walk after lunch Mr Cobb remarked the number and tnmenoss of the pheasants and the little English robms.

Ah, vcu know birds,' said Mr KinIng. 'I don't know birds so well, though I'm fond of them; but I do know trees. There are some good yews here. That one is s=aid to be moro than 800 years old. You'll know those —the sumach and the American dogwood and the . eoldenrod—l had Ihem brought over. I love th™ 6umach: it seems, to mc liko the of the American forests. but I can't make it blaze here —it turns pale. /' 'I wish you would stay until aftei dinner,' he went on. 'I'd' like you to hear a nightingale that eome-t' every evening to ouV garden. Pd like you to compare him with your mockingbird. Tell mc about "the mockingbird— what's he' like?'

"Mr Cobb said the Southern mock-ing-bird was the troubadour of tho woods, a licentious scoundrel, who left Mrs Mocking-bird at home with the little ones and went serenading other bird-beauties —but withal, a fellow with romance in his soul, a true poet. "'Well,' said Mr' Kinline. T wish I could say as much for the nightingale. I know all the popular illusions about him, but the truth is he* a blackguard with a gift of music in his throat that he can't control —a noisy, swashbuckling blackguard of the garden. He comes here at n'ght and he nroceeds to abuse all his enemies for all he's worth. It's feathered profanity in a disguise of harmony, and he 4ets so worked up over it that he finally, ends in an inarticulate gurgle.'

"'But I would like you to see a thrush crack a snail on a stone,' said Mr Kipling. ;l dare say you've never *een that. Well, it's most interesting. You see, when a thrush finds a stone that he likes, he brings all his snails to that particular stone, and he becomes so proficient that it takes just one crack to demolish the shell and lay

the unfortunate snail bare for consumption. There's one thrush here that does it particularly well, and I know where his stone is, but I'm afraid we're too lato for him.' "