A NIGHT WITH KIPLING

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 23, 27 July 1927, Page 13

A NIGHT WITH KIPLING

MR. WATSON AT HIS BEST

The descriptive prose and poems of Rudyard Kipling, with their Wealth of dialect and ; imagination, provided., the central theme for Mr. Alexander Watson's third recital in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall last evening. There was a crowded audience; which was. not slow to show its approval of the artist's ability. His voice, his inflexion; even his actions, made the poems he recited unalloyed word pictures, and his listeners were able to picture for themselves the actual happening. Mr> Watson's opening item was Kipling s famous patriotic poem, "The English Flag," in which winds from the four corners of the earth tell the tale of the Empire's growth, and in which, he, has a quiet ''dig" at £tay r at-home folks in the line, .'What should they know of England who only England know?' The poem' is I'one ™ Kipling's most descriptive, and he shows the variety of land's over which the Union Jack has precedence:— ■

"Never was Isle so little, never was sea so-lone, But over the scud and the palm trees aa English flag was flown."

Mr. Watson's next effort was entirely different, th6ugh. still telling of the sea. The Ballad of the Bolivar" is a drunken sailor s narration of a voyage in a "coffin ship;-' and- of all the- poems he recited .during the evening this was probably his i '3 * here were a°y that should be placed farst. Two ; poems with the; Sussex dialect thick upon them—"The Thousandth '^?- tti.i? 1?? •-"? he Smuggler's Song"—were delightfully given, while one of Kipling's best known poems, "If,"- gave the artist an opportunity to recite something that required --entirely: .different -treatment. Otunga Din, a well-known soldier poem, was also included in the programme. The best of the Kipling items was-the prose S-f l7«^ Terence Mulyaney's adventure With My Lord the Elephant," in which the Irish, soldier finds something in : the temper of an elephant akin to the Irish temperament.-^ The brogue, the picture of t&e street-la Cawnpore, which is conjured up by the words alone,, and the final conflict m the compound were sp told that the audience had httle. difficulty in following the adventure to its culmination when the giant beast alloy/s Mulvaney to chain him forehand aft" in the elephant lines. The second *alf of the programme was devoted to a different class of literature. The first item came from the works of Dickens, and TiWl Stor?, of )] *he of "Little rh?jy^ Om 1 home where she had been sheltered, from, childhood, one Sw » s?** i?°r, t,iP ns of "David Copperfield.'^ Then followed "The Two Captains/? a poem by^ A. H: Miles, in which Uretna trreen plays a' prominent part in a story told by an old groom. A cheerful httle series' of verses by S. W. Foss, Hullo, was in different vein, but showed Mr. Watson's ."ability to deal with this as W »m o^er poems, and his concluding Jtems two "Cautionary Talcs," as they are termed Hilaire Belloc's poem of Lord Lundy," who cried on the slightest J'T°h VOCAi -T' ' iind n 'an; anonymous poem, .The Motor-car Boy," brought a-delict:-ful programme, to ,au end-.,-Mr.. Wat«oii had to answer t'o'an'iiisisfeht recall mU jf^oo^mght "<*} he gave Hudyard X pi The Hump" a poem which is little known, but as "cheer verse" deserves to be memorised by everyone. . •Mr Watson's fourth recital, which takes ?te™ <wf evening, will include several terns from the. writings of J.M. Barrio w U °on h«-r 0? d J)ortio? of the Programme will consist of poems by Tennyson Crosa^d Jam V" *' A(l^,ll llss y e li nLowd , and James Jrayn. ■ v-, ■, ■ *■ .