THE KIPLING TRAIL

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4023, 27 October 1931, Page 2

THE KIPLING TRAIL

A VISIT TO LAHORE A huge, old-fashioned eighteenth century gun and an Indian child scrambling over it—this was the first sight that impressed itself on my attention the first morning 1 strolled down the Mall at Lahore, wrote a special correspondent recently in the ‘News Chronicle.’ Somehow it seemed vaguely familiar to me. Then 1 remembered ‘Kim,’ and hunted it out on my return among my host’s books. There was the scene hi* the opening words. “Kim sat in defiance of municipal orders astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the vender house, as the natives call the Lahore Museum.” 1 realised with a brill that 1 was in the heart of the Kipling country. In the afternoon 1 set out to look for more footprints. I began by visiting the offices of ‘The Civil and Military Gazette,’ where Mr Kipling had begun his astonishing career. The buildings facing the street are new, but walking through 1 found the identical white-washed bungalow from vlijcli the paper in his days was produced. On the wall a tablet laconically records that “ Rudyard Kipling worked here 1885-1889.'

Quite shamelessly I went inside in search of further relics. 1 found that Kipling during those four years had the title of assistant editor. But as tlie editor was the only other member of the staff the position was not as grand as it sounds. Tiie ‘Civil and Military Gazette’ was in those days little more than the parish magazine of the Lahore barracks. Through the kindness of the tafi I was allowed to hunt about in the dusty files of the middle ’eighties, but I could find little more than notices of regimental ordinance or forthcoming gymkhanas. Sad to record, 1 could find no signed articles, nor, indeed, any traces of the master touch. Yet it was while he was general bottle washer for the paper that he published three at least of his most famous works—‘Kim,’ ‘Plain Tales from tho Hills,’ and ‘ Wee Willie Winkie.’ Apparently ho asked that they should be published from the ‘Civil and Military Printing Press.’ But the suggestion was immediately turned down. His editor had no opinion of them at all. Nor does he seem to have gone out of his way to retain Mr Kipling’s services.

The story is that when Mr Kipling sent in his resignation the editor, acknowledging it, advised him to give up tin' profession of writing, “as he was never likely to make much money out of it.” At any rate, he was allowed without protest to transfer his genius to ‘The Pioneer’ at Allahabad. To-day when it is announced that a Kipling manuscript has fetched several thousand pounds in America there is a feverish search in ‘ The Civil and Military Gazette ’ office through old drawers and disused pigeon holes to see if happily a few lines by Mr Kipling on a local flower show or a regimental concert have survived the forty-five years since his departure. CHIPS FOR WORSHIPPERS. Hut all that remains in tangible form is Mr Kipling's desk. It is an old-f;.shinned affair with a balustrade round it, chips of which are surreptitiously broken off as mementoes by over-enthusiastic tourists.

I went out into the sunlight again to explore the rest of Lahore. In appearance it cannot have changed much. I was nearly knocked down by a tonga whi.li might have been the very same one which collapsed with Mr Kipling inside on his famous journey to Cdiapur. It is true that the Mall is macadamised and that the chief officials all have motor cars, hut the main means of transport is still the tonga, a kind of one-horsed dogcart.

It is only necessary to turn off a few yards from the main road to be in the middle of one of Mr Kipling’s descriptive scenes. Here on the background of the swarming bazaar are the beggars, their hands perpetually cupped for alms, the fakirs encased in dust and dirt, the long-haired wild-eyed camel drivers, the sallow-faced Chinamen who have traversed the terrible Tibetan snows, Afghans from across the mountains still untamed, the mild Hindu promising for an incredibly small sum to teach shorthand and typewriting—every character, in fact, that Mr Kipling brought to life for the delectation of the middle classes of the jubilees. I hired a tonga for a drive outside the town, and came across the cantonments in which Mr Kipling loved to gossip with those “who had taken the Queen’s shilling,” and had thereby “ entered the lordiest life on earth.” They were the same buildings as in his day, and from stories 1 heard it would not be difficult to find inside them again Privates Ortheris and Mulvaney. Vet it is not a generation, but an age, that separates us from the spirit in which those extraordinary books were written. Jingoism, which barely survived “ the black week ” of 1899 in South Africa, perished altogether in the barrages of the Somme. Nobody finds any music to-day in the sputter of machine guns, and the idea of “ the white man's burden " is distinctly” de mode.

Perhaps that is why in all these years Mr Kipling has never paid a return visit to Lahore. The scene may he the same, but the background which to Mr Kipling was three-quarters of its fascination has gone for ever.