Kipling’s Fag

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 74, 28 March 1936, Page 7

Kipling’s Fag

SCHOOLDAYS RECALLED The late Kudyard Kipling’s “fag” at school, Brigadier-General R. 11.I 1 . Edwards, told members of the Kipling Society in London something about those schooldays. “I had the honour of being Rudyard’s ‘fag' for a little bit. I used to cook sparrows over the gas/' ho said. ‘‘ Kipling mentions in his writings some of those nasty little boys who used to rob orchards and fill empty clothes bags with apples; and I think somewhere else ho mentions that some boys were shot by farmers with saltpetre. I was! “I was in the sick-bay after that, and other fellows were there. I was warming myself by the lire and somebody pushed me and I sat in it. That did a lot of good! Kipling was not so bad as those other fellows. He had an impish mind. You could see that he was a Teal imp. “I remember that he wroto something in 'The Chronicle’—an ode on being failed in the preliminary for Sandhurst. ‘Stalky,’ now Major-General Dunste'rville, used to give them competitions. He would say, ‘Now you just go away and write an ode on being failed in this prelim. ’ “1 scratched my head,” said General Edwards. “I searched in ‘The Chronicle’ and found Kipling’s odo and pushed it in. The next thing I knew 1 was up for a prize. I said, ‘Look here, there is some mistake.’ The powers that bo said, ‘Well, you are for a prefect’s licking’—and I got the very best I ever had!”