MR RUDYARD KIPLING.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4427, 6 August 1901, Page 3

MR RUDYARD KIPLING.

HIS LITERARY CAREER. There is hope for Mr Rudyard Kipling —he -has repented writing "The AbsentBeggar.’' It is from a book about Ihe Friend" aJi its editing, prepared by Mr Julian Ralph, that we gather this reassuring fact. While at the Cape Mr Kipling dropped into conversation with a manwho, for a moment, did not recognise the ’Laureate of Empire.” When it dawned upon him that the little man with the piercing eyes, looking inquisitively upon the world -through his spectacles, was Mr Kipling he almost doubted his own eye sight. , "Can it be," he asked, "that I am addressing the author- of 'The AbsentMinded Beggar F" Mr Kipling ought to have blushed, but he did not. He answered, "Well, I -have heard that thing played on an organ in Capetown, and I should shoot the man who wrote it if it would kiot be suicide." The moral adorning this little tale is that Mr Kipling has a conscience that pricks him occasionally. It was distinctly disconcerting to -his ardent 'admirers that Rudyard Kipling, who reached the high-water mark of poetry in 1897 with his "Recessional”—the grandest hymn written since Newman's "Lead. Kindly Light”—should touch the very nadir of doggerel in 1900, with "The Absent-Minded Beggar.” In the'interval between the hymn and the music-hall dittv there'had been that alarmingly critical illness and tardy convalescence, and Mr Kipling’s friends had dread forebodings that a process of degeneration had set in. Now'that Mr Kiting has confessed himself ashamed of '/The Absent-Minded Beggar,” those anxious friends may breathe more freely and indulge in a comforting revival of'hope. The Kinling fever is dying down. It is as well that it should. We have had a solid decade J of KIPLTNGAIANIA,

and a reaction was inevitable. There was a time, three or four years ago, when to mildly-criticise any of Mr Kipling's works was rank heresy more horribie than repudiation of the historicity of the Fourth Gospel. Slavish aduldtion was poured upon Rudyard Kipling from all five continents. Everything he wrote was treasured as if verbally inspired; his prices per thousand words ascended to fabulous sums. -Editors would print anything ho wrote, and pay him anything his agent asked. His “best was like his worst" to the critical and uncritical. The 'world was his oyster, and he had opened it, at thirty, with a fountain pen. •

This mood lasted too long for Mr Kip. ling’s own sake. When he could‘get two shillings a word for stories like “Captains Courageous,” and a pound a line for poems like-“ Our Lady of the Snows," he was naturally not unwilling to see to it that the supply mat the demand. Doubtless, like bis own recruiting sergeant, he‘'arskt no questions and he winked the other eye" when the critics declared "Captains Courageous" libellous and "Our Lady of the Snows" genjus. He knew better, but he was content, like Brer Fox, to "lie low and keep on saying nuffinV' That 'time has gone by. We hope that Mr Kipling amassed sufficient wealth during the fat years of his -Vogue to sustain his soul during the loan years that may come'upon him. We do not agree with Max Beerbohn—who expects in a year or -two to meet Mr Kipling walking westwards down Fleet street, carrying under his am a brownpaner parcel contniningthe MS. of a story of his which has been rejected by the editor of "The Boy’s Own Paper’’—that there will be'a serious "slump” in Mr Kinline';, work: but we fanev that there will in the new decade be less disposition to beslaver him and hisV-ritinc with the blind adulation that marked the ATTITUDE OF HIS CRITICS in the Inst, decade. “It is dawning upon people that Mr Kipling is but human after all. and that his lines: YeVho are neither children nor gods. But men in a world of men, are quite applicable to their author. Mr Kipling is as "human 3 as you are,” and "treat him as sich" and his best work may be yet to come. • Rudyard Kipling romped into the literary world in a timely hour. With Tennyson in his vegetating period, 'Browning dead. Carlyle nearly forgotten, Ruskin a spent force, Swinburne retired on his laurels, poety was at a low ebb and prose in abad way. The aesthetic craze had succumbed to ridicule, the theological novel had exhausted its mild excitements, and the new realists had not yet fashioned their style. Edna Lyell was delighting the lovers‘of plain, honest stories, and people were sniggering over Mr Jerome K. Jerome’s cockney jocularities. Mr J. M. Barrie ws •still writing innocuous leading articles for a Nottingham daily paper. Dr Conan Doyle was doubting Whether his surgery or his study would be his permanent workshop. Mr Stanley Weyman was undiscovered, Mr Anthony Hope was still in obscurity, and Mr Henry Seton Merrimnn was in the "shilling shocker” period of his literary evolution. It was an age of famine in the world of hooks when the

Eastern heavens opened, and Kipling arrived with a book of “Plain Tales from the Hills” in his hand. We looked upon it and saw that it was good. Air Kipling came with a new manner, a new note, and with new matter. He introduced us to a new country—tor till he came India was terra incognito to the untravelled Britisher-and a new community —tho Anglo-Indians, a people apart, witn manners and habits all their own, the pro duct of environment, climate, and conditions of service. Mr Kipling came from a ‘’slack” country—for so he pictures India—but he had all the ‘

VIGOUR OF A HIGHLANDER. India, as he painted it was quite new To us. He turned a flashlight on the De. pendency, and we were -sliown a country where men take the “nots” out ot the Commandments and put them into the Beatitudes. It was not a pleasing picture he gave us; but there was a fascination in the bold sweeps of tho artist’s brush "splashed on a 'ten league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair." Anglo Indians were not all exuberantly enthusiastic about Kipling. They had nothing to thank him for. -The author was ’candid about himself. Ho confessed to being “tired," and suggested that he was blase. —having "learned the worst too 'young.” At twenty-five ho declared his willingness to . . sell my Tired soul For a bucking sea-beam roll On a black Bilbao swamp.' Sir Kipling was a cynic and a pessimist, it was thought, and his earlier work certainly gave that impression. But, in -pile of cynicism and pessimism, his bal lads and his stories gripped people. Everyone bad to read them, for they were everywhere the perpetual theme of discussion. There-was something uncanny in the tales —-something arresting in their brute force and tremendous movement. “The Drums of The Fore and Aft,” still Kipling’s chef d’ocnvre, and one of the very best short -lories in tho English language, seemed the incarnation of force in literature. The first impression the author gave his read ers was that of eocksureness. Equivocation never seemed to occur to‘biro; quali ficatiOn of a statement never, apparently, entered into bis bead. He was ‘emphatic in everything, and held his ground—- " What I have written I have written" seemed to be his motto. Then it became dear that the cocksureness was justified by absolute knowledge. Slowly the impres sion grew tbnt his stores of knowledge were encyclopaedic in their scope and microscopic in their minute accuracy. His descriptions, tested on the spot, proved photographically true; tho dialect he put into the mouths 'of his Yorkshiremen, Irishmen, Cockneys, Tommies, and even washerwomen, was declared by exnerts to bo phonograplucally exact. He never tripped, and was 1 NEVER CAUGHT NAPPING. "Tobacco has no taste in tho dark,” said blind Dick Hildar, and it is true, though millions of smokers (not amateur photographers w’ho learn this fact in the dark room) are unaware of it. "Very Hard Cash” was the title he gave to one of Charles Eeado’s novels which every one knows as “Hard -Cash." but which did originally bear the title Kipling had given it. Ho described steam engines with absolute technical accuracy, and in'“The Ship that Found Herself” showed a profound acquaintance with the technicalities of shipbuilding. The apparent omniscience made its impression upon readers and “critics accustomed to sciolism and superficiality. At last a "Pall Mall Gazette” poetaster declared that Kipling’s knowledge had but one limitation—he did not know that ho was 'a relation of Dr Parker’s wife. Kipling’s poetry com. nleted his triumph. "The Barrack Room Ballads’’ revealed the heart of Tommy Atkins and made ns see that soldiers are men and not merely machines. The Bal lads -had a mellow ring and a haunting "lilt.” Who that has read the quatrain. This is the sorrowful story. Told when tho twilight fails. And the -monkeys walk together

Holding each other’s tails, has been able to banish the musical nonsense from his brain? It is as bad as Mark Twain’s "Punch, brothers, punch with care,” rhyme. There are moods in Mr Kipling’s verse that inevitably recall Macaulay’s Lays: And how shall man die better than facing fearful odds ‘ For the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods. If Macaulay had not anticipated him Mr Kipling might have written those lines. There is an echo of Macaulay in: And what should they know 'of England who only England know 1 Had Macaulay sought themes for his “Lays” close at hand instead of selecting classical stories, he would no doubt have robbed Air Kipling of the credit of making poetry out 'of the common life of the com. mon people. Perhaps Mr Kipling’s greatest feat is his transmutation of the Cockney dialect into poetry. • MR BARR AND KIPLING. One of Mr Kipling’s earliest and best friends in England -was Mr Robert Barr, himself a writer of short stories far above the average. When visiting London on one occasion Mr Kipling-was the guest of Mr Barr. Suddenly he disappeared fromhis host’s chambers and was absent for two or three days-without in any way acquainting Air Barr with his whereabouts. Then he as suddenly returned with (it is said) a black eye, a bruised arm, and dishevelled attire. He had. it seems, been studying life in Whitechapel—living, as Air Whiteing’s hero did, in some '“John street” tenement—and, apparently, he had "umpired” a tenement row. Mr Kipling’s experience of the East End 'bore fruit in "The Story of Badalia Herodsfoot," tho grimmest and most realistic of all stories of East London. -The realism of “Badalia Herodsfoot” is unpleasantly vivid—it is photographic ’and brutaj. It must be confessed Air Kipling’s realism is occasionally nastv. Honesty compels tho use of the word. The stable yard phrase with which he describes the taste in a man’s ’mouth after an overnight debauch is mere bestiality ; the picture of the English soldier calmly wiping -his hands on his trousers after gouging out an Arab soldier’s eyes with his finger and thumb is repellent. It is simply riotous excess "in words. Air Kinling seems sometimes to be , “drunk with sight of power” to picture in words anything that his eyes can see or his imagination conceive. It is this realistic relentlessness that led a cynic to declare that his verse is "vulgarity lifup by flash es of genius.” , Although Mr Kinling ! is but half way through the allotted span of life—he was thirtv-five last December —he has estab lished a universal reputation. Perhaps bo isthe only living litterateur who has. Though there was no spontaneity in the memorable outburst of sympathy in his illposp (the messages from famous and exalted ’personages were sought by reply paid telegrams hy the Central News Agency in London, at the instigation of the "New Work Journal, the meanest of yellow papers) there is no "possible probable shadow of doubt” that Afr Kinling stands before the world as the foremost literary personage’of our time.—Literary World.