RUDYARD KIPLING IN INDIA.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XI, 12 September 1896, Page 339

RUDYARD KIPLING IN INDIA.

(By

E. Kay Robinson,

Magazine.)

its Pearton’s

[ln onr issue last week we quoted a few para graphs from Miss E. Kay Robinson's * Kipling in India' which appeared in Mayotine. The article is so interesting that we decided to reproduce it in full in this issue, feeling sure that the many admirers of the talented author will welcome the insight it gives into his work.] CHANCE found me on November 2nd last, within twenty four hours of my landing in America, inside the Century Club, New York, at the moment when Rudyard Kipling was being elected a member, and I had last seen him years before at Lahore, in India, where he used to be my yoke fellow in the daily millround of Anglo-Indian journalism. This coincidence has suggested that some reminiscences of Kipling, as he was before be became famous and adopted America as his home, might not be without interest. Although my official relatione with Kipling did not commence till the autumn of 1886, our acquaintance on paper opened almost immediately after my arrival in India in January, 1885. I had written some dog-Latin verses in the Pioneer of Allahabad, to which pages I had gone out as assistant editor, and signed them with my initials * K.R.,’ while Kipling, who was assistant editor of the Civil and Military Gazette of Lahore, was also in the habit of sending verses to the Pioneer, signed * R K.' I was unaware of this, and, indeed, of Kipling’s existence, until I received a courteous letter from him saying that he had been undeservedly complimented upon the Latin verses which, owing to the similarity of our initials, were being attributed to him. I soon had opportunities of reading some of his work, and appreciated the compliment implied in the mistake. Shortly afterwards I obtained a month's leave, and among other places visited Lahore, where I made the acquaintance of the Kipling family. A more charming circle, or rather square, it would be hard to find.

John Lock wood Kipling, the father, a rare genial soul, with happy artistic instincts, a polished literary style, and a generous, cynical sense of human humour, was without exception the most delightful companion I have ever met. Mrs Kipling, the mother, preserved all the graces of youth with a sprightly, if occasionally caustic, wit, which made her society always desirable, except, perhaps, to those who had cause to fear the lash of her epigrams. Miss Kipling, the sister, now Mrs Fleming, inherits all her mother’s wit, and possesses a rare literary memory. I believe that there is not a single line in any play of Shakespeare which she cannot quote. She has a statuesque beauty, and in repose her face is marvellously like that of the lovely Mary Anderson. Indeed, a terra cotta bust of Miss Kipling, executed by her father, although an excellent likeness, used generally to be mistaken by strangers (myself at first included) for a bust of Mary Anderson. With Kipling himself I was disappointed at first. At the time of which I am writing, early in 1886, his face had not acquired the character of manhood. His juvenile appearance contrasted moreover unpleasantly with his stoop, acquired through much bending over an ottice table, his heavy eyebrows, his spectacles, and his sallow Anglo-Indian complexion ; while his jerky speech and abrupt movements completed an impression so unlike what I had expected to derive from meeting with the author of Kipling’s poems that I felt iuclined for the moment to throw him down from the high pedestal of future fame upon which I had already placed him. With the passage of time a marked and rapid improvement has taken place in Kipling’s personality, and even at our first meeting the unfavourable effect which it produced was transient; for his conversation was always brilliant, and his sterling character gleamed through the humourous light which shone behind his spectacles. In ten minutes his personal disadvantages were forgotten, and he fell into bis natural place as the most striking member of a remarkably clever and charming family. It was a domestic quartette—they had combined, by the way, in the previous year to produce • The Quartette,’ a Christmas publication—of unusual ability, and each of the four had individually attained to al most as much literary fame as can be won in India, where the English reading public numbers perhaps fifty thousand persons, scattered over a vast continent, threefourths of whom are either too preoccupied with dry-as dust official business, or too devoted to the frivolities of life to regard literature as anything better than a vehicle for the conveyance of ponderous statistics, or a means of embroidering the accounts of polo matches.

It was inevitable that such a family should, amid such surroundings, become a select Mutual Admiration Society, with a

forcing hoote atmosphere of warm domestic approval, liable to daogeroaaly encourage eccentric growth in Kipling’s budding genius. He was compelled, however, to toil daily in a newspaper office under a man who appreciated bis talent very little, and kept him at work for the most part utterly uncongenial ; and this may have acted as a salutary antidote. Nevertheless it was almost pathetic bo look through the Civil and Military Gazette at that time, and note how Kipling’s blight humour only Hashed out in the introductory lines Co summaries of Government reports, dry semi political notes, and the side headings of scissors and paste paragraphs. This, however, was the maximum of literary display usually allowed to him, and it seemed such waste of genius that I strongly urged his parents to send him away to England. But one of Rudyard Kipling’s characteristics is, or perhaps was—for it is hard for a man whom the world agrees to praise to believe that the world is wrong—modest self depreciation. He also entertains extravagant sentiments of gratitude for services be believes to have been rendered to him. To all suggestions, therefore, that he should leave India and make a fresh start in the world of Fleet-street he always returned the answer that, when he knew he could do good work it would be time for him to strive for a place in the English world of letters, and that in any case the proprietors of the Civil and Military Gazette had taken him on trust, a boy fresh from school, and he would serve them loyally, like Jacob in the Bible, for his full seven years. There are very few, if they had felt, as Kipling must even then have felt, the power to move men, who would, from modesty and a scrupulous sense of obligation, have been content to remain at Lahore in the distant north-west of India, doing the dreariest drudgery of ill-paid newspaper work. Whether be gained or lost thereby in the long run I do not know ; for, against the dullness of the work, and the smallness of the pay, may be set the wholesome discipline for talents which threatened to be redundant, and still err occasionally on the side of exuberance ; but that I personally gained much is certain, for to Kipling’s refusal to leave India was due the fact that when I subsequently arrived at Lahore to take over the editorship of the Civil and Military Gazette, I found him still there as * assistant.’ I also found a letter from the chief proprietor, in which he expressed the hope that I would be able to * put some sparks into the paper.’ When the staff of a journal consists of two men only, one of whom is Kipling, such an exhortation addressed to the other doubtless seems curious; bnt, as I have said above, Kipling bad been discouraged from ‘sparkling.’ There are men going about, apparently sane, who deny to Rudyard Kipling any literary merit whatever, ‘unless,’ as they say, ‘vulgarity can be called such,’ and my predecessr r in the editorship of the Civil and Military Gazette spoke of him, in bis most favourable mood as * a clever young pup,’ and as a general rule did bis best to make a sound second rate journalist out of Kipling, by keeping his nose at the grindstone of proof reading, scissors and-paste work, and the boiling down of Government blue books into summaries for publication. But Kipling had the buoyancy of a cork, and after his long office hours still foutd spare energy to write those charming sketches and poems which in ‘ Soldiers Three,’ ete, and the ‘Departmental Ditties,' gave him such fame as can be won in the narrow world of Anglo-India. The privilege which he most valued at this time was the permission to send sneb things as his editor, my predecessor, refused for the Civil and Military Gazette, to other papers for publication. These papers used to publish and pay for them gladly, and the compliments and encouragement with which more sympathetic critics treated his work partly consoled him for the consistent efforts made by bis own boss to suppress bis exuberant literature, and bis subsequent writings betray no undue suppression of fancy or depression of spirits. Theie are many indeed who think Kipling’s chief or only fault is excessive selfconfidence, a cock snreness, so to speak, about any phrase or sentiment he may Hing down to the public being accepted as the mintage of genius. Perhaps this fault

— and I think it is not absent from some of Kipling’s writings—would have been more conspicuous if my predecessor in the editorship of the Civil and Military Gazette at Lahore bad been one <f his admirers. Youth is easily spoiled by success ; and, although Kipling a year or two later passed through the ordeal of suddenly stepping into world wide fame, without turning a hair or his back npon any old friend, however humble—and Kipling’s range of acquaintance was as ‘exter stve and peculiar ’ as Mr Weller’s knowledge of India—he may owe tbe fact that he has not been spoiled by a literary elevation as sudden as Byron's, to tbe chastening influence of

those early yean, when * elever young pup' was the highest praise his work could extort from tbe superior under whom be worked, tnd when bis best writings only saw the light of day after they had been refused publication in his own paper. The reason for this treatment of Kipling’s literary efforts is not easy to give. Journalism in India is uncommonly hard labour for the few Englishmen who con stitute an editorial staff; and with the greatest dislike of using a razor to ent grindstones, I could not help burdening Kipling with a good deal of daily drudgery.

My experience of him m » newspaper haek suggests, however, that if you want to fin-* a man who will cheerfully do the work of three men, yon should catch a young genius. Like a blood horse between the shafts of a coal waggon, he may go near to bursting his heart in the effort, but he'll drag that waggon along as it ought to go. The amount of stuff that Kipling got through in the day was indeed wonderful ; and though I had more or less satistaetory assistants after he left, and the staff grew with the paper’s prosperity, I am sure that more solid work was done in that office when Kipling and I worked together than ever before or after. There was one peculiarity of Kipling’s work, which I really must mention, namely, the enormous amount of ink he used to throw about. In the beat of summer white cotton trousers and a thin vest constituted bis cffice attire, and by the day’s end he was spotted all over like a Dolmatian dog. He bad a habit of dipping his pen frequently and deep into the ink pot, and as all his

movements were abrupt, almoat jerky, the ink used to fly. When he darted into my room, as be used to do about one thing or another in connection with the contents of the paper a dozen times in tbe morning, I bad to shout to him to * stand off;’ otherwise, at I knew by experience, the abrupt halt he would make and the flourish with which he placed the proof in his hand before me, would send the penful of ink—he always had a full pen in his hand—flying over me. Driving or sometimes walking home to breakfast in his light attire plentifully besprinkled with ink, his spectacled face peeping out under an enormous mushroomshaped pith hat, Kipling was a quaintlooking object, especially as the vest —not infrequently minus the top button—displayed an expanse of cheat. This was in the hot weather, when Lahore lay blistering month after month under the sun, and every white woman and half of the white men had fled to cooler altitudes in the Himalayas, and only those men were left who, like Kipling and myself, had to stay. So it mattered little in what costume we went to and from the office. In the winter, when * society * had returned to Lahore, Kipling was rather scrupulous in tbe matter of drees, but his lavishness in the matter of ink changed not with the seasons. He was always the best of company, babbling over with delightful humour, which found vent in every detail of our day’s work together; and the chance visitor to the editor’s office most often have carried away very erroneous notions of the amount of work which was being done when he found us in the fits of laughter that usually accompanied our consultations about the make-up of the paper.

Thia is my ehief recollection of Kipling as assistant and companion ; and I would place sensitiveness as bis second characteristic. Although a master of repartet, for instance, he dreaded dining at the clnb, where there was one resident member, since dead, who disliked him, and was always endeavouring to snub him. Kipling's retorts invariably turned the tables on bis assailant, and got us all in a roar; and, besides this, Kipling was popular in the club while his enemy was not. Under snch circumstances an ordinary man would have courted the combat, and enjoyed provoking his clumsy opponent; but the man’s animosity hurt Kipling, and I knew that he often, to avoid the ordeal, dined in solitude at home when be would infinitely have preferred dining at the club, but I conld never persuade him of the folly f doing so.

For a mind thus highly strung the plains of India in the hot weather make a bad abiding place; and many of Kipling’s occasional verses and passages in his Indian stories tell ns how deep he drank at times of the bitterness of the dry cnp that rises to the lips of the Englishman In India in the scorching heat of the sleepless Indian night. In the deep of that cnp lies madness, and the keener the intellect, and the more tense the sensibilities, the greater the danger in those weary honrs, when the dawn brings no relief to the throbbing brain as the weary body rises to another day of work in the stifling heat.*l suffered little in the hot weather, day or night; and yet Kipling, who suffered much at times, willingly went through trials in pursuit of his art which nothing would have induced me to nndergo. His * City of Dreadful Nights ’ was no fancy sketch, bnt a picture burnt into his brain during the suffocating night honrs that he spent exploring the reeking dens of opium and vice in the worst quarters of the native city of Lahore ; while his * City of Two Creeds ’ was another picture of Lahore from the life—and the death—when be watched Mussulman and Hindoo spending the midnight hours in mutual butchery. Apart from his marvellous faculty for assimilating local colour without apparent effort, Kipling neglected no chance, and spared no labour in acquiring experience that might serve a literary purpose. Of the various races of India, whom the ordinary Englishman Inmps together as * natives,’ Kipling knew the qnaintest

details of habits and language, and distinctive ways of thought. I remember well one long limbed Pathan, indescribably filthy, but with magnificent mien and features—Mahbab Ali, I think was his name—who regarded Kipling as a man apart from all other * Sahibs.* After each of his wanderings across the unexplored fricges of Afghanistan, where bis restless spirit of adventure led him, Mahbab Ali always used to turn np travelstained, dirtier and more majestic than ever, for confidential colloquy with * Kuppeling Sahib,’ bis * friend ’; and I more than fancy that to Mahbab Ali, Kipling owed the wonderful local colour which he was able to put into such tales as * Dray wsra you dee’ and ' The Man Who Would be King.’ To me, as Kipling’s superior, Mahbab Ali was always embarrassingly deferential, for we understood not a word of each other’s language, and his Mosaic magnificence of mien oppressed me, no less than if Abraham bad arisen to do obeisance before me. His presence in my office was in fact overpowering, and so was his smell. Out of doors, however, I have seen Kipling, in his cotton clothes and great mushroom hat, and Mahbab Ali’s towering, turbaned, and loose robed figure walking together in earnest and confidential colloquy, the queerest contrast that friendship. even in India, that land of startling contrasts, has probably ever produced. Bnt Mahbab Ali. peace to bis ashes, was only one link in the strange chain of associations that Kipling riveted round himself in India.

No half note in the wide gamut of native ideas and custom was unfamiliar tohim. just as he had left no phase of white life in India unexplored. He knew the undercurrent of the soldiers’ thoughts in the whitewashed barracks on the sunburnt plain of Mian Mir better than sergeant or chaplain. No father confessor penetrated more deeply into the thoughts of fair but frail humanity than Kipling, when the frivolous society of Anglo-India formed the object of his inquiries. The ‘ railway folk,’ that queer colony of white, half white, and three-quarter black, which remains an nncared for and discreditable excrescence npon British rule in India, seemed to have unburdened their souls to Kipling of all their grievances, their poor pride, and their hopeless hopes. Some of the best of Kipling’s work has been in

stories drawn from the lives of these people although to the ordinary Anglo-Indian, whose caste restrictions are almost more inexorable than those of the Hindoo whom he affects to despise on that account, they are as a sealed book. Sometimes taking a higher flight, Kipling has made viceroys and commandera-in-chief, members of council and secretaries to government his theme, and the flashes of light that he has thrown upon the inner working machines of government in India have been recognised as too truly coloured to be intuitive or aught but the light of knowledge reflected from the actual facts. And no other writer, for instance, could have excited, as Kipling did. Lord Dufferin’s curiosity as to bow the inmost councils of the State had thus been photographed, without having somehow or other caught a glimpse of things as they were for at least one moment; and it is this which is the strongest attribute of Kipling’s mind that it photographs, as it were, every detail of passing scenes that can have any future utility for literary reference or allusion.

His habit of thus storing up valuable material while seemingly engrossed in the business or pastime of the moment, inclined me at first almost to think that his absorption of local colour was automatic in its action, and dependent upon no mental and conscious act; but afterwards I concluded that this curious and admirable power arose merely from the activity and swiftness of bis mind. As the drongoshrike in India, tearing the crow, will leave a tree at the same time as his victim, pass and repass it, swoop upon it half a dozen times and make swift circuits round it, eventually alighting simultaneously with the crow upon another tree; so, I suppose Kipling was able, however he might be engaged, to make mental excursions of various kinds while still pursuing the even tenor of the business in hand.

In sporting matters, for instance, I suppose nothing is more difficult than for a man who is no * sportsman ’ —in the exclusive sense of the men who carry the scent of the stables and the sawdust of the ring with them wherever they go—to speak to these in their own language along their own lines of thought. Of a novelist who writes a good sporting story, it is considered praise to say that * none but a real sportsman could have written it.’ But

Kipling was no sportsman, and an indifferent honeman ; yet his sporting verses always took the sporting world in India (where sport takes precedence of almost every other power of human activity) by storm.

I recollect in particular one case in which a British cavalry regiment, once famous in the annals of sport, and quartered at I'mballa, once the brilliant headquarters of military steeplechasing in India, published an advertisement of their steeplechases, and to attract number rather than quality of entries, stated that the fences were * well sloped ’ and * littered on the landing side,’ or something to that effect. Now, if Kipling had ridden a steeplechase then, I imagine the odds would have been against him and the horse arriving at the winning post together; and in India be could only have seen a tew second class steeplechases in the way that the ordinary spectator sees them. Bnt be wrote some verses upon this advertisement, reminding the regiment of what they had been and of wbat Umballa had once been in sport, filled wita such technicalities of racing and stable jargon that old steeplechasers went humming them all over every station in Upper India, and swearing that •it was the best thing ever written in English.' It was a bitter satire on the degeneracy in sport of the cavalry officers who * sloped * and * littered ’ their fences, to make the course easy and safe ; and to the nonsporting reader the technical words gave good local colour, and might or might not have been rightly used ; but wbat impressed me was that a sporting * vet.’, who had lived in the pigskin nearly all his life, should have gone wandering about the Lahore Club, asking people * where the youngster picks it all up?' As for the bitterness of the satire, it is enough to say that many years after an officer of the regiment, finding the verses in a scrap-book of cuttings belonging to a friend in whose house be was staying, apologised for the necessity of tearing the page out and burning it. On leaving India Kipling was plunged into a new world, and to some extent seemed to have lost bis bearings, while his Indian writings—of jungle life, etc.—are losing the exactitude of local colour which marked his earlier work. It may be that I, writing as one who has only left India a few months, am regarding his late Indian

work through the wrong end of the telescope, and that what it has lost in special Indian accuracy it may have gained in world-wide interest ; but I believe that Kipling's maturing experience of life in Europe and America will before long enable him to make a fresher start on Western topics, and smite his way with ease to the very foremost place among the writers of the age, whether of prose or verse.