At twenty four Kipling, as correspondent for the Allahabad "Pioneer", set out for Japan, San Francisco, New York, and England. His tales of India found no market in America and, at first, none in London. But he had not long to wait. In 1890 "Plain Tales from the Hills" was brought out in London; a magazine published in one number "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney" and "The Ballad of East and West"; and there were interviews and reviews and appreciations. Rudyard Kipling was twenty five.

(Youth is a formula. And to make the confession is to take away nothing from the magic of that time. Every boy is a Euclid making the discovery of the immortal and venerable old propositions; demonstrating them, Every young girl is her own prism, deliciously unaware that there is a law of prisms such as she. The young Kipling invented no new formula; he merely applied his immense youthful exuberance to new classes of material. The formulaic nature of his early work was quickly evident. Naturally it has Naturally it has led to formulas in attempts to estimate him. The most hackneyed is the assertion that his best work was done before he was thirty.

It is an assertion not infrequently repeated today, but today its falsity is manifest. Whatever the difficulty in estimating Kipling's prose and verse, the one thing certain is that some of his worst work was done before he was thirty years old. He was only twenty five when "The Light That Failed" was brought out in the United States with a happy ending written especially for American consumption; the London edition, published a year later, finishing in more tragic fashion. "The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot"

which, if you know it not, I beg you to

forget was written at about the same time. "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book" belong to the under-thirty period, but Kipling was thirty six in the year that "Kim" was brought out. There is a further point: Was Kipling's thirty the same as another's? It is impossible to think of it so. A man who has his own job (a responsible one), his own servants and club and "a life of his own" at seventeen, is not as other men. not at all. Not to risk a doubtful comparison with Mr. Tarkington's hero, William Sylvanus Baxter, it is safe to say that Kipling at seventeen occupied the mental and spiritual position of most men from five to ten years older. Thus at thirty he would stand, presumably, with men of thirty five and even forty in attainment.

No,

Of course it is not quite so simple as that; life is a handicap race with any number of deductions and offsets and a few peculiar penalties. Kipling's thirty might be another man's forty; no such fixed relation would hold between him and his fellow at any other given age. And the difference, roughly, between an artist and a man of business is this: The man of business runs life's race as a race frankly, in open and seeing competition with men like him; the artist runs the race only with himself. With him the race is not to win, but to satisfy his need.

At twenty four Kipling, as correspondent for the Allahabad "Pioneer", set out for Japan, San Francisco, New York, and England. His tales of India found no market in America and, at first, none in London. But he had not long to wait. In 1890 "Plain Tales from the Hills" was brought out in London; a magazine published in one number "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney" and "The Ballad of East and West"; and there were interviews and reviews and appreciations. Rudyard Kipling was twenty five.

the confession is to take away nothing from the magic of that time. Every boy is a Euclid making the discovery of the immortal and venerable old propositions; demonstrating them) Every young girl is her own prism, deliciously unaware that there is a law of prisms such as she. The young Kipling invented no new formula; he merely applied his immense youthful exuberance to new classes of material. The formulaic nature of his early work was quickly evident. Naturally it has led to formulas in attempts to estimate him. The most hackneyed is the assertion that his best work was done before he was thirty.

It is an assertion not infrequently rethings today, but today its falsity is writer of Whatever the difficulty in stories); chauving's prose and verse go", Anglo-Saxon (that some of dic" is both too rece inaccurate), prophet, morale, AngloIndian, traveler, country gentleman, hermit. One is exhausted before he can possibly become exhaustive.

o

Next, it is necessary to list, as nearly as possible, all the varieties of his work: Short stories as far apart as the cheap cynicism of some of the earlier Indian tales and sketches and the lovely, delicate, and firm emotion of "They".

forget was written at about the same time. "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book" belong to the under-thirty period, but Kipling was thirty six in the year that "Kim" was brought out. There is a further point: Was Kipling's thirty the same as another's? It is impossible to think of it so. A man who has his own job (a responsible one), his own servants and club and "a life of his own" at seventeen, is not as other men. not at all. Not to risk a doubtful comparison with Mr. Tarkington's hero, William Sylvanus Baxter, it is safe to say that Kipling at seventeen occupied the mental and spiritual position of most men from five to ten years older. Thus at thirty he would stand, presumably, with men of thirty five and even forty in attainment.

No,

Of course it is not quite so simple as that; life is a handicap race with any number of deductions and offsets and a few peculiar penalties. Kipling's thirty might be another man's forty; no such fixed relation would hold between him and his fellow at any other given age. And the difference, roughly, between an artist and a man of business is this: The man of business runs life's race as a race frankly, in open and seeing competition with men like him; the artist runs the race only with himself. With him the race is not to win, but to satisfy his need.

the

at Batemairedy of Kipling - if tragedy A real feeling for the Was iesp ble for his retirement into the country, accentuated by a dislike of the literary circles of London. Since he has lived in that old sixteenth century house, his reclusive tendency has much strengthened. There has never been a telephone installed; only the fewest visitors were ever welcomed, and two significant things have happened to make visitors fewer. One was the death of

Kipling's son, John, in the Great War. Another was an interview by Clare Sheridan appearing after the war. Concerning the interview, there was a complete misunderstanding between Mr. Kipling and the interviewer. The interview was officially denied. I am not aware that it was specifically retracted. Its purport was highly critical of the United States. Published throughout America, it aroused much comment. In Michael Arlen's phrase, there was any amount of backchat. You are anxious, perhaps, to make a name for yourself? You might try to interview Mr. Kipling now.

...

You might even try to see him. Well, you can hang about the village of Burwash and the outskirts of Bateman's. Your reward may possibly be a glimpse of a "moodily stern man striding through Sussex lanes and along the roads, with an angler's creel slung on his back and a stout ashplant in his hand". He used to sing at the top of his voice as he strode along. . . . Much better not to try to speak to him.

Yes, the unique thing is that, since his youth, he has had no personal history at all. There is literally nothing

to record. People have made, in anxiety and enmity or with that curious malice that is not personal but is directed toward the great, all sorts of conjectures. The rumor got about that Kipling's whole ambition was to found a county family. But if he had that ambition, it lies frustrate; and if he had it, perhaps it was never so belittling as the gossips fancied. God knows the children of great writers are not writers - why should they be? - and in England a county family is a really enduring monument. For the son of AngloIndians, and the grandson of Wesleyan Methodist parsons, to found a county family would be a social conquest as splendid as the Norman conquest.

Stan

Perhaps a Conservative government might have given Mr. Kipling a peerage, but since 1914 Conservative governments have been scarce and before 1914 it would not have been possible. ley Baldwin is a kinsman of Kipling; one cannot be indelicate. But it is small wonder that as I am writing these lines Heywood Broun should be printing his opinion that "there seems every reason to believe that the man who wrote 'Kim' is definitely dead". The obvious reply is that, as a person, he never lived. I do not myself for one moment credit the biographical outline I have already set forth. It is, like the atomic theory and other such matters, a mere hypothesis, a plausible way of accounting for the presence of so much printed matter and the evidence of a force or energy which we do not understand. stand. There are the photographs of Kipling - but since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle discovered ectoplasm, the camera is not to be trusted. R. K. is a myth.

But if his personality does not exist outside his work, it is fully realized in it. We shall do well if we can comprehend all of his manysidedness and his singlesidedness. What fun to try!

"Born blasé", was J. M. Barrie's comment, when Kipling the stripling appeared on the scene. And Barrie went away to meditate; a long time passed, and he produced "Peter Pan". Stevenson recognized the newcomer's genius but made his reservations. There was "copiousness and haste", and Kipling "is all smart journalism and cleverness; it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper a good one, s'entendu; but there's no blot of heart's blood and the Old Night. I look on and admire; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and literature, I am wounded."

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. . . . He is our first authority on the second-rate, and has seen marvelous things through key-holes, and his backgrounds are real works of art." In his best tentative manner, Henry James spoke of R. K. as a young man who had gone a long way before breakfast. And, he might have added, was now eating a particularly hearty breakfast.

Thus the voices when Kipling was young in the lands. Barrie was right as far as he went; Stevenson had no inner faculty by which to measure the new man; Wilde's wit was based on the "Plain Tales from the Hills" and "Departmental Ditties" sort of thing, and, so based, was sound enough. Henry James was being properly circumspect.

The first truth, and the truth of all the most enduring, is that(Kipling is a great master of English prose.) He was not born so; you will not find this quality in his earliest work; he conquered it with the help of his instinct, his reporter's training, and the English Bible. I quote from "Men of Letters" by Dixon Scott:

The rhythms run with a snap from stop to stop; every sentence is as straight as a string; each has its self-contained tune. Prise one of them out of its place and you feel it would fall with a clink, leaving a slot that would never close up as the holes do in woollier work. Replace it, and it locks back like type in a form, fitting into the paragraph as the paragraph fits into the tale. There are no glides or grace-notes, or blown spray of sound. Most prose that loves rhythm yields its music like a mist, an emanation that forms a bloom on the page, softly blurring the partitions of the periods. Kipling's prose shrinks stiffly from this trustfulness. The rhythms must report themselves promptly, prove their validity, start afresh after the full stop. Lack of

faith, if you like - but also, it must be admitted, a marvellously unremitting keenness of craftsmanship. And it is the same with the optical integers. Sudden scenes stud his page like inlaid stones.

The leisurely ocean all patterned with peacocks' eyes of foam.

I swung the car to clear the turf, brushed along the edge of the wood, and turned in on the broad stone path to where the fountain basin lay like one star-sapphire.

When his feet touched that still water, it changed, with a rustle of unrolling maps, to nothing less than a sixth quarter of the globe, with islands colored yellow and blue, their lettering strung across their faces.

The

And these are no mere decorations. tales are gemmed - but as watches are jewelled; it is round these tense details that the action revolves. What is the emotional axis of "The Finest Story in the World"? It is that silver wire laid along the bulwarks which I thought was never going to break. Are we to know that a man was struck dumb? Then just as the lightning shot two tongues that cut the sky into three pieces something wiped his lips of speech as a mother wipes the milky lips of her child.

The motive of all his tales, as of "At the End of the Passage", is a picture seen in a lens. Even the shadowy outer influences that brood over Kim's life, the inscrutable Powers that move in its background, come to us first in designs as vivid and dense as the devices of heraldry as a Red Bull on a Green Field, as a House of Many Pillars; and before the close are resolved into the two most definite, clean-cut, and systematic of all earthly organizations: the military mechanism of India and the precise apparatus of Freemasonry. Kipling must have pattern and precision — and he has the power as well as the will. He can crush the sea into a shape as sharp as crystal, can compress the Himalayas into a little lacquer-like design, has even, in "The Night Mail" that clean, contenting piece of craftsmanship — printed a pattern on the empty air.