At last, Kipling is saved from the ravages of political correctness

The Daily Telegraph ^ | May 13, 2003 | Andrew Roberts

[bruinbirdman]

'Take up the White Man's burden," Rudyard Kipling implored the Americans in 1899 as they began ruling the Philippines, hoping that they would better the lot of the inhabitants, whom he characterised as "new-caught, sullen peoples,/ Half devil and half child".

That poem has wrecked Kipling's standing with bien-pensant opinion ever since, but as the United States now bravely embarks on its much more modern form of empire-lite, his reinstatement as a serious political figure - as opposed to merely a pre-eminent phrase-coiner - has received a huge boost.

The Elizabeth Longford Historical Biography prize has been awarded to David Gilmour's superbly revisionist work The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, which triumphantly succeeds in rescuing Kipling's reputation as a significant political thinker.

As the sole Tory reactionary among the judges - the others on the panel were Lady Antonia Fraser, Flora Fraser, Michael Holroyd and Ben Pimlott - I was delighted that Gilmour's argument received such admirably objective appreciation, as he attempted to save Kipling from the taunts of "racist" and "fascist" that have followed him down the decades in countless polytechnic Eng Lit seminars and Left-liberal literary drawing rooms.

The prize was set up in memory of Elizabeth Longford, who died last year aged 96 and whose many biographical subjects included the definitive works on Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington. The financier Peter Soros and his wife, Flora, Lady Longford's granddaughter and the biographer of Emma Hamilton and Queen Caroline, have very generously endowed the annual prize. Solely with biographers for its judges, the ELHB prize is set to become a tremendously prestigious award.

It is all the more satisfying that a scholarly work placing the poet laureate of the British Empire in his proper historical and political context should have won the inaugural prize, and won it unanimously. Only six years after his death in 1935, Kipling was declared to have "dropped out of modern literature" by the critic Edmund Wilson.

In 1942 George Orwell declared that "during five literary generations every enlightened person has despised him" as "morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting". Although Kipling's aesthetic appeal, summed up by Philip Hensher as "his formal skill in verse and his visionary strangeness in prose", has long been revived by critics, his politics have continued to outrage the politically correct.

Until now. David Gilmour's scholarly and wide-ranging book establishes that, far from being a jingoistic drum-banger and racist flag-waver, Kipling held far more complex and subtle views about the Empire he loved. A racist would not have glorified Gunga Din in the way Kipling did, while a gung-ho wider-still-yet-wider imperialist would never have chosen Recessional as the title of his poem to mark Queen Victoria's ebullient 1897 Diamond Jubilee, in which Kipling warned of the day when "Far-called, our navies melt away/ On dune and headland sinks the fire".

The abuse of Kipling has been long and sustained, yet his works might prove our ideal cultural reference for the next stages of the war against terror: he warned that imperialists could only expect "the blame of those ye better,/ The hate of those ye guard".

Gilmour does a good job explaining the most notorious lines in the canon, in which Kipling seems to describe native peoples as "lesser breeds without the law". I have never believed anything other than that those lines referred to the Kaiser's Germans, who were giving imperialism a bad name in Africa and elsewhere by their brutal and arbitrary conduct.

It has been argued that "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" only referred to the irreconcilable points on the compass, whereas Kipling believed that easterners and westerners could meet as equals. Oscar Wilde's barb about Kipling's "superb flashes of vulgarity" more and more looks like a commonplace inversion of cliché, typical of the kind of gag on which so much of his over-lauded wit depended. Far from being vulgar, Kipling's writings on the British squaddie and British India show how much he idolised, but never idealised, those huge entities in his life.

Edward Said's 1993 book Culture and Imperialism denounced as "profoundly embarrassing" Kipling's masterpiece, Kim, the book that thrust the struggling journalist into the global limelight, but Gilmour has the courage not only profoundly to disagree but also to point out why it is a truly great book. Yet this is not primarily a work of literary criticism. As its subtitle suggests, it is a political examination of the poet's public life and actions.

Gilmour points out how often his subject was proved right in many, if not most, of his predictions. Kipling predicted the Boers would establish apartheid if they were allowed to; as early as the mid-1890s, he warned that the Kaiser would unleash an aggressive world war; he said that communal genocide in the Punjab would accompany any over-hasty transfer of power in India; and he denounced the appeasement of Adolf Hitler. It is a noble, but by no means exhaustive, list.

Of course, it is as the finest phrase-maker since Shakespeare that Kipling will be remembered; many of the phrases we associate with the First World War and its commemoration were his. Kipling sacrificed his beloved son John, who died at the Battle of Loos in 1915 serving with the Irish Guards, for the British imperial ideal; his body was never found. As Gilmour puts it, "John Kipling did not shame his kind", and it was a grieving father who chose many of the inscriptions for the war memorials, such as: "A Soldier of the Great War known unto God."

This chivalrous and well-researched resuscitation of Kipling as a political animal, as opposed to just a man of letters, convincingly absolves him from allegations of racism, fascism, homosexuality and any number of lesser accusations. A genuine hero has been restored to us, in an age that affects not to recognise the species. Best of all, perhaps, for a brand new prize with a sparkling future, for its quality of writing and fearlessness of opinion, Elizabeth Longford herself would have loved this book.

[AnAmericanMother]

Pelicans In The Wilderness
(A Grave Near Haifa)

The blown sand heaps on me, that none may learn
Where I am laid for whom my children grieve. . . .
O wings that beat at dawning, ye return
Out of the desert to your young at eve!

[frodolives]

Kipling bump. I read "Jr. Great Books" to ten third graders each Wednesday. We discuss literature. This week it's "The Elephants' Child". You'll laugh out loud when you read it. It brought back floods of happy memories of his "Just So Stories".

And for you REAL gen x-er's, ever heard of "The Jungle Book"?

[AnAmericanMother]

I like Kipling's explication of his own pen-and-ink drawing of the Crab that Played with the Sea:

THIS is a picture of Pau Amma the Crab running away while the Eldest Magician was talking to the Man and his Little Girl Daughter. The Eldest Magician is sitting on his magic throne, wrapped up in his Magic Cloud. The three flowers in front of him are the three Magic Flowers. On the top of the hill you can see All-the-Elephant-there-was, and All-the-Cow-there-was, and All-the-Turtle-there-was going off to play as the Eldest Magician told them. The Cow has a hump, because she was All-the-Cow-there-was; so she had to have all there was for all the cows that were made afterwards. Under the hill there are Animals who have been taught the game they were to play. You can see All-the-Tiger-there-was smiling at All-the-Bones-there-were. and you can see All-the-Elk-there-was, and All-the-Parrot-there-was, and All-the-Bunnies-there-were on the hill. The other Animals are on the other side of the hill, so I haven't drawn them. The little house up the hill is All-the-House-there-was. The Eldest Magician made it to show the Man how to make houses when he wanted to. The Snake round that spiky hill is All-the-Snake-there-was, and he is talking to All-the-Monkey-there-was, and the Monkey is being rude to the Snake, and the Snake is being rude to the Monkey. The Man is very busy talking to the Eldest Magician. The Little Girl Daughter is looking at Pau Amma as he runs away. That humpy thing in the water in front is Pan Amma. He wasn't a common Crab in those days. He was a King Crab. That is why he looks different. The thing that looks like bricks that the Man is standing in, is the Big Miz-Maze. When the Man has done talking with the Eldest Magician he will walk in the Big Miz-Maze, because he has to. The mark on the stone under the Man's foot is a magic mark: and down underneath I have drawn the three Magic Flowers all mixed up with the Magic Cloud. All this picture is Big Medicine and Strong Magic.

[AnAmericanMother]

Amen re "The Gardener". One of his most beautiful stories.

Have you read "The Janeites" and "In the Interest of the Brethren"?

[Tax-chick]

ever heard of "The Jungle Book

We have the Complete Illustrated in hardback - the paperback fell apart from overuse! My kids love it when I read this to them, even though they can all read (except the babies, who also aren't listening!).

The vocabulary, the literary technique, the anthropology, the character development ... it's a complete curriculum in itself!

[AnAmericanMother]

If you track down the original context of "If", you'll find that it was written about George Washington.

It's in Kipling's book of stories "Rewards and Fairies", which with "Puck of Pook's Hill" forms a set of wonderful stories about English history in the context of Kipling's own land at Burwash in Sussex. Kipling himself said that these two books appeared to be written for children but were actually written for adults. Worth hunting down and reading. The poem about Queen Elizabeth I gives me the cold shivers . ..

The Looking-Glass
(A Country Dance)
Rudyard Kipling

QUEEN Bess was Harry’s daughter. Stand forward partners all!
In ruff and stomacher and gown
She danced King Philip down-a down,
And left her shoe to show ’twas true—
(The very tune I’m playing you)
In Norgem at Brickwall!

The Queen was in her chamber, and she was middling old,
Her petticoat was satin, and her stomacher was gold.
Backward and forward and sideways did she pass,
Making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass
As comely or as kindly or as young as what she was!

Queen Bess was Harry’s daughter. Now hand your partners all!

The Queen was in her chamber, a-combing of her hair.
There came Queen Mary’s spirit and It stood behind her chair,
Singing “Backward and forward and sideways may you pass,
But I will stand behind you till you face the looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass
As lovely or unlucky or as lonely as I was!”

Queen Bess was Harry’s daughter. Now turn your partners all!

The Queen was in her chamber, a-weeping very sore,
There came Lord Leicester’s spirit and It scratched upon the door,
Singing “Backward and forward and sideways may you pass,
But I will walk beside you till you face the looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass,
As hard and unforgiving or as wicked as you was!”

Queen Bess was Harry’s daughter. Now kiss your partners all !

The Queen was in her chamber, her sins were on her head.
She looked the spirits up and down and statelily she said:—
“Backward and forward and sideways though I’ve been,
Yet I am Harry’s daughter and I am England’s Queen!”
And she faced the looking-glass (and whatever else there was)
And she saw her day was over and she saw her beauty pass
In the cruel looking-glass, that can always hurt a lass
More hard than any ghost there is or any man there was!

[joesnuffy]

A colonial lad from Australia
Painted his arse like a Dahlia
The color...was fine...
Some said "sublime"
But the odor...
Now that was a failure

[AnAmericanMother]

Best Kipling poem dealing with the ordinary soldier in WWI:

Gethsemane

The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass -- we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn't pass -- it didn't pass --
It didn't pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane!

[Tax-chick]

I haven't seen that before. Get Siegfried Sassoon's "War Poems." Nightmarish!

[AnAmericanMother]

The Jungle Books (there are two, plus assorted short stories on the same theme) are strong meat -- stories of greed and death ("The King's Ankus") and rejection ("Mowgli's Hunting") and terror ("Red Dog").

Disney made an abomination out of a grave and terrible book about the rejected solitary soul coming of age.

My little ones grew up on "Just So Stories". Their favorite seems to be the Rhinoceros and the Parsi from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. My daughter at two could recite "Them as takes cakes/ What the Parsi-Man bakes/ Makes Dreadful mistakes!"

[AnAmericanMother]

I've read most of the World War poets. The thing that troubles me about Sassoon and Wilfred Owen is that they catalog the horror, but never go anywhere with it. Especially Owen sees only the immediate dreadfulness of the war, and it causes him to reject totally the society and ideals of the West - "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." In Kipling's war poems and short stories, you can see him struggling with the idea of redemption, of good coming out of the war, of ideals surviving the horror. It nearly broke him (look at the photo of Kipling and his wife at the dedication of the British military cemetery at Loos - he served on the War Graves Commission and wrote the inscription on the cenotaph. He looks like a dying man. But he did not die until, IIRC, 1927.)

[JackelopeBreeder]

A Kipling quote from "The Naulahka" that preserved my sanity through many years in the Far East:

Now it is not good for the Christians health to hustle the Arian brown,

For the Christian riles, and the Arian smiles, and it weareth the Christian down;

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,

And the epitaph drear: 'A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.'

[B-Chan]

Kipling also wrote a book of poems about automobiles, most of which (in my opinion) were not up to the standard of hs earlier work. One, however, stands out; see if you can figure out the story Kipling is telling here.

ARTERIAL
Early Chinese

I

Frost upon small rain--the ebony-lacquered avenue
Reflecting lamps as a pool shows goldfish.
The sight suddenly emptied out of the young man's eyes
Entering upon it sideways.


II

In youth, by hazard, I killed an old man.
In age I maimed a little child.
Dead leaves under foot reproach not:
But the lop-sided cherry-branch--whenever the sun rises,
How black a shadow!

[itsLUCKY2B]

For our Fighting Men, Lest We Forget........
Tommy

I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind",
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir", when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!

[Bonaparte]

Kim online.

[AnAmericanMother]

Yes, even in parody (and the Muse Among the Motors is parody of everyone from Chaucer to Wordsworth) he occasionally strikes that chilling note, doesn't he?

Kipling is easy to parody - he sometimes parodies himself, and I once presented a gift of a pink flamingo to a friend with a lengthy "Kipling" poem - "The Ballad of Phoenicopteris Pinkus". It was only funny to the folks who understood the references in the poem, but it practically wrote itself.

[AnAmericanMother]

I would love to stay up all night and talk Kipling - or as he said in "My Son's Wife" - "the horse, and weather as it affects the horse, all the way down to the country." But "wakeye wakeye! Getcher cold feet on the warm floor! Har-har-har!" is going to be here sooner than I think . . .

Good night all, and happy reading.

[Bernard Marx]

He has always had admirers (including of all people T.S. Eliot).

Eliot was a great conservative.

[Billthedrill]

OK, kiddo - breaking out the heavy artillery here, and one of my favorites. Here's a master poet at the height of his art just playing with words. Cracks me up every time I read it. Read aloud. Anyone who can rhyme "Allobrogenses" with "amanuenses" is seriously bent...

IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt;
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.

Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.

But a rival, of Solutre, told the tribe my style was outre
'Neath a tomahawk of diorite he fell.
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night:
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!"

. . . . .

Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;
And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal singer
[And a minor poet certified by Tr--ll].

Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow,
When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.

Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide -- as we dropped the half-dressed hide --
To show a fellow-savage how to work.

Still the world is wondrous large, -- seven seas from marge to marge, --
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night: --
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And -- every -- single -- one -- of -- them -- is -- right!

"And I left my views on art, barbed and tanged, below the heart..." Just damn...

[Bernard Marx]

I have never abandoned Kipling. Of course, I've never been politically correct. He was a great poet and a close observer. He, like Mark Twain, was the furthest thing from a racist.

This is my all time favorite Kipling poem. I memorized it when I was about 15 years old and I understood even then that his horizons were far wider than those of the average imperialist Englishman of his time. It doesn't have the depth of some of his stronger poems but it certainly catches the essence of the man.

MANDALAY

Rudyard Kipling

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy at the sea,

There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;

For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say;

"Come you back, you British Soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"

Come you back to Mandalay,

Where the old Flotilla lay;

Can't you 'ear their paddles clunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay?

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin'-fishes play,

An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green,

An' 'er name was Supi-Yaw-Lat jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen,

An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot,

An' wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot:

Bloomin' idol made o' mud--

Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd--

Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed 'er where she stud!

On the road to Mandalay ...

When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow,

She'd git 'er little banjo an' she'd sing "Kulla-la-lo!"

With 'er arm upon my shoulder an' 'er cheek again my cheek

We useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak.

Elephants a-piling teak

In the sludgy, squdgy creek,

Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy you was 'arf afraid to speak!

On the road to Mandalay ...

But that's all shove be'ind me -- long ago and fur away,

An' there ain't no 'buses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;

An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:

"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else."

No! you won't 'eed nothin' else

But them spicy garlic smells,

An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells;

On the road to Mandalay ...

I am sick 'o wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,

An' the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;

Tho' I walks with fifty 'ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,

An' they talks a lot o' lovin', but wot do they understand?

Beefy face an' grubby 'and--

Law! wot do they understand?

I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land! On the road to Mandalay . . .

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,

Where there ain't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;

For the temple-bells are callin', and it's there that I would be--

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the old Flotilla lay,

With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!

O the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin'-fishes play,

An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!