Rudyard Kipling | Page 3

from the ends of the earth. The whole of Mr
Kipling's literary biography is contained in the fact that Mr Kipling has
been a great traveller who is now inveterately at home.
Perhaps we should also note that Mr Kipling was a literary prodigy.
Plain Tales from the Hills appeared in 1887. Mr Kipling at twenty-two
had shown his quality and had already mapped out in little his career.
In Plain Tales from the Hills there are hints for almost everything that
their author afterwards accomplished. As the book of a young journalist
whose name had not yet been whispered among the publishers and
critics of London it was a miracle. If Mr Kipling had been able to
improve on Plain Tales from the Hills as much as Shakespeare
improved on Love's Labour's Lost, as much as Shelley improved on
Queen Mab, Robert Browning on Pauline, Byron on _Hours of
Idleness_, he would to-day be without a peer. Mr Granville Barker is
often cited as a classical modern example of precocity, but he was
twenty-four when he wrote The Marrying of Anne Leete. Mr Henry
James was twenty-eight before he had published a characteristic word.
Mr Thomas Hardy at twenty-five had only printed a short story, and he
was more than thirty when his first novel appeared. Mr Kipling came
upon the public in 1886 without a preliminary stutter. Mr Kipling at
twenty-two could write as craftily as Mr Kipling can write after nearly
thirty years' experience. We shall not be greatly concerned in these
pages to trace the progress of Mr Kipling's craft and wisdom. He was
always crafty and always wise. He had done some of his best work at
thirty. He recalls Hazlitt's curious saying that an improving author is
never a great author. Mr Kipling is not an improving author. There has
been a little moving up and down the scale of excellence; many things
hinted in the early volumes from Plain Tales from the Hills to Many
Inventions are developed more elaborately and surely in later volumes;
the old craft has come to be used with an ease that has in it more of the
insolence of a master than was possible in the author of 1887. But so
far as literary finish is concerned, _Plain Tales from the Hills_ leaves
little to be acquired. Already Mr Kipling wields his implement as deftly

and firmly as many a skilled writer who was learning his lesson before
Mr Kipling was born. Few authors have so surely scored their best in
their earliest years. Authors are considered young to-day at thirty. Mr
Kipling at that age had already written The Jungle Book.
This does not, of course, imply that all Mr Kipling's stories are of equal
merit. On the contrary, we shall henceforth be mainly concerned with
looking for the inspired author under a mass of skilful journalism. It is
not a simple enterprise. Mr Kipling is so competent an author that he is
usually able to persuade his readers that his heart is equally in all he
writes. Moreover, Mr Kipling has fallen among many prejudices,
literary and political, which have caused his least important work to be
most discussed. For these reasons the actual, as distinguished from the
legendary, Mr Kipling is not easily discovered. Mainly it is a work of
excavation.
Mr Kipling has been writing short stories for nearly thirty years. His
tales are too numerous for disparate discussion. It will be necessary to
take them in groups. One or two stories in each group will be taken as
typical of the rest. Thereby we shall avoid repetition and be able to
show some sort of plan to the maze of Mr Kipling's diversity of
subjects and manners.

II
SIMLA
Mr Kipling's Indian stories fall into three groups. There are (1) the tales
of Simla, (2) the Anglo-Indian tales, and (3) the tales of native India.
There is also Kim, which is more--much more--than a tale of India.
Mr Kipling's Indian stories necessarily tend to fill a disproportionate
amount of space. They are of less account than their number or the
attention they have received would seem to imply. Their discussion in
this and the two following chapters will be more of a political than a
literary discussion. Mr Kipling as journalist and very efficient

colourman in words has made much of India in his time. He has
perceived in India a subject susceptible of being profitably worked
upon. Here was a vast continent, the particular concern of the English,
where all kinds of interesting work was being done, where stories grew
too thickly for counting, and where there was, ready to the teller's eye,
a richness and diversity of setting which beggared the most eager
penmanship. Moreover, this continent was virtually untouched in