Rudyard Kipling | Page 6

in which
the reader is not prepared to assume it for the sake of the story.
Mrs Hawksbee is typical of the majority of Mr Kipling's studies in
social comedy. His success in this kind is remarkable, but it is barren.
Mr Kipling realised this himself quite early, for he quite soon

abandoned Simla. There are some sixteen stories in _Plain Tales from
the Hills_ into which the Simla motive is threaded. In the books
immediately following, published in 1888 and 1889, Simla is not
wholly abandoned, but the proportion of Simla stories is less. _The
Phantom Rickshaw_ (1889) is the last story which can fairly be brought
within the list, and this story can only be included by straining its point
to vanishing. Of all the groups of stories in _Plain Tales from the Hills_
the Simla group, though it was largest, promised least for the future.

III
THE SAHIB
There is another group of Indian tales, a group which deals with the
governance of India--with the men who are spent in the Imperial
Service. The peculiar charm and merit of these tales is best considered
as a special case of Mr Kipling's delight in the world's work--a subject
which claims a chapter to itself. But apart from this, Mr Kipling's
Anglo-Indian tales--his presentation of the work of the Indian Empire,
of the Anglo-Indian soldier and civilian--have an unfortunate interest of
their own. They are mainly responsible for a misconception which has
dogged Mr Kipling through all his career. This misconception consists
in regarding Mr Kipling as primarily an Imperialist pamphleteer with a
brief for the Services and a contempt for the Progressive Parties. It is an
error which has acted mischievously upon all who share it--upon the
reader who mechanically regrets that Mr Kipling's work should be
disfigured with fierce heresy; upon the reader who chuckles with
sectarian glee when the "much talkers" are mocked and confounded;
upon Mr Kipling himself who has been encouraged to mistake an
accident of his career as the essence of his achievement and to regard
himself as a sort of Imperial laureate. The origin of this misconception
is not obscure. Mr Kipling has written intimate tales of the British
Army: he is, therefore, a "militarist." He has lived in India many years,
and realised that men who live in India, and administer India, and come
into personal contact with Hindus and Mohammedans, know more
about India than Members of Parliament who run through the Indian

continent between sessions: he is, therefore, a reviler of the free
democratic institutions of Great Britain. He has realised that
Government departments in Whitehall are not always thought to be
very expeditious, well informed and devoted by men who are often
confronted with matters that cannot afford to wait for a telegram: he is,
therefore, a lover of the high hand and of courses brutal and irregular.
He has celebrated the toil and the adventure of pioneers and of outposts:
he is, therefore, one who brandishes unseasonably the Imperial sword.
The grain of truth in these deductions is heavily outweighed by the
massive absurdity of regarding them as in any sense essential. Mr
Kipling brings political prejudice into his work less than almost any
living contemporary. At a time when there was hardly an English novel
or an English play of consequence which was not also a political
pamphlet it was completely false to regard Mr Kipling as a pamphleteer.
When most of our English authors were talking from the platform, Mr
Kipling--with a few, too few, others--remained apart. He is suspect, not
because his Anglo-Indian tales or his army tales are political, but
because they record much that is true of the English Services, which
fails to square with much that once was popularly believed about them.
The real reason of Mr Kipling's false fame as a politician is, not that he
is an Imperial pamphleteer, but that, writing of the Army and the
Empire, he fails to be a pamphleteer on the other side. His detachment,
not his partiality, is at fault.
Mr Kipling's detachment from the politics of his day explains virtually
everything that has offended his modern critics. Almost the first thing
to realise in discussing Mr Kipling's attitude to modern life is that Mr
Kipling has kept absolutely clear of the political and social drift of the
last thirty years. He has been conspicuously out of everything. He has
had nothing to say to any of the ideas or influences which have formed
his contemporaries. While others of his literary generation were
growing up amid intellectual movements, democratic tendencies and
advances of humanity, Mr Kipling was standing between two
civilisations in India which were hardly susceptible of being reconciled
till they had been reduced to very simple terms. The instinct to
simplify--to get