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An Intercepted Letter
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 133-136
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Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 12 October 1887.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, pp. 3–4).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: Unrecorded and unreprinted. The Third Anglo-Burmese War of November 1885 and the work of ‘pacification’ following into 1887 were without drama or grand spectacle, as one officer here reminds a fellow officer – one ‘General’ to another – pointing out that where no drama exists it is necessary to invent it.
* * * My contention is, and of this I feel sure your calmer judgment will approve, that there was no “fizz” in it; and “fizz” – as you ought to have long since learnt – is everything in these days of war correspondents. Gus Harris gave me the tip, that is to say, communicated the information to me, privately before the Egyptian business, and I think I made good use of his advice. But that is neither here nor there. What I want to impress on you, old man, is the disgracefully thickhided way in which you threw away your opportunities. I doubt now, if one single allusion to Bohs and Dahs, or what ever you call them, would raise a titter on a London stage; whereas – but you were at home I think when “Arabi” was a safe draw with any gallery. You may answer that it is not exactly professional for a General in Her Majesty's Army to popularize his enemies. As I have always said, your Afghan education has spoilt you completely from the point of view of the G.[reat] B.[ritish].P.[ublic]., who, after all, is your master and mine. I had only sand and rocks to work with. They made a dull background, but I contrived to raise some very fair scenic effects notwithstanding. You, on the other hand, had all the luxuriant wealth of tropical or sub-tropical greenery – I have forgotten which, but the Daily Telegraph knows all about it – to help you forward; and, best of all, a river which, I should conceive, would be absolutely unrivalled in the opportunities it offers for a torch-light procession of steamers with their flats – quorum pars magna fuisses! You see I have not yet quite forgotten my latinity. Your only disadvantage, and this, I admit, was a serious one, was the absence of any decent ground for cavalry to manoeuvre over.
The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 353-354
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How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 140-142
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Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 19 October 1887.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, p. 150).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: Unreprinted and unrecorded. The Bolan Pass, now in western Pakistan, is one of the two main passes through which traffic from Afghanistan to India moves, or moved; it lies far south of the Khyber. This piece appears to be pointedly topical, but I am unable to identify any occasion for it. RK ventured into strict allegory only rarely – e.g. in ‘The Children of the Zodiac’ (Many Inventions) or the poem ‘A Legend of Truth’ (Songs from Books). This is one of the items from his Indian journalism that RK selected for inclusion in the never published ‘Book of the Forty-Five Mornings’. The cutting in Scrapbook 3 has been lightly corrected by RK, no doubt in anticipation of its reprinting in ‘The Book of the Forty-Five Mornings’.
Very long ago, before there was a beneficent Sirkar or a Kumpany Bahadur – even before Sir Thomas Roe got drunk at Ajmir for the good of his country, and when men killed their neighbours as often and as cruelly as they knew how – the four Very Important Sisters, Wealth, Wisdom, Strength and Liberty, turned their backs upon Europe and went into the East to seek their fortunes. The reasons of their departure were never made public. Perhaps it was an annual pleasure-trip, or perhaps some one on the Continents had insulted them. At any rate they all walked away. Wealth, as everybody knows, goes quickly. She led the way. Strength walked behind her; Wisdom made her progress with difficulty, and little Liberty trotted last, for she was weak and undeveloped, and the stones of the Persian bridle-paths cut her feet terribly.
It is said that, as they travelled, Wealth and Wisdom stayed to flirt with the Parsees and some of the Persians; while strength went on and spent a day in the black tents of the Turkomans. The results of that interview have been disastrous to the Persians up to the present hour.
An Unequal Match
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 22 November 2018, pp 260-266
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Summary
Published: Pioneer, 11 July 1888; Pioneer Mail, 15 July 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4 pp. 72–3).
Text: Pioneer, 11 July 1888.
Notes: An Unequal Match, by Tom Taylor (1817–80), originally performed in London in 1857, was performed at Simla on 6 July 1888. RK wrote of his review of the play: ‘Have attempted a new and slightly audacious form of criticism of The Unequal Match. Instead of writing a laboured review vowing that every one could not have been better I stuck four people into Peliti's balcony and made ‘em talk over the play as they naturally would. I fear, as I said, that the result is slightly acid and I fancy that G. W. A[llen]. won't be over and above anxious to retain me as a dramatic critic’ (to Edmonia Hill [7–8] July 1888: Letters, i, 241). The female lead in the play was taken by Mrs G. W. Allen, wife of the proprietor of the Pioneer.
Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iv, 2074–9.
Simla, 8th July.
First Voice.– Two coffees, and two vermouths: and this is the nicest table. Well, what did you thnk of it Mrs. X——?
Second Voice.– Oh de-lightful. Especially the dancing. How could they do it?
Third Voice.– No, no. Not Bluebeard – the Unequal Match last night.
Second Voice.– I didn't go. Was it amusing? I hear that –
Fourth Voice.– If we begin by listening to what we hear, we shall never
finish anything at all. I went, and I thought it would have been much better if it had not been played when it was.
First Voice.– Mrs. Y— is pleased to be oracular. How do you mean?
Fourth Voice.– And yet after all we cannot kick our legs over each other's heads eternally.
Second Voice.– Heaven forbid! It would make me nervous. You think – that it –
First Voice.– Didn't “bite” exactly after Bluebeard. I thought so, too. It's an old play. We played it here six years ago and it was a great success then.
Third Voice.– Before our taste had been vitiated by burlesques I suppose. Poor little Simla!
Second Voice.– Please don't go back to the Dark Ages! I wasn't born then. Mr. —, tell me what it was all about, and Mrs. Y— can tear the actors to pieces afterwards.
The History of a Crime
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 22 November 2018, pp 49-52
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Summary
Published: The Englishman, 3 February 1886.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 1 (28/1, p. 57).
Text: The Englishman.
Notes: This is the first of four comic articles in Frenchified English that RK published in India (see ‘Les Miserables’, CMG, 28 August 1886; ‘Le Roi en Exil’, CMG, 15 November 1888; and ‘An Interesting Condition’, Pioneer, 20 December 1888). RK explained their genesis in ‘Souvenirs of France’: ‘At that time –’83 to ‘88 – the French Press was not nationally enamoured of England. I answered some of their criticisms by what I conceived to be parodies of Victor Hugo's more extravagant prose. The peace of Europe, however, was not seriously endangered by these exercises.’ They do not, in fact, have anything to do with ‘French criticisms’ but have a local reference.
The topic here is the financial measures of the Indian government, measures that RK also satirised at this time in ‘The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal'vin’, CMG, 30 January 1886, when, as the heading to that poem puts it, ‘Government struck from our incomes two per cent’ (Departmental Ditties).
Sir Auckland Colvin, the finance minister responsible for the new measures, sent a note to RK complimenting him on the ‘wit and delicate humour’ of ‘The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal'vin’, but included a reply to the criticisms expressed in RK's poem with a poem of his own called ‘Proverbs of Sillyman’ (Pioneer, 5 February 1886) in the form of ‘a parody of Solomon's proverbs’. RK then ‘rushed a Victor Hugo skit into a Calcutta paper in revenge’ – that is, ‘The History of a Crime’ (Letters, i, 120). The epithets for the three ‘Sirs’ – ‘huge’, ‘ascetic’ and ‘taciturn’ – are meant to be wildly inappropriate.
The Englishman was a Calcutta paper to which RK contributed a few poems as well as this skit. ‘The History of a Crime’ has been reprinted in the Martindell– Ballard pamphlets, in The Victorian, July 1939,1 and in Harbord, ii, 1054–6.
“Et la dèche eternelle regne de nouveau!” It was Sir Colvin who spoke. He who reads the classics of la belle France and above all Sara Barnum.
He is a great man. Oui. Can he understand Finance? No – a thousand times.
He has drawn pictures of ballet girls. No man who draws pictures of ballet girls understands Finance. One does not reconcile the Incompatibles.
Editorial Practice
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp ix-ix
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“A Free Hand”
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 301-304
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Summary
Published: Pioneer, 10 November 1888; Pioneer Mail, 14 November 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 91).
Text: Pioneer.
Notes: Lord Lansdowne (Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, fifth Marquess of Lansdowne, 1845–1927) succeeded Lord Dufferin as viceroy at the end of 1888. What Dufferin in ‘A Free Hand’ is imagined as saying to Lansdowne is developed at length in RK's dramatic monologue, ‘One Viceroy Resigns’, published in the Pioneer, 7 December 1888, and collected in Departmental Ditties, 4th edn, 1890.
Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iv, 2119–21.
While we cannot recommend that the mother-country should run any serious risk in altering its system of currency to assist its dependency, we think that the Government of the latter should be allowed a free hand to deal with the problem as it considers best in its own interest. Vide Minute of Dissent of Currency Commission.
“How interesting!” said L-d D-ff-r-n as he read the telegrams of the Pioneer of the 9th. “Even I could hardly have said, ‘Go to the Devil!’ in more graceful terms.” He threw open the window and looked towards the blue haze of the plains of Umballa, and the land he was shortly to quit for ever. “Free hand, indeed!” he said, contemptuously. “A free dinner would be more to the point, as L-nsd-wne will discover.” Then he fell a-musing upon his successor, and the Aide-de-Camp who was cording up the boxes in the hall heard something that sounded like a quotation from Plot and Passion. “L-nsd-wne! L-nsd-wne! after me!” said H-s Exc-ll-ncy, and sighed deeply. A few days later he was on his way to Calcutta to give over charge, and had a man been daring enough to clamber upon the Viceregal “Special” as it fled southward he would have seen H-s Exc-ll-ncy dancing a weird and wonderful saraband in the saloon carriage, while Sir D. M. W-ll-ce smiled an austere smile and beat time on the lid of his office-box. It was not altogether joy at returning to England that moved our Viceroy to this unusual demonstration. Sir D. M. W-ll-ce could have enlightened the world had he chosen to open his lips; but he was mute, as a Private Secretary should be.
The Cause of Humanity
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 360-376
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Summary
Published: Unpublished, but included in Harbord's privately printed Readers’ Guide to Rudyard Kipling's Work, v, 2618–30.
Attribution: The text in the Readers’ Guide is from a typescript then in the possession of H. Dunscombe Colt. Colt's Kipling collection was given to the Library of Congress, 1984–5, but the typescript of ‘The Cause of Humanity’ was not included in the gift and its whereabouts are currently unknown.
The typescript of the story was sold at Sotheby's, 10 December 1968, as by Rudyard Kipling, ‘with extensive autograph revisions and additions’; no provenance was given. Since the present location of the typescript is unknown, any further evidence of RK's authorship that might appear from an examination of the typescript is not available. The CK Diary for 12 June 1914 has the following entry: ‘Rud at work on two stories: The Stolen Tide / The [] of Humanity’. The transcriber was unable to construe the missing word or words, but the entry is close to the title of the typescript and the date of the entry fits the internal evidence in the story. I think it likely that the outbreak of the First World War in August and the wholesale slaughter that it produced gave RK a reason not to publish the story.
Text: Harbord.
Notes: Harbord's text, presumably a faithful copy of the typescript, contains many irregularities and repetitions. I have left them unchanged, except that where a speech is provided with only one quotation mark, either at the beginning or end, I have supplied the missing mark. I have also corrected a few mistakes that seemed inadvertent misspellings, e.g., ‘then’ for ‘there’, or impossible meanings, e.g., ‘more’ for ‘none’ in a verse quoted from the Book of Job.
‘The Cause of Humanity’ is not yet recorded in any bibliography.
Two burst tyres in ten minutes, seven miles from everywhere had forced the traveller to spend the rest of the night out of doors. He pushed his car on to a triangular slip of common, put up the hood and arranged the rugs. It was warm summer and when all was quiet again, rabbits stole out and danced in the moonlight.
A Scrap of Paper
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 83-88
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Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 13 December 1886.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, pp. 60–1).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: The story is no. 14 of the newspaper series called ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, but was omitted when most of the series was collected in book form under the same title in 1888. RK perhaps omitted it on account of its double structure – two stories rather than one. It is otherwise very much in keeping with many of the collected Plain Tales.
In ‘Quo Fata Vocant’, the reminiscence that RK wrote for the St George's Gazette, 31 December 1902, the magazine of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, he recalls the elements of the first part of ‘A Scrap of Paper’ as though they had actually happened: ‘Do they [any regiment that succeeded the Fusiliers at Lahore] know a “writer” when they see him, and can they make that “writer” happy and contented down by the elephant lines?’
Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iii, 1558–62.
Some men ought to be hanged – especially London Tradesmen. They never seem to understand when to leave you alone; and they never realize that, in this country, you have quite enough expenses of your own, without attending to their claims.
Every one who has dealt with them knows what an unpleasant firm Rentoul and Brannigan are. They have no sense of common decency, and if you lie on their books for more than eighteen months at a stretch, they send you first a letter on thin white paper, then another letter on thick blue paper; and lastly they send a writ. Writs are unpleasant things; even in so quiet a part of the world as Assam. They begin with lions and unicorns, like the first stage of delirium tremens, and then go on to “all whom it may concern;” and finish up with “wherefores” and “therebys.” The general effect is depressing – distinctly so. But, as I may have said elsewhere, it takes a good deal to depress a Subaltern of the Line, and when Chubbuck got first the white paper, and next the blue, like a seidlitz powder, he knew what was in store for him, and told the rest of the “Inextinguishables” that a writ was in the air.
My New Purchase
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 275-278
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Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 27 August 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 78).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: Unrecorded and unreprinted.
Don't do it! Kind Christian friends, whatever happens, don't do it as you value your peace of mind. Get a tikka – a second class tikka – from day to day, or buy a cart and a caster, and keep them in the cool of a well, using them stealthily at night.
I only wanted something to move about in – a bathtub on wheels would have suited my purpose admirably. But I demanded four wheels – that was the fatal mistake. I never knew before how strong is the current of public opinion in an up-country station.
“Four wheels!” said Botcherby. “What on earth do you want with four wheels. Beastly affectation I call it. Here! Much better buy my dog-cart. Seven feet high, black lacquer, red mare – carry you from one end of the station to the other in ten minutes, but you mustn't cough, or smoke, or take off your hat, when you're behind her. She's nervous, but as good as gold.”
“Thank you, Botcherby,” I said meekly. “I have religious objections to driving any animal. I always manage to hurt their feelings.”
“Huh!” said Botcherby, “better get a bassinette then.”
“The very thing,” I said. “I will procure a bassinette.”
Then Botcherby drove his ramping red devil of a mare all round the station to spread the news that I was suffering from paralysis brought on by evil living, and required a padded carriage and a keeper.
Sigala was the next torturer. “You must get a Lavengro bassinette,” he said, “and be sure that it has a swingle-gaff dissel-boom.”
“Amen,” said I; and went to the Equine Emporium trying to look as if I knew all about it:– “Lavengro bassinette please, and be sure it has a swingle-gaff dissel-boom,” I said.
The proprietor looked at me reproachfully. “We can build you a Lavengro bassinette if you insist upon it,” he answered; “but I feel it my duty to inform you that a hind-lock quarter-bar is the only absolutely safe appliance, and I should be very sorry of the public knew that this establishment turned out swingle-gaff dissel-booms.”
A Day Off
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- 22 November 2018, pp 226-229
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Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 4 May 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 60).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: Late in 1909 the American publisher B. W. Dodge brought out an unauthorised collection of RK's early work under the title Abaft the Funnel. At RK's direction his American publisher, Doubleday, at once (December 1909) brought out an authorised edition of the same collection under the same title at a price of 19 cents, intended to undercut the sale of Dodge's edition. In January, 1910, RK's agent, A. P. Watt, sent to Doubleday a list of titles from RK's file of early work to be kept in Doubleday's safe ‘pending any further action on the part of Messrs Dodge or other pirates’ (1 January 1910: copy, Watt UNC 122:14). ‘A Day Off ‘ was among the titles on the list, but Dodge presented no ‘further action’, and thus ‘A Day Off ‘ did not appear in any authorized collection of RK's work.
Reprinted in ‘Turnovers’, ii, 1888, in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets, and in Harbord, iv, 2032–5.
“‘And on the seventh thou shalt do no manner of work. Thou and thy servant.’ –
Kadir Buksh is that bath ready yet?” Body o’ me! I have slept till ten o'clock. That comes of one, two – no, four whiskey-pegs after dinner. But it has the great advantage of eating into the “long, hot Indian day.” In common decency one cannot go to bed again till ten. There still remain, therefore, twelve weary hours to kill. Outside, the sun has baked the roses brown, and the dust is whirling furiously down the garden paths. It has got into the morning tea, and the day opens auspiciously with the taste of gritty dust in my teeth. Decidedly, the weather is warming up, and gives one headaches – for those four pegs cannot account for the crisp and crawling sensation in the hair of the scalp, and the pain through the temples.
Now, in England, when a man rises on Sunday morning he looks forward to a day's pleasuring – by river, rail or road. Let me think – Loughton, Virginia Water, Datchet, Richmond, with something to eat at a place called the Star and Garter isn't it?
In Memoriam
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- 22 November 2018, pp 151-153
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Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 27 October 1887.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 6).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Note: Unrecorded and unreprinted.
Today, an old and trusted friend is dead. His corpse was carried out from my presence at noon, but I did not weep over him as he lay in the casket, placid and unmoved. What was I to him, or he to me? Our roads lay apart henceforward.
As the friendship of David towards Jonathan, so was the friendship of my friend to me. He was stronger in every way than I, masterful and overbearing at times, but I loved him none the less. I was not fitted to walk alone; help and counsel were as necessary to me as the breath of my nostrils – help for the hand to execute what the brain had, after due advisement, conceived. I took both gifts from my friend, lightly and without heed; never imagining for a moment that he would be called away.
Sitting now, opposite the empty place by the table, and reviewing his virtues dispassionately, I am inclined to think that, perhaps, my friend was hardly judicious in all the advice he gave me. For a contained character, his enthusiasm and buoyancy, amounting almost to spiritual effervescence, were startling and threw outsiders, unacquainted with his merits, off their balance. They were incapable of forming a just estimate of his character; but succumbed at once to the irresistible verve and élan that he threw into the conversation. I myself have been carried away by this peculiarity, and, under its influence, have lent myself to actions of which my isolated judgment can hardly approve. To do him justice, my friend never failed to read me lectures on the folly of my proceedings – generally in the early morning when I could have best dispensed with his presence. My friend was hardly logical, seeing that the deeds whereof he bade me repent had been committed when he was at my elbow – at his direct instigation in fact.
New Year's Gifts
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 22 November 2018, pp 177-183
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Published: Pioneer, 2 January 1888; Pioneer Mail, 4 January 1888; The Week's News, 7 January, 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 46).
Text: Pioneer.
Note: Reprinted in Harbord, iv, 1947–52.
Time, Old Time, is not really half so awe-striking as artists and writer- folk try to make out. In private life, and when he pays an unofficial visit to anyone, as he did to me last night, he is a well preserved old Parsee gentleman, only distinguishable from the common herd by the length of the lock of hair on his forehead. “You see,” said Time, as he took off his high lacquered hat, “I have to wear it long for people to catch hold of when they feel inclined. You've heard of taking Time by the forelock? Well, there's the whole sub chiz. I can't say that it's much used, in this country at any rate. and it's a great nuisance in the hot weather, but I must keep it up in case of contingencies.” “Do you smoke?” I asked politely. “A little,” said Time with a glance that froze me to the marrow. “I've used up a good many Empires that way, as you may have heard. I don't eat up cities: that's a popular delusion. I burn ‘em – put ‘em in my pipe and smoke ‘em.” “And what brand are you smoking now, Sir?” “Oh don't be afraid, It's Russian – very strong and a good deal of it, but I shall get through it in time. I've called to ask your advice in a sort of way.” This was immensely flattering, and I said as much. “I can't altogether keep abreast of myself, and I've been so hard-pushed on the Continent, making arrangements for some fire-works, that I have rather lost touch of this country. Would you mind telling your servants to bring in my portmanteau? I've got some things in it for the men about here, and I want to ask you if they'll suit. You've heard of Time's Gifts and Time's Revenges of course. I've left the Revenges at the Station, but the Gifts are lighter and came in the compartment with me.”
The Dignity of It.
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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Published: Pioneer, October 1888; Pioneer Mail, 10 October 1888; The Week's News, 13 October 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 87).
Text: Pioneer.
Notes: RK wrote on 5 October 1888 that ‘I did this morn horribly oversleep myself and eat too heavy a breakfast which led me to write a pasquinade in the Pi on the text of a telegram from Bombay’ (to Edmonia Hill: Letters, i 256).
The telegram reads: ‘The Bombay Corporation being anxious to secure a greater measure of dignity for their newly constituted body, resolved to apply to Government for sanction to their President being termed “the Honourable” or “Worshipfull”’ (Pioneer, 6 October 1888: RK evidently saw the telegram before it appeared in the Pioneer).
Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, iv, 2109–11.
Board Room of the Purkeshaditvarsubhana Municipality. Revenue Rs. 3,671: population 22732: local death-rate 39. per mile.
Babu Chuchundra Bandra Sen, President (addresses his colleagues).– And how shall fair flower of this our local self-government flourish not ingloriously in all the divisions, sub-divisions, pergunnahs, mahals, and general auditoriums if she is left in naked barrenness unadorned with raiment which well becomes, as Shakespeare says, “this mortal trick before high heaven?” I pause for a reply.
Municipality (generally).– Shabash! How a peroration!
Babu C.B.S. (waving copy of “Englishman”).– I observe in this truly inimical journal, injurious to best interests of nature's gentleman that on Bombay siding such a flower doth not so flourish. (Thunders of applause.) I repeat categorically she doth not so flourish, and why? Because the just and benevolent Lord Reay, truly actuated by high motives that always will and always shall govern all political crises and contingencies, has been graciously pleased, in response to the humble memorial of the Bombay Municipality, to abrogate excessive titular distinctions upon native gentlemen, who at vast sacrifice in time and personal predilections steer the organ of State to its destined haven here below. And if Bombay, how, my brothers and sisters, not Bengal?
“Les Miserables.”
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 22 November 2018, pp 61-64
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Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 28 August 1886.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, pp. 43–4).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: For RK's several exercises in Frenchified English, see the headnote to ‘The History of a Crime’. The decline in the exchange value of the rupee was a standard topic for most of RK's years in India.
Reprinted in the Martindell–Ballard pamphlets and in Harbord, ii, 1081–3.
“The rupee grows each week more worthless for any purpose but that of immediate spending. Under these circumstances, who could wonder if a spirit of recklessness should have taken possession of the Anglo-India community; if the text of to-day should be ‘let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we fast.’”
––See yesterday's Simla letter.To be virtuous one must be happy.
This is a fact. More. It is a fact which can be proved.
And to be happy, it is necessary to be rich. How rich, do you ask?
Enormously – Vanderbiltonically! As were once Messieurs les Anglais in the land of Dupleix and Plassey.
Ces Anglais who have now disappeared.
You smile? It is not so then?
I have with my proper eyes seen them abolished – assimilated – blotted out – these Consuls and Pro-Consuls so arrogant. Listen to my tale.
The Roupé was a coin abnormal – monstrous.
It wavered.
Have you ever seen a franc waver? A Napoleon? No, ten thousand times.
The English are a nation of drunkards. All drunkards waver. The Roupé caught the contagion. Voila the explication. Let us return to our sheep.
I abhor the involutions of Finance. They are to me detestable. And why? Alas, I am poor always.!
But this Roupé.
It wavered. It flickered. It sank. It descended.
It contracted itself as a lady in her corsage.
Have you, my pupil so virtuous, ever seen a lady in her corsage?
She contracts marvellously.
She is also lovely.
The Roupé contracted. But it was not lovely.
It was one schelling and eight pence.
It was one schelling and five pence.
It was one schelliing and two pence.
These English, once so arrogant, had been despondent.
They now laughed. It was the laughter of the Pit.
They grew reckless. It was the ferocious abandon of the unpitied.
The Englishman reckless, is the brute bestial.
“Till the Day Break”
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 239-242
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Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 19 May 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, pp. 64–5).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: In a letter dated a few days after this piece, RK wrote that ‘The heat here is maddening and gets worse at night. In the day one can force oneself into work and not notice it but in the night there is no such relief and so one kicks and knocks about “till the day break”’ (to Mrs Hill, [25–27] 1888: Letters, i, 194). The title is from the Song of Solomon 2:16. ‘Till the Day Break’ has been reprinted in Kipling's India: Uncollected Sketches, 1986.
The Brain-fever bird had a secret to tell since the earliest morning. “I'll tell you what,” said he confidentially. “I'll tell you what.” But he never never told. Now he has gone to bed, taking the secret with him, and the little owls have come out to play bo-peep among the bougainvilleas and chuckle over the folly of the Brain-fever Bird.
Does an owl feel the heat? How can an owl hang head downward for five minutes and talk politics to a neighbour at the same time. If an owl were to lose his balance….
But the business of the night is to sleep. Once upon a time, there were one thousand sheep who came to a nullah, and the bell-wether jumped, and the second sheep jumped, and the third sheep jumped, and the fourth and the fifth and the sixth…. Whose cartwheels are those? Some man coming back from a dinner somewhere. Is it a two-wheeled cart or a four-wheeled? If the first, it may be Bathershin's– if the second, Nixey's. But did Nixey send his cart to be repaired, or was it Nixey's mare or Bathershin's mare that cut her hock upon the splash-board? It was a beast with two white stockings– no, one, and a blaze on the nose. Or two. But which was it? A stocking and a blaze, or two white stockings and without a blaze?
The Confession of an Impostor
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 116-118
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Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 11 August 1887.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, pp. 141–2).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Note: Unrecorded and unreprinted.
I make no complaint. I do not even blame Fate – that last scape-goat of the luckless. Indeed, to-day I have nothing to complain of; for I am accounted a rising man. There are those who consider me successful.
It was ordained that I should fight the battle of life early. A gap in the ranks offered itself; and I was thrust into it almost before I knew what had happened. The last words of counsel from those who had ordered my days were: “Pick up as you go along!”
On my conscience, worn and frayed as a bullock-trunk, I declare to you that sentence is the only education I have thoroughly taken into my system. My métier was “to pick up as I went along” and a vast lumberage of scrap-ends of knowledge, disconnected facts – all useless, unpacked and unavailable – are witnesses to the zeal with which I followed the advice of my elders. There was the line of battle – in front lay the smoke of the great Action of Life and – could I do anything else? – I went in. That year's draft of recruits moved forward. Had I desired it I could not have stepped back. I was a man fighting with and against men. I was “picking up as I went along.” Among the many dreams that vex a man in the night is one wherein he finds himself, clad in the scantiest of nightgear, thrust into a brawling street full of friends all decently dressed. You know the agony and shame of that dream? Imagine it translated into life – drawn out through year after year – and you may conceive the distress I have suffered and do still endure. My curtailed shift of knowledge, piece it out as I will, is for ever threatening to disclose the abject nakedness of my ignorance. I have patched it in a hundred places, but the patches show, the patches show, and my abiding fear is lest my well-clad comrades should notice the deficiency.
A Horrible Scandal
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 267-271
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Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 24 July 1888.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 4 (28/4, p. 75)
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: A native newspaper, the Hyderabad Record, printed a story claiming that an agent of the Pioneer was in Hyderabad to collect a bribe of 40,000 rupees from the Nizam for the paper's support of the Nizam's cause in something called the Deccan Mining Scandals. To this charge the Pioneer made no reply, since, according to the report (‘Charges’ Against the Pioneer’) in the CMG of 24 July 1888, the Pioneer ‘has cultivated a habit of hearing its critics and disregarding them’.
‘A Horrible Scandal’ has been reprinted in Harbord, iv, 2081–4.
The eldest oyster winked his eye
And shook his heavy head,
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster bed.
The Walrus and the Carpenter.There was, as the poet says, “a shine in the tents of Ham.” All the Pi's friends and enemies and acquaintances assembled with copies of the T—s of I—a [Times of India] of the 13th July in their hands and wagged their heads dolorously; “Oh, Pi!” they groaned. “Profligate old Pi! And has it come to this?” “Come to what?” said the Pi, shortly, for it was busy. “Shock, shock! fie, fie!” cried the crowd; and they intoned the following in jerks:– “English newspapers being subsidized to take sides in the keen controversy which has been created in the Deccan Mining Scandals… Most grave allegations made against such papers as the Pioneer and the Bombay Gazette.”
“Yes” said the Pi, abstractedly. “They said five thousand dibs was its price. No wonder it took steps. Five thousand! Just about the price of a new machine! But go on.” “Gross slanders reproduced in a number of journals…. naturally looked for a prompt and indignant denial … Pioneer has seen fit to sit silent under the imputation…. We still urge upon our contemporaries that they should give the lie direct to their traducers.”
“Under Sentence”
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 143-145
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Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 20 October 1887.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, p. 149).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Note: Unrecorded and unreprinted.
In an access of unprofessional candour and wearied, it may have been, by the continual importunity of the patient, the Doctor broke through his established rule of always keeping his clients hopeful to the last gasp, and announced, solemnly as befitted his office, that Such an One had not six months to live. This was said, in a lowered voice and to the face of Such an One, who had so earnestly desired the information, at noon or a little later, on the 19th of September. The nature of Such an One's complaint concerns nobody. It may or may not have been heart-disease, some obscure affection of the nerves, or a score of other things. The main point is, that on the date aforesaid, Such an One was formally sentenced to death by his medical attendant – cast overboard, while yet living, from the ship of life, to find his way as best he could to the ferry where Charon waited. He had asked for certain news; and if he discovered the certainty well-nigh unendurable, had only himself to blame. But, curiously enough, he did not find the foreknowledge a horror – that is to say, after the first day and night of it had passed. Of that season of terror and despair it is better, perhaps, to say nothing. Had the Doctor said: “at the end of six months you will surely die,” the minutes and hours in the one hundred eighty-two days could have been calculated, and their number would have been, for a time at least, a comfortable hedge against the black darkness of the night to come. But the Doctor said “within six months,” which haziness of date left nothing to cling to. Hence the great fear that unnerved Such an One, who had sworn to the Doctor that he was strong enough to bear any news, and endure any suddenness of fate.
After the terror, came the reaction, because it is mercifully ordained that a man cannot go in extreme fear of his life for so long as a week without a break. He becomes callous or reckless.
The New Year's Sermon
- Rudyard Kipling
- Edited by Thomas Pinney, Pomona College, California
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- The Cause of Humanity and Other Stories
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- 12 November 2018
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- 22 November 2018, pp 173-176
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Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 2 January 1888.
Attribution: Signed by ‘The Reveller’, a pseudonym also used at this time on ‘A Merry Christmas’, CMG, 31 December, and on ‘The Luck of Roaring Camp’, CMG, 17 January 1888, as well as on ‘The New Year's Sermon’. The first two stories are positively identified as being by RK (Scrapbook 28/4, p. 44). The evidence of circumstance and style makes RK's authorship nearly certain.
Text: Civil and Military Gazette. The story as reprinted in ‘Turnovers’ shows a number of small variations from the text in the CMG, some of which I have recorded in the notes. They are, perhaps, evidence of RK's participation in the editing of ‘Turnovers’; the publication of this series of reprints was an enterprise of the CMG. The alterations are, in my judgement, such as only an author might make.
Notes: Reprinted in ‘Turnovers’, i, 1888, and in Harbord, iv, 1945–7.
With a punctuality that did them infinite discredit, the Sind, Sagur and S. P. and D. Bank sent home the balanced bank-book on the night of December 31st, to the house of the owner. By a curious coincidence the year and the last page of the bank-book ended together with the sumptuous total in hand of Rs. 46-3-9 only, as the cheques say. The owner and his Familiar Imp took council together. But there was no New Year jocoseness about the Imp. He sat himself comfortably upon the top of the reading-lamp, where the heat best consorted with his ideas of the fitness of things, and coughed politely. The Bank-Book was still lying in its wrapper. “You had better open that interesting publication,” said the Imp suavely: “you'll find it better fun than the newspaper.” “I shan't,” said the owner. “I know all about it, and this is my New Year's holiday.” “Don't think that you know everything though,” said the Imp. “Permit me!” There was a rustling of torn paper, and in another minute the Imp had returned to his place on the reading-lamp with the book balanced on his knees. “You'll forgive a stranger meddling with your private affairs, won't you?” “It's gross insol—” “Not at all – you know nothing about it: we'll begin at the beginning.”