No subject

established by impecunious army and navy officers for the education of their
sons. 23   This school provided the background for the stories in 'Stalky
and Co.', written by Kipling in the late 1890s. 24   Although Westward Ho!
was not necessarily typical of them, English public schools played an
important role in training the cadres of Empire, and instilling in their
pupils the appropriate ideals of service and duty.   As A.P. Thornton
states: '...the public school spirit became one of the most potent of the
imperial elixirs'. 25   It is doubtless the case that Kipling was imbued
while at school with many of the values he took back to India with him as a
journalist.   'Stalky and Co.' itself became the model for generations of
boys' school stories in England. 26

In 1882 Kipling left England for India to work on the Lahore 'Civil and
Military Gazette'.   Later he also worked on the Allahabad 'Pioneer'.
These years (1882-89) were decisive for the development of those writing
skills which he was to use with such success. 27   His earliest writings and
poems soon began to appear in the columns of the Indian press, and his name
became well-known in the relatively closed world of Anglo-India.   He was
extremely precocious, writing and composing on many aspects of Anglo-Indian
and native life.   Later his stories and poems were collected and published
under the titles 'Plain Tales from the Hills' and 'Departmental Ditties'. 28

What kind of picture emerges from these early writings, and from Kipling's
later writings on India?   One Indian critic has a very firm view on the
first part of this question: 'To the average Englishman, Kipling expressed
for the first time his own chauvinistic sentiments and ideas in a firm,
clear, and colloquial manner'. 29   Indeed, already in these early stories
is reflected the arrogance and racial supremacism of the Anglo-Indian ruling
class.   A story such as "His Chance in Life", from 'Plain Tales', contains
passages reflecting deep racism. 30   "The Head of the District", a later
story, reveals Kipling's contempt for the educated Indian. 31

Some critics have claimed that Kipling writes from the point of view of the
skilled technicians, artisans, soldiers and lesser administrators - those
who 'ran the Empire' 32, yet the ordinary folk depicted in the Indian
stories are usually stereotypes and caricatures, like the three oafish
soldiers Learoyd, Ortheris and Mulvaney.   In 'The Man Who Would Be King',
two ordinary soldiers prove to be 'without the law' when they try to set up
a kingdom for themselves in northern Afghanistan, and are deposed. 33   On
the other hand, 'Bobs' - Lord Roberts, the Army commander-in-chief in India
for many years, wins plaudits. 34   There is probably truth in the 1930s
Marxist critic Christopher Caudwell's contention that Kipling represents the
imperialism of the 'duped servants' of the 'big bourgeoisie' 35, rather than
that of the 'big bourgeoisie' itself.   Nevertheless, the values promoted
are essentially the same.   In any case, Caudwell's view does seem more
tenable than G.K. Chesterton's notion of a 'romance of the division of
labour' and a 'discipline of all the trades' in Kipling. 36

Max Beerbohm, one of Kipling's sternest critics, hit out at the
'brutishness' and excessive stress on a stylised masculinity to be found in
Kipling's work.   An undercurrent of violence is indeed significantly
present in much of Kipling's output. 37   Where he deals with the theme of
war in his early material it is often reflective of notions no doubt
developed through the frontier skirmishes of that time, and of the role of
the 'ideal subaltern'. 38   As Edward Shanks remarks in his study of
Kipling: 'The idea of war as a game was never far absent from Kipling's mind
and he often urged it'. 39

Lionel Trilling, writing in 1943, claimed that 'Indians naturally have no
patience whatever with Kipling and they condemn even his best book, "Kim"'
40, (which was published in 1901).    This state of affairs might have been
true at that time, when Congress party leaders were put behind bars for
their participation in the Indian independence struggle, yet there are more
than a few Indian critics who have in more recent times, while not
necessarily forgiving Kipling for his imperialist stance, held up 'Kim' in
particular as an outstanding work.   K. Bkaskara Rao, whom we quoted above,
is of the view that 'Kim' is the greatest book on India written by an
Englishman, even surpassing E.M. Forster's 'A Passage to India', which
appeared in the 1920s. 41   Nirad Chaudhuri, another Indian critic, concurs
with this assessment of 'Kim'. 42

Yet despite all the praise that has been heaped upon 'Kim' 43, especially
for its many-sided portrayal of Indian life, and its sympathetic
characterisation of the Tibetan lama in particular, it nevertheless remains
a fact that, stripped bare, the central idea of the novel '...is to
establish the superiority of Kim on grounds of his being white'. 44
Kipling himself declared that the novel was 'nakedly picaresque and
plotless'. 45   Without the background of the 'Great Game', and the
imperialist theme underlying that, the self-realisation of the Irish boy Kim
as a 'sahib' would not be possible.

Kipling had left India for England in March 1889, arriving in October that
year.   His belligerent attitude was made plain during his world travels in
between.   He scoffed at the harbour defences of San Francisco 46  after
having remarked earlier, concerning the situation in East Asia, that Britain
had 'conquered the wrong country.   Let us annex China'. 47

The London literary scene he hoped to conquer was at this time dominated by
the 'fin de siecle' decadent movement, inspired by French aestheticism. 48
The heroes of the day were artists like Aubrey Beardsley, poets and
dramatists like Oscar Wilde, and critics like Beerbohm.   Their values and
interests were diametrically opposed to many of those held dear by Kipling.
Kipling's Anglo-Indian reputation had preceded him and soon his Indian
stories and poems became widely popular in England.   Kipling came to be
seen as the leader of an 'imperialist' school which included other writers
such as W.E. Henley, Rider Haggard and G.A. Henty. 49

Even from the beginning there was never any consensus in the critical
reception Kipling received.   The established figures of the decadence
looked down upon him with contempt.   Wilde, for example, said of 'Plain
Tales' that it was as though 'one were seated under a palm tree reading life
by superb flashes of vulgarity'. 50   An anonymous reviewer of 'Departmental
Ditties' and 'Soldiers Three', writing in 'The Athenaeum', did not think
much of Kipling as a poet but thought his stories were comparable with
Dickens' early 'Sketches by Boz'. 51   'The Times' was impressed. 52
William Butler Yeats, who was probably the most gifted poet of this era, was
once invited to discuss Kipling's verse and he responded with a raised hand
and the two words: 'That, no...'. 53

   Whatever the opinions of select literary circles might have been, it is
unquestionable that Kipling's verse output struck a chord with popular
taste.   Eric Stokes has perceptively written that Kipling deliberately
chose to model himself on the ballad-maker who functioned as 'a...vehicle of
the folk memory and culture'. 54   Rhymes like 'Gunga-Din' 55 and 'The
Ballad of East and West' 56, may be trite and even crude, yet the lore of
Empire, which Kipling strove so hard to create, is based in some ways on
that kind of crudeness.   It is undoubtedly rhymes like these that helped to
transform Kipling into a 'household god', to use George Orwell's phrase 56,
among wide sections of the literate classes in England and throughout the
British Empire.

Kipling himself describes the process by which he came to arrive at his
imperialist vision:


'Bit by bit, my original notion grew into a vast, vague conspectus...of the
whole sweep and meaning of things and efforts and origins throughout the
Empire.   I visualised it, as I do most ideas, in the shape of a semi-circle
of buildings and temples projecting into a sea of dreams'. 58


His fame assured, Kipling left England in 1892 to live in the USA. 59   He
settled in Vermont and, although circumstances did not prove propitious for
permanent residence, 60 it was here that he wrote a number of important
works, including the 'Jungle Books'.   The latter were published in 1894-95.

The 'Jungle Books' mark a new stage in the development of Kipling's folk
ideology.   These tales, mostly describing the adventures of a white boy,
Mowgli, brought up in the jungle by wolves, are often taken to be simple
children's stories. 62   Yet it is clear enough that they have an adult
dimension, and that the author used the medium of the folk-tale to get
across some of his central philosophical ideas. 63   Other writers such as
Swift and Twain, in their time, used a similar approach to propagate their
views. 64

Shamsul Islam has tried to analyse Kipling's 'Law' - the animating
philosophy perhaps most evident in the 'Jungle Books', where a strict
hierarchy between the different creatures is maintained on the basis of firm
adherence to a generally accepted code. 65   H.G. Wells saw Kipling's law as
a vulgar expression of social darwinism - the law of the strong over the
weak. 66   There are militarist overtones in the Mowgli stories: it is no
surprise that the themes were taken up by the Boy Scout movement - a
characteristic product of Kipling's era - in the den lore of the Wolf-Cubs.
67

Kipling had an ambivalent attitude to the United States of America.   On the
one hand he was impressed by the fact that the Americans had 'extirpated the
aboriginals of their continent more completely than any modern race had ever
done'. 68   On the other hand he clashed genially with Theodore Roosevelt
over US naval policy, and also wrote the poem 'An American' - partly
inspired by the Pullman Strike of 1894 - which spoke of '[the] cynic devil
in his blood/ That bids him mock his hurrying soul'. 70   Later, when the US
seized the Philippines from Spain, Kipling composed the famous poem 'The
White-Man's Burden' 71  which, along with 'A Song of the White Men' 72  of
the same year, made his racism explicit.

1897 was Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year.   It became the occasion for
a major outburst of imperial fanfare and celebration. 73   Kipling, back in
England, composed the hymn 'Recessional' and it was published in 'The Times'
on July 17 of that year.   For once the tone of bombast is absent and
Kipling sounds a note reflective of the transience of imperial supremacy:
'Lo, all our pomp of yesterday? Is one with Ninevah and Tyre'. 74   It is
not as clear to me as it apparently was to George Orwell that the notorious
line in the fourth stanza, 'Or lesser breeds without the law', refers to the
Germans. 75   Even if the line was intended to refer to other Europeans it
would still be objectionable.

The Jubilee year and the appearance of 'Recessional' marked perhaps the
zenith of Kipling's influence and capacity as an artist.   At that time he
was, as Samuel Hynes observes, 'the acknowledged Voice of the Empire'. 76
This status did not last, however, and it was the South African War of
1899-1902 which quite dramatically changed popular political attitudes to
Empire in Britain 77, and saw the beginning of a decline in Kipling's own
popularity.

The war itself was a classic case of imperialist bullying, and by
prosecuting it the British government found itself isolated in world
opinion.   The Boer republics fought hard to retain their independence and
inflicted significant defeats on the British army before the latter was able
to bring heavy numerical force to bear. 78   Kipling became involved in the
war as a frontline correspondent and editor of a British forces' journal. 79
He was a friend of both Cecil Rhodes and Leander Starr Jameson, two figures
who loomed large in South African politics, and it has been claimed that
Kipling saw himself as the 'mouthpiece' of Rhodes at this time. 80   Kipling
has been described as having regarded the Boers as 'an obscurantist minority
resolved to thwart the essential development of a continent' 81, and in his
stories and verse the Boers do appear in a totally negative light. 82   'The
Absent-Minded Beggar', written by Kipling in 1899 83  as a fundraiser for
the war effort, was put to music and widely sung in the music halls, an area
of popular cultural expression that often provided a locus for imperialist
sentiment.

In spite of the eventual military success of British imperialism in its war
against the Boers, Kipling was deeply disturbed by the implications of the
long struggle involved.   He wrote in one poem: 'We have had an imperial
lesson.   It may make us an Empire yet!' 85   And in 'The Islanders' of 1902
he stirred up a great deal of ill-feeling by berating the alleged
complacency and insularity of his countrymen, especially by his unkind
reference to the 'flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the
goals'. 86

As a result of the Boer War the imperial idea in Britain, in the words of
Thornton, '...suffered a contraction, a loss of moral content, from which it
never completely recovered'. 87   It is no accident that Kipling now found
himself on the extreme right-wing fringe of British politics.   One of his
biographers has remarked that Kipling's politics were of the purist type,
and that he mistrusted 'politicians in general and Liberals in particular'.
88   After the Boer War and until the outbreak of World War One, Kipling was
associated with most of the right-wing causes of the day.   The American
critic Edmund Wilson claimed that Kipling's artistic output reached a
turning point with the Boer War and that the extremes of jingoism to which
he descended after that time marked a qualitative break with his earlier
work. 89   Yet none of Kipling's views had changed fundamentally.

On Irish Home Rule for example, an issue that reached explosion point on
several occasions in the years before Britain declared war on Germany in
1914, Kipling had written a poem as early as 1890 blasting the outcome of a
commission of inquiry into the Phoenix Park killings of 1882:  'You're only
traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown', he had intoned. 90   The
poem 'Ulster' of 1912, which referred to Ireland as 'England's oldest foe'
91  formed only one part of Kipling's contribution to the cause of the
Carsonites and other Unionist opponents of Home Rule.   His friend Alfred
Milner, of South African fame, organised a 'British Covenant' to back up
Carson's Ulster Covenant of 1912.   Kipling signed the protest, contributed
an article to a magazine launched under the name 'Covenanter' and also,
according to one of Milner's biographers, sent the group a sum of thirty
thousand pounds. 92

Kipling's anti-Germanism was well-known in the years leading up to the war.
93   Yet the seeds of his antagonism to Germany may be found earlier, in the
story 'Reingelder and the German Flag', published in 1892. 94

The influence of Kipling on official government policy at this time is
difficult to gauge.   But the political divisions of the day were real, and
there is no question of a conspiracy by a small group to maintain the
cohesion of the British political elite, the existence of which has been
seriously alleged. 95   Kipling was associated with the Rhodes Trust,
supported the National Service League 96,  was an admirer of Lord
Baden-Powell and his work 97,  and continued to strike out against any
movement or force which he saw as a threat to the British imperial system.
98

By 1911 then, Kipling's accent had lost its lustre and had become, in the
words of Hynes: 'the snapping and snarling voice of an old Tory dog that
grew more ill-tempered as it lost its teeth'. 99   A popular historical work
by W.H. Fitchett, published in 1912, could still carry a dedication on its
title page from Kipling's poem 'The English Flag' of 1891 100, yet it is
without doubt that the poet's public reputation had fallen considerably
since that piece had originally been published.

Kipling had long expected a war with Germany and had urged national
preparation for it. 101   The logic of inter-imperialist rivalry, and its
ideological expression in racial supremacism and national chauvinism,
produced that 'debasement of spirit' common to all the 'white' nations
described by Paul Johnson in his book 'The Offshore Islanders':


'They began to see each other not as sophisticated human beings but as rival
herds of highly-bred animals doomed to slaughter each other like beasts in
desperate encounters for the survival of the fittest breed'. 102


The First World War was a great catastrophe for civilisation.   For Kipling
it was a time of personal tragedy.   He lost his only son early in the war.
103   Yet, as Bernard Bergonzi remarks, Kipling became more rather than less
belligerent about the war after this loss. 104   His story 'Mary Postgate'
(1915) reveals an almost pathological depth of anti-German sentiment. 105
Kipling continued to do what he could to speed the defeat of the Central
Powers, in particular by communicating with his friend Theodore Roosevelt
and urging an early US entry into the war on the side of the Allies. 106

In the post-war world Kipling's literary reputation declined further, as did
the popularity of the imperialist ideology he espoused. 107   His stories
became increasingly obscure, and a supernatural note obtruded. 108   His
racialism, and in particular his anti-semitic sentiment, was remarked upon
by C.M. Bowra, who visited Kipling in the early 1920s. 109   He showed an
attraction to Mussolini's regime in Italy, 110 although there were many on
the political right, not necessarily fascist themselves, who shared this
attraction.   He had revealed in a pre-war story, 'As Easy as A.B.C.' 111, a
penchant for the authoritarian style of world state, yet there is nothing to
indicate that Kipling's world-view could be in any way described as fascist.
When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Kipling began to sound the
alarm. 112    However, this stance probably had not much more substance to
it than the warnings issued by Churchill, Liddell Hart and others which were
largely a response to the threat of German rearmament.

So what of Kipling's standing fifty years after his death?   The body of
literary criticism indicates that there is no more consensus on this
question than existed in the early 1890s.   The speaker delivering one
Kipling obituary lecture in 1936 proclaimed that it was 'unnecessary to
expose his [Kipling's] offences against taste' 113, whereas Orwell, writing
a few years later, argued that it was better to start by admitting that
Kipling 'is a jingo imperialist...,  morally insensitive and aesthetically
disgusting'. 114   Another critic, A.C. Ward, damns Kipling with faint
praise, describing him 'as a classic of the second rank'. 115   For Shanks,
'[Kipling] was an authoritarian', 116   'He was an imperialist', 117  while
to Bonamy Dobree it is Kipling's sensitivity and compassion that deserve to
be stressed. 118   For A.E. Rodway,  Kipling 'was so far to the right that
he thought his cousin, Stanley Baldwin, a "socialist at heart"'. 119

Compilers of some broader histories have dismissed Kipling as either an
unrepresentative extreme nationalist akin to Germany's Treitschke 120, or as
a 'minor and essentially propagandist figure' to be compared with D'Annunzio
and Maurras. 121   Modern critics have tended to divide into two schools,
one seeing Kipling as a sociological writer, the other seeing him as a
writer who was concerned essentially with the problem of individual
alienation. 122   One self-styled Marxist critic, harking back to the days
of the popular front, concludes his piece with Kipling's ghost resolutely
participating 'in the march of human progress'. 123

The literary legacy of Rudyard Kipling may be clouded by disagreement among
critics, but the historical and ideological legacy is relatively clearer.
Writing in a fairly recent major biography of Kipling, Angus Wilson makes
note of the close links that existed between Kipling and Milner's
'kindergarten' intellectuals of the pre-World War One period. 124   Wilson
declares that Kipling shared their aim of  'a world federation of
Anglo-Saxon countries emerging from the British Empire and based upon full
ties of economy and defence but, above all, upon the possession of a common
social culture'. 125   He might well have substituted the word 'racial' for
'social'.   Wilson doubts the depth of Kipling's racism 126, and observes of
Milner and his school: 'The whole concept of racialist Anglo-Saxon
superiority which these clever men truly believed seems now as absurd as it
is repugnant'. 127   This is a surprising remark to appear in a book
published in a year (1977) that saw major street violence in Britain
involving the neo-fascist and extreme racialist National Front.   The
recrudescence of fascism in Britain demonstrates that racism certainly still
is strongly evident in England.

The racialist content of right-wing politics in Britain has, since the later
19th century,  never been far from the surface. 128   Kipling, as we have
seen from some of his work, shared this racialist sentiment.   It is my
contention that Kipling sought, through his prose writings and his verse, to
give voice to a primitivist folk culture of the Anglo-Saxon race, insofar as
there has ever been such a thing.   'Puck of Pook's Hill', written in 1906,
was clearly aimed at evoking a deepgoing sense of national identity,
particularly among the young. 129   The book fails to achieve its aim
however, because the concept of 'Englishness' when used in a racial or
'folkish' sense loses its meaning and no longer describes a nation of people
who happen to live in the British Isles, and who share with other
nationalities and ethnic groups a common language and to some extent a
common culture.   Other conservative-orientated writers have attempted to
construct a folkish nationalism out of English and British history.   For
Winston Churchill it was the 'Island Race'. 130   For Lord Elton it was the
stillborn notion of an 'Imperial Commonwealth'. 131   These days it is the
racialist fantasies of Enoch Powell or the outright fascism of the National
Front and the British Movement. 132

British imperialism could never be a universal solution to any of the
world's problems, nor to the problems of Britain itself.   All imperialisms
by definition are based on the inequality between ruler and ruled, oppressor
and oppressed.   Kipling's art, by basing itself so squarely on the fortunes
of such a system, inevitably began to decline along with the decline of the
Empire itself, as rival powers strove to undermine British hegemony.
Kipling's 'heroic period', the era of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee and
of 'Recessional', was precisely the period of hubris for Britain as a world
power. 133   No-one can deny that Britain's contribution to civilisation
during its period of world hegemony was a very great one: even Christopher
Caudwell, the most severe of the revolutionary socialist critics of British
imperialism, declared that '[the] Empire builders played a constructive part
in the development of capitalism'. 134   Nevertheless, the tasks of the day
require a radical critique of the imperial legacy, not a celebration of it.

Rudyard Kipling will possibly, a few hundred years hence, be remembered as
having been associated with certain movements and ideologies connected with
the process of transition between two socio-economic systems, capitalism and
socialism.   By then, with the steam out of the pistons, it might be
possible to sit back and enjoy the 'Jungle Books' as just good stories.


FOOTNOTES

1.     Charles Carrington, 'Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work' (London,
1955) p.506

2.      'Ibid.'

3.      'Supplement' 1931-40 (Oxford, 1949) p.514

4.      F.E. Smith, 2nd Earl of Birkenhead (Lord Birkenhead), 'Rudyard
Kipling' (London, 1980) p.216

5.      Peter Porter, "Rudyard Kipling: A Reassessment",  'The Listener'
(April 8, 1965) Vol. 73, No. 1880, p.515

6.      In 1895 for example, 'Dictionary of National Biography', loc.cit.,
p.514

7.      For two views on the relationship between literature and the social
sciences, see Richard Hoggart, "Literature and Society",  Norman MacKenzie
(ed.), 'A Guide to the Social Sciences' (London, 1966) pp.225-48, and Diana
Laurenson and Alan Swingewood, 'The Sociology of Literature' (London, 1971).
The chasm between the sciences and the arts in Western culture in general is
dealt with by C.P. Snow, 'The Two Cultures and a Second look' (Cambridge,
1965).   For a presentation of the issues facing Marxist contributors to the
theory of literary criticism and aesthetics in general, see Terry Eagleton,
'Criticism and Ideology' (London, 1976)

8.      G.S.R. Kitson Clark, 'An Expanding Society: Britain 1830-1900'
(Melbourne, 1967), ch. 5

9.       John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, "The Imperialism of Free
Trade", G.H. Nadel and P. Curtis (eds.),'Imperialism and Colonialism'
(London, 1964) pp.97-111.   See also the same authors' 'Africa and the
Victorians' (London, 1961).   For a riposte to some of their arguments see
Oliver MacDonagh "The Anti-Imperialism of Free Trade", 'Economic History
Review', Second Series, Vol 14, pp.489-501

10.    George Lichtheim's 'Imperialism' (Harmondsworth, 1974) however, does
cover many of the central problems in interpretation

11.     "The New Imperialism: The Hobson-Lenin Thesis Revised", Nadel and
Curtis (eds.), 'Imperialism and Colonialism', p.94

12.      For the foregoing list see Richard Faber, 'The Vision and the Need:
Late Victorian Imperialist Aims' (London, 1966) p.56

13.      Robert Blake, 'The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill'
(London, 1972) pp.125-29

14.      Richard Shannon, 'The Crisis of Imperialism 1865-1915' (London,
1976) p.144

15.      On these points see Raymond Williams, 'The Long Revolution'
(Harmondsworth, 1965) Part Two, ch. 2,3

16.      The social composition of the new reading public, and that of those
who made up Kipling's basic audience, was most often lower-middle class.
George Orwell makes the point that Kipling's popularity was '...of course,
essentially middle class': "On Kipling's Death", Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus
(eds.), 'Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters' (Harmondsworth, 1970)
Vol. 1 'An Age Like This: 1920-1940' p.183.   David Thomson emphasises the
suburban, lower-middle-class appeal of Kipling in the brief discussion in
his 'England in the Nineteenth Century' (Harmondsworth, 1950) p. 205

17.       A.P. Thornton, 'The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies' (London, 1959)
p. x.   See also D.C. Somervell, 'English Thought in the Nineteenth Century'
(London, 1929) who holds that 'imperialism was a sentiment rather than a
policy': p.186

18.       Shannon, 'The Crisis of Imperialism', makes the observation that
'Kipling's political commitment distinguished him as the one considerable
literary figure within the broad category of modern consciousness who used a
deliberate attempt to bridge the gap that had opened between high culture
and the mass of society as a central motive of his art': pp.286-87

19.       For a discussion of this theme see Raymond F. Betts, "The Allusion
to Rome in British Imperialist Thought of the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries", 'Victorian Studies' (December, 1971) pp.149-59.   See also
Faber, 'The Vision and the Need', p.120.   On British India in general see
Steven Watson, "The British in India", Milton Israel (ed.), 'Pax Britannica'
(London, 1968) pp.71-89, and on the 'High Noon' period see Michael Edwardes,
"The Viceroyalty of Lord Curzon", John Hargreaves (ed.), 'The Expansion of
Europe' (London, 1968) pp.131-53.   For a useful overview of relations
between the Asian peoples and the West historically see K.M. Panikkar, 'Asia
and Western Dominance' (London, 1959), although Panikkar sees the problem as
having been more or less automatically resolved at the conclusion of World
War Two.

20.       On Kipling's early life see Carrington, 'Rudyard Kipling: His Life
and Work', ch. 2 and Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', ch. 1

21.        'Something of Myself: For My Friends Known and Unknown' (London,
1937) ch. 1

22.        Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', pp.23-25

23.        Carrington, 'Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Work', ch. 3

24.        'Stalky & Co.' (London, 1950; orig. ed. 1899)

25.        'The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies', p.90

26.       See Orwell, "Boy's Weeklies", Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus,
'Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters' Vol. 1, pp.505-31

27.       See H.M. Green, "Kipling as a Journalist", 'The Australian
Quarterly' (March 1932) No. 13, pp.111-20

28.       For this period in Kipling's life see Birkenhead, 'Rudyard
Kipling', ch. 5-7

29.       K. Bhaskara Rao, 'Rudyard Kipling's India' (Norman, Okl., 1967)
p.5

30.      "His Chance in Life", 'Plain Tales from the Hills' (London, 1964;
orig. ed. 1890) pp.66-72.   'Michele was a poor, sickly weed and very black;
but he had his pride';   ''...he looked down on natives as only a man with
seven-eighths native blood in his veins can'. p.68

31.      'Life's Handicap' (London, 1928; orig. ed., 1891) pp.117-48

32.     See C.S. Lewis, "Kipling's World", 'They Asked for a Paper' (London,
1962) p.82 and James Morris, 'Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire'
(London, 1975) for whom Kipling's imperial heroes were: 'the doers, the law
givers, the governors, the engineers' p.350

33.    'The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories' (New York, 1982)
pp.1-36.  Originally published 1880-90

34.    '"Bobs"' 1898, 'Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition' (London,
1940) pp.395-96

35.    'Romance and Realism: A Study in English Bourgeois Literature'
(Princeton, N.J., 1970) p.83

36.    "On Mr. Rudyard Kipling", R.L. Green (ed.), 'Kipling: The Critical
Heritage' (London, 1971) p.294

37.   See Beerbohm, "Kipling's Entire", 'Around Theatres' (London, 1953)
pp.245-49.   Two stories illustrating Kipling's evident approval of violence
are "The Taking of Lungtungpen" and "The Bronkhurst Divorce Case", both from
'Plain Tales'.   See also some of the comments in Robert Graves, "Rudyard
Kipling", Edgell Rickward (ed.), 'Scrutinies' (London, 1928) pp.74-93

38.   See Edwardes, "'Oh to Meet an Army Man': Kipling and the Soldiers",
John Gross (ed.), 'The Age of Kipling' (New York, 1972).   'The code of the
subaltern was quite simple - self-denial, law, order and obedience, blessed
with the adventurous ardour and audacity of youth' p.40.   See also Boris
Ford, "A Case for Kipling?", Eric Bentley (ed.), 'The Importance of
Scrutiny: Selections from "Scrutiny", A Quarterly Review 1932-1948' (New
York, 1964) p.335

39.   'Rudyard Kipling: A Study in Literature and Political Ideas' (London,
1940) p.83

40.   "Kipling", Andrew Rutherford (ed.), 'Kipling's Mind and Art'
(Edinburgh, 1964) p.88

41.   Bhaskara Rao, 'Rudyard Kipling's India', pp.125-65

42.   "The Finest Story About India - in English", 'Encounter' (April 1957)
Vol. 13, No. 4, pp.47-53.   See also K.R.S. Iyengar, "Kipling's Indian
Tales", M.K. Naik, et al. (eds.), 'The Image of India in Western Creative
Writing' (Madras, 1970) pp.72-91.   Iyengar is also quite rapturous about
'Kim'

43.   "Kim", 'Rudyard Kipling' (New York, 1980) pp.690-864

44.   Ford, 'A Case for Kipling?', p.327

45.   'Something of Myself', p.228

46.   Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', p.91

47.   Quoted in V.G. Kiernan, 'The Lords of Human Kind: European Attitudes
to the Outside World in the Imperial Age' (Harmondsworth, 1972), p.177.
Kipling wrote to the Allahabad 'Pioneer' that the Chinese in Penang 'were
the first army corps on the march of the Mongols.   The scouts are at
Calcutta, and the flying column at Rangoon'.   Quoted in Angus Wilson, 'The
Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling' (London, 1977) p.137

48.   See Holbrook Jackson, 'The Eighteen-Nineties' (Harmondsworth, 1939)
and also A.E. Rodway, "The Last Phase", Ford (ed.), 'The Pelican Guide to
English Literature' Vol. 6 "From Dickens to Hardy" (Harmondsworth, 1969)
pp.385-405

49.   See J.A.V. Chapple, 'Documentary and Imaginative Literature 1880-1920'
(London, 1970) ch. 6, and the comparative material in Alan Sandison, 'The
Wheel of Empire: A Study of the Imperial Idea in Some Late Nineteenth and
Early Twentieth Century Fiction' (London, 1967)

50.   Quoted in Shanks, 'Rudyard Kipling: A Study in Literature and
Political Ideas', p.3

51.   No. 3261 (April 26, 1890) pp.527-28.   It is of interest to note that
this issue of 'The Athenaeum' carried elsewhere in its pages a large
advertisement for a sequel to Sir Charles Dilke's 'Greater Britain'

52.   'Mr. Rudyard Kipling's Writings' (Tuesday, March 25, 1890) p.3

53.   Quoted in J.I.M. Stewart, 'Eight Modern Writers' (Oxford, 1963) ch. 6

54.   "Kipling's Imperialism", Gross (ed.), 'The Age of Kipling', p.94

55.   'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', pp.406-08

56.   'Ibid.', pp.234-38

57.   'On Kipling's Death', p.183

58.   'Something of Myself', p.91

59.   Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', pp.135-37

60.   An embarrassing court-case involving a relative induced Kipling to
abandon his home in the USA.   He returned to England with his family in
August 1896.   See 'ibid.', ch. 11, and Carrington, 'Rudyard Kipling: His
Life and Work', ch. 11

61.   "The Jungle Book", "The Second Jungle Book", 'Rudyard Kipling'
pp.12-139; 143-277 resp.

62.   Rosemary Sutcliff, 'Rudyard Kipling' (London, 1960) looks at them
mainly from this perspective

63.   As Iyengar, 'Kipling's Indian Tales', notes, 'In the "Jungle Books",
Kipling adroitly manages to fuse adventure, fable and primordial myth into
stories for children that are often profound enough for the maturest adults
as well'

64.   In 'Gulliver's Travels' and 'Huckleberry Finn' respectively

65.   'Kipling's Law: A Study of His Philosophy of Life' (London, 1975) esp.
ch. 4

66.   'The Outline of History' (New York, 1920) Vol. 2, pp.423-24

67.   See the Scout Association, 'Wolf-Cub Handbook' (London, 1968)

68.   'Something of Myself', p.123

69.   Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', p.155

70.   'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', p.185.   See the comments in George
Shepperson, "The World of Rudyard Kipling", Rutherford (ed.), 'Kipling's
Mind and Art', pp.142-44

71.   'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', pp.323-24

72.   'Ibid.', p.282

73.   See Morris, 'Pax Britannica', for an overview of the situation at this
time

74.   'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', pp. 328-29

75.   "Rudyard Kipling", Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), 'Collected
Essays, Journalism and Letters' Vol. 2 "My Country Right or Left", p.185

76.   'The Edwardian Turn of Mind' (Princeton, N.J., 1968) p.18

77.   Blake, 'The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill', sees the war
as having become 'almost as divisive an element in Britain as the Vietnam
War in modern America' p.166

78.   On the war see Elie Halevy, 'A History of the English People' Epilogue
Vol. 1 (1895-1905) Book One "Imperialism" (Harmondsworth, 1939) ch. 2

79.   Shepperson, "Kipling and the Boer War", Gross (ed.), 'The Age of
Kipling', pp.81-88

80.   The poem "If-", 'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', pp.576-77, full as it is of
public school sentiment, was actually inspired by the character of Jameson,
whose ill-starred (no pun intended) raid into Boer territory in 1895 had
helped to precipitate the South African War.   See Kipling, 'Something of
Myself', p.191.   On Rhodes and Kipling see Shepperson, 'Kipling and the
Boer War', p.85, and also William York Tindall, 'Forces in Modern British
Literature 1885-1946' (New York, 1949) p.65

81.   Stewart, 'Eight Modern Writers', p.265

82.   See, for example, "A Sahib's War", Rutherford (ed.), 'Rudyard Kipling:
Short Stories' (Harmondsworth, 1971).   The story was originally published
in 1901

83.   'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', pp.459-60

84.   See Colin MacInnes, "Kipling and the Music Halls", Gross, 'The Age of
Kipling', pp.57-61 and also Tony Palmer, 'All You Need is Love: The Story of
Popular Music' (London, 1977) p. 91

85.   "The Lesson: 1899-1902", 'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', pp.299-300

86.   'Ibid.', p.302

87.   'The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies', p.109

88.   Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', p.256

89.   "The Kipling that Nobody Read", 'The Wound and the Bow' (Cambridge,
Mass., 1941) pp.143-44

90.   '"Cleared"', 'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', p.230

91.   'Ibid.', p.233

92.   On the Ulster crisis see George Dangerfield, 'The Strange Death of
Liberal England' (London, 1972) Part Two, ch. 2.   On Milner's activities
and Kipling's role see A.M. Gollin, 'Proconsul in Politics: A Study of Lord
Milner in Opposition and in Power' (London, 1964) pp.183-86.   On Kipling's
monetary gift see John Evelyn Wrench, 'Alfred Lord Milner 1854-1925 (London,
1958) p.287,   Wrench also claims, in the index of his book, that Kipling
met Milner annually during this period, although this is not mentioned in
the text: p.393

93.   Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', pp.183-84

94.   'Life's Handicap', pp.308-12

95.   See Caroll Quigley, 'The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to
Cliveden' (New York, 1981).   This must be a minor classic of 'conspiracy'
history.   The author holds that a secret society set up in the 1890s around
the central figures of Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner came to virtually
control British imperial policy, and much of British political and
intellectual life.   According to the author: 'It plotted the Jameson Raid
of 1895; it caused the Boer War of 1899-1902; it set up and controls the
Rhodes Trust; it created the Union of South Africa in 1906-10,...  it has
controlled 'The Times' for more than fifty years...etc., etc.'   Kipling is
roped in as a co-conspirator through his involvement with the Rhodes Trust
and membership of the so-called Cecil Bloc.   The book was written in the
late 1940s.

96.   See Edwardes, '"Oh to Meet an Army Man": Kipling and the Soldiers',
p.44

97.   Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', p.257

98.   His poem "The Female of the Species", published at the height of the
suffrage agitations by British women, is an example.   'Rudyard Kipling's
Verse', pp.367-69

99.   'The Edwardian Turn of Mind', p.19.   See also H.L. Varley,
"Imperialism and Rudyard Kipling", 'Journal of the History of Ideas' Vol. 14
(January 1953) p.124

100.  'Fights for the Flag' (London, 1912)

101.  See the excerpt quoted from a letter addressed by Kipling to an
American friend living in the occupied Philippines.   Carrington, 'Rudyard
Kipling: His Life and Work', p.408

102.  'The Offshore Islanders: England's People from Roman Occupation to the
Present' (Harmondsworth, 1975) p.503

103.  Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', ch. 17

104.  'The Turn of a Century: Essays on Victorian and Modern English
Literature' (London, 1973) p.155

105.  Rutherford (ed.), 'Rudyard Kipling: Short Stories' Vol. 2 'Friendly
Brook and Other Stories' pp.80-96

106.  Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', ch. 18

107.  See Kingsley Amis's assessment, 'Rudyard Kipling and His World'
(London, 1975) pp.90-91

108.  For example "The Gardener" (1926): Rutherford (ed.), 'Rudyard Kipling:
Short Stories' Vol. 2, pp.203-14

109.  'Memories: 1898-1939' (London, 1966) p.189.   Kipling had composed an
openly anti-semitic poem in 1915, in the wake of the 'Marconi scandal' and
its aftermath.   See "Gehazi", 'Rudyard Kipling's Verse', pp.242-43.   See
also Blake, 'The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill', p.192

110.  Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', p.300

111.  Rutherford (ed.), 'Rudyard Kipling: Short Stories' Vol. 1, pp.221-52

112.  Birkenhead, 'Rudyard Kipling', pp.342-43

113.  W.L. Renwick, "Re-Reading Kipling", Rutherford (ed.), 'Kipling's Mind
and Art', p.5

114.  'Rudyard Kipling', p.184

115.  'Twentieth-Century English Literature' (London, 1964) p. 146

116.  'Rudyard Kipling: A Study in Literature and Political Ideas', p.vii

117.  'Ibid.', p.80

118.  "Rudyard Kipling: A New Aspect", 'The Listener' (June 12, 1952)
pp.967-68

119.  'The Last Phase', p.388

120.  John Bowle, 'Politics and Opinion in the 19th Century' (London, 1963)
p.351

121.  H. Stuart Hughes, 'Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of
European Social Thought 1890-1930' (London, 1959) pp.414-15

122.  The two sides of this critical division are probably best represented
respectively in Noel Annan, "Kipling's Place in the History of Ideas",
'Victorian Studies' Vol. 3, No. 4 (June, 1960) pp.323-48, esp. pp.355-56,
and Sandison, 'The Wheel of Empire', ch. 4.   See also Karl W. Deutsch and
Norbert Wiener, "The Lonely Nationalism of Rudyard Kipling', 'The Yale
Review" Vol. 52, No. 4 (June, 1963) pp.499-518, who see the resolution of
alienation as a major theme in Kipling's writing.   W. H. Auden, "The Poet
of the Encirclement", Morton D. Zabel (ed.), 'Literary Opinion in America'
(Gloucester, Mass., 1968) Vol. 1, pp.259-64, is an earlier exploration of a
related theme.   Shannon, 'The Crisis of Imperialism', shares with Annan the
view that Kipling has a close affinity with the Continental sociologists
Durkheim and Pareto: p.287

123.  Jack Dunman, "Rudyard Kipling Re-Estimated", 'Marxism Today' Vol. 9,
No. 8 (August, 1965) p.248

124.  'The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling', p.241.   See also Vladimir
Halperin, 'Lord Milner and the Empire: The Evolution of British Imperialism'
(London, n.d.) ch. 5

125.  'The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling', p.250

126.  'Ibid.', pp.250-01

127.  'Ibid.', p.241

128.  Tom Nairn, in 'The Break-Up of Britain' (London, 1977) writes that
'British conservatism has always been profoundly "illogical" since the time
of Edmund Burke, by an instinct rooted in the great historical conditions of
its existence'. p.260. Racialism may be seen as a more modern extension of
its illogicality

129.  "Puck of Pook's Hill", 'Rudyard Kipling', pp.416-552

130.  The title of the first volume of 'The History of the English-Speaking
Peoples'

131.  Godfrey Elton, 1st baron, 'Imperial Commonwealth' (London, 1945).
Concerning Oliver Cromwell, Elton writes '...the Idea for which he sometimes
groped was more English even than Protestantism, something primeval and
instinctive, something of which he was dimly conscious but did not wholly
understand, alien to his own despotism and deep-buiried in the folk-mind of
the nation' p.66

132.  The ideological origins of the National Front are traced in Martin
Walker, 'The National Front' (London, 1976)

133.  See Paul Johnson's comments in 'The Offshore Islanders', p.476

134.  'Romance and Realism', p.88




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