REVIEW OF BOOKS
Simon Raven on Kipling, and the virtues of hard work
Philip Mason, as he explains in his Foreword*, has set out to tell us what we need to know of Kipling's life if we are to understand his work, and at Una same time to comment on that work (though mainly on the stories rather than the poetry) in such a fashion as to illuminate Kipling's life. Others, w'rites Mr Mason, have compiled either biographies or critical assessments of Kipling: he himself has hoped to combine both. In case we should still suspect that something of the kind has been attempted, rather frequently, before, Mr Mason issues a further claim to our attention: his strange sub-title, he writes, was suggested to him by a passage in Robert Louis Stevenson's `The Bottle Imp', in which a bottle is described as reflecting the images of ordinary objects from its surface while "withinsides, something obscurely moved, like a shadow and a fire." The normal reflections stand for all that is more obvious about Kipling; "the shadow and the fire" within the bottle stand for "what is below the surface" and, as Mr Mason believes, "best".
I confess to finding it a trifle tedious in Mr Mason that he should be at pains to wrap up so commonplace a thought in so portentous a metaphor. We are all familiar with the notion that a talented man — or any man — often 'Kipling, The Glass, the Shadow and the Fire Philip Mason (Jonathan Cape £6.00) conceals his more interesting motives below the surface which he publicly presents. Why does Mr Mason go on about it — and why am I now going on about his going on? I am doing so in order to warn readers against being put off by Mr Mason's first few pretentious pages. When he has done with his bottles and his genies, he settles down quite satisfactorily to propose three very pertinent questions about Kipling and his oeuvre, and to suggest sensible, well informed (except in one instance, of which more later) and conscientious answers.
Mr Mason's questions are these. Why has Kipling aroused so much hate as well as so much love? Why have so many people read his earlier writing and neglected the more mature? And why did he publish, along with his finest and most 'developed' work, so much that was unworthy? The easy answer to the first question is that Kipling was a jingo and an imperialist whose stories gave great pleasure but whose ethos set up great antagonism. As Mr Mason points out straight away, this simply will not do. To begin with, Kipling was not a jingo: he merely believed that in certain circumstances it was necessary to employ armed force in order to maintain the order and security which are the essential concomitants of human well being — of every man's well being, whether his lot is to govern or to be governed. Secondly, Kipling was not an imperialist, or not in the pejorative sense in which the word is commonly used: he believed in the Pax Britannica. True, he did not always distinguish between the aims of sound administration, which obtained in British India, and the motives of material greed, which were paramount in Africa among the followers of Cecil Rhodes; but nevertheless, and for all his oversights, Kipling sincerely conceived the function of Empire as the widespread bestowal of peace, enlightenment and good law. Although this creed may be questionable (for it premises the right of the strong to impose their will on the weak, and beneficence can seldom justify dictation), it is not ignoble. Why then was Kipling hated for it?
In fact, of course, he was not. He was hated because he believed in individual responsibility, in efficiency, achievement and hard work. The blessings of Empire, as he saw them; depended on the ceaseless and knowledgeable work of dedicated and competent men. If things went well, there would be men to be praised, and if they didn't there would be men to be faulted. It was no good saying that 'God' or 'Fate' or 'Society' was to blame. Even if there had been an unforeseeable and unavoidable natural catastrophe, there were things to be done to mitigate it, and at the very least the-mess could he tidied up. Men who tidied up quickly were good men and those who sat around whining were not. Now, one point about this attitude is that it does not recognise facile excuses for failure; and another is that it attributes merit. And here we have it. In order to operate an
Empire, virtues which few people possess or can attain to must be fostered, encouraged and rewarded, while weaknesses with which many of us are saturated must be despised and punished. Even in Kipling's day the mass of the mediocre resented this state of affairs, and in our own age, which delights to cosset imaginary grievance and to penalise determination and talent, the calculus of merit to which Kipling subscribed is seen as very near criminal. In short: Kipling has been and is widely hated, not for the type of Empire he desired (which he could be forgiven for believing honourable), but for the superior type of man whom he proclaimed must build and guard It.
Kipling, then, admired difficult work and those that did it. But it is permissible to ask (as C. S. Lewis asked years ago) what all the work was ultimately for. Peace, order, sound and uncorrupt administration — oh yes, indeed — but what of the last things of all, what of the immortal soul? This was the problem which began to occupy Kipling more and more as he grew older (the.shadow and the fire inside the bottle), and hence, perhaps, the answer to Mr Mason's second question (why is Kipling's later work comparatively neglected?). For the immortal soul may have concerned Lewis and it may have concerned Kipling, but the topic has long since ceased to be fashionable, being generally (if perhaps mistakenly) regarded as irrelevant. Practical problems of engineering or governance have stronger appeal than those of eschatology, and the practical problems propounded in Kipling's earlier stories have an immediate fascination which is bound to attract and hold readers, however much many of them may dislike the manner and methods of solution. Immortal longings, on the other hand, do not make popular copy; or to put it another way, the Lama (as Mr Mason opines) may be the most subtly drawn character in Kim, but the book is read (as Mr Mason admits) for Mahbub Ali and the Grand Trunk Road.
So far, so good. Philip Mason's account of Kipling's development as a man and as an artist proceeds steadily and competently (Kipling would have admired the work that has gone into it) and as it proceeds gives good, common sense answers, more or less as I have rendered them above, to Mr Mason's first two questions. It is when we come to the third question (why did Kipling publish so much that was unworthy of him?) that I find myself at odds with Mr Mason. As I understand his answer, it is that Kipling's early training as a journalist made him too slick, too prone to showing off in a short space, too concerned with appearing to be 'in the know' — in a word, too conceited — for satisfactory self-appraisal. This seems to me to be naive, or perhaps I had rather say, ill-informed.
For while Mr Mason is the author of many distinguished books, for the first part of his life his actual career was in the Indian Civil Service, since leaving which he has been much employed in giving advice about race relations. So it may be news to Mr Mason that young men who must live by their pens sell anything that anybody will buy from them (experto credite) and that even when they become older and more distinguished and can afford to scrap their unhappier efforts, sheer force of habit impels them to go on selling everything they possibly can. When all is said, work that doesn't come off costs as much (and more) in energy as work that does, there may well be some damned merit in it, and even if there isn't a cheque is substantial consolation: for if somebody has actually bought a sub-standard piece, one can cheat oneself into thinking that it wasn't sub-standard after all because if it was it would not have been paid for. In sum, Kipling wasn't too conceited to recognise his inferior work; he was, when young, too necessitous to refuse money and, when older, too mindful of past necessity. However, if Mr Mason has failed to understand this little professional quirk, be assured that for the most part his good sense is immaculate.
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