Avowals, Chapter 8

London: Privately Printed, 1 September 1919, pages 164-177, 4,476 words

Avowals is a nonlinear volume of sixteen chapters. Chapters 12 and 15 are essays in worldbuilding; the rest are essays in literary criticism. The chapters appear separately in the Aesthetics and Worlds pillars of George Moore Interactive. All are included in the GMi Kindle edition of Avowals. 

CHAP. VIII.

 In the beginning of the last century a musician, Félicien David, came to Algeria with some painters in search of art (in those days local colour was looked upon as art), and hearing the Arabs singing round their camp fires rhythms that seemed to him unknown in Western Europe, he introduced many of them into his symphony, Le Désert, and with such good result that when his symphony was performed in Paris Berlioz wrote an article entitled A New Beethoven. For some days, some weeks, or some months, David and his symphony were the subject of discussion in inartistic circles, but one evening Auber, who had not ventured an opinion till then, said, on being pressed to give one: I will wait till David gets off his camel; and in the nineties, for no better reason than Beethoven's name was spoken in connection with David, Shake­speare's was evoked when Mr Kipling came to England with Plain Tales from the Hills. For local colour was still looked upon as art, and Mr Kipling's stories were filled even fuller with hookahs and elephants, parakeets and crocodiles, than Le Désert with Arab rhythms.

Life does but repeat itself, but there is always a shade of difference in every repetition, so it was not a fellow-writer but the editor of Lippincott's Magazine who asked Mr Kipling to get off his camel. His proposal to Mr Kipling was for a story in which there should not be many camels, and Mr Kipling must have tried his best to comply with the editor's conditions, for there are a few in the beginning of The Light that Failed, none afterwards — not as the story was written for Lippincott's, but it was rewritten, and the second version ends amid a herd of camels. The hero is a special artist who has done some sketches in the East; his sketches, we feel sure, were wash drawings, and they attracted so much attention that a dealer tried to buy the lot, but the special artist said: I know a trick worth two of that, and forthright laid plans for making as much money as possible. The analogy between the special artist and Mr Kipling is plain indeed, and it led many subtle critics to suspect that Mr Kipling would not show himself to be what is known as a creative artist in the subsequent stages of his career — by creative artist is meant one who is able through sympathy to imagine men and women living in ideas and emotions alien to him; and if this be a true definition of a creative artist, Mr Kipling was certainly not one in The Light that Failed. He knew what the journalist was through himself, for there is a good deal of the journalist in Mr Kipling, and he had observed journalists, but not being willing that his hero, Dick Helder, should remain a pure and unmitigated journalist, he does the very thing that a journalist would do in the circumstances, he sets him painting Melancholia, Albert Dürer's subject, thereby lowering his hero to the condition of a melancholy fool and exposing his own poverty of invention. Let this, however, be said in defence of Mr Kipling the artist, The Light that Failed seems to have revealed to him his limitations; we are not aware of any other attempt of Mr Kipling in imaginative representation of men and women, and the knowledge of one limitation is the sure sign of the artist. Mr Kipling is an artist in a measure; his power over words makes him one, and we can but regret that we do not find among his many gifts the supreme gift.

The phrase I have attributed to Dick Helder, I know a trick worth two of that, does not appear in the story entitled The Light that Failed, but the personality of this special artist, except when he tries to paint a picture of Melancholia is racy of I know a trick worth two of that. The words are in a way an abridgment, a compendium of Dick Helder's attitude towards life; he browses like a horse in tether within the circle of I know a trick worth two of that. I know a trick worth two of that is the keynote of Mr Kipling's mind. It is the key in which he always writes; he indulges in some modulations, but the key of I know a trick worth two of that is never quite out of his ear, and if one were so minded, one could trace it through all his prose and a good many poems. Nearly the whole of Kim is written in this key; now and then he modulates into the world and its shows, the Great Wheel, etc., but one knows that the terrible key­ I know a trick worth two of that — is never far off. And he delights in Kim, just as he delighted in Dick, and his admiration is so spontaneous that it is impossible to read Kim without saying to oneself: Kim is Mr Kipling. Kim is never taken in, and not to be taken in is in Mr Kipling's eyes a sort of north star whereby one steers the bark of life. Kim is a spy, but spying is called the Great Game, and nothing matters so long as you are not taken in, and Mr Kipling's beast-kind is the same as his mankind; the animals in the Jungle Books that we are to admire are those that know a trick worth two of that. He does not venture among godkind, but if he did, his gods too would know a trick worth two of that.

Now it is a moot question if an author's mind extends beyond the characters he creates. Did not Baudelaire say that in Balzac even the porters had genius? Among Mr Kipling's works there is a book called The Gadsbys, and the theme is that if a man wants to get on in the army he should not get married. This will seem, to those who admire the book, an unfair description of it; but we must not be deceived by the external form — we must, if we would appreciate a writer, take into account his attitude towards life, we must discover if his vision is mean or noble, spiritual or material, narrow or wide; for all things are in the eye that sees, the ear that hears, the brain that remembers, the earliest and latest philosophy this is; and in the eighties none knew what world Mr Kipling was about to reveal; but his world is before us now, and noble and beautiful are not the adjectives that anyone would choose wherewith to designate the world of Kipling. Rough, harsh, coarse-grained, come into our minds; Mr Kipling's world is a barracks full of oaths and clatter of sabres; but his language is so copious, rich and sonorous that one is tempted to say that none since the Elizabethans has written so copiously. Others have written more beautifully, but no one that I can call to mind at this moment has written so copiously. Shelley and Wordsworth, Landor and Pater, wrote with part of the language; but who else, except Whitman, has written with the whole language since the Elizabethans? The flannelled fool at the wicket, the muddied oaf of the goal, is wonderful language. He writes with the eye that appreciates all that the eye can see, but of the heart he knows nothing, for the heart cannot be observed; his characters are therefore external, and they are stationary. At first we are taken by Kim, for he is well seen, well observed, well copied; the Lama too we can see as if he were before us — an old man in a long habit has his rosary hanging from the girdle, and we hear his continuous mumbling; but before many pages we begin to perceive that Kim and the Lama are fixed, and we have not read fifty pages before the conviction dawns that those two will be the same at the end of the book as they were in the beginning.

The Lama has come from Tibet in search of a sacred river, and at the outset of his journey he meets a street arab, precocious and vile in his every instinct, and these two make common cause, for they are the pegs whereon Mr Kipling intends to hang his descriptions of India. If they were no more than blunt pegs I would like them better, but they are carved a little, a little here and there; but let the carving pass; something must be granted to every writer. Mr Kipling's object is to describe India, and we shall see how he does this; he shall be measured by our measure, and a fair one it will be judged, for it is applicable though the writer be describing a sunset or an old woman peeling onions, whether he is putting words into the mouth of a tramp or of a philosopher. How much of the precious wine of life do we taste, and in what intensity do we taste it, while reading is our standard measure, whether the art under consideration be literature or painting, whether the literature be prose or poetry; and having stated our measure of criticism, we will proceed with the measurement of Mr Kipling:

They entered the fort-like railway station, black in the end of night; the electrics sizzling over the goods-yard, where they handle the heavy Northern grain-traffic.

How strong the rhythm, lacking perhaps in subtlety, like the tramp of policemen, but a splendid rhythm. And it is Mr Kipling's own rhythm; he borrows from no man, and it is always a pleasure to read or hear unborrowed literature or music.

A little farther on we find ourselves in the middle of a spacious paragraph, the sentences moving to the same sonorous march measure.

Then it came out in those worldly days he had been a master-hand at casting horoscopes and nativities, and the family priest led him on to describe his methods, each giving the planets names that the other could not understand, and pointing upwards as the big stars sailed across the dark. The children of the house tugged unrebuked at his rosary; and he clean forgot the Rule which forbids looking at women as he talked of enduring snows, land­ slips, blocked passages, the remote cliffs where men find sapphires and turquoise, and that wonderful upland road that leads at last into great China itself.

And how finely it ends, that long sentence stretching itself out like: the upland road that leads at last into great China itself!

In saying these things we are praising Mr Kipling's technical excellence, but technical excellence is of no value for us except as a means through which life is revealed.

A few pages farther on we come upon a description of evening; and evening is one of the eternal subjects — men were sensible to the charm and beauty and the tenderness of evening ten thousand years ago, and ten thousand years hence they will be moved in the same way.

By this time the sun was driving broad golden spokes through the lower branches of the mango-trees; the parakeets and doves were coming home in their hundreds; the chattering grey-backed Seven Sisters, talking over the day's adventures, walked back and forth in twos and threes almost under the feet of the travellers; the shufflings and scufflings in the branches showed that the bats were ready to go out on the night picket. Swiftly the light gathered itself together, painted for an instant the faces and the cartwheels and bullocks' horns as red as blood. Then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a low, even haze like a gossamer veil of blue across the face of the country, and bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of wood-smoke and cattle and the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes. The evening patrol hurried out of the police-station with important coughings and reiterated orders; and a live charcoal ball in the cup of a wayside carter's hookah glowed red while Kim's eyes mechanically watched the last flicker of the sun on the brass tweezers.

No one will deny the perfection of the writing, of the strong masculine rhythm of every sentence, and of the accuracy of every observation. But it seems to us that Mr Kipling has seen much more than he has felt; and we prefer feeling to seeing; and when we come to analyse the lines we find a touch of local colour not only in every sentence, but in each part between each semicolon: the sun was driving golden spokes through the branches of the mango trees, the parakeets, the doves, the chattering grey-backed Seven Sisters, the bats ready to go out on the night picket, the light painting the faces and the cartwheels and the bullocks' horns. At last a sentence that does not carry any local colour: then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a low even haze like a gossamer veil of blue across the face of the country, but after the comma local colour begins again, bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of wood-smoke and cattle, and the cakes, etc. Then there is the evening patrol and the live charcoal ball, and then Kim's eyes watching the flicker of the sun on the brass tweezers.

It would be difficult to find a passage in literature of the same length so profusely touched with local colour. Was it not a shame to observe that slender wistful hour so closely? Mr Kipling seems to have followed it about like a detective employed in a divorce case — like Kim himself, who is a political spy. We prefer an evening by Pierre Loti; he experiences a sensation, and his words transmit the sensation, and remind us of many things that we have experienced at sunsetting. Loti's touch is perhaps a little superficial, a little facile, the feeling is perhaps genteel, even trite, but with all there is more wistfulness in Loti than in Kipling, and an evening that is not wistful is not evening.

But evening comes, evening with its magic, and we relinquish ourselves to the charm once more.

About our brave little encampment, about the rough horizon where all danger seems at present asleep, the twilight sky kindles an incomparable rose border, orange, then green; and then, rising by degrees to the zenith, it softens and quenches. It is the indecisive and lovely hour, when amid limpidities which are neither day nor night our odorous fires begin to hum clearly, sending up their white smoke to the first stars; our camels, relieved of their burdens and their high saddles, sweep by the thin bushes, browsing on perfumed branches, like great fantastic sheep, of slow inoffensive demeanour. It is the hour when our Bedouins sit in a circle to tell stories and sing; the hour of rest, and the hour of dream, the delicious hour of nomadic life.

The Bedouins and camels tell us that the evening Loti is describing is an Eastern evening, but even these two touches of local colour, which were unavoidable, add nothing to the beauty of the passage: suppress them, tum the Bedouins into gipsies and the camels into horses, and it would be impossible to say whether the evening described had happened in England or Japan. Loti's intention was to describe something that is eternal in the heart of man, something that he has known always, that he knew ten thousand years before Nineveh and that he will know ten thousand years hence. Mr Kipling's intention is more ethnological than poetic. We learn from it that the parakeets and doves come home to the woods in the evening, we learn that the sun turns the faces and the bullocks' horns red as blood, and a variety of other things. From Loti's description we have learned nothing, but we have been moved, as we are moved when we look at a portrait by Rembrandt. Not for a moment must it be thought that I compare Loti with Rembrandt. Loti is a painter in water colours, his sentences flow fragile and transparent like flower blooms; but Rembrandt's intention and Loti's intention is the same — the intention is to interest us in things that always have been and always will be. But I envy Mr Kipling his copious and sonorous vocabulary, especially his neologisms; he writes with the whole language, with the language of the Bible, and with the language of the streets. He can do this, for he possesses the inkpot which turns the vilest tin idiom into gold. Last night, his description of the hills was for me a cup of mixed admiration and misery, and I reaffirm my belief that no one tainted with journalism has written in a language more like the English language, and we take pleasure in noting that, unlike every other journalist, he refrains from French words.

They crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the Lama, mildly chaffing Kim, went through up to his knees, like a Bactrian camel — the snow-bred, shag-haired sort that come into the Kashmir Serai. They dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale, where they took refuge from a gale in a camp of Tibetans hurrying down tiny sheep, each laden with a bag of borax. They came out upon grassy shoulders still snow-speckled, and through forest, to grass anew. For all their marchings, Kedarnath and Badrinath were not impressed; and it was only after days of travel that Kim, uplifted upon some insignificant ten-thousand-foot hummock, could see that a shoulder-knot or horn of the great lords had — ever so slightly — changed outline.

At last they entered a world within a world — a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned of the mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountain. Here one day's march carried them no farther, it seemed, than a dreamer's clogged pace bears him in a nightmare. They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours, and, behold, it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile! A rounded meadow revealed itself, when they had reached it, for a vast tableland running far into the valley. Three days later, it was a dim fold in the earth to southward.

Surely the Gods live here, said Kim, beaten down by the silence and the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain. This is no place for men!

Long and long ago, said the Lama, as to himself, it was asked of the Lord whether the world were everlasting. To this the Excellent One returned no answer…. When I was in Ceylon, a wise seeker confirmed that from the gospel which is written in Pali. Certainly since we know the way to Freedom, the question were unprofitable, but­ look, and know illusion, chela! These are the true hills! They are like my hills by Suchzen. Never were such hills!

Above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away towards the snow-line, where from east to west, across hundreds of miles, ruled as with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped. Above that, in scarps and block upheaved, the rocks strove to fight their heads above the white smother. Above these again, changeless since the world's beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and cloud, lay out the eternal snow. They could see blots and blurs on its face, where storm and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance. Below them, as they stood, the forest slid away in a sheet of blue-green, for mile upon mile; below the forest was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep grazing-grounds; below the village they knew, though a thunderstorm growled and worried there for a moment, a pitch of twelve or fifteen hundred feet gave to the moist valley where the streams gather that are the mothers of young Sutluj.

A miserable midnight is often succeeded by a sunny morning, and it was a relief to awake forgetful of what I had read overnight. Envy! Of course! We're envious because we admire; the lay reader neither admires nor envies — art is for the artists. And I was glad to awake forgetful of Mr Kipling, thinking of Pierre Loti, of a book I had not seen for months. On looking into Kim again I found pages of dialogue, magnificently wrought, hard and breathless; a hardware shop with iron tulips hanging from the rafters and brass forget-me-nots on the counter. Loti is never hard. His attitude towards life is that of a child, of a blond ringleted child with bright blue eyes and hands full of flower blooms, and a sensibility like that of a perverse child impelled to caresses. The description I remembered was a description of a wet evening on Mount Sinai, a few simple lines, simple as a tune played on a shepherd's pipe, not the pipe of a real shepherd, but on a silver flute. Listen to Loti's sweet piping and forget the regimental band, whose last echoes are dying in the twilight.

Marching all the morning through interminable valleys that are alike, walled with red granite, ascending by slight inclines towards the great Sinai where we shall be tomorrow. They grow larger, the valleys, and the mountains rise higher; everything becomes grander amid changing and sombre clouds; over yonder, in front of us, through gigantic and opening bays of stone, we begin to see still higher peaks with white snows shining against the darkness of the sky. An icy wind arises, blowing towards us from the buttresses of Sinai; it drowns us in a smiting rain of melting snow and hail; our camels scream and tremble with cold; our light clothes of white wool, our thin Arab slippers, everything is soon saturated with flowing water; and ourselves are trembling, our teeth clenched, our hands suffering and inert, mortally benumbed.

Soon after, the caravan arrives at Sinai, and several days are spent in a monastery fifteen hundred years old, whose cedar doors are a thousand years old. Loti mentions that the monks have finished saying their prayers, but their prayers have no concern for him; he is not sufficiently interested in them to meditate upon their wisdom or their folly in living their lives amid the rocks of Sinai; he is more interested in the age of the doors, and of the chests, and of the tapestries, and the many old things they show him, and he bids the monks good-bye, somewhat amused by the fact that this good-bye is for eternity. It was part of Loti's genius to look upon the individual as passing, hardly worthy of notice; and this is why Zola said to me, the evening that the news came in that the Academy had elected Loti, that there was no humanity in Loti. I did not understand what Zola meant at the time, for I had not read Loti; now I understand how Zola was deceived. Zola looked upon habits and customs as humanity, and there are no habits and customs in Loti. What is admirable in Loti, what gives him his originality, is his indifference to the individual. He leads us away from our individual troubles, and interests us in the vast mysterious sky, and the rocks; man has travelled the desert with his camels for ever and ever, that is to say since Abraham —

Behind us the scarps of granite have become black screens, wrought and strangely carven against a starry sky — and placed there like the wild seal of Islam, the thin crescent of an Oriental moon, its two horns in the air.

Wandering, for ever wandering through silvery mornings, dazzling afternoons, and rose-coloured evenings, then resting under the moon, the burden of centuries fallen from our shoulders, universal education, bimetallism, free trade, electric light, and wood paving, all our ideas fallen, and we nomads again, wandering, for ever wandering.

Next day we enter an oasis, a little circle of life created by a spring amid the rocks, and rest there; and we resume our journey, wandering, for ever wandering under an immense sky, and Loti noticing every change in it, pink and mauve and grey, delicate harmonies played on lute and lyre, with a flute singing pale turquoise blue. Some brass instruments are added to the orchestra; the bassoon tells of the great blue gulf above, and the trombone of the great blue gulf on the right, a great gulf of Prussian blue describing a curve — the Sea of Akabah. The sheikh rides up to Loti and asks him if he will ride his dromedary, which he says is swifter than the one Loti is riding, and they trot on side by side. A bird follows, flying in the shadow of the dromedary, and at night-time it seeks shelter in Loti's tent. These are the events. Someone shoots a nightjar; it was beautiful when it was flying, but an uninteresting lump of feathers when it was dead; and the female comes crying round the camp seeking its lost mate. And we are delighted when the caravan enters Palestine. For there is a change in the air; it is no longer the hard, dry air that passes unbreathed over a world without life of stones and sand. And with little greedy grunts of satisfaction the camels swing their long necks from side to side, snatching ears of corn. I shall always remember the last salutes when the Arabs leave Loti, returning to the desert where they were born, and where they like to live. Soft as the sound of a flute in the distance the words go by. One writer blows his pipe on the hill-side, the other blares like a military band; all brass and reed instruments are included in this band. Mr Kipling's prose goes to a marching rhythm, the trumpet's blare and the fife's shriek; there is the bass clarionet and the great tuba that emits a sound like the earth quaking fathoms deep, or the cook shovelling coal in the coal-cellar. The band is playing variations; but variations on what theme? The theme will appear presently.... Listen! There is the theme, the shoddy tune of the average man: I know a trick worth two of that.