Chapter III Tales of Soldiers 76

Chapter III

Tales of Soldiers

Rudyard Kipling returned to India in 1882 to work as a journalist In Lahore and later in Allahabad. At that time Britain governed India and what is now Pakistan, and maintained a big army of British and Indian soldiers to defend the frontiers and keep law and order. The British were particularly concerned about the intentions of the Russian Empire to the north, and were suspicious of its interest in Afghanistan, a turbulent buffer state, ruled by an Amir. In the frontier region, then the tribes took little heed of borders unless it suited them, and the British fought a number of small wars and local campaigns to keep order and protect their interests.

Young Kipling, deeply curious about the strange new land he found himself in, with a great capacity for getting to know all sorts and conditions of people, made friends with many soldiers, officers in their messes, sergeants and privates wherever he found them, and wrote about their stories, their lives and their concerns, in tales that were first read in newspapers and magazines, and then collected into highly popular books such as Soldiers Three.

I. Tales of Three Soldiers In most serious criticism of Kipling's work the soldier stories have been either ignored as of minor importance or praised superficially for their authenticity and vivid reportage, while their literary worth as closely integrated and fully achieved works of art has gone largely unrecognised. Kipling wrote eighteen stories about the adventures of these three private soldiers, some hilariously humorous, others grim and tragic, inspired by his acquaintance with the British regiments in and around Lahore. They were also, of course, celebrated in his Barrack-Room Ballads. Each man speaks in his own dialect, Irish, Yorkshire and Cockney, which some commentators have found irritating while others marvel at his mastery of the language. What is undeniable is that Kipling was the first writer in English to create great literature out of the lives of common soldiers. The 77 situation the British soldier "Tommy Atkins" in Kipling's times can be best described in the following lines. When danger's rife and wars are high God and soldier's all the cry. When wars are oe'r and matters righted; God is forgotten and the soldier slighted (Jamiluddin, Tropic Sun53).

Kipling's three soldiers—Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd—are a literary tradition. They are the Horatii and the Curatii, the three Musketeers; Og, Gog and Magog; Captains Fluellin, Macmorris and Jamy; Bardolph, Pistol and Nym. Kipling's soldiers three are the author's achievement in quality and rank. They belong rather to the efficient literary workman who wrote the Simla Tales than to the inspired author of the Jungle Books. Yrom the house of Suddhu to the barrack-yard, Kipling comes forward as a decorator and colourman in words. He is conspicuously at work upon the three soldiers Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd.

Kipling had many opportunities of observing and knowing the British soldier in India. At Westward Ho [majority of the boys were the sons of officers, and destined for the army themselves, and this fact must have left its impressions on him. His first real contacts came at an impressionable age because he was not quite 17, when he joined "The Civil and Military Gazette" at Lahore. He found himself in the province popularly known as 'The Sword Arm of the Empire'-Lahore, the land of the militant Sikhs and fanatic Muslims. He got to meet the soldiery of those days in the visits to Fort Lahore and in a less degree, at Mia Mir Cantonment. He notes, I am one of the few civilians who have turned out a quarter guard of her Majesty's troops. It was on a chill winter morn about 2 a.m. At the fort, and though I suppose I had been given the countersigned on my departure, from the mess, I forgot it ere I reached the main Mir guard, and when challenged announced myself spaciously at "visiting rounds". When the men had clattered out I asked the sergeant if he had ever seen a finer collection of scoundrels. That cost me beer by the gallons but it was worth it (55). 78

The army is not easy to get to know, but Kipling managed it well. Apart from private visits, there was much reporting to be done for the paper-regiments coming in and moving out, manoeuvres, special parades. Army functions. Court Martials and the likes. Either as a correspondent or as a friend ,Kipling was there in the barracks, on the parade ground, at manoeuvres, with soldier shooting parties-wherever there was anything to learn or know of the common soldier. His stories make this association plain to the most casual reader. Palmer leaves us guessing when he say "Mr. Kipling's warrior tales, in fact allow us clearly to realise that Mr. Kipling's real inspiration and interest is far away from the battlefield and the barrack."(67) Actually, Kipling's soldier stories and the barrack room verse narratives are the best pieces of observation which went directly into fiction.

But all the stories were not inspired by life around Kipling. Most of the soldier tales were related to Kipling by soldiers he knew. In most cases the narrator was the contemporary soldier, eventhough the tales may be of soldiers long dead and past.

Kipling's stories give the unmistakable impression that he had seen military life at close quarters in India. In "The Three Musketeers" Kipling proceeds thus; Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd are Privates in B company of a line regiment, and personal friends of mine.Collectively,I think but am not certain ,they are the worst men in the regiment so far as genial blackguardism goes. They told me this story in Umbala Refreshment room while we were waiting for an up-train. I supplied the beer. The tale was cheap at a gallon and a half (Plain Tales69).

The story "The taking of Luntungpen" begins thus "My friend Private Mulvaney told me this sitting on the parapet road do Dagshai; when we were hunting butterflies together"(^^«'" TalesUA).

In "The God from the Machine" we are told Kipling does not take delight in violence and blood. But he appears to be a man who sits down and conscientiously tries to imagine what it is like to kill people. Kipling talks of men carved in battle to the nasty noise of beef-cutting upon the block, or of men falling over like the rattle of fire-irons in 79 the fender and the grunt of a pole-axed ox. He also writes about a hot encounter between two combatants wherein one of them after feeling for his opponent's eyes finds it necessary to wipe his thumb on his trousers or of gun wheels greasy from contact with a late gunner. When Kipling writes like this, they are deliberate fiction. These things have not been written from inspired impulse, but by taking careful thought. Kipling is a writer who writes of war, because for him war is a good "subject" with opportunities for effective treatment. Kipling had gone to attend an Army Ball, and got the story "The Solid Muldoon" from Mulvaney. In "The Solid Muldoon" there is a passage in which Kipling gives us some idea of how the company of the soldiers begot stories. "Tale provoked tale and each tale more beer. Even dreamy Learoyd's eyes began to brighten, and he unburdened himself of a long history in which a trip to Malham Cove, a girl at Pately Brigg, a ganger himself, and a pair of clogs were mixed in drawling tnang\e''\Soldiers ThreeA2).

A passage from Kipling's autobiography finds an echo in "With the Main Guard". "The time was one o'clock of a stifling June night, and the place was the main gate at fort Amara, most desolate and least desirable of all fortresses in India. What I was doing there at that hour is a question which only concerns M'Grath, the sergeant of the Guard, and the men on the gate" {Soldiers Three55).'This shows that Kipling got many of these soldier stories from the soldiers themselves.

In "The Courting of Dinah Shaad" Kipling tells us that he had gone as a special correspondent to report army manoevres, he gives a vivid description of these, such as he may have posted to this paper, and then observes "Pleasant is the lot of the correspondent who falls into such hands as those of privates Mulveny, Ortheris and Leoroyd" {Lifa 's HandicapAA).

In "Love O' Women" Kipling has to attend High Court to report Army murder case. After the trial is over, and Kipling had sent his report to the paper, he joins the trio Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, and spends afternoon with them in the shade of the verandah, Mulveny telling them the story of Love-0-Women .Kipling's insistence in his stories on his association with the soldiers is not a literary device to impart to them an air 80 of realism. .His acquaintance with the soldiery arose both from the "day's work" and the fascination that military life in India had for him.

Kipling's soldiers belonged to the pre-mutiny-days or to the decade immidietely following the Mutiny,and were not the soldiers of the 80s. It is true that since the days of East India Company,army regulations had undergone changes and service terms were different from those of an earlier period.But the character of a soldier and the army life had little altered.This is because the classes from which the recruits came were materially unrevolutionised.Kipling's picture of the contemporary soldier,with his lack of education,his insatiable thirst,his diversions and hobbies,his habh of swearing ,his lapses and crimes,his conditions of living, as also his courage and devotion to duty was closer to the true picture of the times.

We are all familiar with the terrible revelations made as to the temptations of our Army in India.Much as we are devided with regard to certain legislative measures ,we are all agreed as to the necessity of efforts being put forth to grapple with the problem presented by a soldiers life.Let us remember that a large number of our private soldiers are drawn from a class that have never recieved any teaching on the subject of purity ,beyond that conveyed in filthy jests and coarse jocularity .They join the service as mere boys ,low traditions abound all around them ,barrack life excludes them from purifying influences of family life ,and association with pure women"(Hardy,ro/wOTj; Atkms\9l)

Sir Richard Temple, an authority on India describes the unpleasant truths about the environment and the trials of Military life in India. The barracks of these soldiers lacked spaciousness and ventilation, and his surroundings were insanitary.His married quarters were utterly unlike English Homes. He was usually uneducated, his reasonable amusements were few, his temptations to vice were many and his habits but too often tended to intemperence. He worked out his time of Indian service in the hottest plains without respite in cooler hills. If he was sent by medical advice to sanitorium, he was subjected to the hardship of toilsome journey. 81

Kipling arrived in India in 1882 and things came as a shock to him. He mentions Northemberland Fusilers and the Surreys as regiments he bacame very fond of. As he got to know them, he bagan to realise the dreadful conditions under which they served. Discipline was not particularly hard or brutal in those days, but the barrack conditions were extremely bad. There was not much attention paid to the men's food, amenities and welfare. The private soldiers lived in horrible conditions. There is no doubt that Kipling felt it rather too keenly.

Kipling takes for granted the indomitable courage of the soldier and the good luck of the British Army. Stories of actual warfare that the British army saw in Kipling's India was in the nature of border skirmishes and the fighting that led to the annexation of Burma. Many of his stories harp on past wars -notably the Afgan wars. Afganistan with the Russian bugbear behind it, was one of the source of constant anxiety to the ruling power. And Kipling knew well worth of the Afgan as'a fighter, his cunning in attack and defence, as well as his treacherous marauding nature. The danger zone was only about three hundred miles from Lahore. Kipling had visited it and once narrowly escaped death from a deadly bullet fired from the unknown. Officers and men coming in and going out must have given him their own accounts of dangers and thrills of life on frontier. Young husband, who spent 36 years on the frontier and was well known in Kipling circles thus writes of his experiences:

It was a curious and thrilling life on the frontier. Imagine, for instance, playing a game of polo at Hurlingham and then having to fight your way home through a storm of bullets. Yet this exciting finish occurred one evening in the Swat valley. Picture yourself sitting down to dinner in Knightsbridge Barracks, every officer wearing a revolver, and the swords of all stacked in the corners of the room, yet the Guides so dined knightly in the days of Lumsden.Imagine behind the waiter, a sudden apparition,a man with rifle pointed at the colonel. A loud report, a whiff of smoke, and the colonel dead. That too, happenned at an officer's mess on the Derajat Border. (Younghusband, Forty years252) 82

It must also be remembered that Kipling came out to India only two years after the conclusion of the second Afgan war 1878-1880. He had opportunities of getting first hand information from the officers and the men who fought the battles of that war. Roberts. C.I.C, the hero of Ahmed Khyl was his personal friend. And so we see that he was specially equipped to write of the happenings beyond the border. Afganistan and the north west frontier of India furnish all the tragedy and glory of Army in India for three generations, it was not unfitting that a Kipling should have sung them again and again. The actual number of stories is not so large. It should not be forgotten that Kipling is writing fiction and not the military history. If we try to verify his descriptions by a reference to contemporary history it would be disappointing. In these tales there is a tinge of history but in most cases he takes incidents from actual battles and weaves them into artistic patterns of his own creation.

Kipling naturally does not take delight in savage war. He has been accused of a positive gusto for knives and bayonets, for redly dripping steel and spattered flesh. It is the skilled craftsman's gusto for doing things thoroughly and effectively. Kipling cannot conceal his delight in his competency to make war as nasty as Zola or Tolstoy has made it. But this has nothing to do with a delight in war. Kipling's savagery is of excessively cultivated kind. It is not atavism or a sinister resolution to stand in the way of progress and gentility. Kipling's warrior tales, in fact, allow us clearly to realise that Kipling's real inspiration and interest is far away from the battle-field and the barrack.The best example of this is the story" With the Main Guard"told by Mulvaney. It is a story of an incident in the first phase of the second Afgan war. It happenned when he was with the old regiment and it tells of a terrible hand to hand fight with the Pathans.A company of his own Battalion ,with a company of his former corps ,The Black Tyron ,were fighting side by side,his company under the famous "Crook"0'neil and the Tyron had sent a "little officer Bhoy ".This story may be based on events of the fighting at any of the three famous places Peiwar Kotal,Ali Masjid and Jowaki .The touch of the little officer boy and bugle boy who were keen to bag their share of killing pathans ,makes an extraordinary story of tribal warfare thrilling and romantic.As Mulvaney puts it "There is a dale more done in the field then iver gets into field ordhers'XSoldiers Three61) 83

The story "The Drums of Fore and Aft" is a medley of the two battles of the Afgan war, the British disaster at Maiwand and the subsequent victory at Ahmed Khyl.The term "fore and Aft" is the memeory of tradition of fighting both ways, their rear rank and the front rank of the thin red line -that gave the 28"^ their cap badges behind and before and the old name for the 59'*', who were at Ahmed BChyl, the Five and Nine. After preaching a homily on the British military affairs, Kipling tells the story to support his homily. Maiwand was perhaps the worst military reverse known to the British Army in India. Writing of the men who faught in this battle. Kipling says. Their one excuse is that they came again and did their best to finish the job in style.But for a time all their world knows that they were openly beaten, whipped, dumb-cowed, shaking and afraid. The men know it :their officers know it, the Horse Guards know it, and when the next war comes the enemy will know it also...one hears strange and horrible stories of men not following their officers, of orders being given by those who had no right to give them, and of disgrace that, but for the standing luck of the British Army, might have ended in brilliant disaster (Wee Willie Winkie359).

The official account of the war was published in 1907, and Kipling had no knowledge of it when he wrote that story, and yet he comes so very near to the official version. The last part of the story refers to the British viceroy at Ahmed Khyl, a few months after; to avenge the disaster at Maiwand. Kipling makes particular reference to the stand of the Goorkhas and the highlanders.

The Gurkhas'stall at the Bazar was the noisiest, for the men were engaged -to a nasty noise as of beef being cut on the bloc-with the kukri, which they prefered to the bayonet; well knowing how the Afgan hates the full moon blade. As the Afgans wavered, the green standards on the mountain moved down to assist them in a last rally. The Afgan forces were on the run -the run wearied the wolves who Snarl and bite over their shouldders... The highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred yards law, and then brought them down gasping and choking, ere they could reach the protection of the boulders aho\e.{Wee Willie Winkie359) 84

It should be noticed that the two drummer boys Lew and Jekin introduced in the story by Kipling heighten the pathos of the situation by embracing a brave death. No doubt Kipling wanted to emphasise that though the battle was lost through inexperience and bad leadership, the men who fought in it were gallant at heart, that they would come back to avenge their defeat, as they in fact did.

The story "The Lost Legion" is also a medley of two occcurences far removed in time. The title alone bears tribute to Kipling's wide reading and knowledge. It is name in history for famous Ninth Legion. The Legion Hispaniea, about the year 80 A.D, marched out from York, fully equipped, six thousand strong to deal faithfully with the brigands of the northen territories. These people belonged to a powerful teuto-Celtic tribe from the Black Forest. The legion was never heard of again. No prisoners escaping, no slaves rescued, no arms ever for sale nor ever dug up the mystery of history that made along gap in the Army lists of Rome for many a year. And Kipling uses it for his only Mutiny story. The story is really of the 55"^ Bengal Native infantry that mutinied at Nowshera and Mardan. With a small party of mutineer cavalry made for trans-border and swat valley, calls the tribesmen to join them and extirpate the British. But the tribesmen knew more about the British than them and coveted the muteeneer's horses and arms and accoutrements and chased them up and down across the border. At the same time John Nicholson and his levies did the same. The story of their massacre no doubt remained and also the joy Pathan took in it. Kipling took the story of their ghosts wandering and clattering among the tombs, possibly a story then current of how the noise of the ghostly squadron had enabled a real cavalry regiment to pass the hillside watchtowers, as watchers prayed in terror of the ghosts -and thus surround a pirates strong hold. With a simple unletterd, and a credulous Pathan such legends carried conviction. And there must have been many a sight in the battle-scarred border to haunt his imagination.

As for the actual expedhion against Gulla Kutta Mulla described in the story, it is difficult to be definite. There were number of fanatic mullas across the border, with their band of outlaws. Their depredations on the Indian territory meant constant vigil for the govemment.As Kipling expalins it: 85

You must know that all along the northwest frontier of India there is spread a force of some thirty thousand foot and horse ,whose duty it is quietly and unostentetiously to shepherd the tribes in front of them.They move up and down ,and down and up,from one desolate little post to another ;they are ready to take the field at ten minute's notice ;they are always half in and half out of a difficulty somewhere along the monotonous line :their lives are as hard as their own muscles and the papers never say anything about them .It was from this force that the government picked its men {Many Inventions359).

"The Taking of Lungtungpen" is a story of the eastern border. The British went to Mandalay in 1885, deposed the king and took Burma. But they allowed the Burmese army to disband. These formed themselves into bodies of raiders and outlaws ransacking the countryside for the next two years, till they were rounded up. The story of how Mulvaney and his corps swam a river, captured a village and "strippped to the buff actually happened to a company of the Hampshires. The story is in rich humour which belongs to all Mulvaney pieces. Mulvaney draws his own moral from the exploit which is, "They tuk Lungtungpen nakid:an' they'd take St, Pethersburgh in ! Bedgad they would that!" {Plain Tales 121).

Kipling's only story of the Indian Mutiny is "The Little House at Arrah" has not been included in the Sussex edition of his works.Mutiny writings in English attempted to present a picture of the general cataclysm wrought by the Indians during the upheavel, the Indian characters introduced being either villains or spies.No Rani of Jhansi or Tantia Topi (Tatya Tope) finds an honourable place in these pages. The gallantry of many an Indian soldier, of many a civilian in defending and giving shelter to Indian men, women and children, the conflict of patriotism and desire in many a soul to be true to one sown salt -All this find no place in Anglo-Indian mutiny literature. Race, pride and prejudice often blur the writer's vision and either the account -tends to be all history (the British version of it). Otherwise it is all fanciful,conjuring up every possible terror and agony to which the English in India were subjected. 86

Kipling's story of the Mutiny makes no claim to be historical in detail but the account tallies fairly well with the facts of history. The narrator in the story is an old Khansama and his version of the events is correct except a few minute deatails.

"The Little House at Arrah" is most notable story of restraint and balancing to honour a historical monument. Kipling was evidently inspired to write about it from the account that he came across in Trevelyan "Already that wall on which Wake wrote the diary of the seige has been white washed; and the enclosure where the dead horses lay through those August days has been destroyed; and a party wall has been built over the well in the cellars, and the garden fence, which served the muteeneers as a first parallel has been moved twenty yards back" The little house mentioned in the story was billiard room in the compound of the Collector's bunglow, which was converted by Boyle into a little defence house against the mutineers who laid seige to it. A handful of English and loyal sikhs defended it against heavy odds till the hour of relief came. Quite naturally Kipling resents the effacement of this historical monument by the state Government which had remodellled and converted the little house into a residential quarter for the Destrict judge.

English did preserve to the minutest detail other buildings connected with the Mutiny, the Well in Kanpur and the Residency at Lukhnow being two such instances. Kipling's interest in the little house at Arrah is, however understandable. As a refuge of strong men fighting for their lives, as a symbol of duty and devotion to task against heavy odds, it had peculiar charm for him. Kipling's narrative is not marred by any attempt to lay the colours too thickly, and he gives the Sikh soldiers their due share in the gallant defence of the "Little House"

If Kipling had no opportunities in India for seeing the British soldier engaged in active service, he certainly saw all that could be seen of him in the surroundings of peace. Perhaps this is an inevitable corollary to his deep adrriiration of the soldier at war. When it comes to writing about the man in rank, telling civilian how he lived, what he thought about his regimental affairs and his view on things in general, Kipling has no equal. Conditions in barracks, even in England were still bad, but apparently considered good 87 enough for the soldier. The training consisted mostly of drill and marching, with not much to develop the young soldier's intelligence. It must be remembered that quite a number of men could neither read nor write and no regimental schools existed. Life outside the barracks had little interest for them. Kipling portrayed every phase of the soldier's life inside and outside the barrack room in the peacetime stories. That the soldier in peace is a very different character from the soldier in war is generally recognised. The peacetime life set particularly against the background of Indian climate and disease. It has its own comedy and tragedy, its own humour and pathos. A sympathetic study leads to a better understanding of the soldier. This Kipling sought to do through his tales which are analysed hereafter.

A roguish escapade is innocently described in "Private Learoyd's Story". Learoyd plays upon Mrs. Dsussa's weakness for dogs. This lady took a crazy fancy to the colonel's dog Rip, whom Learoyd took out for walks. He was at his wits end on how to deal with the woman, but Mulveny rose to the occasion tempted partly by his love for fun and mischief, but mostly by the "good drink and thin fine cigars" that Learoyd had been monopolising in Mrs. Dssussa's house. Whether in a private drawing room or on Afgan border, Mulvaney knows how to manouvre things. After implying horrible consequences for themselves, he lets out for the sake "O, this kind ,good Lady, I will do what I never dreamt to do in my life I'll stale him"!Learoyd takes up the hint and adds,"Well mum, I never thought to coom down to dog steeling but if my comrade sees how it could be done to oblige a lady like yo'sen I'm nut t'man to hold back,thu'it's bad business I'm thinking an'three hundred rupees is a poor set-off againt'chance of them damning Islands as Mulveny talks oVL\Soldiers Three23) That makes the lady go upto an offer of three-fifty. Then the trio set to work, Ortheris, who knew somethig of colour-mixing and painting, was entrusted into making the sergent's white dog into a very replica of the colonel's dog. Then the dog was stuffed into a basket and delivered at the station to Mrs. Dssussas on her way to Mussourrie." Private Learoyds story"tells more of the condition of the three and of private soldiers in general.

Stealing was so common a vice in the soldiers of those days, that except for very grave offences, it was hardly looked upon as anything extraordinary. In case of Kipling 88 thieving by soldiers brings about humour of a kind. It is very difficult to be offended by a situation like the one descibed in "Private Learoyd's Story". "Ortheris stole a pup from me when our acquaintance was new, and with a little beast stifling under his overcoat denied not only the theft but that he ever was interested in dogs"(Soldiers Three23)

These soldiers have as sense of fairness of things when others are being cheated. Such case is described in "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulveny" in which Dearsley has been defrauding two thousand coolies of their earnings. Mulvaney fights it out with him, and wins the gorgeous palanquin which had been in instrument in Dearsleys nefarious deals. It is in this boisterous farce that Mulveny is carried in the palanquin to Prithi Devi temple at Benares. He is mistaken by praying queens in darkness of the temple for a divine revelation and ultimately makes his escape. This is not without selling his silence on the whole affair, for four hundred and thirty four rupees and "big fat gold necklace"

Kipling's soldiers are almost always soaked in beer. Not a tale consumes less than a gallon or half-a -dozen bottles of liquor. Inside the barrack rooms or out of it, they seem to have no other pleasure but drink. Their money is "melted" into it. Kipling's soldiers are generally long term soldiers, and being forced to live away from friends, in strange lands, the very dullness of their lives drives them to drink. They, however, never allow their good sense to be ruffled by intoxication, and they never create disorderly scenes, or lose themselves as to become despicable creatures.

The earliest tales in which Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd figure are almost negligible, and the crudity of their apppeal has tended to discredit the later more complex achievements. In the earlier stories one can see Kipling's mastery of the device of multiple narration and the begining of his progress towards the technical and emotional subtlities of Soldiers Three. "The Madness of Private Ortheris'" for example shows significant changes in the narrator's relationship with the three men, and in his attitude to military life in general. From being a writer who buys their stories with drinks and claims them as friends, he has become a humble listener aware of his own ignorance, his lack of experience or real understanding. In spite of the fact that it is the narrator, with his superior education and position who succeeds in bringing Ortheris to his senses when he 89 wants to desert, it is with Mulvaney that the other finds real communion. The emphasis is on the narrators position as an outsider -his emotional involvement, but also his feelingof helplessness both as a man of action and a moralist, and his awreness of the whole military condition as one involving problems, that cannot be resolved. This informed and deeply concerned frustration leads directly into the deeper tones and emotional complexities of the second collection of soldier stories.

Kipling seems to have become increasingly aware of his uniquely allusive and highly textured style in the later stories. The later written stories make much fuller, more deliberate artistic use of the social scene. They exploit the fact that this is a collection with a single coherent setting, so that individual stories gain from the atmosphere created elsewhere. Within the stories too, one part begins to comment upon and affect the impact of the other. In "The daughter of the Regiment'" for instance, the sadness of the central episode is modified by gaiety of the frame, so that the total effect is one of the slightly comic, yet poignant triumph in the face of coditions of life in India. Such advances are all important to the more intricate achievements of Soldiers Three. It's a story of six foot high Miss Jhansi McKenna and her mother Bridget McKenna, who has saved many lives at the cost of her own when the Mulvaney's regiment was stricken by cholera in a troop train, and they had never forgotten her.

With smaller and even more coherent society, that of a private soldier, Kipling makes intricate use of the environment that he treats. He doesnt suggest any answer to the problems raised by the conflict of this society and the individual. Instead, his acceptance of the military situation as an inevitable pervades the whole collection with sadness and a sense of strain, focused in the personal committments of the narrator and his three friends, and intensified by the larger insolubles of aging, sic kness, and death which form a permanent background to the action. This results in the collection as a whole presenting a more unified appearence than Plain Tales from the Hills, so that the stories may be apppreciated singly, yet are never completely detachable from the context. And Kipling's interest in this whole society, this way of life, as well as in his individual characters, is reflected in the very framework of the book-in the pattern created by arrangement of stories. 90

"The God from the Machine" views the miHtary society and sees corruption at the bottom but it is told from a distance. Mulvaney's involvement is negUgible and story itself is slight. This is a story of the Mulvaney, Learoyd and Ortheris. Mulvaney tells how, in the days of his youth as a smart young Corporal, he foils a plot by a ruffianly Captain to run away with the Colonel's pretty daughter.

"The Big Drunk Draf deals comprehensively with this subject, and examining military and personal problems with light hearted clarity. "The Solid Muldoon"retums one to moral problems in a military setting, and though the corruption is less apparent than in "The God from the Machine "the sadness underlying the story is deeper". "In the mattter of a Private "takes this same theme and transforms it into a thesis story, weakened only by the rhetorical introduction and conclusion, which are much less effective than a narrative frame would have been. The growing violanences,hatreds and harshnesses, the underlying sadness of the whole collection, find their finest expression in the last story "Black Jack".

Through this sequence of stories Kipling has- approached the military condition first lightly, then with pity and horror and that the analysis is complete, scrupulous and intense. This analysis is carried out with great tact, owing to the relationship between the narrator and the three-and with great narrative skill in the handling of the three themselves as spokesmen. At the end of Plain tales, the narrator was seen in a new and humble position, and this is developed throughout Soldiers Three. His social standing is peculiar. He is involved with the private soldiers but he is not one with them. He is not a memebr of the ruling class or a representative of the Authority. There is always a strongly felt class difference and the narrator is forced to hide his intimacy with whom he associates, but there is no evidence that he has any intimacy of any sort with that stronger class. His position as a journalist seems to put him in the state of being able to communicate with all classes, without being fully accepted by any one of them. He is committd to a group as indivisuals, as a gang and as society representing the larger one containing it. He comprehends their difficulty and their code yet his understanding does not give him any rights. This awareness of the barrier between himself and them gives 91 dignity and delicacy to the whole situation. The relationship with Mulvaney is the crucial example of this. There is a fine balancing of strengths between them. Mulvaney always perceives and accepts any subterfuge the narrator attempts. "You know you can do anythin' with me whin I'm talking!" He reclaims in "Black Jack."

The narrator also recognises Mulvaney's superior strength, experience and wisdom, and regards the stories told to him as of extreme value. But circumstances, and occasionally education or insight, place the narrator in a superior position. It is difficult and tactful relationship of mutual respect. He does not comment on the tales of freud, dog-stealing, and seduction; instead one finds him accepting, humorously and compassionately, the imperfectability of man.

In the stories in Plain Tales from the Hills Kipling had shown immediete technical mastery of the device of divided narration, and this is further developed in Soldiers Three. Mulvanney quickly takes on the position of narrator-in-chief -partly because he is given the most complex character and range of experience, partly because his voice is more adptable to the demands of narrative. Ortheris's essential quality is antisentimentality; he acts as a corrective to the romanticism which Mulvaney often brings, and the harsh quality of his voice makes him useful as an interrupter. Learoyd is a static figure, bringing to this study of the soldier dignity and a shrewd simplicity, but in this collection he is largely silent. His character demands this, and his voice rhythms are in any case too slow for easy intermingling. Mulvaney is at the centre of interest throughout, and the romantic -sensational elements in his character are counteracted by a more acute moral awareness, where he is concerned on the narrators part. This comes from the fact that he skates more dangerously on the border of immorality than do Ortheris and Learoyd. He is the clearest example of the strain beteen individual and society. There is highly strung tension between his social and antisocial tendencies. He treads a narrow path between preservation of others and destruction of himself, for those strengths which stem from his virility and make him a leader and support to others, also lead him into drunkenness, to the verge of adultery and Mutiny. He is thus the ideal figure to express the curious balance between individual and general interest between the personal and the sociological. 92

As a group, the three men have a similar function. They form a sort of miniature society within the larger one. All three, taken together may be said to represent the lower reaches of military life, and their national variety and assortment of characteristics reinforce this impression. Each individual adds something to the group's essential stabilty, correcting those faults in the others which might tend to weaken the group or the military ethic, yet each has his own vice or vices, which bring him into conflict with this ethic: and precarious balance thus achieved is immensely fruitful in the sort of exploration which Kipling's own ambiguous attitude leads him to carry out. While serving to reveal their society in this way, the three also facilitate a wide range of reference, binding story to story, leading outside the collection to a background of suppressed material, and causing one narrative detail to comment on another. This depth of backgound is reflected in the structuring of the stories, one set of facts being placed against another so as to bring out the interrelation of different circumstances and problems.

"Black Jack" is the clearest example of the way in which Kipling can, by interweaving two tales or incidents, call on all the resources of the society which he has recreated. Many years before, as a private in the Black Tyrone, Mulvaney had found himself living in a barrack room with a group of bad characters. Their sergeant was hard on them, and they planned to get revenge on him, but Mulvaney would have nothing to do with the idea.

Then, when sleeping off a drinking session in the long grass, he overhears them plotting to shoot the sergeant with Mulvaney's rifle, and put the blame on him. Back in the barrack-room, he finds that his rifle is loaded; he removes the bullet, leaves the charge, and tampers with the mechanism so that the weapon - a new design of Martini - will blow back when it is fired. The plot goes ahead, the sergeant comes into the verandah, and the rifle is fired at him, but instead of killing him it blows back on the assassin, wounding him severely in the face. Later, the sergeant takes steps to draft the men from this barrack-room elsewhere. He is a womaniser, and Mulvaney - no mean womaniser himself - warns him against taking risks. He ignores the advice and is later shot by a jealous husband. 93

It is also the best example of complex unity, both moral and aesthetic, that he can achieve by this sort of equipoise by the elaborate structure of cross references, parrallels and contrasts between the frame and the central narrative. Three main strands run though this work. The first is the problem of revenge.The second is the loneliness of moral action. The third is the poignancy of effects of time. The last two themes give emotional depth to the work, but act through the first theme and are expressed within it.

The first theme problem of revenge, is what drives the story on but it is not presented as primarily a moral problem at all. It is felt as an emotional one, and the moral aspect is ignored. Action is judged by result alone,and so what the story does is to explore the actions performed from the desire for revenge in terms of their consequences.In the frame, Ortheris, Learoyd and the narrator are all concerned with the basic problem which besets Mulvaney. He has an emotional need to be revenged on Mullins, the young sergeant who has wronged and humiliated him and yet logic and necessity, as all recognise dictate that he should not seek vengeace at all. All advice resignation but resignation is not at that point felt to be an emotionally satisfactory solution. The motif recurs in the central narrative, where Vulmea seeks revenge on O'Hara, and Mulvaney rejects his mode of action: Mulvaney is left alone and in danger with the problem. And later O'Hara muses with the problem. The driving force which urges the reader on from the frame to story and out again is thus not simply what will happen next, but how will Mulvaney behave? There a lot of narrative excitement which comes from one event hurrying directly into another. Each event is scrupulously examined: the narrative is almost leisurely, and the detail holds the story alrnost static without destroying it's excitement. This sort of slow carefully examined narrative, unusual in a short story later is one of Kipling's greatest strengths, and at this point in his development gains enormously from the social interest the whole collection has aroused.

The urge to find solution to the need of emotional satisfaction is felt by the reader as much as by Mulvaney himself, and this is due to a great extent to the unusual relationship "Black Jack" has with the rest of the collection. It is the last story in the anthology; and the last written. Its frame comments upon the story it contains and links the whole work strongly with the rest of the book, giving Soldiers Three what he seems to 94 be a deliberate conclusion. Many motifs from the earlier work such as the mental agony of "The Madness of Private Ortheris", the money-scraping of "Private Learoyd's Story" the adultery of "The Solid Muldoon" are here represented. Moreover the begining and ending bring the three as a group firmly into forefront of attention, and they are seen finally from at a distance, merging into the social frame work. This conclusion, while thus putting them at a distance, nonetheless celebrates the groups continuing existance and vitality.

"Black Jack" gives a fitting end to the collection and gains a lot from the preceding stories. There is a sense of shock, even outrage, in the discovery of Mulvaney's humiliation, as the other tales have made it clear that Mulvaney is vulnerable and also made clear his a strengths as a good man and a leader.. This is the first time that the society potential for harm has been fulfilled. The stability known from the other stories is rocked, and Mulvaney is seen humiliated and morally naked. So recognisisng the depths of humiliation, the reader also appreciates the need for compensation.

In addition, the reader knows that Mulvaney's character prohibits him from taking revenge his instincts demand, and thus the reader is involved in his frustration and his search for some other compensating action, a search which only his reminiscences can satisfy. In the central story a picture of young Mulvaney is given who can not be so humiliated, and to whom no insoluble emotional problem is set. It is a response to the need of the frame.

It is very weird that the story which celebrates the group of three is in fact predominantly showing effects of intense loneliness. The outsider motif is very strong. The narrator is left outside the group of three as Ortheris and Learoyd attempt to bring Mulvaney back to normality. Mulvaney at first does not recognise him, and Mulvaney himself needs to be "walked off and brought out his angry isolation. 'E ain't fit to be spoke to those times-nor "e ain't fit to leave alone neither"

Within the story, too, Mulvaney is both emotionally and morally isolated. He is at war with the rest of his barrack-room, and his closest friend is only "by way av bein'a 95 friend av mine' These isolations are clear to see. What really makes the isolations and loneliness all pervasively felt is the way in which the- comparisons are continually made between different men's courses of action. This is found within the frame, within the central narrative, and in continual correspondences between the two. These comparisons are not only moral comparisons. They are examples of the gulf that separates one man from the other. Ortheris and Learoyd have differing attitudes to moneyfinding. The differences between Mulvaney and Vulmea, Mulvaney and O'Hara are stressed, and while these are indeed moral differences. They seem in a sense inevitable. Each meaningful action is taken alone-Mulvaney Vulmea, and O'Hara. They are all isolated figures and yet they seem to have little real moral choice .They are trapped in their own characters as O'Hara unwittingly points out when Mulvaney attempts some sort of moral advice and communion:"Do you go your way. Private Mulvaney, an I will go minQ'XSoldiers Three33).

This sense of inevitability of moral choice is probably what accounts for the way in which revenge is never inspected as a moral idea.There is a definite understanding of the futility of vengeance; but these come from the emotional effects of every action, not from their abstract moral value. There is only one achieved revenge in the whole work, set apart in time from both frame and centre. The whole central narrative is played against the knowledge of it. "Rafferty shot him [O'HaraJfor fooling with his wife" (Soldiers ThreeAX).

There is something automatic about this circle of action; cause has given rise to predictable effect. But there is no feeling that that was a satisfactory course of action for Rafferty..simply three people have been destroyed. It is by denying effect to cause, as Mulvaney and O'Hara do, that some sort of meaningful action is created What triumph is possible lies there, in such inaction as theirs.

Yet there is no triumph in Mulvaney's inaction in the introduction and it is here that the story gains its wry poignancy. The effects of time are double-edged, and one of the most important comparisons in the work is the comparison between older Mulvaney and younger one. There is a curious impasse in the tale as a whole, expressed through this 96 comparison and the circle of other comparisons surrounding it. The story began with the search for emotional satisfaction, with Mulvaney fourid in the picture of his action in the youth yet the balance between the two figures, the old and the young, is carefully equal, even slightly in favour of the older man. The young Mulvaney is brash and arrogant, and his placidity under the attack of O'Hara comes from security he draws from his own pride and as yet unfrustrated ambition. "I would not mind duckin'him in the Artillary troughs if ut was not that I'm thrying for my shtripes"Self-disillusion has brought greater wisdom to the older man. "I had not learned to hould my liquor wid comfort in thim days, "Tis little betther I am now."

Yet this young man, inferior in wisdom and further from the reader in sympathy, has been proved superior in action to his wiser older, self. Young Mulvaney is carefully shown to be a better man than O'Hara, though sharing some of his vices. But O'Hara is also shown to be a better man than Mullins, not only in virtues, but even in his vices themselves-for the two, like Mulvaney's, seem inseparable. Yet the despicable Mullins has defeated the older Mulvaney, where the respect worthy O'Hara could not defeat the younger one. Time has brought a loss as great as any gain, and the only real satisfaction is that the defeat is not completely a defeat when met with dignity the three bring to it. They return to barrack life without regret at the end.

This narrative of isolated moral action, set in the framework of decay, contains great many references to damnation, which add to the sense of fear and tension throughout the story. Each man goes his own way inexorably, and yet each man is doomed to judgement.

"Black Jack" is the last story where there is a real and successful balance between the problems of the individual and that of military society as a whole. After Kipling leaves India, his soldiers continue to appear, but one can mark the way in which the old frame formula is becoming anachronistic, often effective in itself, but seldom serving an exploratory or analytic perpose. Kipling is once again looking for a satisfactory approach to his medium. This is a period of transition for him. 97

In both failures and successes, however one can see two major changes deeply affecting the soldier stories. The first relates to the Kipling's attitude to group phenomena, and to military society in particular. His love of expertise, the science which the group can impart, swells in importance and becomes dangerous. For instance, the introduction to "The courting of Dinaah Shaad" is really well suited to the mood of central tale. It is so closely detailed and lacking in relevant action that the whole piece seems ill-balanced .Unless one shares Kipling's interest in the details of a military exercise one can not be satisfied with the story's effect.

There is also a loss of tact, the disastrous effect of which can be seen in "His Private Honour" within the rules of the code by which the story lives .The narrator as a civilian is unbearably presumptuous in his outspokenness, and overweening even in drawing attention to his feelings on a matter which should not concern him. The narrator's basic limitations have been forgotten. There is also in some of these stories an increasing tendency to rhetorical persuation, such as had figured in "In the matter of a Private" The rhetoric is sometimes crude, sometimes effective but it's very existence shows that Kipling's aim is no longer strictly fictional but seems propagandist sometimes.

These changes in the treatment of the group show that Kipling's attitude has become too idiosyncratic for the three to be suitable mouthpieces any longer. Just as disruptive in effect is the increasing complexity of the material with which Kipling is dealing. The old frameworks cannot completely hold it, and Mulvaney can not do it justice. The three in spite of subtlety with which they are used, are scarcely designed for great character development .They are figures who first of all elicit a stock response and for Kipling's original purposes those are all that is required." The Courting of Dinah Shaad"takes the revelation of Mulvaney's character as far as it will go, though it will go through its bitter ambiguities and are not fully explored, whereas "Love O'Women" fails in its centre because both Mulvaney and Kipling are unequal to it. There are notorious faults in this story but the basic trouble is that Kipling does not fully recognize the complexity of what he is handling. 98

In this tale "Love O'Women", Mulvaney goes on to tell the story of Larry Tighe, a big dangerously attractive gentleman-ranker, who wilfully makes love to many good women, and breaks hearts out of sheer devilment. He moves on to another regiment, and Mulvaney meets him years later, during a bloody campaign on the frontier. There, Tighe takes risks designed to get himself killed— to no avail. He tells Mulvaney that he can no longer get drunk and that he has long ago thrown away a love that was 'diamonds an' pearls'. As the regiment returns to Peshawur, Tighe succumbs to the last stages of syphilis. The woman he remembers finds him and takes him to her brothel, where he dies in her arms. She shoots herself dead.

The most successful of the later Soldier Tales is indubitably "On Greenhow Hilf'lts unique and attempts a new subject.Its a natural extension oi Soldier Three frame. The stories in Soldiers Three were equations of a human and a social condition, one finding its expression through the other. In spite of their technical expertise, those two later stories make it clear this is no longer so. Now there is less intensity and the central stories break out on their own, "On the Grenhow Hill" has a English story, the application is extended by an Indian frame,used with extraordinary economy. It is a beautifully complex structure, with a subtle poetic effect equal to anything Kipling ever wrote. It follows the pattern of "The Courting of Dinah Shaad"and "Love-o-Women" but differs from them and from majority of the soldier stories in having Learoyd as a narrator.

The story "On Greenhow Hill" Learoyd tells is a fairly commonplace. It is one of the unhappy love affairs, but it is told with superb economy. The story is one of isolation rather than passion, and the love is conveyed through details relevant to this theme. Immedietly Learoyd begins to speak accent and physical detail convey a full sense of the particular society in which the tale is set, and as narrative continues the complications of chapel people as a group become clear. Learoyd's semi acceptance by them is fully felt through the single detail of the fiddle which Jesse Roantree makes him promise to learn, as an entree into the musical circle of the chapel goers. Learoyd's essential unfitness for the group is seen in his inability to keep that promise, and in his retention of his dog. Blast. The dog, as his name suggests represents the unregenerate side of humanity and of Learoyd's in particular. His inclusion as the chapel member is not incongruous than 99

Learoyds own. His isolation from them is emphasised by the digression on their attitude to the army.

The emotional temperature of the story is raised not only by Learoyd's relationship with Liza herself but by his strange love-hate relationship with the preacher, his rival which conveys a peculiar sort of masculine delicacy very much in keeping with Learoyd's character.

The central episode of the narrative is the scene in the mines where this relatioship is seen at its clearest. The preacher is all that Learoyd can not be, and still they are partners rather than opposites, equal as men and as independent individuals both outside the chapel society. But the preacher is completely independent and Learoyd is dependent on Liza. Th e scene in the mines is brilliantly written, showing Learoyd stripped of civilization and left face to face with his passion.In spite of its violence and intensity, this episode does not overbalance the story or move the centre of the narraive interest. The physical climax -Learoyd's attempt on the preacher's life is passed over lightly, and the final emotional impact is preserved for the effect on Learoyd of the news of Liza's decline , and the purgation of feeling achieved when the two inact Liza's dying for themselves in their exploration of the caverns.The major part of the tale is over with Liza's departure for Bradford , and Learoyd's final isolation."And I was left alone on the greenhow ¥{ilV\Tales from Inida6\)

He is rejected by the chapel goers, and on following Liza and her father to Bradford he is rejected again by Jesse. Learoyd accepts the rejection by joining the Army. This is ultimate degradation in the eyes of the chapel folk. But the warmth and love shown in the way Lizza transcends this barrier as he transcended the less obvious ones earlier and accentuates his warmth of belonging.

This story shows how Kipling increased his scope. Every part of the story works upon another part. This gives intensity and excitement to the whole. Though the story is Learoyd's, all three are deeply involved. This begins with the details of a native deserter who disturbs the peace of the camp. The violence and sense of loyalties in collision are 100

quickly conveyed. Ortheris lusts for his blood, and he and Mulvaney go out the next day to lay an ambush. Learoyd joins them slightly later since he has narrowly missed by a trigger-happy fellow riflemen. This shock and the landscape move him to think of Yorkshire landscape of his youth and make him willing to talk. The motifs of the group and group loyalties are introduced while the fact of death underlines the basic isolation of each man.

In "The Grenhow Hill" when Learoyd talks about Yorkshire hills the only colour used is the colour of the white violets. Gradually the description takes on full colour such as Grenhow Hill has grey houses, a white road, the people with red cheeks and noses and blue eyes. The transition is easy and fluent. The story grows from the landscape with the violets forming recurrent motif throughout the telling of the tale. These violets which Learoyd plucks by their colour and association remind us of the innocent love story. The flowers are first grasped by Learoyd when he makes contrast between his youth and present state. They emphasise the violence of the moment in the mines when Learoyd decides to kill the preacher, mingling the two feelings of destruction and goodness in a way which fits the central theme exactly and passionately.

Each soldier responds in his ovra fashion. As Learoyd begins his tale Mulvaney and Learoyd are firmly linked together leaving Ortheris as an outsider.Mulvaney shows sympathy when talking about the folly of the youth.Ortheris sneers at first and is left isolated.Ortheris is incapable of undertsnding Learoyd's religious impulse and therefore moves to idealism.When Ortheris shoots, Mulvaney appreciated it as necessary job of work.Learoyd still involved with his memeories identifies himself with the dead man. Orhteris is cut off from the experience.

Kipling has here overcome the fact that his Indian military story frames have become more limited than his ambition. He has transformed it so that the tale has as unusually wide application, moving through three societies (Native, Military and chapel) to a point beyond social function. He will not be able to repeat the success for some time. The difficulties of a society which to him seems amorphous are not surmounted, except in isolated cases, until his art has become infinitely more complex. His later stories lack that 101 simplicity which India and his soldiers three supply and they therefore lack also some of the appeal of these first achievements of his developing genius.

In his stories of soldiers, Kipling frequently makes use of a 'frame' for a story, so we find that character in a story set in a barracks tells a tale of action, or that one in a setting on the North West Frontier relates a story about life at home. The contrasts made between boredom and action, between barrack life overseas and soldiering in Britain, give us a completely new view of 'Tommy Atkins'.

II. Pyecroft Stories This section will examine those stories and other writings of Rudyard Kipling which relate to the Royal Navy and Royal Naval men. It is not so well-known that Kipling had very close contacts with the Royal Navy, and also wrote several stories and pieces of verse about the Navy of the late Victorian era, and World War I and into the 1930s. He also wrote some pieces of journalism for the Admiralty in World War I about the East Coast patrols, submarines in the North Sea, and the destroyers' night actions after the main clash of the battle fleets at Jutland.

His introduction to the Royal Navy occurred in the 1870s when he was a small boy of seven, living in Southsea in the home of a retired sea captain Mr.Halloway who had been in the coast guard, then run by the Navy. He would take young Rudyard into the Dockyard when he went to draw his pension. Young Rudyard later recorded his memories of seeing the ships of Captain George Nares' Arcfic Expedifion, 1875-76, HMS (Her Majesty's ship) Alert and HMS Discovery.

Thereafter, he went away to school and to India where he learned the craft of a writer as a journalist on two British-run newspapers, and where he made the acquaintance of Private Tommy Atkins. He left India in 1889 as an accomplished journalist, and fiedgling author. Arriving in London at the end of that year, he took literary London by storm, particularly for his stories of the 'common soldier': and he proceeded to write verse and short stories until, two years later, he was exhausted, and took a sea voyage to re-charge his batteries. 102

He took passage to South Africa, and had as a fellow passenger Commander Edward Bayly who was going out to the Cape to take command of HMS Mohawk. This reopened his interest in the Royal Navy, and from there he never looked back. His two best-known naval characters are Petty Officer Pyecroft, and Engine Room Artificer (E.R.A.) 1st class Hinchcliffe. Of the latter he wrote the finest description of an old- fashioned E.R.A. 'Give'im a drum of oil and leave him alone, and he'll coax a stolen bicycle to do typewriting' (Trafficsll). He got the idea for them and their 'adventures' from two trips of about two weeks each which he took in HMS Pelorus, at the invitation of Captain Bayly, her CO, in 1897 and 1898.

Kipling wrote eleven stories which featured naval personnel, of which six were written around Petty Officer Pyecroft. They comprise of the stories 'Judson the Empire (1893)', 'The Bonds of Discipline (1903)', 'Their Lawful Occasions I & II (1903)', 'Steam Tactics (1902)', 'Mrs. Bathurst (1904)', 'The Horse Marines (1910)', 'A Tour of Inspection (1904)', 'Sea Constables (1915)', 'A Flight of Fact (1915)' and 'A Naval Mutiny (1931)'.

In 'Judson the Empire', Judson is a young junior Lieutenant in Royal Navy, commanding an elderly gunboat, based at Simons Town, on the Cape of Good Hope Station in the early 1890s. There is tension between Great Britain and a neighbouring colonial power. Judson is sent to 'protect British interests', but is not to get involved. In the river Zambezi, he removes the buoy marking a shoal, and after the 'enemy' gunboat fires on him, unprovoked, draws her on over the shoal where she is left high and dry. Proceeding up-river, Judson meets a column of overland pioneers who are 'opening up the country', and the local Governor. After a skirmish, which the Governor is allowed to call a victory, the affair ends with a party, at which the British C-in-C makes a convivial appearance. The little crisis has been ended without bloodshed, and the honour of both sides is intact.

"The Bonds of Discipline" is a naval farce, set on board a small cruiser on her way to the Cape, involving a French spy. The story is told by the narrator, who, it may be inferred, is Kipling himself He picks up a book by a French naval officer, which 103 describes some apparently unlikely events which, the Frenchman alleges, recently took place on board one of HM's ships of war. His curiosity piqued, he goes to Plymouth to see if he can find out the truth.

His researches lead him to a pub, where he encounters Petty Officer Pyecroft, who served in the Archimandrite at the relevant time, and over a drink or three, he elicits the truth. It appears that the Frenchman stowed away in the Archimandrite at Madeira, to discover confidential details of her performance. But he is discovered, and his cover 'blown'. The Archimandrite's captain decides to bamboozle the Frenchman by putting on a show of total incompetence, and, loyally backed up by the crew, proceeds to put the plan into action, for 24 hours.

At the end of that time, the Frenchman is passed on to a providential collier, where he will have to work his passage. But he later reproduces all the misleading actions to which he has been exposed as fact, and publishes them and this is the book which Kipling picked up at the start of the story.

In some ways, the tale may be considered almost as one of Kipling's tales of revenge. Nationally, Britain's relations with France, at the time the tale was started (1899), were strained. So, at one level, the tale is of Britannia pulling the wool over the eyes of the "Frogs" (an expression of an attitude held by many British people at that time). This story is an exercise in writing a humorous tale about the Navy, to show Kipling's virtuosity and mastery of naval life and language. All at a time when the Royal Navy was approaching the apogee of its power and influence and when it, and the sea, were woven into the fabric of life in a way which is, regrettably, not the case in modern times.

"Their Lawful Occasions I&II" owe its inception to Kipling's two visits to the Channel Squadron in 1897 and 1898, as a guest of Captain Bayly of the 3rd class cruiser Pelorus and to his trip up and down the Thames Estuary at the invitation of Hamo Thornycroft on board one of their new destroyers while it was undergoing its full-power trials. 104

The story illustrates that though great and continuous strides were being made in technology, their latest results had not yet reached the sea-going Fleet in sufficient strength to make much material difference to the conditions. At higher speeds the cruisers and torpedo craft at the turn of the 20th century were still approaching the limits set by contemporary design and manufacture. Full power placed a great strain on the moving parts and bearings of their steam-driven main engines.

"Steam Tactics" has the narrator, a barely-disguised (Kipling inserted a letter, purporting to be a letter from the narrator to Pyecroft. When the tales were collected in Traffics and Discoveries in their proper order, this letter was omitted) and his chauffeur- engineer driving through west Sussex in his steam car, en route to a luncheon engagement, when they meet Petty Officer Pyecroft and Mr. Hinchcliffe, Engine-Room Artificer 1st Class. The narrator forgoes his lunch engagement and offers Pyecroft and Hinchcliffe a lift. Hinchcliffe takes the controls, and they suffer a series of mechanical mishaps such as Kipling himself had experienced with his Locomobile steam car.

They are stopped for speeding by a plain clothes policeman, and agree to take him, it may be assumed, to the nearest magistrate to pay the fine. But it appears that the constable is not carrying his warrant card, and on the pretext that he might be an impostor, they 'kidnap' him, to show him what the alleged speed of twenty-plus miles an hour was really like.

After a cross-country diversion to avoid another police trap, the car breaks down, but luckily they fall in with the narrator's prospective luncheon host in his big petrol- engined car. He, too, is out of charity with the Sussex constabulary, having just been stopped on a trumped-up charge, and so the unspoken message is that they will have their revenge on the constable, who is treated to a circular tour of Sussex, and finally is left at dusk, close to where the story started, in the middle of a private zoo-park.

"Mrs. Bathurst" is a strange tale of a Warrant Officer who becomes obsessed with a woman, deserts to find her, and dies in mysterious circumstances. This is not usually considered a naval story but the characters and the background are wholly Naval. The 105 narrator meets Mr. Hooper, a railway official, at Simon's Town, the naval base in South Africa, near Cape Town. Subsequently they are joined by Petty Officer Pyecroft and Sergeant Pritchard, a Royal Marine. They are sitting together, yarning over a bottle or two of beer, and the subject of the effect of men on women, and vice versa comes up. There is a slight digression on the subject of desertion (in the sense of being a Naval 'crime'; leaving one's place of duty with the intention of not returning) but they revert to men - especially sailors - and women. The themes then become linked with the mention of a man, known to both Pyecroft and Pritchard some fifteen years before, who deserted for the sake of a woman. This brings us to the core of the story, as Pyecroft, with Pritchard's assistance, recounts the events, in which he was peripherally involved, leading to the recent desertion of a warrant officer from Pyecroft's ship.

It appears that all three, the warrant officer, whose name is Vickery, Pyecroft, and Pritchard, have at different times been acquainted with Mrs. Bathurst, a widow who kept a small hotel near Auckland in New Zealand. Both Pyecroft and Pritchard are agreed that she had that indefinable quality which Kipling was the first to call 'It' - sex-appeal without flaunting her sexuality. "T' isn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'U stay in a man's memory if they once walk down a street" (TrafficsAl).

Chance and naval drafting throws Mr. Vickery and Pyecroft together in a cruiser proceeding to the Cape of Good Hope from England, and in the course of their conversations together, there is a very strong implication that Vickery had had sexual relations with Mrs. Bathurst, or more likely had married her bigamously. Soon after their arrival at Simon's Town for Christmas, Mr. Vickery goes ashore on leave in Cape Town. There he visits a circus where, as part of the entertainment, they are showing an early newsreel film. In it, he sees Mrs. Bathurst, in London. This affects him markedly, and he asks demands that Pyecroft accompany him to a subsequent showing of the film, to confirm what he has seen. He then takes Pyecroft on a pub-crawl round Cape Town, clearly in the grip of some powerful emotion. The same thing is repeated on four further nights, and so marked is Vickery's obsession that Pyecroft is fearful for his sanity. 106

When the circus moves on, Vickery goes to see his captain; by implication, on a personal matter, rather than a professional one. We are unable to know what was said, but we know that a pretext was created for Vickery to leave the ship, and go up-country. Thereafter, all Pyecroft knows is that he did not come back, and had apparently deserted. All this occurred about four months ago.

Mr. Hooper takes up the tale, and describes how he had found a charred corpse, apparently answering to Vickery's description, beside the railway, up beyond Bulawayo, in modern Zimbabwe, There was a second corpse as well, but the tale ends with the reader in suspense. The second corpse is never identified.

"The Horse Marines" is a story revolves round a parliamentary report in a newspaper that the Army is using rocking horses to teach its recruits to ride. Leggatt, the chauffeur, meets Kipling at Southampton-Docks, with Kipling's car sporting four of the most expensive tyres available. Questioned as to their provenance, Leggatt explains that Mr. Pyecroft is the best person to explain, and that he is in Portsmouth. At Pyecroft's uncle's greengrocer's shop in Portsmouth, Pyecroft tells how he and Jules, who have been on a 'run-ashore' in London, happened to meet Leggatt who was about to bring the car to Southampton. They cadge a lift, persuading him that Portsmouth isn't much out of the way to Southampton. Near Portsmouth they encounter a patrol of Boy Scouts, on exercises, and Mr. M o(o)rshed who is their umpire. Morshed decides to commandeer the car for nefarious purposes of his own.

Morshed wishes to 'pull the leg' of his uncle, a Brigadier-General (Army), who is on Whitsun manoeuvres with his brigade somewhere in the Downs. They replace the body of Kipling's car with uncle's delivery cart, and embark one rocking horse and a large quantity of fireworks, and set off into the Downs. They find the Red and Blue armies, and decide that they have an opportunity to pull the whole army's collective leg - not merely that of Morshed's uncle. They set up the rocking horse on a ridge between the opposing armies, and using the fireworks they have brought, illuminate the rocking horse so that it can be seen by both armies. Each thinks the rocking horse has been set up to 107

'take the mickey' out of them by the other. The result is a pitched battle on the summit of the downs, using a heap of man.

"A Tour of Inspection" is another Pyecroft story ashore. It involves a drunken, psalm-singing Cardiff deckhand towing an ammunition barge laden with china clay something like five miles, and this after a very heavy evening. In the meanwhile he has appropriated a couple of red flags from an explosives barge, lending his own craft a dangerous appearance which enables him to terrorize a nearby concrete works into suspending operations.

The core of the plot is as thin as that. It appears that the humour is uncomfortably close to slapstick, or that Pyecroft deviating towards Elder Statesmanship is less entertaining than usual. Kipling may have felt that some revision was needed to make the story worth collecting.

"Sea Constables" describes Five months after the outbreak of World War I, four men are dining in a luxury London hotel. Maddingham, Winchmore and Portson are wealthy members of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, who have made themselves and their private yachts available for patrol duties round the British coast. They exchange stories of a neutral blockade-runner whom they have been shadowing, and reproach Tegg, an officer of the Royal Navy, for missing a chance to have the ship impounded. He explains that the Admiralty had ordered the neutral's release for political reasons. The chase then continued until the neutral fell ill with pneumonia and took refuge in a small Irish port, begging Maddingham to take him to London to see a certain doctor. Maddingham refused, he says, and the man died. The story complete and the four disperse to their duties again.

"A Flight of Fact" describes an event during the War when some destroyer commanders are reminiscing over a drink, in a harbour on the east coast of England. One tells a merry tale of two officers from the Royal Naval Air Service who get separated from their mother ship in the 'Pelungas', an archipelago of coral atolls in the Indian Ocean. Their 'plane, out of fuel, gets washed up on an island, and then runs adrift.' 108

After the initial shock the local islanders make friends with them, and help them to recover it. The airmen then spend several weeks with their rescuers, having a convivial time in the best traditions of the Navy, until they are able to rejoin their ship, wearing massive beards, and the spectacular uniforms of the Pelunga army, 'a cross between a macaw and a rainbow-ended mandrill...'

In his headnote to the story, Kipling writes: Most of this tale actually happened during the War about the years 1916 or 1917; but it was much funnier as I heard it told by a Naval officer than it stands as I have written it from memory. It shows, what one always believed was true—that there is nothing that cannot happen in the Navy'.

"A Naval Mutiny" was first published in The Story-Teller magazine, December, 1931, and collected in Limits and Renewals. An elderly tourist is relaxing on the island of Bermuda (not identified by name, but, from a reference to Shakespeare's "The Tempest", clearly intended to be taken as such), and, in a local boatyard, meets a retired Navy Warrant Officer, a Boatswain, Winter Vergil by name. The boatswain is nursing a bandaged hand, and the tourist asks him how he came by the injury.

Mr. Vergil explains that one of the storekeepers in the dockyard has asked him if he will look after some parrots for a short time, on the basis that Mrs. Vergil has a parrot, and therefore he must be an expert in all ornithological matters. The birds are sailor's pets on board the two sloops based at Bermuda, and are to be landed while the two warships go out to do practice gunnery firings.

Many of the birds can speak, and having been sailors' pets, their language is naval. They are also extremely intelligent, or so it appears, as Mr. Vergil tells the story. Two of them, in particular, are troublemakers, and Mr. Vergil can see similarities between them and sailors whom he has known in past commissions. The following morning, when he goes back to the rigging loft where the parrots had been placed, he finds that some have escaped from their cages (they have unpicked the wire fastenings with their beaks), and are flying around loose. Quickly he shuts them in the loft, and eavesdrops from outside. He leams (the parrots are talking among themselves) that his 109 two potential troublemakers have been the ringleaders of this parrots' mutiny, so he determines on immediate and drastic action. He gets a pair of scissors and cuts off one parrot's tail feathers, and the other bird's crest (he is actually a cockatoo, rather than a parrot). This brings the 'mutiny' to an end, but there is no means of getting the right bird back into the right cage. When the owners return later in the day, and find that they do not have the right bird, there is a row.

The tale ends with Mr. Vergil recognising the tourist as a retired Admiral, with whom he served some fifty years ago. Later, the Admiral recounts his meeting with Mr. Vergil to the captain of one of the cruisers and describes him as "off duty, the biggest liar in the Service."

After the analysis of these stories it can be said that only five stories are about the Navy: "Judson and the Empire", "The Bonds of Discipline", "Their Lawful Occasions", "Sea Constables", "A Flight of Fact". All are technically correct and are typical examples of Kipling showing off his virtuosity in a different field. "Judson and the Empire" and "A Flight of Fact" are comedy, while "The Bonds of Discipline" is pure farce.

Both "Their Lawful Occasions" and "Sea Constables" are distinctly good stories, judged on literary merit, although "Sea Constables" can be considered as one of Kipling's 'hate' pieces. It is a good story, reflecting the time it was written (in 1915). What is lacking in Kipling's naval stories is any inkling of sailors' lives beyond their ship. In another naval story "Bread upon the Waters" (the merchant marine), we get at least a glimpse of Mrs. McPhee, and the McPhee home: there's never a hint of a Mrs. Pyecroft. One point to be made about the critics' opinions is that Kipling's naval readers, then and now and in between, all thought that the tales were good. They didn't think that he was just showing off, but that he had lower-deck speech right, and the camaderie on board. Similarly, Army officers applauded Kipling's stories of soldiers. There is at least a case for suggesting that the critics, out of incomprehension, couldn't understand his naval stories. 110

As well as writing about the Royal Navy, Kipling also wrote about other seafarers, and ships. Four tales which any sailor will probably enjoy are: 'Bread upon the Waters' in which A Chief Engineer, sacked by his shipping company for having too-high standards, gets his revenge when his former ship loses its propellor in mid-Atlantic." The Ship that Found herself is a description of how all the separate parts of a ship's structure learn to work together to combat the stresses of the sea. In "The Devil and the Deep Sea" a ship on an illicit pearling venture in East Indian waters is fired on, and her engines wrecked. The crew manages to repair them, after a fashion, and escape to take their revenge. In "Simple Simon" Francis Drake learns his sea-trade among the tides and shoals of the English Channel and years later uses it to good effect against the Spanish Armada.

The continuity to these tales is supplied by Petty Officer Emanuel Pyecroft. Their themes vary from something not far off slapstick farce to the tragedy of "Mrs. Bathurst" and their quality is uneven. Charles Carrington disparages them generally, quietly and in a nice way: "Though their virtuosity is immense, the stories lack vigour and, while they have their admirers, there is not one likely to find its way into a selection of Kipling's best six or best twelve. Obviously they gave their author great pleasure but this enthusiasm is rarely conveyed to readers who are not already familiar with naval jargon" (127).

The Pyecroft stories are easily the best stories woven round the Navy that have ever been written. But the stories about Petty Officer Pyecroft never won wide popular favour. Pyecroft was too much of an eccentric to be a representative sailor, as Mulvaney had been a representative soldier. But the desire to extol the navy hindered Pyecroft's eccentricity from flowering to the fullest farce. When Pyecroft, the petty officer who is the Mulvaney of the naval stories, say, in "Their Lawful Occasions", "I know 'e's littery, by the way 'e tries to talk navy-talk." As the officers' guest, he was not best placed to absorb the ratings and petty officers who are the core of his naval stories. The result is that the Pyecroft stories have a kind of jocosity that sets them far, far below the adventures of Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, who even at their most comic picaresque have that ambiguous, amoral quality of Shakespeare's Pistol and his associates, but have Ill also the dark despair that gives their positive performance of duty a depth that goes beyond Sunday School morality.

This makes Pyecroft an empty narrating device, compounded only of comic knowingness, cockney accent and of naval jargon, in the stories of adventures aboard ship, like "Birds of Paradise" and "Their Lawful Occasions", and, more decidedly still, an intrusive unfunny 'funny' voice in the tales of motoring larks on shore, "Steam Tactics" and "The Horse Marines", the last of the Pyecroft stories, published in 1910. The truth is that Kipling did not know the life of the man he was describing and so he cast him in carefully arranged farces, often on shore. A sailor's peacetime life, at any rate on the lower deck, must have had much of the sadness, the tension and the reduction of humanity which he captures so wonderfully in the Mulvaney stories, which probably reproduce only what he learned.

Kipling was not concerned to plead on behalf of ratings or the petty officers or indeed the officers. His aim was to interest the general public in the Navy itself, to pass on his own enthusiasm for a neglected Service, not to pass on his compassion for neglected men. These naval stories were published in popular magazine and were full of jargon .One wonders how much he can have fulfilled even this socio-political aim, for who but naval men or engineers could stay with such stuff. As artistic productions, these stories are among his worst.

Kipling maintained an interest in the Navy (and the armed forces in general) as part of his concern over the rise of Nazi Germany, being particularly worried about the effects of the Treaty of London in 1930. This treaty, the second of the two major armaments treaties between the Wars, placed further limitations on Great Britain, and allowed further concessions to the Germans. His final visit to the Navy occurred in the year before his death, when he attended King George V's Jubilee Review at Spithead.

The Pyecroft stories show his longing to find a private world to match his own privacy, his longing to find a secret society that would match his own freemasonry, his longing to find a loneliness that would match his own creative isolation, must have 112 seemed miraculously answered when he was allowed to penetrate that rare world of Her Majesty's ships at sea in peacetime. 'Life out of which [the Navy's] spirit is bom has always been a life more lonely than any there is' (Kipling society), he told the Naval Club in 1908. And he went on to note how only from the turn of the century, with the arrival of Marconi's wireless, were fleets in touch. The naval privacy and isolation defeated the empathy of even Kipling's extraordinary powers of making himself one with other men. He went on board as an honoured guest, he was even chaired by the crew, but he remained apart. Yet he loved the peace-time Navy enough still to write about it when he was on holiday in Jamaica in "A Naval Mutiny", as late as 1931.

The difference in his approach to his naval stories, compared to his stories of soldiers, is that when he was an unknown journalist, he could, and did, drink and mingle with privates in the canteen. By the time he came back to the navy, he was a celebrated author, more likely to be dined in the wardroom than to drop into a sailor's mess at tot- time, so that his naval stories have less of the flavour of the lower-deck about them. 113

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