Chesterton, Heretics, 3

On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject;the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.Nothing is more keenly required than a defence of bores.When Byron divided humanity into the bores and bored, he omittedto notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores,the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he counted himself.The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may,in some sense, have proved himself poetical. The bored has certainlyproved himself prosaic.

We might, no doubt, find it a nuisance to count all the blades of grassor all the leaves of the trees; but this would not be because of ourboldness or gaiety, but because of our lack of boldness and gaiety.The bore would go onward, bold and gay, and find the blades ofgrass as splendid as the swords of an army. The bore is strongerand more joyous than we are; he is a demigod--nay, he is a god.For it is the gods who do not tire of the iteration of things;to them the nightfall is always new, and the last rose as redas the first.

The sense that everything is poetical is a thing solid and absolute;it is not a mere matter of phraseology or persuasion. It is notmerely true, it is ascertainable. Men may be challenged to deny it;men may be challenged to mention anything that is not a matter of poetry.I remember a long time ago a sensible sub-editor coming up to mewith a book in his hand, called "Mr. Smith," or "The Smith Family,"or some such thing. He said, "Well, you won't get any of your damnedmysticism out of this," or words to that effect. I am happy to saythat I undeceived him; but the victory was too obvious and easy.In most cases the name is unpoetical, although the fact is poetical.In the case of Smith, the name is so poetical that it mustbe an arduous and heroic matter for the man to live up to it.The name of Smith is the name of the one trade that even kings respected,it could claim half the glory of that arma virumque which allepics acclaimed. The spirit of the smithy is so close to the spiritof song that it has mixed in a million poems, and every blacksmithis a harmonious blacksmith.

Even the village children feel that in some dim way the smithis poetic, as the grocer and the cobbler are not poetic,when they feast on the dancing sparks and deafening blows inthe cavern of that creative violence. The brute repose of Nature,the passionate cunning of man, the strongest of earthly metals,the wierdest of earthly elements, the unconquerable iron subduedby its only conqueror, the wheel and the ploughshare, the sword andthe steam-hammer, the arraying of armies and the whole legend of arms,all these things are written, briefly indeed, but quite legibly,on the visiting-card of Mr. Smith. Yet our novelists call theirhero "Aylmer Valence," which means nothing, or "Vernon Raymond,"which means nothing, when it is in their power to give himthis sacred name of Smith--this name made of iron and flame.It would be very natural if a certain hauteur, a certain carriageof the head, a certain curl of the lip, distinguished everyone whose name is Smith. Perhaps it does; I trust so.Whoever else are parvenus, the Smiths are not parvenus.From the darkest dawn of history this clan has gone forth to battle;its trophies are on every hand; its name is everywhere;it is older than the nations, and its sign is the Hammer of Thor.But as I also remarked, it is not quite the usual case.It is common enough that common things should be poetical;it is not so common that common names should be poetical.In most cases it is the name that is the obstacle.A great many people talk as if this claim of ours, that all thingsare poetical, were a mere literary ingenuity, a play on words.Precisely the contrary is true. It is the idea that some things arenot poetical which is literary, which is a mere product of words.The word "signal-box" is unpoetical. But the thing signal-box isnot unpoetical; it is a place where men, in an agony of vigilance,light blood-red and sea-green fires to keep other men from death.That is the plain, genuine description of what it is; the prose onlycomes in with what it is called. The word "pillar-box" is unpoetical.But the thing pillar-box is not unpoetical; it is the placeto which friends and lovers commit their messages, conscious thatwhen they have done so they are sacred, and not to be touched,not only by others, but even (religious touch!) by themselves.That red turret is one of the last of the temples. Posting a letter andgetting married are among the few things left that are entirely romantic;for to be entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable.We think a pillar-box prosaic, because there is no rhyme to it.We think a pillar-box unpoetical, because we have never seen itin a poem. But the bold fact is entirely on the side of poetry.A signal-box is only called a signal-box; it is a house of life and death.A pillar-box is only called a pillar-box; it is a sanctuary ofhuman words. If you think the name of "Smith" prosaic, it is notbecause you are practical and sensible; it is because you are too muchaffected with literary refinements. The name shouts poetry at you.If you think of it otherwise, it is because you are steeped andsodden with verbal reminiscences, because you remember everythingin Punch or Comic Cuts about Mr. Smith being drunk or Mr. Smithbeing henpecked. All these things were given to you poetical.It is only by a long and elaborate process of literary effortthat you have made them prosaic.

Now, the first and fairest thing to say about Rudyard Kiplingis that he has borne a brilliant part in thus recovering the lostprovinces of poetry. He has not been frightened by that brutalmaterialistic air which clings only to words; he has pierced throughto the romantic, imaginative matter of the things themselves.He has perceived the significance and philosophy of steam and of slang.Steam may be, if you like, a dirty by-product of science.Slang may be, if you like, a dirty by-product of language.But at least he has been among the few who saw the divine parentage ofthese things, and knew that where there is smoke there is fire--that is,that wherever there is the foulest of things, there also is the purest.Above all, he has had something to say, a definite view of things to utter,and that always means that a man is fearless and faces everything.For the moment we have a view of the universe, we possess it.

Now, the message of Rudyard Kipling, that upon which he hasreally concentrated, is the only thing worth worrying aboutin him or in any other man. He has often written bad poetry,like Wordsworth. He has often said silly things, like Plato.He has often given way to mere political hysteria, like Gladstone.But no one can reasonably doubt that he means steadily and sincerelyto say something, and the only serious question is, What is thatwhich he has tried to say? Perhaps the best way of stating thisfairly will be to begin with that element which has been most insistedby himself and by his opponents--I mean his interest in militarism.But when we are seeking for the real merits of a man it is unwiseto go to his enemies, and much more foolish to go to himself.

Now, Mr. Kipling is certainly wrong in his worship of militarism,but his opponents are, generally speaking, quite as wrong as he.The evil of militarism is not that it shows certain men to be fierceand haughty and excessively warlike. The evil of militarism is that itshows most men to be tame and timid and excessively peaceable.The professional soldier gains more and more power as the generalcourage of a community declines. Thus the Pretorian guard becamemore and more important in Rome as Rome became more and moreluxurious and feeble. The military man gains the civil powerin proportion as the civilian loses the military virtues.And as it was in ancient Rome so it is in contemporary Europe.There never was a time when nations were more militarist.There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages and all epicshave sung of arms and the man; but we have effected simultaneouslythe deterioration of the man and the fantastic perfection of the arms.Militarism demonstrated the decadence of Rome, and it demonstratesthe decadence of Prussia.

And unconsciously Mr. Kipling has proved this, and proved it admirably.For in so far as his work is earnestly understood the military tradedoes not by any means emerge as the most important or attractive.He has not written so well about soldiers as he has aboutrailway men or bridge builders, or even journalists.The fact is that what attracts Mr. Kipling to militarismis not the idea of courage, but the idea of discipline.There was far more courage to the square mile in the Middle Ages,when no king had a standing army, but every man had a bow or sword.But the fascination of the standing army upon Mr. Kipling isnot courage, which scarcely interests him, but discipline, which is,when all is said and done, his primary theme. The modern armyis not a miracle of courage; it has not enough opportunities,owing to the cowardice of everybody else. But it is reallya miracle of organization, and that is the truly Kiplingite ideal.Kipling's subject is not that valour which properly belongs to war,but that interdependence and efficiency which belongs quiteas much to engineers, or sailors, or mules, or railway engines.And thus it is that when he writes of engineers, or sailors,or mules, or steam-engines, he writes at his best. The real poetry,the "true romance" which Mr. Kipling has taught, is the romanceof the division of labour and the discipline of all the trades.He sings the arts of peace much more accurately than the arts of war.And his main contention is vital and valuable. Every thing is militaryin the sense that everything depends upon obedience. There is noperfectly epicurean corner; there is no perfectly irresponsible place.Everywhere men have made the way for us with sweat and submission.We may fling ourselves into a hammock in a fit of divine carelessness.But we are glad that the net-maker did not make the hammock in a fit ofdivine carelessness. We may jump upon a child's rocking-horse for a joke.But we are glad that the carpenter did not leave the legs of itunglued for a joke. So far from having merely preached that a soldiercleaning his side-arm is to be adored because he is military,Kipling at his best and clearest has preached that the baker bakingloaves and the tailor cutting coats is as military as anybody.

Being devoted to this multitudinous vision of duty, Mr. Kiplingis naturally a cosmopolitan. He happens to find his examplesin the British Empire, but almost any other empire woulddo as well, or, indeed, any other highly civilized country.That which he admires in the British army he would find even moreapparent in the German army; that which he desires in the Britishpolice he would find flourishing, in the French police.The ideal of discipline is not the whole of life, but it is spreadover the whole of the world. And the worship of it tends to confirmin Mr. Kipling a certain note of worldly wisdom, of the experienceof the wanderer, which is one of the genuine charms of his best work.

The great gap in his mind is what may be roughly called the lackof patriotism--that is to say, he lacks altogether the faculty of attachinghimself to any cause or community finally and tragically; for allfinality must be tragic. He admires England, but he does not love her;for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons.He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.There is no harshness in saying this, for, to do him justice, he avowsit with his usual picturesque candour. In a very interesting poem,he says that--

"If England was what England seems"
--that is, weak and inefficient; if England were not what (as he believes)she is--that is, powerful and practical--

"How quick we'd chuck 'er! But she ain't!"
He admits, that is, that his devotion is the result of a criticism,and this is quite enough to put it in another category altogether fromthe patriotism of the Boers, whom he hounded down in South Africa.In speaking of the really patriotic peoples, such as the Irish, he hassome difficulty in keeping a shrill irritation out of his language.The frame of mind which he really describes with beauty andnobility is the frame of mind of the cosmopolitan man who has seenmen and cities.

"For to admire and for to see, For to be'old this world so wide."
He is a perfect master of that light melancholy with which a manlooks back on having been the citizen of many communities,of that light melancholy with which a man looks back on having beenthe lover of many women. He is the philanderer of the nations.But a man may have learnt much about women in flirtations,and still be ignorant of first love; a man may have known as manylands as Ulysses, and still be ignorant of patriotism.

Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in a celebrated epigram what they canknow of England who know England only. It is a far deeper and sharperquestion to ask, "What can they know of England who know only the world?"for the world does not include England any more than it includesthe Church. The moment we care for anything deeply, the world--that is, all the other miscellaneous interests--becomes our enemy.Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self"unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as muchwhen they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking,I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I supposethat the Church was a part of the world, and even the loversinhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth--the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe.Thus Mr. Kipling does certainly know the world; he is a man of the world,with all the narrowness that belongs to those imprisoned in that planet.He knows England as an intelligent English gentleman knows Venice.He has been to England a great many times; he has stopped therefor long visits. But he does not belong to it, or to any place;and the proof of it is this, that he thinks of England as a place.The moment we are rooted in a place, the place vanishes.We live like a tree with the whole strength of the universe.

The globe-trotter lives in a smaller world than the peasant.He is always breathing, an air of locality. London is a place, to becompared to Chicago; Chicago is a place, to be compared to Timbuctoo.But Timbuctoo is not a place, since there, at least, live menwho regard it as the universe, and breathe, not an air of locality,but the winds of the world. The man in the saloon steamer hasseen all the races of men, and he is thinking of the things thatdivide men--diet, dress, decorum, rings in the nose as in Africa,or in the ears as in Europe, blue paint among the ancients, or redpaint among the modern Britons. The man in the cabbage field hasseen nothing at all; but he is thinking of the things that unite men--hunger and babies, and the beauty of women, and the promise or menaceof the sky. Mr. Kipling, with all his merits, is the globe-trotter;he has not the patience to become part of anything.So great and genuine a man is not to be accused of a merelycynical cosmopolitanism; still, his cosmopolitanism is his weakness.That weakness is splendidly expressed in one of his finest poems,"The Sestina of the Tramp Royal," in which a man declares that he canendure anything in the way of hunger or horror, but not permanentpresence in one place. In this there is certainly danger.The more dead and dry and dusty a thing is the more it travels about;dust is like this and the thistle-down and the High Commissionerin South Africa. Fertile things are somewhat heavier, like the heavyfruit trees on the pregnant mud of the Nile. In the heated idlenessof youth we were all rather inclined to quarrel with the implicationof that proverb which says that a rolling stone gathers no moss. We wereinclined to ask, "Who wants to gather moss, except silly old ladies?"But for all that we begin to perceive that the proverb is right.The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rollingstone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.

The truth is that exploration and enlargement make the world smaller.The telegraph and the steamboat make the world smaller.The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscopethat makes it larger. Before long the world will be clovenwith a war between the telescopists and the microscopists.The first study large things and live in a small world; the secondstudy small things and live in a large world. It is inspiritingwithout doubt to whizz in a motor-car round the earth, to feel Arabiaas a whirl of sand or China as a flash of rice-fields. But Arabiais not a whirl of sand and China is not a flash of rice-fields. Theyare ancient civilizations with strange virtues buried like treasures.If we wish to understand them it must not be as tourists or inquirers,it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets.To conquer these places is to lose them. The man standingin his own kitchen-garden, with fairyland opening at the gate,is the man with large ideas. His mind creates distance; the motor-carstupidly destroys it. Moderns think of the earth as a globe,as something one can easily get round, the spirit of a schoolmistress.This is shown in the odd mistake perpetually made about Cecil Rhodes.His enemies say that he may have had large ideas, but he was a bad man.His friends say that he may have been a bad man, but he certainlyhad large ideas. The truth is that he was not a man essentially bad,he was a man of much geniality and many good intentions, but a manwith singularly small views. There is nothing large about paintingthe map red; it is an innocent game for children. It is just as easyto think in continents as to think in cobble-stones. The difficultycomes in when we seek to know the substance of either of them.Rhodes' prophecies about the Boer resistance are an admirablecomment on how the "large ideas" prosper when it is not a questionof thinking in continents but of understanding a few two-legged men.And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet,with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of mangoes on concerned with this tree or that temple, with this harvestor that drinking-song, totally uncomprehended, totally untouched.And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smileof amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way,outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing,roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to findthe sun cockney and the stars suburban.