Familiar authors can still spring surprises. In my case, it was an author – Rudyard Kipling – whom I had not read for many years. Although Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, there are, perhaps, few authors whose reputation and popularity have suffered such an eclipse as that of the author of Kim, Captains Courageous, and Plain Tales from the Hills. The only book of his that continues to be popular is The Jungle Book, and that, I suppose, is largely to do with the very successful Disney film of a few years back.
The reason for Kipling's decline in popularity is not far to seek. It is that he, of almost any author you care to mention, is closely identified with Britain's imperial past, and especially India under successive viceroys. Kipling was born in Bombay, and he worked as a journalist on various English-language newspapers until returning to England in 1891. He never returned to India, though his experiences there were to form the basis of many of his novels and short stories, as well as verse collections like Departmental Ditties and Barrack-Room Ballads.
Recently I picked up a second-hand copy of A Choice of Kipling's Verse, made by TS Eliot. His introductory essay is a revelation. Kipling's association with the ethos of Empire cannot be gainsaid, but he is a far subtler writer than that for which he is given credit. In the course of discussing Kipling's poetry, Eliot refers to some of his short stories. One in particular sounded interesting.
I have always enjoyed ghost stories, especially those of M R James, Walter de la Mare, and Henry James, set in old houses, full of dark and obscure secrets. I found a copy of Kipling's short stories in which was the one Eliot had singled out. It was called, simply, They.
The unnamed narrator, out for a drive on the Sussex Downs, follows a narrow, tree-enshrouded road that led him to a large house, set in beautiful parklands. Before he begins to reverse his way out, he notices a little boy at an upper window, waving at him, and then hears from the nearby garden the sounds of children laughing.
At that moment, an attractive woman comes through the garden gate; he quickly realises she is blind. Rather embarrassed, he explains to the woman his predicament, but is met with both kindness and strangeness. She asks if he has seen any of the children, and he tells her he has. She is pleased, remarking how lucky he is, as she can only hear them. As they talk, she asks if he has ever seen in a dream the face of anyone close to him who has died. He replies, sadly, that he has not.
He leaves, but with an invitation to return, which he does a few months later. Greeted again by the blind woman, he again catches glimpses of the children, just out of clear sight. She explains they are terribly shy, but that she loves them all. His visit takes a dramatic turn when a local woman reports that a child in the village is very ill. So the man sets off to fetch the doctor. He says goodbye to the woman, and promises to return soon.
However, he is unable to return for several months. This time the blind woman's butler takes him into the house and leads him to a large room where he greets the woman. As they sit round the fire burning in the great fireplace, he sees a group of the children hiding behind some pieces of furniture, watching them. Amused, he pretends to ignore them. And then something happens.
His hand has been dangling at his side when he feels the soft touch of lips. “The little brushing kiss fell in the centre of my palm – as a gift on which the fingers were, once, expected to close – a fragment of the mute code devised very long ago … Then I knew. And it was as if I had known from the first day when I looked across the lawn at the high window.”
It seems almost indelicate to say any more about this exquisite, deeply moving story, perfect of its kind, except to urge you to read it for yourself. But it is significant that Eliot set Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets, in the grounds of a mansion like the one in this story, and that the laughter of unseen children symbolises the mystical experience that informs the four poems of Four Quartets.
“Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
of Children in the foliage.”
Barnaby ffrench
