Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- 1 The Quest
- 2 ‘The catawampus of Romance’
- 3 Beyond the Lighthouse: Stevenson's Treasure Island
- 4 Rider Haggard's African Romances
- 5 Rudyard Kipling and the Wolves
- 6 Arthur Conan Doyle and the ‘Missing Link’
- 7 ‘You write the history of the world’
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
5 - Rudyard Kipling and the Wolves
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- 1 The Quest
- 2 ‘The catawampus of Romance’
- 3 Beyond the Lighthouse: Stevenson's Treasure Island
- 4 Rider Haggard's African Romances
- 5 Rudyard Kipling and the Wolves
- 6 Arthur Conan Doyle and the ‘Missing Link’
- 7 ‘You write the history of the world’
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Four days after the close of the First World War, Haggard spent the afternoon in the study of Bateman's, Rudyard Kipling's house in Sussex, idly reminiscing with his old friend. Facing them, along one of the many bookshelves, ran a complete set of Stevenson's romances; to either side of the long writing desk, rested two cartographer's globes. Haggard was less intrigued by these familiar objects than he was by Kipling's mannerisms. ‘In one way he is a very curious man,’ he noted in his diary later.
When he talks, he always likes to be doing something with his hands. ‘I must occupy my hands,’ he said, and went to fetch a hollywood stick he had been drying, and peeled and sandpapered it, continually asking my advice as to the process and subsequent treatment of the stick, which I told him to hang up a chimney like a ham. Last time we talked in this fashion he employed himself with a fishing rod and line. (RKRH 106–7)
With his fingers thus occupied, Kipling engaged Haggard in a hesitant tête-a-tête on the subject of their public reputations. He complained of isolation. ‘He is a very shy bird,’ Haggard observed,
and as he remarked had no friends, except I trust myself, for whom he has always entertained affection, and with no acquaintance with literary people. ‘But then,’ he added. ‘I do not think that I am really “literary”, nor are you either.’ I remarked that our literary sides were bye-products. ‘Yes’, he repeated, ‘Bye-products’. (RKRH 107)
The conversation thus noted down took place on Friday, 15 November 1918, by which time both Kipling and Haggard had a considerable body of work behind them, including nearly everything that could be classified as romances. True, the literary tide was turning against them. Even so, Kipling's complaint – or was it a boast? – seems odd. His view of himself, and by implication of Haggard, implies the existence of an establishment, recognizably ‘literary’ in atmosphere, from which they were by now excluded, a state of affairs which Kipling seems to contemplate with a mixture of resentment and satisfaction.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Victorian Quest RomanceStevenson, Haggard, Kipling and Conan Doyle, pp. 47 - 65Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1998