It is real because he sees and feels very swiftly and keenly; it is romantic, again, because he has a sharp eye for the reality of romance, for the attraction and possibility of adventure, and because he is young. If a reader wants to see petty characters displayed in all their meannesses, if this be realism, surely certain of Mr. Kipling's painted and frisky matrons are realistic enough. The seamy side of Anglo-Indian life: the intrigues, amorous or semi-political--the slang of people who describe dining as "mangling garbage" the "games of tennis with the seventh commandment"--he has not neglected any of these. Probably the sketches are true enough, and pity 'tis true: for example, the sketches in "Under the Deodars" and in "The Gadsbys." That worthy pair, with their friends, are to myself as unsympathetic, almost, as the characters in "La Conquete de Plassans." But Mr. Kipling is too much a true realist to make their selfishness and pettiness unbroken, unceasing. We know that "Gaddy" is a brave, modest, and hard-working soldier; and, when his little silly bride (who prefers being kissed by a man with waxed moustaches) lies near to death, certainly I am nearer to tears than when I am obliged to attend the bed of Little Dombey or of Little Nell. Probably there is a great deal of slangy and unrefined Anglo-Indian society; and, no doubt, to sketch it in its true colours is not beyond the province of art. At worst it is redeemed, in part, by its constancy in the presence of various perils--from disease, and from "the bullet flying down the pass." Mr. Kipling may not be, and very probably is not, a reader of "Gyp"; but "The Gadsbys," especially, reads like the work of an Anglo-Indian disciple, trammelled by certain English conventions.
The more Pharisaic realists--those of the strictest sect--would probably welcome Mr. Kipling as a younger brother, so far as "Under the Deodars" and "The Gadsbys" are concerned, if he were not occasionally witty and even flippant, as well as realistic. But, very fortunately, he has not confined his observation to the leisures and pleasures of Simla; he has looked out also on war and on sport, on the life of all native tribes and castes; and has even glanced across the borders of "The Undiscovered Country."Among Mr. Kipling's discoveries of new kinds of characters, probably the most popular is his invention of the British soldier in India.
He avers that he "loves that very strong man, Thomas Atkins"; but his affection has not blinded him to the faults of the beloved. Mr.
Atkins drinks too much, is too careless a gallant in love, has been educated either too much or too little, and has other faults, partly due, apparently, to recent military organisation, partly to the feverish and unsettled state of the civilised world. But he is still brave, when he is well led; still loyal, above all, to his "trusty chum." Every Englishman must hope that, if Terence Mulvaney did not take the city of Lungtung Pen as described, yet he is ready, and willing so to take it. Mr. Mulvaney is as humorous as Micky Free, but more melancholy and more truculent. He has, perhaps, "won his way to the mythical" already, and is not so much a soldier, as an incarnation, not of Krishna, but of many soldierly qualities. On the other hand, Private Ortheris, especially in his frenzy, seems to shew all the truth, and much more than the life of, a photograph.
Such, we presume, is the soldier, and such are his experiences and temptations and repentance. But nobody ever dreamed of telling us all this, till Mr. Kipling came. As for the soldier in action, the "Taking of Lungtung Pen," and the "Drums of the Fore and Aft," and that other tale of the battle with the Pathans in the gorge, are among the good fights of fiction. They stir the spirit, and they should be distributed (in addition, of course, to the "Soldier's Pocket Book") in the ranks of the British army. Mr. Kipling is as well informed about the soldier's women-kind as about the soldier:
