There is no harshness in saying this, for, to do him justice, he avows it 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 from the patriotism of the Boers, whom he hounded down in South Africa.
In speaking of the really patriotic peoples, such as the Irish, he has some difficulty in keeping a shrill irritation out of his language.
The frame of mind which he really describes with beauty and nobility is the frame of mind of the cosmopolitan man who has seen men 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 man looks back on having been the citizen of many communities, of that light melancholy with which a man looks back on having been the 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 many lands as Ulysses, and still be ignorant of patriotism.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling has asked in a celebrated epigram what they can know of England who know England only. It is a far deeper and sharper question to ask, "What can they know of England who know only the world?"for the world does not include England any more than it includes the 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 much when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants 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 there for 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 be compared to Chicago; Chicago is a place, to be compared to Timbuctoo.
But Timbuctoo is not a place, since there, at least, live men who regard it as the universe, and breathe, not an air of locality, but the winds of the world. The man in the saloon steamer has seen all the races of men, and he is thinking of the things that divide men--diet, dress, decorum, rings in the nose as in Africa, or in the ears as in Europe, blue paint among the ancients, or red paint among the modern Britons. The man in the cabbage field has seen 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 menace of the sky. Mr. Kipling, with all his merits, is the globe-trotter;he has not the patience to become part of anything.
