Lionel  Charles  Dunsterville
Major-General, 1865 - 1946

STALKY'S  REMINISCENCES

1928. Reprinted 2006.

Paperback: 300 pages
Pomona Press. Paperback: 300 pages

ISBN-10: 1406794759

Reviewed by Patrick Killough

recollected background on recently (1874) founded USC,

for his own and Kipling's days and merry pranks there,

for the poor harvest of students by a school with no waiting list,

for the school's inevitable lack of tradition and the unruly confusion caused by its collection of masters from schools with clashing traditions

and for the greatness, seconded by Kipling and others, of founding Headmaster Cormell Price.

"Stalky himself was never quite so clever as portrayed in the book. ... But he represents ... the medium of one of the prevailing spirits of this most untypical school."

"Beresford and I had our fair share of brains, but Kipling had a good deal more than his fair share, and added to it the enomous asset of knowledge -- intuitive and acquired" (Ch. 1, 'Childhood'). 

that Queen Victoria studied Urdu to communicate with her beloved Indian domestics and guards (Ch. 6, 'The Die-Hards'). 

A prodigious linguist (11 languages under his belt), Lionel Dunsterville is worth listening to on what makes a language unique:


Running an allied railroad line near Peking during the Boxer Rebellion, Dunsterville cleverly foiled without violence a German attempt to annex a British plot near the railroad station.

"The matter got as far as being mentioned in Reuter's telegrams, and THE MORNING POST of Delhi referred to it under the heading

-- (1) Rudyard Kipling studied there 1878 to 1882;

-- (2) schoolboys Lionel Dunsterville, George Beresford and Joseph Rudyard Kipling constituted the "Co./Company" of STALKY & CO., Kipling's 1899 fictional recreation of his four school years at Westward Ho!

"Nearly all our successes in our various schemes were based on simplicity. Things just seemed to come our way" (Ch. 3, 'Stalky & Co.')  

"Beresford and I had our fair share of brains, but Kipling had a good deal more than his fair share, and added to it the enormous asset of knowledge -- intuitive and acquired" (Ch. 1, 'Childhood').

Our earlier escapades were on the lines of simple buffoonery, but we soon evolved on to a higher plane of astute plotting on more intellectual lines, the essence of each plot being that it should leave our adversaries nothing to hit back at. The culmination of the plot was the appearance of the elusive criminals in the pleasing pose of injured innocence" (Ch. 1, 'Childhood, p. 26).

"The matter got as far as being mentioned in Reuter's telegrams, and THE MORNING POST of Delhi referred to it under the heading 'Stalky Holds Up The Germans'" (Ch. 13, 'Railway Work'). 

-- "... one's nature cannot be wholly evil"    

" ... bad people are not so very bad, and good people are not so very good"  

-- (From warring religions he learned that) "nobody is ever entirely right, and one's opponents are often very far from wrong" (Ch. 3).
 

"Kipling was then living with his parents, while employed on the staff of the CIVIL AND MILITARY GAZETTE, and had already risen to fame as the author of many witty satires on Indian life. We were both twenty years of age and looking forward eagerly to what life might have to show us." (Ch. IV).

"soldiers in India ... men who surely must be growing weary, after 12 years of novels, autobiographies and films, on the subject of the Great War."

          Dunsterville and Kipling

"a good deal more than his fair share" of brains" (STALKY'S REMINISCENCES, Ch. 1).

          Dunsterville and British India

-- A fussy Indian Army colonel insisted that a "notice board" go up for his troops to express their needs -- anonymously. One entry under "wanted" read, "A new Colonel" (Ch. 7).

-- Mauladad Khan, an Afridi tribesman, was a highly decorated heroic native Subadar-Major admired by and known not only to Lionel Dunsterville and to leading Generals but even to Queen Victoria who invited him to England. He was not, alas, big on parades, ceremonial, uniformity in uniforms or subtleties in tactics.

One day a British Major explained a new drill to Indian Officers. Mauladad then summed the lecture up: "In the attack there is only one thing to remember, and that is, "Fix bayonets and charge."

Once an inspecting General asked Mauladad what he would do if attacked on the flank or if surrounded and outnumbered. The Subadar-Major's reply to both questions: "Fix bayonets and charge." The General then had done with further questioning. In an aside to the regimental Colonel, the General remarked: "I believe if I asked him what he would do if I dared to disagree with him, he would reply  "Fix bayonets and charge" (Ch. 6).

"that where once the German flag had flown no power on earth could effect its removal."

"In January 1878 an enduring friendship was formed among three 13-year old schoolboys of United Services College (USC) at Westward Ho! outside the town of Bideford, on the north Devon seacoast. The three boys were the future Nobel Prize winner for literature Joseph Rudyard Kipling, future Major General Lionel Dunsterville and new boy George Beresford, Kipling's closest friend.    

Each boy in later life looked back fondly on those school years and wrote them up as fiction or fact. Kipling told their story in STALKY & CO. (1899). In those tales group leader Dunsterville became 'Stalky,' Beresford 'M'Turk' and Kipling 'Beetle.'"  

"The message is clear - Stalkiness in war is built on Stalkiness at school."