Rudyard  Kipling

DEPARTMENTAL  DITTIES
AND  OTHER  VERSES 
(1886)


 Nabu Press. 2011. 134 pages. paperback
ISBN-10: 1172845794

reviewed by Patrick Killough




(1) biblio.com 08/23/2011

Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes.

review:

In late 1882, 16 year old Rudyard Kipling became Assistant Editor of the Lahore, India, Civil & Military Gazette. It appeared six days a week and was not distributed beyond the Punjab. Rudyard contributed verses of his own and only three years after beginning his journalistic career published DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES.

I find these ditties by a boy aged 17 - 19 of a high order, all things considered, though less consistently good than BARRACK ROOM BALLADS, his second book of verse which first appeared in 1892. The BALLADS are remarkable for how much space is taken up with the British "rankers" in India: army privates, corporals and sergeants. DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES, by contrast, was more given over to British civil servants, though there is some overlap of the other's themes in either volume.

DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES consists of 14 poems, supplemented by 36 OTHER VERSES. All are short, most taking up only two or three pages in the 1921 Methuen and Co. edition now before me. The DITTIES, generally speaking, are not so quotable as BALLADS. But here are some samples:

(1) "And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke" (The Betrothed);

(2) "With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars" (i.e. other than Hindu altars -- Christmas in India);

(3) "So long as debt leads men to wed,
Or marriage leads to debt" (An Old Song);

(4) "You'll never plumb the Oriental mind" (One Viceroy Resigns);

(5) "Its incommunicable, like the east" (One Viceroy Resigns)."  *** 

DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES dabbles in politics, amours, death, aromas, the steaming plains, the cool hills, drought, famine and the varied little peoples of India and Burma. It is a remarkable literary product by a busy, very gifted teenager.

From his earliest days, Kipling's verse expressed his ideas more than adequately. The contrast with the lumbering prose and occasional verses of James Fenimore Cooper is striking.  -OOO-

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(2) lunch.com  08/24/2011

name of review:  "With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars"


rating: * * * *

review:

Rudyard Kipling, first Englishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, loved to play tricks with the look of words. Thus, he sent Capital Letters marching across the pages to war for visual effect and emphasis. He larded his verses with Hindustani and Anglo-Indian expressions. All this and more happens in DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER VERSES. The 20-year old journalist and assistant editor in Lahore, India, issued his first collection of poems in book form in 1886. I have just re-read DITTIES in a 1921 Methuen & Co. edition. Fourteen DITTIES are succeeded by 36 OTHER VERSES, each series in alphabetical order by title.

Kipling's take on India is from two contrasting points of view:

(1) the homesick, often malarial British civilian on service in Queen Victoria's Indian Raj

(2) versus the timeless, unvarying close to earth unreflecting lives of India's dusky Muslim and Hindu peasant farmers ruled by pallid or sun-burnt Englishmen.

Indians are shown going about their daily routines of plowing, dying, worshipping, etc. in almost total disregard of far away Victoria their Queen Empress or of nearer at hand, toiling British members of the Indian Civil Service who devote their hands on lives to service of the people they rule.

Cast a glance at a poem selected at random: "Christmas in India," which was written a year or two earlier but appeared in book form in 1886  Some excerpts, starting with the first three lines:
"The dawn behind the tamarisks -- the sky is             saffron-yellow --
As the women in the village grind the corn.
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling to his fellow."

The poet goes on describing Christmas day as it plays out in India in five stanzas set at different times of day, going back and forth between "at Home" (England) and the blazing hot Indian scene before his eyes where the writer is stationed. The times of day are dawn, full day, high noon, dusk and finally black night.

Here is an excerpt from the second stanza concerning the ceremonial burning of an Indian corpse:
"Call on Rama, going slowly as ye bear a brother lowly --
Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps your voice!"

{then comes the Englishman's point of view}
"With our hymn-books and our psalters we                 appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid 'good Christian men rejoice!'"

By nighttime, the poet is clearly depressed and nostalgic. He ends
"Black night behind the tamarisks--the owls  begin their chorus--
As the conches from the temple scream and  bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors--let us feast with friends and neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past."

There is much experimentation in young Rudyard's DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES, including a clear imitation of his beloved Robert Browning in "One Viceroy Resigns." Warning to readers of DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES: have a glossary at hand and preferably a scholarly edition to identify all the Viceroys and politicians referred to.

No student of Kipling dare overlook this early collection of poems. And even at their occasional flattest, these verses are a thought-provoking, India-evocative read.

-OOO-

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(3) bn.com   08/25/2011

title of review:  "Pagett was dear to mosquitoes, sandflies found him a treat"

rating: * * * *

review:

Few of Rudyard Kipling's fictional characters suffered fools lightly. One such fool, typically, was the noble lord or member of Parliament (M.P.) who visited India for a few weeks to gather impressions for a forthcoming opus magnum on "Our Eastern Possessions" or some such pretentious title. Twenty-year old Kipling in 1886 published his first book of poems, DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER VERSES. My 1921 36th edition from Methuen anc Company lists in alphabetical order by title 14 Ditties and 36 Other Verses. These are normally  about India or Burma. Usually the poem's narrator is a worn-down expatriate member of the Indian Civil Service. His children are back "at Home" in England, Scotland or Ireland being educated. And his wife is probably there with them, until they are old enough to rejoin their father as he rules a large swath of the Sub-Continent.

Let's take one of the OTHER VERSES, selected at random. It gives the flavor of the whole slim book. If you like it, you will like all the DITTIES as well. The poem is "Pagett, M.P." Pagett came out to India planning to stay there November, December, January and February (the cool season). He made the mistake of informing the poet that the heat of India is a "Solar Myth." The poet then somehow tricked the boaster into promising to stay until September, i.e. through the awful summer. Pagett made it into July before fleeing for home.  Here are some excerpts from "Pagett, M.P.": 

"April began with the punkah, coolies, and prickly-heat, --
Pagett was dear to mosquitoes, sandflies found him a treat. 

*** 

May set in with a dust-storm, -- Pagett went down with the sun.
All the delights of the season tickled him one by one.
Imprimis -- ten day's "liver" -- due to his drinking beer;
Later, a dose of fever --slight, but he called it severe. 

*** 

July was a trifle unhealthy, -- Pagett was ill with fear.
'Called it the "Cholera Morbus," hinted that life was dear.
He babbled of "Eastern Exile," and mentioned his home with   tears;
But I haven't seen my children for close upon seven years.   ***

We reached a hundred and twenty once in the Court at noon,
(I've mentioned Pagett was portly) Pagett, went off in a swoon.
That was an end to the business; Pagett, the perjured, fled
With a practical, working knowledge of "Solar Myths" in his head./

And I laughed as I drove from the station, but the mirth died out on my lips
As I thought of the fools like Pagett who write of their 'Eastern trips,'
And the sneers of the traveled idiots who duly misgovern the land,
And I prayed to the Lord to deliver another one into my hand."
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There are DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER VERSES both better and worse than "Pagett, M.P." At their flattest, all are worth reading. At their best they have come into everyday lore. Think of a concluding line from "The Betrothed":

"And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke."

Notice that woman is not captalized, but a Smoke is. Draw your own conclusions! -OOO-


recommended reading:

-- Rudyard Kipling - BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS, MULVANEY STORIES, PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS.


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(4) amazon.com 08/27/2011

title of review:  "Jane Austen Wept," wrote young Rudyard Kipling

rating: * * * *

review:

In 1886, when he was 21, an Anglo--Indian journalist based in Lahore named Joseph Rudyard Kipling published a book of 50 short poems: DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND  OTHER  VERSES. Of DITTIES there were 14, of OTHERS 36. Before me is the Methuen & Co.'s 36th edition of 1921. It is seven inches high and five inches wide. It distributes the 50 poems across 176 pages.

Generally speaking, DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES are about British men and women expatriated from "Home" to India to spend their working or early married years moving in circles of European businessmen, tea planters, judges, civilian rulers of vast British Indian districts, advisors at the courts of dependent rajahs and such like. Other soon to follow books by Kipling, such as MULVANEY STORIES, BARRACK-ROOM BALLADS and PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS would, by contrast, do more to showcase fighting men, usually "rankers," that is privates, corporals and sergeants. But DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER VERSES tells of civilians: pale Irish women and sunburned Welshmen, Irishmen and Scots.

Their setting, of course, is India: the land and the people that they rule or from which they extract wealth. The more thoughtful civil servants do notice the Hindu and Muslim farmers who plow the soil that provides Queen VIctoria her tax revenues and see the Bengali babus in their green eyeshades as they tally their mercantile profits. Native Indians are born, toil, grow ill and old, die and are cremated or buried -- even on "Christmas in India." But they pay little heed to their Queen Empress or her white minions.

In 1887 Kipling was promoted by its owners from being assistant editor of THE CIVIL AND MILITARY GAZETTE, a provincial newspaper written in Lahore, Punjab, to the same position in the nationally much more prominent PIONEER in Allahabad, United Provinces.

More than two years earlier, Kipling had published in the PIONEER of August 22, 1885 a humorous ditty called "The Legend of the Lilly." He was only 19 years old. "The Legend of the Lilly" reappeared in 1886 as "The Mare's Nest," nestled between book covers among Kipling's DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES.

In "Mare's Nest," a good Anglo-Indian expatriate woman does not know that half her wastrel husband's income goes (1) for the upkeep of a racing mare named Lilly, secretly maintained by him at a discreet distance and (2) for racing Lilly for money in various Indian sporting events.

Intercepting at a cool hill station a cable intended for her husband off racing Lilly in the stifling plains in fictitious Shaitanapur ("Satan's Gate"), the wife infers that husband is keeping a mistress named Lilly. She files for divorce and alerts her mother at Home.

But husband sets all right by bringing equine Lilly home to meet his wife, whose name is, improbably, Jane Austen Beecher Stowe De Rouse. Jane Austen falls in love with the thirteen hands high Lilly and soon is infected by her husband Belial Machiavelli's ruinous passion for horse racing. From better woman to bettor! Some exerpts from "The Mare's Nest":
Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse
Was good beyond all earthly need;
But, on the other hand, her spouse
Was very, very bad indeed.
He smoked cigars, called churches slow,
And raced - but this she did not know.

* * * * *

She was so good, she made him worse;
(Some women are like this, I think;)
He taught her parrot how to curse,
Her Assam monkey how to drink.
He vexed her righteous soul until
She went up, and he went down hill.

* * * * *

But 'twas a telegram instead,
Marked "urgent," and her duty plain
To open it. Jane Austen read:
"Your Lilly's got a cough again.
Can't understand why she is kept
At your expense." Jane Austen wept.

* * * * *

There was a scene - a weep or two -
With many kisses. Austen Jane
Rode Lilly all the season through,
And never opened wires again.
She races now with Belial. This
Is very sad, but so it is."

"The Mare's Nest" is perhaps a tad better than most of the other 49 poems in DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER VERSES. But read them all and chuckle to realize why the poet concludes in "The Betrothed" that

"And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke."

Note which of the competitors for attention is capitalized. Enjoy DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES!

-OOO-

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(5) epinions.com  08/28/2011

Review's Title: And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.

Pros:

Kipling's words express Kipling's thoughts perfectly.

DITTIES are witty, insightful, cross-cultural and very, very human.

Cons:

One third of the 1886 collection seems flat.

Another third is merely better than average.

The Bottom Line:

Poems written by Rudyard Kipling between ages 17 and 20: remarkably good for such a young author.

Queen Victoria's dark-skinned India as experienced by its expatriate white rulers.

Reviewer's rating of DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES: * * * *


aohcapablanca's Full Review:

How best review any book of poems written by one person about an exotic part of the world at a certain point in its evolving history?  

I don't know about you. But I have found it helpful, as part of my framing such a review, to select a few of those collected poems at random, describe them and quote them. I conclude by highlighting yet another poem and by treating it in somewhat greater detail.

My concluding suggestion to readers, whether implicit or explicit, is that the selections are typical of the rest. If you like what I have selected, then you will enjoy most if not all the rest of the author's collection of verse. If not, then simply read no further into that book.

Today's collection of poems for review is DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER VERSES. They were published as a slim book of 14 DITTIES and 36 OTHER VERSES in India in 1886. Their author was a 20-year old English expatriate born in Bombay December 30, 1865. Since age 16 he had been slaving away six days a week as Assistant Editor and copy writer of Lahore's CIVIL AND MILITARY GAZETTE. His name? Joseph Rudyard Kipling.

What are the DITTIES about? Pale-faced British memsahibs and their sunburned menfolk exiled from "Home" for years or decades to rule India and Burma for Her Majesty Queen Victoria and to swell London's Exchequer with tax revenues. They labored, loved, they met at balls, they flirted, courted, grew ill and died. All around the expatriates dusky Hindus and Muslims ploughed their fields, worshipped their gods and generally paid little attention to their British masters. This is the world of DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES.

Kipling's early poems of British life in India are often comic, occasionally dark, with an eye toward Imperial policy and the slipshod way it is often made. That said, here are some sample contents:

-- (1) In "A Legend of the Foreign Office," a minor Indian rajah does everything that his appointed British advisor tells him to do by way of sanitation and other "progressive" civic projects. When, however, the Viceroy gives the prince a lesser honor than anticipated, the rajah backs away from every last piece of modernization he had been committed to, starting with "the City drain."

-- (2) "My Rival" is beloved of biographers of the four Kiplings: father John Lockwood, mother Alice Macdonald, son Joseph Rudyard and daughter Alice, better known as "Trix." Biographers interpret "My Rival" as narrated by teen-age Trix trying to break into the elegant summer capital world of Simla with its hundreds of eligible bachelors on duty or vacation. But no one pays attention to Trix when Alice is at a dance or dinner. 

"The incense that is mine by right
     They burn before Her shrine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
     And she is forty-nine."

Someday time will prove Trix's avenger:

"One ray of priceless hope I see
     Before my footsteps shine;
Just think, that she'll be eighty-one
When I am forty-nine."

-- (3) In "A Ballad of Burial," an Englishman begs his friends to bury him in the cool "hills" (i.e., high mountains) of India.

"I could never stand the Plains.
     Think of blazing June and May,
Think of those September rains
     Yearly till the Judgment Day!"

-- (4) "The Mare's Nest" is about a secret racer of horses and his wife Jane Austen Beecher Stowe De Rouse. She begins as a good wife, she becomes even better when, like her husband, Jane Austen becomes a "bettor."

-- (5) Finally, please bear with me if I dwell a tad longer over a fifth example: "The Betrothed." A young man is debating with himself with which of two loves to settle down for life: Maggie or cigars.

Cigars have made up his harem for seven years, Maggie has been his beloved for only one. "The Betrothed" is an extended comparison between the two rivals for his heart. He has to choose:

"For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen."

Maggie is not without her charms ...

"Maggie is pretty to look at -- Maggie's a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass."

He imagines his future: either with Maggies or with cigars, but not both:

"Maggie, my wife at fifty -- grey and dour and old --
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!"

*****

"Here is a mild Manilla -- there is a wifely smile."

Human romantic love in the end will turn into "The butt of a dead cigar."

Ah, but cigars, wonderful cigars!

The best of them is, be it admitted, finished in an hour and thrown away. But there are 49 more waiting to take its place from the remainder of his latest ribbon-wrapped purchase. And when those fifty cigars are gone, fifty more eagerly take their place.

"And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides."

"The Betrothed" concludes, famously,

"Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider anew --
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?
A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba -- I hold to my first-sworn vows,
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse."

A third of DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND OTHER VERSES strike me as flat, less than memorable. Another third are remarkably good for a man of 20. The final third are worth returning to again and again for their humor, for the young man's grace of their light and varied meters (although "One Viceroy Resigns" is a notably dark political face-off in the style of schoolboy Kipling's onetime hero Robert Browning) and for their slants on the varied life styles of East Indians and their British rulers.

One of Kipling's notable gifts, in my opinion, is the perfect marriage between his words and their content. What he says is precisely what he thinks. I am not always sure of this happy conjunction with certain other writers, for example, James Fenimore Cooper.

A final note of biography: "The Mare's Nest" mentioned above appeared in 1885. Kipling was 19. It was one of dozens of poems and short stories that the young author was churning out and having published from age 17 onward.

-OOO-

Recommended:  Yes
 

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