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of privates mulvaney, learoyd and
ortheris, serving in IndiaRudyard Kipling
MULVANEY STORIES Paperback: 236 pages Publisher: International Law & Taxation. 2001) ISBN-10: 1589631390 Reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 05/17/2011 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. review: If there are better short stories out there than Kipling's even dozen MULVANEY STORIES I do not know them. In his earliest years as a published author working as a journalist in India, Rudyard Kipling dashed off 18 tales of three British privates serving in India. The three were Irish, London Cockney and Yorkshire: respectively, Terence Mulvaney, Stanley Ortheris and John Learoyd. Learoyd was 6 1/2 feet tall and powerful, Mulvaney not much shorter but perhaps even stronger, but Ortheris was a little, feisty, moody man, expert in dog raising and taxidermy. The story that launched the three army friends into literature was published in 1887 in an Anglo-Indian newspaper that employed Kipling. It was titled, "The Three Musketeers." Twelve of the 18 yarns of the three soldiers were later pulled together in 1897 for the future (1907) Nobel Prize winner as THE MULVANEY STORIES. Each is told by an Anglo-Indian newspaperman who, after initial suspicion, has been accepted by Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd as a respected friend of much higher social standing than they. Let's just call that narrator Rudyard Kipling himself and be done with it. This book tells tales of the Soldiers Three in war and peace, on the Grand Trunk Road, being kind to poor underpaid natives ("naygurs") while playing tricks on well off babus and Hindu priests. One feature that turns some readers off is Kipling's rendering of the speech patterns of North England, of London and of southern Ireland. Kipling has, in my opinion, a great ear for speech patterns as well as for soldiers' bragging and boasting. I despise misrepresentations of regional dialects (as in Richard Hooker's M.A.S.H.). But judge Kipling for yourself from a sample below. The tale is "The Courting of Dinah Shadd." Young Dinah would become Mulvaney's adoring wife and narrator Kipling's great friend. But the marriage almost didn't happen, as Mulvaney tells Kipling, Learoyd and Ortheris. As he often did, Mulvaney, when telling his yarns, would cast a mournful eye back to his glory days 15 or 20 years earlier when he was a lofty Corporal working hard for his sergeant's stripes: "In the days av me youth, as I have more
than wanst tould you, I was a man that filled the eye an' delighted the
sowl av women. Niver man was hated as I have been. Niver man was loved
as I -- no, not within half a day's march av ut. For the first five
years av me service, when I was what I wud give me sowl to be now, I
tuk whatever was within me reach an' digested ut, an' that's more than
most men can say. ... I could play wid four women at wanst, an' kape
them from finin' out anything about the other three, and smile like a
full=blown marigold through ut all. ... An' so I lived an' so I was
happy..."
If you have never read Kipling, THE MULVANEY STORIES are as as grand a starting place as any. And, I predict, you will not stop with them. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/317893026.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 05/18/2011 Title of Review: In India's sunny clime .. a' serving of the Widder, 'Er Majesty: Queen VIctoria Reviewer's rating of MULVANEY STORIES * * * * * Born in Bombay, India in 1865 to English parents, Rudyard Kipling and his younger sister Trix were brought back to England for schooling. After graduating from high school at Westward Ho! on the coast, young Rudyard (the future Nobel Prize winner -- 1907) returned to India to spend seven years working as a journalist for two different Anglo-Indian newspapers, beginning in Lahore, where his father was a museum curator and teacher of industrial arts. In his spare time Kipling wrote 18 stories about three privates serving in an all-white regiment in India. The three were Irish Terence Mulvaney, Yorkshireman John Learoyd and Londoner Stanley Ortheris. Mulvaney and Learoyd stood well above six feet and were renowned battlers with their fists. Ortheris, by constrast, was slight but a scrapper, fond of training local feral dogs and also of taxidermy. These three intensely close, loyal friends first appeared in literature in 1887 in Kipling's newspaper. It was a short story titled, "The Three Musketeers." And that short story is the first of twelve of the 18 yarns of the Soldiers Three published in book form in 1897 as THE MULVANEY STORIES. Kipling himself seems to be the unnamed narrator of each yarn. His newspaper work had required him to make the acquaintance fo British officers, but he found himself gravitating instead to the hard-boiled, underpaid world of the simple British soldier, affectionately styled "Thomas Atkins" or "Tommy." The soldiers three were at first suspicious of Kipling, two decades their junior, better paid and socially connected. But he won them over by generous gifts of alcohol and pipe tobacco and through his obvious liking and respect for them. Kipling seems to have been the first British author to make heroes of Britain's low-ranking Tommies. Privates Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd fight in India, Afghanistan and Burma ("The Taking of Lungtungpen"). Mulvaney takes a wife, Dinah Shadd, and the tale of their romance is a highlight of the 12 MULVANEY STORIES. In "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney," the giant Irishman is shipped off unconscious to the holy city of Benares by a low-class white railroad gang supervisor whom he had offended. There Mulvaney is taken for the Hindu god Krishna by hundreds of high-caste Indian women gathered in a temple to pray to conceive and bear sons. Like William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott before him, Rudyard Kipling is a master of describing men who know how to boast and brag. In particular Irish Catholic Private Mulvaney loves to recall his first five years soldiering in India. He had made Corporal and seemed on a fast track to a Sergeant's stripes. He could woo four women at once without one suspecting the other. But drink and his fists did Mulvaney in. Fortunately, the Catholic regimental chaplain was on hand for Mulvaney to tell his sins to and offer absolution. Mulvaney, like his two mates, was doomed to remain a private forever. Mulvaney's recollections of past glory as lover and warrior and his inevitable, rollicking boasts are couched in southern Irish English. I for one love it. Some readers hate dialect writing of any kind, including Joel Chandler Harris's UNCLE REMUS. But the Yorkshireman and the Cockney speak Queen Victoria's English no better than they ought and their dialects seem genuine to me. Here is an exchange among the three friends from "The Solid Muldoon," in which Mulvaney encounters a ghost in cantonment while vainly pursuing a married soldier's wife: Giant Yorkshireman John Learoyd happily recalled a brawl in England: "'An' so Ah coot's yead oppen from t' chin
to t' hair and he was abed for t'matter o' a month,' concluded Learoyd,
pensively."
"Mulvaney came out of a reverie ... 'You're a man, Learoyd,' said he critically, 'but you've only fought wid men, an' that's an ivry-day expayrience; but I've stud up to a ghost, an' that was not an ivry-day expayrience.'" "'No?' said Ortheris, throwing a cork at him. 'You git up an' address the 'ouse -- you an' yer expayriences. Is it a bigger one nor usual?'" If you like short stories, I challenge you to find better ones anywhere than the MULVANEY STORIES. -OOO- http://community.cafelibri.com/reviews/d/UserReview-Rudyard_Kipling_MULVANEY_STORIES -74-1735324-207514-In_India_s_sunny_clime_a_serving_of_the.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 05/18/2011 title of review: "I put me fut through ivry livin' wan av the Tin Commandments between revelly an' lights out" rating: * * * * * review: Perhaps Sir Walter Scott got it from Shakespeare and Rudyard Kipling got it from Scott. I mean the ability to do justice in writing to great windbags, boasters and braggarts. Certainly one of the grand men of literature when it comes to marching the English language quick time in the service of grand exaggeration and persiflage was Private Terence Mulvaney of an all British line regiment serving in India in the 1870s or thereabouts. Rudyard Kipling told Mulvaney's stories 18 times beginning in 1887. In 1897 Kipling put 12 of those between book covers as MULVANEY STORIES. Mulvaney himself was a six-foot Catholic Irishmen who loved serving "the widder of Windsor," Queen Victoria. His two inseparable barracks mates and chums were the slow, word chary Yorkshireman Private John Learoyd, all six feet six inches of him, and feisty little Stephen Ortheris, Indian stray dog trainer supreme and taxidermist extraordinary. A fourth friend of these 40-something privates was the two decades younger narrator of their adventures, their improbable friend, none other than Kipling himself (though the narrator modestly never names himself). I will say nothing of the individual adventures of the "Three Musketeers" as they are called in the first short story of MULVANEY STORIES. Nor detail their wars in Afghanistan and among the Pathan tribes of the Afghan frontier or all over North India and even in Burma ("The Taking of Lungtungpen"). This review showcases one and only one (of many) selected brags in MULVANEY STORIES. It is in Mulvaney's Irish dialect. There is a lot of dialect in this book. If dialect writing (e.g. in M.A.S.H. or UNCLE REMUS) turns you off, then please read no further. But consider the following passage Speaking to Ortheris, Learoyd and Kipling, thus spake Terence Mulvaney in "The Solid Muldoon" before telling of his long ago encounter with a ghost: *** "'Did I iver tell you,' Mulvaney continued
calmly, 'that I was wanst more av a divil than I am now?'"
"'Mer-ria! You don't mean it?' said Ortheris." "Whin I was corp'ril ... I was a divil of a man.'" "'They were great times. I'm ould now; me hide's wore off in patches ... an' I'm a married man tu. But I've had my day, I've had my day, an' nothin' can take away the taste av that! Oh, my time past, whin I put me fut through ivry livin' wan av the Tin Commandments between revelly an' lights out." ... Was there any wan in the ould rig'mint to touch Corp'ril Mulvaney when that same was turned out for sekudshin? I niver met him. Ivry woman what was not a witch was worth the runnin' afther in those days ... Mother av Hivin, look at me! Fwhat am I now? But no matther! I must get to the other ghosts -- not the ones in my ould head.'" Shades of Sir John Falstaff! Of IVANHOE's tormented Templar who loved Rebecca of York: Brian de Bois-Guilbert or of Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster!" Now, that's bragging! Enjoy MULVANEY STORIES. -OOO- recommended reading: -- Rudyard Kipling: DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES AND BARRACK ROOM BALLADS; KIM; STALKY & CO.; THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Mulvaney-Stories/Rudyard-Kipling/ e/9781589631397/?itm=2&USRI=kipling+-+mulvaney+stories =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 05/19/2011 title of review: Three British Army Privates Speak Three Kinds of English in Queen Victoria's India rating: * * * * * review: In 1897 31-year old Rudyard Kipling published a small collection of 12 short stories that he had been writing off and on since 1887 about three privates in an all-white British army regiment in India. The "Three Musketeers" as Kipling called them in the first of 18 yarns that immortalized their low-class adventures, spoke three different versions of the same British English language. Kipling gives lengthy, accurate samples of Private Learoyd's Yorkshire, Private Ortheris's Cockney and Private (once long ago Corporal) Mulvaney's Irish. For extended exposure to a dialect of North England, dip into "Private Learoyd's Story." Herein the three friends cooperated to separate Mrs. De Sussa, a wealthy Eurasian, from 350 rupees. She coveted the "colonel's lady's dog Rip .. t' prettiest picter of a cliver fox-tarrier 'at iver I set eyes on." The three friends, led by taxidermist Ortheris, eventually painted a bad-tempered Rip look-alike to pass for the terrier and sold him safely cowed inside a covered basked to Mrs. De Sussa as she boarded a train at Howrah for Monsooree Pahar. And how did Mrs. De Sussa look to six foot six Private Learoyd? "Ortheris ... said she wasn't a real
laady, but nobbut a Hewrasian. I don't gainsay as her culler was a bit
doosky like. But she was a laady. Why she rode iv a cariage, an' good
'osses too, an her 'air was that oiled as you cud see your faice in
it." At the train station in Howrah, the
soldiers three " 'elped Mrs. De Sussa wi' about sixty
boxes, an' then we gave her t'basket. ... 'Oh!' says t'awd lass; the
beautee! How sweet he looks!' An' just then t' beauty snarled and
showed his teeth, so Mulvaney shuts down t' lid..."
Most of Mrs. De Sussa's 350 rupees went to wet three thirsty military throats. Except for a bit of which Mulvaney said, "I'll send a thrifle to Father Victor for the poor people he's always beggin' for." One after another the 12 MULVANEY STORIES showcase Privates Mulvaney, Learoyd and Ortheris at work and at play. Their regiment fights in India, in Afghanistan and in Burma. When not fighting they turn the visit of a Lord who wants the regiment to turn out in the heat for an extra parade into an occasion for making him think he is being kidnapped by dacoits. Mulvaney becomes engaged to Dinah Shadd, a sergeant's daughter, but their marriage almost did not happen when then Corporal Mulvaney's eye kept roving a tad too long among the ladies. In one tale, Mulvaney takes a gorgeous but old royal Indian palanquin away from an Irish railroad foreman who has been heating his gulible "naygurs" out of their wages. Bent on revenge, the foreman drugs Mulvaney and puts him and palanquin on a train for the holy city of Benares. In a Hindu temple, Mulvaney's quick thinking gets him taken for the god Krishna by dozens of Indian princesses there to pray to give birth to sons. And on and on the stories go rollicking along. This is the life of ordinary soldier Tommy Atkins, British equivalent of G.I. Joe. The three friends are not the stuff of which field-marshals are made. And Kipling was the first British writer to do them justice. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/Mulvaney-Stories-Rudyard-Kipling/product-reviews/ 1589631390/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 05/20/2011 Review Title: In Queen Victoria's India with Privates Mulvaney, Learoyd and Ortheris Product Rating: * * * * * Pros: Twelve of perhaps the fifty most memorable short stories ever told. Language. Love. Humor. Adventures. Cons: For some but not all readers: heavy use of three British dialects: Irish, Yorkshire, Cockney. The Bottom Line: Kipling was the first major British author to make a hero of previously unsung common soldier "Tommy Atkins," the British G. I. Joe. Behold three Tommies in Victorian India. aohcapablanca's Full Review: Rudyard Kipling - Mulvaney Stories Rudyard Kipling was 21 and a journalist in Lahore, Punjab, when he published "The Three Musketeers," the first of 18 stories of three British privates serving Queen Victoria's Indian Raj. At 31 Kipling put twelve of his favorites between book covers as MULVANEY STORIES. Terence Mulvaney, in his 40s and 50s for many of the tales, was an Irish Catholic. His career in "the Widder of Windsor's" British Indian Army had a good beginning. For within five years he had made Corporal and seemed well on his way to a sergeant's stripes. Women adored Corporal Mulvaney and he enjoyed cuckolding their husbands. Stephen Ortheris was a wiry little Londoner who would retire from India "back home" to a taxidermist's shop. He put his animal hides skill to good use in India, once earning 350 rupees for the trio from a Eurasian lady, Mrs. De Sussa, who was besotted of a terrier belonging to the Colonel's wife. Mulvaney picked out a bad-tempered look alike dog that no one would miss. And Ortheris painted it to look like the Colonel's wife's terrier. North Englander John Learoyd was six feet six (Mulvaney was not much lower), slow thinking, slow talking, handy with his fists. He narrated in broad Yorkshire dialect Mrs. De Sussa's tale in "Private Learoyd's Story." The Three Musketeers were inseparable, and woe betide any of their barracks mates who tried to separate one from another. Kipling drew all his journalistic writings, poems, short stories, autobiographic sketches and novels from life. Academic careers have been made running down the originals of Kipling's Soldiers Three, Kim, the Afghan horse trader Mahboob Ali, the Red Teshoo Lama and dozens of other characters. Born 1865 in Bombay, and only recently returned from years of schooling in England, young Rudyard lived with his parents in Lahore. There, as would any English journalist writing for English readers in India, young Kipling, as had his predecessors, cultivated contacts among mid-career and higher ranking military and civilian officers of the Government of India. Unlike other journalists, however, Rudyard also cultivated the lower ranks: including sergeants and even corporals and privates. And in doing so, Kipling became the first major British writer to make a literary hero of "Tommy Atkins," the G.I. Joe of his time, the unsung non-ranking British soldier. From such real-life contacts sprang up in Kipling's imagnation Privates Ortheris, Learoyd and Mulvaney. Every MULVANEY STORY is narrated by a young unnamed newspaperman speaking standard English and in control of grammar and syntax. Clearly, he is none other than Kipling himself. And this narrator supplies food, drink and tobacco to his "three musketeers," bonding with them and they with him, despite the differences in social rank. The "Soldiers Three" war together in Burma, Afghanistan, in tribal territory on the Border and in India itself. They suffer through long hot, boring Indian days of peace in army cantonments. Evenings they lie out a mile or two from barracks hoping for a breeze and sharing with one another and with Kipling tales of their days of glory. "The Taking of Lungtungpen" tells of an army detachment swimming naked across a river in Burma to capture a key village by surprise, still naked. "The Solid Muldoon" has Mulvaney encountering a ghost when he would rather be bedding the mistress of the cantonment house the ghost is visiting. In telling his companions this yarn, Private Mulvaney delivers one of his most boastful of recollections of old, long gone glory times. Thus, "'Did I iver tell you,' Mulvaney continued
calmly, 'that I was wanst more av a divil than I am now?'"
"'Mer-ria! You don't mean it?' said Ortheris." "Whin I was corp'ril ... I was a divil of a man.'" "'They were great times. I'm ould now ... But I've had my day, I've had my day, an' nothin' can take away the taste av that! Oh, my time past, whin I put me fut through ivry livin' wan av the Tin Commandments between revelly an' lights out." ... Was there any wan in the ould rig'mint to touch Corp'ril Mulvaney when that same was turned out for sekudshin? I niver met him. Ivry woman what was not a witch was worth the runnin' afther in those days ... Mother av Hivin, look at me! Fwhat am I now? But no matther! I must get to the other ghosts -- not the ones in my ould head." Rudyard Kipling had a great ear for spoken languages: English, Urdu and the mixture that British privates in India were wont to use with natives, also called "naygurs." And let's not forget the many kinds and levels of English spoken by Indians, including a Hindu priest of the temple of Prithi-Devi in Benares in "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney." Earlier, Mulvaney and friends had returned for a pre-arranged fist fight with a European, dubious owner of an ancient palanquin for an Indian rani, who had been defrauding his gang of railroad coolies through a crooked lottery. A hilarious version of that visit is recorded in the language of the coolies: "'We were at work.
Three men in red coats came. They saw the sahib {whose name was
Dearsley}. They made oration, and noticeably the small man among the
red-coats {Ortheris}. ... Upon this talk they departed together to an
open space, and there the fat man in the red coat {Learoyd} fought with
Dearsley Sahib after the custom of white men -- with his hands, making
no noise, and never at all pulling Dearsley Sahib's hair. ... fifty of
us made shift to rush upon the red coats. But a certain man {Mulvaney}
-- very black as to the hair, and in no way to be confused with the
small man, or the fat man who fought -- that man, we affirm, ran upon
us, and of us he embraced some ten or fifty in both arms, and beat our
heads together, so that our livers turned to water, and we ran away.'"
The privates were not above playing pranks on their social superiors, e. g., on visiting Lord Benira Trig, a Radical member of Parliament in "The Three Musketeers." And they also disliked unfair, petty-minded sergeants. Nonetheless, in "Black Jack," Mulvaney saved martinet Colour Sergeant O'Hara from planned assassination by disgruntled privates of Fort Amara, "twelve av the scum av the earth." Worse yet the plotters had planned to make an innocent Mulvaney seem guilty of murder. Mulvaney, by his own admission was admittedly no saint: "'I have sinned me sins an' I have made me confesshin', an' Father Victor knows the worst av me.'" But murder he would not, as the happily surviving O'Hara privately acknowledged to Mulvaney. More than once the three privates also helped out young inexperienced British officers whose merits they sensed. Thus the last of the 12 MULVANEY TALES is "The Big Drunk Draf.' Here Mulvaney and wife Dinah Shadd are back in India after his retirement from the army. In the UK, "She could not stand the poky little lodgings, and she missed her servant Abdullah more than words could tell." Terence Mulvaney had parlayed an earlier acquaintance with a contractor on a Central Indian railway into a civilian job supervising construction coolies. But his heart was always with his old regiment. And one fine day a near to rioting bunch of them marched nearby en route to Bombay after officially mustering out and on their way to sailing back to England. The 57 uniformed men were, following tolerated military custom after mustering out, doing as they pleased and "the bhoy" officer in charge of them had never controlled them from the beginning. But Terence then volunteered to help and by a display of his trusty fists against Peg Barney, the head mutineer, taught the young officer how to impose discipline. Said Mulvaney later to Kipling of that incident and how things improved after Mulvaney's voluntary intervention: "'That bhoy, so I was tould by letters
from Bombay, bullydamned 'em down to the dock, till they cudn't call
their sowls ther own. From the time they left me oi till they was
'tween decks, not wan av thim was more than dacintly dhrunk. An', by
the holy articles av war, when they wint aboard they cheered him till
they cudn't spake, an' that, mark you, has not come about wid a draf'
in the mim'ry av livin man! You look to that little off'cer bhoy. He
has bowils.'"
Regarding Rudyard Kipling's MULVANEY STORIES: if you can recall any better short tales, please let me know. I will then add them to my Hall of Fame. -OOO- p.s. Warm thanks to epinions BOOKS category Co-Queen PestySide Patsy for making this book quickly reviewable. Just in time for my trip tomorrow to the Maritimes of Canada. Will be back in WNC June 7, God willing. ENJOY EPINIONS! Recommended: Yes http://www.epinions.com/review/Rudyard_Kipling_Mulvaney_Stories_epi/content_551344770692 http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/kipling_mulvaney.html |