Abstract
The subject of secret service, that indispensable responsibility of the creed hero and the lifework for which the young protagonist is being schooled in Kim, continues to occupy center stage in much of Kipling’s later writings, especially four stories involving a Masonic Lodge, “Faith and Works No. 5837 E. C.” In these works, “In the Interests of the Brethren” (1918), “The Janeites” (1924), “A Madonna of the Trenches” (1924), and “Fairy-Kist” (1927), the children of the zodiac have become “middle-aged people,” as one of them says, older men who are not so much involved in intricate exploits and dangerous intrigue but in a quieter, but nonetheless heroic, way of thwarting the forces of fear, confusion, and despair, which threaten to debase and destroy the human spirit. Ritual is the sword used against these pernicious, hellish forces by the older heroes. It takes the form of Masonic ceremonies and practices related to or derived from them; what a character in “The Janeites” calls “this secret society business.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Quoted in Albert G. Mackey, An Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry ( Philadelphia, PA: L. H. Everts, 1886 ), 701.
C. S. Lewis, “Kipling’s World,” in Kipling and the Critics, ed. Elliot L. Gilbert (New York: Elliot L. 1965 ), 112, 114.
Philip Mason, Kipling: The Glass, The Shadow and The Fire ( London: Jonathan Cape, 1975 ), 84.
Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (Charleston, SC: A. M. 5632, 1871), 856.
J. M. S. Tompkins, The Art of Rudyard Kipling ( London: Methuen, 1959 ), 194.
George MacMunn, Rudyard Kipling: Craftsman, new and rev. ed. (London: Robert Hale, 1938 ), 277.
Jane Austen, Emma ( New York: Barnes and Noble, 1996 ), 337.
Quoted in Frederick Bussby, Jane Austen in Winchester ( Winchester: Friends of Winchester Cathedral, 1969 ), 5.
J. I. M. Stewart, “Tradition and Miss Austen,” in Critical Essays on Jane Austen, ed. B. C. Southam ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968 ), 128.
For an excellent treatment of the influence of Jane Austen’s novels on Kipling’s writings, see Lisa A. F. Lewis, “Kipling’s Jane: Some Echoes of Austen,” English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, 29, No. 1 (1986), 76–82.
The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, ed. Thomas Pinney (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990–2005), 4: 296. It is in this same letter that he mentions Jane Austen’s delicacy of “hand” and the keenness of her “scalpel.”
Quoted in Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (first published in 1857), ed. Angus Easson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 ), 274.
See Jon Spence, Becoming Jane Austen: A Life ( London: Hambledon and London, 2003 ), 216–18.
Brander Matthews probably initiated this line of argument with his review of Debits and Credits, in which he wrote that “A Madonna of the Trenches” is a story “of love enduring through life and even after death.” “Mr. Kipling Strikes a Deeper Note,” Literary Digest International Book Review, 9 (November 1926), 746. C. A. Bodelsen describes the relationship in like terms, arguing that it emphasizes “the victory of Love over Death.” Aspects of Kipling’s Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1964), 94, 97,142. Lord Birkenhead calls it “sublime love” (333), and Philip Mason indicates that Kipling was expressing his “belief that there is the possibility of the kind of love between man and woman that Dante wrote of, instantaneous and eternal” (284). “A Madonna of the Trenches,”
Bonamy Dobrée declares, is “one of Kipling’s most moving love stories.” Rudyard Kipling: Realist and Fabulist (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 52.
Sandra Kemp, Kipling’s Hidden Narratives ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988 ), 119.
Harry Ricketts, The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling ( London: Chatto and Windus, 1999 ), 364.
Juliana Horatia Ewing, Mary’s Meadow and Letters from a Little Garden (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1886), 11. All page references to this work are hereafter given in the text and are to this edition.
Lewis Spence, The Fairy Tradition in Britain (London: Rider, 1948), 196, 195.
Carole G. Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 ), 169.
Daniel Karlin, Rudyard Kipling. The Oxford Authors ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999 ), 643.
Martin Booth, The Doctor, the Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography ofArthur Conan Doyle ( London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997 ), 327.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Preface, The Edge of the Unknown ( New York: Putnam’s, 1930 ).
Daniel Stashower, Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (New York: Holt, 1999), xiii.
Lynn Sunderland, The Fantastic Invasion: Kipling, Conrad and Lawson ( Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1989 ), 31.
When Kipling said to his visitor at Bateman’s, “I lie there… and wait for my daemon to tell me what to do,” the puzzled young man responded: “Daemon?” Kipling “shrugged” and explained: “Intuition. Subconscious. Whatever you want to call it.” Arthur Gordon, “Six Hours with Rudyard Kipling,” in Kipling: Interviews and Recollections, ed. Harold Orel (Totowa, NJ: Totowa, 1983 ), 2: 385.
André Maurois, Prophets and Poets, trans. Hamish Miles (New York: Harper, 1935 ), 41.
Copyright information
© 2005 William B. Dillingham
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dillingham, W.B. (2005). “This Secret Society Business”. In: Rudyard Kipling. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-7868-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-7868-4_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-99960-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-7868-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)