Punch enthusiastically greeted the Ruritanian romances of "Anthony Hope" as an antidote to the ultra-realistic novel, and Mr. Kipling's Jungle Book was welcomed in 1894 with a salvo of puns on the Kip-lingo of the Laureate of the Jingle-Jungle, the Bard of the Bandar-log. In 1895 The Men that Fought at Minden is described as "perhaps the most coarse and unattractive specimen of verse that this great young man has yet put forth—a jumble of words without a trace of swing or music. All this Tommy Atkins business is about played out." In 1898, in the series of "Letters to the Celebrated," "The Vagrant," while deprecating the "orgy of Imperialism" which Mr. Kipling had helped to foster, frankly admitted that he was largely responsible for "a quickened sense of the greatness of our mother-land, and a new sympathy for those who fight our battles"; and predicted that his greatest and most enduring title to fame would rest on his verse. In 1899 Mr. Kipling is rebuked for his glorification of machinery—he is called "the Polytechnic Poet"—slang and militarism, while the parody of Stalky and Co. is distinctly hostile to what Punch evidently considered an ignoble travesty of Public School traditions. Punch had himself repeatedly assailed the fetish-worship of Athletics, but Mr. Kipling's Island Race—with its bitter reference to those who
contented their souls
With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals—
was more than he could endure. Accordingly his representative conducted an imaginary interview with "The Director-General of the Empire," who had added some fresh lines in violent and obscure abuse of rowing-men, and who explained that he never played games himself, but "spent all his spare time loafing and scoring off masters"—a further hit at Stalky. This mood of resentment had entirely passed by 1907, when Punch depicted Mr. Kipling as "A Verry Parfit Nobel Knight"—on the occasion of his being awarded the Nobel Prize—and in 1910 the perusal of Rewards and Fairies is compared to reading English history by the light of a Will-o'-the-Wisp.
The reviewer notes defects in style and lucidity, but ends on a note of whole-hearted admiration:—
When one considers the quality of Mr. Kipling's invention, the piety of his patriotism, the freshness and vigour of his style, and his astounding understanding of men and movements, why, one forgets all about these little trifling defects and again murmurs, "Wizard."
The Yellow Book
To return to the early 'nineties, Punch saw no virtue, artistic or otherwise, in the movement towards unrestrained self-expression in belles lettres which had its outcome in the Yellow Book and the Savoy, its headquarters at "The Bodley Head," and whose chief hierophants were the avowed disciples of Baudelaire and Verlaine. To Punch the movement was wholly decadent. In the verses "Tell it not in Gath," in 1894, after denouncing "flowers of evil," and the practice of delving in the drains and dustbins of humanity, the writer declares he would far rather remain a Philistine than achieve enlightenment by such unsavoury means. In the same vein he addresses "Any Boy-poet of the Decadence":—
For your dull little vices we don't care a fig,