The Wish House and Other Stories Read Online Free Page B

Myself
, Kipling gives a more decided, less gradualist account of his relationship with William. William isn’t
ever
“the Noble Nigger.” He is “coloured porter, our Nurse, Valet, Seneschal, and Master of Ceremonies.” Here Kipling is mostly interested in William’s vernacular: “bekase” for “because,” “haow” for “how,” “dey” for “they” etc. To this end, Kipling recounts one of William’s anecdotes—about a friend who wants to be a conductor, but thinks he can succeed simply by copying William. He fails dismally, of course, and cries in a cupboard. William has to do the work for him.
    Why does Kipling tell this parable, as he calls it? That it
happened
isn’t a reason for inclusion. I think the reason is unconscious. The anecdote is an act of unconscious discrimination on Kipling’s part—he is discriminating between his prejudice and his experience. Prejudice requires Negro incompetence, the caricature crying in the cupboard. Experience requires tribute to the omni-competence of William.
T HE I RISH
    Kipling is undoubtedly prejudiced against the Irish (and, incidentally, the Welsh)—largely because they resist British rule and insist on their national language.
    This is from a letter to Andrew Macphail (October 5, 1913): “I had a man the other day from the interior of Wales poisonous-full of his own ‘nationality’ and its tongue and the teaching thereof. But I entirely agreed with him and was prepared to help in giving funds for the teaching of Cymric and Ogham and all the rest—compulsory if need be. Says he gratefully:—‘But I shouldn’t have expected this of you Mr. Kipling.’ ‘Man,’ says I, ‘anything that cripples and diverts and renders more unintelligible the inferior and crippled breeds of the earth has my blessing and support.’”
    In
Something of Myself
, Kipling candidly disparages the Irish: “[They] had passed out of the market into ‘politics’ which suited their instincts of secrecy, plunder and anonymous denunciation.”
    This and other disparaging anti-Irish remarks scattered through Kipling’s correspondence look racist—and they are, but the racism is an emphasis given to political disagreement. Vis-à-vis the Irish, we can see the absence of true racism in a letter to Andrew Macphail (October 21, 1911). There, Kipling excoriates the Irish for their diminished aesthetic sense, their clinging to “Erse,” their spitting (like U.S. citizens), the manure pit of the station, etc. Then: “We got into the North and the car literally bumped into a new country of decent folk….” Decent folk who are, of course, Irish—but Irish who wish to be part of the United Kingdom.
    In
From Sea to Sea
, a variety of verdicts on the Irish are handed down. On a train (vol. 2, p. 139) a drunken actress weeps because the conductor has taken her five-dollar bill to look for change. She fears he will not return. Kipling writes: “He was an Irishman, so I knew he couldn’t steal.” Eventually, the conductor reappears, “the five-dollar bill honestly changed.”
    At the end of the first volume, though, Kipling denounces Irish politics, as usual for being anti-English: “The Irish vote is more important [than the Italian vote]. For this reason the Irishman does not kill himself with overwork. He is made for the cheery dispensing of liquors, for everlasting blarney, and possesses a wonderfully keen appreciation of the weaknesses of lesser human nature. Also he has no sort of conscience, and only one strong conviction—that of deep-rooted hatred toward England.”
T HE Y ELLOW P ERIL
    From Sea to Sea
contains ostensibly virulent anti-Chinese remarks, but these are in the persona of the despised globe-trotter. The letters have one reference to “the Yellow Peril.” A postscript to Jules Huret (August 31, 1905) asks “Who launched the phrase?” The answer is Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.
    In his recent biography, Harry Ricketts discusses Kipling’s racism in the