The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-04-26
KrpLINe AS A CRITIC OF AMERICA.

KIPLING AS A CRITIC OF AMERICA.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling has recently pub
lished picture of rural New England that
is as baseless. fippant and gross a carica-
ture as that he drew of the cities of San
Francisco and Chicago. Our people have
become rather thick-skinned and indiffer-
ent to the splenetic criticism of foreigners
and especially of ill-bred and jaundiced
Englishmen. From the days of Mrs.
Trollope down to the present date a great
many English tourists have made a good
deal of money abusing America. Marryat,
Basil Hall, Dickens, Sir Lepel Griffin,
and Matthew Arnold all had their
whack at America. Among eminent
Englishmen who have visited America and
did not hurry home and abuse US in book
are Thackeray, II erbert Spencer, Froude,
Tom Hughes, Dean Stanley, Richard Cob
den, Lord Houghton, Archdeacon Farrar,
Thackeray was too genial and well bred
man to put a microscope over every mole
he saw on the cheek of Columbia, and
Spencer and Bryce we're too profound and
philosophical thinkers to treat our great
republic with contempt. Mr.. Spencer
neither fiattered nor fayed us; he kindly
warned us that our greatest danger was
that some day our democracy might drift
too strongly in the direction of a mere
plutocracy.
1t was an unpleasant surprise that = man
of genius and intellectual independence,
like Matthew Arnold. should write of
America in a spirit of childish petulance,
insular egotism and insolence. but we re-
membered that while Mr.. Arnold was
poet, and an honest, sincere man, he was,
if not professional pedagogue, superin-
tendent of schools, o man Of pedantic
character, habits, pursuits, life and train
ing; he was not "a man Of the world" as
well as q man Of genius. and his petulant
criticism of America must be taken as one
of the natural infirmities of a man of
genius doomed to dwell too many hours in
purely scholastic atmosphere. Mr.. Arnold
wrote Of America like dyspeptic peda-
gogue. an itinerant bilious theologian
with rare gifts as a common scold. He
did not admire our scenery; he sneered at
our farmers; he ridiculed our architecture;
he bewailed the absence of any fine old.
feudal ruins on the Hudson such as he
abominable from New Hampshire to
Florida. Arnold's petty, childish criti-
cism of America excited the amusement
of the leading English newspapers, and it
was laughed at on both sides of the water
as nothing but the grumblings Of an Eng
fish schoolmaster Of genius. who had
visited the United States and eaten some
thing that disagreed with him.
The abuse of our country by Mr.. Kip
ling will disappoint many of the Ameri-
can admirers of his genius, because it is
instinct with the spirit of Dickens Amer
lean Notes" and Martin Chuzzlewit." 1t
is not criticism at sll in any fair, philo-
sophical sense; it is caricature instinct
with either ignorance or dishonesty. 1t
is not supposable that either Dickens or
Kipling are dull, and so their pictures of
America are drawn with deliberate dis
honesty in order to create caricature.
The original of that disgusting stage
Yankee, "Solon Single" may exist some
where in New England, but if he does he
is repulsive and eccentric exception to
the ordinary New England population,
not popular or common type of it; he is
as much an object of amusement and dis
gust to his neighbor as he is to any metro
politan theatric audience. ''Solon Shin
gle" Is no more type Yankee than child
with two heads is a type American; he is
dramatic freak. So with Mr.. Kipling's
picture of New England rural life
and manners, conversation, thought,
etc.; it is caricature: it is the
delineation of certain quality of
provincialism that is as common in Eng
land as it is in America, and setting 1t
forth as peculiar to America Mr.. Kip
ling can see nothing in New England life
but this provincialism, which is no more
common here than in the small rural COM
munities of his own country, and in this
wilful blindness he is as dishonest and
mean-souled as Dickens. Dickens wrote
like a correspondent who had been sent to
America by the London Times with
strict orders to "burn up" the
country and roast" its people
without qualification, discrimination,
reflection or restraint. Dickens and Kip
ling were both trained as journalists; like
Dickens, Kipling is a man of the world,
q brilliant Bohemian of genius, who has q
low-bred, vulgar strain in him; he is not
gentleman, for he Is ready to caricature
country IN the spirit of the Bohemian
blackguard of a blackmailing newspaper.
Mr.. KipIIng is in danger of the fate of
Bret Harte; in danger of deteriorating so
rapidly by hack work that the whole
English reading public will sigh for the
day when the Rudyards cease from Kip
ling and the Haggards ride no more"
SALVATION THROUGH SCHOOLS.