The Press: Truth’s Elder Sister

At Bateman’s Burwash, Sussex, a man of three score years and one packed his bags last week and journeyed in to London. One more honor was to be thrust upon him. Once more he must don garments in which he seems a bent and spectacled waiter whose mustaches droop. When he should stand up before the Royal Society of Literature to receive its gold medal, many a critical eye would be upon him. Dean Inge would certainly make some acidulous remark next day. Lord Darling might crack a senile quip upon the spot. And Louis Raemaekers would be there. His broad Dutch pencil might well produce a devastating caricature. . . .

Putting aside such thoughts, Rudyard Kipling received the gold medal with a smile, spoke a few words of courteous acceptance which circled the world’s cables: “Recognition by one’s equals and betters in one’s own craft is a reward of which a man may be unashamedly proud. The fiction that I am worthy of that honor be upon your heads. . . . Yet at least the art that I follow is not an unworthy one. For fiction is truth’s elder sister. Obviously, no one in the world knew what truth was until some one had told a story. . . . Fiction began when some man invented a story about another man. It developed when another man told tales about a woman. . . . Perhaps a dozen writers have achieved immortality in the past 2,500 years. From a bookmaker’s — a real bookmaker’s—point of view the odds are not attractive, but fiction is built on fiction. That is where it differs from and other arts.”

Everywhere editors sought some comment not too banal upon Kipling, his medal, his words. . . .

The New York Herald Tribune aimed widest, fell shortest. With invincible puerility it secured from some 24 writers—five of them widely famed—lists of “their personal choice of the immortal dozen” writers casually alluded to by Kipling. Homer and Shakespeare were well spoken of by most of the 24; though Shakespeare escaped mention by Dutch savant-to-tiny-tots Van Loon. The entire vapidity, occupying over two full columns, failed of that success in puffing the Herald Tribune’s book section achieved by Mrs. Ogden Reid, able wife of its publisher, at her persistent “literary teas” to authors, publishers, publicists.

More robust was the Chicago Tribune’s response to this later day touting of the name of Kipling. The Tribune’s editor frankly admitted that he had written Mr. Kipling’s obituary long ago, had grown tired of seeing it around the shop. Why not slap it in now? Done!

Startled Tribune readers scanned a two-column-wide editorial two columns long, which read in part: “Rudyard Kipling is dead. The herald of the right and might of empire lies silent amid the weald and the marsh and the down country of Sussex. England has lost the recorder of the glories that were hers in the day of conquest. The world has lost a singer.” Amid the “weald” of Sussex, Mr. Kipling remained alive, did not sing.

Throughout newspaperdom gleeful journalists reflected that obituaries for every aging public man, from Andrew William Mellon, 72, to Chauncey Mitchell Depew, 92, lie ready in the desks of most editors. Why not print them as their subjects reach the age of 70? Messrs. Mellon, Depew, and many another cheerful bigwig would relish well the jest. Would not many a reader prefer to scan while his idol is yet in the quick those shrewd estimates of attainment, and compendiums of little known facts reserved by custom for obituaries?