Kipling A Diversity of Creatures

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-5404-7
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 910 Seiten

Classic Kipling stories, including As Easy as ABC, Friendly Brook, In the Same Boat,
The Honours of War, The Dog Hervey, The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat,
In the Presence, Regulus, The Edge of the Evening, The Horse Marines, 'My Son's Wife',
The Vortex, 'Swept and Garnished', and Mary Postgate. According to Wikipedia: 'Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English author and poet. Born in Bombay, British India (now Mumbai), he is best known for his works The Jungle Book (1894) and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (1902), his novel, Kim (1901); his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), If- (1910); and his many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888). He is regarded as a major 'innovator in the art of the short story'; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works speak to a versatile and luminous narrative gift. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in English, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[2] The author Henry James said of him: 'Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius (as distinct from fine intelligence) that I have ever known.' In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient. Among other honours, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, all of which he declined.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kipling, Rudyard

Leseproben

The Dog Hervey
  (April 1914)   My friend Attley, who would give away his own head if you told him you had lost yours, was giving away a six-months-old litter of Bettina's pups, and half-a-dozen women were in raptures at the show on Mittleham lawn.   We picked by lot. Mrs. Godfrey drew first choice; her married daughter, second. I was third, but waived my right because I was already owned by Malachi, Bettina's full brother, whom I had brought over in the car to visit his nephews and nieces, and he would have slain them all if I had taken home one. Milly, Mrs. Godfrey's younger daughter, pounced on my rejection with squeals of delight, and Attley turned to a dark, sallow-skinned, slack-mouthed girl, who had come over for tennis, and invited her to pick. She put on a pince-nez that made her look like a camel, knelt clumsily, for she was long from the hip to the knee, breathed hard, and considered the last couple.   'I think I'd like that sandy-pied one,' she said.   'Oh, not him, Miss Sichliffe!' Attley cried. 'He was overlaid or had sunstroke or something. They call him The Looney in the kennels. Besides, he squints.'   'I think that's rather fetching,' she answered. Neither Malachi nor I had ever seen a squinting dog before.   'That's chorea--St. Vitus's dance,' Mrs. Godfrey put in. 'He ought to have been drowned.'   'But I like his cast of countenance,' the girl persisted.   'He doesn't look a good life,' I said, 'but perhaps he can be patched up.' Miss Sichliffe turned crimson; I saw Mrs. Godfrey exchange a glance with her married daughter, and knew I had said something which would have to be lived down.   'Yes,' Miss Sichliffe went on, her voice shaking, 'he isn't a good life, but perhaps I can--patch him up. Come here, sir.' The misshapen beast lurched toward her, squinting down his own nose till he fell over his own toes. Then, luckily, Bettina ran across the lawn and reminded Malachi of their puppyhood. All that family are as queer as Dick's hatband, and fight like man and wife. I had to separate them, and Mrs. Godfrey helped me till they retired under the rhododendrons and had it out in silence.   'D'you know what that girl's father was?' Mrs. Godfrey asked.   'No,' I replied. 'I loathe her for her own sake. She breathes through her mouth.'   'He was a retired doctor,' she explained. 'He used to pick up stormy young men in the repentant stage, take them home, and patch them up till they were sound enough to be insured. Then he insured them heavily, and let them out into the world again--with an appetite. Of course, no one knew him while he was alive, but he left pots of money to his daughter.'   'Strictly legitimate--highly respectable,' I said. 'But what a life for the daughter!'   'Mustn't it have been! Now d'you realise what you said just now?'   'Perfectly; and now you've made me quite happy, shall we go back to the house?'   When we reached it they were all inside, sitting in committee on names.   'What shall you call yours?' I heard Milly ask Miss Sichliffe.   'Harvey,' she replied--'Harvey's Sauce, you know. He's going to be quite saucy when I've'--she saw Mrs. Godfrey and me coming through the French window--'when he's stronger.'   Attley, the well-meaning man, to make me feel at ease, asked what I thought of the name.   'Oh, splendid,' I said at random. 'H with an A, A with an R, R with a--'   'But that's Little Bingo,' some one said, and they all laughed.   Miss Sichliffe, her hands joined across her long knees, drawled, 'You ought always to verify your quotations.'   It was not a kindly thrust, but something in the word 'quotation' set the automatic side of my brain at work on some shadow of a word or phrase that kept itself out of memory's reach as a cat sits just beyond a dog's jump. When I was going home, Miss Sichliffe came up to me in the twilight, the pup on a leash, swinging her big shoes at the end of her tennis-racket.   ''Sorry,' she said in her thick schoolboy-like voice. 'I'm sorry for what I said to you about verifying quotations. I didn't know you well enough and--anyhow, I oughtn't to have.'   'But you were quite right about Little Bingo,' I answered. 'The spelling ought to have reminded me.'   'Yes, of course. It's the spelling,' she said, and slouched off with the pup sliding after her. Once again my brain began to worry after something that would have meant something if it had been properly spelled. I confided my trouble to Malachi on the way home, but Bettina had bitten him in four places, and he was busy.   Weeks later, Attley came over to see me, and before his car stopped Malachi let me know that Bettina was sitting beside the chauffeur. He greeted her by the scruff of the neck as she hopped down; and I greeted Mrs. Godfrey, Attley, and a big basket.   'You've got to help me,' said Attley tiredly. We took the basket into the garden, and there staggered out the angular shadow of a sandy-pied, broken-haired terrier, with one imbecile and one delirious ear, and two most hideous squints. Bettina and Malachi, already at grips on the lawn, saw him, let go, and fled in opposite directions.   'Why have you brought that fetid hound here?' I demanded.   'Harvey? For you to take care of,' said Attley. 'He's had distemper, but I'm going abroad.'   'Take him with you. I won't have him. He's mentally afflicted.'   'Look here,' Attley almost shouted, 'do I strike you as a fool?'   'Always,' said I.   'Well, then, if you say so, and Ella says so, that proves I ought to go abroad.'   'Will's wrong, quite wrong,' Mrs. Godfrey interrupted; 'but you must take the pup.'   'My dear boy, my dear boy, don't you ever give anything to a woman,' Attley snorted.   Bit by bit I got the story out of them in the quiet garden (never a sign from Bettina and Malachi), while Harvey stared me out of countenance, first with one cuttlefish eye and then with the other.   It appeared that, a month after Miss Sichliffe took him, the dog Harvey developed distemper. Miss Sichliffe had nursed him herself for some time; then she carried him in her arms the two miles to Mittleham, and wept--actually wept--at Attley's feet, saying that Harvey was all she had or expected to have in this world, and Attley must cure him. Attley, being by wealth, position, and temperament guardian to all lame dogs, had put everything aside for this unsavoury job, and, he asserted, Miss Sichliffe had virtually lived with him ever since.   'She went home at night, of course,' he exploded, 'but the rest of the time she simply infested the premises. Goodness knows, I'm not particular, but it was a scandal. Even the servants!... Three and four times a day, and notes in between, to know how the beast was. Hang it all, don't laugh! And wanting to send me flowers and goldfish. Do I look as if I wanted goldfish? Can't you two stop for a minute?' (Mrs. Godfrey and I were clinging to each other for support.) 'And it isn't as if I was--was so alluring a personality, is it?'   Attley commands more trust, goodwill, and affection than most men, for he is that rare angel, an absolutely unselfish bachelor, content to be run by contending syndicates of zealous friends. His situation seemed desperate, and I told him so.   'Instant flight is your only remedy,' was my verdict. I'll take care of both your cars while you're away, and you can send me over all the greenhouse fruit.'   'But why should I be chased out of my house by a she-dromedary?' he wailed.   'Oh, stop! Stop!' Mrs. Godfrey sobbed. 'You're both wrong. I admit you're right, but I know you're wrong.'   'Three and four times a day,' said Attley, with an awful countenance. 'I'm not a vain man, but--look here, Ella, I'm not sensitive, I hope, but if you persist in making a joke of it--'   'Oh, be quiet!' she almost shrieked. 'D'you imagine for one instant that your friends would ever let Mittleham pass out of their hands? I quite agree it is unseemly for a grown girl to come to Mittleham at all hours of the day and night--'   'I told you she went home o' nights,' Attley growled.   'Specially if she goes home o' nights. Oh, but think of the life she must have led, Will!'   'I'm not interfering with it; only she must leave me alone.'   'She may want to patch you up and insure you,' I suggested.   'D'you know what you are?' Mrs. Godfrey turned on me with the smile I have feared for the last quarter of a century. 'You're the nice, kind, wise, doggy friend. You don't know how wise and nice you are supposed to be. Will has sent Harvey to you to complete the poor angel's convalescence. You know all about dogs, or Will wouldn't have done it. He's written her that. You're too far off for her to make daily calls on you. P'r'aps she'll drop in two or three times a week, and write on other days. But it doesn't matter what she does, because you don't own Mittleham, don't you see?'   I told her I saw most clearly.   'Oh, you'll get over that in a few days,' Mrs. Godfrey countered. 'You're the sporting,...