TRICIA LOOTENSlittle things behind him" (RK 457) - including his home, and perhaps his
wife, children, or sweetheart. "His weaknesses are great - / But we and
Paul must take him as we find him." Like Paulus Kruger, the Boer leader,
English civilians will find Atkins at the ready: for he has absented his mind
- and body - from home to do his "country's work." Thus literalizing
"absent-minded," Kipling narrows the meaning of "beggar." Atkins may
merit the affectionate label of "poor beggar" but he seeks no hand-outs:
"There are families by the thousands, far too proud to beg or speak" (RK
458), who will "live on half o' nothing, paid 'em punctual once a week, /
'Cause the man that earns the wage is ordered out."
So loyal is Atkins, Kipling suggests, that he may even "forget" if England
sends his "kiddies" to the workhouse while he fights (458). The claim
underscores Isobel Armstrong's assertion that Kipling's poetry "portrays,
exploits and glories in a working-class solidarity which consents to an
ideology it may not analyse." 47 "Jingoism" is the word often used for such
writing, of course; and the term, whose roots lie in music-hall militarism, is
indispensable. Yet the roots of jingoism's belief in the manly redemptive
power of national bloodletting lie not only in the music hall but also in the
philosophy of a Hegel or the prophetic eloquence of a Victorian sage such
as Thomas Carlyle or Ruskin. Moreover, with his aggressive mockery of
civilian fondness for patriotic song, and his implicit condemnation of an
"absent-minded" state, the poem's speaker is no mere jingoist. "When
you've shouted 'Rule Britannia,'" he begins; "When you've sung 'God Save
the Queen,' / When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth, / Will
you kindly drop a shilling in my little tambourine / For a gentleman in
khaki ordered South?" (457). The question resonates with the request of
Kipling's shambling, desperate former Crimean soldiers in the bitter "Last
of the Light Brigade" (1891) who visit the Laureate to say, "You wrote we
were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now" (201). Given
Kipling's history of scathing exposes of civilian exploitation and mistreat-
ment of common British soldiers, the challenge to civilians to pay "for your
credit's sake" was serious indeed ("The Absent-Minded Beggar" [457]).
Who has the "credit" to speak - or sing - as a British patriot? Never fully
answered, the question shapes Kipling's poetry. In early Kipling poems such
as "The English Flag" (1891) or "Christmas in India" (1892), as in
Hemans, homesickness is an imperial duty: the British earn imperial land
through patriotic exile. In the poetry of the late-Victorian Kipling, however,
the professional imperial soldier often has no home - unless it is in the
homosocial company of his military peers. Ultimately, those peers may
even include the former enemy.
Celebration of bonds between warriors is as old as English literature; and270