A Kipling novel that still defies comprehension
‘Listen, Bill,’ wrote P. G. Wodehouse (in a letter published in Performing Flea), ‘something really must be done about Kip’s “Mrs Bathurst”. I read it years ago and didn’t understand a word of it. I thought to myself, “Ah, youthful ignorance!”
A week ago I re-read it. Result: precisely the same.’
Wodehouse is not alone in finding the story baffling. At once rambling and compressed, told entirely in reminiscent and speculative conversation, it is powerful but murky. You may feel it is a masterpiece yet be unable to determine just what happens. Summarising it is difficult, but, for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t know the story, here goes.
Four men meet on a beach in South Africa and talk as they drink beer: an unnamed narrator (Kipling himself?), Inspector Hooper of the Cape Government Railways who has just come down from up-country, Pyecroft of the Royal Navy, an old acquaintance of the narrator, and Sergeant Pritchard of the Royal Marines.
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