Stalky & Co. - Rudyard Kipling
This is probably being read today because J.K. Rowling revived the school story with her Harry Potter books. Read by adults, that is. Hard to imagine minors of either gender getting off on this one and not just because the vocabulary is a mix of French, Latin, Biblical allusions, late Victorian usage, and antique schoolboy slang ("you frabjous ass"). Only one girl has a part and she’s used by the protagonists to get a boy in dutch. The headmaster is implausible for his frankness with his staff, his Solomon-like wisdom, and his dab hand with the cane (yet another Victorian skill now unfashionable).
I also had a bit of time with Stalky as he is just the kind of imprudent practical joker that I, as a boy, regarded as not half devious enough (though I did respect their “injured innocence” routine, a must-have ability for troublemakers). Heaven knows, in our kinder gentler age, the punishment doled out to the bullies in The Moral Reformers will be seen as gratuitously cruel and violent. Still, Kipling gets his point across: the brutality of school life had its limits and was a necessary part of training for a career in Imperial Management, in which wearing kid gloves would be laughably inappropriate.
And Kipling did not gloss over reporting that numbers of Old Boys of the school were indeed killed while serving. Nor does he have patience with jingos who pop off about sacred things like patriotism in tones bullying and presumptuous.
Kipling was a fine writer. Vulgarian sinner that I am, I liked these cruel short stories.
I picked up a copy of Stalky & Co last year--I'd just seen the Tarkovsky movie Stalker, which is in some way supposed to be influenced by Stalky. I've yet to read it, though. Cruelty may be the link. Interesting to see this & thanks. Kipling is a fine writer, frequently ignored these days, sometimes, but not always, for cause.
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