Secondhand American
Like most famous visitors to Australia’s shores, Rudyard Kipling was pounced upon by the press almost before he had stepped ashore. His evident confusion about the nature of the place he was in is thus forgivable. This interview by a zealous Age journalist was published on 13 November 1891.
To say a word first of Mr Kipling’s personal appearance, his physique and manner are those of a rapid thinker and worker. He is of medium height, with a solid, nuggetty build; a sharp, lively face, with the bronzed complexion of India; bright, quick eyes looking through light gold spectacles, and short hair, nearly thinned down to baldness on the top of the head. He has a lightning power of forming and phrasing his impressions, which are expressed with a lighting of the face like sparks under a blow on a hot iron.
While he has been in Australasia his sense of humour has been excited by the ‘steep’ yarns the ‘boys’ have been telling him, mistaking him for an Englishman instead of a colonial, for as an Anglo-Indian he belongs to a race as un-English as the Australians themselves; and he has now and then smiled inwardly at the ‘precipitous’ tales of alligators, mosquitoes, fish and snakes that have been poured into him by the deluded yarn spinners…
Since reaching Melbourne Mr Kipling has been seized with a sense of the Americanism of the place. ‘This country is American,’ he says, ‘but remember it is secondhand American, there is an American tone on the top of things, but it is not real. Dare say, by and bye, you will get a tone of your own. Still, I like these American memories playing round your streets. The trams— those bells are like music; those saloons and underground dives are as Yank as they can be. The Americanism of this town with its square blocks and straight streets, strikes me much. I can’t say anything about the people, for I have not met any of them, but I gather this much that they are very much pleased with their own town. They don’t seem to follow the Americans in their habits so much as the city itself. I asked a man today where the depot was, but he didn’t know I meant the railway station… These trams are as good as the trams of ’Frisco which was the home of the cable car and started it first. The clang of that bell sounds to my ear like “Hello, Central!” used to sound in the ear of the Yankee at the court of King Arthur.’…
The internal affairs of this country have not escaped Mr Kipling’s notice, and he particularly notes the place which the labour question takes in Australian politics. He thinks we have too much politics for a young country with its character still to make, and that the claims of labour occupy too prominent a place in proportion to other branches of politics, just as politics as a whole receive more than enough attention in proportion to real and solid development of the country…‘Is it not rather early in your history,’ he asks, ‘with a mere handful of population, to have half that population crowded into the cities while the lands lie an idle wilderness, and men are striking against overwork while governments are paying big wages on relief works for the unemployed?…
‘It seems to me to be taking a ridiculously elevated estimate of one’s own importance to think that it is your mission in life to go around and insult countries when you are only a man among men, and especially a man who can’t get even his boots on’—for Mr Kipling was now struggling with a new pair of boots, being due for an evening at the Austral Salon. ‘I got these boots in Fourteenth Street,’ he explained. He meant Swanston Street, which seemed to him the Fourteenth Street of Melbourne, while Collins Street recalled something of that other New York thoroughfare, the Fifth Avenue. Time was up and a very pleasant interview came to an end.