The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling - By Lawrence Block Page 0,16

wasn’t capable of it. But he got the job done, and the book’s quite a rarity.”

“It must be. One hundred fifty copies…”

Whelkin smiled widely. “That’s how many were printed. How many do you suppose survive?”

“I have no idea. The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow? I’ve never heard the title.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Fifty copies? Seventy-five? I have no idea what the survival rate would be.”

The coffeepot was empty. Whelkin frowned and rang a bell mounted on the wall. He didn’t say anything until the waiter limped over with a fresh pot.

Then he said, “Kipling wrote the poem in 1923. He’d hoped to give out copies to close friends for Christmas that year, but the holiday had come and gone before Smithwick was able to make delivery. So Kipling decided to hold them over for Christmas of ’24, but sometime in the course of the year he seems to have come to his senses, recognizing the poem as a scurrilous piece of Jew-baiting tripe and bad verse in the bargain.

“As was his custom, Kipling had presented his wife, Carrie, with an inscribed copy. He asked for it back. He’d given another copy to a Surrey neighbor of his named Lonsdale as a birthday gift in early spring and he managed to get it back as well, giving the man several other books in exchange. These two books, as well as the other bound volumes, the printer’s proofs, and the original holograph manuscript plus the typed manuscript from which Smithwick set type—all of this went up the chimney at Bateman’s.”

“Bateman’s?”

“Bateman’s was the name of Kipling’s house. There’s an undated letter to a London acquaintance, evidently written in the late summer or early fan of ’24, in which Kipling talks of having felt like an erring Israelite who had just sacrificed a child by fire to Moloch. ‘But this was a changeling, this bad child of mine, and it was with some satisfaction I committed it to the flames.’ ” Whelkin sighed with contentment, sipped coffee, placed his cup in its saucer. “And that,” he said, “was the end of The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow.”

“Except that it wasn’t.”

“Of course not, Mr. Rhodenbarr. The Rider Haggard copy still existed. Kipling, of course, had given a copy to his closest friend almost as soon as he received the edition from Smithwick. Had it slipped his mind when he set about recalling the other copies? I don’t think so.

“Haggard, you see, was in failing health. And Kipling had dedicated the book to Haggard, and had added a personal inscription to Haggard’s own copy, a paragraph running to over a hundred words in which he hailed Haggard as a kindred spirit who shared the author’s vision of the peril of Jewish-inspired holocaust, or words to that effect. I believe there’s a letter of Rider Haggard’s in the collection of the University of Texas acknowledging the gift and praising the poem. After all that, Kipling may have been understandably reluctant to disown the work and ask for the book’s return. In any event, the copy was still in Haggard’s possession upon his death the following year.”

“Then what happened to it?”

“It was sold along with the rest of Haggard’s library, and no one seems to have paid any immediate attention to it. The world didn’t know the book existed, and no doubt it was sold in a lot with the other copies of Kipling’s works, and for very little money, I’m sure. It came to light shortly after Kipling’s death—not the copy, but the realization that Kipling had written an anti-Semitic poem. The British Union of Fascists wanted to disseminate it, and Unity Mitford was rumored to have been on the trail of the Haggard copy when war broke out between Britain and Germany.

“Nothing further was heard until after the war, when the Haggard copy turned up in the possession of a North Country baronet, who sold it privately. There were supposed to have been two or three additional private transactions before the volume was scheduled to appear in Trebizond & Partners auction of effects from the estate of the twelfth Lord Ponsonby.”

“You say scheduled to appear?”

He nodded shortly. “Scheduled, catalogued and withdrawn. Six weeks ago I took one of Freddie Laker’s no-frills flights to London with the sole purpose of bidding on that book. I calculated that the competition would be keen. There are some rabid Kipling collectors, you know, and his reputation’s been making a comeback. The University of Texas has a well-endowed library and their Kipling collection is a