Page:The Spoils of Poynton (London, William Heinemann, 1897).djvu/313

 A Tale of West and East

The Athenæum.—'There is no one but Mr. Kipling who can make his readers taste and smell, as well as see and hear, the East; and in this book (if we except the description of Tarvin's adventures in the deserted city of Gunvaur, which is perhaps less clear-cut than usual) he has surely surpassed himself. In his faculty for getting inside the Eastern mind and showing its queer workings Mr. Kipling stands alone.'

The Academy.—'The Naulahka contains passages of great merit. There are descriptions scattered through its pages which no one but Mr. Kipling could have written. . . Whoever reads this novel will find much of it hard to forget. . . and the story of the exodus from the hospital will rank among the best passages in modern fiction.'

The Times.—'A happy idea, well adapted to utilize the respective experience of the joint authors. . . . An excellent story. . . . The dramatic train of incident, the climax of which is certainly the interview between Sitabhai and Tarvin, the alternate crudeness and ferocity of the girl-queen, the susceptibility of the full-blooded American, hardly kept in subjection by his alertness and keen eye to business, the anxious eunuch waiting in the distance with the horses, and fretting as the stars grow paler and paler, the cough of the tiger slinking home at the dawn after a fruitless night's hunt—the whole forms a scene not easily effaced from the memory.'

The Glasgow Herald.—'An entrancing story beyond doubt. . . . The design is admirable to bring into violent contrast and opposition the widely differing forces of the Old World and the New and while, of course, it could have been done without the use of Americanese, yet that gives a wonderful freshness and realism to the story. The design is a bold one, and it has been boldly carried out. . . . The interest is not only sustained throughout, it is at times breathless. . . . The Maharajah, the rival queens, the pomp and peril of Rhatore, are clearly Mr. Kipling's own, and some of the Indian chapters are in his best style.'

The Speaker.—'In the presentation of Rhatore there is something of the old Kiplingesque glamour; it is to the pages of Mr. Kipling that one must go for the strange people and incidents of the royal household at Rhatore. .... It is enough to say that the plotting of that most beautiful and most wicked gipsy, Sitabhai is interesting; that Sitabhai is well created; and that the chapter which describes her secret meeting with Tarvin is probably the finest and the most impressive in the book.'

The Bookman.—'The real interest of the book is in the life behind the curtains of the Maharajah's palace. The child Kunwar, his mother, the forsaken Zulu queen, the gipsy with her wicked arts, are pictures of Indian life, which even Mr. Kipling has not surpassed.'


 * WILLIAM HEINEMANN,, W.C.