August 23, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
17 
The Wallet of Kai-Lung 
By J. C. Squire 
EVERYBODY knows about Mr. ■ Thomas Hardv, 
Shakespeare, Lord B\Ton and Lord Tennyson. This 
docs not detract from one's enjoyment of their works ; 
but there is a pecuhar and intense delight in good 
books which are not commonly kno>vTi. English literature 
is sprinkled with them. .and one's own 1 favourites of the 
kind one talks about with a peculiar enthusialtm. For 
myself I continually urge people to r*afcl-i lYelawney's 
Adventures of a Yottnger Son and Coryat's Oxudities, which, 
famous enough in the auction -room, is seldom -ftiough talked 
about outside it. The present age, like other ages, produces 
these books that are less celebrated than they ought to be, 
and one of them is Mr. Ernest Bramah's The Wallet of Kai- 
Lung. This work was first published by Mr. Grant Richards 
seventeen vears ago. For all I know to the contrary, it fell 
quite flat ;' at any rate since that date Mn, iBelloc has fre- 
quently informed an inattentive public thati/iti-is one of the 
best of modern books, but one has never heard it mentioned 
by any other critic. Largely, I take it, on account of Mr. 
Belloc's recommendation, Methuens have nowiiisatied it in their 
IS. 3d. (ne IS.) Library. It is a volume of. Chinese stories. 
*' * ♦ #••■ 
One does not need to have read many translations from 
the Chinese to understand that there is a distinctive, a unique, 
Chinese way of looking at things. The late Count Hayashi, 
in his memoirs, observed that his owni.countrymen, whatever 
their material successes, could not help feeling inferior in the 
presence of the civilisation, the rounded philosophy and per- 
fect manners, of the Chinese gentleman. A man who reads 
Chinese poetry is in contact with a mastery of the Art of Life. 
Religion does not come in much except for rather decorative 
gods and good spirits and demons ; once admit religion in our 
sense and the Chinese conception of Ufe Avill not hold water. 
But granted their rationalistic epicureanism they certainly 
carry it out to perfection. They keep so supprbly their 
balance. Moved by the passions, they stand outside them- 
selves and watch themselves with sympathetic humour. 
They would have grief but not its abandonment, joy but not its 
paro.xysms ; they are conscious of the sweet in the bitter 
and the bitter m the sweet. They bear pain, and the 
spectacle of pain, with equanimity ; yet their calm does not 
degenerate into callousness, and their comments on the 
spectacle of life fall through the air like parti-coloured petals, 
which flutter noiselessly in the wind and show in constant 
alternation the grey side of irony and the golden side of tender- 
ness. They enjoy beautiful things with an exquisite sensi- 
bility, : but a careful moderation : wine, flowers, and the 
sky, snow upon the mountains, reflections in the water, 
song and the laughter of girls. They yield a little to every^ 
thing, but surrender to nothing, save to death ; and there 
they submit courteously, with dignity, and throwing back 
a glance of no more than whimsical regret. The old 
Chinese literature is steeped in this philcsophy. They have, 
it is alleged, no literature now on a higher level than that 
which comes out on the tea-boxes. But the manners and the 
restraint remain. When the fall of the Pekin Legations, was 
in doubt the then Chinese Minister here, a most jfnliglitejied 
and charming man. was asked what w;ould hanpen to. the 
diplomatists if the rebels got in. " They will be de/cahpitat^d," 
he said, with a slight inclination. " But what wi|l happen to 
the women and children ? " continued the lady. " They will 
be decahpitated," he said. " But you, who are so pro- 
English, what would happen to you if you were there ? 
" I should be decahpitated." He thought that adequate : 
it was only decorous to leave any anxieties or strong. emotions 
he had to be guessed. 
Mr. Bramah, in his book, has got the Chinese equanimity 
wonderfully ; the most moving and the most horrible things 
are told with mild deprecation ; the most^iotesquely farcical 
situations are analysed and dev,(jloped with a full seiKe of 
their rich ludicrousness but with tjie very slightest loss of 
gravity on the part of the narrator. All the characters 
behave consistently, veiling their actions and their intentions 
behind the most transparent lies and subterfuges and saying the 
most offensive things in the jjplites^ possible way. F^"^ '* 
is to the comic side of the Chmese genius that Afr. Bramah 
chiefly inclines. Now and then he uses China as an illustration 
of Europe. By transplanting customs and phrases he at once 
suggests the unity and the absurdity of mankind. Jn The 
Confession nf Kai-Luttf; hey? j:r^nkly prji^wsterous. He des- 
cribes Kai-Lung's earlv career as an author in terms precisely 
applicable to a European literary failure. He began by 
falling in love with Tiao T'sun, the most beautiful maiden ill 
Pekin, whom he frequently met 
at flower-feasts, melon-seed assemblies, and those gatherings 
where persons of both sexes e.xhibit themselves in revolving 
attitudes, and are permitted to embrace openly without 
reproach 
(which reminds one of the old lady's comment on the Tango, 
in one of the. late " Saki's " books : " I suppose it doesn't 
matter if they really love one another.") Kai-Lung was success- 
ful in his suit. Then, " on a certain evening," he says : 
this person stood alone with Tiao upon an eminence over- 
looking the city and watched the great sky-lantern rise from 
behind the hifls. Under these delicate and ennobling in- 
fluences lie gave speech to many very ornamental and refined 
thoughts which arose within his mind concerning the grace- 
ful brilliance of the light which was cast all around, yet not- 
withstanding which a still more exceptional light was shining 
in his own internal organs by reason of the nearness of an 
even purer and more engaging orb. There was no need, 
this person felt, to hide even his most inside thoughts from 
the dignified and sympathetic being at his side, so without 
hesitation he spoke — in what he believes even now must ha\e 
been a very decorative manner — of the many thousand persons 
who were then wTapped in sleep, of the constantly changing 
lights which appeared in the city beneath, and of the'vastness 
which everywhere lay around. 
" O Kai Lung," exclaimed the lovely Tiao. when this person 
had made an end of speaking, " how expertly and in what a 
proficient manner do you express yourself, uttering even the 
.sentiments which this person has felt inwardly, but for which 
she has no words. Why, indeed, do you not inscribe them 
in a book ? " 
He does. But while he is absorbed in his labour Tiao accepts 
"the wedding gifts of an objectionable and excessively round- 
bodied individual, who had amassed an inconceivable number 
of taels by inducing persons to take part in what at first sight 
appeared to be an ingenious but very easy competition 
connected with the order in which certain horses should arrive 
at a given and clearly defined spot. " He completes his 
work, publishes it at great expense and great loss, and makes 
a last desperate bid with an effort to prove that the 
works of the great national poet were not sheer imita- 
tions. Here, in adaptations from Shakespeare, we lapse 
into burlesque. There are several quotations like : " O 
nobly intentioned but nevertheless exceedingly morose Tung- 
shin, the object before you is your distinguished and evilly- 
disposed-of father's honourably-inspired demon "■ — though 
after all a Boer dramatic adapter did render the same passage 
as " I 6m thy papa's spook." This excursion, howe\'*er, dees 
show Mr. Bramah s style. That style is almost impeccable. 
* * * « « 
He keeps it up from start to finish ; ceremonial to the point 
of absurdity, embellished with an unending flow of maxim 
and euphemism. It is not possible here to detail the com- 
plicated plots of his extremely ingenious stories. The best 
of all is The Transmutation of Ling. Ling is a studious youth 
who passes the public examination and, to his horror, is 
awarded, not a cosy Cuthbertship in the Whitehall of Pekin, 
but the command of a very white-livered band of bowmen 
who have to resist the continual onslaughts of exceedingly 
ferocious bandits. His adventures are numerous and diverse. 
A& I say, I will not tell the story, which Kai-Lung re- 
counts, standing with a rope around his neck and his toes 
touching the ground, to a brigand chief with a formidable 
snickersnee. But one may perhaps quote some of the 
incidental proverbs, which add much to the grace of the 
tales. 
Before hastening to secure a possible reward of five taels by 
dragging an unobservant person away from a falling building, 
examine well hi.s features lest you find, when too late, that it 
is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount. 
The road to eminence lies through the cheap and exceedingly 
iminviting eating-houses 
Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant 
conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple 
, without talking about feet. 
Whether Mr. Ern(>st Bramah has been to the East or 
has merely caught the atmosphere of its literature I do 
not know. I do not even know who he is. But it is not sur 
prising that one who likes good satire, good humour, good 
romance and good English should find the book worthy of 
being an inseparable comjiqnion. 
