August 23, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
17 
The Wallet of Kai-Lung 
By J. G. Squire 
E\'ERYBODY knows about Mr. Thomas Hardv, 
Shakespeare. Lord Byron and Lord Tennyson. This 
does not detract from one's enjoyment of tlieir works ; 
but there is a peculiar and inten'^e delight in good 
books which are not commonly known. English literature 
is sprinkled with theih.^and one's own favourites of the 
kind one talks about with a peculiar enthusiasm. For 
m>'self I continually, urge people to read 1 Tralawney's 
Adventures of a Younger Son and Coryat's Cfudilies, which, 
famous enough in the auction-room, is seldom enough 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 Air. Erhest Bramah's The U'allel of Kai- 
I.ung. 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 Mr. Belloc has fre- 
quently informed an inattentive public that' it 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 now issued 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 o\^ti countrymen, whatever 
their material successes, could not he'p 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 conc(?ption of life will not hold water. 
But granted their rationalistic epicureanism they certainly 
carry it out to perfection^ They keep so superbly 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 
paroxysms ; 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 
skv, snow upon the mountains, reflections in the water, 
song and the laughter of girls. They yield a little to every- 
thing, but siirrender 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 
Chmese literature is steeped in this philosophy. 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 Pckin Legations was 
in doubt the then Chinese Minister here, a most enlightened 
and charming man, was asked what would happen to the 
diplomatists if tlie rebels got in. " They will be decahpitated. ' 
he said, with a slight inclination. " But what will 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 adequatie : 
it was only decorous to leave any anxieties or strong eni<itinns 
he had to be guessed. 
Mr. Bramah, in his book, has got the Chinese equaniniity 
wonderfully ; the most moving and the most horrible things 
are told with mild deprecation ; the most giotesquely farcical 
situations are analysed and developed with a full sense of 
their rich ludicrousness but with the 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 politest possible way. I'or it 
is to the comic side of the Chinese genius that Mr. 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. In The 
C.onfea'^ion 0/ Kai-Lung he is frankly ])rep(is1erous. H<- (1<'^- 
cribes Kai-Lung's early 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 in 
Pekin. whom he frequently met 
at flower-feasts, melon-seed a.ssemblies, and those gatherings 
where persons of both sexes exhibit themselves in revolving 
attitudes, and are peimitted 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 sk-y-lantern rise frnra 
behind the hills. Under these delicate and ennobling in- 
fluences he 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 have 
been a very decorative manner — of the many thousand persons 
who were then wrapped 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 nunibex 
of tacls by inducing persons ta take part in what at first sight 
appeared to be an ingenious but very easy competitio'n 
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 am thy papa's spook. " This excursion, however, 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 Transmulation of Ling. Ling is a studious yoiith 
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 adventiu-es are numerous and diverse. 
As 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 his 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 
uninviting eating-house.s 
Although there exist many thousand Subjects for elegant 
conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple 
without talking about feet. 
Whether Mr. Ernest 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 Finglish should find the book worthy of 
being an inseparable companion. 
