Have been following this correspondence with much interest. Further to
Michael Jefferson's aeronautical dates, here are some dates relating to
this story and other texts RK was working on at the same periods, taken
from Carrington's notes from Mrs K's diary):
3 July 07 'As Easy as ABC'
25 July 07 'a story about bees' ('The Mother Hive' was published Nov. 08).
25 Sept 08 'working at airship story' (not 'With the Night Mail' which was
already published).
21 July 10 'suffragette verses put aside for a time'.
17 Dec. 10 'As Easy as ABC'.
12 April 11 'suffragette verses'
20 Aug. 11 'The Female of the Species' finished (publ. Nov. 1911)
12 Sept. 11 'redrafting As Easy as ABC' (publ. in magazine Feb. and March
1912.
So ''As Easy as ABC' was evidently one of the stories he had by him
for years that, he claimed, 'shortened themselves yearly'. The manuscript
at Edinburgh University has a long unpublished section describing a meeting
of the Aerial Board of Control, at which 'our Queen' is present and knits
throughout. They are discussing the outbreak of a war in Haiti between
rival religious factions, which the Board has been trying to contain and
control. A young woman delegate called Jeanne Kergariou passionately
attacks this as an infringement of rights and is patronised by the Queen
and male delegates. Afterwards she protests bitterly that because she is a
woman, she is treated as a child, whereas the narrator (a writer) has been
invited to go with a fact-finding mission.
It does look as though correspondents who suggest an element of
political satire in the story are correct; but then the Daemon got at it
...
Personally, I see it as a poor story with some wonderful bits in it. I've
always been entertained by the Mayor of Chicago hoping to recruit
trouble-makers to his Council. A while ago, I seem to remember that
somebody wrote to the Journal and pointed out that the control of crowds by
sonic effects had been tried in Northern Ireland. The use of light to
alter moods was also a hot topic.
The comparison with H.G. Wells is interesting. There was a set of
his novels in the house at Kipling's death. Regards, Lisa Lewis
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