Insulter Kipling

Poet Rudyard Kipling insulted Queen Victoria with a Barrack Room Ballad. It hailed, "the Widow at Windsor," rollicked that she sent her soldiers to "barbarious wars," bellowed that she had bought " 'alf 'o Creation" with English blood.

Of course hard-boiled men in barracks do rollick and bellow, especially at the Sovereign and the Empire they love. But Victoria, no Hard-Boiled Queen, missed the too-blunt point and was irrevocably insulted.

Therefore a news furore stirred, last week, when Queen Insulter Kipling went up to the royal Scottish estate at Balmoral, and there settled down as the house guest of George V.

An ignorant world press blared that at last King-Emperor George V had forgiven the poet who insulted a widow by calling her "widow!"

Actually the reconciliation took place some years ago. Poet Kipling's cousin, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, presented him at a Royal Levee in 1925. By pure accident, George V was ill on the appointed day; and the Levee had to be held by Edward of Wales (officially representing His Majesty). The function was, in every social particular, the exact equivalent of a reception by the King-Emperor. Thus the story that Rudyard Kipling was not "forgiven" until last week is tosh.

Public libraries throughout the English speaking world were hard pressed to supply insult-snoopers with the poem. Excerpts :

'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor

With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?

She 'as ships on the foam -she 'as millions at 'ome,

An' she pays us poor beggars in red.

(Ow, poor beggars in red!)

There 's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses,

There 's 'er mark on the medical stores -

An' 'er troopers you'll find with a fair wind be'ind

That takes us to various wars.

(Poor beggars! -barbarious wars!)

Then 'ere 's to the Widow at Windsor,

And 'ere 's to the stores an' the guns,

The men an' the 'orses what makes up the forces

O' Missis Victorier's sons!

(Poor beggars! Victorier's sons!)

Walk wide, o' the Widow at Windsor,

For 'alf o' Creation she owns:

We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,

An' we've salted ;'' down with our bones.

(Poor beggars! -it's blue with our bones!) . . .

We 'ave 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor,

It's safest to let 'er alone:

For 'er sentries we stand by the sea an' the land

Wherever the bugles are blown.

(Poor beggars! -an' don't we get blown!) . . .