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(notes edited by John McGivering) |
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Publication
The story was published in the Civil and Military Gazette on April 2nd 1887, in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.
The Story
Michele D'Cruze is a lowly railway clerk, of mixed ancestry, seven eighth Indian and one eighth English. His community are very conscious of their European descent, however remote it may be. He wishes to marry, but the lady's mother insists that first he must achieve a much higher salary. Then he has his chance. There is a riot in the small town he has been posted to as a Telegraph Signaller, and - aware of his European blood - he takes command of the situation, and keeps order until the Assistant Collector arrives. He is promoted as a result, and is married in formal old-fashioned style.
This is a brief and, on the whole, fairly sympathetic glance at the very sensitive question of mixed race which is also touched upon in “Kidnapped” and “Beyond the Pale” both later in this volume. See also “Without Benefit of Clergy” in Life’s Handicap and Bhowani Junction (1954) a novel by John Masters. Kipling's confidence in the innate imperial capacity of Europeans to exercise command over Indians seems anachronistic today, but would have been a familiar and comfortable doctrine to his readers in Lahore in the 1880s.
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