“With The Night Mail: A Story of 2000 A. D.” by Rudyard Kipling
Surprises are usually found in the most unlikely places (Otherwise, they would hardly be surprises, would they?)
The other day I stumbled on an unusual set of illustrations by Frank Xavier Leyendecker. How does this lead to Kipling? Serendipity of course, which should be a mandatory discipline in schools; I was actually looking for work by Frank Xavier’s brother Joseph Christian.
J. C. Leyendecker epitomizes the glamorous flamboyance of the covers of the Saturday Evening Post for almost the whole first half of the 20th century.[1] He was a friend and an inspiration for Normal Rockwell, he popularized Santa Claus as we know him today (the modern Santa more or less invented, by the way, by Haddon Sundblom for a 1930’s Coca Cola campaign) immortalized the New Year Baby theme and generally reflected everything patriotic and glamorous about the America of his time.
Hardly surprising then, that J. C.’s younger brother Frank, also an illustrator, has seen posterity tuck him away in the shadow of his elder sibling. But first of all: Rudyard Kipling.
Kipling spent his whole life it seems, struggling with belonging and exclusion. Born in India, he was denied the perceived pedigree of birth on British soil. As a citizen of the occupying powers in India, for whose inhabitants, despite prevailing prejudices of the time, he felt a deep affection, he remained a foreigner. Clothing his emotions in literary gruffness and apparent imperialism, Kipling was nevertheless the epitome of a decent man and a gentleman, and above all, besides his better-known poetry, Just So Stories (for which he did truly extraordinary illustrations himself, which marked my childhood deeply) and Jungle Books, he wrote science fiction.[2]
His futuristic story was first published in the United States, in the November 1905 edition of McClure’s Magazine. It appeared in The Windsor Magazine, December 1905, in England. “With The Night Mail: A Story Of 2000 A.D., together with extracts from the magazine in which it appeared” was followed over six years later by a sequel entitled “As Easy as A. B. C.” in The London Magazine, in March and April 1912.
Strictly speaking, “With the Night Mail” is hardly a novelette; it belongs more to the undefined realm of journalistic fiction. Kipling develops no plot, presents few characters and no story arc; his tale is a fact-filled fictional report of a night-time Atlantic crossing, beginning with the loading of the mail in Highgate tower, near London, and ending at dawn, arriving at the Heights Receiving Towers in Quebec with twenty minutes to spare on the schedule.
Kipling offers little in the way of explanations; there are no expository passages, instead, he provides a partial view of a complex world with which we, as readers, are as if expected to be familiar. The result is companionable and almost complicit. We learn that airplanes have not caught on; indeed they may have been legislated out of the air, and only dirigibles ply the skies. And what dirigibles, they are pure steampunk eighty years before the term was coined. Kipling imagines them as varied and colourful as sailing ships of old.
Approaching the North American coast “… we met Hudson Bay furriers out of the great Preserve, hurrying to make their departure from Bonavista with sable and black fox for the insatiable markets. We over-crossed Keewatin liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who see no land between Trepassy and Blanco, know what gold they bring back from West Africa. Trans-Atlantic Directs, we met, soberly ringing the world around the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; and white-painted Ackroyd & Hunt fruitiers out of the south fled before us, their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites. Their market is in the North among the northern sanatoria where you can smell their grapefruit and bananas across the cold snows. Argentine beef boats we sighted too, of enormous capacity and unlovely outline. They, too, feed the northern health stations in ice-bound ports where submersibles dare not rise.
Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks punted down leisurely out of the north like strings of unfrightened wild ducks. It does not pay to “fly” minerals and oil a mile farther than necessary; but the risks of transhipping to submersibles off Nain or Hebron are so great that these heavy freighters fly down to Halifax direct, and scent the air as they go. They are the biggest tramps aloft except the Athabasca grain-tubs. But these last, now that the wheat is moved, are busy, over the world’s shoulder, timber-lifting in Siberia.”
“Fleury’s Paradox of the Bulkheaded Vacuum” powers these multifarious airships. “Even Fleury, who begat it and, unlike Magniac, died a multi-millionaire, could not explain how the restless little imp shuddering in the U-tube can, in the fractional fraction of a second, strike the furious blast of gas into a chill grayish-green liquid that drains (you can hear it trickle) from the far end of the vacuum through the eduction-pipes and the mains back into the bilges. Here it returns to its gaseous, one had almost written sagacious, state and climbs to work afresh. Bilge-tank, upper tank, vacuum, main return (as a liquid), and bilge-tank once more is the ordained cycle. Fleury’s Ray sees to that; and the engineer with the tinted spectacles sees to Fleury’s Ray. If a speck of oil, if even the natural grease of the human finger touch the hooded terminals Fleury’s Ray will wink and disappear and must be laboriously built up again. This means half a day’s work for all hands and an expense of one hundred and seventy-odd pounds to the G. P. O. for radium-salts and such trifles.”
Air traffic is guided by Mark Boats – dirigibles tethered to locations – and powerful beacons. “Our planet’s overlighted if anything,” says Captain Purnall at the wheel, as Cardiff-Bristol slides under. “I remember the old days of common white verticals that ‘ud show two or three thousand feet up in a mist, if you knew where to look for’em. In really fluffy weather, they might as well have been under your hat. One could get lost coming home then, an’ have some fun. Now, it’s like driving down Piccadilly.”
He points to the pillars of light where the cloud-breakers bore through the cloud floor. We see nothing of England’s outlines: only a white pavement pierced in all directions by these manholes of variously coloured fire – Holy Island’s white and red – St. Bee’s uninterrupted white, and so on as far as the eye can reach. Blessed be Sargent, Ahrens, and the Dubois brothers, who invented the cloud-breakers of the world whereby we travel in security!”’
All this is under the watchful eyes of the A. B. C. or Aerial Board of Control “… that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score persons of box sexes, controls the planet. ‘Transportation is Civilization,’ our motto runs. Theoretically, we do what we please so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all it implies.” Practically, the A. B. C. confirms or annuls all international arrangements and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of private administration on its shoulders.” The A. B. C., we conclude, is a dystopian de facto world government, but Kipling tells us little about it.
He does, however, provide us with a wonderfully inventive series of mock advertisements that flesh out the world of the Night Mail, touting everything from Ardagh’s hydraulic buffer-stops (“Remember our motto ‘Upward and Outward,’ and do not trust yourself to so-called ‘rigid’ guide bars) to Wright & Oldis’ Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording change of level. (Catalogues free throughout the Planet).
The mock advertisements accompanying the magazine publication, also included in the book.
We find out a good deal more in the sequel “As Easy as A. B. C.,” first published in various Sunday papers in the United States on 25 February and 12 March 1912 and in the London Magazine of March and April the same year. We are in the year 2065 and the Aerial Board of Control send a gang of trouble-shooters to Illinois, which has severed communications and where people are muttering about dangerous and distasteful concepts like democracy. Naturally, there will be trouble. Novelistically more ambitious, the sequel has triggered much debate about Kipling’s stance on society, though it seems few critics agree on more than Kipling’s dislike of agitation and turmoil, and his idealistic and paternalist yearning for a happier world.
Artwork by F. Gardner for “As Easy As A. B. C.”, including an advertisement for the issue in which it appeared.
The story was published with the illustrations of F. Gardner (1882-1968) Gardner was a British illustrator, active from the early 1900’s to 1940’s, producing advertisements, cartoons, posters, book and magazine illustrations (including illustrations for “The Morning of Time” by Charles G.D. Roberts, a prehistoric novel in which a stone-age tribe flees from volcanic dangers and seeks a new home, meeting dinosaurs and waging war with its enemies, serialized in The London Magazine in 1912/13) and was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists and president of the London Sketch Club in 1943-44.
As for the illustrations accompanying the various appearances of “With the Night Mail”, they are the work of three illustrators. F. X. Leyendecker’s illustrations appeared with the publication in book form, accompanied by one illustration by H. Reuterdahl, who had provided three images for the serialization in McClure’s Magazine. Windsor Magazine commissioned H. C. Seppings Wright to illustrate its edition, also including two illustrations by Reuterdahl.
Henry Charles Seppings Wright (1850-1937) was a British artist and naval illustrator who served as a war correspondent and contributed to numerous magazines such as Vanity Fair (under the unusual nom de plume de “Stuff”) and the Illustrated London News.
Henry Reuterdahl (1870-1925) was a Swedish-American marine painter, the US Navy’s official artist during WWI, member of the Society of Illustrators and the American Watercolor Society. He also taught at the Art Students league of New York.
Artwork by Henry Reuterdahl and H. C. Seppings Wright for Windsor Magazine, London, and McClure’s Magazine, New York.
As for Franz Xavier Leyendecker (also known as Frank or F. X. Leyendecker), whose work it was that initially drew me into this whole newsletter, he was born in Montabaur, Germany in March 1876. Youngest of four children; his three siblings were Adolph, born in 1869; Augusta Mary, born in 1872, and Joseph Christian, in 1874. Peter and Elizabeth Leyendecker and their four children emigrated to America and settled in Chicago in 1882. They set up house at 5334 East Lake Avenue, with Peter working as a brewer in the McAvoy Brewery.
In 1897 Adolph struck out west, eventually settling in Kansas. The two younger brothers packed their bags and went to Paris, where they studied at the Académie Julian.[3] The year they spent in the French capital left them with an enduring influence of Art Nouveau, and Frank with an addiction to morphine.
On their return to Chicago, Christian and Frank shared a studio in the Fine Arts Building at 410 Michigan Avenue. First commissions were not long in coming, presaging successful careers for them both. Frank ‘s first jobs were book illustrations and book cover designs. Joseph produced his first cover for the Saturday Evening Post in 1899. In 1900, the Leyendeckers moved to New York City, where Elizabeth died at age 60, in 1905. Frank illustrated “With the Night Mail” for Doubleday four years later, in 1909.[4] The following year saw the remaining members of the Leyendecker family move together to 114 Pelham Road in New Rochelle. A few years later, Joseph’s fame was at its height, making him wealthy enough to build a private mansion. The whole family, the two brothers, their sister Augusta and their father, along with Tom Beach, Joseph’s “model, lover, cook and business manager,” moved into 40 Mount Tom Road in 1914. Frank occupied an independent wing of the house. Two years later, Peter Leyendecker died, aged 79.
Frank, battling depression and his morphine addiction, fell out with Joseph in 1923, moving out of the Leyendecker mansion. He found refuge in an unfinished garage apartment belonging to Norman Rockwell. Rockwell later said, “Frank had the furniture from his bedroom in the mansion moved in. A magnificent four-poster Baroque Italian bed, set against the west wall, occupied half the floor space. He also moved in hand-carved chairs from the same period and a large oriental rug that he never bothered to unroll. With his failing health and a career that was all but over, Frank Leyendecker passed away on Good Friday, 1924.” One of Frank’s last published illustrations, entitled “A Modern Witch”, appeared on the cover of the October 4th edition of Life magazine in 1923.
A Selection of Artwork by F. X. Leyendecker: “The Flapper”, far left, is one of his better-known covers for Life Magazine. Far right: “A modern Witch”, cover art for Life Magazine, October 4th, 1923, the last of his paintings to be published before his death.
There is a good deal of speculation about Frank’s sexual orientation, and the difficulty of living in close proximity to his far more successful brother. It is possible his death was a suicide. He was 47 years old.
Beach and Leyendecker remained together for 49 years. Joseph Leyendecker’s lavish lifestyle saw the last years of his life plagued by financial concerns; Augusta and Beach sold many of his paintings – now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars – for a pittance to make ends meet. Leyendecker died on July 25th, 1951, followed a few months later by Beach.
For “With the Night Mail,” Frank supplied endpapers and three illustrations, possibly the cover design as well. One illustration by Harry Reuterdahl, originally published in both MacClure’s and Windsor magazines, was also included. Frank’s imagery possesses the Old-World elegance and ready allegory he must have encountered as a student in Paris. The paintings are done with a freedom that characterizes his brother’s later work: sureness of hand, elegance of proportion and a clear sense of post-modern design… how one wishes to have been the fly on the wall while sketches and originals were being produced in that studio in the Fine Arts Building in 1909.
All in all, “With the Night Mail” is an extraordinary book, with the bonus of having Reuterdahl’s haunting painting of the pithed dirigible reproduced in colour; most of the others for Windsor and McClure’s Magazines were printed in black and white.
Above all, though, it is the encounter of two worlds that interests me: the visual world of F. X. Leyendecker and the dystopian vision of Rudyard Kipling, both having ventured into the realm of imaginative futurism for the space of a few pages. Leyendecker, to my knowledge, never pursued science fiction, nor did Kipling, with the exception of the sequel to Night Mail.
The result is an odd little book, handsomely bound, (the pages printed only on one side; the verso of each page is blank) elegantly illustrated, and augmented with Kipling’s fanciful advertisements and “period” texts. It is quite unique. I’m grateful for the coincidences that allowed me to stumble on it.
Serendipity. As I said, it should be taught in schools. And 2000 A. D. was only a decade and a half ago. Where are all the airships?
From left to right: Cover, endpapers, frontispiece, title page, interior illustrations. See extended captions below
“A MAN WITH A GHASTLY SCARLET HEAD FOLLOWS, SHOUTING THAT HE MUST GO BACK AND BUILD UP HIS RAY.” Frontispiece
“A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb and takes the air of us humming. Her underbody colloid is open and her transporter-slings hang down like tentacles. We shut off our beam as she adjusts herself – steering to a hair – over the tramp’s conning-tower. The mate comes up, his arm strapped to one side, and stumbles into the cradle. A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must go back and build up his Ray. The mate assures him he will find a nice new Ray all ready in the liner’s engine-room. The bandaged head goes up wagging excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheers above us, and we see the passenger’s faces at the saloon colloid.
“SLIDES LIKE A LOST SOUL DOWN THAT PITILESS LADDER OF LIGHT, AND THE ATLANTIC TAKES HER.” Following page 31
Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavy pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally used as a settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The derelict’s forehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. She falls stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her.
“THE STORM” Following page 39
He is less than just to the good element. If one intrudes on the Heavens when they are balancing their volt-accounts; if one disturbs the High Gods’ market-rates by hurling steel hulls at ninety knots across the tremblingly adjusted electric tensions, one must not complain of any rudeness of reception.
“I’VE ASKED HIM TO TEA ON FRIDAY.” Following page 58
In ten seconds the coach with its clerks clashed down to the receiving-caisson; the hostlers displaced the engineers at the idle turbines, and Tim, prouder than all, introduced me to the maiden of the photograph on the shelf. “And by the way,” he said to her, stepping forth in sunshine under the hat of civil life, “I saw young Williams in the Mark Boat. I’ve invited him to tea on Friday.”
˜ FOOTNOTES ˜
[1] I will leave a proper exploration of J. C. Leyendecker’s prolific career to those who have already done so. (“J. C. Leyendecker: American Imagist”, by Laurence Cutler & Judy Goffman Cutler is a good volume as any to start.) He is a pivotal figure in the flourishing of the image of the American Dream. It is likely you have seen his work, even if you have not put a name to it.
[2] I will leave proper exploration of Kipling’s life, work and political views to those who have written extensively and expertly about them. There is a wide choice. There is also his autobiography “Something of Myself”, written in 1937. “Just So Stories”, published in 1902, with Kipling’s own pictures, is a must-have for every library.
[3] Notable students of the Académie are far too many to list, but include such names as Alfons Mucha, Fernand Khnopf, Charles F. Goldie, Käthe Kollwitz and John Singer Sargent. The school was founded in 1868.
[4] Coincidentally, this was the year that saw the founding of Futurism, which, while it left great piles of manifestos on just about everything, (including such oddities as “Perspectives of Flight”, a passionate defense of “Aeropittura” or aeropianting, in 1926, although aeropainter Fortunato Depero did design the Campari bottle), had faded away by the 1930’s . In a sense, the future caught up with it.
