The Phantom Rickshaw & Other Tales

E-134: Messrs. A. H. Wheeler & Co. Very Good. 1890. Paperback. Trade PB. Small 8vo. Messrs. A. H. Wheeler & Co. , Allahabad, India. 1888. 114 pgs, vii pgs of ads. First Edition/First Printing/2nd Issue (Second issue with the apostrophe before Rickshaw on the front cover and title page, Periods after the A and H on the publisher's initials on the front cover; with "Mayo School of Art, Lahore" AND "Mufid I Am Press" printed below the illustration and publication information). Slipcased in a nice red cloth clamshell slipcase with gilt titles present to the spine. Issued in green-grey paper wrappers with lithographed design on front and back and “A. H. Wheeler & Co’s Indian Railway Library No. 5 One Rupee”. Wrappers worn with some shelf-wear to the extremities present (light chipping present to the spine ends, spine curled). Previous owner's name present to the title page. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. Contents : The Phantom 'Rickshaw; My Own True Ghost Story; The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes; The Man who Would be King. 'The Phantom Rickshaw' describes the travails of a Bengal Civilian hounded by the rickshaw riding ghost of the woman he spurned, through the rain-swept and pine-lined streets of late 19th century colonial Simla. Simla of course appears often in Kipling's stories - most particularly in the volume 'Plain Tales from the Hills' - and brings to life the lives of the Sahibs and Mem Sahibs at rest and leisure, recreating little Englands in hill-stations dotted all over India. 'My Own True Ghost Story' provides a taxonomy of the various kinds of ghosts in India; mentions specific hauntings at Simla, Mussoorie, Dalhousie, Lahore, Murree, Mian Mir, Peshawar, and Allahabad; a description of dilapidated and dingy and often haunted dak-bungalows on the GT Road; and, an account of a suspicious and seemingly ghostly billiard game at one such dak-bungalow on a stormy night. 'The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes' is indeed one of the strangest stories that I have read. But I guess what makes it - and much else of Kipling - so very compelling for someone like me are several different reasons. First, I am fascinated by how the lead character is unabashedly and quite hatefully the pompous sahib who considers himself superior to natives in every way and how common imperialist tropes of exotic, unknowable, superstitious, cunning and untrustworthy natives characterize the stories. At the same, time Kipling is a great story-teller with an eye for detail and particular talent in describing topography and creating a sense of the sinister (the amphitheater shaped steep depression where the undead are trapped and dwell and that is blocked off on the only open side by quicksand is a truly strange imagining). And finally, his stories will always remain unique as through a foreign and eventually nativized eye they look at landscapes and people that I know, love and feel connected to as a local - the setting for this story is the Punjabi countryside along the Sutlej river. There is a strange thrill in looking at the same through a set of alien and yet also native eyes. 'The Man who would be King' is also part of the collection as well as an often independently published novella. This is such a very strange and often jarring story. Admittedly to be read in its context and seen from the perspective of the two protagonists - as reckless and untamed a pair of Loafers as any - it is nevertheless consistently blatant in its imperialistic aspirations and orientalist outlook. One gathers that many in the West grew up looking upon it as the ultimate adventure story - two audacious men who set out to become kings in an exotic and untamed land called Kafiristan while courting all manner of peril and if anything making light of it - but it is precious hard to just live with that perspective. EB; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 114 pages .