"A Snake-Charmer," by John Lockwood Kipling

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A Snake-Charmer

John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911)

1891

Illustration for Beast and Man in India, p. 353

Apart from the decorated initial, this is the only illustration for Chapter XV, "Of Reptiles," in which Kipling explores the "ingrained respect for serpent life" in India (344). He has already treated the subject of animal training, showing how cheetahs were trained to hunt, bears to dance, and so on, and here declares that "it is only in India that the reptile under the rock has retainers" (352). [Commentary continues below.]

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Dismissing the possibility of the snake-charmer's "special occult influence," Kipling proclaims that "like the mongoose, he owns no more than his nimbleness, possesses no charm more potent than knowledge of his subject..." (352). This illustration shows the snake-charmer with one snake draped round his neck while he plays to another. In the background, which is often as interesting in these illustrations as the main subject, children watch with as much fascination as the dancing snake, while an older lad or young man holds them back: earlier in the chapter Kipling gave the numbers of people who die from snake-bites in different regions, and added that a snake-bite "seems likely to remain incurable until some more fortunate Dr. Koch of the future discovers a fluid which on injection will counteract the horrible decomposition of the blood that snake-poison causes (349). Kipling, it seems, was well up in recent scientific advances.

But what is most evident here is the life in the composition. Sandra Kemp feels that the drawings here "are more documentary than distinctive, and lack the flair of the sketchbook drawings" (320). Perhaps finished drawings always lack some of the spontaneity of quick sketches. Nevertheless, there are some marvellous vignettes of Indian street life here.

Bibliography

Bryant, Julius, and Susan Weber, eds. John Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and London. New York: Bard Graduate Centre Gallery; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017.

Kemp, Sandra. "My Bread and Butter: Kipling's Journalism." In Bryant and Weber. 301-27.

Kipling, John Lockwood. Beast and Man in India: A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals in Their Relations with the People. London: Macmillan, 1891. Internet Archive. Contributed by the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. Web. 22 January 2017.

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Created 22 January 2017