Some readers have asked me for the source of that Evelyn Waugh quote in my Monday column. It is in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, p. 625 in my 1983 edition. Waugh is reviewing two books about Kipling for the London Sunday Times. The review appeared March 22, 1964. (The books are: Kipling’s Mind and Art, ed. Andrew Rutherford and Aspects of Kipling’s Art by C.A. Bodelsen.)
Here is the full paragraph from Waugh’s review.
Mr Noël Annan provides a valuable examination of Kipling’s conception of ‘the Law’ and Society. ‘He was hardly interested,’ he writes, ‘whether the customs of morality or religion were right or wrong. For him all that mattered was that they existed.’ This judgment goes to the heart of Kipling’s character. He was a conservative in the sense that he believed civilization to be something laboriously achieved which was only precariously defended. He wanted to see the defences fully manned and he hated the liberals because he thought them gullible and feeble, believing in the easy perfectibility of man and ready to abandon the work of centuries for sentimental qualms.