Wireless (short story)

Short story by Rudyard Kipling

"Wireless"

Short story by Rudyard Kipling
Country| United Kingdom
Language| English
Genre(s)| Short story
Publication

"Wireless" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in Scribner's Magazine in 1902, and was later collected in Traffics and Discoveries.[1] The sister-poem accompanying it, Butterflies or Kaspar's Song in Varda, Kipling claimed to have been a translation of an old Swedish poem (from the Swedish of Stagnelius),[1] although this claim is unsubstantiated.[2]

## Plot

[edit]

The narrator (Kipling) is visiting a chemist friend who is experimenting with radio. He is attempting to make contact with another enthusiast, several miles distant. They are passing a restless night, concocting the most marvelous cocktails from the chemicals at hand, and the narrator succeeds in drugging Mr Shaynor, the chemist’s assistant, who is suffering from last stage consumption.

"Again he sought inspiration from the advertisement"

Shaynor has all the night been expressing his approval of a certain young lady in a toilet-water advertisement, and as he slips into a trance, he begins to recite poetry to her. To the narrator's surprise, he begins to compose a poem of Keats; instead of merely writing the lines, he is in all the agonies of composition, and occasionally, in Kipling's opinion, improving on the poet's own work. The poem is The Eve of St. Agnes; in one instance Shaynor takes the "trite" line

And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast

(line 218) and changes it to

And threw warm gules on Madeline’s young breast

which Kipling considers a change for the better. It seems to him that by the atmosphere auspicious for radio contact, Shaynor has somehow managed to connect with Keats, and the lines he writes are "the raw material...whence Keats wove the twenty-sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas of his poem."[1]: 260

## Criticism

[edit]

J. M. S. Tompkins was critical of the story, saying it was "too full of crowded detail which, as it is structural, cannot be eliminated."[3]

Author John Rhode later used the story as the inspiration for the plot of his 1929 detective novel The House on Tollard Ridge.[4]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c Kipling, Rudyard (1904). Traffics and Discoveries.
2. ^ Bodelsen (1965). "Wireless". Journal of English Studies.
3. ^ Tompkins, J. M. S. (1959). The Art of Rudyard Kipling. p. 91.
4. ^ Evans, Curtis. Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961. McFarland, 2014. p.66

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Rudyard Kipling

Novels|

* The Light That Failed (1891)
* The Naulahka: A Story of West and East (co-author, Wolcott Balestier, 1892)
* Captains Courageous (1896)
* Kim (1901)

Collections|

* Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)
* Soldiers Three (1888)
* The Story of the Gadsbys (1888)
* In Black and White (1888)
* The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales (1888)
* Under the Deodars (1888)
* Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1888)
* From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel (1889)
* Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, poetry)
* Many Inventions (1893)
* The Jungle Book (1894)
* "Mowgli's Brothers"
* "Kaa's Hunting"
* "Tiger! Tiger!"
* "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
* The Second Jungle Book (1895)
* "Letting in the Jungle"
* "Red Dog"
* All the Mowgli Stories (c. 1895)
* The Seven Seas (1896, poetry)
* The Day's Work (1898)
* Stalky & Co. (1899)
* Just So Stories (1902)
* The Five Nations (1903, poetry)
* Puck of Pook's Hill (1906)
* Rewards and Fairies (1910)
* The Fringes of the Fleet (1915, non-fiction)
* Debits and Credits (1926)
* Limits and Renewals (1932)
* Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (1940)
* A Choice of Kipling's Verse (by T. S. Eliot, 1941)

Poems|

* "The Absent-Minded Beggar"
* "The Ballad of the 'Clampherdown'"
* "The Ballad of East and West"
* "The Beginnings"
* "The Bell Buoy"
* "The Betrothed"
* "Big Steamers"
* "Boots"
* "Cold Iron"
* "Dane-geld"
* "Danny Deever"
* "A Death-Bed"
* "The Female of the Species"
* "Fuzzy-Wuzzy"
* "Gentleman ranker"
* "The Gods of the Copybook Headings"
* "Gunga Din"
* "Hymn Before Action"
* "If—"
* "In the Neolithic Age"
* "The King's Pilgrimage"
* "The Last of the Light Brigade"
* "Late Came the God"
* "The Lowestoft Boat"
* "Mandalay"
* "The Mary Gloster"
* "McAndrew's Hymn"
* "My Boy Jack"
* "Recessional"
* "A Song in Storm"
* "The Song of the Women"
* "The Sons of Martha"
* "Submarines"
* "The Sweepers"
* "Tommy"
* "Ubique"
* "The White Man's Burden"

Short stories|

* ".007"
* "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly"
* "Baa Baa, Black Sheep"
* "Bread upon the Waters"
* "The Broken-Link Handicap"
* "The Butterfly that Stamped"
* "Consequences"
* "The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin"
* "Cupid's Arrows"
* "The Devil and the Deep Sea"
* "The Drums of the Fore and Aft"
* "Fairy-Kist"
* "False Dawn"
* "A Germ-Destroyer"
* "His Chance in Life"
* "His Wedded Wife"
* "In the House of Suddhoo"
* "Kidnapped"
* "Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris"
* "Lispeth"
* "The Man Who Would Be King"
* "A Matter of Fact"
* "Miss Youghal's Sais"
* "The Mother Hive"
* "The Other Man"
* "The Rescue of Pluffles"
* "The Ship that Found Herself"
* "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo"
* "The Taking of Lungtungpen"
* "Three and – an Extra"
* "The Three Musketeers"
* "Thrown Away"
* "Toomai of the Elephants"
* "Watches of the Night"
* "Wireless"
* "Yoked with an Unbeliever"

Related|

* Bibliography
* Bateman's (house)
* Indian Railway Library
* Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer
* Iron Ring
* Law of the jungle
* Aerial Board of Control
* My Boy Jack (1997 play)
* Rudyard Kipling: A Remembrance Tale (2006 documentary)
* My Boy Jack (2007 film)

Family|

* Caroline Starr Balestier Kipling (wife)
* Elsie Bambridge (daughter)
* John Kipling (son)
* John Lockwood Kipling (father)
* MacDonald sisters (mother's family)
* Stanley Baldwin (cousin)
* Georgiana Burne-Jones (aunt)
* Edward Burne-Jones (uncle)
* Philip Burne-Jones (cousin)
* Edward Poynter (uncle)
* Alfred Baldwin (uncle)

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