Conversely, Rudyard Kipling's seminal Jungle Book (1897) had an undoubted influence on the Scout, and later the Cub and Brownie movements, when proper names from the novel - Akhela, Baghera, Baloo, Mowgli, and Sher Khan - were incorporated into its lore. The Jungle Books gave to the scouting world a sense of the wild and untamed, the free and the spirited which civilian life could not offer. They emphasise the power of social cohesion to achieve control: "For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. / The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown, / Remember the wolf is a hunter -- go forth and get food of thine own."(298) In the Jungle Book it is "the law" which is promulgated, "Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they".(299) There are resonances with imperial activity, with social cohesion, and for control applied regularly in British life through the medium of friendly animals such as teddy bears, cartoon characters like Rupert bear, tank engines, turtles and other metaphors which I explore in Chapter 5.

The Jungle Book's influence on the Cub movement came from the same kind of animal lore of wolf cubs and the pack instinct, and has a bearing on the British love of animals as an allegory used in many cases for capitalist social organisation, meaning how these metaphors were used to guide and advise young people in the lores of adult life:

The call of the pack all over the world is "We'll do our best"; so when your cubmaster comes into the circle you chuck up your chin and, all together, you howl out - making each word a long yowl; ‘A-ka-la- We-e-e-e-ll do -o-o-o- our BEST.’ Yell the word "best" sharp and loud and short and all together.(300)

Scouting, explains Allen Warren, was capable of being presented in a dual guise before 1914, that is to say, on the one hand, promoting conduct and action as the true patriotic teaching, and, on the other, arguing for an increased focus on formal instruction through a reformed syllabus. Thereby, the scouts could be held to be at the same time both an, "ideal vehicle of socio-political consolidation in divided and multi-racial societies" and also, " genuinely imperial, an effective cement for the emerging commonwealth of nations, itself presented as a living embodiment of Scouting's multi-racial ideals".(301)

For Robert Baden - Powell, his own sense of "playing the game" is exemplified in his comparison of what he saw as German rigidity and what he considered to be English spirit:

It is just the opposite to the free spirit where a man is trusted on his honour to play the game, and which is known among us as "good form." The spirit of playing the game is, I hope, more characteristic of the British nation than any other, and it is the highest form of national discipline...."(302)

Through its organs The Scouter and The Trail the Scouts' organisation disseminated advice and help to provincial and regional scouts groups who were, otherwise, unable to be in touch with the central organisation. In later years "scout shops" were opened for the sale of the paraphernalia and gimcrackery which scouting lore promoted. Items ranged from thumb sticks to patrol flags, from pocket knives to first aid kits, [in order to “Be Prepared!”, the Scouts motto], from shoulder flashes to copies of Scouting for Boys.(303) It demonstrates close attention to the detail involved in winning imperial skirmishes aided by putative service organisations. Baden-Powell(304) had his own tailor to produce a standard of excellence in uniform far above the normal issue given to the "brother officers" with whom he served.

His attitude to sexuality can be gauged, to some extent, by reading Scouting for Boys, where, in a section on Health Giving Habits, Camp Fire Yarn No.18, Baden-Powell counselled on the self control required to maintain what he called continence. What he meant was probably how to prevent masturbation. Although not using the word, he referred to "this secret vice",(305) which, if not controlled, would lead to ruin. It was usually brought about, according to Baden-Powell, by eating food that was too rich, or by sleeping in a bed with too many blankets on it. It was essential to find a form of negation. The remedy was a regime of cold baths, showers, or development for the upper part of the body by arm exercises and boxing. If all else failed, the boy was encouraged to have a talk with his scout leader about it.

A combination of the refinement of taste, excellence of personal standards with just a hint of suppressed homoeroticism made a platform upon which to base a movement which was quintessentially English, supererogatory, enervating and clean. It was based on the outdoors, rather than indoors, and while not necessarily flamboyant, certainly dynamic, when seen from the point of view of the urban poor, as the trek cart pushed off for a camp which would take the boy away from the late Victorian and early Edwardian urban squalor and bourgeois conformity.

The symbiotic relationship between the masculine novel of action and the increased flow of fiction for boys is partly evident. Whether the flow of fiction for boys resulted from the pressure created by the number of works available to be read or was in itself created by an avid reading public is problematic. There was an emphasis placed on the maleness of the world that the late Victorians inhabited, a world in which masculine collaboration through bonding played an increasing part.

The tension formed by the debate between romance and realism was misrelated to what was occurring in the minds of Stevenson, Lang, Henley, Kipling, and James and was reflected not only in the intellectualisation about epic style but in the writing of a number of the texts that I look at, not least in an apparent torridness in the writing which resulted from these co-operative ventures. The collaborative fiction of empire promoted ways of preparing men for imperial service through a variety of such organisations as the public schools, boys' clubs and the Boy Scouts. It sought to produce forms of fiction tailored for an imperial culture, or was perhaps shaped by, this culture, and the search for ways of training men and boys, but not women and girls, for the service of empire throughout the late nineteenth century is reflected in much of the literature I examine.

(1) Henry James, The Private Life, The Wheel of Time, Lord Beaupré, The Visits, Collaboration and Other Tales (London: Osgood and McIlvane, 1893; London: Macmillan, 1923) 157. First published in The English Illustrated Magazine. September. 1892. quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: The Middle Years (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962) 321. James also wrote a work in collaboration with family members entitled The Whole Family, a Novel by Twelve Authors etc. (London and New York: Harper Bothers, 1908.) 1-225.

Over his Shoulder
by Geoffrey Clarke

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