His cousin Oliver Baldwin described Kipling's story 'Mary Postgate' as 'the wickedest story in the world'. It did shock its readers very much, but it is not entirely easy to determine just what the shocking element was, perhaps still is. Told with a subdued but cheerful elegance a little in the manner of Jane Austen's novels, which Kipling much admired, it is a tale about a virtuous spinster companion during the Great War, whose employer's nephew in the RFC is killed on a training flight. Having brought him up, Mary is very devoted to him. Later a little girl in the village is horribly killed when a house collapses, perhaps as a result of a German bomb. Further upset, Mary sets out to burn the dead nephew's belongings in the garden incinerator, and finds in the shrubbery a wounded German airman, who pleads for help. She refuses it, and watches his death agony with intense pleasure, afterwards taking a bath and sitting on the sofa in a mood of relaxed satisfaction.

LRB 7 January 1988 | PDF Download