The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly

Last updated

"The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 23 November 1886 in book form, in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection. The story, published when Kipling was not quite 21 years old, is a well-crafted piece of writing about an essentially schoolboy version of schadenfreude - sheer pleasure, in this case, at seeing someone 'get his comeuppance' - with an element of slapstick.

Lieutenant Golightly is a young officer in the British Army in India who prides himself on "looking like 'an Officer and a Gentleman'". According to John McGivering, in the Notes to this story on the Kipling Society's website, [1] Golightly is certainly an officer, but not at all certainly a gentleman. It is clear that he takes too much care over his appearance, and dresses rather too flashily, wearing, as he is, a "delicate olive-green suit" with a blue tie and a sola topee. As he hastens back from leave (having left all his money apart from loose change behind him), he is beset by misfortune: monsoon rains make him muddy and sweaty; his helmet dissolves in the rain; the dyes of its lining (purple) and his suit (green) run. He falls from his horse, which becomes so lame that he has to walk, whereon he throws away his tie, which has also run, and his (detachable) collar. He arrives at a railway station, buys a drink - and finds that he only has 6 Indian anna left. On talking to the Station Master, he is taken for a deserter, one Private Binkle, and after some temporising is arrested and carried bodily off by four native policeman. They hand him over to a detachment of the British Army, who admire his fluency in bad language, but don't believe his insistence that he is an officer. Golightly is finally saved by a Major in his own Regiment, who recognises him and has him released - then, of course, relating the story to the army. Kipling says that he may now publish the story as Golightly has "gone Home".

All quotations in this article have been taken from the Uniform Edition of Plain Tales from the Hills published by Macmillan & Co., Limited in London in 1899. The text is that of the third edition (1890), and the author of the article has used his own copy of the 1923 reprint. Further comment, including page-by-page notes, can be found on the Kipling Society's website, at http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_golightly1.htm

Related Research Articles

Stalky & Co. is a novel by Rudyard Kipling about adolescent boys at a British boarding school. It is a collection of school stories whose three juvenile protagonists display a know-it-all, cynical outlook on patriotism and authority. It was first published in 1899 after the stories had appeared in magazines during the previous two years. It is set at a school dubbed "the College" or "the Coll.", which is based on the actual United Services College that Kipling attended as a boy.

<i>Plain Tales from the Hills</i> 1888 collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling

Plain Tales from the Hills is the first collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Out of its 40 stories, "eight-and-twenty", according to Kipling's Preface, were initially published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Punjab, British India between November 1886 and June 1887. "The remaining tales are, more or less, new."

In the British Army, a gentleman ranker is an enlisted soldier suited through education and social background to be a commissioned officer or indeed a former commissioned officer. Rudyard Kipling titled one of his poems, which was published in 1892, "Gentlemen-Rankers".

"Miss Youghal's Sais" is a short story in Rudyard Kipling's collection Plain Tales from the Hills (1888). It is the first appearance in book form of the fictional character Strickland.

"The Rescue of Pluffles" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. Its first appearance in book form was in Kipling's first collection of short stories, Plain Tales from the Hills (1888); it was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on November 20, 1886. It centres on Mrs Hauksbee, and begins

Mrs. Hauksbee was sometimes nice to her own sex. Here is a story to prove this; and you can believe just as much as ever you please.

"The Three Musketeers" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling which introduces three fictional British soldiers serving in India in the later nineteenth century: the privates Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris. These characters appear in many early Kipling stories. "The Three Musketeers" was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 11 March 1887. It appeared in book form in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888).

"False Dawn" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.

"Lispeth" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 29 November 1886; its first appearance in book form was in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and it later appeared in subsequent editions of that collection. The tale is an interesting example of Kipling's attitudes to different races and cultures, which is less simple than many accounts of his beliefs allow.

"Thrown Away" is a short story by British author Rudyard Kipling. It was published in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), and in subsequent editions of that collection.

"Yoked with an Unbeliever" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on December 7, 1886, and in book form in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888. It also appears in subsequent editions of that collection.

"Cupid's Arrows" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.

The phrase 'watches of the night' has been used since at least the Book of Mishna: "watches of the night": the night-time; watch originally each of the three or four periods of time, during which a watch or guard was kept, into which the night was divided by the Jews and Romans". The phrase occurs several places in the Old Testament and it is suggested in the New Testament. Also found in the Dhammapada, chapter 12 (Attavaggo).

"His Chance in Life" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), and in subsequent editions of that collection. The story is illuminating about Kipling's attitudes to race, which are less cut-and-dried than is often thought. Kipling is interesting, if not very detailed, on people of mixed race and the snobberies involved.

"Consequences" is the title of a short story by Rudyard Kipling, first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on December 9, 1886; and first in book form in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), and in subsequent editions of that collection.

"The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on April 28, 1887, and first in book form in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Taking of Lungtungpen</span> 1887 short story by Rudyard Kipling

"The Taking of Lungtungpen" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling which was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on 11 April 1887. In book form, the story appeared in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.

"A Germ-Destroyer" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on May 17, 1887, in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection. The story is one of Kipling's essays into farcical humour – with his frequent sardonic glances at the oddities of the way that the world works: here, the administrative world of the British Raj. He tells of the new Viceroy who has arrived with a Private Secretary called Wonder, who is trying to run the Indian Empire.

"In the House of Suddhoo" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. The story was published in the Civil and Military Gazette on April 30, 1886 under the title "Section 420, I.P.C.". Its first appearance in book form was in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888. It was the third of the stories that appear in that collection to be written

"His Wedded Wife" by Rudyard Kipling ...was published in the Civil and Military Gazette on February 25, 1887, and in book form in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection. It is one of the short stories that J. M. S. Tompkins classifies as a tale of 'revenge', but it has elements of those classified as 'farce'.

The Rudyard Kipling story "The Broken-Link Handicap" was first published in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.

References

  1. ↑ "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly". 14 April 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.