Quartette is an intriguing collaboration between all four of the Kiplings living in Lahore, including poems by Alice Kipling (Rudyard's mother), Lockwood Kipling (four stories), Trix Kipling (poems and a short story), and Rudyard Kipling (five poems and three stories).

The individual contributions are not marked and authorship is not indicated. The book as a whole is attributed to "Four Anglo-Indian Writers."

Charles Allen describes two contributions by Rudyard Kipling, "The Phantom Rickshaw" and "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" as signs of the future potential of Rudyard Kipling as a fiction writer.

The full Table of Contents of "Quartette" is as follows:

The Mirror of Two Worlds (LOCKWOOD KIPLING)
Divided Allegiance (poem by RUDYARD KIPLING)
An Anglo-Indian Episode (LOCKWOOD KIPLING)
At the Distance (poem by RUDYARD KIPLING)
The Unlimited 'Draw' of 'Tick' Boileau (RUDYARD KIPLING)
A Tragedy of Teeth (poem by RUDYARD KIPLING)
The Haunted Cabin (ALICE "TRIX" KIPLING / A. M. FLEMING)
The Second Wooing (poem by RUDYARD KIPLING)
The Strange ride of Morrowbie Jukes, C.E. (RUDYARD KIPLING)
Two Sonnets (Poems by ALICE MACDONALD KIPLING)
My Christmas at the Ajaibgaum Exhibition (Debated Authorship: some sources suggest LOCKWOOD KIPLING, while others suggest RUDYARD)
Rivals (poem  by ALICE MACDONALD KIPLING)
The Phantom 'Rickshaw (RUDYARD KIPLING)
From the Hills (poem by RUDYARD KIPLING)
Mofussil Jurisdiction (LOCKWOOD KIPLING)
Parted (poem by ALICE MACDONALD KIPLING)

"The Mirror of Two Worlds"

Authorship: Lockwood Kipling

Summary: A first-person account in the voice of a circus proprietor. The attention to specific cultural curation and the knowledge of Indian society all point to the senior curator Lockwood Kipling.

Brief passage quote:

"I have no 'agent in advance,' and my experience is that in this country such a person is not necessary. We find our visitors are the best agents, and they work a kind of underground post that carries news of such a tamasha as mine faster and farther than any newspapers or letters. and as for bills and posters, we distribute thousands of these small pictures slips lithographed, as you see, on thin paper. Some are taviz or jantars, arrangements of figures in squares, you know; others are marked with elephants, interlaced fishes, peacocks, geese, tigers and other auspicious creatures, and others have the Swastika or Gunesh sign, while others have figures of Krishna and popular divinities, but all enjoin on the reader that his first duty is to go and see 'The Mirror of Two Worlds.' and they accept the invitation in thousands, people of all sorts and conditions; and what is strangest of all, large numbers of Mussulmans as well as Hindus. The fact is, Sir, among the lower orders they are rather more mixed in the matter of their religious notions, and more practically tolerant than you would suspect, from what you hear and read.

Keywords: Western knowledge of Indian culture and religion; circus

Racial make-up: White British protagonist, Indian assistant.

Connection to the Kiplings' journalism / real-life: Unknown

"An Anglo-Indian Episode"

Authorship: Lockwood Kipling

Summary:  A young man named Scott is sent out from England with the promise of a job at a remote tea plantation in India. He arrives at the plantation, where the only other Europeans are a family of three -- the proprietor, his wife Laura, and their young daughter Nora. Scott begins to develop feelings toward Nora which he dare not express aloud. But before that romantic drama can be brought to a head, cholera strikes the plantation. The daughter is nearly instantly killed, and the planter sends Scott with Nora to escape the plantation. Nora dies en route to Calcutta, and Scott sends a letter to the planter informing him. The letter is returned; it turns out that the planter himself has died of cholera. The story ends with Scott boarding a ship to return to England.

Keywords: cholera; adultery; tea plantation; provincial life (Mofussil); romance

Racial make-up: All white main cast of characters. Some Indian servants do appear briefly

Connection to the Kiplings' journalism / real life: Unknown

"The Unlimited 'Draw' of 'Tick' Boileau"

Authorship: Rudyard Kipling

Summary: A new man comes to the regiment. At first he is unpopular owing to certain personality traits (his "dark horsiness"). Later, he seems more sober, and he reveals the reason in an account that constitutes the bulk of the second half of the story. During a leave, he had gone to Mussoorie to spend time with a woman in whom he had an interest. He dances with her at the Ball, and after the "last pukka waltz" she comes to him on the veranda. He proposes to her and professes his love, and she reciprocates. But then it is discovered that in fact she had died of a freak seizure in the coat room and must have been dead before the conversation she apparently had had with Tick Boileau. The mean listening to the story take it seriously and seem to believe the narrator, but later it is made clear that the tale was a hoax. The subalterns at Mian Mir are now widely mocked for being overly gullible.

Keywords: Military life; ghost stories; romance

Racial make-up: All white

Connection to the Kiplings' journalism / real life: Unknown

"The Haunted Cabin"

Authorship: Alice "Trix" Kipling

Summary: A young mother and her three year old boy are on a steamer heading from England to Bombay when they encounter a mysterious little girl. They are the only ones who can see or hear her. The mother is convinced that there's a rational explanation for the mystery, but her son concludes that the girl is a fairy and stops trying to talk to her. Just before docking at the end of the voyage, the narrator encounters the little girl sitting in an odd way on a railing. The girl then falls into the water. The narrator initially attempts to find help and rescue the child but a stranger interposes herself and informs the narrator about the story of the young girl who died in this location years earlier.

Keywords: Horror, steamship travel

Racial make-up: All white

Connections to the Kiplings' journalism / real life: Unknown / none

"The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes, C.E." 

Authorship: Rudyard Kipling

Summary: A man named Morrowbie Jukes is in a remote part of India. Out hunting alone at night, he has an accident on his horse and falls into a kind of pit-village that is entirely inhabited with Indians who have been condemned to live there on account of being thought ill. The village is in effect a kind of permanent quarantine, ignored by the outside world and policed by soldiers who shoot on sight anyone who tries to leave. Morrowbie Jukes befriends a shady Indian character named Gunga Dass, a Brahmin who has been forced to abandon caste and who now catches and eats crows like the rest. Jukes learns that an earlier Englishman had been in the pit, and had been killed by Gunga Dass. Jukes discovers that the Englishman had drawn up a map of a way out of the pit-village on foot that goes through the quicksand. Dass betrays Jukes as they attempt to escape together, but Jukes is rescued by his Indian servant from outside the pit, who had tracked him to the edge of the slope constituting one of the barriers around the village.

Representative passage:

“In epidemics of the cholera you are carried to be burned almost before you are dead. When you come to the riverside the cold air, perhaps, makes you alive, and then, if you are only little alive, mud is put on your nose and mouth and you die conclusively. If you are rather more alive, more mud is put; but if you are too lively they let you go and take you away. I was too lively, and made protestation with anger against the indignities that they endeavored to press upon me. In those days I was Brahmin and proud man. Now I am dead man and eat”— here he eyed the well-gnawed breast bone with the first sign of emotion that I had seen in him since we met —“crows, and other things. They took me from my sheets when they saw that I was too lively and gave me medicines for one week, and I survived successfully.

And another passage, which illustrate the racial paranoia quite nicely:

When I was in the open, I saw Pornic, my poor old Pornic, lying dead on the sandy soil. How they had killed him I cannot guess. Gunga Dass explained that horse was better than crow, and “greatest good of greatest number is political maxim. We are now Republic, Mister Jukes, and you are entitled to a fair share of the beast. If you like, we will pass a vote of thanks. Shall I propose?”

Keywords: Horror; cholera; Racial paranoia; Hindu rituals; Caste

Racial make-up: Mixed English and Indian; Racial paranoia

Connections to the Kiplings' journalism / real life: Unknown

"My Christmas At the Ajaibgaum Exhibition"

Authorship: LIKELY LOCKWOOD KIPLING

Summary and commentary: A comment on the debated authorship of "My Christmas at the Ajaibgaum Exhibition" might be in order. Worldcat.org's Table of Contents for this volume lists the authorship as R. Kipling; when Rudyard sent a copy of the book to a family friend, he apparently marked a black dot next to the title to indicated a claim of authorship. That said, later in life Rudyard denied the story was his, and Pinney, in The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, makes clear he believes the story was authored by Lockwood Kipling (see The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, Volume 1, p. 113).

Based on the theme of the story, I would tend to share Pinney's opinion in general.

The story is in two chapters, with the first chapter focused on an account of a young newspaper man named Mudsworth, sent to a town called Ajaibgaum to work on an Exhibition. (Both father and son wrote for newspapers, so the choice of occupation doesn't point in any particular direction, though the focus on the "Exhibition" seems to point more towards Lockwood Kipling -- he was engaged in a very similar task in the fall of 1885. The general tone and style of this part of the story also seems a bit too mature and embedded in the Indian setting for it to be authored by Rudyard Kipling at least circa 1885; later, his style would shift and become more confidently "Indian."

The second half of the story shifts gears, and becomes a simple Anglo-Indian romantic / marriage plot along the lines of other Rudyard Kipling stories from this period (i.e., the simple Romantic stories from Plain Tales from the Hills). (Then again, "Mofussil Jurisdiction" does have a Romantic farce quality, so perhaps this format was something Lockwood enjoyed after all).

Themes: Mistaken identity; Small town ("Mofussil") Anglo-Indian life; journalism

Racial make-up: All white characters; significant usage of Hindustani phrases and bilingual puns ("Ajaibgaum"; "Pagalnugger"; "Bewafqoofabad").

Links to Kipling's journalism / real-life: The protagonist is a reporter for a Mofussil newspaper, and can thus be said to resemble Rudyard. He is sent to curate a museum exhibition, which suggests a resemblance to Lockwood.