agreed to compose music for Kipling's poem Recessional, but he never completed the song. When asked to set "The Absent-Minded Beggar" to music two years later, Sullivan found Kipling's verses so difficult to set that he told his diary, "if it wasn't for charity's sake, I could never have undertaken the task". Still, the experienced composer completed the music in four days, on 5 November 1899, and it was published by Enoch & Sons for the Daily Mail. The first public performance was sung by John Coates, under Sullivan's baton, at the Alhambra Theatre on 13 November 1899, to a "magnificent reception" of an overflowing theatre. In 1900, "Kipling travelled to South Africa to help distribute the supplies bought with the funds raised by the song." Reception of the song Sullivan's music captured Britain's jingoistic mood, and his diary entry notes, "Wild enthusiasm. All sang chorus! I stood on the stage and conducted the encore – funny sight!" With characteristic grace, the composer wrote to Kipling, "Your splendid words went with a swing and enthusiasm which even my music cannot stifle". Kipling, on the other hand, described the music as "a tune guaranteed to pull teeth out of barrel-organs". The Daily Chronicle wrote that "It has not been often that the greatest of English writers and the greatest of English musicians have joined inspiring words and stirring melody in a song which expresses the heart feelings of the entire nation". Sullivan's manuscript was later auctioned for £500 towards the fund. Critic Fuller Maitland disapproved of the composition in The Times, but Sullivan asked a friend, "Did the idiot expect the words to be set in cantata form, or as a developed composition with symphonic introduction, contrapuntal treatment, etc.?" The poem, song and piano music sold in extraordinary numbers, as did all kinds of household items, postcards, memorabilia and other merchandise emblazoned, woven or engraved with the "Gentleman in Kharki" figure, the poem itself, the sheet music, or humorous illustrations. Some of these items were very expensive. 40 clerks answered 12,000 requests a day for copies of the poem, and it was included in 148,000 packets of cigarettes within two months of the first performance. Alternative arrangements of the song were published, such as "The Absent-Minded Beggar March". The Daily Mail'''s charitable fund was eventually titled the "Absent Minded Beggar Relief Corps" or the "Absent-Minded Beggar Fund", providing small comforts to