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= Rudyard_Kipling =
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Introduction
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Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 - 18 January 1936) was an
English journalist, novelist, poet and short-story writer. He was born
in British India, which inspired much of his work.
Kipling's works of fiction include the 'Jungle Book' duology ('The
Jungle Book', 1894; 'The Second Jungle Book', 1895), 'Kim' (1901), the
'Just So Stories' (1902) and many short stories, including "The Man
Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga
Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White
Man's Burden" (1899) and "If--" (1910). He is seen as an innovator in
the art of the short story. His children's books are classics; one
critic noted "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".
Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United
Kingdom's most popular writers. Henry James said "Kipling strikes me
personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine
intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, he was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature, as the first English-language writer to
receive the prize, and at 41, its youngest recipient to date. He was
also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and several times
for a knighthood, but declined both. Following his death in 1936, his
ashes were interred at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed with the political and
social climate of the age. The contrasting views of him continued for
much of the 20th century. The literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote that
Kipling "is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement
and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled.
But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an
incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was
experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary
narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."
Childhood (1865–1882)
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Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay in the Bombay
Presidency of British India, to Alice Kipling (born MacDonald) and
John Lockwood Kipling. Alice (one of the four noted MacDonald sisters)
was a vivacious woman, of whom Lord Dufferin would say, "Dullness and
Mrs Kipling cannot exist in the same room." John Lockwood Kipling, a
sculptor and pottery designer, was the Principal and Professor of
Architectural Sculpture at the newly founded Sir J. J. School of Art
in Bombay.
John Lockwood and Alice met in 1863 and courted at Rudyard Lake in
Rudyard, Staffordshire, England. They married and moved to India in
1865 after John Lockwood had accepted the position as Professor at the
School of Art. They had been so moved by the beauty of the Rudyard
Lake area that they named their first child after it, Joseph Rudyard.
Two of Alice's sisters were married to artists: Georgiana to the
painter Edward Burne-Jones, and her sister Agnes to Edward Poynter. A
third sister, Louisa, was the mother of Kipling's most prominent
relative, his first cousin Stanley Baldwin, who was the British prime
minister three times in the 1920s and 1930s.
Kipling's birth home on the campus of the Sir J. J. School of Art in
Bombay was for many years used as the dean's residence. Although a
cottage bears a plaque noting it as his birth site, the original
building was torn down and replaced. Some historians and
conservationists take the view that the bungalow marks a site merely
close to the home of Kipling's birth, as it was built in 1882 - about
15 years after Kipling was born. Kipling seems to have said as much to
the dean when visiting J. J. School in the 1930s.
Kipling wrote of Bombay:
Mother of Cities to me,
For I was born in her gate,
Between the palms and the sea,
Where the world-end steamers wait.
According to Bernice M. Murphy, "Kipling's parents considered
themselves 'Anglo-Indians' [a term used in the 19th century for people
of British origin living in India] and so too would their son, though
he spent the bulk of his life elsewhere. Complex issues of identity
and national allegiance would become prominent in his fiction."
Kipling referred to such conflicts. For example: "In the afternoon
heats before we took our sleep, she (the Portuguese 'ayah', or nanny)
or Meeta (the Hindu 'bearer', or male attendant) would tell us stories
and Indian nursery songs all unforgotten, and we were sent into the
dining-room after we had been dressed, with the caution 'Speak English
now to Papa and Mamma.' So one spoke 'English', haltingly translated
out of the vernacular idiom that one thought and dreamed in."
Education in Britain
======================
Kipling's days of "strong light and darkness" in Bombay ended when he
was five. As was the custom in British India, he and his
three-year-old sister Alice ("Trix") were taken to the United Kingdom
- in their case to Southsea, Portsmouth - to live with a couple who
boarded children of British nationals living abroad. For the next six
years (from October 1871 to April 1877), the children lived with the
couple - Captain Pryse Agar Holloway, once an officer in the merchant
navy, and Sarah Holloway - at their house, Lorne Lodge, 4 Campbell
Road, Southsea. Kipling referred to the place as "the House of
Desolation".
In his autobiography published 65 years later, Kipling recalled the
stay with horror, and wondered if the combination of cruelty and
neglect that he experienced there at the hands of Mrs Holloway might
not have hastened the onset of his literary life: "If you
cross-examine a child of seven or eight on his day's doings (specially
when he wants to go to sleep) he will contradict himself very
satisfactorily. If each contradiction be set down as a lie and
retailed at breakfast, life is not easy. I have known a certain amount
of bullying, but this was calculated torture - religious as well as
scientific. Yet it made me give attention to the lies I soon found it
necessary to tell: and this, I presume, is the foundation of literary
effort."
Trix fared better at Lorne Lodge; Mrs Holloway apparently hoped that
Trix would eventually marry the Holloways' son. The two Kipling
children, however, had no relatives in England they could visit,
except that they spent a month each Christmas with a maternal aunt
Georgiana ("Georgy") and her husband, Edward Burne-Jones, at their
house, The Grange, in Fulham, London, which Kipling called "a paradise
which I verily believe saved me".
In the spring of 1877 Alice returned from India and removed the
children from Lorne Lodge. Kipling remembers "Often and often
afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told any one
how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for
what comes to them they accept as eternally established. Also,
badly-treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely to
get if they betray the secrets of a prison-house before they are clear
of it."
Alice took the children during spring 1877 to Goldings Farm at
Loughton, where a carefree summer and autumn was spent on the farm and
adjoining Forest, some of the time with Stanley Baldwin. In January
1878, Kipling was admitted to the United Services College at Westward
Ho!, Devon, a school recently founded to prepare boys for the army. It
proved rough going for him at first, but later led to firm friendships
and provided the setting for his schoolboy stories 'Stalky & Co.'
(1899). While there, Kipling met and fell in love with Florence
Garrard, who was boarding with Trix at Southsea (to which Trix had
returned). Florence became the model for Maisie in Kipling's first
novel, 'The Light That Failed' (1891).
Return to India
=================
Near the end of his schooling, it was decided that Kipling did not
have the academic ability to get into Oxford University on a
scholarship. His parents lacked the wherewithal to finance him, and so
Kipling's father obtained a job for him in Lahore, where the father
served as Principal of the Mayo College of Art and Curator of the
Lahore Museum. Kipling was to be assistant editor of a local
newspaper, the 'Civil and Military Gazette'.
He sailed for India on 20 September 1882 and arrived in Bombay on 18
October. He described the moment years later: "So, at sixteen years
and nine months, but looking four or five years older, and adorned
with real whiskers which the scandalised Mother abolished within one
hour of beholding, I found myself at Bombay where I was born, moving
among sights and smells that made me deliver in the vernacular
sentences whose meaning I knew not. Other Indian-born boys have told
me how the same thing happened to them." This arrival changed Kipling,
as he explains: "There were yet three or four days' rail to Lahore,
where my people lived. After these, my English years fell away, nor
ever, I think, came back in full strength."
Early adult life (1882–1914)
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From 1883 to 1889 Kipling worked in British India for local newspapers
such as the 'Civil and Military Gazette' in Lahore and 'The Pioneer'
in Allahabad.
The former, which was the newspaper Kipling was to call his "mistress
and most true love", appeared six days a week throughout the year,
except for one-day breaks for Christmas and Easter. Stephen Wheeler,
the editor, worked Kipling hard, but Kipling's need to write was
unstoppable. In 1886 he published his first collection of verse,
'Departmental Ditties'. That year also brought a change of editors at
the newspaper; Kay Robinson, the new editor, allowed more creative
freedom and Kipling was asked to contribute short stories to the
newspaper.
In an article printed in the 'Chums' boys' annual, an ex-colleague of
Kipling's stated that "he never knew such a fellow for ink - he simply
revelled in it, filling up his pen viciously, and then throwing the
contents all over the office, so that it was almost dangerous to
approach him." The anecdote continues: "In the hot weather when he
(Kipling) wore only white trousers and a thin vest, he is said to have
resembled a Dalmatian dog more than a human being, for he was spotted
all over with ink in every direction."
In the summer of 1883 Kipling visited Simla (today Shimla), a
well-known hill station and the summer capital of British India. By
then it was the practice for the Viceroy of India and government to
move to Simla for six months, and the town became a "centre of power
as well as pleasure". Kipling's family became annual visitors to
Simla, and Lockwood Kipling was asked to serve in Christ Church there.
Rudyard Kipling returned to Simla for his annual leave each year from
1885 to 1888, and the town featured prominently in many stories he
wrote for the 'Gazette'. "My month's leave at Simla, or whatever Hill
Station my people went to, was pure joy - every golden hour counted.
It began in heat and discomfort, by rail and road. It ended in the
cool evening, with a wood fire in one's bedroom, and next morn -
thirty more of them ahead! - the early cup of tea, the Mother who
brought it in, and the long talks of us all together again. One had
leisure to work, too, at whatever play-work was in one's head, and
that was usually full."
Back in Lahore, 39 of his stories appeared in the 'Gazette' between
November 1886 and June 1887. Kipling included most of them in 'Plain
Tales from the Hills', his first prose collection, published in
Calcutta in January 1888, a month after his 22nd birthday. Kipling's
time in Lahore, however, had come to an end. In November 1887 he was
moved to the 'Gazette's' larger sister newspaper, 'The Pioneer', in
Allahabad in the United Provinces, where he worked as assistant editor
and lived in Belvedere House from 1888 to 1889.
Kipling's writing continued at a frenetic pace. In 1888 he published
six collections of short stories: 'Soldiers Three', 'The Story of the
Gadsbys', 'In Black and White', 'Under the Deodars', 'The Phantom
Rickshaw' and 'Wee Willie Winkie'. These contain a total of 41
stories, some quite long. In addition, as 'The Pioneer's' special
correspondent in the western region of Rajputana, he wrote many
sketches that were later collected in 'Letters of Marque' and
published in 'From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel'.
Kipling was discharged from 'The Pioneer' in early 1889 after a
dispute. By this time, he had been increasingly thinking of his
future. He sold the rights to his six volumes of stories for £200 and
a small royalty, and the 'Plain Tales' for £50; in addition, he
received six months' salary from 'The Pioneer', 'in lieu' of notice.
Return to London
==================
Kipling decided to use the money to move to London, the literary
centre of the British Empire. On 9 March 1889, he left India,
travelling first to San Francisco via Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong
and Japan. Kipling was favourably impressed by Japan, calling its
people and ways "gracious folk and fair manners". The Nobel Prize
committee cited Kipling's writing on the manners and customs of the
Japanese when they awarded his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.
Kipling later wrote that he "had lost his heart" to a geisha whom he
called O-Toyo, writing while in the United States during the same trip
across the Pacific, "I had left the innocent East far behind....
Weeping softly for O-Toyo.... O-Toyo was a darling." Kipling then
travelled through the United States, writing articles for 'The
Pioneer' that were later published in 'From Sea to Sea and Other
Sketches, Letters of Travel'.
Starting his North American travels in San Francisco, Kipling went
north to Portland, Oregon, then Seattle, Washington, up to Victoria
and Vancouver, British Columbia, through Medicine Hat, Alberta, back
into the US to Yellowstone National Park, down to Salt Lake City, then
east to Omaha, Nebraska and on to Chicago, then to Beaver,
Pennsylvania on the Ohio River to visit the Hill family -- Mrs.
Edmonia 'Ted' Hill, "eight years older than [him, who had] become
Kipling's closest confidante, friend and sometimes collaborator" in
British India, and her husband, Professor S. A. Hill, who [had] taught
Physical Science at Muir College in Alhallabad. From Beaver, Kipling
went to Chautauqua with Professor Hill, and later to Niagara Falls,
Toronto, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.
In the course of this journey he met Mark Twain in Elmira, New York,
and was deeply impressed. Kipling arrived unannounced at Twain's home,
and later wrote that as he rang the doorbell, "It occurred to me for
the first time that Mark Twain might possibly have other engagements
other than the entertainment of escaped lunatics from India, be they
ever so full of admiration."
As it was, Twain gladly welcomed Kipling and had a two-hour
conversation with him on trends in Anglo-American literature and about
what Twain was going to write in a sequel to 'Tom Sawyer', with Twain
assuring Kipling that a sequel was coming, although he had not decided
upon the ending: either Sawyer would be elected to Congress or he
would be hanged. Twain also passed along the literary advice that an
author should "get your facts first and then you can distort 'em as
much as you please." Twain, who rather liked Kipling, later wrote of
their meeting: "Between us, we cover all knowledge; he covers all that
can be known and I cover the rest." Kipling then crossed the Atlantic
to Liverpool in October 1889. He soon made his début in the London
literary world, to great acclaim.
London
========
In London Kipling had several stories accepted by magazines. He found
a place to live for the next two years at Villiers Street, near
Charing Cross (in a building subsequently named Kipling House):
Meantime, I had found me quarters in Villiers Street, Strand, which
forty-six years ago was primitive and passionate in its habits and
population. My rooms were small, not over-clean or well-kept, but from
my desk I could look out of my window through the fanlight of Gatti's
Music-Hall entrance, across the street, almost on to its stage. The
Charing Cross trains rumbled through my dreams on one side, the boom
of the Strand on the other, while, before my windows, Father Thames
under the Shot tower walked up and down with his traffic.
In the next two years, he published a novel, 'The Light That Failed',
had a nervous breakdown, and met an American writer and publishing
agent, Wolcott Balestier, with whom he collaborated on a novel, 'The
Naulahka' (a title which he uncharacteristically misspelt; see below).
In 1891, as advised by his doctors, Kipling took another sea voyage,
to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and once again India. He cut
short his plans to spend Christmas with his family in India when he
heard of Balestier's sudden death from typhoid fever and decided to
return to London immediately. Before his return, he had used the
telegram to propose to, and be accepted by, Wolcott's sister, Caroline
Starr Balestier (1862-1939), called "Carrie", whom he had met a year
earlier, and with whom he had apparently been having an intermittent
romance. Meanwhile, late in 1891, a collection of his short stories on
the British in India, 'Life's Handicap', was published in London.
On 18 January 1892 Carrie Balestier (aged 29) and Kipling (aged 26)
married in London, in the "thick of an influenza epidemic, when the
undertakers had run out of black horses and the dead had to be content
with brown ones." The wedding was held at All Souls Church in Langham
Place, Central London. Henry James gave away the bride.
United States
===============
Kipling and his wife settled upon a honeymoon that took them first to
the United States (including a stop at the Balestier family estate
near Brattleboro, Vermont) and then to Japan. On arriving in Yokohama,
they discovered that their bank, The New Oriental Banking Corporation,
had failed. Taking this loss in their stride, they returned to the US,
back to Vermont - Carrie by this time was pregnant with their first
child - and rented a small cottage on a farm near Brattleboro for $10
a month. According to Kipling, "We furnished it with a simplicity that
fore-ran the hire-purchase system. We bought, second or third hand, a
huge, hot-air stove which we installed in the cellar. We cut generous
holes in our thin floors for its eight-inch [20 cm] tin pipes (why we
were not burned in our beds each week of the winter I never can
understand) and we were extraordinarily and self-centredly content."
In this house, which they called 'Bliss Cottage', their first child,
Josephine, was born "in three-foot of snow on the night of 29th
December, 1892. Her Mother's birthday being the 31st and mine the 30th
of the same month, we congratulated her on her sense of the fitness of
things..."
It was also in this cottage that the first dawnings of 'The Jungle
Books' came to Kipling: "The workroom in the Bliss Cottage was seven
feet by eight, and from December to April, the snow lay level with its
window-sill. It chanced that I had written a tale about Indian
Forestry work which included a boy who had been brought up by wolves.
In the stillness, and suspense, of the winter of '92 some memory of
the Masonic Lions of my childhood's magazine, and a phrase in
Haggard's 'Nada the Lily', combined with the echo of this tale. After
blocking out the main idea in my head, the pen took charge, and I
watched it begin to write stories about Mowgli and animals, which
later grew into the two 'Jungle Books'."
With Josephine's arrival, 'Bliss Cottage' was felt to be congested, so
eventually the couple bought land - 10 acre on a rocky hillside
overlooking the Connecticut River - from Carrie's brother Beatty
Balestier and built their own house. Kipling named this Naulakha, in
honour of Wolcott and of their collaboration, and this time the name
was spelt correctly. From his early years in Lahore (1882-87), Kipling
had become enamoured with the Mughal architecture, especially the
Naulakha pavilion situated in Lahore Fort, which eventually inspired
the title of his novel as well as the house. The house still stands on
Kipling Road, 3 mi north of Brattleboro in Dummerston, Vermont: a big,
secluded, dark-green house, with shingled roof and sides, which
Kipling called his "ship", and which brought him "sunshine and a mind
at ease". His seclusion in Vermont, combined with his healthy "sane
clean life", made Kipling both inventive and prolific.
In a mere four years he produced, along with the 'Jungle Books', a
book of short stories ('The Day's Work'), a novel ('Captains
Courageous'), and a profusion of poetry, including the volume 'The
Seven Seas'. The collection of 'Barrack-Room Ballads' was issued in
March 1892, first published individually for the most part in 1890,
and contained his poems "Mandalay" and "Gunga Din". He especially
enjoyed writing the 'Jungle Books' and also corresponding with many
children who wrote to him about them.
Life in New England
=====================
The writing life in 'Naulakha' was occasionally interrupted by
visitors, including his father, who visited soon after his retirement
in 1893, and the British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who brought his
golf clubs, stayed for two days, and gave Kipling an extended golf
lesson. Kipling seemed to take to golf, occasionally practising with
the local Congregational minister and even playing with red-painted
balls when the ground was covered in snow. However, winter golf was
"not altogether a success because there were no limits to a drive; the
ball might skid 2 mi down the long slope to Connecticut river."
Kipling loved the outdoors, not least of whose marvels in Vermont was
the turning of the leaves each fall. He described this moment in a
letter: "A little maple began it, flaming blood-red of a sudden where
he stood against the dark green of a pine-belt. Next morning there was
an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. Three days
later, the hill-sides as fast as the eye could range were afire, and
the roads paved, with crimson and gold. Then a wet wind blew, and
ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; and the oaks, who had
held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzed
cuirasses and stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, till
nothing remained but pencil-shadings of bare boughs, and one could see
into the most private heart of the woods."
In February 1896 Elsie Kipling was born, the couple's second daughter.
By this time, according to several biographers, their marital
relationship was no longer light-hearted and spontaneous. Although
they would always remain loyal to each other, they seemed now to have
fallen into set roles. In a letter to a friend who had become engaged
around this time, the 30‑year‑old Kipling offered this sombre counsel:
marriage principally taught "the tougher virtues - such as humility,
restraint, order, and forethought." Later in the same year, he
temporarily taught at Bishop's College School in Quebec, Canada.
The Kiplings loved life in Vermont and might have lived out their
lives there, were it not for two incidents - one of global politics,
the other of family discord. By the early 1890s, the United Kingdom
and Venezuela were in a border dispute involving British Guiana. The
US had made several offers to arbitrate, but in 1895 the new American
Secretary of State, Richard Olney, upped the ante by arguing for the
American "right" to arbitrate on grounds of sovereignty on the
continent (see the Olney interpretation as an extension of the Monroe
Doctrine). This raised hackles in Britain, and the situation grew into
a major Anglo-American crisis, with talk of war on both sides.
Although the crisis eased into greater American-British co-operation,
Kipling was bewildered by what he felt was persistent anti-British
sentiment in the US, especially in the press. He wrote in a letter
that it felt like being "aimed at with a decanter across a friendly
dinner table." By January 1896 he had decided to end his family's
"good wholesome life" in the US and seek their fortunes elsewhere.
A family dispute became the final straw. For some time, relations
between Carrie and her brother Beatty Balestier had been strained,
owing to his drinking and insolvency. In May 1896 an inebriated Beatty
encountered Kipling on the street and threatened him with physical
harm. The incident led to Beatty's eventual arrest, but in the
subsequent hearing and the resulting publicity, Kipling's privacy was
destroyed, and he was left feeling miserable and exhausted. In July
1896, a week before the hearing was to resume, the Kiplings packed
their belongings, left the United States and returned to England.
Devon
=======
By September 1896 the Kiplings were in Torquay, Devon, on the
south-western coast of England, in a hillside home (Rock House,
Maidencombe) overlooking the English Channel. Although Kipling did not
much care for his new house, whose design, he claimed, left its
occupants feeling dispirited and gloomy, he managed to remain
productive and socially active.
Kipling was now a famous man, and in the previous two or three years
had increasingly been making political pronouncements in his writings.
The Kiplings had welcomed their first son, John, in August 1897.
Kipling had begun work on two poems, "Recessional" (1897) and "The
White Man's Burden" (1899), which were to create controversy when
published. Regarded by some as anthems for enlightened and duty-bound
empire-building (capturing the mood of the Victorian era), the poems
were seen by others as propaganda for brazen-faced imperialism and its
attendant racial attitudes; still others saw irony in the poems and
warnings of the perils of empire.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
--"The White Man's Burden"
There was also foreboding in the poems, a sense that all could yet
come to naught.
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet.
Lest we forget - lest we forget!
--"Recessional"
A prolific writer during his time in Torquay, he also wrote 'Stalky
& Co.', a collection of school stories (born of his experience at
the United Services College in Westward Ho!), whose juvenile
protagonists display a know-it-all, cynical outlook on patriotism and
authority. According to his family, Kipling enjoyed reading aloud
stories from 'Stalky & Co.' to them and often went into spasms of
laughter over his own jokes.
Visits to South Africa
========================
In early 1898 the Kiplings travelled to South Africa for their winter
holiday, so beginning an annual tradition which (except the following
year) would last until 1908. They would stay in "The Woolsack", a
house on Cecil Rhodes's estate at Groote Schuur (now a student
residence for the University of Cape Town), within walking distance of
Rhodes' mansion.
With his new reputation as 'Poet of the Empire', Kipling was warmly
received by some of the influential politicians of the Cape Colony,
including Rhodes, Sir Alfred Milner and Leander Starr Jameson. Kipling
cultivated their friendship and came to admire the men and their
politics. The period 1898-1910 was crucial in the history of South
Africa and included the Second Boer War (1899-1902), the ensuing peace
treaty, and the 1910 formation of the Union of South Africa. Back in
England, Kipling wrote poetry in support of the British cause in the
Boer War and on his next visit to South Africa in early 1900, became a
correspondent for 'The Friend' newspaper in Bloemfontein, which had
been commandeered by Lord Roberts for British troops.
Although his journalistic stint was to last only two weeks, it was
Kipling's first work on a newspaper staff since he left 'The Pioneer'
in Allahabad more than ten years before. At 'The Friend', he made
lifelong friendships with Perceval Landon, H. A. Gwynne and others. He
also wrote articles published more widely expressing his views on the
conflict. Kipling penned an inscription for the Honoured Dead Memorial
in Kimberley.
Sussex
========
In 1897 Kipling moved from Torquay to Rottingdean, near Brighton, East
Sussex - first to North End House and then to the Elms. In 1902
Kipling bought Bateman's, a house built in 1634 and located in rural
Burwash.
Bateman's was Kipling's home from 1902 until his death in 1936. The
house and its surrounding buildings, the mill and 33 acre, were bought
for £9,300. It had no bathroom, no running water upstairs and no
electricity, but Kipling loved it: "Behold us, lawful owners of a grey
stone lichened house - A.D. 1634 over the door - beamed, panelled,
with old oak staircase, and all untouched and unfaked. It is a good
and peaceable place. We have loved it ever since our first sight of
it" (from a November 1902 letter).
In the non-fiction realm, he became involved in the debate over the
British response to the rise in German naval power known as the
Tirpitz Plan, to build a fleet to challenge the Royal Navy, publishing
a series of articles in 1898 collected as 'A Fleet in Being'. On a
visit to the United States in 1899, Kipling and his daughter Josephine
developed pneumonia, from which she eventually died.
In the wake of his daughter's death, Kipling concentrated on
collecting material for what became 'Just So Stories for Little
Children', published in 1902, the year after 'Kim'. The American art
historian Janice Leoshko and the American literary scholar David Scott
have argued that 'Kim' disproves the claim by Edward Said that Kipling
was a promoter of Orientalism, since Kipling - who was deeply
interested in Buddhism - presented Tibetan Buddhism in a fairly
sympathetic light and aspects of the novel appeared to reflect a
Buddhist understanding of the universe. Kipling was offended by the
German Emperor Wilhelm II's Hun speech '(Hunnenrede)' in 1900, urging
German troops being sent to China to crush the Boxer Rebellion to
behave like "Huns" and take no prisoners.
The publication of a British government White Paper about Venezuelan
debt crisis 1902, revealing the nature of the "iron-clad==" agreement,
infuriated the British press, not least because the yoking of British
and German interests was considered dangerous, and unnecessary for the
mere collection of some foreign debts. This was exemplified by Rudyard
Kipling's polemic poem 'The Rower', published in '[[The Times' on 22
December as a response to the crisis; it included the words '"a secret
vow ye have made with an open foe ... a breed that have wronged us
most ... to help them press for a debt!"'
In 'The Rowers', Kipling attacked the Kaiser as a threat to Britain
and made the first use of the term "Hun" as an anti-German insult,
using Wilhelm's own words and the actions of German troops in China to
portray Germans as essentially barbarian. In an interview with the
French newspaper 'Le Figaro', the Francophile Kipling called Germany a
menace and called for an Anglo-French alliance to stop it. In another
letter at the same time, Kipling described the "'unfrei' peoples of
Central Europe" as living in "the Middle Ages with machine guns".
Speculative fiction
=====================
Kipling wrote a number of speculative fiction short stories, including
"The Army of a Dream", in which he sought to show a more efficient and
responsible army than the hereditary bureaucracy of England at the
time, and two science fiction stories: "With the Night Mail" (1905)
and "As Easy As A.B.C." (1912). Both were set in the 21st century in
Kipling's Aerial Board of Control universe. They read like modern hard
science fiction, and introduced the literary technique known as
indirect exposition, which would later become one of the science
fiction writer Robert Heinlein's hallmarks. This technique is one that
Kipling picked up in India, and used to solve the problem of his
English readers not understanding much about Indian society when
writing 'The Jungle Book'.
Nobel laureate and beyond
===========================
In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, having been
nominated in that year by Charles Oman, professor at the University of
Oxford. The prize citation said it was "in consideration of the power
of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and
remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of
this world-famous author." Nobel prizes had been established in 1901
and Kipling was the first English-language recipient. At the award
ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December 1907, the Permanent Secretary of
the Swedish Academy, Carl David af Wirsén, praised both Kipling and
three centuries of English literature:
The Swedish Academy, in awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature this
year to Rudyard Kipling, desires to pay a tribute of homage to the
literature of England, so rich in manifold glories, and to the
greatest genius in the realm of narrative that that country has
produced in our times.
To "book-end" this achievement came the publication of two connected
poetry and story collections: 'Puck of Pook's Hill' (1906), and
'Rewards and Fairies' (1910). The latter contained the poem "If--". In
a 1995 BBC opinion poll it was voted the UK's favourite poem. This
exhortation to self-control and stoicism is arguably Kipling's most
famous poem.
Such was Kipling's popularity that he was asked by his friend Max
Aitken to intervene in the 1911 Canadian federal election on behalf of
the Conservatives. In 1911 the major issue in Canada was a reciprocity
treaty with the United States signed by the Liberal Prime Minister Sir
Wilfrid Laurier and vigorously opposed by the Conservatives under Sir
Robert Borden. On 7 September 1911, the 'Montreal Daily Star'
newspaper published a front-page appeal against the agreement by
Kipling, who wrote: "It is her own soul that Canada risks today. Once
that soul is pawned for any consideration, Canada must inevitably
conform to the commercial, legal, financial, social, and ethical
standards which will be imposed on her by the sheer admitted weight of
the United States." At the time, the 'Montreal Daily Star' was
Canada's most read newspaper. Over the next week, Kipling's appeal was
reprinted in every English newspaper in Canada and is credited with
helping to turn Canadian public opinion against the Liberal
government.
Kipling sympathised with the anti-Home Rule stance of Irish Unionists,
who opposed Irish autonomy. He was friends with Edward Carson, the
Dublin-born leader of Ulster Unionism, who raised the Ulster
Volunteers to prevent Home Rule in Ireland. Kipling wrote in a letter
to a friend that Ireland was not a nation, and that before the English
arrived in 1169, the Irish were a gang of cattle thieves living in
savagery and killing each other while "writing dreary poems" about it
all. In his view it was only British rule that allowed Ireland to
advance. A visit to Ireland in 1911 confirmed Kipling's prejudices. He
wrote that the Irish countryside was beautiful, but spoiled by what he
called the ugly homes of Irish farmers, with Kipling adding that God
had made the Irish into poets having "deprived them of love of line or
knowledge of colour." In contrast, Kipling had nothing but praise for
the "decent folk" of the Protestant minority and Unionist Ulster, free
from the threat of "constant mob violence".
Kipling wrote the poem "'Ulster'" in 1912, reflecting his Unionist
politics. Kipling often referred to the Irish Unionists as "our
party". Kipling had no sympathy or understanding for Irish
nationalism, seeing Home Rule as an act of treason by the government
of the Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith that would plunge Ireland
into the Dark Ages and allow the Irish Catholic majority to oppress
the Protestant minority. The scholar David Gilmour wrote that
Kipling's lack of understanding of Ireland could be seen in his attack
on John Redmond - the Anglophile leader of the Irish Parliamentary
Party who wanted Home Rule because he believed it was the best way of
keeping the United Kingdom together - as a traitor working to break up
the United Kingdom. 'Ulster' was first publicly read at an Unionist
rally in Belfast, where the largest Union Jack ever made was unfolded.
Kipling admitted it was meant to strike a "hard blow" against the
Asquith government's Home Rule bill: "Rebellion, rapine, hate,
Oppression, wrong and greed, Are loosed to rule our fate, By England's
act and deed." 'Ulster' generated much controversy with the
Conservative MP Sir Mark Sykes - who as a Unionist was opposed to the
Home Rule bill - condemning 'Ulster' in 'The Morning Post' as a
"direct appeal to ignorance and a deliberate attempt to foster
religious hate."
Kipling was a staunch opponent of Bolshevism, a position which he
shared with his friend Henry Rider Haggard. The two had bonded on
Kipling's arrival in London in 1889, largely on the strength of their
shared opinions, and remained lifelong friends.
Freemasonry
=============
According to the English magazine 'Masonic Illustrated', Kipling
became a Freemason in about 1885, before the usual minimum age of 21,
being initiated into Hope and Perseverance Lodge No. 782 in Lahore. He
later wrote to 'The Times', "I was Secretary for some years of the
Lodge... which included Brethren of at least four creeds. I was
entered [as an Apprentice] by a member from Brahmo Somaj, a Hindu,
passed [to the degree of Fellow Craft] by a Mohammedan, and raised [to
the degree of Master Mason] by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an Indian
Jew." Kipling received not only the three degrees of Craft Masonry but
also the side degrees of Mark Master Mason and Royal Ark Mariner.
Kipling so loved his Masonic experience that he memorialised its
ideals in his poem "The Mother Lodge", and used the fraternity and its
symbols as vital plot devices in his novella 'The Man Who Would Be
King'.
First World War (1914–1918)
======================================================================
At the beginning of the First World War Kipling, like others, wrote
pamphlets and poems enthusiastically supporting the UK war aim of
restoring Belgium after it had been occupied by Germany, together with
generalised statements that Britain was standing up for the cause of
good. In September 1914 Kipling was asked by the government to write
propaganda, to which he agreed. Kipling's pamphlets and stories were
popular with the British people during the war. His major themes were
to glorify the British military as 'the' place for heroic men to be,
while citing German atrocities against Belgian civilians and stories
of women brutalised by a horrific war unleashed by Germany, yet
surviving and triumphing in spite of their suffering.
Kipling was enraged by reports of the Rape of Belgium together with
the sinking of the in 1915, which he saw as a deeply inhumane act,
leading him to view the war as a crusade for civilisation against
barbarism. In a 1915 speech, Kipling declared, "There was no crime, no
cruelty, no abomination that the mind of men can conceive of which the
German has not perpetrated, is not perpetrating, and will not
perpetrate if he is allowed to go on... Today, there are only two
divisions in the world... human beings and Germans."
Alongside his passionate antipathy towards Germany, Kipling was
privately deeply critical of how the war was being fought by the
British Army. Shocked by the heavy losses that the British
Expeditionary Force had taken by the autumn of 1914, he blamed the
entire pre-war generation of British politicians who, Kipling argued,
had failed to learn the lessons of the Boer War. Thus thousands of
British soldiers were paying with their lives for their failure in the
fields of France and Belgium.
Kipling scorned men who shirked duty in the First World War. In "The
New Army in Training" (1915), He concluded by saying:
This much we can realise, even though we are so close to it, the old
safe instinct saves us from triumph and exultation. But what will be
the position in years to come of the young man who has deliberately
elected to outcaste himself from this all-embracing brotherhood? What
of his family, and, above all, what of his descendants, when the books
have been closed and the last balance struck of sacrifice and sorrow
in every hamlet, village, parish, suburb, city, shire, district,
province, and Dominion throughout the Empire?
In 1914 Kipling was one of 53 British authorsa number that included H.
G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Thomas Hardywho signed their names to
the "Authors' Declaration." This manifesto declared that the German
invasion of Belgium had been a brutal crime, and that Britain "could
not without dishonour have refused to take part in the present war."
Death of John Kipling
=======================
Kipling's only son, John, was killed in action at the Battle of Loos
in September 1915, at age 18. John initially wanted to join the Royal
Navy, but having had his application turned down due to poor eyesight,
he applied for military service as an army officer. Again, his
eyesight was an issue during the medical examination. He tried twice
to enlist, but was rejected. His father had been lifelong friends with
Lord Roberts, former commander-in-chief of the British Army, and
colonel of the Irish Guards, and at Rudyard's request, John was
accepted into the Irish Guards.
John Kipling was sent to Loos two days into the battle in a
reinforcement contingent. He was last seen stumbling through the mud
blindly, with a possible facial injury. A body identified as his was
found in 1992, although that identification has been challenged. In
2015 the Commonwealth War Grave Commission confirmed that it had
correctly identified the burial place of John Kipling; they recorded
his date of death as 27 September 1915, and that he is buried at St
Mary's A.D.S. Cemetery, Haisnes.
After his son's death, in a poem titled "Epitaphs of the War", Kipling
wrote "If any question why we died / Tell them, because our fathers
lied." Critics have speculated that these words may express Kipling's
guilt over his role in arranging John's commission. Professor Tracy
Bilsing contends that the line refers to Kipling's disgust that
British leaders failed to learn the lessons of the Boer War, and were
unprepared for the struggle with Germany in 1914, with the "lie" of
the "fathers" being that the British Army was prepared for war when it
was not.
John's death has been linked to Kipling's 1916 poem "My Boy Jack", by
the play 'My Boy Jack' and its subsequent television adaptation, along
with the documentary 'Rudyard Kipling: A Remembrance Tale'. However,
the poem was originally published at the head of a story about the
Battle of Jutland and appears to refer to a death at sea; the "Jack"
referred to may be the boy VC Jack Cornwell, or perhaps a generic
"Jack Tar". In the Kipling family, Jack was the name of the family
dog, while John Kipling was always John, making the identification of
the protagonist of "My Boy Jack" with John Kipling questionable.
However, Kipling was emotionally devastated by the death of his son.
He is said to have assuaged his grief by reading the novels of Jane
Austen aloud to his wife and daughter. During the war, he wrote a
booklet 'The Fringes of the Fleet' containing essays and poems on
various nautical subjects of the war. Some of these were set to music
by the English composer Edward Elgar.
Kipling became friends with a French soldier named Maurice Hammoneau,
whose life had been saved in the First World War when his copy of
'Kim', which he had in his left breast pocket, stopped a bullet.
Hammoneau presented Kipling with the book, with bullet still embedded,
and his Croix de Guerre as a token of gratitude. They continued to
correspond, and when Hammoneau had a son, Kipling insisted on
returning the book and medal.
On 1 August 1918 the poem "The Old Volunteer" appeared under his name
in 'The Times'. The next day, he wrote to the newspaper to disclaim
authorship and a correction appeared. Although 'The Times' employed a
private detective to investigate, the detective appears to have
suspected Kipling of being the author, and the identity of the hoaxer
was never established.
After the war (1918–1936)
======================================================================
Partly in response to John's death, Kipling joined Sir Fabian Ware's
Imperial War Graves Commission (now the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission), the group responsible for the garden-like British war
graves that can be found to this day dotted along the former Western
Front and the other places in the world where British Empire troops
lie buried. His main contributions to the project were his selection
of the biblical phrase, "Their Name Liveth For Evermore"
(Ecclesiasticus 44.14, KJV), found on the Stones of Remembrance in
larger war cemeteries, and his suggestion of the phrase "Known unto
God" for the gravestones of unidentified servicemen. He also chose the
inscription "The Glorious Dead" on the Cenotaph, Whitehall, London.
Additionally, he wrote a two-volume history of the Irish Guards, his
son's regiment, published in 1923 and seen as one of the finest
examples of regimental history.
Kipling's short story "The Gardener" depicts visits to the war
cemeteries, and the poem "The King's Pilgrimage" (1922) a journey
which King George V made, touring the cemeteries and memorials under
construction by the Imperial War Graves Commission. With the
increasing prevalence of the automobile, Kipling became a motoring
correspondent for the British press, writing enthusiastically of trips
around England and abroad, though he was usually driven by a
chauffeur.
After the war, Kipling was sceptical of the Fourteen Points and the
League of Nations, but had hopes that the United States would abandon
isolationism and the post-war world be dominated by an
Anglo-French-American alliance. He hoped the United States would take
on a League of Nations mandate for Armenia as the best way of
preventing isolationism, and hoped that Theodore Roosevelt, whom
Kipling admired, would again become president. Kipling was saddened by
Roosevelt's death in 1919, believing him to be the only American
politician capable of keeping the United States in the "game" of world
politics.
Kipling was hostile towards communism, writing of the Bolshevik
take-over in 1917 that one sixth of the world had "passed bodily out
of civilization". In a poem in 1918 Kipling wrote of Soviet Russia
that everything good in Russia had been destroyed by the Bolsheviks -
all that was left was "the sound of weeping and the sight of burning
fire, and the shadow of a people trampled into the mire."
In 1920 Kipling co-founded the Liberty League with Haggard and Lord
Sydenham. This short-lived enterprise focused on promoting classic
liberal ideals as a response to the rising power of communist
tendencies within Great Britain, or as Kipling put it, "to combat the
advance of Bolshevism."
In 1922 Kipling, having referred to the work of engineers in some of
his poems, such as "The Sons of Martha", "Sappers" and "McAndrew's
Hymn", and in other writings, including short-story anthologies such
as 'The Day's Work', was asked by a University of Toronto civil
engineering professor, Herbert E. T. Haultain, for assistance in
developing a dignified obligation and ceremony for graduating
engineering students. Kipling was enthusiastic in his response and
shortly produced both, formally titled "The Ritual of the Calling of
an Engineer". Today, engineering graduates all across Canada are
presented with an iron ring at a ceremony to remind them of their
obligation to society. In 1922 Kipling became Lord Rector of the
University of St Andrews, a three-year position.
Kipling, as a Francophile, argued strongly for an Anglo-French
alliance to uphold the peace, calling Britain and France in 1920 the
"twin fortresses of European civilization". Similarly, Kipling
repeatedly warned against revising the Treaty of Versailles in
Germany's favour, which he predicted would lead to a new world war. An
admirer of Raymond Poincaré, Kipling was one of few British
intellectuals who supported the French Occupation of the Ruhr in 1923,
at a time when the British government and most public opinion was
against the French position. In contrast to the popular British view
of Poincaré as a cruel bully intent on impoverishing Germany with
unreasonable reparations, Kipling argued that he was rightfully trying
to preserve France as a great power in the face of an unfavourable
situation. Kipling argued that even before 1914, Germany's larger
economy and higher birth rate had made that country stronger than
France; with much of France devastated by war and the French suffering
heavy losses meant that its low birth rate would give it trouble,
while Germany was mostly undamaged and still with a higher birth rate.
So he reasoned that the future would bring German domination if
Versailles were revised in Germany's favour, and it was madness for
Britain to press France to do so.
In 1924 Kipling was opposed to the Labour government of Ramsay
MacDonald as "Bolshevism without bullets". He believed Labour was a
communist front organisation, and "excited orders and instructions
from Moscow" would expose Labour as such to the British people.
Kipling's views were on the political right. Though he admired Benito
Mussolini to some extent in the 1920s, he was against fascism, calling
Oswald Mosley "a bounder and an 'arriviste'". By 1935 he was calling
Mussolini a deranged and dangerous egomaniac and in 1933 wrote, "The
Hitlerites are out for blood".
Despite his anti-communism, Kipling was popular with Russian readers
in the interwar period. Many younger Russian poets and writers, such
as Konstantin Simonov, were influenced by him. Kipling's clarity of
style, use of colloquial language and employment of rhythm and rhyme
were seen as major innovations in poetry that appealed to many younger
Russian poets. Though it was obligatory for Soviet journals to begin
translations of Kipling with an attack on him as a "fascist" and an
"imperialist", such was Kipling's popularity with Russian readers that
his works were not banned in the Soviet Union until 1939, with the
signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The ban was lifted in 1941
after Operation Barbarossa, when Britain become a Soviet ally, but
imposed again with the Cold War in 1946.
Many older editions of Rudyard Kipling's books have a swastika printed
on the cover, associated with a picture of an elephant carrying a
lotus flower, reflecting the influence of Indian culture. Kipling's
use of the swastika was based on the Indian sun symbol conferring good
luck and the Sanskrit word meaning "fortunate" or "well-being". He
used the swastika symbol in both right and left-facing forms, and it
was in general use by others at the time.
In a note to Edward Bok after the death of Lockwood Kipling in 1911,
Rudyard said: "I am sending with this for your acceptance, as some
little memory of my father to whom you were so kind, the original of
one of the plaques that he used to make for me. I thought it being the
Swastika would be appropriate for your Swastika. May it bring you even
more good fortune." Once the swastika had become widely associated
with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Kipling ordered that it should no
longer adorn his books. Less than a year before his death, Kipling
gave a speech (titled "An Undefended Island") to the Royal Society of
St George on 6 May 1935, warning of the danger which Nazi Germany
posed to Britain.
Kipling scripted the first Royal Christmas Message, delivered via the
BBC's Empire Service by George V in 1932. In 1934, he published a
short story in 'The Strand Magazine', "Proofs of Holy Writ",
postulating that William Shakespeare had helped to polish the prose of
the King James Bible.
Death
======================================================================
Kipling kept writing until the early 1930s, but at a slower pace and
with less success than before. On the night of 12 January 1936 he
suffered a haemorrhage in his small intestine. He underwent surgery,
but died at Middlesex Hospital in London less than a week later on 18
January 1936, at the age of 70, of a perforated duodenal ulcer.
Kipling's body lay in state in the Fitzrovia Chapel, part of Middlesex
Hospital, after his death, and is commemorated with a plaque near the
altar. His death had previously been incorrectly announced in a
magazine, to which he wrote, "I've just read that I am dead. Don't
forget to delete me from your list of subscribers."
The pallbearers at the funeral included Kipling's cousin, Prime
Minister Stanley Baldwin, and the marble casket was covered by a Union
Jack. Kipling was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in north-west
London, and his ashes interred at Poets' Corner, part of the south
transept of Westminster Abbey, next to the graves of Charles Dickens
and Thomas Hardy. Kipling's will was proven on 6 April, with his
estate valued at £168,141 2s. 11d. (roughly equivalent to £ in ).
Legacy
======================================================================
In 2002 Kipling's 'Just So Stories' featured on a series of UK postage
stamps issued by the Royal Mail to mark the centenary of the
publication of the book. In 2010, the International Astronomical Union
approved the naming of a crater on the planet Mercury after Kipling -
one of ten newly discovered impact craters observed by the MESSENGER
spacecraft in 2008-2009. In 2012 an extinct species of crocodile,
'Goniopholis kiplingi', was named in his honour "in recognition for
his enthusiasm for natural sciences." More than 50 unpublished poems
by Kipling, discovered by the American scholar Thomas Pinney, were
released for the first time in March 2013.
Kipling's writing has strongly influenced that of others. His stories
for adults remain in print and have garnered high praise from writers
such as Randall Jarrell, who wrote: "After you have read Kipling's
fifty or seventy-five best stories you realize that few men have
written this many stories of this much merit, and that very few have
written more and better stories."
His children's stories remain popular and his 'Jungle Books' made into
several films. The first was made by the producer Alexander Korda.
Other films have been produced by The Walt Disney Company. A number of
his poems were set to music by Percy Grainger. A series of short films
based on some of his stories was broadcast by the BBC in 1964.
Kipling's work is still popular today.
The poet T. S. Eliot edited 'A Choice of Kipling's Verse' (1941) with
an introductory essay. Eliot was aware of the complaints that had been
levelled against Kipling and he dismissed them one by one: that
Kipling is "a Tory" using his verse to transmit right wing political
views, or "a journalist" pandering to popular taste; while Eliot
writes: "I cannot find any justification for the charge that he held a
doctrine of race superiority." Eliot finds instead:
Of Kipling's verse, such as his 'Barrack-Room Ballads', Eliot writes
"of a number of poets who have written great poetry, only... a very
few whom I should call great verse writers. And unless I am mistaken,
Kipling's position in this class is not only high, but unique."
In response to Eliot, George Orwell wrote a long consideration of
Kipling's work for 'Horizon' in 1942, noting that although as a "jingo
imperialist" Kipling was "morally insensitive and aesthetically
disgusting", his work had many qualities which ensured that while
"every enlightened person has despised him... nine-tenths of those
enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still
there.":
In 1939 the poet W. H. Auden celebrated Kipling in a similarly
ambiguous way in his elegy for W. B. Yeats. Auden deleted this section
from later editions of his poems.
Time, that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language, and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at his feet.
Time, that with this strange excuse,
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
The poet Alison Brackenbury writes "Kipling is poetry's Dickens, an
outsider and journalist with an unrivalled ear for sound and speech."
The English folk singer Peter Bellamy was a lover of Kipling's poetry,
much of which he believed to have been influenced by English
traditional folk forms. He recorded several albums of Kipling's verse
set to traditional airs, or to tunes of his own composition written in
traditional style. However, in the case of the bawdy folk song, "The
Bastard King of England", which is commonly credited to Kipling, it is
believed that the song is actually misattributed.
Kipling often is quoted in discussions of contemporary British
political and social issues. In 1911 Kipling wrote the poem "The Reeds
of Runnymede" that celebrated Magna Carta, and summoned up a vision of
the "stubborn Englishry" determined to defend their rights. In 1996
the following verses of the poem were quoted by the former prime
minister Margaret Thatcher warning against the encroachment of the
European Union on national sovereignty:
At Runnymede, at Runnymede,
Oh, hear the reeds at Runnymede:
"You musn't sell, delay, deny,
A freeman's right or liberty.
It wakes the stubborn Englishry,
We saw 'em roused at Runnymede!"
... And still when Mob or Monarch lays
Too rude a hand on English ways,
The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,
Across the reeds at Runnymede.
And Thames, that knows the mood of kings,
And crowds and priests and suchlike things,
Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings
Their warning down from Runnymede!
The political singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, who attempts to build a
left-wing English nationalism in contrast with the more common
right-wing English nationalism, has attempted to 'reclaim' Kipling for
an inclusive sense of Englishness. Kipling's enduring relevance has
been noted in the United States, as it has become involved in
Afghanistan and other areas about which he wrote.
Camp Mowglis and Wolf Cubs
============================
In 1903 Kipling gave permission to Elizabeth Ford Holt to borrow
themes from the 'Jungle Books' to establish Camp Mowglis, a summer
camp for boys on the shores of Newfound Lake in New Hampshire, US.
Throughout their lives, Kipling and his wife Carrie maintained an
active interest in Camp Mowglis, which still continues the traditions
that Kipling inspired. Buildings at Mowglis have names such as Akela,
Toomai, Baloo and Panther. The campers are referred to as "the Pack",
from the youngest "Cubs" to the oldest living in "Den".
Kipling's writings were very similarly used as the basis of the 1916
Wolf Cubs programmes of Robert Baden-Powell and his Boy Scouts
Association. Wolf Cubs use themes from 'Jungle Book' stories and 'Kim'
and play "Kim's Game". The Wolf Cubs were named after Mowgli's adopted
wolf family, and adult helpers of Wolf Cub (now Cub) Packs take names
from 'The Jungle Book', especially the adult leader called 'Akela'
after the leader of the Seeonee wolf pack.
Kipling's Burwash home
========================
After the death of Kipling's wife in 1939 his house, Bateman's in
Burwash, East Sussex, where he had lived from 1902 until 1936, was
bequeathed to the National Trust. It is now a public museum dedicated
to him. Elsie Bambridge, his only child who lived to maturity, died
childless in 1976, and bequeathed her copyrights to the National
Trust, which in turn donated them to the University of Sussex to
ensure better public access.
The novelist and poet Sir Kingsley Amis wrote a poem, "Kipling at
Bateman's", after visiting Burwash (where Amis's father lived briefly
in the 1960s) as part of a BBC television series on writers and their
houses.
In 2003 the actor Ralph Fiennes read excerpts from Kipling's works
from the study in Bateman's, including 'The Jungle Book', 'Something
of Myself', 'Kim', and 'The Just So Stories', and poems, including "If
..." and "My Boy Jack", for a CD published by the National Trust.
Reputation in India
=====================
In modern-day India, whence he drew much of his material, Kipling's
reputation remains controversial, especially among modern nationalists
and some post-colonial critics. It has long been alleged that Rudyard
Kipling was a prominent supporter of Colonel Reginald Dyer, who was
responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar (in Punjab),
and that Kipling called Dyer "the man who saved India" and initiated
collections for the latter's homecoming prize. Kim Wagner, senior
lecturer in British Imperial History at Queen Mary University of
London, says that while Kipling did make a £10 donation, he never
made that remark. Similarly, author Derek Sayer states that Dyer was
"widely lauded as the saviour of Punjab", that Kipling had no part in
organising 'The Morning Post' fund, and that Kipling only sent £10,
making the laconic observation: "He did his duty, as he saw it."
Subhash Chopra also writes in his book 'Kipling Sahib - the Raj
Patriot' that the benefit fund was started by 'The Morning Post'
newspaper, not by Kipling. 'The Economic Times' attributes the phrase
"The Man Who Saved India" along with the Dyer benefit fund to 'The
Morning Post' as well.
Many contemporary Indian intellectuals, such as Ashis Nandy, have a
nuanced view of Kipling's legacy. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime
minister of independent India, often described Kipling's novel 'Kim'
as one of his favourite books.
G. V. Desani, an Indian writer of fiction, had a more negative opinion
of Kipling. He alludes to Kipling in his novel 'All About H. Hatterr':
The Indian writer Khushwant Singh wrote in 2001 that he considers
Kipling's "If--" "the essence of the message of the 'Gita' in
English", referring to the 'Bhagavad Gita', an ancient Indian
scripture. The writer R. K. Narayan (1906-2001) said: "Kipling, the
supposed expert writer on India, showed a better understanding of the
mind of the animals in the jungle than of the men in an Indian home or
the marketplace." The politician and writer Shashi Tharoor commented
"Kipling, that flatulent voice of Victorian imperialism, would wax
eloquent on the noble duty to bring law to those without it".
In November 2007 it was announced that Kipling's birth home within the
campus of the Sir J. J. School of Art in Mumbai would be turned into a
museum celebrating the author and his works. A plaque at the entrance
of the Kipling Bungalow, located on campus, is engraved with the
words: "Rudyard Kipling, son of Lockwood Kipling, first dean of Sir JJ
School of Art, was born here on December 30, 1865." A bust of Rudyard
Kipling also exists there.
Art
======================================================================
Although he was best known as an author, Kipling was also an
accomplished artist. Influenced by Aubrey Beardsley, Kipling produced
many illustrations for his stories, for example a 1926 edition of his
'Just So Stories'.
Screen portrayals
======================================================================
* Reginald Sheffield portrayed Kipling in 'Gunga Din' (1939).
* Paul Scardon portrayed Kipling in 'The Adventures of Mark Twain'
(1944).
* David Watson portrayed Kipling in 'The Time Tunnel' episode "Night
of the Long Knives" (1966).
* Christopher Plummer portrayed Kipling in 'The Man Who Would Be King'
(1975).
* David Haig portrayed Kipling in 'My Boy Jack' (2007).
* Seán Cullen portrayed Kipling in episode 3 of season 16 "The Write
Stuff" (September 26, 2022) of the Canadian television period
detective series Murdoch Mysteries.
Bibliography
======================================================================
Kipling's bibliography includes fiction (including novels and short
stories), non-fiction and poetry. Several of his works were
collaborations.
See also
======================================================================
* --Ship mentioned in one of Kipling's poems
* Kipling Trail
* List of Nobel laureates in Literature
Further reading
======================================================================
; Biography and criticism
* Allen, Charles (2007). 'Kipling Sahib: India and the Making of
Rudyard Kipling', Abacus. .
* Bauer, Helen Pike (1994). 'Rudyard Kipling: A Study of the Short
Fiction'. New York: Twayne
* Birkenhead, Lord (1978). 'Rudyard Kipling'. Worthing: Littlehampton
Book Services Ltd. .
*
* Croft-Cooke, Rupert (1948). 'Rudyard Kipling'. The English Novelists
series. London: Home & Van Thal Ltd.
* David, C. (2007). 'Rudyard Kipling: a critical study', New Delhi:
Anmol. .
* Dillingham, William B (2005). 'Rudyard Kipling: Hell and Heroism'.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan. .
* Gilbert, Elliot L. ed. (1965). 'Kipling and the Critics' (New York:
New York University Press).
* Gilmour, David (2003). 'The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of
Rudyard Kipling' New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. .
* Green, Roger Lancelyn, ed. (1971). 'Kipling: the Critical Heritage'.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
* Gross, John, ed. (1972). 'Rudyard Kipling: the Man, his Work and his
World'. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
* Hussain, Syed Sajjad (1964). 'Kipling and India: An Inquiry into the
Nature and Extent of Kipling's Knowledge of the Indian Sub-Continent'.
Dacca: Dacca University Press .
* Kemp, Sandra (1988). 'Kipling's Hidden Narratives'. Oxford:
Blackwell.
* Lycett, Andrew (1999). 'Rudyard Kipling'. London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson. .
* Lycett, Andrew (ed.) (2010). 'Kipling Abroad', I. B. Tauris. .
* Mallett, Phillip (2003). 'Rudyard Kipling: A Literary Life'.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
* Montefiore, Jan (ed.) (2013). 'In Time's Eye: Essays on Rudyard
Kipling'. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
* Narita, Tatsushi (2011). 'T. S. Eliot and his Youth as 'A Literary
Columbus. Nagoya: Kougaku Shuppan.
* Nicolson, Adam (2001). 'Carrie Kipling 1862-1939 : The Hated Wife'.
Faber & Faber, London. .
* Ricketts, Harry (2001). 'Rudyard Kipling: A Life'. New York: Da Capo
Press .
* Rooney, Caroline, and Kaori Nagai, eds. (2011). 'Kipling and Beyond:
Patriotism, Globalisation, and Postcolonialism'. Palgrave Macmillan;
214 pp. Scholarly essays on Kipling's "boy heroes of empire", Kipling
and C.L.R. James, and Kipling and the new American empire, etc.
* Rutherford, Andrew, ed. (1964). 'Kipling's Mind and Art'. Edinburgh
and London: Oliver and Boyd.
* Sergeant, David (2013). 'Kipling's Art of Fiction 1884-1901'.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Seymour-Smith, Martin (1989). 'Rudyard Kipling'. New York: St.
Martin's Press. .
* Shippey, Tom, "Rudyard Kipling", in: 'Cahier Calin: Makers of the
Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of William Calin', ed. Richard Utz and
Elizabeth Emery (Kalamazoo, MI: Studies in Medievalism, 2011), pp.
21-23.
* Tompkins, J. M. S. (1959). 'The Art of Rudyard Kipling'. London:
Methuen. [
https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6061068 OOnline
edition] .
* Walsh, Sue (2010). 'Kipling's Children's Literature: Language,
Identity, and Constructions of Childhood'. Farnham: Ashgate.
* Wilson, Angus (1978). 'The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling: His Life
and Works'. New York: The Viking Press. .
External links
======================================================================
* [
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/ The Kipling Society website]
*
* [
http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=kipling_rudyard Rudyard
Kipling] at the Encyclopedia of Fantasy
* [
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/kipling_rudyard Rudyard
Kipling] at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
* [
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/names/102514 Rudyard Kipling
recordings] at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
; Works
*
*
*[
https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/rudyard-kipling-books.html Rudyard
Kipling] at Global Grey Ebooks
*[
http://noblib.internet-box.ch/NLEW.php?authorid=8 List of works at
the Works Catalogues of Laureates of the Nobel Prize for Literature]
*
*
*[
https://wikilivres.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling Works by Rudyard
Kipling] (not public domain in US, so not available on Wikisource)
; Resources
*[
https://www.thekeep.info/collections/keep-partners/university-of-sussex-special-collections/kipling-papers-wimpole-archive-sxms-38/
Rudyard Kipling Papers and other Kipling related collections] at The
Keep, University of Sussex
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20090309171106/http://www.marlboro.edu/resources/library/collections/kipling/
The Rudyard Kipling Collection] maintained by Marlboro College.
*[
https://www.poemist.com/rudyard-kipling/poems The Rudyard Kipling
Poems] by Poemist.
*[
https://web.archive.org/web/20110925191249/http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/kipling.html
Rudyard Kipling: The Books I Leave Behind] exhibition, related
podcast, and digital images maintained by the Beinecke Rare Book &
Manuscript Library, Yale University
*
*[
https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/134.html The Rudyard Kipling
Collections] From the [
https://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/ Rare Book and
Special Collections Division] at the Library of Congress
* Archival material at
[
https://library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/8697 Leeds
University Library]
*
* A. P. Watt & Son records relating to Rudyard Kipling. General
Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale
University.
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=========
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling
