Joseph Rudyard Kipling (/ˈrʌdjərd/RUD-yərd; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)[1] was an English journalist, novelist, poet and short-story writer. He was born inBritish India, which inspired much of his work.
Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United Kingdom's most popular writers.[3]Henry James said "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known."[3] In 1907, he was awarded theNobel Prize in Literature, as the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and at 41, its youngest recipient to date.[6] He was also sounded out for theBritish Poet Laureateship and several times for aknighthood, but declined both.[7] Following his death in 1936, his ashes were interred atPoets' Corner inWestminster Abbey.
Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed with the political and social climate of the age.[8][9] The contrasting views of him continued for much of the 20th century.[10][11] The literary criticDouglas 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."[12]
John Lockwood and Alice met in 1863 and courted atRudyard Lake inRudyard, Staffordshire, England. They married and moved to India in 1865 after John Lockwood had accepted the position as Professor at the School of Art.[18] 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 painterEdward Burne-Jones, and her sister Agnes toEdward Poynter. A third sister, Louisa, was the mother of Kipling's most prominent relative, his first cousinStanley Baldwin, who was theBritish prime minister three times in the 1920s and 1930s.[19]
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.[20] Although a cottage bears a plaque noting it as his birth site, the original building was torn down and replaced.[21][22] 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.[23]
Mother of Cities to me, For I was born in her gate, Between the palms and the sea, Where the world-end steamers wait.[24]
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."[25]
Kipling referred to such conflicts. For example: "In the afternoon heats before we took our sleep, she (the Portugueseayah, or nanny) or Meeta (the Hindubearer, 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."[26]
Kipling's days of "strong light and darkness" in Bombay ended when he was five.[26] 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 toSouthsea,Portsmouth – to live with a couple whoboarded children of British nationals living abroad.[27] 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 themerchant navy, and Sarah Holloway – at their house, Lorne Lodge, 4 Campbell Road, Southsea.[28] Kipling referred to the place as "the House of Desolation".[26]
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 ofbullying, but this was calculatedtorture – 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."[26]
Kipling's England: A map of England showing Kipling's homes
Trix fared better at Lorne Lodge; Mrs Holloway apparently hoped that Trix would eventually marry the Holloways' son.[29] 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, inFulham, London, which Kipling called "a paradise which I verily believe saved me".[26]
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."[26]
Alice took the children during spring 1877 to Goldings Farm atLoughton, where a carefree summer and autumn was spent on the farm and adjoining Forest, some of the time withStanley Baldwin. In January 1878, Kipling was admitted to theUnited 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 storiesStalky & Co. (1899).[29] 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).[29]
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.[29] His parents lacked the wherewithal to finance him,[15] and so Kipling's father obtained a job for him inLahore, where the father served as Principal of theMayo College of Art and Curator of theLahore Museum. Kipling was to beassistant editor of a local newspaper, theCivil 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."[26] 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."[26]
The former, which was the newspaper Kipling was to call his "mistress and most true love",[26] 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.[4]
In an article printed in theChums 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."[30] The anecdote continues: "In the hot weather when he (Kipling) wore only white trousers and a thin vest, he is said to have resembled aDalmatian 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 (todayShimla), a well-knownhill station and the summer capital of British India. By then it was the practice for theViceroy of India and government to move to Simla for six months, and the town became a "centre of power as well as pleasure".[4] Kipling's family became annual visitors to Simla, and Lockwood Kipling was asked to serve inChrist 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 theGazette.[4] "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."[26]
Back in Lahore, 39 of his stories appeared in theGazette between November 1886 and June 1887. Kipling included most of them inPlain Tales from the Hills, his first prose collection, published inCalcutta 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 theGazette's larger sister newspaper,The Pioneer, in Allahabad in theUnited Provinces, where he worked as assistant editor and lived in Belvedere House from 1888 to 1889.[31][32]
Rudyard Kipling (right) with his father John Lockwood Kipling (left), c. 1890
Kipling was discharged fromThe 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 thePlain Tales for £50; in addition, he received six months' salary fromThe Pioneer,in lieu of notice.[26]
Kipling decided to use the money to move to London, the literary centre of theBritish Empire. On 9 March 1889, he left India, travelling first to San Francisco viaRangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. Kipling was favourably impressed by Japan, calling its people and ways "gracious folk and fair manners".[33] TheNobel Prize committee cited Kipling's writing on the manners and customs of the Japanese when they awarded his Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.[34]
Kipling later wrote that he "had lost his heart" to ageisha 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."[33] Kipling then travelled through the United States, writing articles forThe Pioneer that were later published inFrom Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel.[35]
Starting his North American travels in San Francisco, Kipling went north toPortland, Oregon, thenSeattle, Washington, up toVictoria andVancouver, British Columbia, throughMedicine Hat, Alberta, back into the US toYellowstone National Park, down toSalt Lake City, then east toOmaha, Nebraska and on to Chicago, then toBeaver, Pennsylvania on theOhio 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.[36] From Beaver, Kipling went toChautauqua with Professor Hill, and later toNiagara Falls, Toronto, Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.[35]
In the course of this journey he metMark Twain inElmira, 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."[37]
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 toTom 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.[37] 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."[37] 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."[37] Kipling then crossed the Atlantic toLiverpool in October 1889. He soon made his début in the London literary world, to great acclaim.[3]
In London Kipling had several stories accepted by magazines. He found a place to live for the next two years atVilliers Street, nearCharing 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 thefanlight ofGatti'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 theShot tower walked up and down with his traffic.[38]
In the next two years, he published a novel,The Light That Failed, had anervous 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).[15] In 1891, as advised by his doctors, Kipling took another sea voyage, to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and once again India.[15] He cut short his plans to spend Christmas with his family in India when he heard of Balestier's sudden death fromtyphoid fever and decided to return to London immediately. Before his return, he had used thetelegram 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.[15] Meanwhile, late in 1891, a collection of his short stories on the British in India,Life's Handicap, was published in London.[39]
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."[26] The wedding was held atAll Souls Church inLangham Place, Central London.Henry James gave away the bride.[40]
Kipling in his study at Naulakha, Vermont, US, 1895
Kipling and his wife settled upon a honeymoon that took them first to the United States (including a stop at the Balestier family estate nearBrattleboro, Vermont) and then to Japan.[15] On arriving inYokohama, they discovered that their bank,The New Oriental Banking Corporation, had failed. Taking this loss in their stride, they returned to the US, back toVermont – Carrie by this time was pregnant with their first child – and rented a small cottage on a farm near Brattleboro for $10 a month.[26] According to Kipling, "We furnished it with a simplicity that fore-ran thehire-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."[26]
In this house, which they calledBliss 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..."[26]
Rudyard Kipling's America 1892–1896, 1899
It was also in this cottage that the first dawnings ofThe 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 theMasonic Lions of my childhood's magazine, and a phrase inHaggard'sNada 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 aboutMowgli and animals, which later grew into the twoJungle Books."[26]
With Josephine's arrival,Bliss Cottage was felt to be congested, so eventually the couple bought land – 10 acres (4.0 ha) on a rocky hillside overlooking theConnecticut River – from Carrie's brother Beatty Balestier and built their own house. Kipling named thisNaulakha, in honour of Wolcott and of their collaboration, and this time the name was spelt correctly.[15] From his early years inLahore (1882–87), Kipling had become enamoured with theMughal architecture,[41] especially theNaulakha pavilion situated inLahore Fort, which eventually inspired the title of his novel as well as the house.[42] The house still stands on Kipling Road, three miles (4.8 km) north of Brattleboro inDummerston, 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".[15] 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 theJungle Books, a book of short stories (The Day's Work), a novel (Captains Courageous), and a profusion of poetry, including the volumeThe Seven Seas. The collection ofBarrack-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 theJungle Books and also corresponding with many children who wrote to him about them.[15]
Portrait of Kipling's wife, Caroline Starr Balestier, by his cousin SirPhilip Burne-Jones
The writing life inNaulakha was occasionally interrupted by visitors, including his father, who visited soon after his retirement in 1893,[15] and the British writerArthur Conan Doyle, who brought his golf clubs, stayed for two days, and gave Kipling an extended golf lesson.[43][44] Kipling seemed to take to golf, occasionally practising with the localCongregational minister and even playing with red-painted balls when the ground was covered in snow.[13][44] However, winter golf was "not altogether a success because there were no limits to a drive; the ball might skid two miles (3.2 km) down the long slope toConnecticut river."[13]
Kipling loved the outdoors,[15] not least of whose marvels inVermont was the turning of the leaves each fall. He described this moment in a letter: "A littlemaple 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 thesumacs 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 theoaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzedcuirasses 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."[45]
Caricature of Kipling in the London magazineVanity Fair, 7 June 1894
In February 1896Elsie 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.[46] Although they would always remain loyal to each other, they seemed now to have fallen into set roles.[15] 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."[47] Later in the same year, he temporarily taught atBishop's College School inQuebec, Canada.[48]
The Kiplings' first daughter Josephine, 1892. She died of pneumonia in 1899 aged 6.
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 andVenezuela were in a border dispute involvingBritish Guiana. The US had made several offers to arbitrate, but in 1895 the new AmericanSecretary of State,Richard Olney, upped the ante by arguing for the American "right" to arbitrate on grounds of sovereignty on the continent (see theOlney interpretation as an extension of theMonroe Doctrine).[15] This raised hackles in Britain, and the situation grew into a majorAnglo-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.[15] He wrote in a letter that it felt like being "aimed at with a decanter across a friendly dinner table."[47] By January 1896 he had decided to end his family's "good wholesome life" in the US and seek their fortunes elsewhere.[13]
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.[15] 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.[13]
Kipling's Torquay house, with a blue plaque on the wall
By September 1896 the Kiplings were inTorquay, Devon, on the south-western coast of England, in a hillside home (Rock House, Maidencombe) overlooking theEnglish 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.[15]
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 theVictorian era), the poems were seen by others as propaganda for brazen-facedimperialism and its attendant racial attitudes; still others saw irony in the poems and warnings of the perils of empire.[15]
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"[49]
There was also foreboding in the poems, a sense that all could yet come to naught.[50]
Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one withNineveh andTyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet. Lest we forget – lest we forget! —"Recessional"[51]
A prolific writer during his time in Torquay, he also wroteStalky & Co., a collection ofschool stories (born of his experience at theUnited Services College inWestward Ho!), whose juvenile protagonists display a know-it-all, cynical outlook on patriotism and authority. According to his family, Kipling enjoyed reading aloud stories fromStalky & Co. to them and often went into spasms of laughter over his own jokes.[15]
H.A. Gwynne, Julian Ralph, Perceval Landon, and Rudyard Kipling in South Africa, 1900–1901
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 onCecil Rhodes's estate atGroote Schuur (now a student residence for theUniversity of Cape Town), within walking distance of Rhodes' mansion.[52]
With his new reputation asPoet of the Empire, Kipling was warmly received by some of the influential politicians of theCape Colony, including Rhodes, SirAlfred Milner andLeander 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 theSecond Boer War (1899–1902), the ensuing peace treaty, and the 1910 formation of theUnion 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 forThe Friend newspaper inBloemfontein, which had been commandeered byLord Roberts for British troops.[53]
Although his journalistic stint was to last only two weeks, it was Kipling's first work on a newspaper staff since he leftThe Pioneer in Allahabad more than ten years before.[15] AtThe Friend, he made lifelong friendships withPerceval Landon,H. A. Gwynne and others.[54] He also wrote articles published more widely expressing his views on the conflict.[55] Kipling penned an inscription for theHonoured Dead Memorial in Kimberley.[56]
Kipling at his desk, 1899. Portrait by Burne-Jones.
In 1897 Kipling moved from Torquay toRottingdean, nearBrighton, East Sussex – first to North End House and then to the Elms.[57] In 1902 Kipling boughtBateman's, a house built in 1634 and located in ruralBurwash.[58]
Bateman's was Kipling's home from 1902 until his death in 1936.[59] The house and its surrounding buildings, the mill and 33 acres (13 ha), 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).[60][59]
In the non-fiction realm, he became involved in the debate over the British response to the rise in German naval power known as theTirpitz Plan, to build a fleet to challenge theRoyal Navy, publishing a series of articles in 1898 collected asA Fleet in Being.[61] On a visit to the United States in 1899, Kipling and his daughter Josephine developedpneumonia, from which she eventually died.[62]
("Kim's Gun" as seen in 1903) "He sat in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gunZam-Zammeh, on her old platform, opposite the old Ajaibgher, the Wonder House, as the natives called theLahore Museum." -Kim
In the wake of his daughter's death, Kipling concentrated on collecting material for what becameJust So Stories for Little Children, published in 1902, the year afterKim.[63] The American art historian Janice Leoshko and the American literary scholar David Scott have argued thatKim disproves the claim byEdward Said that Kipling was a promoter ofOrientalism, 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.[64][65] Kipling was offended by the German EmperorWilhelm II'sHun speech(Hunnenrede) in 1900, urging German troops being sent to China to crush theBoxer Rebellion to behave like "Huns" and take no prisoners.[66]
In a 1902 poem,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 essentiallybarbarian.[66] In an interview with the French newspaperLe Figaro, theFrancophile Kipling called Germany a menace and called for an Anglo-French alliance to stop it.[66] In another letter at the same time, Kipling described the "unfrei peoples of Central Europe" as living in "the Middle Ages with machine guns".[66]
Kipling wrote a number ofspeculative 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 twoscience fiction stories: "With the Night Mail" (1905) and "As Easy As A.B.C." (1912). Both were set in the 21st century in Kipling'sAerial Board of Control universe. They read like modernhard science fiction,[67] and introduced[68] the literary technique known asindirect exposition, which would later become one of the science fiction writerRobert 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 writingThe Jungle Book.[69]
In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, having been nominated in that year byCharles Oman, professor at theUniversity of Oxford.[70] 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 theSwedish Academy,Carl David af Wirsén, praised both Kipling and three centuries ofEnglish 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.[71]
To "book-end" this achievement came the publication of two connected poetry and story collections:Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), andRewards and Fairies (1910). The latter contained the poem "If—". In a 1995BBC opinion poll it was voted the UK's favourite poem.[72] This exhortation to self-control and stoicism is arguably Kipling's most famous poem.[72]
Such was Kipling's popularity that he was asked by his friendMax Aitken to intervene in the1911 Canadian federal election on behalf of the Conservatives.[73] In 1911 the major issue in Canada was areciprocity treaty with the United States signed by the Liberal Prime Minister SirWilfrid Laurier and vigorously opposed by the Conservatives under SirRobert Borden. On 7 September 1911, theMontreal 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."[73] At the time, theMontreal 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.[73]
Kipling sympathised with the anti-Home Rule stance ofIrish Unionists, who opposed Irish autonomy. He was friends withEdward Carson, the Dublin-born leader ofUlster Unionism, who raised theUlster 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.[74] 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."[75] 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".[75]
Kipling wrote the poem "Ulster" in 1912, reflecting his Unionist politics. Kipling often referred to the Irish Unionists as "our party".[76] Kipling had no sympathy or understanding forIrish nationalism, seeing Home Rule as an act of treason by the government of the Liberal Prime MinisterH. H. Asquith that would plunge Ireland into the Dark Ages and allow the Irish Catholic majority to oppress the Protestant minority.[77] The scholarDavid Gilmour wrote that Kipling's lack of understanding of Ireland could be seen in his attack onJohn Redmond – the Anglophile leader of theIrish 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.[78]Ulster was first publicly read at an Unionist rally in Belfast, where the largest Union Jack ever made was unfolded.[78] 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."[75]Ulster generated much controversy with the Conservative MP SirMark Sykes – who as a Unionist was opposed to the Home Rule bill – condemningUlster inThe Morning Post as a "direct appeal to ignorance and a deliberate attempt to foster religious hate."[78]
Kipling was a staunch opponent ofBolshevism, a position which he shared with his friendHenry Rider Haggard.[79][80] The two had bonded on Kipling's arrival in London in 1889, largely on the strength of their shared opinions, and remained lifelong friends.[81][82]
According to the English magazineMasonic Illustrated, Kipling became aFreemason in about 1885, before the usual minimum age of 21,[83] being initiated intoHope and Perseverance Lodge No. 782 inLahore. He later wrote toThe 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 fromBrahmo Somaj, aHindu, passed [to the degree of Fellow Craft] by aMohammedan, and raised [to the degree of Master Mason] by an Englishman. OurTyler was anIndian Jew." Kipling received not only the three degrees of Craft Masonry but also the side degrees ofMark Master Mason and Royal Ark Mariner.[84]
Kipling so loved his Masonic experience that he memorialised its ideals in his poem "The Mother Lodge",[83] and used the fraternity and its symbols as vital plot devices in his novellaThe Man Who Would Be King.[85]
At the beginning of theFirst World War Kipling, like others, wrote pamphlets and poems enthusiastically supporting the UK war aim of restoring Belgium after it had beenoccupied 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 writepropaganda, to which he agreed.[86] Kipling's pamphlets and stories were popular with the British people during the war. His major themes were to glorify the British military asthe 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.[86]
Kipling was enraged by reports of theRape of Belgium together withthe sinking of theRMS Lusitania in 1915, which he saw as a deeply inhumane act, leading him to view the war as a crusade for civilisation against barbarism.[87] 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."[87]
Alongside his passionateantipathy towards Germany, Kipling was privately deeply critical of how the war was being fought by theBritish Army. Shocked by the heavy losses that theBritish 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 theBoer War. Thus thousands of British soldiers were paying with their lives for their failure in the fields of France and Belgium.[88]
Kipling scorned men who shirked duty in the First World War. In "The New Army in Training"[89] (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 authors – a number that includedH. G. Wells,Arthur Conan Doyle andThomas Hardy – who 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."[90]
2nd Lt John KiplingMemorial to 2nd Lt John Kipling inBurwash Parish Church, Sussex, England
Kipling's only son,John, was killed in action at theBattle of Loos in September 1915, at age 18. John initially wanted to join theRoyal 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 withLord Roberts, former commander-in-chief of the British Army, and colonel of theIrish Guards, and at Rudyard's request, John was accepted into the Irish Guards.[86]
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.[91][92][93] In 2015 theCommonwealth War Grave Commission confirmed that it had correctly identified the burial place of John Kipling;[94] they recorded his date of death as 27 September 1915, and that he is buried at St Mary's A.D.S. Cemetery,Haisnes.[95]
After his son's death, in a poem titled "Epitaphs of the War",[96] 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.[97] 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.[86]
John's death has been linked to Kipling's 1916 poem "My Boy Jack", by the playMy Boy Jack and its subsequenttelevision adaptation, along with the documentaryRudyard Kipling: A Remembrance Tale. However, the poem was originally published at the head of a story about theBattle of Jutland and appears to refer to a death at sea; the "Jack" referred to may be the boy VCJack Cornwell, or perhaps a generic "Jack Tar".[98] 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 ofJane Austen aloud to his wife and daughter.[99] During the war, he wrote a bookletThe Fringes of the Fleet[100] containing essays and poems on various nautical subjects of the war. Some of these were set to music by the English composerEdward Elgar.[101]
Kipling became friends with a French soldier named Maurice Hammoneau, whose life had been saved in the First World War when his copy ofKim, which he had in his left breast pocket, stopped a bullet. Hammoneau presented Kipling with the book, with bullet still embedded, and hisCroix 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.[102]
On 1 August 1918 the poem "The Old Volunteer" appeared under his name inThe Times. The next day, he wrote to the newspaper to disclaim authorship and a correction appeared. AlthoughThe 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.[103]
Kipling, aged 60, on the cover ofTime magazine, 27 September 1926
Partly in response to John's death, Kipling joined SirFabian Ware's Imperial War Graves Commission (now theCommonwealth War Graves Commission), the group responsible for the garden-like British war graves that can be found to this day dotted along the formerWestern 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 theStones 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 theCenotaph, Whitehall, London. Additionally, he wrote a two-volume history of theIrish Guards, his son's regiment, published in 1923 and seen as one of the finest examples of regimental history.[104]
Kipling's short story "The Gardener" depicts visits to the war cemeteries, and the poem "The King's Pilgrimage" (1922) a journey whichKing George V made, touring the cemeteries and memorials under construction by theImperial 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 theFourteen Points and theLeague 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.[105] He hoped the United States would take on a League of Nations mandate forArmenia as the best way of preventing isolationism, and hoped thatTheodore Roosevelt, whom Kipling admired, would again become president.[105] 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.[106]
Kipling was hostile towardscommunism, writing of theBolshevik take-over in 1917 that one sixth of the world had "passed bodily out of civilization".[107] In a poem in 1918 Kipling wrote ofSoviet 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."[107]
In 1920 Kipling co-founded theLiberty League[108] withHaggard andLord 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."[109][110]
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",[111] and in other writings, including short-story anthologies such asThe Day's Work,[112] was asked by aUniversity 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 aniron ring at a ceremony to remind them of their obligation to society.[113][114] In 1922 Kipling becameLord Rector of the University of St Andrews, a three-year position.
Kipling, as aFrancophile, argued strongly for an Anglo-French alliance to uphold the peace, calling Britain and France in 1920 the "twin fortresses of European civilization".[115] Similarly, Kipling repeatedly warned against revising theTreaty of Versailles in Germany's favour, which he predicted would lead to a new world war.[115] An admirer ofRaymond Poincaré, Kipling was one of few British intellectuals who supported the FrenchOccupation of the Ruhr in 1923, at a time when the British government and most public opinion was against the French position.[116] 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.[116] 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.[116]
In 1924 Kipling was opposed to theLabour government ofRamsay 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.[117] Kipling's views were on the political right. Though he admiredBenito Mussolini to some extent in the 1920s, he was againstfascism, callingOswald Mosley "a bounder and anarriviste". By 1935 he was calling Mussolini a deranged and dangerous egomaniac and in 1933 wrote, "The Hitlerites are out for blood".[118]
Despite hisanti-communism, Kipling was popular with Russian readers in the interwar period. Many younger Russian poets and writers, such asKonstantin Simonov, were influenced by him.[119] 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.[120] 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 theSoviet Union until 1939, with the signing of theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[119] The ban was lifted in 1941 afterOperation Barbarossa, when Britain become a Soviet ally, but imposed again with theCold War in 1946.[121]
A left-facingswastika in 1911, an Indian symbol of good luckCovers of two of Kipling's books from 1919 (l) and 1930 (r), showing the removal of the swastika
Many older editions of Rudyard Kipling's books have aswastika 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 theSanskrit word meaning "fortunate" or "well-being".[122] He used the swastika symbol in both right and left-facing forms, and it was in general use by others at the time.[123][124]
In a note toEdward 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."[122] Once the swastika had become widely associated withAdolf Hitler and theNazis, Kipling ordered that it should no longer adorn his books.[122] Less than a year before his death, Kipling gave a speech (titled "An Undefended Island") to theRoyal Society of St George on 6 May 1935, warning of the danger whichNazi Germany posed to Britain.[125]
Plaque atFitzrovia Chapel, Westminster, commemorating Kipling's body resting there following his 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 atMiddlesex Hospital in London less than a week later on 18 January 1936, at the age of 70, of aperforatedduodenal ulcer.[129][130][131] Kipling's body lay in state in theFitzrovia Chapel, part of Middlesex Hospital, after his death, and is commemorated with a plaque near the altar. His death had previously beenincorrectly 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."[132]
In 2002 Kipling'sJust So Stories featured on aseries of UK postage stamps issued by theRoyal Mail to mark the centenary of the publication of the book.[136] In 2010, theInternational Astronomical Union approved the naming of a crater on the planetMercury after Kipling – one of ten newly discoveredimpact craters observed by theMESSENGER spacecraft in 2008–2009.[137] In 2012 an extinct species of crocodile,Goniopholis kiplingi, was named in his honour "in recognition for his enthusiasm for natural sciences."[138] More than 50 unpublished poems by Kipling, discovered by the American scholar Thomas Pinney, were released for the first time in March 2013.[139]
Kipling's writing has strongly influenced that of others. His stories for adults remain in print and have garnered high praise from writers such asRandall 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."[140]
His children's stories remain popular and hisJungle Books made into several films. The first was made by the producerAlexander Korda. Other films have been produced byThe Walt Disney Company. A number of his poems were set to music byPercy Grainger. A series of short films based on some of his stories was broadcast by the BBC in 1964.[141] Kipling's work is still popular today.
The poetT. S. Eliot editedA Choice of Kipling's Verse (1941) with an introductory essay.[142] 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."[143] Eliot finds instead:
An immense gift for using words, an amazing curiosity and power of observation with his mind and with all his senses, the mask of the entertainer, and beyond that a queer gift of second sight, of transmitting messages from elsewhere, a gift so disconcerting when we are made aware of it that thenceforth we are never sure when it isnot present: all this makes Kipling a writer impossible wholly to understand and quite impossible to belittle.
Of Kipling's verse, such as hisBarrack-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."[145]
In response to Eliot,George Orwell wrote a long consideration of Kipling's work forHorizon 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.":
One reason for Kipling's power [was] his sense of responsibility, which made it possible for him to have a world-view, even though it happened to be a false one. Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists. He identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition. In a gifted writer this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality. The ruling power is always faced with the question, 'In such and such circumstances, what would youdo?', whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions. Where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly. Moreover, anyone who starts out with a pessimistic, reactionary view of life tends to be justified by events, for Utopia never arrives and 'the gods of the copybook headings', as Kipling put it, always return. Kipling sold out to the British governing class, not financially but emotionally. This warped his political judgement, for the British ruling class were not what he imagined, and it led him into abysses of folly and snobbery, but he gained a corresponding advantage from having at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like. It is a great thing in his favour that he is not witty, not 'daring', has no wish toépater les bourgeois. He dealt largely in platitudes, and since we live in a world of platitudes, much of what he said sticks. Even his worst follies seem less shallow and less irritating than the 'enlightened' utterances of the same period, such as Wilde's epigrams or the collection of cracker-mottoes at the end ofMan and Superman.
In 1939 the poetW. H. Auden celebrated Kipling in a similarly ambiguous way in his elegy forW. 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 pardonPaul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well.[147]
The poetAlison Brackenbury writes "Kipling is poetry's Dickens, an outsider and journalist with an unrivalled ear for sound and speech."[148]
The English folk singerPeter 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.[149] 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.[150]
Kipling often is quoted in discussions of contemporary British political and social issues. In 1911 Kipling wrote the poem "The Reeds of Runnymede" that celebratedMagna 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 ministerMargaret Thatcher warning against the encroachment of theEuropean 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![151]
The political singer-songwriterBilly Bragg, who attempts to build a left-wingEnglish nationalism in contrast with the more common right-wing English nationalism, has attempted to 'reclaim' Kipling for an inclusive sense of Englishness.[152] Kipling's enduring relevance has been noted in the United States, as it has become involved inAfghanistan and other areas about which he wrote.[153][154][155]
In 1903 Kipling gave permission to Elizabeth Ford Holt to borrow themes from theJungle Books to establishCamp Mowglis, a summer camp for boys on the shores ofNewfound Lake inNew 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 asAkela,Toomai,Baloo and Panther. The campers are referred to as "the Pack", from the youngest "Cubs" to the oldest living in "Den".[156]
Kipling's writings were very similarly used as the basis of the 1916Wolf Cubs programmes ofRobert Baden-Powell and hisBoy Scouts Association. Wolf Cubs use themes fromJungle Book stories andKim and play "Kim's Game". The Wolf Cubs were named afterMowgli's adopted wolf family, and adult helpers of Wolf Cub (now Cub) Packs take names fromThe Jungle Book, especially the adult leader calledAkela after the leader of the Seeonee wolf pack.[157]
Bateman's, Kipling's beloved home – which he referred to as "A good and peaceable place" – inBurwash, East Sussex, is now a public museum dedicated to him.[158]
After the death of Kipling's wife in 1939 his house,Bateman's inBurwash, East Sussex, where he had lived from 1902 until 1936, was bequeathed to theNational 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 theUniversity of Sussex to ensure better public access.[159]
The novelist and poet SirKingsley 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.[160]
In 2003 the actorRalph Fiennes read excerpts from Kipling's works from the study in Bateman's, includingThe Jungle Book,Something of Myself,Kim, andThe Just So Stories, and poems, including"If ..." and "My Boy Jack", for a CD published by the National Trust.[161][162]
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 ColonelReginald Dyer, who was responsible for theJallianwala Bagh massacre inAmritsar (inPunjab), and that Kipling called Dyer "the man who saved India" and initiated collections for the latter's homecoming prize.[163] Kim Wagner, senior lecturer in British Imperial History atQueen Mary University of London, says that while Kipling did make a £10 donation, he never made that remark.[164] Similarly, author Derek Sayer states that Dyer was "widely lauded as the saviour of Punjab", that Kipling had no part in organisingThe Morning Post fund, and that Kipling only sent £10, making the laconic observation: "He did his duty, as he saw it."[165] Subhash Chopra also writes in his bookKipling Sahib – the Raj Patriot that the benefit fund was started byThe Morning Post newspaper, not by Kipling.[166]The Economic Times attributes the phrase "The Man Who Saved India" along with the Dyer benefit fund toThe Morning Post as well.[167]
Many contemporary Indian intellectuals, such asAshis Nandy, have a nuanced view of Kipling's legacy.Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, often described Kipling's novelKim as one of his favourite books.[168][169]
G. V. Desani, an Indian writer of fiction, had a more negative opinion of Kipling. He alludes to Kipling in his novelAll About H. Hatterr:
I happen to pick up R. Kipling's autobiographicalKim.Therein, this self-appointed whiteman's burden-bearing sherpa feller's stated how, in the Orient, blokes hit the road and think nothing of walking a thousand miles in search of something.
The Indian writerKhushwant Singh wrote in 2001 that he considers Kipling's "If—" "the essence of the message of theGita in English",[170] referring to theBhagavad Gita, an ancient Indian scripture. The writerR. 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."[171] The politician and writerShashi Tharoor commented "Kipling, that flatulent voice of Victorian imperialism, would wax eloquent on the noble duty to bring law to those without it".[172]
The Kipling Bungalow, located adjacent to the site of his birth and built after Kipling had been sent to England.[22]
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.[173] 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."[174] A bust of Rudyard Kipling also exists there.[175]
Although he was best known as an author, Kipling was also an accomplished artist. Influenced byAubrey Beardsley, Kipling produced many illustrations for his stories, for example a 1926 edition of hisJust So Stories.[176]
^abcdeRutherford, Andrew (1987). General Preface to the Editions of Rudyard Kipling, in "Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies", by Rudyard Kipling. Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-282575-5
^abcdeRutherford, Andrew (1987).Introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition of 'Plain Tales from the Hills', by Rudyard Kipling. Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-281652-7
^James Joyce consideredTolstoy, Kipling andD'Annunzio the "three writers of the nineteenth century who had the greatest natural talents", but that they "did not fulfill that promise". He also noted their "semi-fanatic ideas about religion, or about patriotism". Diary of David Fleischman, 21 July 1938, quoted inJames Joyce byRichard Ellmann, p. 661, Oxford University Press (1983)ISBN0-19-281465-6
^Birkenhead, Lord (1978).Rudyard Kipling, Appendix B, "Honours and Awards". Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London; Random House Inc., New York.
^Lewis, Lisa (1995).Introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition of "Just So Stories", by Rudyard Kipling. Oxford University Press, pp. xv–xlii.ISBN0-19-282276-4
^Quigley, Isabel (1987).Introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition of "The Complete Stalky & Co.", by Rudyard Kipling. Oxford University Press, pp. xiii–xxviii.ISBN0-19-281660-8
^Said, Edward (1993).Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus, p. 196.ISBN0-679-75054-1.
^Sandison, Alan (1987).Introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition ofKim, by Rudyard Kipling. Oxford University Press. pp. xiii–xxx.ISBN0-19-281674-8
^Douglas Kerr, University of Hong Kong (30 May 2002)."Rudyard Kipling."Archived 26 July 2019 at theWayback MachineThe Literary Encyclopedia. The Literary Dictionary Company. 26 September 2006.
^Flanders, Judith (2005).A Circle of Sisters: Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Agnes Poynter, and Louisa Baldwin. W. W. Norton and Company, New York.ISBN0-393-05210-9
^Sir J. J. College of Architecture (30 September 2006)."Campus". Sir J. J. College of Architecture, Mumbai. Archived fromthe original on 28 July 2011. Retrieved2 October 2006.
^Brown, Jonathan (28 August 2006)."The Great War and its aftermath: The son who haunted Kipling".The Independent.Archived from the original on 3 May 2018. Retrieved3 May 2018.It was only his father's intervention that allowed John Kipling to serve on the Western Front – and the poet never got over his death.
^Original correspondence between Kipling and Maurice Hammoneau and his son Jean Hammoneau concerning the affair is at the Library of Congress under the title:How "Kim" saved the life of a French soldier: a remarkable series of autograph letters of Rudyard Kipling, with the soldier's Croix de Guerre, 1918–1933.LCCN2007-566938. The library also possesses the actual French 389-page paperback edition ofKim that saved Hammoneau's life,LCCN2007-581430.
^Simmers, George (27 May 1918)."A Kipling Hoax".The Times.Archived from the original on 3 March 2014. Retrieved17 February 2013.
^Kipling, Rudyard (1923). TheIrish Guards in the Great War. 2 vols. London.
Hodgson, Katherine (October 1998). "The Poetry of Rudyard Kipling in Soviet Russia".The Modern Language Review.93 (4):1058–1071.doi:10.2307/3736277.JSTOR3736277.
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 .
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.
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.
Rudyard Kipling: The Books I Leave Behind exhibition, related podcast, and digital images maintained by the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University
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