Kipling Sahib
Page 43
8 Lorna Lee, Trix.
9 RK to Margaret Burne-Jones, Jamalpur 25 January 1888, RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
10 Sir John Kaye, History of the Sepoy War, Vol. II.
11 G. H. Keene, Handbook for Visitors.
12 Home Secretary’s Confidential Despatches, Indian Records, 1878 (APAC, BL).
13 Quoted in Lycett, RK.
14 RK to Margaret Burne-Jones, Jamalpur 25 January 1888, RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
15 Ibid.
16 AK’s comments were quoted by RK in a letter to Mrs Edmonia Hill, Allahabad 30 April 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
17 RK to Mrs Isabella Burton, Allahabad 20 January 1988, from a private collection, quoted in Lycett, RK.
18 Mrs Edmonia Hill to Caroline Taylor, date unknown, quoted in Lycett, RK.
19 RK, SM.
20 Ibid.
21 ‘Hustling American’, ‘ “Kipling About” in London for a Week’, KJ, October 1928.
22 W. J. Makin, T.P.’s Weekly, 17 August 1929.
23 T. Goodenough, Leeds Mercury, 30 December 1926.
24 W. J. Makin, T.P.’s Weekly, 17 August 1929.
25 RK, SM.
26 RK, ‘The Epics of India’, CMG, 24 August 1886, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
27 RK, ‘A Real Live City’, Pioneer, 2 March 1888, collected in From Sea to Sea, 1890.
28 RK, ‘The Song of the Women’, Pioneer, 17 April 1888.
29 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, April 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
30 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 8 May 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
31 RK, ‘Dray Wara Yow Dee’, CMG, 28 April 1888, collected in In Black and White, 1889.
32 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 11 May 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
33 Sir William Hunter to RK, July 1888, quoted in F. H. Skrine, The Life of Sir William Wilson Hunter.
34 Sir William Hunter, The Academy, 1888.
35 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 15 May 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
36 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 1 June 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
37 Auteur du Mariage (1883) and Auteur du Divorce (1886) by ‘Gyp’, the pseudonym of Madame de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville (1849–1932), who wrote more than 120 novelettes.
38 RK, SM.
39 Andrew Wilson, Abode of Snow.
40 I am indebted to D. C. Kala for much of this information, contained in his recently published book Frederick Wilson.
10: ‘Who travels the fastest’: Simla, Allahabad and an ending, 1888–9
1 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 9–10 July 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
2 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 27 June 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
3 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 28 June–1 July 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
4 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 15 July 1888, incomplete letter, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
5 JLK to Edith Plowden, Effingham 28 August 1888, JLK Papers, Sussex.
6 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 13 July 1888, incomplete letter, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
7 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, undated incomplete letter, probably late July 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
8 RK, SM.
9 RK, ‘One Viceroy Resigns’, Pioneer, 7 December 1888, collected in later editions of DD.
10 AK to Lord Dufferin, 17 December 1888, Dufferin Papers, PRO Northern Ireland, quoted in Lycett, RK.
11 RK, SM.
12 Mrs Edmonia Hill, Hill Papers, Cornell University, quoted in Lycett, RK.
13 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 6 October 1888, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
14 RK, ‘A Celebrity at Home: Mrs S. A. Hill at Belvidere House, Allahabad’, unpublished MS, Baldwin Papers, Sussex.
15 Mrs Edmonia Hill, ‘The Young Kipling’, Atlantic Monthly, April 1936.
16 Birkenhead, RK.
17 Sir Charles Ross Alston, related in K. Jamilludin, The Tropic Sun.
18 W. J. Makin, T.P.’s Weekly, 17 August 1929.
19 RK, ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft’, Wee Willie Winkie, December 1888.
20 RK, ‘The Masque of Plenty’, Pioneer, 26 October 1888, collected in RK’s Verse.
21 RK, ‘The Enlightenment of Pagett, MP’, Contemporary Review, June 1890.
22 RK, ‘The Head of the District’, Macmillan’s Magazine, January 1890, collected in Life’s Handicap, 1891.
23 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, probably 6 February 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
24 RK to Mrs Margaret Mackail, NWP Club, Allahabad 11–14 February 1889, RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
25 RK, SM.
26 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, probably 26 February 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
27 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, 26 February 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
28 RK to Kay Robinson, Lahore 13 April 1886, RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
29 This was one burnt bridge too many, and as soon as he had the funds he bought the copyright back for the then considerable sum of £1200.
11: ‘Life and Death … and Love and Fate’: London and fame, 1889–91
1 RK, undated articles printed in the Pioneer, Scrapbook 1, RK Papers, Sussex, quoted in Carrington, RK.
2 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, Wellesley 13 September 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
3 Quoted in Carrington, RK, the source being a letter from Lockwood de Forest, an American collector of Indian art whom Lockwood Kipling had met in Lahore.
4 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, The Grange 25 October 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
5 RK to Miss Caroline Taylor, Embankment Chambers 9 December 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
6 RK, SM.
7 RK, ‘A Legend of Great Honour’, CMG, 11 and 13 January 1890, subsequently published in England as ‘My Great and Only’.
8 Desmond Chapman-Huston, The Lost Historian.
9 RK, SM.
10 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, Embankment Chambers 3–25 December 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
11 JLK to Edith Plowden, 29 Wynnstay Gardens, Kensington, undated but autumn 1890, JLK Papers, Sussex.
12 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, Embankment Chambers early November 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
13 RK, SM.
14 Ibid.
15 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, Embankment Chambers 3–25 December 1889, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
16 Ibid.
17 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, Embankment Chambers 2 January 1890, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
18 RK, ‘In Partibus’, CMG, 23 December and Pioneer, 25 December 1889, collected in Abaft the Funnel, 1909.
19 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, Embankment Chambers February 1890, from a copy in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. I.
20 RK’s next (surviving) letter was sent on 30 July 1899 in reply to Edmonia Hill’s letter of condolence.
21 Quoted without source in Birkenhead, RK.
22 Ibid.
23 JLK to Edith Plowden, 29 Wynnstay Gardens, Kensington, undated but late summer 1890, JLK Papers
, Sussex.
24 J. M. Barrie in Contemporary Review, quoted in Carrington, RK.
25 RK to an unidentified recipient, Embankment Chambers 9 March 1890, in RK Papers, Sussex, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
26 Martin Seymour-Smith, Rudyard Kipling.
27 Henry James, ‘Wolcott Balestier: a Portrait’, Cosmopolitan, May 1892.
28 Arthur Waugh, One Man’s Road, quoted in Wilson, The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling.
29 Will Cabot in Vermont Phoenix, 13 November 1891, quoted in Carrington, RK.
30 Wolcott Balestier to W. D. Howells, 18 February 1891, Harvard, quoted in Lycett, RK.
31 Henry James in two letters, to Mrs Sands and Edmund Gosse, quoted without source in Carrington, RK.
32 Carrie Balestier to Josephine Balestier, January 1891, Dunham, quoted in Lycett, RK.
33 RK to George Allen, January 1891, Dalhousie University, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
34 RK, SM.
12: ‘Try as he will’: Weddings and funerals, Vermont and Sussex, 1892–9
1 Edmund Gosse to R. W. Gilder, 18 January 1892, quoted in Lycett, RK.
2 Henry James to William James, 6 February 1892, Houghton Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard, quoted in Carrington, RK.
3 RK, SM.
4 RK to W. E. Henley, Brattleboro 3 January 1893, Berg Collection, New York Public Library, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
5 RK, ‘The Potted Princess’, St Nicholas Magazine, January 1893.
6 RK, ‘Collar-Wallah and the Poison Stick’, St Nicholas Magazine, February 1893.
7 RK to Mary Mapes Dodge, Brattleboro 15 October 1892, Princeton University, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
8 RK to Mary Mapes Dodge, Brattleboro 24 November 1892, Princeton University, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
9 RK to R. U. Johnson, Naulakha 20 December 1895, Dalhousie University, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
10 RK, ‘In the Rukh’, Many Inventions, June 1893.
11 RK, ‘Toomai of the Elephants’, St Nicholas Magazine, December 1893, collected in The Jungle Book, 1894.
12 RK, ‘Tiger-Tiger’, St Nicholas Magazine, February 1894, collected in The Jungle Book, 1894.
13 RK to Mary Mapes Dodge, Brattleboro 21 October 1892, Princeton University, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
14 It is odd that the Bengal tiger, alone among the Jungle Book’s larger beasts, should have been saddled with so many negative qualities. Kipling seems to have taken his cue from R. A. Sterndale, Bengal Civilian and renowned shikari, who in his Denizens of the Jungle, 1880, wrote about a tiger he named ‘Shere Ali’, both cowardly and cruel in his killing.
15 RK, SM.
16 RK, ‘The Bridge-Builders’, Illustrated London News Christmas number 1893, collected in The Day’s Work, 1898.
17 RK, ‘That Day’, first published in 1896 edition of BRB.
18 Gen. A. S. Little in a letter to Lord Birkenhead, quoted in Birkenhead, RK.
19 RK to E. L. White, Naulakha 17 August 1894, Ray Collection, Morgan Library, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
20 RK to Mary Mapes Dodge, Naulakha 18 June 1895, Princeton University, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
21 Mrs Carrie Kipling, Diary 21 March 1895, RK Papers, Sussex.
22 RK to Robert Barr, 11 March 1896, quoted without source in Lycett, RK.
23 Mrs Carrie Kipling, Diary, 13 May 1896, RK Papers, Sussex.
24 Carrington and Lycett give different accounts of the encounter, both taken from the same source. Lycett cites Molly Cabot, ‘The Vermont Period: Rudyard Kipling in Vermont’, English Literature in Transition, 29/2, 1986.
25 RK to Cormell Price, Rock House 18 December 1896, Library of Congress, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
26 RK, SM.
27 Both letters are quoted in Carrington, RK.
28 Angela Thirkell, Three Houses.
29 The final draft was noted as finished by Carrie Kipling on 22 November 1898. Copies were then sent to Theodore Roosevelt and McClure’s Magazine. It appeared in The Times on 4 February and in the New York Sun and Tribune on 5 February 1899.
30 Mrs Katherine Crossley, ‘Impressions of Trix’, in ‘“Aunt Trix”: Mrs Alice Macdonald Fleming, Some Recollections by Gwladys Cox’, Lorna Lee, Trix: Kipling’s Forgotten Sister.
31 RK to Alfred Baldwin, The Elms 18 November 1898, Dalhousie University, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
32 AK to Mrs Georgina Burne-Jones, 6 March 1899, JLK Papers, Sussex, footnote in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
33 RK, SM.
34 JLK to Sally Norton, 22 July 1899, JLK Papers, Sussex, quoted in Lycett, RK, 1999.
35 RK to Mrs Edmonia Hill, The Elms 30 July 1899, Library of Congress, collected in Pinney, Letters, Vol. II.
36 Kay Robinson to RK, 19 December 1899, RK Papers, Sussex.
37 Kay Robinson was now building a new career for himself as a writer on nature. He became a devoted pantheist and 1903 founded the Countryside magazine which he edited for many years before his death in 1928.
38 Angela Thirkell, Three Houses.
Envoi: ‘In the faith of little children’: Kim and after, 1899–1936
1 Another beneficiary was George Allen’s North-West Tannery in Cawnpore, which made the boots for the Indian Army, although Sir George himself had now retired to a country estate in Sussex with the knighthood he had so long craved. He died in 1900.
2 Henry James to Grace Norton, 15 December 1897, Harvard, quoted in Lycett, RK.
3 Quoted without source in Carrington, RK.
4 RK, ‘The Two-Sided Man’. The two verses are as printed at the head of Chapter 7 in Kim. The poem was subsequently revised and enlarged before collection in Songs from Books, 1913.
5 Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty and War.
6 Charles Allen, God’s Terrorists.
7 RK, ‘The Truce of the Bear’, Literature, October 1898, collected in The Five Nations, 1903.
8 RK, SM.
9 For the full story of the Pundits, see Charles Allen, A Mountain in Tibet, John Keay, Where Men and Mountains Meet, and Patrick Hopkirk, Trespassers on the Roof of the World.
10 Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XI, 1881.
11 Angus Wilson, The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling; Nirad Chaudhuri, ‘The Finest Story about India – in English’, Rudyard Kipling: the Man, his Work and his World, ed. John Gross, 1972; Edward Said, ‘Kim: the Pleasures of Imperialism’, Raritan, 1987.
12 Henry James to RK, 30 October 1901, Harvard, quoted in Lycett, RK, 1999.
A Glossary of Indian and Anglo-Indian Words
Definitions given in italics are taken from the glossary found in the 1897 edition of Departmental Ditties, the work of J. Lockwood Kipling.
Act – To deputise, thus ‘to do an act’.
ADC – Aide-de-Camp.
Adjutant-crane – Largest stork in N. India, known for its upright stance and measured gait.
Afghan business – Second Afghan War of 1878–80.
Afridi – tribesman from one of the largest of the Pathan tribes.
Ajaib-ghur, Ajaib-ghar – ‘House of wonders’, name given to the Lahore Museum.
Allah ho Akbar – ‘God is Great’, opening phrase of the Muslim call to prayer.
Anglo-Indian – Originally used to describe Britons living in India, after 1900 used to designate a person of mixed Indo-British ancestry, see Eurasian.
Anna – One-sixteenth of a rupee, thus ‘eight annas to a rupee’ to describe a Eurasian.
Annandale – A valley near Simla – the Simla Racecourse, Cricket, and Recreation Grounds.
Ayah – Child’s nurse, lady’s maid, der. Portuguese.
Baba – Baby, orig. English, thus ‘baba-logue’– ‘baby people’, ‘missy baba’ – ‘little miss’.
Baboo, babu – A title such as ‘Mr’, used frequently to signify a Bengali clerk; originally a term of respect but increasingly used as
a pejorative term by Anglo-Indians to describe semi-Anglicised Indians, particularly Bengalis.
Babul – Thorny mimosa with yellow flowers.
Bagh – Enclosed formal garden; but also tiger, see also shere.
Bagheera – Panther.
Bahadur – Champion, brave.
Baloo – Brown bear.
Bandar, bundur – monkey.
Bandobast, bandobust, bundobast, bundobust – Tie up loose ends, arrangement, thus ‘let’s make a bundo’.
Bania, bunnia, bunya – A corn and seed merchant or dealer; also money-lender, thus ‘banyakiraj’- ‘rule of the money-lender’, term used to describe the British Raj.
Baradari – Muslim monument with twelve entrances.
Bazaar, bazar – Native market.
BB&CI – Bombay, Baroda and Central India railway.
Bearer – Personal servant or valet, originally torch or palanquin bearer. Benmore – The old Simla Assembly Rooms.
Bhang – Indian hemp or cannabis in processed form.
Bhai – Brother, thus bhai-bhand – brotherhood, see also Boy.
Bheesti, Bheesty, Bhistee – water-carrier, also employed to sprinkle water from goatskin mussack over dusty ground.
Bibi – Lady, often used to describe kept mistress, thus bibi khana – lady’s house, kept woman’s quarters.
Bobs – General Sir Frederick Roberts, later Lord Roberts, known as ‘Bobs Bahadur’– ‘Robert the Champion’.
Box-wallah – Door-to-door pedlar, thus derog. term for British businessmen in India.
Boy – Call for servant, der. bhai – ‘younger brother’.
Brandypawni – Brandy and soda-water, favourite tipple in Clubs. Brahmin – A member of the priestly caste of Hindus, thus ICS, see also Heaven-Born.
Budlee, budli – Substitute or acting servant, often used jokingly to describe an ‘acting’ appointment.
Bund – Raised embankment, thus Apollo Bunder in Bombay.
Bungalow – Country house, der. bangla – ‘country’, properly, simple single-storey building with verandah.
Burka, boorka – Outdoor garment worn by Muslim women to cover themselves.
Burra – Big or senior, thus burra sahib – senior man; burra-mem – wife of senior man; burra khana – Big dinner party, burra deen – big day, thus Christmas Day, burra bungalow – senior officer’s house, burra peg – double tot of whisky or brandy.