Т.В. Артеменко, Е.В. Кривощекова, Е.В. Кравченко, Н.Е. Николаева - Reader in Language and Culture (1098538), страница 16
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I.You speak another tongue than mine,Though both were English born.I towards the night of time decline,You mount into the morn.You shall grow great and strong and free,But age must still decay:To-morrow for the States -- for me,England and Yesterday.Joseph Rudyard KiplingJoseph Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay (nowMumbai) India, son of Alice née MacDonald (1837-1910) and John Lockwood110Kipling (1837-1911) Head of the Department of Architectural Sculpture at theJejeebhoy School of Art and Industry in Bombay. Some of Kipling’s earliest andfondest memories are of his and sister Alice’s trips to the bustling fruit market withtheir ayah or nanny, or her telling them Indian nursery rhymes and stories beforetheir nap in the tropical afternoon heat.
His father’s art studio provided manycreative outlets with clay and paints. Often the family took evening walks alongthe Bombay Esplanade beside the Arabian Sea, the dhows bobbing on the glitteringwaters.“I have always felt the menacing darkness of tropical eventides, as I haveloved the voices of night-winds through palm or banana leaves, and the song of thetree-frogs”—from his autobiography Something of Myself (1937)The newly opened Suez Canal created a bustling port city which captivatedyoung Rudyard, an intersection to the ancient cultures and mystical rites of Hindus,Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Anglo-Indians and their then colonial rulers.The idyllic days were to end when in 1871 Rudyard and Alice were sent toschool in Southsea, England, to live with Captain Holloway and his wife. She ruledthe boarding house with fire and brimstone and Kipling was often beaten by herand her son.
“Then the old Captain died, and I was sorry, for he was the onlyperson in that house as far as I can remember who ever threw me a kind word.”—ibid. Kipling soon learned to read and found solace in literature and poetry,voraciously turning to the magazines and books his parents sent him includingDaniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and works bythe likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bret Harte also left an indelible impressionon Kipling.Respite from the Holloway household was gained when he spent one montha year in London with his mother’s kindly sister Aunt Georgie and her husband,pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne Jones and their children. Those months ofDecember were a veritable paradise to Kipling; North End House was constantlybrimming with visiting friends and relatives, and the homey and artistic effects ofthe affectionate couple were everywhere.
Their home echoed with laughter and the111patter of little feet or was eerily hushed as the children raptly listened to fantasticstories told by Edward. They also played the organ, sang songs, dressed up incostumes and acted out plays.In 1877 Kipling’s mother returned to England and collected him from ‘TheHouse of Desolation’ as he grimly refers to the Holloway’s over sixty years later inhis autobiography, so that he could attend the United Services College inWestward Ho!, Devon. He was now armed with spectacles, for Kipling was nearlyblind without them and his undiagnosed vision problems were the source of muchgrief from Mrs.
Holloway and his schoolteachers. He learned to defend himselffrom bullies and settled into the life of a student, became the editor of the schoolpaper, and in his second year started writing his own Schoolboy Lyrics (1881)printed by his parents. In 1878 his father took him to the Paris Exhibition where hewas allowed to wander freely and gained much appreciation for French culturewhich he wrote about in Souvenirs of France (1933).In 1881 Kipling traveled back to Lahore, India to live with his parents. Itwas a happy homecoming and his ayah was overjoyed to see him too. Ensconcedin his own office he became the assistant editor for the Anglo-Indian Civil andMilitary Gazette and later The Pioneer.
He had suffered frail health as a child andhis penchant for working ten or more hours a day may have led to a later nervousbreakdown.Thus began Kipling’s career as roving reporter, traveling to various parts ofIndia and the United States. He wrote dozens of essays, reviews and short storieslike “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888) and “Gunga Din” (1890) whichwould later be collected in such volumes as Departmental Ditties (1886, poetry),Plain Tales From the Hills (1888, short stories), Wee Willie Winkie (1888, shortstories), American Notes (1891, non-fiction), and his first major success BarrackRoom Ballads (1892, poetry).
In 1887, he met professor Alec Hill who wouldbecome a great friend and travel companion.Now living just off the Strand in London, England on Villiers Street, Kiplingenjoyed the success of many of his publications and continued his prodigious112output. During the influenza epidemic, on 18 January 1892 Kipling marriedCaroline ‘Carrie’ Balestier, the sister of his American publisher.
American authorHenry James attended. The Kiplings started their ‘magic carpet’ honeymoon in awintry Canada (they bought twenty acres of land in North Vancouver only to learnseveral years later that it was owned by someone else) then went on to Yokohama,Japan, but the same day an earthquake struck he was informed by the bank that allhis funds with the New Oriental Banking Corporation were lost when it failed. Leftwith the clothes on their backs and what they owned in their trunks, they madetheir way back to the United States, first living in ‘Bliss Cottage’ in the NewEngland town of Brattleboro, Vermont before moving into ‘The Naulakha’. Theirfirst daughter Josephine was born in 1892, Elsie in 1896, and son John “on a warmAugust night of ‘97’”.
After a legal falling out with his publisher and brother-inlaw Beatty Balestier, Kipling decided to move to England in 1896 and settled at‘The Elms’ in Rottingdean, Sussex. He was now a success in India and Americaand The Jungle Book (1894) established his fame in England. Many other titleswere published around this time including The Naulahka: A story of West and East(1892), The Second Jungle Book (1895) and Captains Courageous (1896).In the winter of 1898, the Kiplings went on their first of many holidays inSouth Africa.
“the children throve, and the colour, light, and half-oriental mannersof the land bound chains round our hearts for years to come.” While in the UnitedStates a year later, Josephine died of pneumonia. Kipling had been gravely ill fromit too and her death was a terrible blow to him. When the Boer War broke outKipling joined in campaign efforts to raise money for the troops and reported forarmy publications.
During a harrowing two-week stay in Bloemfontein he cameface to face with the tragedies of war; the deaths by typhoid and dysentery andappalling conditions in the barracks. “They were wonderful even in the hour ofdeath—these men and boys—lodge-keepers and ex-butlers of the Reserve and rawtown-lads of twenty.”—Something of MyselfEmbittered by the Great War Kipling sought solitude in the Sussex downsand in 1902 he and Carrie found the house ‘Bateman’s’ in Burwash, which he113purchased and lived in for the rest of his life. First serialised in McClure’sMagazine, Kim was published in 1901. It follows the adventures of KimballO’Hara in the Himalayas and reflects the conflicts between Britain, Russia, andcentral Asia.
Kipling had thus far refused many awards and honours including thatof England’s Poet Laureate but in 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize forliterature “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination,virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creationsof this world-famous author.”In 1915 during World War I Kipling visited the Western Front as reporterand wrote “France at War”.
The Fringes of the Fleet (1915) was followed by SeaWarfare (1916). His son John died at the age of eighteen while fighting with theIrish Guards in the Battle of Loos which he wrote about in The Irish Guards in theGreat War (1923). In 1922 he was named Lord Rector of the University of StAndrews in Scotland. The same year he produced “The Ritual of the Calling of anEngineer” or “The Iron Ring Ceremony” and Obligation at the request of theUniversity of Toronto Engineering department. In 1926 he was featured on thecover of Time magazine. In 1935 Kipling gave an address to the Royal Society ofSt. George, “An Undefended Island”, outlining the dangers Nazi Germany posed toBritain.Rudyard Kipling died of a hemorrhage on 18 January 1936 in London, andhis ashes are interred in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey, London,England near to T. S. Eliot.
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