The Kipling Society of Australia - Rudyard Kipling
Jottings from the Editors Desk
It seems that no sooner has one edition gone out to our members that the next one is due.
Our next meeting, on August 28th is an interesting one, we have a talk by Robyn Forster on Rudyard Kipling and how his interest in Freemasonry is reflected in his writings. Robyn has been associated with Freemasonry for many years, and, as a librarian has spent a lot of time researching the connections between Kipling and Masonry. Our secretary, Robyn Scott, is going to be on hand with some of Kipling’s poems as well.
I have been rereading “Kipling Sahib”, and getting a lot more out of it second time around. The reviewers, especially those quoted by the publishers, were very kind, though I did like, and agree with, the Spectator’s comment “…a delightful evocation of late nineteenth century India and an acute study of Kipling’s genius; utterly absorbing” I will bring a copy to the next meeting if someone wants to borrow it.
We have heard a lot from Kipling’s early days, and some from his middle period, but, save possibly from “Thy servant a Dog” very little from his later periods. So I have chosen “The Ballad of the Cars”.
Kipling was an avid motorist, his Rolls Royce, on blocks (shades of wartime England when lack of petrol forced many families to put their precious car on blocks for the duration) and screened behind glass at Batemans, is always an attraction for visitors.
Kipling’s “The Muse among motors” the works were published from 1904 to 1927, and are in the main parodies of other authors, mainly those whom Kipling enjoyed or admired.
The help given by our contributors, Susannah Fullerton, Naren Meron, Rodney Pine, and in the use of notes from the Readers Guide in the UK, is greatly appreciated.
By the time of the August meeting, 28th for your diaries, Ian our able treasurer, should have finalised the date time and location of our Christmas luncheon
Jorge Luis Borges, famous Argentine Author, died in 1986. I recently came across a description of an interview with him shortly before he died by Paul Theroux, the travel writer. Borges was blind at that time, and he got Theroux to read some of Kipling’s works.
One of his comments about the English “Look what they gave India-Kipling! One of the greatest writers”.
His favourite “The church that was at Antioch, a marvellous story and a great poet”, they read the Harp Song of the Dane Woman.
What is a woman that you forsake her, And the hearth-fire and the home-acre, To go with the old grey Widow-maker? Then his next favourite, the often misquoted ‘The Ballad of East & West’.
Borges also produced the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and on India the illustrated plates were signed by Lockwood Kipling, RK’s father.
He recited the love song that Bisesa sings to Trejago in ‘Beyond the Pale’.
Alone among the housetops, to the North I turn and watch the lightning in the sky, The glamour of thy footsteps in the North, Come back to me Beloved, or I die!
It is interesting that Borges, probably South America’s most well known author, should be a very outspoken fan of Kipling, and have a detailed knowledge of his works.
Dear David,
Thank you for the latest "Jungle Drum",which,as usual,made very interesting reading.
I noticed a Kipling reference in yesterday's "Herald" that might be of interest to you and the membership. In the Sports section, dated Tuesday 13 April, 2010, the Rugby commentator, Spiro Zavos, wrote an article, entitled "School children, look no further than these comeback kids for life lessons". He is suggesting that sport can offer kids the chance to learn about coming back from adversity.
He writes:
"There has been a lively debate in education circles about the merits of public schools avoiding labelling children as failures in school reports. False praise, it is argued, gives students an unrealistic impression of their abilities.
"In all the discussion the point is never made by educationists that competitive sport is one of the ways to ground students,and to offer them redemption if they run into trouble in their lives.
"Educationists ignore the millions of people who have become better people because they have learnt fom the pressures of competitive sport the great life lesson,in the words of Rudyard Kipling,' to treat those twin imposters[Triumph and Disaster] just the same.'
He doesn't say exactly which Kipling creation he is quoting from and I leave it to the experts to locate the quote.
I look forward to catching up with you and the members at the May meeting.
Best wishes,
Rodney Pyne.
David,
Do you remember me telling the
group that St Xavier's in Kim was
actually La Martiniere, Lucknow ?
This is what the old School looks
like now, photos taken by a recent
Old Boy!
The attached image is the first page of the passenger list for the voyage of the Kaiser I Hind from London to Calcutta on 12th October 1893.
The passenger list shows what appears to be part of a fishing fleet.
There are no obvious fishermen on board, however, because this is a very special type of fishing fleet. All the people on this page are noted simply as being "ladies and gentlemen".
Reading down the list of names, past Mrs Wright, Mrs Simpson, the infant and ayah (Indian nanny), you come to Miss Max, Miss Cowell, Miss Blyth, Miss Graham,a long sequence of unmarried women, down to Miss Sandys and Miss Good.
This is the suspected "fleeting fleet": marriageable young women sailing out to India in search of eligible bachelors, preferably the so-called "heaven-born" serving in the Indian Civil Service or officers in the Army.
The fleet sailed out from Britain in the autumn or early winter and spent the next few cooler Indian months socialising at the British clubs and angling for a groom.
There was always a shortage of unattached British women in India, so the arrival of the fishing fleet was doubtless fondly awaited by sincere and ardent gentlemen ready to be affianced, not to mention by dastardly bounders who enjoyed toying with a lady's affections for the season.
Unsuccessful women - the "returned empties" - re-embarked for Britain in the spring.
Rudyard Kipling was the first writer to chronicle the lives of ‘ordinary’ soldiers. The affection and respect he felt for ‘Tommy Atkins’ shine through his stories and poems about the privates and NCOs who served in the British army in India.
Among the real-life NCOs and privates of that army were many members of the family of Brian Wright, a British actor and writer. He combined the information he unearthed about his soldier forebears with his love of Kipling to conceive the idea of an audio book where these two strands illuminated each other. Along the way it would offer an insight into Britain’s long – and often inglorious – involvement in Afghanistan.
Brian took the project to Crimson Cats Audio Books which has a growing reputation in the UK for imaginative and innovative work. The result is My Grandads and Afghanistan or Picture Postcards from Kipling which fuses excerpts from Kipling’s work and Brian’s family history, accompanied by music of the period played on the soldiers’ instrument, the banjo.
At the Kipling Society’s meeting on October 23rd Michael Bartlett and Dee Palmer, the partners in Crimson Cats, will talk about the making of My Grandads and Afghanistan and will play some extracts from the CD.
Michael was in the BBC’s Radio Drama Department for many years, working as director, script reader and editor. As well as directing plays and readings he was responsible for commissioning new work and developing scripts with writers. He is also a writer himself with many radio, television and stage plays to his credit.
Dee worked in BBC World Service, producing factual programmes on a wide variety of topics and also presenting the flagship science programme Science In Action.
Jim Bryant gave a most elucidating talk, followed by a reading, of the Sestina of the Tramp-Royal. Other than it was a form of poetry and reputed difficult I must admit that until Jim spoke I really had no idea what a Sestina involved.
Not only six verses of six lines and a seventh of six half lines, but each verse had the lines ending in the same six words, and in the seventh verse again the half lines ending in the same six words .With each of the six verses the last word of the sixth line is also the last word of the first line of the next verse. Not only a very difficult form, but also producing good poetry, not doggerel.
The use of the word Tucker for food, although of Dutch origin I always believed was an Australian word, nationalistic prejudice rearing its head here, and the ending bears a curious resemblance to Abu Ben Adem “May his tribe increase…..write me one said Abu then, as one who loved his fellowmen”.
Sestina of the Tramp-Royal.
Speakin’ in general. I ‘ave tried ‘em all,
The ‘appy roads that take you o’er the world.
Speakin’ in general, I ‘ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get ‘ence, the same as I ‘ave done,
An’ go observin’ matters till they die.
What do it matter where or ‘ow we die,
So long as we’ve our ‘ealth to watch it all-
The different ways that different things are done,
An’ men an’ women lovin’ in this world-
Takin’ our chances as they come along,
An’ when they ain’t, pretendin’ they are good?
In cash or credit-no, it aren’t no good;
You ‘ave to ‘ave the ‘abit or you’d die,
Unless you lived your life but one day long,
Nor didn’t prophesy nor fret at all,
But drew your tucker some’ow from the world,
An’ never bothered what you might ha’ done.
But, Gawd, what things are they I ‘aven’t done?
I’ve turned my ‘and to most, an’ turned it good,
In various situations round the world-
For ‘im that doth not work must surely die;
But that’s no reason man should labour all
‘Is life on the same shift; life’s none so long.
Therefore, from job to job I’ve moved along.
Pay couldn’t ‘old me when my time was done,
For something in my ‘ead upset me all,
Till I ‘ad dropped whatever ‘twas for good,
An’, out at sea, be’eld the docklights die,
An’ met my mate- the wind that tramps the world!
It’s like a book, I think, this bloomin’ world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you’re readin’ done,
An’ turn another-likely not so good;
But what you’re after is to turn ‘em all.
Gawd bless this world! Whatever she ‘ath done-
Excep’ when awful long-I’ve found it good.
So write, before I die, “E liked it all!”
Turning our attention northwards for a moment, to what extent was Kipling inspired by Arctic themes (using that term rather loosely) as distinct from Antarctic ones? There are two stories in the Jungle Books, “The White Seal” and “Quiquern” with their associated verses, and two poems, “The Explorer”, a poem clearly inspired by the pushing out of the northern frontiers of civilisation, and “The Rhyme of the Three Sealers”.
All of these works were written after Kipling’s early visits to Canada and the USA, and since he did not visit the north Pacific sealing grounds or the Canadian Arctic, it is clear that they are based on information supplied to him: indeed some of the informants can be identified.
Only “Quiquern” has a strictly Arctic location and tells of an Inuit village in the far north, in the Ellesmere Island area, between 75 and 80 deg. North. Sledge dogs figure largely but do not have human voices as in the Mowgli tales.
The story concerns a boy and a girl and two dogs conquering the elements to find seals for the starving community. It contains some familiar Kipling themes: loyalty to the tribe, the learning of the survival skills of hunting and dog driving, the bumptious young learning from hard experience, the phoney “magic man” who is tolerated rather kindly by the people, and true love triumphing through adversity.
“The White Seal” on the other hand, with its talking animals, fits into the Jungle Book format more easily. Set on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, in the context of the sealing industry, the White Seal has a mission to find a safe breeding haven for his tribe where man never comes. With the aid of Sea Cows he finds the magic place.
But it is a sad story and shows that Kipling and presumably his informants were aware of the danger of over-exploitation destroying the industry, even though by this time governments had taken steps to control the kill. Indeed it can be said to show in him a concern for conservation; nowadays we might call him “a bit of a greenie”. The poem “Lukannon” follows the story:
“I meet my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band. Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land; Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame, And still we sing Lukannon – before the sealers came.”
By contrast, the story of “The White Seal” is followed by a poem celebrating the successful seal hunt of the Inuits:
“Our gloves are stiff with the frozen blood. Our furs with the drifted snow, As we come in with the seal – the seal! In from the edge of the floe.”
The contrast is obvious; this is what we would call “sustainable” hunting necessary for survival, as distinct from the appalling ruthless near-extermination of the Fur Seal.
The long narrative poem “The Rhyme of the Three Sealers” is also about sealing, in this case poaching by American sealers on the islands of the Russian Far East. It is a violent and bloody story of piratical and brutal men quite willing to kill each other for the money. They also run the risk of harsh imprisonment:
“For life it is that is worse than death, by force of Russian law, To work in the mines of mercury that loose the teeth in your jaw.”
We shall encounter the poem “The Explorer” again shortly.
Antarctic events however largely seem to have escaped Kipling’s notice. It is of course the case that from 1899, when the Boer War started, Kipling’s attention would have been preoccupied by South African events, and that from the beginning of the Great War, news from the Far South would have seemed of peripheral concern.
But between these two conflicts there was the successful return in 1904 of Scott’s first Discovery expedition and the Scottish expedition in the Scotia; Shackleton’s Nimrod in 1909; and in 1913 the return of the survivors of the Terra Nova expedition with the tragic news of the death of Scott and his companions on their way back from the South Pole. That last event did however evoke a comment from Kipling, as we shall see.
Rudyard Kipling has been honoured in many ways, but did you know that he and his works have also appeared on postage stamps?
In 1970 San Marino issued a stamp in a Walt Disney series which featured Walt Disney and a scene from The Jungle Book, the last animated film he worked on.
In 1977 the Central African Empire issued a 100F stamp which features Kipling’s face and the Bandar-log from The Jungle Book.
In 1991 Gambia issued a set of 12 stamps on The Just-So Stories. These are Disney stamps so Disney characters also appear on the stamps – Pluto chases the Kangaroo who is running across Australia, Goofy watches the Leopard get its spots, Minnie Mouse is passed by the cat which walks by itself and Mickey Mouse admires the camel’s new hump. A tiny portrait of Kipling’s face appears in each corner of the 12 stamps.
In 1985 the Maldives issued a stamp depicting Mowgli.
In 1996 Nevis issued a stamp, again a Disney one, depicting Mowgli, a girl and Kaa.
In 2002 the Royal Mail in Britain celebrated the anniversary of the publication of The Just-So Stories with 10 self-adhesive stamps depicting the stories. These are watercolour illustrations by Izhar Cohen.
In 2007 Alderney issued a set of 6 stamps with pictures from The Just-So Stories.
In 2007 Monaco celebrated of Kipling’s Nobel Prize for Literature by putting him on one of their stamps.
I doubt that this is a complete list. If any members of the Kipling Society find more, please let us all know. Rudyard Kipling was very fond of travel. It’s nice to think that pictures of him and of his characters still travel in the form of stamps stuck onto letters.
Dear David,
"In all the discussion the point is never made by educationists that competitive sport is one of the ways to ground students,and to offer them redemption if they run into trouble in their lives.
