The Jungle Drum - December 09

Jottings from the Editors Desk

I feel twice blessed in this issue - two articles for inclusion! An article by Susannah Fullerton on Kipling’s American home, Naulakha, a word which has two spellings and interpretations, the Hindi priceless jewel, and the more colloquial a cart load of gold.

The second article is by Catherine Barker, a very informative essay on Elsie Bambridge’s Wimpole Hall. It would be good to include this home in our itinerary when we arrange a visit to the UK. Unfortunately it is some little distance, in time if not miles, from Batemans.

There have been two events since our last newsletter, an excellent meeting with Professor Peter Alexander, and a most enjoyable Christmas luncheon, the hard work being put in by our Treasurer, Ian Claridge. Both events are reported separately.

Our next meeting, which is also our AGM, is on February 27th at Roseville. It will feature a talk on "Rudyard Kipling and the Antarctic" by Dr Alan Cowan. Alan, one of our early members, lives in Canberra, so we do not see him as often as we would like!

We have some excellent speakers lined up for next year, including Amelia Scholtz who will speak on "Rudyard Kipling and Japan" on Saturday 29th May. I am investigating whether we can also get together for some little informal meetings, discussing aspects of Kipling's writings. More of this later.

I ran into an enterprising young man Gregory North who, in the traditions of our early bush poets, writes and performs his poetry, and captures it on CD. I heard a very good poem he wrote about Gelignite Jack Murray. We may get one on Kipling yet.

Remember to pay your subs at the AGM, Ian will be away overseas but his assistant will be on the ball, she assures me. Robyn, our secretary, is overseas at the moment but will be back for the AGM.

In response to our letter of thanks we received this reply from Professor Alexander “ Happy to do it: the RK group is always a very responsive audience, Regards, Peter."

Our patron, Susannah Fullerton has been involved in an exciting new project this year. She was invited by a UK recording company to write and record a CD about the life and writings of one of the worlds great short story writers, Katherine Mansfield. The CD is now available and can be ordered from Susannah on fullerto@bigpond.net.au or purchased at meetings.

Look forward to seeing you all on February 27th.

- D.W.

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Kipling Society Christmas Lunch

We held our Christmas lunch at a private room in the Roseville Memorial Hall. The event was organised by Ian Claridge who, together with his wife Beverley put in a lot of work. The menu was excellent, and the 18 of us who attended had a most interesting time. We enjoyed listening to a poem read by Don, and the Catherine and David Barker gave a joint recital, which we'd love to hear again some time. Ian organised a quiz, showing old photographs of parts of Sydney which we had to identify. It was one of those days when 3 hours was not long enough for lunch. Our big vote of thanks to Ian for an excellent job was carried by acclamation.

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KIPLING ABROAD
Traffics and Discoveries from Burma to Brazil

Edited by Andrew Lycett

Andrew Lycett is the author of the definite biography of Rudyard Kipling. As a former foreign correspondent, he has travelled widely and worked in most parts of the world written about by Kipling. His other books include lives of Ian Fleming, Dylan Thomas and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He is the Meetings Secretary on the Council of the UK Kipling Society and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

I quote from the publishers comments,

Rudyard Kipling’s genius for evoking the sights, sounds and atmosphere of a place was crystallised in his fiction, in which he introduced Victorian and later readers to the drama and exoticism of the East. Kipling’s poetry ,journalism and letters also encapsulated the spirit of the places he visited, from Egypt, India and Brazil to the United States and Southern Africa. At a time when tourism was in its infancy, he prophetically reflected on the effects of mass transport and the ‘globe trotters’ who thronged to India. Kipling Abroad gathers together some of the most descriptive and revealing of his travel writing, which has never before been published in one volume. Introduced and edited by Andrew Lycett, author of an acclaimed biography of Kipling, it captures the range, curiosity and sheer talent of one of our best loved authors, revealing as much about Kipling himself as it does about the places he visited, and staking a claim for his recognition as the father of modern travel writing.

I hope to have a copy here shortly.

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Ray Bradbury

In 2004, Ray Bradbury, the Author of many books, and screen plays, remember Fahrenheit 451? Published a book of short stories and a poem, called The Cat’s Pajamas. The poem, entitled “Epilogue” was a description of a train journey , forever Orient Express, with many noted authors, Shaw, Chesterton, Twain, Dickens, Wilde, and. last but not least Kipling. Some extracts about Kipling from the poem follow:

“Here stalks Melville, Rudyard Kipling too.. Kim’s scribe an Indian hue,
..while steaming Kipling’s Country of the Blind,
While Kipling curries up remembrance when
His Kim drummed out in dust and back again,
And Kaa was coveted as a monarch snake.
And Mowgli howled with wolves that shrilled to shake.
The moon,and pace our train, while our hearts sing:
Aye! Kipling’s our Man Who Would Be King!”

At the end of the journey Bradbury says “And Kipling wipes the tear winks from my eye”

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Elsie Kipling’s Legacy

About 14 kilometres southwest of Cambridge stands an imposing country house, Wimpole Hall, which has a link to Rudyard Kipling via his daughter Elsie. It was she who bought the dilapidated house in 1938 and spent almost the next 40 years lovingly restoring it to its former glory before leaving it to the National Trust so that the public could enjoy its splendours.

Elsie was the younger daughter of Rudyard Kipling. Her elder sister Josephine was her father’s favourite, and when she died of pneumonia in 1899 aged only 6, Kipling was heartbroken. Elsie and her brother John spent several winters with their parents in South Africa between 1900 and 1905, and on one visit they adopted a lion cub as a pet. This caused their father to nickname them Una (after the character in The Faeirie Queen) and Dan (after the Biblical hero of the lion’s den). As Una and Dan, Elsie and John were immortalized by their father in Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910).When John, Kipling’s only son, was killed in action in 1915, Elsie was left as the only surviving child, a role she found rather difficult as both her parents never really ceased to mourn their two lost children.

In 1924 Elsie married Captain George Bambridge and in 1938 they bought the virtually derelict Wimpole Hall and began its restoration. Elsie’s mother Carrie, had died in 1939, three years after Rudyard, and Elsie used the money she inherited from her parents to begin the restoration of the Wimpole estate, which she carried on alone after the death of George in 1943.

The house was originally built in 1640 and has been added to over the centuries since, making it the largest house in Cambridgeshire today. There are over 3000 acres of parkland and farmland, with Wimpole Home Farm providing a particular delight for young visitors today. The grounds were developed by a series of landscape designers including “Capability” Brown (1767) and Humphrey Repton (1801 – 9). The work was then completed under Elsie’s supervision.

The house was devoid of any furniture or paintings when Elsie bought it and she spent her life trying to replenish some of them. The interior is chiefly decorated in 18th century style and there are several notable rooms open to the public, including one with a rather dramatic plunge bath. In the housekeeper’s sitting room is a unique set of slates owned by Kipling’s father, John, dating from when he lived in India. Queen Victoria visited Wimpole Hall in October 1843. She and Prince Albert stayed two nights, 800 guests joining the Royal party for dinner and a ball. The most spectacular room in the house, the yellow drawing room with its magnificent domed ceiling, designed by Sir John Soane, became the ballroom for the regal occasion. Last year the exterior front of the house was used for the filming of the Noel Coward play “Easy Virtue” and made a most impressive backdrop for a scene involving the Cambridgeshire Hunt.

On Kipling’s death Elsie inherited her father’s documents and she then dedicated herself to the preservation of these papers, most of which consisted of his correspondence. She worked on them at Wimpole Hall and there with the help of Kipling’s secretary, Cecily Nicholson, began the task of sorting and listing all the documents. She also purchased what additional documents she could find on sale, seeking out others in private possession and having copies made. When Elsie died in 1976, she bequeathed the 32 boxes of Kipling’s papers, known as the Wimpole Archive, together with the House itself, to the National Trust. The archive was then passed to the University of Sussex library where it has been made use of by several of his biographers including Lord Birkenhead.

Overshadowed in her early life by her brother and sister, it was as a middle aged woman that Elsie took over from her mother as keeper of her father’s memory. It was she who christened a K Class destroyer Kipling in January 1939, saying that nothing would have given her father such immense pride and pleasure than having a ship of the Royal Navy bear his name. It was a pity that she died a childless widow – how Kipling would have loved grandchildren! However the Kipling Archive exists today as a testament to her work and the legacy of her restoration of Wimpole Hall is certainly well worth a visit.

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Kipling’s ‘Naulakha’

Did you know that you can go and stay in Rudyard Kipling’s home?

In 1892 Kipling and his new wife, Carrie, arrived in Vermont to stay with her family. Kipling loved the countryside and decided to settle there permanently, so bought 11 acres of land and began to supervise the building of a house. He called the house ‘Naulakha’, the jewel beyond price. The plans were drawn up by H.R.Marshall, but Kipling had great input and ensured that the house had the privacy he required to write. He wanted every room to enjoy the view across woods and farmland to distant hills, so the house is long and thin and most unusual in its design.

Unfortunately things did not go well in Vermont for the Kiplings. Carrie’s brother made their lives difficult and they left in 1896. In 1902, when they were settled at Bateman’s, they sold the house, with much of its furniture, to a Miss Cabot. It then passed into the hands of the Holbrook family, who cared for it lovingly and made very few alterations.

‘Naulakha’ is now in the hands of the Landmark Trust, an organisation founded in Britain in 1965 to prevent the loss or irreversible alteration of small but worthwhile buildings. The Landmark Trust rents out its properties (most of which are in Britain) for days or weeks, giving its members the opportunity to stay in wonderfully historic and sometimes very unusual buildings. There is a small membership fee to join the Trust, but it does offer a fascinating range of accommodation (see www.landmarktrust.org.uk ). There are other literary homes in their care – you can stay at James Boswell’s Scottish home Auchinleck, the Browning’s home ‘Casa Guidi’ in Florence, or William Beckford’s Tower.

So today you can, through the Landmark Trust, go and stay in Kipling’s home, inhabit the rooms where he wrote The Jungle Books and Captains Courageous and admire the view over the Vermont countryside which he loved.

Susannah Fullerton

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Professor Peter Alexander

Professor Peter Alexander kept us enthralled with his scholarly analysis of Kipling’s religious beliefs, concentrating on his Christian beliefs. What follows are notes from his talk, which he expanded.

1. It was an establishment run with the full vigour of the Evangelical as revealed to the Woman. I had never heard of Hell, so I was introduced to it in all its terrors - I and whatever luckless little slavey might be in the house, whom severe rationing had led to steal food. Once I saw the Woman beat such a girl who picked up the kitchen poker and threatened retaliation. Myself I was regularly beaten. The Woman had an only son of twelve or thirteen as religious as she. I was a real joy to him, for when his mother had finished with me for the day he (we slept in the same room) took me on and roasted the other side."
   
   
2. Chiefly I believe in the existence of a personal God to whom we are personally responsible for wrongdoing - that it is our duty to follow and our peril to disobey the ten ethical laws laid down for us by Him or His prophets. I disbelieve directly in eternal punishment for reasons that would take too long to put down on paper. On the same grounds I disbelieve in an eternal reward. As regards the mystery of the Trinity and the Doctrine of Redemption I regard them most reverently but cannot give them implicit belief, accepting them rather as dogmas of the church than as matters that rush to the heart. I would give much to believe in them absolutely. Since you have asked and you - but you alone - have a right to an answer, I explain as badly and clumsily as I may. Summarized it comes to I believe in God the Father Almighty maker of Heaven and Earth and in one filled with his spirit who did voluntarily die in the belief that the human race would be spiritually bettered thereby. I believe that after having seen and studied eight or nine creeds in Justification by work rather than faith, and most assuredly I do believe in retribution both here and hereafter for wrongdoing as I believe in a reward, here and hereafter for obedience to the Law."
   
   
3. " …It seems to me cruel that white men, whose governments are armed with the most murderous weapons known to science, should amaze and confound their fellow creatures with a doctrine of salvation imperfectly understood by themselves and a code of ethics foreign to the climate and instincts of those races whose most cherished customs they outrage and whose gods they insult."
   
   
4. To begin with, they have seen pain - pain that no word or deed of theirs can alleviate - life borne into Death, and Death crowded down by unhappy life. Also they understand the full significance of drink, which is a knowledge hidden from very many well-meaning people, and some of them have fought with the beasts at Ephesus.." (The Record of Badaliah Herodsfoot)
   
   
5. He rose at her approach and without prelude or salutation asked: ’Who are you looking for?’ ‘Lieutenant Michael Turrell-my nephew’ said Helen slowly and word for word, as she had many thousands of times in her life. The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion before he turned from the fresh-sown grass towards the naked black crosses. ‘Come with me’ he said, ‘and I will show you where your son lies’ When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener. (The Gardener)
   
   
6. “He went on with his braziers, hummin’ his hymn, down Butcher’s Row. Just before we got to the old dressin’ station he stops and sets ’em down an’ says ”Where did you say she was, Clem ? Me eyes ain’t as good as they used to be” “In ‘er bed at ‘ome” I says. “Come on down. It’s perishin’ cold, an’ I’m not due for leaf” “Well, I am" ‘e says, “I am…” An’ then - ‘give you me word I didn’t recognise the voice - he stretches out ‘is neck a bit, in a way ‘e ‘ad, an’ he says: “Why, Bella!” ‘e says.”Oh Bella” ‘e says. Thank Gawd!” ‘e says. Just like that! An’ then I saw - I tell you I saw - Auntie Armine herself standin’ by the old dressin’ station door where first I’d thought I’d seen her. He was looking at ‘er an’ she was lookin’ at him. I saw it, an’ me soul turned over insideme because - because it knocked out everything I’d believed in. I ‘ad nothing to lay ‘old of, d’ye see? An’ ‘e was looking at ‘er as though ‘e could ‘ave et ‘er, an’ she was lookin’ at ‘im the same way, out of ‘er eyes. (The Madonna of the Trenches)
   
   
7. “He did not know fear. He gave me a dose of my own medicine once. It was a morning watch coming down through the Islands. We had been talking about the cut of our topsail - he was right - it held too much lee wind - and then he went to wash before he prayed. I said to him: ”You seem to have both ends and the bight of most things coiled down in your little head, Paul. If it’s a fair question, what is your trade ashore?” And he said ”I’ve been a man-hunter—Gids forgive me: and now that I think The God has forgiven me, I am man-hunting again” Then he pulled his shirt over his head, and I saw his back. Did you ever see his back , Quabil?” ‘I expect I did -That last morning when we all stripped: but I don’t remember’ ‘I shan’t forget it! There was good sound lictotr’s work and the criss-cross Jew scourgings like gratings; and a stab or two; and, besides those, old dry bites - when they get good hold and rugg you. That showed he must have dealt with the Beasts. So, whatever he had done, he’d paid for. I was just wondering what he had done, when he said “No; not your sort of man-hunting.” “It’s your own affair,” I said:” but I shouldn't care to see Caesar with a back like that. I should hear the Beasts asking for me” “ I may that, too, some day” he said, and began sluicing himself. (The Manner of Men)
   
   But if the dark Hour does not vanish, as sometimes it doesn't; if the black cloud will not lift, as sometimes it will not; let me tell you again for your comfort that there are many liars in the world, but there are no liars like our own sensations. The despair and horror mean nothing, because there is for you nothing irremediable, nothing ineffaceable, nothing irrevocable in anything you may have said or thought or done.
   
   
8. Bless you for your note which has just come in. He who puts us into this life does not abandon His work for any reason or default at the end of it. That is all I have come to learn out of my life. So there is no fear.
   

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A Kipling Poem

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