Jottings from the Editors Desk
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Last month we had a nephew of RK’s join our society, unfortunately he lives in Buderim Queensland, and finds travelling difficult, but he is writing down his comments on Carrie Kipling, whom he knew, his comments on the recently published book about her, and also some comments on “Granma Baldwin” I hope to share these with you in the next newsletter.
A review of the Kipling primer is included in this issue, but two comments in it stand out, remember published in 1900. ”It is fair to say that Kiplings’ reputation is greater than any English speaking poet who has ever lived” and “his verse is both brilliant and rhetorical.
Professor Peter Alexanders’ talk at our last meeting was both brilliant and entrancing, a very hard act to follow. Peter is currently working on a biography of John Lockwood Kipling, and has promised to come back next year and tell us about it.
I am delighted that our paid up membership has now reached 45, I had a very small bet that we would reach 50 by Christmas and I look like collecting! Professor Rickarts of New Zealand, who edited Kiplings Book “One Lady of Warakei” has agreed to talk to a joint meeting of the Jane Austen Society and ourselves next year, on the subject of Jane Austen and Rudyard Kipling. We remember RK’s short story “the Janeites” and the accompanying poem “Janes Wedding” surely prescient in view of the recent book and subsequent film! I will reprint the poem before Professor Rickarts comes. Now we have decided on Sunday luncheon for November where are we going to hold it? Suggestions please... A short while ago I picked up first edition of “Actions and Reactions” and was delighted to find inside a long, two column, clipping from the Morning Post, I believe the forerunner of the English Daily Telegraph, giving a very favourable review of the book. Our next meeting, on August 25th, at 7 Lord Street, Roseville, at 2pm, will be a talk and film by Ian Fullerton on Rudyard Kipling in South Africa. Come and bring your memories and questions with you and stay for tea afterwards. - D.W.
| Photo taken at our meeting May 5th
This photo was taken by our Treasurer, Ian Claridge. From the left, Professor Peter Alexander, Professor of English Literature at UNSW, and a first rate speaker, Susannah Fullerton, authoress and patron RKS, and your Editor, David Watts.
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A Kipling Primer
 Sorting through my Kiplings, I came across a little red book called a Kipling Primer, by F.L.Knowles, published by Chatto & Windus. Written in 1899, I had not previously read it, expecting it to be a collection of Kiplings childrens stories. To my surprise it turned out to be a biography, and a very well annotated index to RK’s works to 1899.
The bibliography of reference articles is almost all extracts from magazines, one I noted was “Kiplings suppressed Works. Luther S Livingston, Bookman(NY) Vol9 No 1, March 1899”.
It sounded very interesting, but probably relates to The Smith Administration (1891) The City of Dreadful Night and Other Places (1891), Letters of Marque (1891) which were printed and then withdrawn from sale, and have since been reprinted in collections, ie From Sea to Sea(.Letters of Travel.) The bibliography of First Editions is a bit of a misnomer, in that the author tries to list all known editions, with a bias to those available in the USA.
It would have been more interesting if the lists had included all the pirated versions produced in the USA. The first paragraph of the preface starts “This book has been written in the hope that it may minister to an intelligent appreciation of Mr Kipling’s prose and poetry. The world has never before witnessed the spectacle of a collected edition of an author’s work issued within a dozen years of the date on his earliest title-page. A body of criticism is bound to grow up around the writings of a genius so commanding and brilliant. If the Primer serve as an unpretentious forerunner of this literature, it asks for nothing more”.
The author Frederic Knowles, an American, states that the book was primarily developed for American readers, but my copy was printed by Chatto & Windus in England.
The book includes a couple of portraits of RK and also lists current portraits. The Index to RK’s principal writings, some 107 pages, gives a brief description of each verse or piece of prose that it lists, mainly factual descriptions but also includes some critical reviews.It is probably unfair to find faults in Knowles work, but several inaccuracies were noted. For instance in the Ballad of Boh Da Thone it mentions a birthmark on little Kathleen, whereas the poem calls it a crest on her dress. there are probably others, but it is a very comprehensive work for its times and gives a very interesting little sketch of each piece of prose or poetry published to that date (1899).
One must read it, and the reviews, in context of the social period, in which they were written, it is a trifle unreal to find the Spectator referring to “Tomlinson” as a gruesome satire, but again Knowles goes behind the obvious when he relates The Rhyme of the Three Captains to the Harper & Brothers v Kipling controversy. Again when the Recessional was published for the Queens Jubilee in 1897 the Spectator devoted a full page editorial, and the Academy (literary magazine)” there are now in the public mind two Kiplings, --Kipling the great story teller and Kipling a national stimulus and guide” True then and true today.
A Kipling Quiz - Answers
| ~ 2 Kings 8:13 Thy servant a dog |
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Book title 1930 |
| ~ Esther 1:19 Laws of Medes & Persians |
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Stalky & Co |
| ~ Psalms 12:2 No doubt ye are the people |
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The Islanders |
| ~ Proverbs 30:19 Way of a man with a maid |
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The Long Trail |
| ~ Ecclesiastes 7:28 One man among a thousand |
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The Thousandth Man |
| ~ Isaiah 53:6 Sheep that have gone astray |
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Gentleman Rankers |
| ~ Ecclesiasticus (Apocryphia) 44:1 Let us now praise famous men |
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School Song Stalky & Co |
| ~ Mathew 12:44 Swept and garnished |
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Swept & Garnished (1915) |
| ~ Luke 10:42 Mary hath chosen the good part |
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Sons of Martha |
| ~ Apostles 25:11/12 Appeal unto Caesar |
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Stalky & Co |
A Kipling Poem
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The Glory of the Garden
OUR England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,
With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;
But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye.
For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall,
You'll find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the heart of all
The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dung-pits and the tanks,
The rollers, carts, and drain-pipes, with the barrows and the planks.
And there you'll see the gardeners, the men and 'prentice boys
Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;
For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to scare the birds,
The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.
And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust with anything that grows ;
But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand and loam,
For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.
There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.
Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner In the Glory of the Garden.
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away !
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