June 2, 2002

Rudyard Kipling’s name is almost synonymous with India and the Empire at the turn of the century. But in fact comparatively little of his life was spent in India. Born in Lahore, where his father was curator of the Museum, from the age of five, he went to school in England. Kipling returned to India at the age of 16 and went immediately to work on the Civil & Military Gazette, of which he became editor.

But he stayed in India only until the age of 23, determined to go to England to make his name on a bigger stage as a literary figure. Through a detailed analysis, including numerous quotations from Kipling’s own works, the author of The long recessional shows Kipling against not so much his Indian background but an ‘imperial’ one which included amongst his passions the British empire in South Africa.

As the author points out, Kipling in fact wrote more on South Africa than he ever did on India. But it is perhaps his Indian inspired poems and stories which have remained in our memory because they are the best, among them, Kim and the Just so stories. To this day, his poem, Arithmetic on the frontier, warns against the risks undertaken by British soldiers against the tribesmen from lands beyond the Khyber Pass.

Although David Gilmour’s book is a traditional biography which begins at the beginning of Kipling’s life and ends at the end, it is also a literary compendium to his subject’s extensive writings. Earlier biographies have focused on Kipling’s personal and domestic life. For the first time the reader is exposed to his role as a public barometer of both his and other peoples’ thoughts on Empire. We therefore not only accompany Kipling through the various phases of his life, but through the stages of his literary and political thought. Thus we see how Kipling grows from extolling the virtues of empire for political reasons, to praising it because of the service he believed it provided to mankind.

There is no escaping Kipling’s belief that Asians and Africans were best ruled by Britons. It is of course a notion totally contrary to current thinking, but if one can accept that his beliefs were commonly shared by many at the time, it is possible to see the depth of humanity and social concern which Kipling showed. Through wit and satire he ridiculed the pompous upper classes who lived off the fat of the land; his sympathy went to the hard working officials and soldiers, who invariably were as much victims as the people over whom they ruled.

After Kipling left India, he went first to work in London. He then moved to the United States having met and married an American. And it was in the United States that he wrote some of his greatest works. But a dispute, with his wife’s family, led him to return to England where he settled for the rest of his life, making journeys abroad in winter time, especially South Africa, in search of the sun.

In later life, Kipling became not only a prophet of Empire but also a prophet of doom. Long before it happened, he was predicting the Armageddon which became the First World War. Yet even though he had warned against the war, when it came, he threw himself into its defence, writing some 300,000 words during the war. He also insisted that his only son John enlist, even though he had twice failed the medical examination because of poor eyesight.

With customary Victorian stoicism, when he wrote his autobiography, Kipling mentioned neither the death of his son in his first action, nor that of his young daughter at the age of six. Instead he immortalized his son’s contribution to the war effort in one of his best war poems: “My boy Jack”.

Kipling died before the outbreak of the Second World War — at the age of 70 in 1935. But, with the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, he had no illusions about what was coming. David Gilmour’s book makes an important contribution to our knowledge of Kipling and his literary output. That we may no longer share his beliefs and ideals in no way detracts from the brilliance of so much of his work. That some of it was mediocre makes him all the more human.

The long recessional: the imperial life of Rudyard Kipling
By David Gilmour
John Murray, London
ISBN 0-7195-5539-6
362pp. £22.50

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