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Biography of Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936

Biographical Sketch by Wendi Capehart

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in India, where he lived very happily until he was five years old. An early family story his mother liked to tell is of the time he was approximately three, and he waved good-by to her, walking hand in hand with an Indian herdsman, calling back to his mother in Hindustani, "Goodbye! I am going with him. He is my brother." Kipling also wrote about how in the afternoon nap times, he and his little sister would be told stories by their Ayah (nursemaid) and a Hindu manservant, who each spoke different languages. When the afternoon cooled and they were sent to their parents, the servants would caution them to speak English to their parents, and Kipling explained, "So one spoke 'English', haltingly translated out of the vernacular idiom that one thought and dreamed in." That must have felt odd, to need to translate into the "correct" language before you could speak to your parents.

When he was five, he and his three-year-old sister were taken to England and left with a foster family who kept Anglo-Indian children (that is, the British "children of the Empire" whose parents worked in India). It was believed the Indian climate was very unhealthy for British children, so it was common to send them "home" to England when they reached school age. But England was not home for Kipling, and his foster mother was cruel to him (she favored his little sister, though). He was very much an outsider, but he was also subjected to cruel treatment and was bitterly unhappy. His favorite solace was to bury himself in the books his father sent him, Grimms' Fairy Tales and Robinson Crusoe. He also had as much fun as possible over the Christmas holidays when he and his sister spent a month with the famous artist Burne-Jones and his wife, who was sister to the Kipling children's mother.

He was sent away to a boarding school at twelve. At first it was hard. The quickest path to friends at British boarding schools for boys was through sports, and Kipling had such poor eyesight that he didn't play games, making him once again an outsider, looking on from the sidelines. But eventually he was able to make some friends, and the schoolmaster was not unkind. His school experiences formed some of the background for a later book, Stalky & Co. He was not a good enough student to pass the exams for Oxford University, and his father could not afford to support him. Four years later, at the age of sixteen, he returned home to India. He had forgotten all the Indian languages he had learned, he thought; but as he walked down the streets he found full phrases and sentences returning to him. Sometimes he didn't even remember what they meant; he just knew they were the right sentences for the scenes before him.

His father helped him get a job as a reporter. His job was to observe events and then report them, and observing and describing were two of his strongest skills. He began writing short stories and poems which were often published by the papers he worked for. They were often humorous, or "tongue in cheek." They brought him much popularity, and he was able to publish a couple of volumes which brought him more public success.

A few years later he moved to England where he published more of his stories, wrote for newspapers, and married Carrie Balestier. Carrie was American, but she had been keeping house in England for her brother, one of Kipling's closest friends. For their honeymoon they planned a world trip, which had to be cut short when Kipling's bank failed. Instead, they moved to Vermont, in the United States, where her family was from. They lived very happily in Vermont for a time; but her remaining brother became troublesome and argumentative, and a growing anti-British sentiment in the country made Kipling keenly aware once more than he was an outsider, so they moved to England and stayed there for the rest of Kipling's life. All of that time he would say he would rather be living in Bombay or Vermont, but he was unable to do either.

Kipling has had many admirers in the literary world, and also many detractors; he has gone in and out of favour. It is now difficult to discuss Kipling in polite society, or to read him well. Many dismiss him outright as an extreme racist. But often even his harshest critics will acknowledge he wrote very, very well. He favored the British Empire, because he thought it brought security, safety, and the rule of law to the colonies; but he was also not afraid to harshly criticize it. He was condemning British policy in connection with Germany long before World War I began.

In his poem "Epitaphs of the War," written about World War I (in which his only son John died at the age of eighteen), he wrote this bitter couplet:

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Kipling is probably responsible for turning the word "hun" into an ugly slur about German people, before WWI. He did not care at all for Irish Catholics. He was staunchly opposed to Indian independence because he thought British rule was the best thing for India, and for every other race that wasn't white (and also for Irish Catholics, and Dutch Boers, and Bolsheviks). But his writings are also full of warmly compassionate observations of people of all different creeds and colors, and this appreciation of his ability to observe and then tell back to us, his readers, in a way that makes us see and hear what Kipling wants us to, is a compliment often repeated by both his admirers and his critics.

It's interesting to note that Kipling had been offered knighthood more than once, and in spite of his reputation as the "Bard of Empire," he turned down every offer. He refused to accept the Poet Laureateship for England, and also the recently-established Order of Merit. However, in 1907 he did accept an award that was not British: he accepted the Nobel prize in literature. He was only the sixth recipient, but he was the first English writer to receive the award; and at 41, he is still the youngest ever to have received the Nobel for literature. The prize citation said it was "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author." (Six years later, Bengali Indian poet and author Rabindranath Tagore would be the first non-European to be awarded the same prize.)

Kipling also introduced more phrases to the English language than anybody since Shakespeare, says Orwell (and some others). Some of them:

East is East, and West is West.
The white man's burden.
What do they know of England who only England know?
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Somewhere East of Suez.
Paying the Dane-geld
law of the jungle
the unforgiving minute

Maya Jasanoff of Harvard University writes that "Kipling knew India more intimately than any other British writer." Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie, Indian-born British-American novelist and essayist, says this knowledge of India gives Kipling's work "undeniable authority." Indian author and professor Amit Chaudhuri says that Kipling clearly had racial prejudices, but was also a "compelling and very, very gifted author," and that in spite of his prejudices, when Kipling writes about India, he manages to do so in a way that is "very interesting, rather than merely exotic." He also says that, "There are great blind spots in Kipling and the blind spots are all the more curious and regrettable because they occur in a writer who was extraordinarily observant and acute in his observations."

Many have criticized Kipling's poems for being jingoistic, or overly patriotic. G.K. Chesterton, who was not a fan, said that Kipling was too rootless to be patriotic, and that he lacked a true sense of home that a real patriot requires. Today we call people like Kipling TCKs, third culture kids. These are people who either have parents from two different cultures, or they have spent key parts of their childhood in a culture or country not their own. An aspect TCKs often share is their gift for observation, which comes from that other shared trait—never quite feeling at home, never quite feeling like they fit in, and always feeling that sense of being on the outside looking in. The poet Alison Brackenbury writes "Kipling is poetry's Dickens, an outsider and journalist with an unrivalled ear for sound and speech." Novelist and poet Maya Angelou also said that she respected and admired Kipling.

I don't know who you will see when you read these poems: Kipling the imperialist, Kipling the observer, Kipling the bigot, or Kipling the gifted writer? A man who knew, understood, and loved India, or one who sneered at her? I don't know what you will find, or how these poems might change you. But I do know how you should look. Like Kipling, begin as an observer, on the outside looking in, and let the poems speak for themselves. Pay attention to what he is actually saying, and what he is not. Remember where and when he wrote, and don't read into his poems ideas and events that had not happened yet. Read them aloud, listening to the sounds and rhythm. Let the poems speak for themselves before you let somebody else speak for them.