The Man Who Would Be King Read online

  THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING: SELECTED STORIES OF RUDYARD KIPLING

  SERIES EDITOR: JAN MONTEFIORE

  RUDYARD KIPLING, born in December 1865 in Bombay (now Mumbai), was taken to England in 1871 with his younger sister Alice and left for five years with an abusive foster-family in Southsea, after which he was sent to the United Services College in Devon, the public school affectionately recalled in Stalky & Co. (1899). He returned to India in the autumn of 1882 to work as a reporter. The poems, sketches and stories which he wrote during his ‘Seven Years’ Hard’ in India, especially the series ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, published as a book in 1888, won him immediate acclaim and, from his arrival in London in 1889, worldwide literary celebrity. This was increased by the powerful stories collected in Life’s Handicap and the originality of Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), whose poems ‘Mandalay’, ‘Tommy’ and ‘Gunga Din’ became immensely popular performance items in music-halls – which, like hymns and ballads, were a lasting influence on Kipling’s verse.

  In 1892 Kipling married the American Caroline Balestier and lived with her in Vermont for four happy years, during which their daughters Josephine and Elsie were born and Kipling wrote some of his best work, including the two Jungle Books (1894, 1895). They moved to England in 1896, settling in Rottingdean, East Sussex, where their son John was born, and eventually at the house Batemans, at Burwash. Kipling continued to travel widely with his family, spending nearly all the winters from 1898 to 1908 in South Africa. On a trip to New York in 1899, his 6-year-old daughter Josephine died of pneumonia, which Kipling himself narrowly survived.

  Kipling published his masterpiece, Kim, in 1901, and the Just So Stories in 1902. He turned to the theme of Englishness and history in his children’s books Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910), interweaving poems and stories to subtle intertextual effect. His stories for adults after 1900 focus on the lives of ordinary people, uniquely combining a creative response to the new twentieth-century technologies of communication with a strong imaginative feeling for the strange and the numinous, intensified by his pared-down, understated style. His public poems, including ‘Recessional’, ‘The White Man’s Burden’ and ‘The Islanders’, all printed in The Times, preached the virtues of patriotism and duty.

  From the outset Kipling identified with the rulers and officials of the British Empire, although he was never their servant (he refused both a knighthood and the Order of Merit). Yet he sympathized deeply with children, outlaws and outsiders, who often engaged his best energies as a writer, as witnessed by the vitality and subtlety of the Jungle Books and Kim. He was a strong supporter of the Boer War, for which he wrote journalism and propaganda; this, together with the hardening of his conservative political views after 1900, made him increasingly unpopular with liberals and anti-imperialists. Kipling returned their dislike. His books continued to sell and to be read widely and he was awarded honorary doctorates by many universities and the Nobel Prize in 1907, but he never again enjoyed the brilliant reputation which he had held in the 1890s.

  In the First World War Kipling remained a strongly patriotic writer, but after the blow of losing his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915 he became a more private man. He nonetheless played a major role in the War Graves Commission, arguing successfully for equality of treatment for all ranks and choosing the inscriptions for the memorial stones. He commemorated the dead in his own moving ‘Epitaphs of the War’ and his History of the Irish Guards in the Great War (1923), an account of his son’s regiment. His late stories of loss and bereavement are written with an acuteness and subtlety not always perceived by their contemporary readers.

  Kipling died in 1936.

  JAN MONTEFIORE is Professor of Twentieth-Century English Literature in the University of Kent at Canterbury, where she has taught in the School of English and American Literature since 1978. Her books include Rudyard Kipling (2007), Arguments of Heart and Mind (2002) and Feminism and Poetry (1987). She is married to the war correspondent Patrick Cockburn.

  RUDYARD KIPLING

  The Man Who Would Be King

  Edited with an Introduction and Notes by

  JAN MONTEFIORE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  This selection first published in Penguin Classics 2011

  Introduction and editorial material copyright © Jan Montefiore, 2011

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the editor has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-141-96654-0

  Contents

  Chronology

  General Preface

  Introduction

  Note on the Text

  Further Reading

  THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

  The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows

  In the House of Suddhoo

  The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes

  Lispeth

  Beyond the Pale

  Dray Wara Yow Dee

  At the Pit’s Mouth

  A Wayside Comedy

  The Story of Muhammad Din

  Little Tobrah

  The Finances of the Gods

  Baa Baa, Black Sheep

  The Man Who Would Be King

  Naboth

  On the City Wall

  ‘The City of Dreadful Night’

  At the End of the Passage

  The Drums of the Fore and Aft

  With the Main Guard

  On Greenhow Hill

  Without Benefit of Clergy

  The Bridge-Builders

  The Maltese Cat

  ‘The Finest Story in the World’

  The Ship That Found Herself

  Mrs Bathurst

  ‘They’

  ‘Wireless’

  The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat

  The House Surgeon

  Mary Postgate

  A Madonna of the Trenches

  The Janeites

  His Gift

  The Wish House

  The Gardener

  Dayspring Mishandled

  The Manner of Men

  Notes

  Chronology

  1865 Joseph Rudyard Kipling born 30 December in Bombay, India, to Alice and John Lockwood Kipling, teacher of Art and Crafts at the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy School of Art and Industry.

  1868 Sister Alice (‘Trix
’) born.

  1871–7 Rudyard and Alice taken to England and left in the care of the Holloway family in Lorne Lodge, Southsea (the ‘House of Desolation’).

  1878–82 Attends United Services College at Westward Ho!, Devon.

  1880 Falls in love with Florence (‘Flo’) Garrard and corresponds with her for four years.

  1881 Schoolboy Lyrics privately printed in Lahore, India, by Alice Kipling.

  1882 Leaves school to join his family in Lahore (where Lockwood Kipling has been Principal of the Lahore School of Art and Curator of the Lahore Museum since 1875); ‘unofficially’ engaged to Flo Garrard.

  1882–7 Junior reporter on Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore at a starting salary of 150 rupees a month, rising to 200 after six months and 400 after a year.

  1884 Indian National Congress founded. Flo Garrard breaks off their connection. Echoes, a book of parodies and spoof poems written jointly with his sister, privately printed and published.

  1885 In Lahore, publishes Departmental Ditties and Quartette, a supplement to the Civil and Military Gazette written by the Kipling family, including ‘The Phantom ’Rickshaw’ and ‘The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes’.

  1886 Departmental Ditties published in London. November 1886–June 1887: ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’ appear as ‘turnovers’ in the Civil and Military Gazette; negotiates with Thacker Spink in Bombay about publishing them as a book.

  1887 Moves to Allahabad to write for the Pioneer newspaper, with increased salary of 600 rupees a month. Writes travel sketches of Native States entitled ‘Letters of Marque’ (later reprinted in From Sea to Sea, 1899).

  1888 Thacker Spink publish Plain Tales from the Hills, revised and enlarged, in Bombay and England. Soldiers Three, Wee Willie Winkie, Under the Deodars, The Phantom ’Rickshaw, In Black and White and The Story of the Gadsbys published by A. D. Wheeler in the Indian Railway Library series.

  1889 Leaves India to become a full-time freelance writer, travelling through China, Japan and the USA, as described in From Sea to Sea. Arrives in England, settles in London near Charing Cross, and achieves spectacular early literary success. Macmillan become his London publisher, publishing all his works apart from his poetry.

  1890 Elected to Savile Club. Publishes ‘Barrack-Room Ballads’ in Scots Observer, and many poems and short stories in Macmillan’s Magazine, St James’s Gazette and Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in New York. Suffers a breakdown and recovers; meets Flo Garrard, again falls in love and is again rejected, fictionalizing the experience in The Light That Failed. Becomes a close friend of Wolcott Balestier, American literary agent, and with him begins their joint novel, The Naulahka.

  1891 The Light That Failed and Life’s Handicap: Stories of Mine Own People published. In October sets out by ship for South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, revisiting India for what proves to be the last time. On 7 December learns by telegram from Caroline (Carrie) Balestier of her brother Wolcott Balestier’s death and on 27 December leaves Lahore for England.

  1892 10 January: marries Carrie Balestier at All Souls, Langham Place, London. 3 February: the couple set out for Brattleboro, Vermont, to meet the Balestier family. March: they continue their honeymoon journey via Vancouver to Japan. 9 June: Kipling loses his savings of nearly £2,000 when his bank (New Oriental Banking Co.) goes broke; they return to the USA, and settle in Brattleboro, in Bliss Cottage. 29 December: their daughter Josephine (‘Best Beloved’) is born. The Naulahka published. Barrack-Room Ballads (Methuen) sells 7,000 copies in its first year.

  1893 The Kiplings move into their own house, Naulakha. Many Inventions published.

  1894 The Jungle Book published. Lockwood and Alice Kipling leave India, retiring to Tisbury, Wiltshire.

  1895 The Second Jungle Book, Soldiers Three and Other Stories, Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories published. Anti-English feeling between the USA and Great Britain over Venezuela makes Kipling uncomfortable. He is approached about becoming Poet Laureate on the death of Tennyson and indicates refusal.

  1896 A second daughter, Elsie, born 3 February. Quarrel with Carrie’s brother Beatty Balestier, followed by an embarrassing court action, decides Kipling to return to England. In September they take a house in Torquay, Devon.

  1897 Family moves to Rottingdean, East Sussex. In June, Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrated; Kipling writes the admonitory ‘Recessional’, which appears in The Times 17 July. Son John Kipling born 17 August. Captain Courageous and The Seven Seas (poems) published.

  1898 Kitchener killed at Omdurman. The Day’s Work published. The Kipling family visits Cape Town, South Africa, from January to April. Kipling becomes a friend of Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner.

  1899 Stalky & Co. published. February: ‘The White Man’s Burden’, encouraging US annexation of the Philippines, appears in The Times and in McClure’s Journal in the USA. Kipling and his family set out on a disastrous visit to the USA. Arriving in New York, Kipling becomes critically ill with pneumonia; his near-death and recovery is global headline news. 6 March: his daughter Josephine dies. His sister ‘Trix’ suffers her first mental breakdown. Travel writings collected From Sea to Sea (2 vols.) published. 11 October: Boer War begins. Kipling, a strong supporter of the Government, writes ‘The Absent-minded Beggar’ which, set to music by Arthur Sullivan for the Soldiers’ Families Fund, nets £300,000.

  1900 January–April: Kipling and family visit South Africa, staying in Cape Town; Kipling visits the army to raise morale. Later he works on Kim, discussing its progress with his father. From 1900 to 1908 Kipling and his family spend their winters in Cape Town at The Woolsack, a house built specially for them by Cecil Rhodes.

  1901 Kim published.

  1902 Cecil Rhodes dies. Treaty of Vereeniging ends the Boer War. 2 January: The Times publishes Kipling’s ‘The Islanders’, a poem rebuking the British for military unpreparedness. Kipling purchases his house Batemans in Burwash, East Sussex, and moves in on 3 September. Just So Stories published.

  1903 The Five Nations (poems) published.

  1904 Traffics and Discoveries published.

  1906 Puck of Pook’s Hill published.

  1907 Kipling awarded Nobel Prize for literature and Hon. D.Litt. by Oxford and Durham universities.

  1909 Actions and Reactions published.

  1910 Rewards and Fairies published. Death of Edward VII. Union of South Africa created, to Kipling’s disgust. 23 November: Alice Kipling dies.

  1911 26 January: Lockwood Kipling dies. C. R. L. Fletcher’s History of England, with poems by Kipling, published. Public agitation for women’s suffrage; Kipling publishes ‘The Female of the Species’ in hostile response.

  1912 ‘Marconi scandal’ of insider dealing by Liberal Cabinet members, including Rufus Isaacs, outrages Kipling. Songs from Books (poems) published.

  1913 Rufus Isaacs appointed Attorney General: Kipling writes and privately circulates the anti-Semitic poem ‘Gehazi’, attacking him. Home Rule Bill for Ireland passes the Commons twice, to be rejected by the Lords. Edward Carson foments rebellion in Ulster, supported by Kipling in speeches.

  1914 Home Rule Bill for Ireland passes its third reading in the House of Commons, infuriating Ulster Protestants. April: Kipling’s poem ‘Ulster’ supporting Edward Carson’s sedition published in the Morning Post; he makes a speech in Tunbridge Wells attacking Liberals and Home Rule. 4 August: Britain declares war on Germany. 1 September: Kipling’s call to arms, ‘For All We Have and Are’, published in The Times. 10 September: Kipling’s son John joins the Irish Guards.

  1915 Kipling writes war stories, including ‘Mary Postgate’. John Kipling’s battalion moves to France to take part in Battle of Loos (25–8 September). 27 September: Second Lieutenant John Kipling is reported ‘wounded and missing’. Kipling begins to suffer the serious stomach pains that will trouble him for the next nineteen years. Writes naval sketches and poems published as The Fringes of the Fleet; four of the poems are set to music by Edward Elgar.

 
; 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin quashed by British Army; execution of its leaders. Sea Warfare, including the poem ‘My Boy Jack’; published.

  1917 Kipling is asked to write the regimental history of the Irish Guards, and agrees. A Diversity of Creatures published. His poem ‘Mesopotamia’, protesting at the losses in the mishandled Mesopotamian campaign, published in the Morning Post. September: Kipling is appointed to War Graves Commission. Begins writing ‘Epitaphs of the War’.

  1918 End of the First World War.

  1919 Election of Sinn Fein in Ireland, leading to unrest suppressed by British troops (‘Black and Tans’). Kipling writes the poem ‘Gods of the Copybook Headings’. The Years Between, a book of poems including ‘Epitaphs of the War’, published.

  1921 Irish Free State established.

  1922 Kipling falls ill with stomach pains, wrongly thought to be cancer.

  1923 Elected Rector of St Andrews University. History of the Irish Guards in the Great War and Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides published.

  1924 Elsie Kipling marries Captain George Bambridge.

  1926 Debits and Credits published.

  1930 Thy Servant a Dog published, becoming an instant best-seller.

  1932 Limits and Renewals published. Kipling writes the text of the first royal Christmas message to the Empire, broadcast by King George V.

  1934 Kipling’s stomach pain finally diagnosed as a duodenal ulcer and properly treated. His health improves.

  1935 August: Kipling begins writing Something of Myself.

  1936 12 January: Kipling falls ill with a perforated duodenal ulcer. 16 January: dies. He is cremated at Golders Green. 23 January: his ashes are interred in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey; pall-bearers include the Prime Minister, his cousin Stanley Baldwin.

  1937 Something of Myself published.

  1937–9 Sussex Edition of Kipling’s works in 35 volumes issued.

  Jan Montefiore 2011

  General Preface

  Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was a Victorian and an early modernist, a preacher of the imperialist virtues of discipline and duty whose imaginative sympathies lay with children and outlaws, and a lover of the stability of ‘Old England’ who much enjoyed travelling outside it. He was a world-famous author, the most genuinely popular English writer since Dickens, and his poem ‘If –’ is to this day read and admired by people who do not otherwise read poetry; yet when his ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey he was considered by many intellectuals as barely worth serious reading, even though he was admired by T. S. Eliot, Bertolt Brecht, W. H. Auden and André Gide. The 35-volume Sussex Edition of his work represents an extraordinary diversity: Kim and three other long prose fictions including The Light That Failed; eleven collections of stories, from Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) to Limits and Renewals (1932); seven books for children (the two Jungle Books, the Just So Stories, the two Puck books, Stalky & Co. and Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides); journalism, propaganda, public speeches and travel writing, the little-read classic History of the Irish Guards in the Great War, a great deal of verse and the posthumous memoir Something of Myself. A virtuoso of the short story, he wrote ironic comedies and tragic dramas, tales of adventure and of work, ghost stories, revenge farces, psychological studies, animal fables and machine fables. D. H. Lawrence is the only English writer of the twentieth century who can match his record for brilliant and diverse writing which escapes conventional classifications, and as a storyteller he has no contemporary English rival.