Kipling's 'Something of Myself'

Book Reviews Kipling's 'Something of Myself' Rudyard Kipling. 'Something of Myself and Other Autobiographical Writings. Thomas Pinney, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xxxv + 294 pp. $39.50 PROFESSOR PINNEY begins his professionally-crafted introduction with a brief biographical sketch of Kipling, and notes, with a chagrin generations of readers have shared, how much Kipling omitted from the memoir he left behind. What can one say about an autobiography that omits any mention of his love for Florence Violet Garrard; his complicated relationship to the American woman Edmonia Hill; his engagement to Edmonia's sister; his best male friend Wolcott Balestier; or for that matter his courtship of Wolcott's sister, Caroline, whom he married precipitously after Wolcott's untimely death? The quarrel with Beatty Balestier that destroyed Kipling's ability to enjoy life in Vermont, and seriously damaged his ability to assess American conduct on the international stage, is never mentioned. The death of his beloved daughter Josephine is not recorded, nor the subsequent death of his son John on the battlefield of Loos. Kipling moved to his home at Bateman's in 1902, and lived for another thirty-four years; but no reader of this memoir will be satisfied with what he tells us of the second half of his life. So much is omitted, indeed, that we can only agree with the editor that this curious fragment was appropriately retitled, by one reviewer, Hardly Anything of Myself. The reasons for not knowing quite what to make of Kipling's last important piece of writing lie partly in the uneasiness with which we react to the knowledge that Mrs. Kipling prepared the manuscript for publication, edited it, made deletions (some of them at the suggestion of H. A. Gwynne, the editor of the Morning Post), and failed to do what she was in an excellent position to do, namely, correct factual errors. (Pinney remains baffled by Lord Birkenhead's notation that Lord Webb-Johnson not only "edited" the book, but gave it its title, since supporting evidence for both claims is missing.) Kipling's memoir is also marked by malice, concealment, and omission. These create problems in straightening out the record of what actually happened, and must have undermined the self-confidence of an editor who admires Kipling and yet, in all honesty, 213 ELT : VOLUME 35:2 1992 must construct reasonable guesses as to why Kipling distorted his past, guesses that often reflect badly on Kipling's character. Why bother, then, to edit with great care a record that often seems to have more lacunae than discrete nuggets of information? The obvious answer, that anything Kipling wrote about himself possesses rich inherent interest, is easy enough to make; this is definitely not "the diary of a nobody"; Kipling's diffidence about his private life stimulated a morbid interest in his doings, and in the possibility of scandal, from the 1890s on, and anything that tells us more about Kipling the human being is worth investigating. If we keep in mind the need to verify carefully almost anything that is recorded here—a journalistic cliché comes inevitably to mind: "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out"—valuable illuminations about the House of Desolation, the "seven years' hard" spent as a journalist in India, and Kipling's sense of indebtedness to a personal Daemon will inevitably shine through. In other words, much remains even after we adjust for the omissions, and Kipling the artist has taken care of much of the dross anyhow. Pinney cites additional reasons for taking Something of Myself ^ seriously . Kipling's "descriptive mastery" is fully in evidence, and the peculiarities of his style, for which one can trace neither ancestry nor legitimate descendants, remind us of how packed with ideas, sensory images, and dynamic language almost any paragraph in the memoir can be. Kipling was also able to communicate a "quick and sympathetic perception of local life," whether he was dealing with fellow expatriates at a hill-station like Simla or hard-bitten Vermonters or taciturn farmers in a Sussex landscape. One may find in abundance clues to Kipling's sensitivity to the continuity of the past, and the...