Kipling’s Ken of India

KIPLING'S KEN OF INDIA • Nelson S. Bushnell Two decades ago, in 1936, Rudyard Kipling died, and it has frequently been assumed that his literary reputation was interred with his bones.' But the customary period during which nothing unless evil may be spoken of the dead is now coming to an end; Kipling's precocious fame has already had time to emerge from the first of those recurrent clouds which must be endured by all reputations but a choice few; and the hue and cry after Tory witches of which he was a darling victim has begun to ring a little thin. During the years intervening since Kipling's death, persistent expressions of concern over his permanent status in literature have been accumulating . The comments of Edmund Wilson, T. S. Eliot," George Orwell, Somerset Maugham, and G. M. Trevelyan encourage us to attempt a second reading, recently facilitated by John Beecroft's Selection of the stories and poems; and a full-scale Life has been published, as "the definitive biography of one of England's greatest writers.'" In addition, Kipling benefits by a special dispensation, for current political events beget an anxiety over India in North American minds whose awareness of that country is rooted in his pages. How can one hear talk of the Northwest Frontier and Lahore and Delhi and Lucknow without remembering Kim and "The Man Who Would Be King"? Those who wish to reread Kipling, or to risk a first exposure to his questionable arts, are tberefore likely to tum to his stories and poems of India, if only for a reminder of the picture seen by Western eyes during the last half-century-though the present essay will indicate that something more is to be found. These Indian pages make up something like half of his total output; some of them were the occasion of his sudden fame; and some constitute those portions of his work which have the smack of immortality. But before submitting to the spell of Kipling's own voice it is a healthy precaution to inquire how far the man was in fact qualified, by experience and temperament, for that role which he assumed, and in which the popular vote of his contemporaries confirmed him-the role of Interpreter General from India to the West. 62 KIPLING'S KEN OF INDIA 63 Kipling was deeply involved in India during three different periods of his life. Most of his first six years (1865-71) were spent in Bombay; then, after struggling through boyhood and adolescence in England, he returned to India to engage in newspaper work. The second period (1882-91) covers not only his seven years' service in Lahore and Allahabad but also the beginning of his career as a man of letters in London, while he was still exploiting his experiences as an Indian journalist. Some time after a final visit to India late in 1891, Kipling as a mature and famous writer turned once more to Indian subject matter in three volumes published in the period 1894-1901: the two Jungle Books and Kim. As to the richness of the infant Rudyard's experience of India there can be no question. India is an enchanting place for a baby to awaken into consciousness, and Kipling like Wordsworth-whose name will reappear in the ensuing paragraphs--might well have exclaimed, "Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up ... much favored in my birthplace ." He was doubly favoured in that the times smiled upon British residents. The great rising of 1857 had been finally quelled, and a benevolent British Crown had superseded John Company. The proclamation of Dizzy's Faery as Empress of India was not to come for another dozen years; though an impulse towards self-determination was already astir in Indian breasts, "imperialism" had not yet become a fighting word. Kipling's parents enjoyed secure prestige in official, British India; John Lockwood Kipling had arrived in Bombay University shortly before Rudyard's birth, on an appointment as Professor of Architectural Sculpture, and was later to advance to the curatorship of the Museum of Lahore; it is a safe surmise that we have his portrait in Kim's...