Kipling's Jane: Some Echoes of Austen

KIPLING'S JANE: SOME ECHOES OF AUSTEN By Lisa A.F. Lewis (Oxon, England) Close reading reveals echoes of Jane Austen in some of Kipling's mature stories, notably in two of the finest, "Mary Postgate" and "The Gardener." In a verse attached to a third tale, he paid her a fervent tribute: "Jane lies in Winchester—blessed be her shade! / Praise the Lord for making her, and her for all she made! / And whiïe the stones of Winchester, or MUsom Street, remain, / Glory, love and honour unto England's Jane!" ("The Janeites").1 This admiration grew on him late in life. An early reference in a comic poem was ntildly disparaging: in 1885, aged twenty-one, he began "The Mare's Nest": "Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse / Was good beyond aU earthly need."2 Kipling here equates Jane Austen and Harriet Beecher Stowe with a feminine code unbearable to the male: "She was so good she made him worse / (Some women are like this, I think)." Fifteen years later, he accompanied his wife on a visit to her cousin Mrs. Low, whose sister had married the son of Lord Leigh.3 Perhaps it was there that his interest was aroused, for the Leighs were Jane Austen's mother's family, and the connection would surely have been mentioned to a literary guest. At forty he must have read her novels, and such memoirs and letters as were then available,4 as background for "Marklake Witches" (Rewards and Fairies, 1910), set in 1806. The connection was remarked by Carrington, who says "the reader might suppose himself to be listening to a minor character from Jane Austen,"5 while Lord Birkenhead less accurately calls it "written in the manner of Jane Austen, whom Kipling so greatly revered."6 "Marklake Witches" is not really in the Austen manner—he was yet to pay her the compliment of imitation. The girl who speaks, Philadelphia Bucksteed, shares her first name with Jane Austen's real-life aunt. The character, like the heroine of Emma, is a widower's daughter who has assumed too young the duties of a squire's wife and allowed herself to be flattered into believing she knows everything. She is only fourteen,7 and like Catherine Morland at a similar age is beginning to have "an inclination for finery."8 She too has been something of a tomboy, as we see when she climbs a tree, though Catherine could never match her poise when she falls out and is discovered (but Emma could). It is not strange that a story set in this period and mUieu should owe something to Jane Austen. It was during the First World War that Kiphng began to show a warm regard for her novels. In January 1918, after his only son had been killed, he was reading Emma to his wife and daughter, and Mrs. Kipling told her diary how much they aU enjoyed it.9 But a serious attempt to write in her manner may first have aroused his respect, "Mary Postgate" (written in March 1915). In this story, Kipling has borrowed from her more than just a setting. Besides their middle-class female style and viewpoint, her novels have another wellknown factor in common. They show her heroines' personalities reacting to others within a small circle, and so gradually revealing to themselves and to the reader what their true nature is. Her previous employer introduces Mary in the very tones of Lady Catherine de Bourgh:10 "Of Miss Mary Postgate, Lady McCausland wrote that she was 'thoroughly conscientious, tidy, companionable, 76 and ladyhke. I am very sorry to part with her, and shall always be interested in her welfare.'"11 Next we hear how Mary's new employer sees herself, leading up to the description of Mary, first through Miss Fowler's eyes—in a string of negatives-then as seen by the neighbours: Miss Fowler engaged her on this recommendation, and to her surprise, for she had had experience of companions, found that it was true. Miss Fowler was nearer sixty than fifty at the time, but though she needed care she did not exhaust her attendant's vitality...