Rudyard Kipling
It is unfortunate that this literary great is nowadays only associated with the story behind a colourful, lively, all-singing, all-dancing Disney film known as “The Jungle Book”. There is far more to Rudyard Kipling, including a link to Torbay.
Born on 30th December 1865 in Bombay (now Mumbai), his first six years were spent living a fairly fortunate life with his younger sister, Alice. His memories of this time influenced a lot of his early poetry. In 1871 he was put on a boat with Alice and sent to England to live with Captain and Mrs Holloway near Portsmouth on the south coast; things would never be the same again.
The neglect that Kipling suffered at the hands of Mrs Holloway was a terrible thing for him to deal with: no more nannies to look after him; no more hot sunny days and humid nights; instead he was left to do everything for himself in the cold and damp of England. In a way it is possible that this misfortune at such an early age became the reason for his literary career because he began to make up stories to pass the time.
By 1878 Kipling was at public school. His first few years were tough but he soon grew to enjoy the friendships that he made and as a result wrote one of his other famous stories ‘Stalky & Co.’
When he finished his education in England, the 16-year-old Kipling returned to India. Over the next few years he started writing at an amazing pace and produced poems and short stories which were published in 1888.
Kipling decided to use the money he had earned from his stories to travel to San Francisco via Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. He then travelled through the United States writing articles for the Pioneer newspaper back in Bombay. During these travels that he met Mark Twain.
When he returned to England Kipling met and married Caroline Balestier. He soon began to have the first ideas about ‘The Jungle Book’, and within four years completed that book, the novel ‘Captains Courageous’, and a collection of poems, ‘Barrack-Room Ballads’.
In 1896 the Kipling family moved to Torquay, to a house overlooking the sea. Kipling continued to write, now including politics in his work.
The family did not stay in Torquay for long. By 1898 Kipling had sailed with his family to South Africa, where he spent the next few years making political friends and being very vocal in his opposition to the Boer War.
By the beginning of the twentieth century Kipling was at the height of his popularity. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 and his work was known around the world, as were his political views: he sympathised with the anti-Home-Rule views of the Unionists in Ireland and was a strong opponent of Bolshevism.
The twentieth century also saw the death of Kipling’s son, John, in the Battle of Loos during World War I. It inspired his poem ‘My Boy Jack’, and it’s thought that his words show the guilt he felt at getting John a commission in the Irish Guards after he was rejected by the British Army because of his bad eyesight.
Kipling kept writing until the early 1930s. He died on 18th January 1936. Despite his political views he was awarded the honour of being buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. AT
