Monday 17 April 2017

Rudyard Kipling and the House of Desolation: Part II

Part 1 described how Rudyard Kipling and his younger sister were consigned to the care of Mrs Holloway, a committed Evangelical and a bigoted and ignorant woman who took a dislike to Kipling and treated him very badly. He endured many years of her cruelty and neglect, not to mention hell-fire Christianity.

There are some more questions to be asked.

Why didn’t Rudyard Kipling say anything?
Kipling said that his beloved aunt asked him this question many times.

He later gave two reasons for his not telling anyone how he was being treated. He said that children accept everything that happens to them as inevitable and eternal; he also said that they sense what they will get if they betray the secrets of the prison-house before they are well clear of it.

These are good answers – as far as they go.

Children in general do think that whatever adults do is normal behaviour; children are often threatened with dire consequences for speaking out, perhaps verbally or perhaps with unspoken but well conveyed and understood intention. They may be afraid of losing what little they have.

However, there may be more to it.

Children in general may not be able to put things into words; they may lack the necessary concepts and vocabulary. It is up to adults to set an example and educate children in how to express themselves.

Children may also be overwhelmed, unable to speak. The necessary assertiveness and inner strength may have been destroyed by the vicious attacks. It is up to adults to draw children out and encourage them to speak up.

Children may be subconsciously afraid of mentioning bad treatment in case they find that no one cares and nothing is done; they may also fear being accused of lying. Sometimes the default, the instinctive reaction, is to hide all injuries and carry on as if nothing has happened. Some people dissociate very easily.

These are all psychological factors, explanations that will make sense to most people. There is also the possibility of other, metaphysical influences. For example, something like bad energy or an evil spell that prevents people from saying anything by may be at work: victims may feel choked and smothered when they try to speak about forbidden topics.

Why didn’t anyone notice anything?
It is up to parents to be responsible for children's wellbeing and to satisfy themselves that their children are healthy and happy. Kipling didn't see his parents during his years of captivity; they just sent books and letters. His mother might have sensed his inner distress if she had come to visit him.

Kipling said that what saved him was going to stay with his maternal aunt for one month at Christmas each year. He said that it was like going from Hell to Paradise. These breaks were missed opportunities; he said nothing about the abuse he was enduring and no one noticed anything. His aunt really should have asked him about the details of his daily life. However, he appeared well and happy, as he did to visitors who came to see him in Southsea.

An obvious explanation is that escaping from prison for the Christmas holidays and receiving visitors would have relieved some of the pressure, so of course he looked well and happy – for the duration. Kipling conceded that Mrs Holloway fed him adequately, which would have made him appear in reasonably good health.

Other factors may have been at work here. Sometimes attacks and their consequences are invisible because they take place on another dimension. The whole affair, especially the difference between Mrs Holloway's behaviour towards Rudyard in public and private, reminds me of Beverley Nichols' witch Miss Smith and her victim Snowdrop the pony. He was forced to fawn on her in public while she was torturing him in private. She fed him magic pills to hide his injuries and extreme thinness.

The end of the prison sentence
Kipling's aunt did eventually notice that all was not well with him. This was during his Christmas visit in 1876. She informed his mother, who arrived in England in the spring of 1877. By that time, Kipling's eyesight was failing and he was having a kind of breakdown. This was the first time he had seen his mother since late 1871, when she abandoned him without warning.

Mrs Kipling removed her two children and took them for a holiday that lasted nine months, after which Rudyard was sent to a boarding school in Devon and Trix was sent back to Southsea for three more years.

It seems that nothing much was said by or to anyone at the time. Presumably Mrs Holloway got away with everything and was never confronted. I wonder whether she worried about what the children would say about her after they were removed from her care. Why on earth was Trix sent back? Why didn't Kipling's parents try to discover exactly what had happened to put him in such a bad state? His father remained in India all this time; his mother behaved much the same as the Reverend Patrick Brontë had after his two eldest girls died after attending the dreadful Cowan Bridge School. Maybe they assumed that it was just one of those things and best forgotten. Maybe unseen influences prevented these parents from thinking clearly.

Kipling's parents were devastated when they first read Baa Baa, Black Sheep in 1888 and learned the full story. They may have deserved to suffer and feel guilty; they may have been victims of something that they were not even aware of.

Many other creative people had miserable childhoods, with both chronic and acute suffering. These things often seem arranged, a process that people with potential are put through.

More about this in the final part of this article. In the meantime, here is what Kipling said at the end of Baa Baa, Black Sheep about his ordeal:

...for when young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of hate, suspicion and despair, all the love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge. Though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach faith where no faith was.

Rudyard around the age of six again: