Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30th 1865,
in India.
His life and his writings have been written about and
discussed extensively. I have read a lot of criticism of him and his works and
I agree with some of it, but he is still one of my favourite authors.
Kipling is also a person of interest because the kind of unseen
influences that I am very interested in appear to have been at work in his
life. This will be the subject of a future article.
In the meantime, there is a big coincidence involving a
place in Hampshire where he stayed as a child. I have mentioned it in another
article, but decided to repeat the story to mark the occasion of the birthday of
a very great author and poet.
It came first as a surprise, then, on reflection, not
such a surprise, when I first learned that Lorne Lodge, the ‘House of
Desolation’ where he and his sister suffered so much as children, was (and
still is) in Campbell Road in Southsea. ‘By chance’, Lorne Lodge is just around
the corner from a house where my family lived for a while when I was 11 years
old. What a coincidence. Although I knew nothing at the time, I always avoided
walking down Campbell Road because it gave me bad feelings.
The name of the people Rudyard Kipling stayed with was
Holloway; by coincidence, when my family left Southsea it was to go to a house
very close to a big thoroughfare called Holloway Road.
Kipling loved Sussex – Sussex by the Sea - and spent the
final 34 years of his life there; I too like this county very much and spent
some years living in various towns there.
Kipling lived in many places before he finally settled
down in Burwash. By coincidence, I now live a short walk away from another place where he stayed for a while.
Rudyard Kipling was a major influence in many people’s
lives when he was alive; he is still very far from being forgotten. There have
been many special talks, events and exhibitions this year to mark the 150th anniversary. I suspect that much of the interest comes from older people,
people for whom books were the main source of entertainment in their formative
years, people who grew up long before the internet – and political correctness –
existed.
Will there be big celebrations in 2065 for the 200th anniversary of his birth? How long will the Kipling Society remain in
existence?
I will never know.
Perhaps it will depend on whether or not more generations
are introduced to and enjoy his work. How many parents are currently making
sure that their children read his books?
While ‘Kipling’ may well mean only Kipling Cakes or
Kipling Bags to many people who never have read any of his works, films such as
Disney’s Jungle Book and Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King may have recruited
some new readers.
There is still a demand for Kipling’s books: printed
versions are available in various editions on Amazon. It is encouraging to see
that his works are still being sold despite being accessible on free sites such
as Project Gutenberg.
There seems to be plenty of mileage left for now: new
books about Kipling’s life and times are still being published, and selections
from his writings are being issued with titles such as Kipling and War and
Kipling and the Sea.
The biographical work shown below was first published in
2008, so there also remains a demand for information about Kipling himself.
He would not be happy with the way his appeal for
personal privacy has been rejected:
The Appeal
If I have given you delight
By aught that I have done,
Let me lie quiet in that night
Which shall be yours anon:
And for the little, little, span
The dead are born in mind,
Seek not to question other than
The books I leave behind.
