Some thoughts from the poet Kathleen Raine

Some of the books I have written about are guaranteed to drive the dark clouds away every time I read them, Rudyard Kipling’s Stalky stories and the Molesworth books for example. They are old friends who never fail to amuse and make me feel better.

Other books have the opposite effect. I sometimes wish that I had never read Kathleen Raine’s three-volume autobiography. Some of the things that she writes come very close to home; they are extremely depressing and almost too painful to read.

I have described elsewhere the fatal curse that she believes she put on her friend Gavin Maxwell. The books Farewell Happy Fields, The Land Unknown and The Lion’s Mouth contain much more material of interest, not all of it distressing to read.

Here are a few random extracts from the notes I made when reading the three books, which are now back in the public library. I have changed the sequence in which her words appear, and just included some quotations that might inspire people and provide confirmation for their ideas.

Some words of wisdom from Kathleen Raine, and a few comments from me:

“Imagination loves nobility and splendour, tragedy, beauty and kingship; loves all great things …of equality it knows nothing…”

“… poetry alone answers to the unsatisfied longing for beauty and wonder…”

“Poets keep alive the pearls and not the acorns, food of natural mankind…”

Is she suggesting that the majority of people are swine!

 “…I rejected socialism and the greatest good of the greatest number for those values which few can reach…high and beautiful things are the true ends of life …”

Yes. It is good that some people are elitists and keep the flame alive.

“The barbarians so outnumber the people of culture that they themselves set the standards.”

Very true.

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part VIII: Two school stories

My investigation of Rudyard Kipling's early life has stirred up memories of two good books about life in boys' schools, one of them written by Kipling himself:

Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling

The Compleet Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle.

The Molesworth books are much lighter than the Stalky stories; they are greatly enhanced by Ronald Searle's cartoons.

Rudyard Kipling is a great writer; Ronald Searle is a great illustrator.

Both books are very funny; they have brought great enjoyment to large numbers of people. I am very glad that I read them when I was young enough for them to make an indelible impression.

Reading in childhood

Children may read to escape, to fill gaps in their lives, to exercise their imaginations, to learn directly and indirectly and for enjoyment; whatever the cause, they may remember what they read for the rest of their lives.

Ayn Rand for example read a story in a magazine in 1914, when she was nine years old.  Her biographer Barbara Brandon managed to locate a copy of the magazine in 1982, and discovered that Ayn, who had recounted the story to her at considerable length, had remembered almost every detail, both major and minor, of this work that she had not read since the age of nine.

As a small boy in Southsea, Rudyard Kipling escaped from his unbearable life by reading. He never forgot some of the stories and poems that he read in books and magazines during this time. He wrote about them and his efforts to identify some of them in Something of Myself.

I can remember most of what I read as a child very vividly. Some of it was buried for many years but it was still all there, including these two books about school life. They have their critics; they may seem dated, irrelevant and politically very incorrect, but they are part of my life and I feel privileged to have read them.

Rudyard Kipling and the House of Desolation: Part III

Part I of this series of articles describes the abandonment of Rudyard Kipling and his younger sister by their parents. Part II continues the story and ends with his release from what seemed to him like a prison sentence with torture thrown in.

There are still a few questions outstanding and points to be made.

Did Kipling lie about or exaggerate his suffering?

I remember reading somewhere that when Kipling's parents first read the account of his time in Southsea, they tried to get his sister Trix to say that it hadn't been as bad as he said it was. This is what happens in many such cases; people said the same thing to Charlotte Brontë - when actually she had toned down her account of life at the dreadful school.

There is a lot that could be and has been said on this subject. Writers certainly use their imagination to create good stories. For many, what happens in their imagination seems real to them, more real even than what really happened. Some use what happened in real life as just the starting point for building a whole edifice of fiction. Some present occasional incidents as happening frequently and such things as minor criticisms as vicious attacks. This may seem like lying and exaggeration to some people.

However, it is not only a case of what actually happened, but the kind of person it happened to and what the effects were. Some collective-minded, grounded people might be resilient and recover quickly; they might let it all go, put it behind them, forgive and forget and get on with their lives. Others, perhaps more imaginative and sensitive and wide open to subtle energies, may have little insulation or resistance and be permanently affected in the core of their beings. Some people feel everything on an archetypal level; some get bad feelings in overwhelming and concentrated doses, enough for one hundred normal people.

I believe that Rudyard Kipling told the truth about what happened and did not exaggerate the effect it had on him. I also believe that a very different type of boy might have been much less affected and even been treated better. Jane Eyre said much the same thing about herself.

The childhood of Marie Corelli

I described some painful events in the life of the Queen of Victorian Best-sellers Marie Corelli recently. Writing about an episode in Rudyard Kipling's childhood gave me the idea of investigating Marie Corelli's childhood.

There is little information available and much confusion about her parentage. She deliberately muddied the water herself; she obscured her past with a fog of lies and deceit. We will never know for sure whether the Scottish poet, scholar and journalist Charles Mackay was her real father or, as she insisted, her adopted father. It is likely that her mother was a servant and Marie was born illegitimate. She would have seen this as a terrible disgrace, something to be ashamed of and kept hidden; she claimed Venetian blood and gave herself an Italian name in compensation and to hide her real parentage.

What we do know is that despite having a kind man as her official father, she was very unhappy as a child.

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.

Rudyard Kipling and the House of Desolation: Part I

There is an episode in Rudyard Kipling's childhood that is of great interest to me: the miserable years of torment spent in what he later called ‘The House of Desolation’.

He endured five and a half years of calculated neglect, persecution, punishment and humiliation at the hands of a horrible, cruel, religious fanatic of a woman called Mrs Holloway and her awful bully of a son. Some of the damage that this prolonged and constant torture caused was permanent.

He wrote about his ordeal in the short story Baa Baa, Black Sheep, in his novel The Light that Failed and in his autobiographical work Something of Myself. It makes very painful reading, at least for people who have experienced something similar.

This nightmare interlude in Kipling's childhood has also been described and discussed extensively in many biographies, reviews, essays and articles; there is no need to reproduce all the details and cover the same ground here. I just want to concentrate on a few aspects of this case, on some unseen but familiar influences and some connections that I have noticed.

First, a few questions.

Today is the 25th anniversary of Isaac Asimov's death

Isaac Asimov died at the age of 72 on 6th April 1992. His death was a great loss to the world.

I enjoyed reading his Science Fiction novels and stories very much; I bought an old 2-volume pack of his autobiography at a big discount a while back, and found In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt just as good.

I like information, and these books are packed with it. He describes his early life so well that reading about it made me feel as though I had grown up in a poor area in 1930s New York myself.

I like the way he puts his life into the context of the times; he comes to realise that while his family were poor, they were not destitute like others in the Depression era. He also puts his life and personality into the context of other people's; he is balanced and objective when interpreting his earlier behaviour and explaining himself to his readers.

I like the way he uses these books to pay off his old debts – of both kinds. Better late than never. He thanks a teacher who let him go on the school outing even though he hadn't qualified, and he thanks a professor who had shown favouritism towards him. He also pays back a few people he had grudges against!

I like the way he makes the small stuff, the petty details of his life, seem fascinating. I enjoyed reading about the food that he ate and the books that he read.

I like his honesty when he says that a lot of people couldn't stand him, and that he failed to get into medical school because of the offensive way he behaved at the interviews. Of course, he wrote this as a rich, famous, adored and successful author who had moved on and could afford to look back with amusement at his past failures and deficiencies; he could offset the bad with the good.