Rudyard Kipling and the House of Desolation: Part III

Part I 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.

Exploitation and unfinished business in the life of Marie Corelli

There are some lessons to be learned from the financially successful but personally sad life of best-selling Victorian novelist Marie Corelli. 

One of these lessons is about taking responsibility where appropriate, as opposed to blaming someone else. It particularly involves learning to be a good judge of character and not being influenced by factors such as self-interest, self-deception and wishful thinking - as opposed to blaming the other party for not being what we thought they were or wanted them to be.

Blaming people for deceiving us and letting us down seems to be the default. We need to learn to look after our side of things; we need to learn from experience what to look for in people. In particular, we need to learn to recognise warning signals.

This extract from Marie Corelli's book The Silver Domino shows that she knew, in theory at least, that people should take responsibility and blame themselves for their own poor judgement when they feel that they have been deceived by someone:

"Remember that if you do persuade yourself into thinking that I am a Somebody, and if I turn out after all to be a Nobody, it is not my fault. Don't blame me, blame your own self deception."

This is admirable; it is spot on. However, she talked a better game than she played; she didn't apply her wise words to herself. The Silver Domino was published in 1892; here is an extract from The Young Diana, first published in 1918:

"I asked for love – now I ask for vengeance. I gave all my heart and soul to a man whose only god was Self, and I got nothing back…So I have a long score to settle, and I shall try to have some of my spent joys returned to me – with heavy interest."

This is Marie Corelli speaking for herself, and from bitter experience. She was raging at a man she had been infatuated with, because she felt that he had deceived her; he was not what she thought he was and wanted him to be. She had become disappointed and disillusioned. The expression 'Hell hath no greater fury than a women scorned' very much applies in her case.

Who having known the Diamond...

“Who having known the Diamond will concern himself with glass?”

I like this quotation from Rudyard Kipling's autobiographical work Something of Myself very much.

Kipling's words go straight to the heart. They say to me that people who have encountered the best will not settle for or want to be involved with anything less. I see his words as a very neat and clever way of saying that anyone who has experienced the real thing will not be fooled by a counterfeit or a cheap copy.

I know from experience that this is not always the case. Some people ignore, avoid and reject the diamond and home in on and embrace the glass. I have seen innumerable examples of such twisted values in the past, and often wondered why this should be.

I am not talking about people who have never seen, heard of, read about, experienced or imagined the best, the real deal; some people have low horizons and few opportunities. I am not talking about people who are unable to recognise differences, make comparisons or grade and classify what they encounter; some people have limited understanding and little ability to look at things objectively.

I am not talking either about people whose diamonds may look like glass to other people; sometimes 'diamond' may just mean the most suitable, or the best that someone can envisage, achieve and attain.

Here are a few examples from my own experience.