Rudyard Kipling

In 1892, Rudyard Kipling married Caroline Starr Balestier. They had three children; two daughters, Josephine and Elsie, and a son, John. Among them, only Elsie survived her parents. While Josephine died from influenza at the age of six, John went missing during WWI. It is presumed that he died in action.

Kipling had a hemorrhage in his small intestine on the night of 12 January 1936, which was operated upon. Subsequently, he died on 18 January 1936 from perforated duodenal ulcer. He was then seventy years old. His mortal remains were later cremated and his ashes were buried in the Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Camp Mowglis, a nonprofit, residential camp founded in 1903 in New Hampshire, USA bears his legacy till date.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay (Mumbai), then under British India. His parents named him after the Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, where they had met for the first time.

His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was a sculptor and pottery designer from North Yorkshire. After his marriage to Alice MacDonald, the daughter of Reverend George Browne MacDonald, they moved to India where he was appointed a professor of architectural sculpture in the Jeejeebhoy School of Art.

Rudyard had a sister, also named Alice, three years junior to him. Like most other British children in India, they spent the greater part of the day with Indian nannies and servants, listening to the unforgettable stories they told in their native tongue and exploring local markets with them.

As a result, Rudyard became more proficient in their language than in English. But all these changed abruptly in 1871, when both the siblings were sent to live in a foster home in England to be educated under the British system.

Arriving in England in October, they put up with Captain Pryse Agar Holloway and his wife Sarah, who boarded children of British nationals serving in India in their home at Southsea, Portsmouth. Here he was admitted to a school, but found it hard to adjust. Life at the foster home was not easy either.

Immediately on his arrival to Bombay, Rudyard Kipling found his childhood memories rushing back. On moving around among the familiar sights and sounds, native words, whose meanings he did not know, began to tumble out of his mouth.

He now put up with his parents, then posted at Lahore and began his career as a copy editor for the ‘Civil and Military Gazette.’ His parents were not officially important, but still commanded certain respect. Therefore, he had access to the highest echelon of the British society.

Concurrently, he moved around in the native neighborhoods, absorbing the colorful life of the native Indians. Thus he had the opportunity to observe the whole spectrum of the social fabric. With an unstoppable urge to write, he now began to fill his notebook with light verses and prose sketches.

In the summer of 1883, he visited Shimla, a well-known hill station and the summer capital of India. He must have liked the place very much for from 1885 to 1888, he made yearly visit to the place. The town featured prominently in many stories he wrote for his newspaper.

In 1886, he had his first work, ‘Departmental Ditties’, a book of witty verses, published. Concurrently, he continued to write short stories, among which, at least thirty-nine were published in the Gazette between November 1886 and June 1887.

On 9 March, 1889, Rudyard Kipling set out for England. Traveling via Singapore and Japan, he first reached San Francisco and thereafter traveled throughout the United States, meeting among others, Mark Twain. Finally he reached Liverpool in October 1889.

On reaching England, he found that his reputation had preceded him and he was already accepted as a brilliant author. Shortly, his stories began to appear in different magazines.

For the next two years, he worked on his first novel, ‘The Light That Failed’. Published in January 1891, it was poorly received. Sometime soon after that, he met the American writer and publishing agent, Wolcott Balestier, with whom he began collaborating on a novel.

Sometime in 1891, Kipling also suffered a nervous breakdown and on the advice of his doctors he embarked on another voyage, reaching India via South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. But before long, the news of Balestier’s death brought him back to London.

In early 1892, Kipling married Balestier’s sister, Carrie, and traveled first to the USA and then to Japan for their honeymoon. Eventually they returned to the United States and set up their home in Vermont.