A bit of wine and re-watching my late sister’s Brattleboro, Vermont memorial gathering video has inspired me to write about Rudyard Kipling.
For Christmas past I asked for and received a collection of his poetry, all 831 pages of it. Not sure where that amount of love of Kipling came from. Perhaps it was a book rescued from my mother’s attic when I was cleaning it out after her passing. Obviously, my father’s, as he was the great reader, it was a select collection of Kipling’s short stories, many from his time in the Raj, and many about British soldiers, curated by Somerset Maugham. His lengthy introduction cited the opinions of Kipling’s many critics, but ended with his own evaluation: “He is our [Britian’s] greatest story writer.”
But, equally likely, it came from the time, many years before, when my late sister and I sneaked onto the property of his American home near Brattleboro prior to its restoration. I had very little familiarity with Kipling at the time, but peeking into those dusty windows began the connection. He’d moved to Vermont because his wife was from that area, and it was there that he wrote The Jungle Book and Captains Courageous, two of his most well know novels.
Of course, everyone is familiar with The Jungle Book, although they may attribute it to Walt Disney. Perhaps less recognized is his novel Kim, which he started in Brattleboro and which I consider the best, most richly appointed story that a child of any age could experience. But in addition to his early journalistic career, he was the author of nearly 600 poems, four novels, 350 short stories and 12 non-fiction works. Throw in the 1907 Nobel Prize for literature, and his entombment in Westminster Abbey and he could hardly be thought of as a flash in the pan.
Back to the poetry: Kipling was never considered a great poet, more a clever and prolific one. That’s attested to by the size of that tome by my bedside. He seemed to be able to write a rhyme about everything he experienced, calling on an encyclopedic knowledge of both the classics and the breadth of his experience across the British Empire, particularly India, where he was born and where he returned to live much of his young adult life. Mark Twain, who met with Kipling when he traveled around America, admiringly said of him, “Between us, we cover all knowledge; he covers all that can be known and I cover the rest.” If you want a real treat, find one of his poems read aloud on the internet by someone with ken of its intended dialect. Compared to simply reading it on the page in black and white, it’s like TechniColor.
Of course, Kipling is now often demeaned as a reactionary racist and imperialist, much of that based on his poem “The White Man’s Burden.” In fact, Kipling was a great Americanophile, and that poem was really about our own colonization of the Philippines. But if you read most any of his works, you don’t see racism so much as a recognition of the underlying dignity of those in the lower social rungs he describes. I take as example one of my favorites, “Gunga Din.” And throughout all of his Barrack Room Ballads, spoken in the vernacular of the 19th Century British soldier, there is a real, if grudging, respect for their foes. Google “Kipling and racism,” to partake for yourself of an intense online debate as to whether he should be condemned, or forgiven due to his historical context. I’m of the latter school.
My personal obsession with Kipling reveals my age. I still have one foot on the platform of the pre-1950’s. So I’m very comfortable with Kipling. But while I so wish my grandchildren could take him up, I’m afraid, for them, the train of historical knowledge needed to truly appreciate this master has already left the station.
©2025, David B Bucher
SoEast 