Triumph and Disaster: The Life of Rudyard Kipling

On this episode of Our American Stories, the life of the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Rudyard Kipling, was filled with tragedy. He survived a difficult childhood to go on to become one of the most celebrated authors of his day, penning such classics as "The Jungle Book" and "Just So Stories.” Here’s The History Guy with the story of Rudyard Kipling.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com.
They're some of our favorites. And now onto the History Guy.
His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people
of all ages on YouTube. The History Guy is also

(00:30):
heard here at Our American Stories. The life of the
youngest ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Rudyard Kipling,
was filled with tragedy. He survived a difficult childhood to
go on to become one of the most celebrated authors
of his day, penning such classics as The Jungle Book
and Just So Stories. Here's the History Guy with the

(00:51):
story of Rudyard Kipling.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Now a named just send a claim? What do you
used to spend my time? Son of her Majesty the
Queen All the black Face Crew. The finest man I
knew was Regimental Beastie Gungadin, was Din Din Din young
limp and Leppo brick dust Gungadin high slippery, hithero water
Bring it to Perry low Yes, squishy nosed, none idle Gungadin.
Written in eighteen ninety, The poem Gungaden was one of

(01:16):
the most famous poems in the world in its time.
Chronicles the life of a British soldier in Indian offers
an unlikely hero in the person of Gungaden, the regimental waterbearer,
who represents an idea, perhaps surprising to the soldier narrator,
that a person's worth is not defined by their race.
The poem has inspired films and songs, and its famous

(01:38):
last line, You're a better man than I am Gungaden
is an off quoted bit of praise, but the author
of the poem, the youngest person ever to receive the
Nobel Prize for Literature, lived a tragic life. Rudyard Kipling,
the author of such beloved classics as The Jungle Book
and Captain's Courageous, suffered an abusive and difficult childhood. Went

(02:00):
on to become one of the most famous authors of
his time, but lived a life of tragedy. The father
of three, only one of his children would survive him.
Rudyard Kipling was born to Lockwood Kipling, who was the
head of an art school, and his wife Alice, in Bombay, India,
on December thirtieth, eighteen sixty five. They entrusted the early
care of their son to an Indian nurse who carried

(02:22):
the young Kipling with her during her daily duties to
the bazaar. He was with her so much that Kipling's
first language and the one that he said he spoke
in his dreams, was Hindi, but Thenders always reminded Kipling
to speak only English to his parents so that they
didn't necessarily know the extent of his fluency. Kipling's parents
were concerned about the health of their amiable son, who
was nicknamed the little Friend of the World because of

(02:44):
his friendly attitude, and their second child, a daughter named
Alice whom everyone called Tricks, who was born a few
years later. Typhoid, cholera, and other epidemics were common, partially
because the causes of the disease were unknown, and the
Kiplings believed their children would be safer from potential illness.
Back in England, they found a boarding house in the

(03:06):
south of England that seemed like the perfect place, but
they apparently didn't check all the appropriate references, and it
was an unfortunate decision for Rudyard and Tricks. The family
that ran the boarding house, called the Holloways, told the
children that their parents had left him behind in England
because they had been bad. There never seemed to be
enough to eat. Called the lady the house, quizzing him

(03:28):
about his daily activities and then picking Aparty's every answer
in an effort to catch him in a lie. The
Halloway's son cruelly beat the five year old Kipling with
his fists. If the children cried after receiving a letter
from their parents, they were locked in the basement for
an entire day. The word help was carved into the
house's walls by one of the children kept by the Holloways.
It was bleak. Kipling forever after called the place the

(03:51):
House of Desolation. Later in life, Kipling wrote a semi
autobiographical novel entitled Bob Bob Blackshep that detailed the line
lives of a six and three year old who were
left in the care of an abusive family in the
south of England. Kipling's readers didn't know that he had
modeled the story after his own life. For when young
lips have drunk deep of the better waters of hate, suspicion,

(04:13):
and despair, all the love in the world will not
wholly take away that knowledge. Though it may turn darkened
eyes for a while to the light and teach faith
where no faith was Bob Bob black Sheep, eighteen eighty nine.
After Rudyard's mother came to take care of children home
six years later, she was putting Kipling to bed and
went to give him a kiss good night. He automatically

(04:33):
threw up his hands as if to ward off an attack.
It was then that she realized how awful the boarding
house life had been to her children. Emotional scars ran deep.
Trix would struggle with what might be now labeled as
bipolar disorder for her entire life. Rudyard, on the other hand,
had intermittent periods of what he called depression and according
to some historians, and an ability to form a close

(04:55):
relationship with his wife. Kipling said he'd dealt with his
variable moods by working long, sometimes as much as sixteen
hours in a day. You'd later write to a friend,
my head is all queer and I'm going to have
to have it mended someday. But that someday never seemed
to come. Kipling received his formal education at United Services
College in Devon. It was another boarding school in one

(05:18):
of which he didn't necessarily thrive, who called being terrified
as his fellow students hung him by his ankles out
of the window on the fifth floor of a dormitory.
Never particularly athletic, the dreamy and buckish Kipling was described
as an indifferent student. Yet there be certain times in
the young man's life when, through great sorrow or sin,
all the boy in him is burnt and seered away,

(05:39):
so he passes at one step to the more sorrowful
state of manhood The Dream of Duncan Parnis, eighteen eighty four.
But there were echoes of Kipling's earlier amiable attitude towards
the world. One of his classmates remembered him as a capering,
podgy little fellow, as precocious as ever could be. When

(06:01):
he finished his time at United Services College, Kipling took
a job at a newspaper near his parents in Lahore, India,
which is now Pakistan. Kipling began publishing his poetry, which
was incredibly well received by the public. Almost from the
beginning of his career. He formed a close relationship with
an American publicist in London named Walcott Bellister, and when
Balister unexpectedly died, Kipling married the deceased man's sister, Carrie

(06:23):
in January eighteen ninety two. The rush wedding was small,
with only four people in attendance, because London had virtually
come to a standstill there was a crippling influenza epidemic
sweeping in the city. Kipling described the atmosphere in his
biography as it was in the thick of an influenza epidemic,
when the undertakers had run out of black horses and
the dead had to be content with brown ones.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
And you're listening to the history guy tell the story
of the youngest winner in the history of the Nobel
Prize for Literature, Rudyard Kipling. And what a childhood he
suffered at the hands of my goodness monsters, the House
of Desolation, the story of the boarding house he grew

(07:05):
up in. An indifferent student. You hear that a lot
about really talented folks. They're in different students because they
just haven't been tapped for their potential and their talent.
We capture that often on the stories we tell here.
When we continue more of the remarkable life of poet
and writer Rudyrid Kipling here on our American stories, folks

(07:31):
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(07:52):
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we continue with our American Stories and the story of

(08:12):
Rudyard Kipling. Let's return to the history Guy.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
The couple honeymoon to the United States for a time
and went on to Japan, where they received news that
their bank had collapsed and taken much of their fortune
with it. They returned to the States, Carrie's home country,
pursased a home near her family in Rattleborough, Vermont. Carrie
Kipling discovered she was pregnant and gave birth to the
couple's first child, Josephine, on December twenty ninth, eighteen ninety two.

(08:38):
In his biography, Kipling wrote that his daughter was born
in three foot of snow on the night of twenty
nine December eighteen ninety two, her mother's birthday being the
thirty first and mine the thirtieth on the same month.
We congratulated her on our sense of the fitness of things.
Kipling described this period of his life as the happiest
and most productive as his career. He loved living in
the countryside of Vermont, away from the noisy cities or

(08:59):
temptato like alcohol or opium. He wrote such classics as
The Jungle Book, Captain's Courageous, both of which would later
be made into films, and other books filled with short
stories and poetry. Now this is the law of the jungle,
as old and as true as the sky, and the
wolf that shall keep it may prosper. But the wolf
that shall break it must die. As the creeper the

(09:20):
girdles the tree trunk. The law runneth forward and back,
For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and
the strength of the wolf is the pack. The Second
Jungle Book, eighteen ninety five. In eighteen ninety six, Carrie
gave birth to the couple's second child, a daughter named Elsie,
and a son quickly followed. In eighteen ninety seven, whom

(09:41):
they named John. Kipling began telling his eldest daughter, Josephine,
whom he called Effie, versions of his now beloved Just
So stories for little children every night before bed, he said,
in the evening there were stories meant to put Effie
to sleep, and you were not allowed to alter those
by one single little word that would be told just so,
or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence.

(10:02):
So at last they came to be like charms, all
three of them. The Whale Tale, the Camel Tale, and
the rhinoceros Tale. The just So stories are imaginative stories
about how animals begin to look and act the way
they do in nature. The titles detail each story. There's
how the whale got his throat and how the camel
got his hump. The enduring popularity of these stories speaks
to the love and care with which Kipling wrote them

(10:23):
for his children. I keep six honest serving men. They
taught me all I knew. Their names are what and
where and when and how and why and who? The
Elephant's Child nineteen oh two. The Kipling's idyllic existence in
the United States ended when Kipling had a public run
in with Carrie's brother, Baby Ballister. Billister struggled with addiction

(10:45):
to alcohol and money troubles. After publicly threatening to blow
off Kipling's head, Balister was arrested and the trial followed,
which drew quite a lot of attention from the press
because of Kipling's popularity as an author. As for his part,
Kipling seemed to mourn the loss of his privacy and
everly moved his family back to England in an effort
to reclaim it. Were all islands shouting lies to each

(11:06):
other across seas of misunderstanding The Light They Failed eighteen
ninety one. Unfortunately, he suffered one of the largest losses
of his life. The Kipling's eldest daughter, Josephine, aged six,
succumbed to pneumonia on March sixth, eighteen ninety nine. Kipling
had been ill at the same time, and at first

(11:26):
the family feared that they would lose them both. Ever,
Kipling survived to discover that his daughter had not. The
world is very lovely, and it is very horrible, and
it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.
The Light They Failed eighteen ninety one, when The Justice
Stories for Children was first published, in nineteen o two.

(11:48):
Kipling illustrated the stories himself. The timing of the publication
so soon after the loss of Josephine was particularly poignant.
The loss forever after changed the author. According to those
close to him, the man who had once been described
as as a friend of the world smiled and laughed
a little less often. Kipling's sister Tricks said he became
a sadder and a harder man. Kipling received the Nobel

(12:10):
Prize for Literature in nineteen oh seven, and remains the
youngest person ever to have obtained the honor, but his
star seemed already to be fading. He espoused imperialistic political
ideas and encouraged countries to pursue imperialistic policies. Kipling wrote
the poem The White Man's Burden, and an effort to
encourage the United States to take a more active role
in the Philippines. Take up the white Man's Burden, Send

(12:30):
forth the best you breed, Go, bind your sons to exile,
to serve your captive's need. The White Man's Burden eighteen
ninety nine. He was also in support of the Great
War World War One, encouraged his son John to serve
the conflict. At first, John failed a medical examination to
join the Royal Navy because of his weak eyesight. He

(12:51):
attempted to list two more times that was rejected both times,
and then, using his father's connections, Kipling joined the Irish
Guards to part in the bloody Battle of Life Lose,
the largest British assault of nineteen fifteen. John Kipling, age eighteen,
was assumed to have been blown apart by shells, and
no piece of his corpse was ever recovered for his
family to mourn. Over twenty fifteen, the Commonwealth Grave Commission

(13:12):
announced it had located the grave of John Kipling, whose
remains been buried in a French cemetery. If any question
why we died, tell them because our fathers lied. Epithets
of War nineteen eighteen. This second last at Kipling and
his wife incredibly hard. Kipling said he read the novels

(13:33):
of Jane Austen to his wife and remaining daughter over
and over again in an effort to shake the grief
he felt at John's death. He also joined the group
that would later become the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in
honor of his lost son. Kipling suggested some of the
biblical verses the commission put on the stones of the
word dead. He also wrote a regimental history of the
Irish Guards, which was published in nineteen twenty three and

(13:53):
has been considered by some to be one of the
best examples of a regimental history ever pinned. There were
too many almost children, of whom no record remains. They
came out of Warley with the constant renewed drafts, lived
the span of a second lieutenant life, and were spent
the Irish Guards in the Great War. Nineteen twenty three,

(14:16):
while morning his lost children, Kipling's health began a study decline.
Kipling suffered from dwagno Ulscler's, which it is believed eventually
killed him at age seventy. The writer's ashes are interred
at Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner this Forever and of the
remains of Thomas Hardy Charles Dickens, Kipling's only surviving child, Elsie,
married George Bambridge, a diplomat, in nineteen twenty four. She

(14:37):
never had any children, so Kipling's bud line ended. She
died on April twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six. Like some
celebrities today, Kipling's death was reported ahead of its time.
Reading about it in a magazine, he wrote to the magazine,
I've just read that I died. Don't forget to delete
me from your list of subscribers. Many of his political viewpoints,

(14:58):
notably about imperialism no laws, held sway in the international
world as he grew older, and he did receive much
criticism for that. George Orwell described him as a jingo
imperialist who was morally insensitive and a gutter patriot. His
literary career had a meteoric rise, but then seemed to stagnate,
and he often spoke to friends about the foibles of

(15:19):
early fame, like his idyllic views of empire. In many ways,
Rudyard Kipling seemed to become history even before his days
had passed, especially in the way that the loss of
his children affected him. But what is left of Rodger
Kipling when everything else is turned to dust are his writings,

(15:39):
like perhaps his most famous poem if penn in eighteen
ninety five, which seems to represent his tragic life but
exhorts us all to be the best that we can be,
even in the face of terrible loss. If you could
make one heap of all your winnings, risk it on
one turn of pigeon toss, lose start age at your beginnings.

(16:02):
Never say one word about your loss. If you can
force your heart and nerve and sin you to serve
your term long after they are gone, and so hold
on when there is nothing in you except the will
that tells them. I'll hold on. If you can talk
to crowd to keep your virtue, walk with kings, or
lose the common touch. If neither foe nor loving friend

(16:24):
can hurt you, If all men matter to you, but
none too much. If you can fill the everlasting minute
with sixty seconds of distance rout, then yours is the
earth and everything that's in it. And what's more, you'll
be a man, my son.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
And great job is always by Greg Hangler bringing us
the story and a special thanks as always to the
History Guy. History deserves to be Remembered. That's where you
can find him and his work on the YouTube channel
History Guy. History Deserves to be Remembered. Just do that
Google search and you'll enjoy what you see. Poet's Corner

(17:06):
is remarkable all by itself with memorials, but the very
few who actually got buried there include as was indicated
not just Dickens and Chaucer and Tennyson, but in the
end Kipling too, joining this August breed. And in addition
there are memorials for au Jane Austen and Blake the poet,

(17:26):
and Auden and Lewis Carroll and C. S. Lewis and T. S.
Eliot and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the list goes on
and on. There was something special about the British talent
for literature, poetry, and all else. It may be one
of the great special gifts that the British gave us
was a shared and common language, not just the laws,

(17:47):
but the common language. The story of Rudyard Kipling a
story of loss and tragedy and beauty. Here on our
American stories