[1865–1936]
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay. His father, John Lockwood Kipling, was a professor at the School of Art in Lahore. Kipling’s happy childhood came to an abrupt end when, at the age of six, he was sent with his sister to England. He was put into the care of a strict guardian and attended the United Services College, a public school in Devon. These unhappy schoolboy years were later to be recounted in the semi-autobiographical Stalky & Co. (1899).
In 1882, having left school, Kipling went back to India and worked as a journalist in Lahore on the Civil and Military Gazette. Aside from news items, he began to contribute his mildly satirical poetry and short stories. In 1886 his first collection of poems, Departmental Ditties, was published, followed by two collections of short stories, Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Soldiers Three (1889). These works were to bring him early recognition back in England. Having spent two years travelling around India, he returned to England, by way of the United States, in 1889.
Settling into the London literary scene, Kipling reissued his India stories and published a new collection, Life’s Handicap (1891). That same year, during a trip undertaken to improve his health, he visited India for the last time. In 1892 he married an American, Caroline Balestier, the sister of Charles Wolcott Balestier, an author-publisher with whom Kipling had worked. Moving with his wife to her home in Vermont, Kipling wrote and published what were to become some of his most celebrated titles, among them Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), a collection of poems written in the ballad tradition, the short stories Many Inventions (1893) and his classic children’s story The Jungle Book (1894), plus its sequel in 1895. This spell in America ended abruptly in 1896 when, following an argument with his brother-in-law, Kipling returned with his family to England.
Thereafter, Kipling remained in England, with spells in South Africa during the winter, where he voiced his support of Britain in the Boer War. His South African experiences, together with his earlier impressions of India, are reflected in his rigidly imperialist views on ‘the white man’s burden’. In fact, though some of his writing showed a sensitivity to the ill-effects of colonialism, much of it displayed his enthusiasm for a ruling order, and Kipling was later to be widely criticized for his jingoistic arrogance towards people ruled by Britain. However, in the days of the British Empire, Kipling’s poetry was hugely admired by many, including Queen Victoria and George V, and although he declined many offers of honours, including a knighthood and the Order of Merit, in 1907 he did accept the Nobel Prize for Literature. Among his celebrated later works were the novel Kim (1901), and for children the Just So Stories (1902) and Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906). His autobiography, Something of Myself, was published in 1937, after his death.
Having lost his son in the First World War, Kipling removed himself from the public sphere and died in relative isolation. He was buried in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.
Whether one chooses to view Kipling as an unreconstructed jingoist or a fundamentally more critical observer of English life, his work comes towards the end of a period in which British people instinctively viewed themselves in a global light. The poem that follows, ‘The English Flag’ (1891), affirms this connection to a larger world beyond the small island and suggests that such links are benign and positive, even in the face of early protests from those ‘colonials’ who preferred to burn the flag.
THE ENGLISH FLAG
Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack, remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the incident.
DAILY PAPERS
Winds of the Worlds, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro –
And what should they know of England who only England know? –
The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag!
Must we borrow a clout from the Boer – to plaster anew with dirt?
An Irish liar’s bandage, or an English coward’s shirt?
We may not speak of England; her Flag’s to sell or share.
What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!
The North Wind blew: – ’From Bergen my steel-shod vanguards go;
‘I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe.
‘By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
‘And the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.
‘I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
‘Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came.
‘I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
‘And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.
‘The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic nights,
‘The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Lights:
‘What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare,
‘Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!’
The South Wind sighed: – ‘From the Virgins my mid-sea course was ta’en
‘Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,
‘Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon
‘Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.
‘Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,
‘I waked the palms to laughter – I tossed the scud in the breeze.
‘Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
‘But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.
‘I have wrenched it free from the halliards to hang for a wisp on the Horn;
‘I have chased it north to the Lizard – ribboned and rolled and torn;
‘I have spread its folds o’er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;
‘I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
‘My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
‘Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
‘What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,
‘Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!’
The East Wind roared: – ‘From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,
‘And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
‘Look – look well to your shipping! By breath of my mad typhoon
‘I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!
‘The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,
‘I raped your richest roadstead – I plundered Singapore!
‘I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose;
‘And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.
‘Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
‘But a soul goes out in the East Wind that died for England’s sake –
‘Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid –
‘Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
‘The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows,
‘The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.
‘What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare,
‘Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!’
The West Wind called: – ‘In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly
‘That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.
‘They make my might their porter, they make my house their path,
‘Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath.
‘I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole.
‘They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll;
‘For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath,
‘And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.
‘But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,
‘I leave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,
‘First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,
‘Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.
‘The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it – the frozen dews have kissed –
‘The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
‘What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,
‘Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!’