Table Of ContentThe Man who would be Kipling
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The Man who would
be Kipling
The Colonial Fiction and the
Frontiers of Exile
Andrew Hagiioannu
© Andrew Hagiioannu 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-2029-4
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hagiioannu, Andrew, 1967–
The man who would be Kipling:the colonial fiction and the frontiers of
exile/Andrew Hagiioannu.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. Kipling, Rudyard, 1865–1936—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Kipling,
Rudyard, 1865–1936—Political and social views. 3. Kipling, Rudyard,
1865–1936—Homes and haunts. 4. Politics and literature—Great Britain.
5. Literature and society—Great Britain. 6. Imperialism in literature.
7. Colonies in literature. 8. Exiles in literature. I. Title.
PR4857.H27 2003
828(cid:2).809—dc21 2003053617
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Contents
Preface vi
Acknowledgements viii
Part I India: Writing Under Western Eyes
1 The Sentence for Mutiny: ‘In the Year ’57’, Plain Tales
from the Hills, and the Rhetoric of the Punjab 3
2 Borderline Fictions and Fantasies: The Man who would
be King, The City of Dreadful Night, and other Allahabad
Writings 34
Part II America: Out of Empire
3 American Fiction: The Day’s Work, US Imperialism,
andthe Politics of Wall Street 61
4 Mowgli’s Feral Campaign: The Jungle Booksand the
Americanisationof Empire 96
Part III South Africa and Sussex: An Estranged
Homecoming
5 By Equal War Made One: The Scramble for Social Order
in The FiveNations 117
6 Strange Deaths in Liberal England: Traffics and Discoveries,
MediaWar, and the Machineries of Social Change 136
7 Kipling’s Tory Anarchy: Puck of Pook’s Hilland the
PoliticsofMisrule 165
Conclusion: The Edge of Evening 179
Notes 184
Bibliography 209
Index 216
v
Preface
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
W.H. Auden, ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ (1939)
In these famous lines on the death of Yeats, Auden imagines the
memory of the poet scattered among his admirers in a hundred cities,
to be exposed to ‘unfamiliar affections’ and ‘punished under a foreign
code of conscience’. It is an unsettling vision of literary celebrity that
seems to recall the mythical dismemberment of Orpheus, the greatest
musician and poet of them all, torn asunder by the ravenous Thracian
women and thrown into the pitiless waters of the Hebrus. The land-
scape of Auden’s poem, however, is distinctly modern, with the imagery
of statues, public spaces, airports, suburbs, and prison-houses intimat-
ing the dread mundanity and political nightmare of pre-war, fascist
Europe – the ‘dark cold day’ of Yeats’ journey into posterity.
Troubled by the uncertain destiny of Yeats, Auden finds some comfort
in the example of Rudyard Kipling. Time, he suggests, has ‘pardoned’
Kipling’s intolerable political views because it worships language and
‘forgives/Everyone by whom it lives’. Perhaps again recalling the role
of Zeus in the Orphean myth, Time supposedly elevates the poet of
empire above the reproachful scene of modern Europe, setting him in
the constellations to sparkle above a troubled civilisation.
Conscious of the vagaries of Time, this study aims to reflect the com-
plexity of Kipling’s response to the historical and cultural environments
that informed his work. It locates his writings – including a range of
familiar and less familiar works – in the historical setting of the various
cultures in which he lived and wrote, covering his time in India,
America, South Africa and England. The volume thus deals with the first
half of Kipling’s career, from 1886 – the year of his first serious literary
enterprise – to around 1906, the high point of English Liberalism and
the beginning of a crucial period of political reform in the nation and the
empire. These were formative years, encompassing the long period of
colonial and international residence that so powerfully informed his
vi
Preface vii
work – the period that saw the publication of the writings he collect-
ively termed, with some degree of irony, his ‘“Imperialistic” output’.1
These years saw Kipling engaging with the political and rhetorical
complexities of Raj governance in northern India, the economic and
social upheavals of a rapidly urbanising America, and the movements
of retrenchment and reform at home and abroad following the war
in South Africa. For Kipling, the publication of the Puck stories in 1906
concluded this imperial phase, and hence my readings of the Puck
tales – the last works discussed in his autobiography – conclude the
present study, with the later writings forming the subject of a planned
second volume.
My purpose in writing this book is to lend depth of shading and
subtlety to the understanding of Kipling’s cultural and historical experi-
ence, adding new coverage and critical analysis to areas of his life,
politics, and writings unduly neglected in the past. For example, his
transfer to Allahabad during those Indian years is an episode familiar to
biographers, but the effect of this move upon his literary work has been
overlooked in a number of critical studies. Similarly the move to
Vermont, which is arguably even more integral to his writings, has
received scant attention in regard to its impact upon such popular
works as the two Jungle Books. In the later chapters, my focus upon the
cultural impact of new technology and the media highlights the essen-
tial political and historical allusion of Kipling’s Edwardian writings.
The title, ‘The Man who would be Kipling’ is, of course, adapted from
the title of the author’s famous tale of imperial greed and violence, ‘The
Man who would be King’. The alteration of the last word is intended to
suggest the problem of identity always implicit in the author’s work, the
feeling that he is a man of many parts, often unrecognisable to himself
and constantly on the move. In the pages that follow, this feeling
of self-alienation emerges as a key theme of Kipling’s tales, dramatised
inrecurring depictions of alienated narrator-figures, and culminating in
the fractured English identity and forebodings of exile reflected in the
later, Edwardian stories. It is arguably in those Sussex tales that Kipling
most powerfully mines the ‘deserts of the heart’ described by Auden –
and perhaps in those tales that the ‘healing fountain’ starts.
Acknowledgements
I should like to express my gratitude to the many people who have
supported my long labours in this project: firstly to William F.T. Myers,
a much-valued teacher, colleague and friend, whose insights into
Kipling and the complexities of history have had an important influ-
ence upon my own critical outlook and methods. Bill’s comments on
various early drafts of this material were invaluable, as were the astute
and meticulous observations of Professors Martin Stannard and Greg
Walker, two of my most stalwart friends and colleagues. I should also
like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Dr David Bradshaw and
Professors Christopher Ricks, J.P. Parrinder and Clare Hanson, each of
whom has been generous in their support and encouragement. Any
errors and limitations in this volume are, of course, entirely my own.
The award of a Visiting Fellowship at St John’s College, Oxford
(summer 2000) provided a valuable time of reflection and research in
the writing of this book, and I am grateful to the Fellows of the College
for the warm welcome that made this visit so memorable for me.
Particularly warm thanks are due to Dr John Langton, whose expert
advice (and much-appreciated loan of books) contributed significantly
to the analysis of Englishness and landscape in the later parts of
mystudy.
Among the many other friends who have offered their time, energy
and encouragement, I should like to thank Michael Davies, David Salter,
Lucy Faire, Chris Watts, Philip Gordon, Terry Cavanagh, and Richard
Ashton. John and Margaret Parkinson have also been close companions
throughout, and, as one of John’s former students, I have long benefited
from his kindness, wit and literary sense. I should also like to thank Lisa
Keane and Jon Stevens for their kind hospitality and friendship during
research visits to London. And last, but most certainly not least, warm
thanks and much love to Matthew, Theresa, and Katie Young, whose
support has been unfailing and deeply appreciated.
Various institutions have contributed financially and materially to
this project, including the British Academy, which funded my doctoral
studies and thereby introduced me not only to Kipling, but also, in the
shape of numerous research grants, to the many libraries and archives
that would eventually form the mainstay of my research, including the
British Library and India Office Collection, and Special Collections at
viii
Acknowledgements ix
the University of Sussex. The Budget Centre Research Committee of the
University of Leicester supported additional visits to these libraries,
including a period of study at Kipling’s former home, Bateman’s
(for which the permission of the National Trust to examine works
inKipling’s library is greatly appreciated). My thanks are due to the staff
of each of these libraries and special collections, particularly Dorothy
Sheridan, Bet Inglis, Joy Eldridge, and everyone connected with the
Kipling Archive at Sussex. The librarians of the Bodleian, St John’s
College, and the University of Leicester were also extremely helpful,
patient and conscientious in dealing with my various queries and
requests.
Portions of Chapter 1 were first published in The Review of English
Studies, volume 51, number 201 (February 2000), and now appear in
revised form with the permission of Oxford University Press.
This study is dedicated to my parents, who have been a constant source
of inspiration, and a lifelong example of East–West compatibility – of
the kind, I suspect, that has some bearing on the contents and concerns
of this volume.
Andrew Hagiioannu, 2003
