RUDYARD KIPLING

(1865 - 1936)

Rudyard Kipling was born on December 30th 1865, in Bombay (now called Mumbai) in India into an upper-middle class family. At the time of his birth, his parents, John and Alice, were recent arrivals in India. They had come, like so many of their countrymen, with plans to start new lives and to help the British government run the continent. The family lived well, and Kipling was especially close to his mother. His father, an artist, was the head of the Department of Architectural Sculpture at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Bombay. For Kipling, India was a wondrous place. Along with his younger sister, Alice, he reveled in exploring the local markets with his nanny. He learned the language, and in this bustling city of Anglos, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews, Kipling fell in love with the country and its culture. However, at the age of 6, Kipling's life was torn apart when his mother, wanting her son to receive a formal British education, sent him to Southsea, England, where he attended school and lived with a foster family named the Holloways. These were hard years for Kipling. Mrs. Holloway was a brutal woman who quickly grew to despise her young foster son. She beat and bullied Kipling, who also struggled to fit in at school. His only break from the Holloways came in December, when Kipling, who told nobody of his problems at school or with his foster parents, traveled to London, where he stayed with relatives for the month. With few friends, he devoted himself to reading. By the age of 11, Kipling was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A visitor to his home saw his condition and immediately contacted his mother, who rushed back to England and rescued her son from the Holloways. To help relax his mind, Alice took her son on an extended vacation and then placed him in a new school in Devon. There, Kipling flourished and discovered his talent for writing, eventually becoming editor of the school newspaper. In 1882, Kipling was told by his parents that they didn't have enough money to send him to college. Instead, they had him return to India. Kipling made his home with his parents in Lahore and, with his father's help, found a job with a local newspaper. He began to write fiction at the same time, and continued to observe and record the huge variety of native life he came across on his travels. In 1889, seven years after he had left England, Kipling returned to London. Kipling then marred an American woman, Caroline Balestier. They moved to America, but Kipling did not enjoy himself, seeing the Americans as an "inferior race". They returned to England, where they bought a house in Sussex. In 1907, Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He continued to preach the doctrine of Imperialism until his death, seeing it as the developed world's duty to take on "the white man's burden". As much of Europe braced for war with Germany, Kipling proved to be an ardent supporter of the fight. In 1915, he even traveled to France to report on the war from the trenches. He also encouraged his son, John, to enlist. Since Josephine's death, his daughter who died from pneumonia, Kipling and John had grown very close. In October of 1915, the Kiplings received word that John had gone missing in France. The news devastated the couple. Kipling, perhaps feeling guilty about his push to make his son a soldier, set off for France to find John. But nothing ever came of the search, and John's body was never recovered. Over his last few years, Kipling suffered from a painful ulcer that eventually took his life on January 18th, 1936. Kipling's ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey in Poets' Corner.