The Man who would be Kipling This page intentionally left blank 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 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publicationmaybe made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted savewith written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication maybeliable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as theauthorofthisworkinaccordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillandivision of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom andother countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Unionand other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-51451-9 ISBN 978-0-230-28781-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230287815 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managedand sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 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