🔰Rudyard Kipling - Lives of Great Men

The National Broadcasting Company presents Lives of Great Men, a series on great leaders in human progress, presented by Dr. Edward Howard Griggs, distinguished lecturer, critic, and author of The Philosophy of Art and many other books. In his talk, Dr. Griggs is building a story of civilization based on outstanding characters through the ages and how each one influences his own and future times. This evening, Dr. Griggs will discuss Rudyard Kipling, interpreter of the British Empire. We present Edward Howard Griggs. My friend, Rudyard Kipling has been one of the outstanding literary figures of our time, writer of tales portraying both the English and the native life of India, of verses that revealed the British Tommy Atkins and leading interpreter of the spirit of British imperialism. Almost forgotten in our absorption in vast changes since the World War, Kipling's recent death and now published autobiography have wakened fresh interest in him and in his delightful books. Moreover, his view of Britain's relation to the world has challenging appeal to her in the present critical hour of her destiny. Kipling was born in Bombay, India in 1865, and his earliest vague memories were of that colorful tropical land. His father was a gifted painter, later curator of the museum at Lahore and head of an art school. Kipling speaks of his mother as Celtic, fine, gifted, and a writer of poems. His initial view in telling his life story is that all things conspired in his favor. This shows his sanguine temperament, since many in one living through his early sufferings would have cried out against hampering fate. At seven, Kipling was taken to London and placed in a home for colonial officer's son, kept by an evangelical but hard and heartless woman. Six years the boy suffered in this house of desolation, meantime attending day school. One month each year was heaven, as December was spent at the home of his mother's sister, wife of the painter, Byrne Jones. There, in an atmosphere of highest culture, he lived a normal child's life. The gifted older persons, including William Morris, Uncle Topsy, were playmates of the children. Kipling's cousin, Stanley Baldwin, was often of the group. Later on, his aunt asked him why he had not told of his 11-month annual misery. Kipling thinks the answer is that children are like dumb animals, taking what comes, and also that he feared further beatings if he complained. The deeper reason, I think, was an instinctive stoicism, marking him from the start and throughout his life. His mother came home for a visit and quickly discovered the situation, for as she stooped to kiss her boy, he threw up his arm to ward off the expected blow. The next period was four years of schooling at the far end of England, Kipling and his sister living in a home of culture with three dear old ladies. The school's brutalities he later exploited in stocky and company. Nevertheless, he thinks the school years were of great value, particularly in training precision in writing, and in opening to him the world of literature. He came upon Browning's men and women, and was fascinated by the character portrayal, noting particularly the parallel of his early life and that of Frolipo Lippy. In both cases, the experience of the artist fitted him to portray the world as he saw it. At 17, he was offered the place of associate editor on an English newspaper in India, and eagerly accepting, returned to his native land. The work was fiercely demanding, extending to 16 hours a day. He experienced all the miseries of tropical heat and diseases, but stuck doggedly to his task. Kipling attributes to Walter Besant's All in the Garden Fair, the inspiration to write of common things, observable in the world immediately about him. So began the plain tales from the hills and departmental ditties published in several papers and periodicals. While this fine work was to become the foundation of his fame, it had for the time being only an indifferent audience. With the urge to write dominant, he sold the tales and verses so far produced to secure funds for a trip around the world to England. In the course of it, he crossed America from west to east. At that time, he was able to see something good in us, and his American letters, while castigating our obvious vices, are not like his later drastic criticism. On Kipling's arrival in England, success came quickly. Henley and other editors of magazines eagerly accepted his work, and he soon had money enough to buy back the stories and poems he had sold in India and republish them in England. At the same time, he began the barrack room ballads, interpreting in dialect verse all aspects of the British soldier's life. Similar work followed through the years, gathered up in the Seven Seas and other volumes. As typical, hear a part of the song of the banjo. You couldn't pack a broadwood half a mile. You mustn't leave a fiddle in the damp. You couldn't rest an organ up the Nile and play it in an equatorial swamp. I travel with the cooking pots and pails. I'm sandwiched between the coffee and the pork, and when the dusty column shakes and tails, you should hear me spur the rear guard to a walk with my filly, willy, winky, winky fox. Oh, it's any tune that comes into my head, so I keep them moving forward till they drop, so I play them up to water and to bed. In the silence of the camp before the fight, when it's good to make your will and say your prayer, you can hear my trumpety-trumpety overnight, explaining ten to one was always fair. With my tum-pa-tum-pa-tum-pa-tum-pa-tum in the desert where the dung-fed camp smoke curls, there was never a voice before us till I led our lonely chorus. I, the war drum of the white man round the world. Kipling has caught the very music of the banjo. His feeling for meter was one of his finest poetic gifts. An illness led to Kipling's tour in Italy. Then he went to visit the British Dominion, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, returning to India in company of General Booth of the Salvation Army, and then home to England. Kipling married an American girl at 27, and started with his wife on another world tour. He crossed our continent, got as far as Yokohama, when his bank's failure forced him to turn back. He went to the home of his wife's relatives in Vermont, living for a time in a small cottage near them. Success came quickly again, as he developed a new field with the charming jungle books, which with other stories added innumerable children to his wide audience. His captains courageous, born of visits to Gloucester, Massachusetts, and attendance at the annual memorial service for fishermen lost at sea, has recently been made into an outstandingly great moving picture. American publishers begged for his books. Our public eagerly bought them, and he was able to build a beautiful Nalaka, intended as a permanent home. He did not like his neighbors, however, and came to detest our conglomerate population, both native and immigrant. Our political chicanery and exploitation at that time of ignorant labor disgusted him. His most drastic comment on us occurs toward the close of his autobiography, in narrating a trip of continuous ovations in a private car furnished by the head of the Canadian Pacific Railway across Canada, taken because he had been told that Canada was coming out of its spiritual and material subjection to the United States. Contrasting the two peoples, he remarks, always the marvel, to which the Canadian seemed insensible, was that on one side of an imaginary line should be safety, law, honor, and obedience, and on the other, frank, brutal decivilization, and that despite this, Canada should be impressed by any aspect whatever of the United States. The autobiography does not mention the more pungent reason for his dislike, the long unjust quarrel inflicted on him by one of his wife's relatives, which however was more than sufficiently exploited in the press at the time. Thus after some years, England looked more attracted to Kipling, and he abandoned us to our vices and returned to the seat of empire. We regret that Kipling may not be numbered among our American authors, but recognizing a measure of justice in his criticism, it is easy to forgive his diatribes since we are so used to being called bad names, Shylock and others, by those whom we have generously served. Before leaving America, Kipling had met Theodore Roosevelt and saw him again in England after the Spanish-American War. The two held much the same view of world relations. By criticizing Theodore Roosevelt's anti-British views, which he thought adopted for political purposes, Kipling says of him, my own idea of him was that he was a much bigger man than his people understood or at that time knew how to use, and that he and they might have been better off had he been born 20 years later. For some time, Kipling lived half the year in England, half in South Africa. Cecil Rhodes became his close friend, and he knew and approved Jameson. He served Britain remarkably well in the Boer War. The youth made a song of his absent-minded beggar, earned, he tells us, a million dollars for the cause. In 1907, Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The recognition of his work was now worldwide. During the World War, he contributed poems and articles, but stood somewhat apart. In his later work is an increasing didactic element, but his imperialist views remained unchanged. It is strange that he was never made Poet Laureate, since no other poet of his time approximated him, either in interpreting England and her far-flung empire, or in the wide recognition he received. No Poet Laureate since Tennyson has written a patriotic hymn approximating an impressive Surely no one has interpreted the finest spirit of British imperialism in carrying the white man's burden, as he has done. Perhaps his criticism of governmental incompetence was too drastic. His singing of the sorrows of Tommy Atkins was too frank. Possibly the laurel crown might have been his, had he not written such poems as The Sons of the Widow. Have you heard of the widow at Windsor, with a hairy gold crown on her head? She has ships on the foam, she has millions at home, and she pays us poor beggars in red. Oh, poor beggars in red. Then here's to the widow at Windsor, and here's to the stores and the guns, the men and the horses, what makes up the forces of Mrs. Victoria's sons. Poor beggars, Victoria's sons. Walk wide of the widow at Windsor, for our creation she owns. We have bought her the same with the sword and the flame, and we've sorted it down with our bones. Poor beggars, it's blue with our bones. Hands off of the sons of the widow, hands off of the goods in her shop, for the kings must come down and the emperors frown when the widow at Windsor says stop. Poor beggars, we're sent to say stop. We have heard of the widow at Windsor, it saves us to let her alone. For centuries we stand by the sea and the land, wherever the bugles are blown. Then here's to the sons of the widow, wherever, however they roam. Here's all they desire, and if they require, a speedy return to their own. Poor beggars, they'll never see home. Has there ever been written another poem as effective as this one in the cause of peace? The recessional must be regarded as the crown of Kipling's work. While written as a sort of protest at the time of Queen Victoria's second jubilee, it gives just the appeal and warning all English-speaking people's need at the present dark hour. God of our fathers, known of all. Lord of our far-flung battle line. Beneath whose awful hand we hold dominion over palm and pine. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. The tumult and the shouting dies. The captains and the kings depart. Still stands by an ancient sacrifice, and humble in the contrite heart. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. Far called our navies melt away. On dune and headland sinks the fire. Though all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre. Judge of the nations spare us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. If drunk with sight of power, we loose wild tongues that have not thee in awe. Such boasting as the Gentile Jews, or lesser breeds without the law. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget. Roger Kipling, interpreter of the British Empire, has been the subject of another program in the series titled, Lives of Great Men. Presented by Dr. Edward Howard Griggs, distinguished lecturer, critic, and author. Next week, Dr. Griggs will speak on Pierre Loti, a sensitive dreamer as child and man. Copies of tonight's discussion of Roger Kipling may be obtained by addressing the National Broadcasting Company, Radio City, New York, or the station to which you are listening.