The Tragic Life of Rudyard Kipling

now a ninja's sent a claim what I used to spend my time seven of Her Majesty the Queen of all the black faced crew the finest man I knew was regimental bhisti hunkered in was din din Daniel impanel up Oh Brett dusk gonna get in hi slippery Heather Oh water bring it to Perry low ya squishing nose don't idle gunga din written in 1890 the poem Ganga Dan was one of the most famous poems in the world and it's time chronicles the life of a British soldier in India and offers an unlikely hero in the person of Ganga Dan the regimental Water Bearer who represents an idea perhaps surprising to the soldier narrator that a person's worth is not defined by the race the poem has inspired films and songs and its famous last line you're a better man than I am Gunga Din is enough quoted bit of praise but the author of the poem the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature lived a tragic life Rudyard Kipling the author of such a beloved classics as The Jungle Book in Captains Courageous suffered an abusive and difficult childhood went on to become one of the most famous authors of his time but lived a life of tragedy the father of three only one of his children would survive him the life and losses of Roger Kipling are history that deserve to be remembered Rudyard Kipling was born to Lockwood Kipling who was the head of an art school and his wife Alice in Bombay India on December 30th 1865 they entrusted the early care of their son to an Indian nurse who carried the young Kipling with her during her daily duties to the bazaar he was with her so much that kiplyn's first language and the one that he said he spoke in his dreams was Hindi but the nurse always reminded Kipling to speak only English to his parents so that they didn't necessarily know the extent of his fluency Kipling's parents were concerned about the health of their amiable son he was nicknamed the little friend of the world because of his friendly attitude and their second child a daughter named Alice whom everyone called Trix who was born a few years later typhoid cholera and other epidemics were common partially because the causes of the disease were unknown and the Kipling's believed their children would be safer from potential illness back in England found a boardinghouse in the South of England that seemed like the perfect place but they apparently didn't check all the appropriate references and it was an unfortunate decision for Rudyard & Tricks the family that ran the boarding house called the Holloway's told the children that their parents had left them behind in England because they had been bad there never seemed to be enough to eat Tiffin recalled the lady of the house quizzing him about his daily activities and then picking apart his every answer in an effort to catch him in a lie the hallways son cruelly beat the five-year-old Kipling with his fists if the children cried after receiving a letter from their parents they were locked in the basement for an entire day the word help was carved into the houses walls but one of the children kept by the Holloway's it was bleak keep playing forever after called the place the house of desolation later in life Kipling wrote a semi autobiographical novel entitled baa baa black sheep that detailed the lives of a six and three-year-old were left in the care of an abusive family in the South of England Kipling's readers didn't know that he had modelled the story after his own life for Wind young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of hate suspicion and despair all the love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge though it may turn dark and eyes for a while to the light and teach faith where no faith was baa baa black sheep 1889 after Rogers mother came to take her children home six years later she was putting Kipling to bed and went to give him a kiss goodnight he automatically threw up his hands as if to ward off an attack it was then that she realised how awful the boarding house house life had been to her children the emotional scars Randeep tricks would struggle with what might be now labelled as bipolar disorder for her entire life Rudyard on the other hand had intermittent periods of what he called depression and according to some historians and an ability to form a close relationship with his wife Kipling said he dealt with his variable moods by working long hours sometimes as much as 16 hours and a day did let her write to a friend my head is all queer and I'm gonna have to have it mended someday but that some day never seemed to come Kipling received his formal education at United Services College in Devon it was another boarding school and one at which he didn't necessarily thrive who called being terrified as this fellow students hung him by his ankles out of the window on the fifth floor of a dormitory never particularly athletic that dreamy and bookish Kipling was described as an indifferent student yet there be certain times in a young man's life when through great sorrow or sin all the boy in him is burped and steered away so he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood the dream of Duncan Paris 1884 but there were echoes of Kipling's earlier amiable attitude towards the world one of his classmates remembered him as a key purring podgy little fellow as precocious as ever could be when he finished his time at United Services College Kipling took a job at a newspaper near his parents in Lahore India which is now in Pakistan Kipling began publishing his poetry which was incredibly well received by the public almost from the beginning of his career he formed a close relationship with an American publicist in London named Walcott Bela steer and when balusters unexpectedly died Kipling married the deceased man's sister Carrie in January 1892 the rushed wedding was small with only four people in attendance because London had virtually come to a standstill there was a crippling influenza epidemic sweeping the city Kipling described the atmosphere in his biography as it was in the thick of an influenza epidemic when the Undertaker's had run out of black horses and the dead had to be content with brown ones the couple honeymooned in the united states for time and went on to japan where they received news that their bank had collapsed and taken much of their fortune with it the return to the states carries home country versus a home near her family in Brattleboro Vermont Carrie Kipling discovered she was pregnant and gave birth to the couple's first child Josephine on December 29th 1892 and his biography Kipling wrote that his daughter was born in three foot of snow on the night of 29 December 1890 to her mother's birthday being the 31st in mind the 30th on the same month we congratulated her on her sense of the fitness of things Kipling described this period of his life as the happiest and most productive as his career he loved living in the countryside Vermont away from the noisy cities or temptations like alcohol or opium he wrote such classics as the Jungle Book Captains Courageous both of which would later be made into films other books filled with short stories and poetry now this is the law of the jungle as old and as true as the sky and the wolf that shall keep it may prosper but the wolf that shall break it must die as the creeper that girdles the tree trunk the law runneth forward and back for the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack the second Jungle Book 1895 in 1896 Carrie gave birth to the couple's second child a daughter named Elsie and the son quickly filed in 1897 whom they named John Kipling began telling his eldest daughter Josephine whom he called Effie versions of his now beloved just-so stories for little children every night before bed he said in the evening that where stories meant to put Effie to sleep and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word that had be told just so if he would wake up and put back the missing sentence so at last they came to be like charms all three of them the whale tail the camel tail and the rhinoceros tail the just so stories are imaginative stories about how animals begin to look and act the way they do in nature the titles detail each story there's how the whale got his throat and how the camel got his hump the enduring popularity of the story speaks to the love and care with which Kipling wrote them for his children I keep six honest serving men they taught me all I knew their names are what and where and when and how and why and who the elephant's child 1902 the Kipling's idyllic existence in the United States ended when Kipling had a public run-in with Carey's brother baby balusters boaster struggled with addiction to alcohol and money troubles after publicly threatening to blow off Kipling's head Doster was arrested and the trial followed which drew quite a lot of attention from the press because of Kipling's popularity as an author as for his part Kipling seemed to mourn the loss of his privacy never say moved his family back to England in an effort to reclaim it we're all Islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding the light they failed 1891 unfortunately he suffered one of the largest losses of his life the Kipling's eldest daughter Josephine aged six succumbed to pneumonia and six 1899 Kipling had been ill at the same time and at first a family feared they would not that they would lose them both ever Kipling survived to discover that his daughter had not the world is very lovely and it's very horrible and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else the light they failed 1891 when the Justice of stories for children was first published in 1902 Kipling illustrated the stories himself the timing of the publication so soon after the loss of Josephine was particularly poignant the loss forever after changed the author according to those close to him the man who had once been described as a friend of the world smiled and laughed a little less often Kipling sister Trix said he became a sadder and a harder man Kipling received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 and remains the youngest person ever to have obtained the honor but his star seemed already to be fading he espoused imperialistic political ideas and encourage countries to pursue imperialistic policies Kipling wrote the poem the white man's burden and an effort to encourage the United staes to take a more active role in the Phillipines take up the white man's burden send forth the best G breed go bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need the white man's burden 1899 he was also in support of the Great War World War 1 encouraged his son John to serve the conflict at first John failed a medical examination to join the Royal Navy because of his weak eyesight he attempted to list two more times that was rejected both times and then using his father's connections Kipling joined the Irish Guards to part in the bloody Battle of Loos the largest British assault of 1915 John Kipling aged 18 was assumed to have been blown apart Michels and no piece of his corpse was ever recovered for his family to mourn over 2015 the Commonwealth grave commission announced it had located the grave of John Kipling whose remains been buried in a French Cemetery if any question why we died tell them because our fathers lied at the tests of war 1918 this second loss at Kipling at his wife incredibly hard Kipling said he read the novels of Jane Austen to his wife and remaining daughter over and over again in an effort to shake the grief he felt it death he also joined the group that would later become the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in honor of his lost son Kipling suggested some of the biblical verses the Commission put on the stones of the war dead Nasser wrote a regimental history of the Irish Guards which was published in 1923 it has been considered by some to be one of the best examples of a regimental history ever pinned and there were too many almost children of whom no record remains they came out of Worley with the constant renewed drafts lived the span of a second lieutenants life and were spent the Irish Guards in the great war 1923 while mourning his lost children Kipling's health began a steady decline Kipling suffered from duardo ulcers which it is believed eventually killed him at age 70 the Ryder's ashes are interred at Westminster Abbey's Poets Corner this forever dove the remains of Thomas Hardy Charles Dickens Kipling's only surviving child Elsie married George bambridge a diplomat in 1924 she never had any children so Kipling's bloodline ended she died on April 24th 1976 like some celebrities today Kipling's death was reported ahead of its time reading about it in a magazine he wrote to the magazine I've just read that I died don't forget to delete me from your list of subscribers many of his political viewpoints notably about imperialism no longer held sway in the international world is he grew older and he did receive much criticism for that George Orwell described him as a jingo imperialist who was morally insensitive and a gutter patriot his literary career had a meteoric rise but then seemed to stagnate and the often spoke to friends about the foibles of early fame like his idyllic views of empire in many ways Rudyard Kipling's seemed to become history even before his days had passed especially in the way that the loss of his children affected him but what is left of Rudyard Kipling when everything else is turned to dust or his writings like perhaps his most famous poem if penned in 1895 which seems to represent his tragic life but exhorts us all to be the best that we can be even in the face of terrible loss if you can make one heap of all your winnings risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss lose start account your beginnings never say one word about your loss if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will that tells them all hold on if you can talk to crowd to keep your virtue walk with Kings nor lose the common touch if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you if all men matter to you but none too much if you can fill the everlasting minute with 60 seconds of distance run then yours is the earth and everything that's in it and what's more you'll be a man my son I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on facebook instagram twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 574,565

Rating: 4.9486637 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, world history, author, nobel prize winner, rudyard kipling, history guy

Id: Wd14NCctoBA

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019