![]() ![]() ![]() At the same time, and characteristically, he put a positive spin on the ‘torture’ suffered there by suggesting that it hastened his development as a writer. Their parents seem to have paid little attention to what their life might be like in that household, but Kipling afterwards referred to it as ‘the House of Desolation’, and in his retrospective memoir Something of Myself he recalled it with horror. From this culturally rich and unfettered early life, magnified and idealised in the freedoms of the young Kim, he was ripped untimely at the age of six (along with his sister Trix, only four) to be fostered and taught by a couple in Southsea, England. English was not, then, his mother tongue and England was not his mother country. In ‘To the City of Bombay’, Kipling would describe it as ‘Mother of Cities to me’, and he was likewise ‘mothered’ by Indian servants and spoke what he called the vernacular (Hindustani) in his formative years. Impeccable English origins then but in 1865 the newly-married couple moved to India, and their son was born, on the penultimate day of the same year, in Bombay where his father was Principal of the newly-founded School of Art. ‘Rudyard’ was Kipling’s second given name (his first was Joseph), derived from Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire where his parents had done their courting. Rudyard Kipling has elements in common with my previous subject, Joseph Conrad, in spite of appearances to the contrary. ![]()
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