if occasionally caustic wit, which made her society always desirable.” 1

Such were the parents of the most eminent of living poets. He was born into an atmosphere of ideal charm and culture, and yet the circumstances of his birth in the great cosmopolitan city of western India left much to be desired. There is sincere pathos in those lines of The Native-Born:

"We learned from our wistful mothers

To call old England 'home.'

2. CHILDHOOD.

Rudyard Kipling was named from Rudyard Lake, Staffordshire, on the banks of which John Kipling first met Miss Alice Macdonald. As a child the poet was familiarly called "Ruddie." It is interesting to learn that as he grew in years he "scorned all playthings that were commonplace toys; but any sort of instructive puzzle or game that required thought and intelligence appealed to him at once, and with these he found endless pleasure and pastime." When, under his mother's guidance, he had once mastered the art of reading, it was difficult to get him to play with the other boys. He was precocious, and filled with curiosity

on all subjects.

The first five years of his life, excepting a short visit to England with his mother, were spent in his native city or its neighborhood, but in 1871 he was

1 McClure's, July, 1896.

taken to England and left, together with a younger sister, in the care of an elderly relative at Southsea. Here, as it is generally believed, he spent several unhappy years. If it is true that Baa, Baa, Black Sheep and the opening chapter of The Light that Failed are largely autobiographical, we can only wonder that Rudyard escaped growing up sullen and embittered. It must be admitted that he was strong-willed and impetuous, and never an "easy boy to manage," yet no amount of repressive and ill-advised methods of discipline sufficed to take from him his healthy outlook on life or enjoyment of its pleasures.

Perhaps it was well, however, that he was not kept longer in his uncongenial surroundings. In 1877 his mother visited him, and his father joined her the following year. The boy spent several weeks with the senior Kipling in Paris, and when his parents returned to India, in 1878, he was entered as a pupil at the United Service College of Westward Ho, at Bideford, North Devon.

3. SCHOOLDAYS.-Westward Ho, thus named from Charles Kingsley's story (it was within two miles of Amyas Leigh's house at Northam), stood on the shore of the British Channel. It was under the direction almost wholly of civil or military officers, and the pupils were chiefly officers' sons who eventually went into the Indian service. Rudyard Kipling was noted at school principally for his wit,

his gift of story-telling, and his facility at writing. He held for two years the editorship of the United Service College Chronicle, where many bright verses and articles appeared over his signature. As a scholar he was not distinguished, though he was extraordinarily quick at any intellectual problem when he chose to apply his mind to it, and he carried away from the institution a well-deserved first prize in English literature. If one cares to know the schoolboy Kipling one must read the Stalky stories, where the nascent author figures as "Beetle." "Stalky " and " McTurk" were Beresford and Dunsterville, who shared Kipling's study and were his sworn confederates. Each one of the trio has since made his mark, the latter two having "passed brilliantly into the scientific branch of the British military service." Kipling's nickname was "Gigs" or "Giggsy," given him because of the huge glasses his near-sightedness forced him to wear. This affliction prevented his engaging actively in most athletic sports, though, in common with all his schoolmates, he was a good swimmer. He rambled much about the seashore, also, and was an adept in catching and training the young jackdaws which nested in the neighboring cliffs. The life at the college was of the most rough-and-tumble kind, floggings with cane and birch alternating with the laxest sort of discipline or absence of it, which resulted in the boys roaming over the country in

1

predatory bands, poaching, fighting, and playing tricks on the farmers. While roguish rather than malicious, Rudyard seems to have been one of the most irrepressible of the lot, "always," as an old schoolmate tells us, "in some harmless mischief, always playing off some joke upon either one of his masters or his schoolfellows, no respecter of persons, and not caring one jot what good or evil opinion those held of him with whom he came in daily contact."

Young Kipling passed his holidays at South Kensington, in the home of his aunt, Mrs. Burne-Jones, where he became associated with men of the highest intellectual attainments, notably with William Morris, a close intimate of the family. The influence of such associations on the impressionable boy cannot easily be estimated.

4. JOURNALISM IN INDIA. At the age of seventeen Kipling joined his parents in India, and through his father's influence obtained a position on the editorial staff of the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette. Here he served an apprenticeship of five years, leaving in 1887 to become assistant editor of the Pioneer at Allahabad. The latter position he held till 1889.

Perhaps the drudgery of a newspaper office, varied by missions to the frontier and to different parts of India, was the best possible preparation for his afterwork. Mr. Robinson, who has been previously quoted, was at this time the editor of the Gazette.

Of his young assistant he says: "My experience of him as a newspaper hack suggests that if

you want to find a man who will cheerfully do the office work of three men you should catch a young genius. Like a blood horse between the shafts of a coalwagon, he may go near to bursting his heart in the effort, but he'll drag that wagon along as it ought to go. The amount of 'stuff' that Kipling got through in the day was indeed wonderful; and though I had more or less satisfactory assistants after he left, and the staff grew with the paper's prosperity, I am sure that more solid work was done in that office when Kipling and I worked together than ever before or after." 1

Mr.

But Kipling was far more than a drudge. Robinson says further: "He was always the best of good company, bubbling over with delightful humor, which found vent in every detail of our day's work together; and the chance visitor to the editor's office must often have carried away very erroneous notions of the amount of work which was being done when he found us in the fits of laughter that usually accompanied our consultations about the make-up of the paper." 2

The astonishing local color in Kipling's tales is the product of first-hand observation. He neglected no opportunity for gaining experience. Natives of

1 McClure's, July, 1896.

2 Ibid.