Rudyard Kipling

Some Lesser Known Facts About Rudyard Kipling

• Did Rudyard Kipling smoke?: Yes 

• Did Rudyard Kipling drink alcohol?: Yes

• He was born to Alice Kipling and John Lockwood Kipling in Bombay, British India.

• His mother, Alice, was one of the four noted MacDonald sisters. 

• His father was a famous sculptor and pottery designer and was the Principal and Professor of Architectural Sculpture at Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art in Bombay. 

• In 1865, his parents moved to India.

• His parents had been so moved by the beauty of the Rudyard Lake area that they named him after the lake. 

• Stanley Baldwin, three times Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (in the 1920s and ’30s), was Kipling’s cousin. 

• The home in the campus of the J J School of Art in Bombay, where Kipling was born, had been used for many years as the Dean’s residence. The cottage bears a plaque noting it as the site where Kipling was born. 

• Reportedly, Kipling’s parents considered themselves ‘Anglo-Indians.’

• When Kipling was five years old, as was the custom in British India, he and his three years old sister Trix were taken to Southsea (located in Portsmouth at the southern end of Portsea Island, Hampshire, England) to live with a couple (Captain Pryse Agar Holloway and Sarah Holloway). The couple boarded children of British nationals who were serving in India, at their house, Lorne Lodge. Kipling lived there for the next six years (from October 1871 to April 1877). 

• In his autobiography, Kipling recalled his stay at Lorne Lodge with horror. He also termed it as a calculated torture- religious as well as scientific.

• In the spring of 1877, Kipling’s mother, Alice, returned from India and rescued the children from Lorne Lodge.

• In January 1878, Rudyard Kipling was admitted to the United Services College at Westward Ho, a school to prepare boys for the army. It was the school, which provided the setting for his schoolboy stories Stalky & Co. (1899). 

• During his time at the United Services College, Kipling fell in love with Florence Garrard, a friend of his sister Trix. Florence also became the model for Maisie in Rudyard Kipling’s first novel- The Light that Failed (1891). 

• Kipling was not good at studies and lacked the academic ability to get into Oxford University on a scholarship. His parents also lacked the financial ability to get him enrolled at the Oxford. So, his father obtained a job for Kipling in Lahore, British India (now, in Pakistan) where Kipling worked as the assistant editor of a small local newspaper- The Civil & Military Gazette. 

• At sixteen years and nine months, Kipling sailed for India on 20 September 1882 and arrived in Bombay on 18 October.

• In 1883, he visited Shimla (then, Simla) and was so moved by the beauty of it that from 1885 to 1888, he used to visit there for his annual leave.

• In 1886, Kipling published “Departmental Ditties,” his first collection of verse. 

• In 1887, Kipling was transferred to The Pioneer in Allahabad, where he worked as the Assistant Editor.

• In January 1888, a month after his 22nd birthday, his first prose collection “Plain Tales From The Hills” was published in Calcutta. 

• The same year, he published six collections of short stories: The Story of the Gadsbys, Soldiers Three, Under the Deodars, In Black and White, Wee Willie Winkie, and The Phantom Rickshaw. 

• In early 1889, he was discharged from The Pioneer; after a dispute.

• After that, he decided to move to London, and on 9 March 1889, Kipling left India.

• In 1891, he embarked on another sea voyage and once again visited India.

• In late 1891, a collection of his short stories about the British in India, Life’s Handicap, was published in London. 

• On 18 January 1892, Kipling got married to Carrie Balestier in London.

• They planned their honeymoon to the United States, where in Vermont, they rented a cottage; as Carrie was pregnant with their first child- Josephine. They called the house as “Bliss Cottage.” It was in this cottage that the first drawings of “The Jungle Books” came to Kipling.

• The stories about Mowgli and animals later grew into the two Jungle Books. 

• Later, the Kipling family moved from Bliss Cottage and build their own house on a rocky hillside overlooking the Connecticut River. He named the house Naulakha; as he was inspired by the Naulakha pavilion situated in Lahore Fort. The house still stands on Kipling Road in Dummerston, Vermont. 

• During his four years stay in Vermont, Kipling wrote his most acclaimed work- The Jungle Books.

• In July 1896, after a family dispute, the Kipling Family left the United States and returned to England.

• In 1898, he visited South Africa and later it became one of his favourite holiday destinations.

• In his next visit to South Africa in 1900, Kipling became a correspondent for The Friend newspaper in Bloemfontein.

• In 1897, he moved to Rottingdean, where he bought Bateman’s. Kipling lived there from 1902 until his death in 1936. 

• In 1907, Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

• During the First World War, the British Government asked Kipling to write propaganda, which Kipling immediately accepted. Kipling’s pamphlets were very popular among the people during the War. 

• During the First World War, Kipling’s son John was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915. 

• On 27 September 1926, at the age of 60, Kipling was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. 

• On the night of 12 January 1936, Kipling suffered a haemorrhage in his small intestine, and on 18 January 1936, he died.

• He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in northwest London and his ashes were kept next to the graves of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

• Rudyard Kipling’s children’s stories remain so popular that his Jungle Books have been made into several films.

• The first movie based on Kipling’s Jungle Books was released on April 3, 1942. The film was produced by Alexander Korda. 

• Subsequently, the Jungle Book films were made in the years 1967, 1994, and 2016 with the title “The Jungle Book.”

• In 2010, a crater on Planet Mercury was named after him by the International Astronomical Union.

• In 2012, an extinct species of crocodile, Goniopholis kiplingi, was named in his honour.

• An American scholar Thomas Pinney discovered more than 50 unpublished poems by Kipling and published them for the first time in March 2013.

• In 2018, Warner Bros. Pictures announced another film titled “Mowgli;” based on Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books.