Page 145 - DENG203_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_IV

Elective English—IV

Notes become enamored with the Mughal architecture, especially the Naulakha pavilionsituated
in Lahore Fort, which eventually became an inspiration for the title of his novel as well as the
house. The house still stands on Kipling Road, three miles (5 km) north of Brattleboro
in Dummerston, Vermont: a big, secluded, dark-green house, with shingled roof and sides,
which Kipling called his “ship”, and which brought him “sunshine and a mind at ease.” His
seclusion in Vermont, combined with his healthy “sane clean life”, made Kipling both inventive
and prolific.
In the short span of four years, he produced, in addition to the Jungle Books, a collection of short
stories (The Day’s Work), a novel (Captains Courageous), and a profusion of poetry, including
the volume The Seven Seas. The collection of Barrack-Room Ballads was issued in March 1892,
first published individually for the most part in 1890, and containing his poems “Mandalay” and
“Gunga Din”. He especially enjoyed writing the Jungle Books—both masterpieces of imaginative
writing—and enjoyed, too, corresponding with the many children who wrote to him about
them.
The writing life in naulakha was occasionally interrupted by visitors, including his father, who
visited soon after his retirement in 1893, and British writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who brought
his golf-clubs, stayed for two days, and gave Kipling an extended golf lesson. Kipling seemed to
take to golf, occasionally practising with the local Congregational minister, and even playing
with red-painted balls when the ground was covered in snow. However, wintertime golf was
“not altogether a success because there were no limits to a drive; the ball might skid two miles
(3 km) down the long slope to Connecticut river.”
From all accounts, Kipling loved the outdoors, not least of whose marvels in Vermont was the
turning of the leaves each fall. He described this moment in a letter: “A little maple began it,
flaming blood-red of a sudden where he stood against the dark green of a pine-belt. Next
morning there was an answering signal from the swamp where the sumacs grow. Three days
later, the hill-sides as fast as the eye could range were afire, and the roads paved, with crimson
and gold. Then a wet wind blew, and ruined all the uniforms of that gorgeous army; and
the oaks, who had held themselves in reserve, buckled on their dull and bronzed cuirasses and
stood it out stiffly to the last blown leaf, till nothing remained but pencil-shadings of bare
boughs, and one could see into the most private heart of the woods.”

In February 1896, Elsie Kipling was born, the couple’s second daughter. By this time, according
to several biographers, their marital relationship was no longer spontaneous and light-
hearted. Although they would always remain loyal to each other, they seemed now to have
fallen into set roles. In a letter to a friend who had become engaged around this time, the 30 year
old Kipling offered this sombre counsel: marriage principally taught “the tougher virtues—
such as humility, restraint, order, and forethought.”
The Kiplings loved life in Vermont and might have lived out their lives there, were it not for
two incidents—one of global politics, the other of family discord—that hastily ended their time
there. By the early 1890s, the United Kingdom and Venezuela were in a border dispute
involving British Guiana. The U.S. had made several offers to arbitrate, but in 1895 the new
American Secretary of State Richard Olney upped the ante by arguing for the American “right”
to arbitrate on grounds of sovereignty on the continent (see the Olney interpretation as an
extension of the Monroe Doctrine). This raised hackles in the UK, and the situation grew into a
major Anglo-American crisis, with talk of war on both sides.
Although the crisis led to greater U.S.-British cooperation, at the time Kipling was bewildered
by what he felt was persistent anti-British sentiment in the U.S., especially in the press. He wrote
in a letter that it felt like being “aimed at with a decanter across a friendly dinner table.”
By January 1896, he had decided to end his family’s “good wholesome life” in the U.S. and seek
their fortunes elsewhere.

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