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The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, by David Gilmour
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A major new biography of Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a unique figure in British history, a great writer as well as an imperial icon whose life trajectory matched that of the British Empire from its zenith to its final decades. Kipling was in his early twenties when his first stories about Anglo-Indian life vaulted him into celebrity. He went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize, and to add more phrases to the language than any man since Shakespeare, but his conservative views and advocacy of imperialism damaged his critical reputation -- while at the same time making him all the more popular with a general readership. By the time he died, the man who incarnated an era for millions was almost forgotten, and new generations must come to terms in their own way with his enduring but mysterious powers.
Previous works on Kipling have focused exclusively on his writing and on his domestic life. Here, the distinguished biographer David Gilmour not only explains how and why Kipling wrote, but also explores the themes of his complicated life, his ideas, his relationships, and his views on the Empire and the future. Gilmour is the first writer to explore Kipling's public role, his influence on the way Britons saw themselves and their Empire. His fascinating new book, based on extensive research (especially in the underexplored archives of the United States), is a groundbreaking study of a great and misunderstood writer.
- Sales Rank: #1112751 in Books
- Published on: 2002-05-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.23" h x 6.20" w x 9.36" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 368 pages
From Library Journal
The events of September 11 and the war in Afghanistan have again brought attention to Kipling and the themes of imperialism, postcolonialism, and the role of the West in the Middle East. While essentially a Victorian in his values and art, Kipling died in 1936 on the eve of World War II, opposed to fascism and prophesying that the end of the British Empire would bring sectarian strife. During his life he witnessed the pinnacle and decline of the British Empire. While a spokesman for empire, Kipling was always cognizant of the complexity of the "white man's burden." Gilmour, who has written books on the politics of Spain and Lebanon, as well as a biography of Italian novelist Giuseppe di Lampedusa, offers a brief, sympathetic, well-informed, and highly readable account of Kipling. He focuses on Kipling's complex relation to empire, especially as expressed in his stories and poetry. His effort joins Harry Ricketts's recent popular, and more general, Rudyard Kipling. Highly recommended. Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* For 50 years, Rudyard Kipling projected his political and social views in prose fiction and, more pointedly, in verse. He was a British imperial propagandist but also an artist who took no orders. As Gilmour presents him in a biography focused on his political life, but that cites and evaluates numerous poems and stories, noting their aesthetic qualities as well as their messages, Kipling was the greatest, because he was the most humane, British imperialist and also the empire's great, pessimistic prophet. His early working years in India convinced him that British rule there had to be paternal: guiding but not dominating, helping but not exploiting native peoples. The British in South Africa had similar duties, he thought, and needed also to restrain the Boers, whom he warned would establish a racist regime: apartheid. He despised liberals and socialists because he believed they would dismantle the empire, leaving India to be torn asunder by contending Hindus and Muslims--another accurate forecast. He undermined his own effectiveness with his ideological purity and permanent grudges. Still, as Gilmour makes abundantly clear, he was a major player in the affairs of the mightiest power on Earth, which lost its potency in tandem with his loss of practical influence. A remarkable man, a remarkable book. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"The best Kipling biography yet written... Gilmour's account of this driven man shines with intelligence" Scotsman "An enthralling biography of a mind...essential reading for anyone who cares about how a writer finds, and passionately lives, his subject" Daily Telegraph "A fine, fair and generous work... Gilmour's celebrated life of Curzon demonstrated his mastery of imperial nuance and esoteric character, and he brings to this book just the right combination of empathy, distaste and fastidious detachment" New Statesman "A splendid and much needed reappraisal of Kipling...outstanding for its precise, elegant writing" Herald "A superb short biography...a beautifully written, touching and occasionally very funny book" -- Andrew Roberts Daily Mail
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Biography; Shows How Far England Has Fallen
By Adam Wayne
Rudyard Kipling, when remembered today, is usually snidely dismissed as a jingoistic Victorian, or as the writer of certain children’s books. “The Long Recessional” provides the modern reader with a concise biography of the multi-faceted Kipling, showing him as, if not a man for all seasons, surely a man for his time.
David Gilmour is also the author of an excellent biography of George Nathaniel Curzon, sometime Viceroy of India, and a contemporary of Kipling’s. Kipling was born in India and in the public mind is associated very much with India, but although he spent his formative years there, he did not visit India for most of the rest of his life. He remained very interested in what happened in India, but he focused in his adult life more broadly on the British Empire (he also spent time in America, memorably characterizing New York as “the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance”). He also focused on the British working and middle classes, for whom he had great sympathy and empathy, and among whom he also spent much of his youth. And, over the years, his focus shifted from the Empire in its glory to the Empire in its decline, of which he was the prophet, and to the deep and abiding sorrow of the War (in which his son was killed). So Kipling was, again contrary to popular myth, a broad-minded man with the common touch—it was the elites who disliked him, not the normal Englishman. And, for that matter, it’s the elites who dislike him now.
As to India, and the Empire generally, Kipling was perhaps the exemplar of the “service model” of the Empire. Nowadays, the common view is that the Empire was purely about economic benefit (as in Sven Beckert’s puerile “Empire Of Cotton”), or about imperialism more generally, both Marxist-derived analyses. The reality is much different—a very significant fraction of Englishmen viewed England’s role as service, to the “lesser peoples,” and a very significant fraction thought the Empire was a bad idea (for a variety of reasons). Gilmour summarizes Kipling’s view as “The British were now in India for a moral purpose, for the good of the native inhabitants, whom it was their duty to lead through example to a safer and more prosperous future.” This, not racism, is the message of “The White Man’s Burden,” and Englishmen died in their thousands to bring it to the Indians. Kipling’s talents were used in service of this ideal, and whatever one may say about the ideal, it is an undeniable truth that the British succeeded. Who can doubt that India is both safer and more prosperous now as a result of colonialism than it would have been had the British never ruled? Only the ignorant and the politically blinkered.
Gilmour draws sharp portraits of the idiosyncrasies of the members of the English ruling class, such as the Admiral of the Channel Fleet until 1909, Lord Charles Beresford. His daily greeting was “Good morning, one day nearer the German war.” The writing is fluid and the biography is not over-long, considering the complexity of the subject. One oddity is that the beginning of the book is full of descriptions of Kipling’s relationship with his parents and his sister, which family unit they called the “Family Square.” His parents are mentioned intermittently throughout the book, and his sister is noted as having suffered a mental decline. But there is no mention at all of the deaths of Kipling’s parents—the book does not say when they died, or what effect that had on Kipling. This seems like a significant omission, for their death must have affected Kipling. Doubtless not as much as the deaths of two of his three children, but his parents were a formative influence, and their deaths must have mattered.
While Gilmour’s focus is largely on Kipling’s political views, and how those developed over time, naturally his voluminous writings provide the frame for any discussion of Kipling. These include famous writings: “Kim, “Recessional,” “If.” But they also include lesser known gems, some of which are very powerful, like “Gethsemane”:
The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass—we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.
The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.
It didn’t pass—it didn’t pass—
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane!
And there are powerful political poems, still powerful despite the conflicts that inspired them having faded into gray obscurity. The best example of this is “Gehazi,” tied to a political corruption scandal. The poem revolves around an analogy to Naaman, the leper cured by the prophet Elisha, whose servant Gehazi then tried to extort money from Naaman, and was himself turned into a leper. You have to read the whole poem to appreciate it:
“Whence comest thou, Gehazi,
So reverend to behold,
In scarlet and in ermines
And chain of England’s gold?”
“From following after Naaman
To tell him all is well,
Whereby my zeal hath made me
A Judge in Israel.”
Well done, well done, Gehazi!
Stretch forth thy ready hand,
Thou barely ’scaped from judgment,
Take oath to judge the land
Unswayed by gift of money
Or privy bribe, more base,
Of knowledge which is profit
In any market-place.
Search out and probe, Gehazi,
As thou of all canst try,
The truthful, well-weighed answer
That tells the blacker lie—
The loud, uneasy virtue
The anger feigned at will,
To overbear a witness
And make the Court keep still.
Take order now, Gehazi,
That no man talk aside
In secret with his judges
The while his case is tried.
Lest he should show them—reason
To keep a matter hid,
And subtly lead the questions
Away from what he did.
Thou mirror of uprightness,
What ails thee at thy vows?
What means the risen whiteness
Of the skin between thy brows?
The boils that shine and burrow,
The sores that slough and bleed—
The leprosy of Naaman
On thee and all thy seed?
Stand up, stand up, Gehazi,
Draw close thy robe and go,
Gehazi, Judge in Israel,
A leper white as snow!
Unfortunately, as can be seen from these two examples, many of Kipling’s poems depend for understanding on deep familiarity with both the Old and New Testaments, so even now they are probably incomprehensible to many, and in a few decades in the post-Christian West, only experts will be able to grasp the metaphors. This is hardly Kipling’s fault, though; it is ours.
Kipling seems to have been a difficult man. While he always empathized with the common man (unlike the “Decadents,” such as Oscar Wilde, who viewed the common man with contempt), he grew away from immersing himself in popular culture over time. And in his upper class milieu, he viewed most relationships through a political prism, and he was very good at hating others and accumulating enemies. This seems like it would have been exhausting, but it worked for him.
Kipling was also a pessimist throughout his life. As Gilmour says, “Pessimists and reactionaries make the best prophets because they are without illusions, because they can see behind as well as beyond contemporary viewpoints. . . . . Prophets, as the Old Testament reveals, say unpalatable things and say them in provocative and unpleasant language. So did Kipling. . . . . But there was an excuse for his bitterness, as there was with Jeremiah—he KNEW what was going to happen.” Kipling predicted various bad things—the disappearance of Empire; that the Boers would impose apartheid if the English let them run South Africa; that the Kaiser would bring about a war; that if England left India there would be carnage between Hindu and Muslim; and much more. But he was always proven right, even after his death, as with the military resurgence of Germany. He would have agreed with Winston Churchill, whom he loathed as a “political whore,” that “the Hun is always either at your throat or your feet” (although now, courtesy of Angela Merkel, the Hun has prostrated itself voluntarily to a new enemy, whom it has welcomed in their migrant millions---something of which Kipling would doubtless have clearly seen the results). We could use Kipling’s pessimism, to counteract the combination of Pollyanna and ostrich that characterizes the political whores of today, such as Merkel.
And, most importantly, as Gilmour again says, “The spirit of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain owed much to Kipling.” Of course, that spirit is long gone, in an enervated England ruled by faithless globalist elites. Most likely it can never be restored, despite the good sense of the slight majority of Britain’s inhabitants recently voting to exit the EU and restore some small measure of British sovereignty. But that’s a long cry from the spirit of World War II, which was itself a long cry from the spirit of 1890. The breath of Empire, once gone, does not return, but perhaps an appreciation of the virtues of Kipling, and some hard choices and hard deeds, could restore England to once again be an example for the world.
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Overlooked Today, But a Towering Figure in His Time
By Douglas S. Wood
Rudyard Kipling, according to David Gilmour's authoritative 'The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling' was a first-class political hater and author of children's books, as well as the virtual embodiment of the British Empire. Kipling was considered the Imperial Laureate, although he would have refused the post had it existed as he did all government posts - not in his line at all.
Kipling lived much of the first half of his life in the Empire - he spent his early years in India, except for a horrid stretch when he was boarded back in England by his parents who stayed in British India, and later lived off-and-on in South Africa. Kipling loved the Empire and its civilizing mission (up to a point - he did not favor Christian religious proselytizing), but oddly was not that fond of England or the English.
Gilmour paints a portrait of Kipling as a thorough-going reactionary, a pessimist, a virulent opponent of women's suffrage, Irish Home Rule, nearly all politicians (he especially hated Liberals, but also accused Winston Churchill of `political whoring'), trade unions, and imperial wavering of any kind.
'The Long Recessional' (the title refers both to his poem written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and the decline of the Empire) is not so much a history of Kipling's literary works as it is his leading role in promoting the Empire through his literature. Readers seeking detailed literary analyses had best look elsewhere, but should read this book first to understand what it was that Kipling was so all-fired angry about most of the time. Kipling was something of a negative "prophet"; he saw the coming decline of the Empire and viewed as willful surrender, he saw the coming Great War and watched his countrymen fail to prepare or take a firm stand against 'the Hun', and he saw the coming Second World War and the repeated lack of preparation (he died before that war actually occurred).
Kipling suffered great personal unhappiness from the death of his first daughter at age 6, to a seemingly unhappy marriage with Kipling as the henpecked husband and the death of his son in one of those insane headlong infantry assaults on the German trenches at the Battle of Loos. Kipling's dour personality in most of his last quarter-century of life may to some extent be attributed to a misdiagnosed (and thus mistreated) duodenal ulcer that caused him great pain - once it was correctly diagnosed in 1933, Kipling's pain departed and his personality revived.
Kipling's writings were enormously influential in his time, probably to an extent difficult for the modern reader to grasp given over as we are to the visual and the aural. After the Boer War he turned his pen more and more toward political ends and a bitter-tipped pen it was. Today Kipling is more remembered for his children's classics such asThe Jungle Books (Signet Classics). His Plain Tales from the Hills explores India's impact on the British who lived there and in particular the soldiers who sometimes fought and died there.
Salmon Rushdie has summarized it best when he stated, "There will always be plenty in Kipling that I will find difficult to forgive; but there is also enough truth in these stories to make them impossible to ignore."
Gilmour brings Kipling back to life for some 300 pages; 'The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling' is a rewarding reading experience about a man mostly overlooked today, but of towering importance in his time.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Kipling Re-considered
By R. M. Peterson
At a time when the "politically correct" holds sway in much of the media for intellectuals and all too much of academia, Rudyard Kipling is persona non grata -- the author of charming Victorian children's tales, but irredeemably tainted as an advocate and apologist for the British Empire and its subjugation of so many blacks and browns in the world. This biography of Kipling shows that the popular image de jour of Kipling is oversimplified and, at bottom, unfair and wrong.
David Gilmour deliberately focuses on the "imperial" Kipling, or the political (as opposed to the literary) aspect of his life. Of course, it is impossible to cleave Kipling into two selves, one political and the other literary. No one can be so compartmentalized, but Kipling resists it more than most because he was so unabashedly a political writer. And Gilmour chooses to emphasize that fact by exploring Kipling's politics and his view of the British Empire, as well as his role in celebrating it and then mourning its imminent demise (Kipling died before World War II and the death throes of empire). As Gilmour puts it in his preface: "This is the first volume to chronicle Kipling's political life, his early role as apostle of the Empire, the embodiment of imperial aspiration, and his later one of the prophet of national decline."
Gilmour achives his objective quite well. His Kipling -- as I believe is true of the actual Kipling -- was NOT a jingoistic rascist (although, to be sure, certain lines of his taken as they say out of context could be stretched and cited for the opposite conclusion). Yes, Kipling was a Victorian Englishman who grew up amidst, and believed in, the glory of the British Empire. But, as Gilmour persuasively writes, the empire Kipling touted and valued was a civilizing, even humanitarian, force -- an empire of "peace and justice, quinine and canals, railways and vaccinations". His model of empire had no place for the missionary zeal to transform all the Empire's subjects into brown or black (depending on their class) fish-and-chippers or public-school-educated Church-of-Englanders. Moreover, to Kipling, it was the altruistic responsibility of the wealthy, civilized haves of the world (principally Great Britain and the United States) to relieve suffering and improve the lot in life of the myriad have nots.
Gilmour's biography shows, without explicit lecturing, that Kipling was not a stock "stiff-upper-lip" Victorian cardboard cut-out; he was human, with weaknesses he sought both to overcome and to mask, and with a strength of character that ultimately more than redeems him.
Gilmour does not ignore, but he does not dwell on, the literary side of Kipling. For that, the reader must go elsewhere. But for a sensitive yet objective picture of "Kipling as a figurehead of his country and his age", I don't know where else one should or would care to look.
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