313. Rudyard Kipling: Escaping India & Writing The Jungle Book (Part 2)

Summary

Empire Podcast Episode 313: "Rudyard Kipling: Escaping India & Writing The Jungle Book (Part 2)"

Hosts: William Dalrymple (WD), guest Andrew Lycett (AL)
Date: December 4, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, William Dalrymple (without co-host Anita Anand, who is unwell) is joined by renowned Kipling biographer Andrew Lycett. Together, they chronicle the latter half of Rudyard Kipling’s time in India, his legendary short stories, his complicated views on empire, and his move to America—where, as an expatriate, Kipling would write his most enduring works: The Jungle Book and Kim. The episode navigates not only Kipling's literary genius and contradictions but also the deeply ambivalent legacy of British imperialism he embodied.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Kipling’s Strange and Haunting Short Stories

• "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" (02:00–05:12)
  • WD recounts the plot: "An unimaginative engineer...ends up falling into a pit, where, says Kipling...the undead of India, those who recover on funeral pyres...are living off crows and living this half life."
  • AL agrees: "It is a very weird story...It shows Kipling's sense of alienation from the society that he finds himself in...that India is a fascinating place, but it was also a harrowing place and it's full of pitfalls."
  • Both see parallels to H.G. Wells’ early science fiction and reflect on Kipling's ambivalence toward both British and Indian society.

Literary Success and the Anglo-Indian World

• "Departmental Ditties" and the Making of a Celebrity (05:12–06:06)

  • WD: "He becomes sort of standard railway reading for the Anglo Indian community. He's their own sort of Chekhov or their Tolstoy, recording their lives."
  • By age 18, Kipling is a literary star in India.

• "The Man Who Would Be King" (06:06–08:34)

  • Adventure tale of opportunists trying to rule in Afghanistan, full of themes of kingship and Freemasonry.
  • Memorable quote from WD:

    "Do you know what they did to Peechey between the two pine trees? They crucified him, sir, as Peachy's hands will show..." (07:11)

  • Kipling drew on both real events and archetypes of British frontier life.

Portraying Indian Social Life: Courtesans, Soldiers, and Administrators

• "On the City Wall" and the Tawaif World (08:34–09:20)

  • Kipling’s relationship with Lahore’s nightlife and the courtesans, or tawaifs, is discussed sympathetically.
  • WD clarifies: "This is very much a British understanding of the Tawaifs, who are not prostitutes as such. More courtesans..."
  • AL: "He wrote very sympathetically about them...one of the memorable things...is his portrayal of this bejeweled, very gracious...prostitute called Laloon."

• Soldiers and Barracks Life (09:58–10:41)

  • Kipling’s affection for common soldiers: "He liked to have his groups of soldiers...That was very important in his world picture because he was beginning to develop this sense of how the Raj operated." (AL)

• Shift Toward Reactionary Views (10:41–14:14)

  • WD: "He becomes notably reactionary...He admires the Irish squaddies, the engineers building bridges...people that were very low on the Raj hierarchy, but he sort of turns them into heroes."
  • AL notes Kipling's growing conservatism: "It was a conservative view of the Raj that he was in favour of the administration as it was. He was against any kind of fiddling with it."

Clashes and Controversy

• Conflict with Captain Hersey and Anti-Congress Sentiment (12:51–14:16)
  • Kipling disparages a prominent Anglo-Indian, nearly gets horsewhipped; indicative of his deepening opposition to Indian self-rule and increasing racial prejudice.
  • WD: "Even by the standards of the time...he actually was [reactionary], wasn't he?"

Leaving India: Travels and Disillusionment

• The Epic Journey Home (17:26–19:44)

  • Kipling takes a circuitous route back to England via Hong Kong, Burma, Japan, and America, recording impressions with an imperialist’s gaze.
  • His "disdain for San Francisco's defenses" and disappointment at Chicago’s meat markets exemplify both his snobbery and his restlessness.

• Failure to Adjust to London Literary Life (19:57–21:29)

  • WD: "He is appalled by the place...What doesn't he like about London? It's too dirty, too crowded. What's wrong with it?"
  • AL: "There's something else about the cultural ambiance of the place that he doesn't like...He doesn't like the artistic world that he discovers in England. He begins to yearn for Indian certainties, the sort of the order of Indian society."

Marriage and Vermont: An Expatriate’s Retreat

• Walcott and Carrie Balestier: Transatlantic Ties (20:43–22:48)

  • Kipling befriends American publisher Walcott Balestier; upon Walcott's sudden death, Kipling quickly marries his sister Carrie.
  • Notable moment:

    "Henry James makes a speech at the wedding which doesn't sound like...the best man's speech from hell. He says it's a union of which I don't forecast the future." (22:58)

  • Carrie becomes Kipling’s "Committee of Ways and Means," offering structure and support.

• Settling in Vermont; A Surge of Productivity (23:53–25:29)

  • Kipling builds the Naulaka, a peculiar American house, and finds peace and energy to write.
  • AL: "He begins to understand America...He finds that it's not all happy in America, that Americans are a bit too democratic for him."
  • WD: "But bizarrely, it's in America that he writes his two greatest Indian books..."

The Jungle Book and Kim: Masterpieces Born in Exile

• Writing The Jungle Book (Dedicated to his daughter, Josephine) (25:29–25:43)

  • WD: "Is this, at the time, as big a success?...At the time, is it a big success?"
  • AL: "I don't think it is...but it is indicative of Kipling going through a period of incorporating his Indian experience."

• Kim: Kipling’s Literary Pinnacle (25:43–29:55)

  • WD calls Kim "probably my favourite Kipling book...It's almost as if, despite his reactionary political views, his innate love of the color of India, which he grew up with, is expressed in this extraordinary masterpiece."

  • Memorable Reading (WD, 27:04):

    "He sat, in defiance of municipal orders astride the gun Zam Zama on her brick platform opposite the old Ajebgar, the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who holds the Zamzama, the fire breathing dragon holds the Punjab..."

  • AL agrees: "It is Kipling's masterpiece, enduring masterpiece of literature...He tried to incorporate his love of India in all its facets. And it starts with an amazing, evocative picture of Lahore."

  • WD: "It's this wonderful portrait...the colours, the lights, the smells come alive..."

  • On the paradox of Kipling's love of India and reactionary views:

    "It sort of brings up this strange paradox that Kipling, who so loved India and was so brilliant at describing it, is also the reactionary who is wanting the British to rule it..."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Kipling’s Nightmare Storycraft:
  • WD (03:09): “India is a fascinating place, but it was also a harrowing place and it’s full of pitfalls. His literature is really about how he...negotiates these things.”
• The Gruesome Fate in "The Man Who Would Be King":
  • WD (07:11): “They crucified him, sir...he hung there and screamed and they took him down the next day and said it was a miracle that he wasn’t dead.”
• On Literary London:
  • AL (20:10): “There’s something else about the cultural ambiance of the place that he doesn’t like...He begins to yearn for Indian certainties, the sort of the order of Indian society.”
• The Best Man’s Speech from Hell:
  • WD (22:58): “Henry James makes a speech at the wedding which doesn't sound like one of the...It sounds like the kind of the best man's speech from hell. He says it's a union of which I don't forecast the future.”
• Kim’s Evocation of India:
  • WD (27:04–28:42): [Reads opening passage of Kim]
• On Kipling’s Paradox:
  • WD (29:13): “It sort of brings up this strange paradox that Kipling, who so loved India and was so brilliant at describing it, is also the reactionary who is wanting the British to rule it...and who ultimately is a fan of General Dyer.”

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Key Timestamps

• 02:00 — Start of main discussion; “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes”
• 05:12 — First literary successes: “Departmental Ditties”
• 06:06 — “The Man Who Would Be King”: plot and themes
• 08:34 — "On the City Wall" and Lahore’s night world
• 09:58 — Soldiers and working class in Kipling’s stories
• 10:41 — Kipling’s increasing conservatism
• 12:51 — The Hersey incident, anti-Congress views
• 17:26 — Kipling leaves India, journeys through Asia and America
• 19:57 — Alienation from London’s literary world
• 22:24 — Death of Walcott Balestier, Kipling’s marriage to Carrie
• 23:53 — Life in Vermont, beginnings of The Jungle Book
• 25:43 — Writing and discussing Kim
• 29:13 — The paradox: Kipling’s love for India vs. his politics
• 31:35 — End of main content, sign-off

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Tone & Voice

The conversation is lively, deeply informed, and laced with affectionate critique. Dalrymple and Lycett strike a balance between literary scholarship, biographical detail, and reflections on imperial legacies—with touches of dark humor and pathos especially when contemplating Kipling’s contradictions.

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Closing Note

The episode concludes by highlighting the central paradox of Kipling’s legacy: a literary titan whose immersive love for India’s sights and sounds was haunted by an unyielding faith in British rule. Listeners are left anticipating the next episode, when Kipling returns to England and steps into his role as the “laureate of the Empire.”

Transcript

[William Dalrymple]

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[Michael Stevens]

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[William Dalrymple]

Hello and welcome. There is no Anita, I'm afraid, in this episode as she is still in A and E, so all your prayers. Her back is giving her terrible pain. But with me is my great friend Andrew Lycett, the brilliant biographer of Rudyard Kipling who took us in the last episode so brilliantly through Kipling's childhood and his early writings. Now in this episode we are going to follow Rudyard Kipling through his brilliant Indian short stories, including classics such as the man who Would Be King that became that famous movie with Michael Caine and Sean Connery. And then his move to America where, improbably in Vermont he wrote the Jungle Book and Kim, two of the greatest volumes of British fiction about India. We last saw Kipling with Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs. Reaver, Andrew up in Simla, dining in polities and involved in Himalayan flirtations. By the end of the summer he's back on the plains and he's beginning to publish short stories in the Christmas annual of the Civil and Military Gazette. Now one of the first stories he writes extraordinary tale called the Strange ride of morrowby dukes. And this tells the tale of an unimaginative engineer, a typical servant of empire, who is going out for an evening ride. He's got a slight fever, so he's. He's trying to ride it off and wake himself up. And the horse careers off and he ends up falling into a pit, where, says Kipling, in this work of fiction, the undead of India, those who recover on funeral pyres, people who are suffering from cholera, but who suddenly get better on their way to the cremation ghats, they're not allowed back into society, according to Kipling, and they are put in this pit where they are living off crows and living this half life, this life of almost like sort of the undead. And it's a strange and weird tale that reminded me of some of the early H.G. wells science fiction. It's not quite of this world. Andrew, what do you make of this story?

[Andrew Lycett]

I agree with you. It is a very weird story. And it shows Kipling's sense of alienation from the society that he finds himself in. I mean, both the immediate society of sort of Anglo Indians, but also the wider India. He is finally helped out by. I think it's his bearer who puts.

[William Dalrymple]

A rope down and hauls him out.

[Andrew Lycett]

Yes, who sort of faithfully has followed him and discovered what has happened to him and puts a rope down, as you say, and pulls him out from this nightmare. It shows the sense that Kipling is beginning to develop and which actually lies at the bottom of his stories, that India is a fascinating place, but it was also a harrowing place and it's full of pitfalls. His literature is really about how he, as a sort of Brit in India, negotiates these things. And partly, obviously, one way that he negotiates it goes up to Simla, where Little Britain is recreated.

[William Dalrymple]

Now, after this, he produces his first proper book in 1886, called Departmental Ditties. Not a title, perhaps, that would sell today, but it actually is a huge hit, isn't it? 500 copies are printed at the Gazette and it sells out immediately. It's then republished by the Pioneer and then by thacker, Spink & Co. And he becomes sort of standard railway reading for the Anglo Indian community. He's their own sort of Chekhov or their Tolstoy, recording their lives. And his work is terrifically popular. I mean, at the age of only. What is he now, 18, still a teenager? So this is the point at which he writes the man who Would Be King. This is more famous, I think, now, as a movie with Sean Connery than it is as a short story, but it works very well. I've just reread it this week and it stands up fantastically well. He's sitting in his newspaper in the fictional story when this man turns up with this.

[Andrew Lycett]

Tale. It's a sort of adventure story, really, and that's why it sort of translates very well into the cinema. It's about these two ne' er do Wells. At least one of them has a military background. They sort of go out into Frontierland, if you.

[William Dalrymple]

Like. It's in kind of Afghanistan, I think, and it's Peechy. Dravo and Carnehan are the two protagonists who, again, are kind of early versions of what will be very common in Kipling, which is this sort of, you know, the Irish common soldier who he makes a point of sketching and bringing to.

[Andrew Lycett]

Life. And basically these British Irish people try and make themselves the. The kings of this wayward people on the northwest frontier. They adopt the sort of mythology.

[William Dalrymple]

Of kingship which is related to Freemason. It's got a whole Freemason thread running through it, hasn't.

[Andrew Lycett]

It? Funny enough, that is perhaps one of the underestimated aspects of Kipling, that there is a sort of Masonic theme running through him because he became a member of the Masonic Lodge in Lahore, which, you know, he liked to present as a kind of multicultural.

[William Dalrymple]

Environment. I think it was one of the very few places in the Raj that Indians and Brit could meet on the same social level. It really did have a leveling effect. Now, the man who Would Be King has a very gruesome ending. I'll just read a little fragment from it. Do you know what they did to Peechey between the two pine trees? They crucified him, sir, as Peachy's hands will show. They used wooden pegs for his hands and his feet, and he didn't die. He hung there and screamed and they took him down the next day and said it was a miracle that he wasn't dead. They took him down. Poor old Peachy, that hadn't done any harm, that hadn't any dumb to them. He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of his scarred hands and moaning like a child. That story seems to pick up on two real stories. There's one of an American who set up a kingdom in Ghor in Afghanistan, and another figure called Bahari Wilson, who set up a sort of kingdom in the Punjab Hills very briefly. But other of Kipling's stories mirrored more closely his own life. And I'm very intrigued by on the City Wall, Andrew, which is a story which sort of implies that Kipling's going out at night, wandering through Lahore and visiting the red light district, because he seems to have a very intimate knowledge of the Kutis, as they're called, of the Tawaifs or the courtesans. Tell us about on the City Wall.

[Andrew Lycett]

1889. Well, yes, Kipling fund sleeping difficult. And when this became oppressive, he used to get up at night and he used to go and wander into the city and find what I guess was open at the time, which was opium shops and places like that. And he went into them and he wrote about them. And one of the things that he wrote about was the world of the prostitutes who inhabited the darkness of Lahore. But he wrote very sympathetically about them. And one of the memorable things about on the City Wall is his portrayal of this bejeweled, very gracious, very educ prostitute called.

[William Dalrymple]

Laloon. This is very much a British understanding of the Tawaifs, who are not prostitutes as such. More courtesans, I think you'd call them.

[Andrew Lycett]

Probably. I think you're right. Yeah, I think that's absolutely.

[William Dalrymple]

True. While there is definitely sex available, these places are hubs of gossip. Places where young men get sent to learn manners and learn the way of the world. It's much more a salon than simply a place that people go for sex. As well as focusing on the demimonde and the world which most Brits would not have seen, this world of courtesans and opium dens and so on, he's also going into the barracks and recording the speech patterns and the ways of the simple squaddies, the Irish and the British recruits, who often get left out of the official records, but who were the backbone of the British.

[Andrew Lycett]

Army. He liked to go to Myanmare, which was the barracks just out the city, outside the city. He got to know the squaddies. He wrote very sympathetically about them in stories like Soldiers three, he liked to have his groups of soldiers. So he had three soldiers, an Irishman and a Yorkshireman and a cockney. So that was very important in his world picture because he was beginning to develop this sense of how the Raj operated. And this was also reflected in his stories because there were often appreciations, if you want to use that word, of the administrators. And this became again, a sort of plank in his understanding of India. But within about two or three.

[William Dalrymple]

Years, he becomes notably.

[Andrew Lycett]

Reactionary. He absorbed the world of the club. He was a member of the Lahore Club and he Used to go in there. They were incredibly reactionary. But on the other hand, he liked what they brought to India. He thought that they brought order. They were the people who made sure that the railways ran, that law was.

[William Dalrymple]

Administered. And he admires these people. There's no sense of speaking from d', Omba, is there? He's not talking down to them. He admires the Irish squaddies. He admires the engineers building the bridges, the guys in the public works department keeping the sewers clean. These are people that were very low on the Raj hierarchy, but he sort of turns them into heroes in his.

[Andrew Lycett]

Stories. Yes, indeed. And this of course contributed to the popularity of his stories because he built a wider constituency because these were people who appreciated that. But yeah, it was a conservative view of the Raj that he was in favour of the administration as it was. He was against any kind of fiddling with.

[William Dalrymple]

It. Now in 1887, he's already at the age of 22, the bestselling author in India. His stories are on sale on railways. He's read in the newspapers. And he's moved from being this sort of brattish 16 year old, fresh from school, to this highly respected figure, age 22, who's become a local celebrity. He moves from Lahore to Allahabad in central India and this is the setting for his last years in India to the.

[Andrew Lycett]

Pioneer. Indeed, his boss, chief of the Civil and Military Gazette, has fingers in lots of pies. And one was a rather more popular paper, which was the Pioneer in Ilabad. He was also given a bit more license to sort of go travel and such leads to some what you might call travel writing about rydish.

[William Dalrymple]

Style. This is the princely states which are half outside of British control. They might administer their own courts. There's a resident, but otherwise not British territory. So he writes interesting travel writing about the princely states. But he also upsets some people, doesn't he? There's one character called Hersey who tries to horsewhip him. What's that story.

[Andrew Lycett]

Andrew? That's to do with Kipling's sort of burgeoning antipathy to the forerunner of the Indian National Congress, which was having a gathering, a meeting, one of the annual meetings in Laabad. Kipling wrote about this and he wrote pejoratively about Captain Hersey, who was of mixed race.

[William Dalrymple]

Origin. They're a distinguished Anglo Indian family. The Herseys were like the Skinners. They were one of the sort of grandees of the Anglo Indian.

[Andrew Lycett]

Community. Kipling wrote disparagingly and rudely about his dark skin and Hersey came to the Pioneer office with his horsewhip. Indeed, he was going to beat the living daylights out of Kipling. I don't think he did.

[William Dalrymple]

Actually. Kipling, I think, was luckily out when he had turned up. But it would have been his just.

[Andrew Lycett]

Dessert. Yes, right. It's interesting that this is indicative of Kipling, Kipling's growing demonstrative conservatism. He developed this idea that any kind of Indian self expression in politics was going to be dangerous for the.

[William Dalrymple]

Raj. Yes. I mean, even by the standards of the time, people occasionally defend Kipling say that by the standards of the time, he wasn't reactionary. But he actually was, wasn't he? I mean, there was many liberals in India that were trying to widen Indian self rule. The Indian National Congress had been founded by an Englishman, Alan Octavian Hume. And Kipling thought this was anathema to him. This was not what should be happening at all. So he was, even by the standards of the Raj, increasingly a.

[Andrew Lycett]

Reactionary. Absolutely.

[William Dalrymple]

Right. So by this stage, Kipling is now ready to spread his wings. He's a celebrity in India, but he's not widely known outside. So in 1889, with Hersey and his horse Whip not far behind him, he's packing up his things and moving to London. But he decides to do so. Rather than the normal route of heading westwards by the Suez Canal back to Europe, he decides to take a long sea voyage by the Pacific and via America. More on this after the.

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[William Dalrymple]

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Welcome back. So it's 1889 and the 2023 year old Rudyard Kipling is leaving India. He pays one last visit to India after this. But basically this is the end of his Indian phase of his life. And yet it's something he continues to write about for the rest of his life, but no longer a place that he will be based. And this is the moment, age 23, that he discovers his love of travel, particularly of the high seas. Tell us about his journey away from.

[Andrew Lycett]

India. Kipling decides that he's going to travel back to England. He's been sort of seduced by the possibility of greater audiences for his increasingly popular stories and poems. He should go for the big market in.

[William Dalrymple]

Britain. Does he have any audience at all in Britain at this point, Andrew, or is he just read in.

[Andrew Lycett]

India? Very small, you know, he's been just being picked up by one or two sort of critics in England. It's not an audience at all. So he wants to sort of crack that new market. He's decided that he's not going to go back to England via the sort of traditional route via Suez, Hong.

[William Dalrymple]

Kong. He goes to and is rather impressed.

[Andrew Lycett]

By. He goes to Hong Kong, famously goes to Burma and enthuses about the pagoda at Mandalay and the women. And that's the basis of one.

[William Dalrymple]

Of his most famous poems, as quoted rather embarrassingly by Boris Johnson on a diplomatic visit to.

[Andrew Lycett]

Myanmar. That's correct, yes. I'd forgotten that. Yes. Anyway, he sort of makes his way round in Singapore. He sees for the first time Chinese people. And this impression is sort of continued when he makes his way up Hong Kong and goes to Japan. He idolizes. Not quite the right word.

[William Dalrymple]

Yes. He realizes he's onto something completely different in Japan, that this is an Asia that he doesn't recognize. And he then heads to San Francisco, where, rather unflatteringly, for America. As he heads through the Golden Gate and sees a blockhouse, he remarks it could easily be silenced by two gunboats from Hong Kong. So he's going there very much with the eyes of a British imperialist, even when he's in San.

[Andrew Lycett]

Francisco. This was at a time, just after the Civil War, when sort of relations between Britain and America were sort of a bit icy. He makes his progress through the United States. He goes to Chicago and is appalled by the meat markets there. He goes to meet Mark Twain in upstate New York, who he.

[William Dalrymple]

Admires. He's a very big fan of Mark Twain, isn't.

[Andrew Lycett]

He? He greatly admires and then comes back to England. Kipling, in 1889, is back in London and he is appalled by the place. This is the place that was going to be his.

[William Dalrymple]

Making. What doesn't he like about London? It's too dirty, too crowded. What's wrong with.

[Andrew Lycett]

It? The weather? Yeah, sure, you could say.

[William Dalrymple]

That. Can't argue with.

[Andrew Lycett]

That. There's something else about the cultural ambiance of the place that he doesn't.

[William Dalrymple]

Like. He'd been thinking of going to visit every theatre in London while he's in India. But when he arrives, it isn't at all what he imagines.

[Andrew Lycett]

It. No, right. He doesn't like, you know, the sort of emerging world of Oscar.

[William Dalrymple]

Wilde. Oscar Wilde would not be to Kipling's taste at.

[Andrew Lycett]

All. He doesn't like the artistic world that he discovers in England. He begins to yearn for Indian certainties, the sort of the order of Indian.

[William Dalrymple]

Society. Now, Andrew, he doesn't much take to literary London, but he does make friends with a man called Wolken Ballestia. Tell us about.

[Andrew Lycett]

Him. Walcott Molestier was an American publisher, basically, or agent. He was over here touting for English talent, for American publishers. And American magazines. Kipling befriends him. They become quite close. Kipling is going through a bit of a crisis. He really doesn't like it in London. Might almost be called a nervous.

[William Dalrymple]

Breakdown. I'm just saying. So he's. The certainties of Britain imagined from India, one thing, but the reality of Victorian London is another thing altogether. Yeah, Kipling is disappointed by London. He likes the music halls, he enjoys the uproarious atmosphere behind Charing Cross, gets these songs into his work. But he's still looking back to India, isn't he? He's writing about Indian barracks. The barrack room ballads are.

[Andrew Lycett]

Written. At this point, he's uneasy in London, there's no doubt about that. And he meets this American publisher, agent Walker Ballastier. They actually write a novel.

[William Dalrymple]

Together. Not one of his better works. No, no, it's definitely not the Naulaka, a story of east and.

[Andrew Lycett]

West. At one stage, Kipling sort of tries to escape London and he goes on a great voyage, goes down to Australia, and he's actually quite popular there in Australia already. But he wants to meet one of his great heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson, who is not available. So he comes back, and he comes back via Lahore. He makes that return visit to India for the last time, that he goes to.

[William Dalrymple]

India. This is the last time he'll see it. He continued writing about it the rest of his life, but it's the last.

[Andrew Lycett]

Time. Aged 25, 1891. Ye, that's right. He goes to Lahore. There's a wonderful description of his journey from Ceylon, Sri Lanka to Lahore. While he's in Lahore, he has this telegram from Walcott, Ballastier's sister Caroline, who Kipling has got to.

[William Dalrymple]

Know.

[Andrew Lycett]

Carrie. Carrie, yeah. And Carrie says, come back. Walcott is dead. And this is a great shock to Kipling because Walcott is a sort of bosom buddy of his. He rushes back from Lahore to London. I'm not even sure if he actually makes it for the funeral. I don't think he does. But the kind of shared experience of the mourning for Walcott, this charismatic.

[William Dalrymple]

Figure throws him together with Carrie.

[Andrew Lycett]

Absolutely. Brings him together with Walcott's sister. And within a very short time, they are married people, such as Henry James, who's a sort of mutual friend, kind of looks slightly askance on this.

[William Dalrymple]

Union. Henry James makes a speech at the wedding which doesn't sound like one of the. It sounds like the kind of the best man's speech from hell. He says it's a union of which I don't forecast the future. That's not what you want to hear on your wedding.

[Andrew Lycett]

Day. I'm afraid that is true. This is something to do with a slight prejudice that there was within Kipling's family against him marrying an American woman. The fact is that she's a very powerful woman and becomes his mainstay throughout the rest of his.

[William Dalrymple]

Life. What sort of marriage is it, Andrew? I mean, is Henry James right to be skeptical, or is she actually a rock that he relies.

[Andrew Lycett]

On? Of course she's a rock. She sort of runs his household and allows him to get on with writing. Like. Like most writers, you know, they've got to have somebody a bit like that in their lives. He describes her in his autobiography as the Committee of Ways and Means. And she is powerful enough to sort of entice him to go with her back to her home in America, to.

[William Dalrymple]

Vermont. Do they have means? Are they a richer family than the.

[Andrew Lycett]

Kiplings? I think they are, yeah. They've got links to old families in the United States in Chicago and statesmen in Washington. But she is, I guess, adamant that they will live in Vermont. And he builds a house.

[William Dalrymple]

There. One of his biographers says it's the only ugly house in.

[Andrew Lycett]

Vermont. It's an acquired taste, let's put.

[William Dalrymple]

It that way, because his later English house, Bateman's, is absolutely charming. But this. I've seen pictures of Naulaka and its.

[Andrew Lycett]

Horror. The Naulaka, as it's called, In Memory of India and of Walcott, his joint.

[William Dalrymple]

Novel.

[Andrew Lycett]

Yeah. He begins to understand America, which is a kind of another awakening for him, because he finds that it's not all happy in America, that Americans are a bit too democratic for.

[William Dalrymple]

Him. Doesn't have the autocratic government that he admires in.

[Andrew Lycett]

India. Yeah, right.

[William Dalrymple]

Exactly. But they have a daughter, don't they? 1892, Josephine is born, and it's a place where he manages to get a lot of work done. He's living in the countryside. He's healthy and energetic and productive. And bizarrely, it's in America that he writes his two greatest Indian books, or certainly the two books for which he's most famous. And in 1893, the year after Josephine is born and dedicated to her, he writes the Jungle Book story of Mowgli, a boy raised by wolves. Is this, at the time, as big a success? I mean, today it's probably the single most famous book he wrote, thanks to Disney at the time. Is it a big.

[Andrew Lycett]

Success? I don't think it is. Amazing success that it has continue to be, but it is indicative of Kipling going through a period of incorporating his Indian experience. So those memories of India after.

[William Dalrymple]

The Jungle Book comes Kim, which many people regard as his masterpiece. He doesn't finish it in America, but he does begin it. And I think it's probably my favourite Kipling book. It's a book which I enjoyed much more on a second reading later in life than I first did when I came across it at.

[Andrew Lycett]

School.

[William Dalrymple]

School. It's the story of Kimball o', Hara, the son of an Irish color sergeant and you infer a Eurasian nursemaid. He follows a Tibetan lama on religious pilgrimage to Benares. The lama is trying to find the river that'll wash away his sins. But within the pages of Kim are some of the best description, most evocative description of India that we get in any British writing on India. Also some of the most sympathetic writing on India. It's almost as if, despite his reactionary political views, his innate love of the color of India, which he grew up with, is expressed in this extraordinary masterpiece. Tell us about the writing of Kim. I know it isn't completed in America, but let's talk about it now.

[Andrew Lycett]

Andrew. It is Kipling's masterpiece, enduring masterpiece of literature. It's not a story. It's his attempt at a full scale novel. And you hadn't had great success up to that stage in writing a novel. He tried to incorporate his love of India in all its facets. And it starts with an amazing, evocative picture of.

[William Dalrymple]

Lahore. I'll read it. I have it in front of me. This wonderful opening passage. He sat, in defiance of municipal orders astride the gun Zam Zama on her brick platform opposite the old Ajebgar, the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who holds the Zamzama, the fire breathing dragon holds the Punjab. For the great green bronze piece is always the first of the conqueror's.

[Andrew Lycett]

Loot. The Wonder House. In the background there is the.

[William Dalrymple]

Museum where his father was the.

[Andrew Lycett]

Curator. And there are sort of all sorts of fascinating sort of allusions to the artifacts that Lockwood Kipling has accumulated.

[William Dalrymple]

There. The sort of Buddhist Gandharan sculpture. Exactly. It is the colours, the lights, the smells that come alive, isn't it, Andrew? It's this wonderful.

[Andrew Lycett]

Portrait. That's.

[William Dalrymple]

Right. So this story gets tied up with the great game, doesn't it, Andrew? That amid this sea of people, with Kim and the llama wandering around, Kim gets taken up by Colonel Creighton, who's the head of the. I suppose the Secret Service. Is that.

[Andrew Lycett]

Right? That's right. And you know, this is one of the great stories about the great game, the battle between Britain and Russia for control over the sort of wider Indosphere. Crichton sort of ensures that Kim is educated in the colonial ways. And Kim, who had been this sort of street boy, becomes part of the establishment. He wants to be still free. Meanwhile, there's a sort of the.

[William Dalrymple]

Lama following his path, looking for the river that will give him eternal life and cleanse his.

[Andrew Lycett]

Sins. So it's a story of two paths to understanding and living in one's environment. You have the sahib's way that Kim inculcated into At La Matinea. And then you've got the Dalma, who Kim goes a long way with on the Tibetan Buddhist path, but eventually is pulled towards the colonial.

[William Dalrymple]

World. And there's echoes of the previous book, the Jungle Book. Here Mowgli too is living away from the Brits, but is pulled into that world. He again is at the end of the Jungle Book. He goes back to quote, civilization. The two books have parallels, don't.

[Andrew Lycett]

They? Well put. They're very interesting. Yes. Yeah, you're absolutely.

[William Dalrymple]

Right. I should read a little bit. Andrew, a small snippet here. This broad, smiling river of life he considered, was a vast improvement on the cramped and crowded Lahore streets. There were new people and new sights at every stride, castes he knew and castes that were altogether out of his experience. They met a troupe of long haired, strong scented sansis with baskets of lizard and other unclean food on their backs, their lean dogs sniffing at their heels. These people kept up to their side of the road, moving at a quick furtive jog trot. Then an akali, a wild eyed and wild haired Sikh devotee in the blue check clothes of his face, with polished steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban. Kim was careful not to irritate that man, for the akali's temper is short and his arm quick. Here and there they were met or overtaken by the gaily dressed crowds of the whole villages turning out at some local fair. The women with their babies on their hips walking behind the men, the older men prancing on sticks of sugar cane, dragging rude brass models of locomotives that they sell for half a penny, or flashing the sun into the eyes of their betters from cheap toy mirrors. One could see at a glance where each had brought, and if there were any doubt, it needed only to watch the wives comparing brown arms against brown arm, the newly purchased dull glass bracelets that come from the northwest. These merry makers stepped Slowly calling to one another and stopping to haggle with Sweetmeat Stellars, it goes on. It's a wonderful portrait of India in all its variety. I love that whole passage about the Grand Trunk Road. And it sort of brings up this strange paradox that Kipling, who so loved India and was so brilliant at describing it, is also the reactionary who is wanting the British to rule it, who doesn't think Indians are capable of running their own show, who opposes Indian National Congress, and who ultimately is a fan of General Dyer. But that is the side of Kipling that we will see more of in the next episode, where we see Kipling return from Vermont to London and take up his unofficial position as laureate of the Empire. Goodbye from me, William Darrymple. And sadly, no Anita. But goodbye also from our.

[Andrew Lycett]

Guest. Goodbye from me, Andrew.

[Michael Stevens]

Lycett.

Okay, so here's a glimpse of what's to come. If it sparks something unexplainable, then you can join us every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes of the Rest is Science and we'll figure it out together. You mentioned earlier that a cup of water is like a rock smoothie. Right. Because you've got rocks dissolved in it, magnesium and calcium. I would go a step further, though, and say that a glass of water is actually just a glass of.

[Andrew Lycett]

Lava.

[Michael Stevens]

Right. Because I've talked about this before and I bring it up whenever I can. Ice is a.

[Andrew Lycett]

Rock.

[Michael Stevens]

Sure. Because. Well, hold on. Ice is a mineral because a mineral is just a inorganic material that is solid and has a definite crystal structure, which ice does. Water is important for life, but it's inorganic. Actually, it would exist here whether there was life or not. And what that then means is that a cube of ice is made of a mineral, so it's a mono mineralic rock. So melted ice is molten rock, lava. So water is lava. I'm here for this and this is not a joke. Ice won the mineral cup back in 2015, I believe. Like some geologists all voted on their favorite mineral and ice finally got the reputation it deserves. Yeah. Got the.

[Andrew Lycett]

Prize.

[Michael Stevens]

Yeah. I mean, sure, I'm happy with that classification if the rock people say it. So then I'm happy with it. They also move the same way. I mean, when lava gets spurred, diverted out of volcano, it uses the. The way that it, that it moves and behaves is exactly what, like the fluid dynamics of lava. Fluid dynamics of lava is the same as water at that stage. Yeah. A bit later on when it cools down, then it's. Then it changes it more like ice more like ice. There's a transition phase where it's more like toothpaste, where it needs a certain amount of sheer forces in order for it to flow. But that would be analogous to, like, slush. Maybe. Maybe, yeah.