Is Rudyard Kipling an American?
Let’s start with the obvious fact about Kipling: he is out of fashion these days.
About the only thing most people know about him is the title of one of his poems. Yeah, you know which poem. Nobody actually even bothers to read the poem any more.
Everyone just knows: Kipling is bad, very bad.
I have spent years trying to convince people that Kipling is well worth reading. I have spent years trying to convince people that Kipling is not at all what they imagine him to be, that he has nuance and insight. Nobody believes me. For some strange reason, they just think I am being contrarian and iconoclastic. Go figure.
But, I am very happy to report that I can now recommend a marvelous new book to people who disbelieve me about Kipling.
If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years, by Christopher Benfey.
If you think you don’t like Kipling, if you think he is just a racist imperialist jingoist, then you should really spend some time with this crisply written book. If you love Kipling, you should also read this book. I had a very high opinion of Kipling before I read this book, but I now realize he is even better than I thought.
This book, like all of Benfey’s books, is only superficially a biography. It is actually a tapestry woven together of innumerable people and events. Twain, Longfellow, Roosevelt, Emerson, William and Henry James, and Henry Adams all wander into the picture.
The book starts with an observation that surprises most
people—Kipling lived in America for a number of years. He was English, but grew up in India, so it
has always been hard to place him. Now,
in the biggest surprise of the book, we can place him.
Kipling is best considered an American author. Before reading Benfey’s book, I had never even thought about this idea. But, after reading this book, it seems so obvious.
Consider:
1. Kipling’s poem “If” was originally published in a volume of
Kipling’s tales, right after a story about George Washington. “If you can talk with crowds and keep your
virtue,/ Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch” is just one of the many refrains
that are suddenly obviously setting forth Washington as the role model in “If.”
2. Kim, Kipling’s greatest novel, was started when he lived in America. Kipling was fascinated with Mark Twain; on Kipling’s first trip to America, he made an arduous effort to track him down to meet him. Now, knowing those two things, compare Kim to Huckleberry Finn. They are essentially the same story. Kim and Huck are virtually the same character. The lama and Jim are the same character, both in need of the guidance of their respective young friends in their quest for liberation. The Mississippi River and the Grand Trunk Road are the same paths. Once you see it, it is uncanny.
3. Captains Courageous
also written while Kipling was in America, is obviously an American story. See Moby
Dick.
4. The Jungle Books were also written in America. This is the most curious surprise. Kipling’s original idea for the Jungle Books was to write a set of stories about local life near his home in Vermont. When thinking about it, he realized he could do better imagining the local color of the jungle of India, where he grew up.
This got me wondering: Start with the idea that the Jungle
Books are about the idea of a person living in a particular space. Now add in Mowgli and ask: stripped of the
details of the location, who is Mowgli most like? Yep, Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. Impish, resourceful, and recklessly
brave. At home in the wild parts of the world,
but chafes in civilization. Then add in the characters to interact with Mowgli
and realize that none of them are authority figures; they guide by example,
both good and ill. In other words, the
Mowgli stories take place in India, but they are really American stories.
The Just-So Stories were also started in America; I haven’t thought about it yet, but I suspect on reflection they will also betray their American origins.
5. And then, to look at the obvious, that poem everyone
knows, “The White Man’s Burden,” was written about America and the
Philippines. Benfey notes this poem had
its genesis at the same time as another famous Kipling poem, “Recessional.” He rightly pairs them to note that Kipling is
vastly more ambiguous than people who only know the title of the one poem want
to believe.
“Recessional” is published before “White Man’s Burden.” “Recessional” notes the collapsing of the British Empire, “Lo, all our pomp of yesterday,/ Is one with Nineveh and Tyre.” Since Biblical literacy is not as high as it was in 1897, it is worth noting that Nineveh and Tyre are cities condemned by God in the Old Testament.
But, as the fallen empire retreats, what will fill the void in those lands? Enter America: “Go bind your sons to exile/ To serve your captives need” and “The ports ye shall not enter,/ The roads ye shall not tread,/ Go make them with your living,/ And mark them with your dead!”
Combined, Kipling is arguing that America, not England, is the future. Kipling has the American optimism that America can succeed where other countries have failed. This is nothing other than American Exceptionalism.
(The obligatory note: Yes, Kipling does not have the views on race we all now share in the 21st century. Yes, it would sure be nice if he had our 21st century sensibilities back in the late 19th century.)
But, the idea that America needs to take on the burden of helping others…what is still more
American than that?
In other words, Benfey’s book shows that almost everything Kipling
wrote was started in or deals with America.
Once I started thinking along these lines I realized that a good case can probably be made that my favorite Kipling work, The Barrack Room Ballads, is also shockingly American.
These poems were written before Kipling ever set foot in America, and yet the focus on the common soldier is incredibly egalitarian.
For example, “Gunga Din” ends with “you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!” Class structure doesn’t matter—the simple Gunga Din, giving his life to bring a drink of water to a wounded soldier, is the better man. The same sort of theme shows up in other poems in this collection.
The fact that Kipling has vastly more nuance than most people
believe is beautifully illustrated in the surprising epilogue to Benfey’s
book. Having finished showing how
Kipling interacted with America, Benfey devotes the epilogue to showing how America
interacted with Kipling during the Vietnam War.
I cannot imagine a better way to show how nuanced Kipling is.
There are, Benfey notes, three phases to the way Kipling played
a role in Vietnam. At the outset of the war, Kim was literally a field manual for CIA operatives in
Vietnam. Then, as the war turned into a
grind, The Barrack Room Ballads
became the touchstone, describing the life of the common soldiers in the jungle.
And as the war was slowly lost, there was Kipling again, in a poem much quoted
at the time:
Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”
For years I have been recommending Kipling to anyone who is willing to give him a chance.
Now, I will recommend Benfey’s If because it is hard for me to imagine that anyone giving it a fair read will not immediately want to pick up and start reading the poems and stories of that Great American Author, Rudyard Kipling.
