Kipling and Torquay - tandem bikes rides and bad weather

'Early morning walks to the Bombay fruit market with my ayah and later my sister in her perambulator - with Meeta my Hindu bearer... There were Arab dhows on the pearly waters, and gaily dressed Parsees wading out to worship the sunset- and near the house, were the Towers of Silence where their dead are exposed to the waiting vultures on the rim of the towers, - I do not understand my Mothers distress when she found a child's hand in our garden, and I want to ask questions about it".

Having been born in India Rudyard and his sister Alice (aged three) were brought to England in 1871 and "marooned in a small terrace house smelling of aridity and emptiness" as boarders to strangers - Captain Holloway and wife Rosa (the woman). The Captain would regularly walk Rudyard around Portsmouth docks and was always kind to both children but after his death in 1875 "the woman" and her evangelical son created what later was named a “ house of desolation" and were bullied, caned and humiliated with reading of priceless books left by their parents before returning to India, the only joy. It would be six years before their mother returned on learning of their plight from a relative. She immediately arranged for Rudyard to Board at the United Services College Westward Ho where in 1878 happiness finally returned. By 1891 Rudyard's "Brugglesmith" was published and contemporaries named him "a scribe of genius". He eventually returned to India to work for the Lahore Civil and Military Gazette and for the first time met John his father. As a quite brilliant reporter he was brilliant at storytelling - the paper named him a "versifier".

Rudyard in January 1892 married Caroline Balestier and they immediately spent a honeymoon in America and Canada before settling at Brattleboro Vermont where "Jungle Book-Bandarlog" and his "Many Inventions" were written. The first child Josephine came in December 1892 when lots of books appeared and in 1894 they on again back to Wiltshire. The second child Elsie brought another move this time to Rock House Maidencombe in Torquay in Autumn 1896. Rudyard now discovered the tandem bike which in testing his patience,saw him writing to a friend - "a tandem bicycle whose double steering-bars made good dependence for continuous domestic quarrel" and later having fallen off it, named it a "Hell spider" and never rode again.

Bad weather ensured Rudyard loathed Torquay although some of his best work - including ten books of "Stalky" (one never published) were written here. Yet immediately the six-month lease ended the Kipling's went to Rottingdene Sussex where John was now born. Meanwhile young Josephine had died, yet his "Just So" books were published. In his autobiography Rudyard believes they were his best stories. Yet it would be "Puck" that earned him a Nobel Prize for literature - published in 1907.

Poor eyesight has seen John rejected by the Army so Rudyard "pulled strings" and he joined the Irish Guards. The intervention was to haunt him the rest of his life as when John was killed in action in 1915 the guilt and sorrow flowed from his pen. The poem "My Boy Jack" confirms this and Rudyard now campaigned for lost soldiers having no gravestones (rich or poor) and after winning this campaign then ensured The Last Post was to be sounded at the "Menin Gate" France" in perpetuity through an endowment lodged with the War Commission.

Following an operation in hospital in January 1936 J.R Kipling died on the 18th to be buried at Westminster Abbey London. His unfinished autobiography “Something of Myself” was posthumously published in 1937 and two years later Caroline donated “Batemans” (their house) to the National Trust. It would take until 2003 before Torbay Civic Society produced a Blue Plaque for Rock House although this was never formally unveiled.

IAN'S COMMENT. An extra-ordinary wordsmith who although born in India was very British. The plaque on Rock House gatepost in Rockhouse Lane may still be viewed.

NEXT WEEK - Beverley Nichols