Major Edwards High School - Mesa Yearbook (West Boylston, MA)

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THE MAN jMULVAMEY In a recent article in Haroer’s Magazine, the writer tells us that no English author of our time has been so widely known, or made more financial profit by the mere sale of his books to the public, than Rudyard Kipling, the man who nude ■ u : - ‘ A.nd yet, no English critic has ever said the rignt tamp shout him the greatest master of English prose oj. our ime, fen t-i ueople who presumably were best qualified to appreciate his merit, steadily failed to do so. Perhans the most original genius among English- ' ”rit ing novelists of the later nineteenth century, Kipling enjoyec extra- ordinary and world-wide popularity for years. Ho represented admirably certain phases of the spirit oJ his ago ana o.t -ne Anglo-Saxon race. ' Vigor , audacity, and efficiency are the virtues that most appealed to him, and tney char a c t orisec, ms own thought to a remarkable degree. A master of languors, ho ranges from the brutal speech of the barracks to a diction Uut is noble and majestic. Born in India, of English parentage, in 1865, at the age of five he was brought to England, nd, eight years later, entered college in Devonshire. While there, ho edited the Ccl...o; Chronicle for which he v r rote both pros .; and vorse. on ni.-. school life, he drew freely for the incidents related in his oo . entitled ” Stalky Co.”, which appeared in 189 Retur in oo India at- the age of seventeen, he was on the editorial otff of several par er s to which he contributed sketches and satiric- 1 verses . Mulvaney appears, was His book, ” Soldiers Three”, in which the character of v rit ten in 1889. Having now become well- Sown in India, he visited England and the United States in search of a publisher, but foiled at first. In 1890, on revumxng o London he suddenly found himself famous. While on a tour of the United States, he married a Vermont sirl, the sister of a literary friend, and, for the next i our years, their home was in this country. His two dam-brers wore

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rJ g r T W ri O jV! A M MADH i ■ j V » - JIVA p v ' , .» his s on s on wa s born in „ enlisted in the ' K s re- end the from another corn in Vermont and England. John, the English army in the World War, ported later among the missing, family never laiew whs t became of him. It is said that Kipling never recovered from the effect of the loss of his son and that he withdrew from the outside ■ or Id, In 1899, three years after returning to England, the Kip lings returned to Am rica, probably with the intention of settling again in Vermont, but both he one of his daughters became sick in New York, and the girl died. After that, the family returned to England. The home that., he built in Vermont still stands, a house and garden so different from the characteristics of New England that one would know, without being told, that a land had built it. Although the house was and person j. wu, , . large, he and his wife did not entertain much; but even, -men they were alone, he always dressed for dinner in i ' S- — asn style . In 1907, he received the Nobel Prize for literature, and was awarded many other honors, but the poet laur ea. teship of .a .1- nd was denied him, in 1913. It Is generally believed tno.t , Victoria was angered by the expression. Widow ; t Windsor, vim on occurs in one of his noems , and had her revenge by not anmc.nt ' ng him Poet Laureate. He had a different explanation for not brAng appointed, but a still better reason may be that in such an official position it is safer for the United Kingdom to have someone who confines himself ao ! poetic tnomes. Two of his poems that became especially famous are 1 The White Man’s Burden and ' The Recessional. ' ' The latter was written for the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Kipling’s impulse to creative writing came through journalism. Some of the stories that made him famous he first hoard from his father others were childhood recollections of tales tola by ms native nurse, still others he picked up from native workmen and sailors in every part of the world, or derived from his experi- ence as a field correspondent with the British army in India. The realism, vitality, and sense of abounding life the t are found in Kipling’s prose tales are also qualities of his poetry.