An' because it was so, why, o' course 'e went an' died

[sovay]

I'm reading Charles McGrath's "Rudyard Kipling in America" in the most recent issue of The New Yorker and it contains one of those ordinary facts the finding out of which makes you feel like you've been living under a rock:

Kipling wound up in Brattleboro because, in January, 1892, when he was twenty-six and already famous for tales and poems he had published about India, he married a Vermonter named Carrie Balestier. Theirs was such a perplexing union that you wish that Benfey had gone into more detail about it. He doesn't tell you, for example, just how much Kipling's family and most of his friends disliked Carrie. They thought her unattractive and opinionated, not nearly feminine enough. Kipling's father said she was "a good man spoiled." Most Kipling biographers have depicted her as a nag, a harridan, a ball-breaker. So what did Kipling see in her? Mostly, it seems, he saw her brother, who was Kipling's friend and literary agent.

Wolcott Balestier was a darting, quicksilver figure, who probably deserves a book of his own. Arthur Waugh (Evelyn's father), who briefly worked for him, said he had a "chameleon power with people." After dropping out of Cornell, Wolcott travelled to Colorado and to Mexico, looking for adventure, and then edited a lowbrow New York weekly called Tid-Bits, before settling in London, where he became an enterprising and ambitious agent—the Andrew Wylie of his time. Some people thought him vulgar, but most of literary London was charmed; Henry James and Edmund Gosse were especially smitten. Kipling loved Balestier, too, and their friendship, if it wasn't overtly sexual, had erotic overtones. They even wrote together—something Kipling never did with anyone else—collaborating on a novel, "The Naulahka," an adventure story about a priceless Indian necklace.

In December, 1891, Balestier died suddenly, of typhoid, at the age of twenty-nine. Kipling, who was visiting India, where his parents still lived, raced back to London, and scarcely a week after he returned he married Balestier's younger sister, in a dreary little ceremony that was more like a funeral than a wedding. Henry James gave away the bride, though he said later, "It's a union of which I don't forecast the future." Kipling, for their honeymoon, rewrote a love poem that he had intended for her brother, changing the pronouns and addressing her as "Dear Lass," instead of "Dear Lad."

If I'm going to be earwormed with Oh, passin' the love o' women—you, too, sunshine.

Comments

[gwynnega]

Oh wow.

[sovay]

Oh wow.

It's certainly made me curious about The Naulahka.

[a_reasonable_man]

Years ago I read a book on Kipling in America, but not that story. As the late, lamented Arte Johnson would say, "Verrry interesting."

[sovay]

Years ago I read a book on Kipling in America, but not that story.

I knew some about his time in Vermont (I've never visited the house Naulakha, though I would like to) but almost nothing about his marriage. I'd never heard of Wolcott Balestier.

As the late, lamented Arte Johnson would say, "Verrry interesting."

spatch is now wandering around the house muttering, ". . . but stupid."

[landofnowhere]

I'd never heard of Wolcott Balestier, but he sounds fascinating -- like a character out of George Gissing's New Grub Street, only I don't think Gissing knew how to write homoeroticism.

[sovay]

I'd never heard of Wolcott Balestier, but he sounds fascinating -- like a character out of George Gissing's New Grub Street, only I don't think Gissing knew how to write homoeroticism.

I hope he gets that book of his own.

(Speak to me of New Grub Street.)

[yhlee]

Mostly what I get out of this is that I feel really bad for Kipling's wife now.

[sovay]

Mostly what I get out of this is that I feel really bad for Kipling's wife now.

I do not think it is a very fair way to marry someone, no.

[staranise]

I desperately want to know if she ever, like... knew.

[genarti]

SAME. God. Though I'm also desperately curious whether she knew, and whether it was in any way fair to her -- like, did she get any freedom by it? (A beard??) Or did she just have a husband who wanted to be with her dead brother and in-laws who despised her?

Possibly there are answers to this available to people who know Kipling's biography more than I (not hard, as I know very very little.)

[asakiyume]

That was **precisely** my thought, but I wanted to read through the comment thread to see if anyone had said that before me. Married as a bound-to-be-not-satisfactory substitute for your brother, and hated by your husband's family.

[radiantfracture]

Good heavens.

[sovay]

Good heavens.

I knew assorted facts about Kipling's life, but not that one.

[nineweaving]

Oh wow. How awful for both of them. And then they lost two beloved children: Josephine to pneumonia, and John (poor half-blind boy) to war.

Nine

[sovay]

Oh wow. How awful for both of them.

Tell Grevil he dodged several bullets knowing enough not to marry Idony.

And then they lost two beloved children: Josephine to pneumonia, and John (poor half-blind boy) to war.

I hope Elsie was very dearly loved. She had a life, but I know almost nothing about her.

[poliphilo]

But the marriage lasted.

Kipling was very protective of his private life- and will be happy that it remains a mystery to us.

They tell you at Batemans that she used to act as his watchdog- keeping unwanted visitors at bay so he wouldn't be interrupted in his work. Also she was the business brains of the enterprise- and signed all the cheques. My granny volunteered to work at Batemans during the Great War and was told she really didn't want to because Mrs Kipling "was a tartar". She took the post anyway because she was a huge fan. I don't think she saw much of either of them- but she did get him to sign a book for her- which was something he didn't much care to do. I think Rudyard and Carrie were a tight little unit.

Elsie lived on at Batemans, keeping the place as a shrine to her parents. When she died she left it to the National Trust. I think I'm right in saying she never married.

Kingsley Amis wrote a poem about Carrie- and how in the portrait of her as a young housewife she has "some sort of key" hanging from her belt. He implies that if we had that key and the lock it fits we would know everything...

If I have given you delight
By aught that I have done
Let me lie quiet in that night
Which shall be yours anon.

And for the little, little space
The dead are borne in mind
Seek not to question other than
The books I leave behind.

[sovay]

I think Rudyard and Carrie were a tight little unit.

That is what I would hope. If a marriage is going to last, I would like it to be for reasons that are better than inertia or economics or children (which are real factors, especially in a culture without no-fault divorce). I care that people are loved for themselves. It's tough enough to manage under the most congenial circumstances.

Elsie lived on at Batemans, keeping the place as a shrine to her parents. When she died she left it to the National Trust. I think I'm right in saying she never married.

She married a diplomat, the internet tells me, but she outlived him, too, by more than thirty years. She had no children. She carried a lot of memory.

[vass]

I regularly feel like I've been living under a rock, but this is still a surprise. Gosh.

[sovay]

I regularly feel like I've been living under a rock, but this is still a surprise. Gosh.

And it's not like Kipling's poetry isn't important to me! I'd just never seen anyone mention it before.

[poliphilo]

Also...

Everyone who has commented here has assumed that Kipling swept in and overpowered Carrie. I suggest it may have been the other way round. It's on record somewhere (don't ask where exactly) that one of Kipling's female relations (his mother I think) said, on first meeting Carrie, "That young person is going to marry our Rud". I think Carrie wanted him from the offset- and the relationship, however it developed, dates from before Wolcott's death. His family's objection to her had a good deal of snobbery about it- and it might be worth observing that her family didn't like him either- and that he was driven out of America after his brother-in-law threatened to shoot him and the resulting court case turned him into a figure of fun.

Carrie was tough. He was delicate, impressionable, highly strung. They complimented one another. I don't find it odd that in the aftermath of a sudden and terrible bereavement they should have decided to throw in their lot together.

A number of his later stories hinge upon an obsessive relationship- which is baffling to outsiders- between two unglamorous and completely unlikely people. Examples are Mrs Bathurst and A Madonna of the Trenches. Mrs Bathurst is famously obscure. I suggest he may have been sending a coded message to his wife- and dropping a hint to the rest of us- though heaven forbid that we should pick it up.

[asakiyume]

That's a better story than the one I was imagining in my head, yes. I suppose he could have loved both the siblings. I still think it's rough that he repurposed a poem intended for someone else, but that's not a capital offense.

[cmcmck]

Strange thing is that the marriage did work- sorta.

[poliphilo]

Certainly it did- and they guarded their privacy fiercely. The truth is we know very little about it- and many of those who had things to say about it were hostile to Carrie.

[movingfinger]

The house Naulakha is designed so that visitors would be seen coming a good way off---and so that Kipling was not immediately accessible or easily disturbed. I seem to recall that one has to go through her parlor to get to his study. The kitchens/public area are at the end of the house that faces the drive and road approach.

Here's a floor plan! Kipling's study is at the end of the house where the big open porch is.

[poliphilo]

Batemans was run on the same principle- and Carrie was his watchdog. Some of his friends wondered whether he was quite as keen on his privacy as she made out.

[starlady]

Dang. I should have known--were any of the boosters of empire and players of the Great Game in the late C19 not gay?

[sovay]

--were any of the boosters of empire and players of the Great Game in the late C19 not gay?

I mean, I personally think it's more normal than not. (Point still taken.)

[nineweaving]

Kipling's recent biographer Andrew Lycett writes: "According to Edmund Gosse, Carrie's telegram to Rudyard in Lahore had read simply: 'WOLCOTT DEAD STOP COME BACK TO ME STOP.'"

Nine

[sovay]

'WOLCOTT DEAD STOP COME BACK TO ME STOP.'

That clarifies nothing.