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An' because it was so, why, o' course 'e went an' died
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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Of course. She became Mrs Bainbridge. I should have remembered.
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Like I said in comments above, I am going to read Benfey's biography of Kipling in America and then Nicolson's biography of Carrie, after which I may have some better idea (or I may discover it's a pure indeterminacy). I think my personal preference would be what
I was glad that the movie My Boy Jack viewed the relationship sympathetically.
I think that's the only fictional representation I've ever seen of their marriage, which was one of the reasons I didn't know it was considered fraught until reading this article!
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I took a train from London and jogged the three miles from the station to Bateman's just to touch the place by the door where Jack carved his initials. The only other thing I remember about the house was an antique sideboard. I have no idea why it affected me so - a gazillion guys died pointlessly in that war, and I didn't go to extremes to honor many of them.
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Agreed—I don't imagine that fiction stands in for the historical record. I just tend to expect that if a marriage is considered famously troubled, it will be represented as such, especially in pop culture.
My thought was that after Jack's death I would never have forgiven R for getting him into the Army, but in an interview that aired on PBS when they showed the film, Kim Cattrall, who played Caroline, remarked that Jack would have done anything he could to get in, with or without his father's connections, and Caroline knew it.
That chimes with what I remember. (I did not see the PBS interview. I don't tend to watch interviews, although I will read them if published. It makes the whole "special features" component of home video frustrating to me.)
I have no idea why it affected me so - a gazillion guys died pointlessly in that war, and I didn't go to extremes to honor many of them.
He turned up in one of my poems once. I'm not going to blame you.