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Lot 104
KIPLING (RUDYARD)
22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £2,500 inc. premium
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KIPLING (RUDYARD)
Autograph letter signed, to Christie Murray, confessing that he would dearly love to be a proper novelist: "being a short story-story writer, I naturally yearn wildly to write a real novel – not a one volume or a two volume but a really decent three-decker of 300 pp. per vol. Only I do believe that no man this side of forty at earliest has secreted enough observation – not to say thoughts – to write a novel, which, in spite of all they say of the short-story, is the real vehicle. Independent firing by marksmen is a pretty thing but it's the volley-firing of a full battalion that clears the front"; he nevertheless expresses his delight at his correspondent's kind appreciation of his writing ("...I can't tell you how delighted – not to say lofty in my boots – I feel over yours of the 31st and the enclosure. As you say it's the recognition of ones elders and betters that's worth having in this world and I've been tremendously lucky in that..."), adding however: "there is only one thing in your generous 'criticism' that I would point out. My newspaper work in India wasn't dull and dreary – nor dry, except climatically, I got a good deal of fun out of it. Ask Kay Robinson of the Globe how a 'hack' can frolic. But there were some rather tough times", 2 pages, on rough oatmeal headed paper, light overall foxing, 8vo, Maidencombe, 4 February 1897
Footnotes
'I NATURALLY YEARN WILDLY TO WRITE A REAL NOVEL': KIPLING ON HIS AMBITIONS BEFORE BEGINNING KIM. He had, in point of fact, at this time already written several books that could be described as novels, the third, Captains Courageous running in McClure's Magazine during that same winter of 1896-7. But there can be little doubt that the "real novel" he had in mind when he wrote this letter – as far as he had any specific work in mind – was his masterpiece, Kim (even if in the event it was mercifully not to take the form of a three-decker). The first references to his plans for the novel occur late in 1892, but the project was put aside in favour of the Jungle Books. Over the next few years, the project was revived, only to be dropped once more. He finally set to work in earnest late in 1898 and had a completed draft ready by November 1899, the first chapter being published by McClure's Magazine in December 1900.
The recipient of this letter, David Christie Murray, was himself a successful novelist; both he and Kipling being contributors to Jerome K. Jerome's My First Book (1894), he writing on A Life's Atonement, Kipling on Departmental Ditties. The book which Kipling here acknowledges and which makes him feel so very lofty in his boots is My Contemporaries in Fiction (1897), in which Christie Murray devotes a chapter to him under the heading 'Living Masters'. The Kay Robinson referred to in connection with Kipling's Indian journalism is Edward Kay Robinson for whom Kipling acted as assistant editor at the Civil and Military Gazette and who transferred to the Globe on his return to England. This important letter is not published in The Letters of Rudyard Kipling.