One can only imagine the horror he and his wife felt upon burying their first daughter at age six and losing their only son at eighteen on the Western Front. Kipling’s deep love for his own children, Josephine, John, and Elsie emerges throughout his writings, from his address to his “Best Beloved” Josephine in Just So Stories to numerous later illustrated letters from across the globe. For the next six years he suffered cruelty and bullying. After being nurtured by loving parents and a devoted ayah for his first five years, Kipling suffered a traumatic childhood when he and his younger sister “Trix” were abruptly taken to Southsea, England and left behind with paid guardians to start a British education.

Born in Bombay to Anglo-Indian parents, he recalled: “My first impression is of daybreak, light and colour and golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder” ( Something of Myself for My Friends Known and Unknown, 1). What is your very first memory or impression? Is it your mother’s holding you? Your father’s singing to you? An avenue of trees? I hope yours is positive. Courtesy of the British Library Board, MS 59840 f118r. By Linda Shires Left: Rudyard Kipling, “The Cat That Walked by Himself,” in Just So Stories for Little Children, 1902.

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