Kipling & the Bloemfontein "Friend"
I have been reading through a series of out-of-print books by Lawrence G.
Green whose
father was the editor of the Cape Argus and who himself worked for that same
newspaper
for many years. Members may be interested in this snippet:
In his book "Something Rich and Strange" published in 1962 Lawrence G. Green
has this to say about Rudyard Kipling and the Bloemfontein "Friend":
"Copies of the Bloemfontein "Friend" published from the middle of March to
April 16th, 1901 fetch high prices. A complete set must now [1962] be worth
over one hundred pounds.
Rudyard Kipling was an associate editor for that brief space, and among
those who collaborated with him were such famous war correspondents as Edgar
Wallace, Julian Ralph, "Smiler" Hales and L.S. Amery. In those issues are
to be found several Kipling poems, including his tribute on the death of
General Joubert, the Boer commander-in-chief:
"With those that bred, with those that loosed the strife,
He had no part, whose hands were clean of gain;
But subtle, strong and stubborn, gave his life
To lost cause, and knew the gift was vain.
Later shall rise a People, same and great,
Forged in strong fires, by equal war made one --
Telling old battles over without hate,
Not least his name shall pass from sire to son ..."
Kipling also wrote the humerous "Kopje-Book Maxims."
One of them ran:
"Spare the solitary horseman on the skyline: he is bound to be a Britisher."
When the newspaper was handed over by Lord Roberts to the proprietor of the
Johannesburg "Star," the war correspondents moved on. Kipling wrote:
"Never again will there be such a paper! Never again such a staff! Never
such fine larks!"
Some of Kiplings early pamphlets were printed in South Africa, and these are
now extremely rare and valuable. One entitled "The Sin of Witchcraft"
fetched twenty-five pounds shortly before World War II, and must have
doubled or trebled in price since then.
"The Absent-Minded Beggar" appeared in Cape Town printed on a single
foolscap sheet of pink paper, and signed "K"."
Lawrence G. Green believed that most of Kipling's manuscripts written in
South Africa were lost & says that if you can find these in your attic you
have a small fortune in your grasp.
>From Chapter 19, Treasure in the Attic, Page 219
Another Kipling poem quoted on page 161 of the same book in Chapter Thirteen
under the sub-heading Lobengula's Lost Hoard is:
"We've laughed at the world as we found it, --
Its women and cities and men --
From Sayyid Burgash in a trantrum
To the smoke-reddened eyes of Loben
(Dear Boys!),
We've a little account with Loben.
With the comment that Lobengula was dead when that poem was written, so
perhaps Kipling was thinking of Lobengula's [undiscovered] millions.
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