Jan,
Interestingly, if you adjust Mulholland's earnings for the change in average earnings since 1895 rather than average prices, you get something around £2,000 a month (£24k p.a.). https://www.measuringworth.com/index.php. This measure is useful in positioning a worker's relative standing in the earnings hierarchy. Comparing on purchasing power does not allow for the fact that food and consumer goods have got relatively cheaper over time and most people now buy a lot more than they could in 1895.
Mike
-----Original Message-----
From: To exchange information and views on the life and work of Rudyard Kipling <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Janet Montefiore
Sent: 07 October 2020 10:27
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Mulholland's Contract
I think you're right about this, Meredith, that it's crazy as in 'crazy paving'. Mulholland's reaction to the Lord's command - " I didn't want to do it, for I knew what I should get/ An' I wanted to preach religion, handsome an' out of the wet" - is perfectly sane.. He is the kind of unpretentious evangelist that RK had a lot of time for, not least because his conversion leads to him bringing order and decency into the rough world he inhabits. Kipling's 1889 letter to Caroline Hill his then fiancée (quoted by Athar Murtuza in his article on missionaries in KJ 383) states that 'I believe in Justification by work rather than faith", which supports this sympathetic reading of Mulholland . (I wonder if RK had once bumped into someone a bit like Mulholland on his sea travels?)
I also think the note on his 'four pound ten a month' : £4.50 in today's depreciated currency' - should be modified. Google tells me that £1 in 1895, the poem's year of publication, was equivalent in purchasing power to £132.35 in today's depreciated currency, so his monthly salary would now amount to nearly £600 ( £595.57 to be precise). Far from princely, but as a sailor he's able to 'save the money clear' because he pays no rent or board while at sea, clearly isn't supporting a family, and doesn't drink or gamble. Mulholland is therefore far better off than the equivalent wage earners of the time, for whom 'round about a pound a week' was the de facto minimum wage - they too got no pension and no pay when not working, and they had to pay rent and support dependents on that mingy wage. It was a very harsh world, late Victorian England.
Jan
On 04/10/2020, 16:14, "To exchange information and views on the life and work of Rudyard Kipling on behalf of Meredith Dixon" <[log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]> wrote:
Having been reminded of "Mulholland's Contract," by the Journal, I
just read the NRG entry for it. For what it's worth, while Alistair
could be right, I'm not sure that by "as crazy as could be" Mulholland
is referring to his mental state; after all, he clearly denies being
crazy in that sense in the last verse. "Crazy" can also mean
"cracked", and I think he means that his skull was literally cracked
by the stanchion.
--
Meredith Dixon <[log in to unmask]>
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