/Dear Brian/,
>
> 1. So far as I know, the exact date of its writing is not
> known precisely. One can only give some possible limits. Its first
> publication, so far as I am aware, was in the /Daily Telegraph/ on 19
> October 1916, at the head of the first of the articles collectively
> entitled “Destroyers at Jutland”, later published in /Sea Warfare/
> (Macmillan) in November/December 1916. If you accept John Walker’s
> premise that it was written in memory of Boy John Travers Cornwell,
> who died on 02/03 June 1916 of wounds received in HMS /Chester/ at
> the battle of Jutland (31 May/01 June 1916), that provides a /terminus
> a quo/. My personal view is that the trigger for the poem was rather
> wider than Boy Cornwell alone. I believe it was written as a memorial
> for all the 7,000-odd British men who died at Jutland, which provides
> us with the same possible starting date.
>
> 2. I am the custodian of a typescript of some, but I think not
> all, of the Carrington extracts from Carrie Kipling’s diaries. In
> those that I have, there is no specific mention of the writing of the
> poem. However, Carrie does record the date, 19 August 1916, on which
> Kipling was visited at Batemans by Captain Sir Douglas Brownrigg (the
> Chief Naval Censor), at whose instance the four articles which
> comprise “Destroyers at Jutland” were written.
>
> 3. The Carrington extracts give no indication of any other
> particular work or movements during late August/September/early
> October which might have enabled me to suggest dates when it _wasn’t_
> written.
>
> 4. In summary, if you accept that it was written as a direct
> result of the battle of Jutland, then it cannot have been started
> before 04 June, when the first casualty lists were published. It has
> to have been finished by 17 October for publication on the 19^th . I
> believe it is most probable that it wasn’t started until Kipling was
> given specific details for the articles he was to write on 19 August,
> though I accept that it could have been started at any time within the
> previous two-and-a-half months.
>
> 5. There is a letter, dated 11-13 September, to Andrew
> Macphail, in Pinney’s Vol. 4 of the letters which says “I have just
> finished some stuff (I hope the censor will pass it) about the work of
> our destroyers at Jutland, on reports of the same destroyers”. (He
> meant “based on the reports …”.) I think it highly unlikely that the
> poem would have had to be submitted for censorship, so it does not
> necessarily have to have been written by 11 September. In fact, I
> would presume to say that it would NOT have been written at the same
> time as he was writing the Jutland articles. I would most humbly
> suggest that the attitude of mind required for the writing of the text
> of the articles would not have been that required for the writing of
> the poem – though Kipling with his two sides to his head certainly
> might have managed it.
>
> 6. The most likely period for the writing of the poem, I
> believe, would have been during the latter part of the month of
> September 1916/first week or so of October, after the articles had
> been written, so he knew he had a peg on which to hang the poem, and
> in sufficient time for the /Telegraph/ to be fully prepared for
> publication on 19 October.
>
> 7. One may also mention that there are a number of other
> references in the letters to visits to Kipling in June-August 1919 by
> various naval officers who had been at Jutland, but all are distinctly
> gung-ho, ‘we-gave-the-Hun- a good-bashing’, type of references – not
> the more serious “the casualties were pretty horrendous” references
> which one have expected if his mind had been in ‘My Boy Jack’ mode.
>
> 8. As regards your ‘freudian slip’ (“son” for “boy”) it would
> be idle to suggest that Kipling did not have the loss of his son in
> his mind when he wrote the poem, but it is, in my view, most certainly
> NOT an epitaph for his son.
>
I hope you find this of help,
Yours,
/Alastair Wilson/
Brian Southam wrote:
> Apologies to all for a Freudianism which led me to entitle an earlier query
> regarding 'My Boy Jack' as 'My Son Jack'.
>
> My questions are 1. Is there a surviving ms of 'My Boy Jack'; and, if so, where
> is it located ? 2. Do we know precisely when the poem was written?
>
> Many thanks Brian Southam [log in to unmask]
>
>
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