Dear All,
Thanks to those who confirmed that Kipling did not have first-hand knowledge of Lucknow and therefore, of the La Martinière school.
This was a post-pilgrimage question, forKim is all about pilrimages and searching for places we are not quite sure exist. The River of the Arrow, anyone?
In 2007, I went traipsing across several cities - and the countryside - in northern India, with a side-trip to Lahore, Pakistan. I was, of course, following in "Kim's" footsteps, looking for what remained of scenes depicted in that novel. Before setting out, I read of two similar searches. One was undertaken by English foreign correspondent, Peter Hopkirk and recorded by him in Quest for Kim (1997).
The other account I read inThe Kipling Journal : an Australian civil engineer, L.A. Crozier, working in south Asia, attempted to track down Kim sites in his spare time in the 1970s. Both men were an inspiration. I left my paper-back copy of Hopkirk with a friend I made in Lahore, who loved Kipling.
But all three of us were beguiled - led astray? - by Kipling's ability, as masterly journalist and travel writer, to make everything seem based on a real place. Sorting out the truly fictitious from the "thinly disguised" has become part of the fun. Now I must "correct" my memory of standing in the dining room of La Martinière, and thinking "Kipling stood here when he mused about Kim learning to eat beef."
And what's my hypothesis on La Martinière as the basis for St Xavier's? Kipling would have known the reputation of this great school in Lucknow, without needing to visit. Presumably he would have disguised it, even if had he known every stone in its walls. There are real lists of old Martinians. But Lahore railway station or the great gun Zam Zammah? Why Kim could easily be a nameless urchin around these real places.
Kim Klein
