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Paddy, If the photo was at the latest 8th July, it could not have been the subject of an event around over a week later described in a letter to Elsie. Moreover, according to Pinney, Elsie had been in Scotland for some time by the 19th of July Mike From: To exchange information and views on the life and work of Rudyard Kipling [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paddy at Tiscali.co.uk Sent: 20 February 2017 19:42 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Seeking three honest serving-men: can you help? A number of you have said that you are unable to see the Kipling family to the right of the photo: it seems to have become cropped in the sending. I have reduced the size, and also copied below the photo the text I wrote in 2014, when I gave up the search. This group photo was taken in England sometime between 22nd June and 8th July 1922. How do we know that? One striking presence, wearing a straw boater, is a former US President, William Taft, who, in his capacity as the US Chief of Justice, visited the UK once only last century, on a legal fact-finding mission from 16th June to the 8th July 1922. Why the 22nd June start? Because another striking presence, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught (son of Queen Victoria), fourth from left on front row, is wearing on his left arm a black mourning armband. His great friend and military colleague Sir Henry Wilson had been assassinated outside his London home on the 22nd - the Duke accompanied his coffin on behalf of the King at the funeral in Westminster Abbey on 26th June. So, we know when and who , but not why or where. Immediately behind the Duke, with a round white collar, is Sir John Simon, a brilliant lawyer who had visited Taft in the US, and was almost certainly a key figure in the return visit. In fact Taft stayed with Sir John at his home at Fritwell Manor near Oxford, on the weekend of 1st/2nd July. Sir John went on to fill nearly every major post in government: Attorney General, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Chancellor. To the left of Sir John is Bonar Law, shortly to become British Prime Minister. Further along the seated front row with arms folded is Rudyard Kipling, sitting between his daughter and her husband to be, Captain George Bambridge, a senior diplomat. His wife Carrie sits alongside. Standing in the middle of the photo, in the uniform of the 5th Battalion Royal Berkshire Regt, is Colonel Herbert Thomas Goodland, C.B, D.S.0, Deputy Controller of the Imperial War Graves Commission in France. He served on the Bulgarian Front in Gallipoli and Salonika at the same time as the man to his right, Army Service Corps Captain William Masters, in whose album this photo was found. Seated in front of them is General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien GCB, GCMG, DSO, ADC, who was in 1922 Governor of Gibraltar. To the left of William Taft, in a dark suit, is Sir Reginald Blomfield, architect of many War Memorials, including the impressive Menin Gate at Ypres, which commemorates nearly 55,000 fallen, and carries, as do many war memorials, inscriptions composed by Kipling. Seated front row, second from left, is Major General Sir Fabian Ware KCVO, KBE, CB, CMG, founder and Vice Chairman of the Imperial War Graves Commission. So what event were this group of leading policitians, architects, soldiers, commissioners and Rudyard Kipling attending? They are in front of a pavilion of some kind, appear to have eaten (waitress in the background), some present are wearing round white passes, and one soldier is wearing a white armband on his right arm, often worn by competitors in equestrian events. What connects them? All the males so far named are Freemasons, many of them high-ranking, eg the Duke of Connaught was a Grand Master. Many, including Ware, Goodland and Kipling, were founders of a Masonic Lodge called "The Builders of the Silent Cities" (a name coined by Kipling) to be associated with the War Graves Commission and its building works. This was founded in France and consecrated in January 1922. It is possible this was a meeting of Brethren interested in founding a branch in England, which was eventually consecrated in December 1927, and is still operative. Here is an extract from a letter Kipling wrote to his daughter Elsie, from Batemans, Burwash, Sussex on 19th July. 1922.at 8.40. p.m., describing his visit to London the day before: "Then I to lunch at the Carlton where I met Uncle Stan [Stanley Baldwin, a cousin] ... "Then I to my graves commission, after having writ our names in the D. of C.'s book - a detail I had omitted since the lunch... "When I got home to Brown's at 5 o'clock or later there was Colonel Goodland just on his way back to France... He's a nice simple man that I can't help liking, and full of enquiries for you. Told us that part of his duties is to chase up Mormonistic gardeners who are living with French women and forgetting that they have a deserted wife on the rates in England. The d.w.[Department for Work] often finds out the husband's address (if he hasn't been prudent enough to change his name) and pursues him through the Poor Law Relief officers. Then there are scenes. "Well. all that's very distressin', ain't it?" said Goodlands, with that queer twist of his eye. "I don't think one ought to overlook that sort of thing - do you? Even if a man does his work well as a gardener he hasn't any business to do that - has he?" We agreed: even gardeners should not grow two wives." The second sentence bristles with significance. D of C equals Duke of Connaught surely. But what is the book, and why would Kipling need to record his family's names in it? And is the lunch the one consumed before the photo was taken? Since he doesn't explain "the lunch" we can assume that Elsie would know to what he was referring by the D of C reference. We understand from paragraph three, ".full of enquiries for you", that Colonel Goodland has met Elsie, perhaps at the lunch? Gardeners are the IWGC staff who tend the graves, many were brought over from England in the early days. We have contacted the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (formerly the IWGC), the Kipling Archive at the University of Sussex and the Builders of the Silent Cities Masonic Lodge, all have responded, but none have been able to track any reference to this event in their archives. "I keep six honest serving-men They taught me all I knew; Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who." Elephant's Child in "Just So Stories" - Rudyard Kipling