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RUDYARD-KIPLING  December 2009

RUDYARD-KIPLING December 2009

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Subject:

Re: My Boy Jack

From:

Alastair Wilson <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Alastair Wilson <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:36:32 +0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (97 lines)

/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]
>
>
> __________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4712 (20091223) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>
>
>
>
>   

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