The Maltese Cat

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai, India on 30th December 1865. As was the custom in those days, he and his sister were sent back to England when he was 5. The ill-treatment and cruelty by the Portsmouth couple they boarded with Kipling said contributed to the onset of his literary life. At 16 he returned to India to work on a local paper where he was soon contributing and writing. It also exposed him to the issues of identity and national allegiance which pervade much of his work. In 1886, his ‘Departmental Ditties’, collection of verse appeared in print followed by 39 short stories for his newspaper over only 8 months. These were then published as ‘Plain Tales from the Hills’, shortly after his 22nd birthday. He continued his prolific pace of writing before being dismissed in a dispute and, taking his pay-off and the profits from the sale of some publishing rights, decided to return to London, travelling via Rangoon, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States, all the while writing articles, and arriving at Liverpool in October 1889.Over the next two years he saw further works published as books and in magazines, as well as a nervous breakdown for which he was prescribed a sea voyage, to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India. Happier times came with marriage to Caroline Starr Balestier in January 1892. The honeymoon began in Vermont and ended in Yokahama where they heard their bank had failed. They returned to Vermont and settled. Caroline was now pregnant and he was planning the ‘Jungle Books’. A failed arbitration between the US and England resulted in an argument between Caroline’s brother and Kipling, and then his arrest. At the hearing he was mortified by the exposure of his private life and after settling the matter they returned to England and life in Torquay. ‘Kim’ was published in 1902, and ‘Just So Stories for Little Children’, a year later. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature with the citation “in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterise the creations of this world-famous author”. When the Great War erupted, he scorned those who refused conscription. His son enlisted and was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, at 18, an exploding shell had ripped his face apart. This death inspired Kipling’s writing thereafter, but the tragedy broke his life and by 1930 his prolific pen had almost ceased.Rudyard Kipling died on 18th January 1936 from a perforated duodenal ulcer. He was 70. His ashes are buried at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.In the Maltese Cat Kipling returns once more to India and the British Empire. A polo match is being played. The fierce competitive instincts of two social classes are fighting for dominance. All told through the voice of the Maltese Cat, the most cunning of the horses.