KIPLING AND MASONRY
Rudyard Kipling is one of the giants of
modern English literary history. He towered
over the closing decades of the Victorian era
and lived well into the twentieth century.
Although current literary criticism tends to
belittle or to ignore him-probably because he
glorified British imperialism and the ideals
of colonialism - there was a time when
hundreds of "Kipling Clubs" met faithfully to
read and to discuss his writings. Each new
volume of his stories provided some of the
most stimulating programs for those literary
"fan clubs".
His place in literature seems assured. He
knew how to tell a story, and he told many
good ones. The art of the short story has had
few masters who surpassed Rudyard Kipling.
While his poetry is less extensive and
perhaps less "inspired" than his prose,
critics have generally agreed that he was a
vigorous and, for his day, an unconventional
poet, whose use of the British soldier's
slang in verse was an outstanding success.
"Gunga Din", "Mandalay", and "Danny Deever"
have passed into the common fund of "folk
culture" and are familiar to millions who
couldn't tell you that Rudyard Kipling wrote
them.
He was born in Bombay, India, on December 30,
1865. His father, John L. Kipling, was an
artist of considerable ability. Like most
British children born abroad, he was sent to
England for his education, which he received
at United Services College at Westward Ho,
North Devon. By 1880, however, he was back in
India, at Lahore, where at the age of
seventeen he began his life's work, writing,
as a sub-editor for The Civil and Military
Gazette and Pioneer.
Some of his first short stories appeared in
that journal. Between 1887 and 1889 he
travelled extensively in Asia and America. He
lived for four years in the Granite State,
Vermont. In 1892 he married an American girl,
Caroline Starr Batestier. He became
acquainted with the leading American writers
of the day, including Mark Twain, with whom
he was later to receive an honorary degree
from Oxford University, in 1907.
But England was his spiritual home. He
settled there soon after his marriage, to
become one of that country's most admired and
prolific writers. In 1907 he was awarded the
Nobel Prize for literature, the first English
writer to win that prize. In his lifetime he
was widely acclaimed and highly honored. He
died on January 18, 1936, and was buried as
an English hero in Westminster Abbey.
His popularity is illustrated by the report
that Kipling himself might have titled, "The
bank balance that wouldn't diminish." For a
time the author couldn't understand why the
checks he wrote in payment of his bills
weren't being cashed. Upon investigation, he
learned that some of them had been framed and
hung on the walls of shops because of the
famous signature. Other tradesmen had
discovered that they could sell his autograph
for considerably more than the cash value of
the check. A brisk business in Kipling
autographs had kept his own bank balance from
decreasing!
Rudyard Kipling was a Mason. More
significantly, he was an active and devoted
Mason all his life. His writings contain many
allusions and references to Masonic ideas and
practices; some of them are completely
Masonic in thought and motivation.
He was made a Mason in Hope and Perseverance
Lodge No. 782 (English Constitution) at
Lahore, Punjab, India in 1886. It required a
special dispensation, because Kipling was
only twenty years and six months of age at
the time. The same evening that he was raised
he was elected secretary of the lodge, so
that he recorded his own initiation in the
minutes of his mother lodge!
Only six months later he stood before his
brethren, to give them good and wholesome
instruction, by reading a paper "On the
Origins of Masonry, and the First Degree in
Particular." That was merely the beginning of
a lifelong service of his heart, and mind,
and pen in the interests of the Craft.
Rudyard Kipling became a Mark Master in Mark
Lodge "Fidelity" on April 12, 1887, and
received the Mark Mariners degree in Lodge
"Mt. Ararat" at Lahore, April 17, 1888. In
that year he also affiliated with
Independence with Philanthropy Lodge No. 391
at Allahabad, Bengal. English Freemasonry has
never prohibited dual or plural membership.
After settling in England, he also affiliated
with Motherland Lodge No. 3861 in London, and
helped to found two other lodges there,
Author's Lodge No. 3456 and Lodge Builders of
the Silent Cities No. 4948. In 1905 he was
chosen poet laureate of Scotland's famous
Canongate-Kilwinning Lodge No. 2, Edinburgh,
and thereby became one of the successors to
the immortal "Robbie" Burns, the first to
hold that distinguished Masonic office.
That he was truly devoted to his mother lodge
is shown not only by his well-known poem,
"Mother Lodge", (which was written as early
as 1886) but also by the fact that a few
months before his death, realizing that he
would never return to Lahore, he sent the
lodge a gavel which bore the inscription,
"Hope and Perseverance". Our English brethren
have long practiced the affectionate custom
of giving gifts to their mother lodges. The
ancient officers' jewels of the Lodge of
Antiquity No. 2, London, are such a gift of
filial love.
What seems to have attracted and held Rudyard
Kipling to Freemasonry are the same ideals
and tenets which have fascinated men of
brotherhood since time immemorial, the
possibility of all good men "meeting on the
level" and building a better society "by the
square".
In 1925 he wrote in the London Freemason, "I
was Secretary for some years of Hope and
Perseverance Lodge No. 782, E.C., Lahore,
which included Brethren of at least four
creeds. I was entered by a member of Bramo
Somaj, a Hindu; passed by a Mohammedan, and
raised by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an
Indian Jew. We met, of course, on the level,
and the only difference anyone would notice
was that at our banquets, some of the
Brethren, who were debarred by caste rules
from eating food not ceremoni4ly prepared,
sat over empty plates." (Kipliongs memory
slipped. Englishmen gave him all three
degrees)
To the natives of Lahore in India the
Freemasons' hall was "a house of magic",
because they wouldn't believe that anything
but magic could bring together so many
military men of all ranks, so many men of
different classes or castes, and so many men
of different religions. It was the magic hope
of a universal brotherhood which captured a
great writer's imagination and gave it the
perseverance to depict that hope throughout a
lifetime of gifted authorship.
Among the collections of stories which
Kipling published, these will probably assure
his immortality: Plain Tales from the Hills
(1887), Life's Handicap (1891), Many
Inventions (1893), The Jungle Book (1894),
The Second Jungle Book (1895), Just So
Stories for Children (1902), Traffics and
Discoveries (1904), Puck of Pook's Hill
(1906), Rewards and Fairies (1910), and
Debits and Credits (1926).
Plain Tales from the Hills was an immediate
success. These stories of English life in
India helped to establish Kipling's
reputation as a spokesman for the British
Empire. The Jungle Books are regarded by many
critics as his finest writing. These
fascinating tales of wild animals are still
best-sellers on book lists for children. The
collections published in 1906 and 1910, were
written for the children of England, to make
them aware and proud of the country and its
history.
In 1888-89 the author brought out a half
dozen slender paper-bound volumes containing
a single story. Among them are some of
Kipling's best loved compositions: Soldiers
Three, The Phantom `Rickshaw, Wee Willie
Winkie, and Under the Deodars.
He also tried his hand at novels or longer
tales. Kim (1901), a picaresque novel of
Indian life, is generally regarded as the
best of these. Hollywood, however, turned
into profitable movies two of Kipling's
novels, The Light that Failed (1891) and
Captains Courageous (1897). Stalk y and
Company (1899), based on his experiences at
United Services College, still has many
admirers.
Kipling's poetry was an early product of his
pen. 1886, the same year he was made a Mason,
saw the publication of Departmental Ditties,
a collection of light verse which
foreshadowed his ability to express the
sentiments of the British soldier in foreign
service. This was followed by Barrack Room
Ballads (1892), which contains the famous
"Gunga Din", "Mandalay", and "Danny Deever".
In 1896 appeared the collection of poems
titled The Seven Seas, which contains the
Masonic composition, "Mother Lodge"; and in
1903, The Five Nations, which includes the
famous hymn, "The Recessional", which Kipling
wrote in 1897 for the celebration of Queen
Victoria's second jubilee.
A complete and scholarly catalog of all the
Masonic allusions and references in Kipling's
writings is still to be attempted. There are
many, some quite obvious, like the plot of
"The Man Who Would Be King" (in Wee Willie
Winkie); and some not so obvious, like the
reference to an American Masonic newspaper in
Traffics and Discoveries. The final verses of
the poem, "A Dedication", are clearly Masonic
in their thought and expression. Many a
phrase in Kipling's writings seems perfectly
natural to the uninitiated reader, but to a
Mason their fraternal source is unmistakable.
There are obvious Masonic ideas in some of
the Plain Tales from the Hills, as well as in
the novel, Kim.
Masonic thoughts and expressions can also be
found in the stories, "On the Great Wall",
"The Winged Hat", "Hal o' the Draft" and "The
City Wall". "With the Main Guard" contains a
definite reference to the third degree. "The
Carpenter" is pure Masonic philosophy. In
Debits and Credits there are obvious Masonic
allusions in such stories as "The Janeites",
"A Friend of the Family", and "Madonna of the
Trenches". "The Butterfly That Stamped" in
Just So Stories pictures King Solomon adorned
with a Masonic apron, sash, and trinket.
Some of Kipling's poems may be positively
labelled "Masonic". Among them are "The
Palace", "Banquet Night", "The Widow of
Windsor", "Rough Ashlar" and "Mother Lodge",
which first appeared in The Seven Seas
(1896).
The story of "The Man Who Would Be King" (in
Wee Willie Winkie) has a plot which is based
on the degrees of Symbolic Masonry. Its
"moral" suggests that no man may use
Freemasonry to advance his own personal,
selfish ends. "In the Interests of the
Brethren" (in Debits and Credits) is a wholly
Masonic story, which poignantly describes a
meeting of crippled and wounded brethren
after World War I at "a lodge of
instruction", where they were able to "brush
up" on their lectures. Kipling wrote the
story to stimulate a movement for the
establishment of a Masonic War Hospital in
England.
Of Masonry there is indeed a plenty in the
writings of Rudyard Kipling. He deserves a
wider audience among the members of the
Craft. If he would take the time to read,
many a Mason would discover that Brother
Kipling can entertain and enthrall him much
better than the average show he watches on
television. Brother Kipling knew how to tell
a story.
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