While Rudyard Kipling is most strongly identified with India and England -- the respective sites of his famous books "Kim" and "Puck of Pook's Hill" -- he also had many connections to the United States. The author's less well-known, but lifelong, association with America is explored in an exhibit on view through Nov. 6 at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
"The American Kipling" is organized around three central themes: his family life in Vermont, his lawsuits against American publishers and his significance at Yale. All of the items on view are drawn from the private collection of David Richards '67, '72 J.D., who also wrote the exhibit labels and accompanying catalog. The exhibit is part of the Beinecke Library's series featuring Yale collectors.
After Kipling left India in 1889 he married Caroline Balestier, a descendent of two Connecticut governors. The couple built their first home in 1892 near Brattleboro, Vermont, where their two children were born. Among the items on view in "The American Kipling" are postcards of the Kiplings' Vermont home, as well as a volume, titled "Book of Roses," used by the writer to order roses for his garden there.
Also featured in the exhibit are some of Kipling's writings in America, including "Captains Courageous." On view is the first American edition of the book, autographed by the author, as well as the first English edition in its original dust jacket and the 1937 movie version, which starred Spencer Tracy.
According to Mr. Richards, Kipling's works were widely pirated by American publishers even after the United States adopted the International Copyright Law of 1891. Kipling began several lawsuits -- most of which he lost -- against those who continued to sell unauthorized reprints of his work in competition with this authorized editions, Mr. Richards says. The exhibit details some of facts surrounding those lawsuits.
One case of the exhibit is devoted to Kipling as "The Yale Celebrity." In the fall of 1895, a group of sophomores, including Payne Whitney, founded The Kipling Club, and the next year invited the writer to the club's first annual banquet. "Much to the surprise of the students, Kipling wrote a poem in reply," says Mr. Richards. "Then untitled, the poem is now known as 'Mulvaney's Regrets,' and is written in the Irish dialect." Ten copies of a broadside facsimile were printed by club members, and one was reproduced in club member Julian S. Mason's "A Yale Footnote to Kipling," published by the Yale Library Associates in 1937. The poem was also printed in the May 1896 issue of the Yale Literary Magazine and was reprinted in an issue of the magazine in 1936, just after Kipling's death. It also received national exposure in The Cornhill Booklet, printed in 1900. The exhibit features various copies of the poem, "the original of which is now supposedly in the Scroll & Key senior society," says Mr. Richards. (It was presented to the secret society by Gouverneur Morris Jr., who was president of The Kipling Club.)
Also on view is the only American edition of "The Fifth Book of Horace," formally titled "Q. Horati Flacci Carminum Librum Quintum," which contains three odes written by Kipling. The American edition was published by the Yale University Press in 1921 as "The First Work Published on the Fund Established by the Colorado Yale Alumni Association."
In some respects, Kipling is immortalized at Yale through "The Whiffenpoof Song," says Mr. Richards, explaining that some of its words, including the lament for "poor little lambs who've lost our way," come from "Gentlemen Rankers," one of Kipling's "Barrack Room Ballads."
The Beinecke Library, located at 121 Wall St., is open for exhibition viewing Monday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday,
10 a.m.-5 p.m.