Kipling by Jad Adams

Author:Jad Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Kipling, Rudyard Kipling, Jungle Book
ISBN: 9781908323071
Publisher: Haus Publishing

The Family Feud

Kipling never got over the notion he developed on his first travels in America that the land was a place of lawless violence. While he did meet some refined, literary Americans, the American he saw most frequently was Beatty Balestier, who was a drunken and often reckless character, but for all his cherished reputation as a wild man, his ever-helpful and generous character endeared him to his farming neighbours.

As the Kiplings became wealthier, Carrie became more English in her habits, dressing for dinner even when only the two of them were present and driving around in her elegant two-horse carriage with a straight-backed English groom in attendance. This was in keeping with the aspirations of the Balestier family in general, with the exception of their boisterous neighbour Beatty, who was the opposite of the conservative, temperate and privacy-loving Kiplings.

While the roots of the problem that split the Balestier family and led to Kipling’s departure from America could be put down to simple mutual incompatibility, it is as well to remark that not many people would have wanted Beatty Balestier as a neighbour. As Frederic van de Water, an American journalist wrote, ‘Beatty had horses and cattle, a hired man and a hired girl, a daughter, his first wife and a mighty thirst when he welcomed the Kiplings to Vermont. One by one in the years that followed, he lost them all but the last.’131

Beatty was well on the way through the first fortune he had inherited when Naulakha was completed. He had been kept by the Kiplings as their agent, superintending the construction and bulk-buying coal and other supplies for the establishment. Carrie directly accused Beatty of appropriating money he had been given for paying Naulakha workmen. As an older sister she tried to keep him on a tight rein, giving him money in small amounts and lecturing him about his wayward lifestyle. It is an example of her unsubtle methods that she tried to persuade Mrs Balestier to join her in removing their names from the backing of Beatty’s mortgage, which would have rendered him bankrupt and, so Carrie seemed to believe, would have taught him a lesson. Mrs Balestier refused, remarking with more wisdom than her daughter, ‘Beatty is a gentleman, drunk or sober.’132

Finally the respectable couple, probably at Carrie’s behest, formulated a plan for the reformation of the wastrel, which was taken to Beatty by Kipling. If Beatty would leave his drinking cronies in Vermont and devote himself to work elsewhere, Kipling would support Beatty’s wife and child for a year. Beatty was the opposite of grateful. He explained in the most explicit terms what his brother-in-law could do with his charity, and the relationship between them was cool thereafter. As early as May 1895 Carrie records in her diary that the Balestiers ‘slammed and locked front door in my face.’

A second cause of conflict was land. Kipling had worried that a small piece of land opposite Naulakha might fall into the hands of someone who would build on it and block his view.

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