From Propaganda to Private Grief: Rudyard Kipling and World War I

Like many of his contemporaries such as Rupert Brooke, Jessie Pope or Ian Hay, at the outbreak of World War I Rudyard Kipling wrote fervently about the need to fight against the “Hun […] at the gate” (“For All We Have and Are”). The ‘Great Imperialist’ collaborated actively with the first official government propaganda organization, Wellington House. As the war progressed, however, the tone of his works changed, most notably after October 1915, when he and his wife were told that their beloved only son John, aged eighteen, was missing, believed dead. This essay will move from Kipling’s pre-1915 jingoistic poems to his short story “The Gardener” (1925). I will show that notwithstanding his extreme patriotism, Kipling gave his private grief a universal dimension, in the hope that “Their Name [would live] Forevermore”.