March 1, 1892: Rudyard Kipling Publishes "Barrack-Room Ballads"

March 1, 1892: Rudyard Kipling publishes Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses. It marks him as the defining poet of the Victorian Age British Army -- for good, and for ill.

It had been said since the 16th Century that "The Sun never sets on the British Empire," because, at every point during a calendar day, the Sun was shining on some spot of land in the Empire. Stretching east to Asia and Australia, south to Africa, and west to Canada and the Caribbean.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was a product of this Empire, born in India in 1865. Hearing tales of the British Army from India, Afghanistan, and the African colonies, he immortalized them in verse. Barrack-Room Ballads included perhaps his best-known work, "Gunga Din." The narrator has mistreated the title character, an Indian water-bearer. Then the soldier is shot, but Gunga saves his life, at the cost of his own, forcing the soldier to admit, in the poem's last line, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

His tales of brave Brits in far-off lands made him enormously popular throughout the English-speaking world. Author Henry James said, "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, he became the 1st English-language winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was 41, and no one younger has won the award. He died in 1936, still very popular.

A common joke of the era had a man trying to find out a woman's tastes: "How do you like Kipling?" And she said, "I don't know, you naughty boy. I've never kippled!"

But as time went by, people saw the horrid racism in his poems and stories, including in such children's tales as The Jungle Book (published in 1894). Many people have heard the expression "The White Man's Burden," but might not know where it comes from. It was a poem Kipling wrote in 1899, telling America to not only put down the Philippine Insurrection, but to colonize and anglicize -- if not quite "Americanize" -- the island nation.

Kipling's son John was rejected for an officer's commission in World War I, due to poor eyesight. The father bought it off, anyway. The son died in the Battle of Loos in 1915. This left his daughter, Elsie, as his only surviving child. She died in 1976, having married but not having had children, and so the family line died out.

The racism continued after his death: A film based on Gunga Din was released in 1939, with the title role played by Sam Jaffe, not an Indian but an Eastern European Jew with bad makeup. At least when The Jungle Book was filmed in 1942, Mowgli was played by an Indian actor, Sabu Dastagir (using only his first name). But as late as 1967, when Disney did a cartoon version, the stereotypes were still pretty cringey.

Perhaps it would be better to leave on this note: In 1910, Kipling wrote "If-- " an inspirational poem:

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
    And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    ⁠And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    ⁠Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
    ⁠And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

But how wise is it? It sounds like a lot of pressure to put on a young man.

Besides, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, maybe they know something that you need to know.

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March 1, 1892 was a Tuesday. There were no scores on this historic day, because baseball and football were out of season, hockey was still all-amateur, and basketball had been invented only a few weeks before.