All the Mowgli Stories (Macmillan Collector's Library)

‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ said Muller. ‘It’s nothing. Gott in Himmel! “Und I work miracles—und dey come off too!”’

The Only Son

She dropped the bar, she shot the bolt, she fed the fire anew,

For she heard a whimper under the sill and a great gray paw came through.

The fresh flame comforted the hut and shone on the roof-beam,

And the Only Son lay down again and dreamed that he dreamed a dream.

The last ash fell from the withered log with the click of a falling spark,

And the Only Son woke up again, and called across the dark:—

‘Now was I born of womankind and laid in a mother’s breast?

For I have dreamed of a shaggy hide whereon I went to rest.

And was I born of womankind and laid on a father’s arm?

For I have dreamed of clashing teeth that guarded me from harm.

And was I born an Only Son and did I play alone?

For I have dreamed of comrades twain that bit me to the bone.

And did I break the barley-cake and steep it in the tyre?

For I have dreamed of a youngling kid new-riven from the byre:

For I have dreamed of a midnight sky and a midnight call to blood,

And red-mouthed shadows racing by, that thrust me from my food.

’Tis an hour yet and an hour yet to the rising of the moon,

But I can see the black roof-tree as plain as it were noon.

’Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the trooping blackbuck go,

But I can hear the little fawn that bleats behind the doe.

’Tis a league and a league to the Lena Falls where the crop and the upland meet,

But I can smell the wet dawn-wind that wakes the sprouting wheat.

Unbar the door, I may not bide, but I must out and see

If those are wolves that wait outside or my own kin to me!’

She loosed the bar, she slid the bolt, she opened the door anon,

And a gray bitch-wolf came out of the dark and fawned on the Only Son!

Footnote

1

Literally a rotted-out tree-stump.

Afterword

All the Mowgli Stories was first published in one volume in 1933, two years before Kipling’s death. It is surprising that these stories, with their accompanying verses, waited for nearly forty years before being brought together. The author, his literary agent and his publisher – Macmillan – were certainly no strangers to what these days is called ‘sweating the assets’, and it would seem that the success of the anthology of Kipling’s Animal Stories, illustrated by Stuart Tresilian and published the previous year, prompted this sound commercial decision.

The Mowgli stories are strange and exciting tales that have inspired generations of readers. In Edith Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods, written only five years after the appearance of the two Jungle Books, Oswald Bastable says, ‘We’ll play Jungle Book, and I shall be Mowgli.’ Not long after this, Kipling’s friend Robert Baden-Powell organized younger boy scouts into packs of wolf-cubs whose leader was Akela, named after the lone gray wolf of the stories. Tarzan of the Apes, first published in 1912, owes much to Mowgli, and Kipling commented acidly that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Tarzan of the Apes to ‘find out how bad a book he could write and get away with it’.

The Mowgli stories may be less familiar to today’s readers, and while they remain thrilling, a little background detail reveals another level of storytelling. Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, had been appointed Professor of Architectural Sculpture at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art. For his first five years young Ruddy, together with his younger sister Alice – known as Trix – enjoyed an idyllic childhood surrounded by servants and with an ayah that they adored. In April 1871 this all ended when Ruddy’s parents took Trix and Ruddy to England via the newly opened Suez Canal. At this time, it was thought that British children could endure the Indian climate until they were five or six but should then be sent to Britain. This was imperial hypocrisy at its most refined. As one contemporary journalist put it, ‘In the reeking atmosphere of servants’ huts, he [the child] soaks in Asiatic vices and meanness through every pore of his little white skin.’ In October of that year, Ruddy and Trix were delivered into the care of ‘Aunty Rosa’ – Mrs Sarah Holloway – who kept a house in Southsea near Portsmouth, with her husband and twelve-year-old son, Harry. For six miserable, parentless, affection-starved years, Ruddy and Trix endured their exile, leavened only by Christmas visits to their Uncle Ned’s family in London – Uncle Ned being Edward Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelite painter. This period of Kipling’s life is described in the barely fictionalized ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, one of the author’s best and most heartbreaking short stories. The two children were reunited with their parents in early 1877 after six years’ separation, and became a close family group again surprisingly quickly.