Kipling

RUDYARD KIPLING (1865 - 1936)

In India in 1886-88, Kipling knew the Northumberland Fusiliers best of all; he called them the 'Tyneside tail-twisters'. Kipling wrote: 'The man who has never heard the 'Keel Row' rising high and shrill above the sound of the regiment... has something yet to hear and understand.' Bobby Wicks, the idealised young officer in the story 'Only a Subaltern' is drawn from the regiment. Interestingly enough, Dr Watson of the Sherlock Holmes stories served in the regiment as assistant surgeon on his first posting to India.

In Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) there are three fine chapters devoted to a centurion of the XXX Legion, staunchly defending the Roman wall in the days of imperial decline. The town Kipling mentions 'Hunno' seems to be Corbridge, then on the main road from York to Scotland:

'The hard road goes on and on - and the wind sings through your helmet-plume - past altars to Legions and Generals forgotten, and broken statues of Gods and Heroes, and thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares peep at you. Red-hot in summer, freezing in winter, is that big, purple, heather country of broken stone...
... Just when you think you are at the world's end, you see a smoke from East to west as far as the eye can stretch, houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks and granaries, trickling along like dice behind - always behind - one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers. And that is the Wall!'
'Ah!' said the children, taking breath.
'You may well,' said Parnesius. 'Old men who have followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the Empire is more wonderful than first sight of the Wall!'

Kipling cannot have been to the fort in Wallsend, however, as he describes it as 'Segedunum on the cold eastern beach.' The 'Winged Hats' are unhistorically liable to descend on Segedunum in early spring, and screened catapults are set up on the beach, where the Roman troops are hampered by 'blowing sand and snow'.
For Kipling the Mauretania was a mighty symbol. In 'The Secret of the Machines' (1911) , he writes:

The boat-express is waiting your command!
You will find the 'Mauretania' at the quay,
Till her captain turns the lever 'neath his hand
And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.

Lady Noble records that Kipling visited the Armstrong works at Elswick in 1915, presumably in connection with his books Fringes of the Fleet and The War at Sea (1916).

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
RUDYARD KIPLING (1865 - 1936) In India in 1886-88, Kipling knew the Northumberland Fusiliers best of all; he called them the 'Tyneside tail-twisters'. Kipling wrote: 'The man who has never heard the 'Keel Row' rising high and shrill above the sound of the regiment... has something yet to hear and understand.' Bobby Wicks, the idealised young officer in the story 'Only a Subaltern' is drawn from the regiment. Interestingly enough, Dr Watson of the Sherlock Holmes stories served in the regiment as assistant surgeon on his first posting to India. In Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) there are three fine chapters devoted to a centurion of the XXX Legion, staunchly defending the Roman wall in the days of imperial decline. The town Kipling mentions 'Hunno' seems to be Corbridge, then on the main road from York to Scotland: 'The hard road goes on and on - and the wind sings through your helmet-plume - past altars to Legions and Generals forgotten, and broken statues of Gods and Heroes, and thousands of graves where the mountain foxes and hares peep at you. Red-hot in summer, freezing in winter, is that big, purple, heather country of broken stone... ... Just when you think you are at the world's end, you see a smoke from East to west as far as the eye can stretch, houses and temples, shops and theatres, barracks and granaries, trickling along like dice behind - always behind - one long, low, rising and falling, and hiding and showing line of towers. And that is the Wall!' 'Ah!' said the children, taking breath. 'You may well,' said Parnesius. 'Old men who have followed the Eagles since boyhood say nothing in the Empire is more wonderful than first sight of the Wall!' Kipling cannot have been to the fort in Wallsend, however, as he describes it as 'Segedunum on the cold eastern beach.' The 'Winged Hats' are unhistorically liable to descend on Segedunum in early spring, and screened catapults are set up on the beach, where the Roman troops are hampered by 'blowing sand and snow'. For Kipling the Mauretania was a mighty symbol. In 'The Secret of the Machines' (1911) , he writes: The boat-express is waiting your command! You will find the 'Mauretania' at the quay, Till her captain turns the lever 'neath his hand And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea. Lady Noble records that Kipling visited the Armstrong works at Elswick in 1915, presumably in connection with his books Fringes of the Fleet and The War at Sea (1916).
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