The Foundations

Abstract

The maddening sprawl of Kipling’s work is perfectly reflected in his fragmentary autobiography Something of Myself, a remarkable work embodying nearly every characteristic for which Kipling has been either damned or celebrated. Similarly, on its own miniaturist scale, the brief impressionistic passages about Kipling’s infancy in Bombay diagram much of his life and work for us. We learn of young Rudyard’s “morning walks to the Bombay fruit market with my ayah” the “far-going Arab dhows on the pearly waters”, and of what he regarded as the servant’s “curious mixture of deep affection and shallow device”. We also learn of a “marvellous place filled with smells of paints and oils … the atelier of my Father’s school of Art”.¹