Rudyard Kipling: Passing Through

Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's sixth child.

Through the years, many famous visitors have come to Victoria on Canada’s west coast.  The history books and newspapers of the day describe their visits in detail.
 
For instance, although Queen Victoria herself never visited her namesake city, her daughter Princess Louise, came to the city in 1882.  She apparently loved Victoria so much that some thought she would never leave! She was often spotted wandering along Government Street.

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Winston Churchill planting a tree in Beacon Hill Park. 1929.

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​Another famous visitor was Winston Churchill, who came in 1929 and planted a tree in Beacon Hill Park.   

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Members of the British Monarchy are always visiting Victoria. In 1919 the then Prince of Wales came here after WWI and in 1939 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited prior to WWII. In more recent years, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Phillip, Prince Charles, Prince William, and the Duchess Cambridge with Prince George and Princess Charlotte have graced our shores.

Rudyard Kipling. 1895.

But one man is seldom remembered when we discuss our famous visitors.

That man is Rudyard Kipling, who made three visits to Victoria (in 1889, 1892, and 1907) and included it in  his poem “Song of the Cities”:

From East to West the circling word has passed,
Till West is East beside our land-locked blue;
From East to West the tested chain holds fast,
The well-forged link rings true!

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Here’s more about the British poet and novelist:
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• He was born in Bombay, India, in 1865, where his father was a professor at the Bombay School of Art.
• He was sent to a private boarding school in England and eventually returned to India in 1882.
• In 1889 he was living in London again and in 1892 had married an American woman, Carolyn Balestier. Later they moved to the US and settled in Vermont. They had three children. Their only son was killed in WWI, and one of their daughters, Josephine, died young.
• He wrote many books, including The Jungle Book in 1894 and The Second Jungle Book the following year. In 1896 he published The Seven Seas and Soldier Tales. He and his wife settled back in the English countryside in 1897, where his book Captain Courageous was published.

Kipling loved to travel the world, but his time in Victoria, British Columbia, made a special impression on him.

For instance, while staying at the Oak Bay Hotel, he wrote a poem (unpublished) after a "night out" with John Virtue, the proprietor of the Oak Bay Hotel where he stayed in 1907. The first verse of that poem reads:

A gilded mirror, and a polished bar,
Myriads of glasses strewn ajar,
A kind of faced man all dressed in white,
That's my recollection of last night.

Judging from Kipling's description of coming back to his room later that night, he must have been a little the worse for wear after a good night out!

In 1908 he wrote his famous description of the city for Collier's weekly magazine in 1908 (vol. 41):

To realize Victoria you must take all that the eye admires most in Bournemouth, Torquay, the Isle of Wight, the Happy Valley of Hong Kong, the Doon, Sorrento, and Camps Bay: add reminiscences of the Thousands Islands, and arrange the whole around the Bay of Naples, with some Himalayas for the background.

Kipling continued to travel the world for years and published many more books, poems, and short stories before his death in 1936 at age 70.

He received various honorary degrees and awards, some of which he declined, but he did accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was the first English writer to receive this award.

The pallbearers at his funeral included UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, an admiral, and a general.

He is buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in London. In Victoria, we still have an apartment building in Oak Bay named for him: the Rudyard Kipling.

​Did you know about Kipling’s visits to Victoria?  And do you agree with his description of our fine city?

Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

If you enjoyed reading about Kipling, check out this post about another historical figure who chose a significantly different line of work.

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