Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was the consummate writer of the Raj, one whose work best casts lights on the prejudices and inner life of the British in India. His writings from Lahore during the mid- 1880s made him world-famous. They are slowly being re-read by some scholars for their subtle undermining of the Raj, despite Kipling's later conservative reputation.

Rikki Tikki Tavi, for example, is one of the most gripping of children's stories. The interface between the human and animal realities is seamless. The Jungle Book is one of the few Victorian stroybooks still read by children today. Plain Tales from the Hills (Oxford World's Classics) , most of which was first published in The Civil and Military Gazette newspaper in Lahore, is incredibly well written and clever. Clear racism is mixed with relentless digs at the Raj by someone who relishes systemic absurdities with lyricism and insight.

Is this CDV actually by the Lahore and Muree photographer John Burke (1843-1900)? John Burke was Kipling's contemporary when he returned from London to take up a job as an assistant editor at the Gazette in the early 1880s. The back of the card has the firm's name imprinted, and a negative number that means it could have been ordered from the store like the standard customer portrait.

This is the only example I know of where a Burke CDV has its trademark information pasted over the back. Examination suggests it is blank behind the paper. The printer was Marion and Co., a prestigious printing house which represented Burke's Afghan War albums in the London market.1 Generally, Burke's own CDVs also had his studio's name on the front of the card.

Was Kipling this bald in his twenties? He left Lahore in 1887, the year Plain Tales from the Hills was published. A sketch made of him by his father just before he left India in 1889 shows him with far more hair than in this image.2

An 1895 portrait by Elliot & Fry in London shows a similar hairline, suggesting that the Burke CDV is from the 1890s. Kipling would have been around 30. The CDV was sold to people in Lahore and elsewhere in the Punjab who knew Kipling and knew the stories in Plain Tales from the Hills from the newspaper. Given Kipling's father's longtime association with Lahore, where he ran the Lahore Museum, it may well have been ordered, the image provided by, or even sold to the writer's family.

KIPLING AND BURKE

We do know that Kipling appreciated John Burke's work. Kipling was present at the foundation stone laying of Aitchison College on November 1, 1886. He published this review of John Burke's photographic series on the Darbar on December 6, 1886:3

KIPLING AS A CHILD

What sort of a boy was Rudyard Kipling? He was born and spent his earliest years in Bombay. Those who are interested in this period of Kipling's life will find some amusement in the remarks of an American in London who was quoted via The Los Angeles Times in The Bombay Gazette, on May 26, 1900. Kipling was at the height of his fame, having published such enduring hits as The Jungle Book:

"I met an Army Officer's sister who had been in India", she says, "and they were speaking of the Anglo-Indian writer. 'I was brought up with him,' said the Army woman. 'He was the most horrid little wretch of a boy imaginable.' 'And you played with him?' I asked thinking in my own little American way that it would be something to be proud of.' 'Played with him? None of us played with him. He was sulky sensitive brutal-oh, a little wretch, I assure you. But don't repeat it,' And so I haven't."- "M.A.P."

1. 1. See for example, On Service in India: The Mein Family Photographs 1870-1901 , p. 10, which reproduces an ad which lists Marion & Co. as dealers for Burke's Kabul War 1880 photographs.
2. 2. Thomas Pinney, Kipling's India, Fig. 8
3. 3. I am thankful for this reference to Prof. Thomas Pinney, author of Kipling's India: Uncollected Sketches 1884-88 who found the piece collected in Kipling's Suusex notebooks.