I wish you luck with your clouded Tiger
Autograph Letter Signed
1911.
A small one-sided autograph letter (approximately 120 words), to an unknown recipient, written in ink on "Bateman's Burwash Sussex" (Kipling's home from 1902-1936) stationary, and signed from Kipling, discussing the inspirations for his story "The Tomb of his Ancestors" (first published 1897), in original blank envelope. Kipling explains that his protagonist John Chinn was "certainly modelled on [Sir James] Outram" - a british general who fought in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and came to hold authority over a tribe known as the Bhils. Kipling seems particularly surprised by Outram's success in garnering support from "Brahmins and Rajputs" to "help him lick his bhils into shape as a regiment". He also explains that "the inscription of course (in the tomb itself) is the one to [Augustus] Clevland of Bhagalpur", an East India Company administrator who had a monument erected to him for winning the confidence of a tribe in Bihar called the Sonthals, and persuading them to peacefully trade instead of fighting. Very good condition.
In Kipling's story, the protagonist is seen by the indigenous tribe - the Bhils - as a reincarnation of his grandfather (also called John Chinn) who had won their trust before his death and is now viewed as a kind of deity, believed to ride out from his monument at night on a clouded, not striped, tiger.
Kipling describes the influences of Clevland and Outram in the creation of John Chinn and his grandfather, and these men's experiences of ingratiating themselves with indigenous people in India inspires the possibility for the peaceful resolutions to cultural differences which we see in Kipling's story.
Stock ID: 45962
