- 5/29/2025
1. "If-" (incomplete)
2. "For All We Have and Are"
3. "Mesopotamia"
4. "My Boy Jack" (about the death of his son John, in the First World War)
5. "If-" (Complete):
''If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!''
2. "For All We Have and Are"
3. "Mesopotamia"
4. "My Boy Jack" (about the death of his son John, in the First World War)
5. "If-" (Complete):
''If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!''
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Welcome to Bateman's. This glorious 17th century house was the place where Kipling lived for the
00:11last 34 years of his life. We're going to go in through the ancient entrance with 1634 over the
00:19door and reach for the bell pull. Rajad Kipling discovered Bateman's in 1901 when he and his wife
00:41Carrie were searching for a new home away from the prying eyes of celebrity hunters.
00:47They moved to Bateman's in 1902 and may also have still been trying to escape their grief at the
00:54death of their daughter Josephine. She had died from fever three years earlier aged just six.
01:01John Walker and Mike Lacey from the Kipling Society guide us through the Kipling family home. He'd been
01:11a very unhappy man he'd lost the daughter that meant everything to him the best beloved he'd written the
01:16Jungle Book and the Just So stories for. And it's thought that when he arrived at Bateman's he was
01:22never to be the same again. However he was as happy as he could get. Carrie she was a loving wife to him
01:30but ever so wary of anyone else who may have wanted to get in the way. So here in the hall we actually
01:40have a tiny little effectively a squint which is the window from Carrie's office and anyone coming
01:46into the house here would have had to get past the glare the stare of Caroline Kipling. She did it for
01:54the best because she facilitated him. Kipling lived in Victorian times when to show despair was sometimes
02:02to show weakness. It was at Bateman's in 1910 that he published his most famous piece of verse reflecting
02:11upon the need to keep a stiff upper lip and advising his only son John how to be a man.
02:17If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can
02:26trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait
02:33and not be tired by waiting or being lied about don't deal in lies or being hated don't give way to
02:41hating and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or
02:50walk with kings nor lose the common touch. If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you. If all men
02:58count with you but none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of
03:06distance run. Yours is the earth and everything that's in it. And which is more? You'll be a man, my son.
03:18So I think we should really go through into the dining room now. And it's very small. For a man of
03:30his importance you'd expect some sort of grand room. But of course Rudyard Kipling was to say the least
03:37in his domestic arrangements understated. The point about Kipling's dining room is that it's intimate
03:44so there would never have been a large gathering in here. But the people who did come would have been
03:49some significance usually. And here they would discuss the huge range of subjects. There must have
03:57been regular mention of what was common knowledge at the time that our soldiers were not doing terribly
04:04well out in the Boer Wars. And so I would imagine too that each time the conversation
04:14turned to soldiering it would be recognised that Kipling was the soldier's poet. And he saw that in Europe
04:22that very war was coming. Kipling believed that the South African campaign at the turn of the century
04:30had shown that British soldiers were unready for a large-scale conflict. To help them to prepare
04:36he set up and financed rifle clubs and spoke at recruiting meetings long before the opening of
04:43hostilities. Kipling described the Boer Wars in South Africa as a first-class rehearsal for Armageddon
04:52and felt sure that this conflict was already brewing in Europe. In 1904 Kipling had written a piece
05:00called the army of a dream. He saw a Britain where military service would be the done thing for every
05:07able-bodied man. In the years before World War One here at Batemans Kipling was writing and speaking
05:16about the need to be ready.
05:20When the expected war did come the British Expeditionary Force was short of men trained to fight.
05:26By the end of 1914, after the battles of Mons, Le Cateau and Ypres, 92,000 soldiers had died.
05:35They were unprepared, under-resourced and ill-equipped and struggled to hold the line whilst Britain
05:42scrambled to find reinforcements. The British public looked to Kipling for commentary and were waiting for
05:50his response. Alongside headlines such as broken British regiments and battling against odds, Kipling's
06:00first verse of the war was published in the Times newspaper on September 2, 1914. This is an extract from
06:09World War Two, 1904. This is an extract from the World War Two, 1904. For all we have and are, for all
06:17our children's fate, stand up and take the war. The Hun is at the gate. Our world has passed away in
06:25wantonness or throne. There is nothing left today but steel and fire and stone. Though all we knew depart,
06:33the old commandments stand. In courage, keep your heart. In strength, lift up your hand.
06:42Once more we hear the word that sickened earth of old. No law except the sword, unsheathed and
06:49uncontrolled. Once more it knits mankind. Once more the nations go to meet and break and bind a crazed and
06:58driven foe. No easy hope or lies shall bring us to our goal, but iron sacrifice of body, will and soul.
07:08There is but one task for all, one life for each to give. What stands if freedom fall? Who dies if England live?
07:19Kipling's son John was keen to enlist. At the outbreak of war, John Kipling was only 16 and like many of his
07:31friends, he was anxious to be in the war before it ended. John was desperate to enlist. John set off for
07:38Maidstone and was refused. His vision was certainly poor. Kipling used his influence and particularly with
07:47Lord Roberts, who had been a friend for very many years, to engineer for John a commission into the
07:53Irish Guards. There's a record in Carrie's diary and in her letters, and she says that much against
08:00his better judgment, Kipling was prevailed upon to help his son join the army.
08:06We're standing on the landing, just outside Roger Kipling's study, and immediately outside the
08:17Kipling's bedroom. Now as a couple, they'd had the awful tragedy of losing their favourite child.
08:26And now here we are, no more than about 15 years later, and the poor woman, Carrie, must have been in
08:33complete emotional turmoil. She records, having stood on these stairs, seeing her son John go off to
08:42war, inevitably never to come back, calling to her from these stairs, send my love to Daddo.
08:51And all around us are images of Kipling as a young man, only age 25, in his Indian tunic, bright-eyed,
09:01bushy-tailed, and opposite the painting of him when he returned to England after his tragedy in America, losing
09:10Josephine. Both these pictures are by John Collier, who was the outstanding late Victorian portrait
09:17painter. And as John stood on these stairs, if those paintings were where they are now, which they may not
09:24have been. Everything around here must have registered in John's mind, perhaps, who knows,
09:30that this was to be his last time in this house, which had meant everything to him.
09:40John Kipling was sent to fight in France on his 18th birthday. Shortly after his arrival there,
09:47John wrote to his father. Dear F, just a hurried line as we start off tonight. The front line trenches
09:55are nine miles off, so from here it won't be a very long march. This is the great effort to break
10:01through and end the war. The guns have been going deafeningly all day, without a single stop. We have
10:08to push through at all costs, so we won't have much time in the trenches, which is great luck. Funny to
10:14think one will be in the thick of it tomorrow. They're staking a tremendous lot on this great
10:20advancing movement, as if it succeeds, the war won't go on for long. You have no idea what enormous
10:26issues depend on the next few days. This will be my last letter, most likely for some time, as we
10:32won't get any time for writing this next week, but I will try and send field postcards. Well, so long,
10:38old dears, dear love, John. This was John Kipling's last letter. He died at the Battle of Luz on September
10:49the 27th, 1915. The British Army suffered 50,000 casualties at Luz. John's battalion, the Irish Guards,
11:00suffered particularly badly, losing 80% of their regiment from just this one short battle. John was
11:07reported missing in action, and was last seen with a shattered jaw, stumbling and weeping, so that
11:14another soldier said he didn't approach him out of embarrassment. Kipling set to work, as did many
11:22parents at the time, to try to trace his son. One would assume that a father who's lost his son in a
11:30war which he had predicted for many years, and which he still felt could have been avoided, would have
11:38taken his anger to the government immediately, and to the public in general. Instead it's clear that
11:44Kipling carried on his writing work. He was working for the government, and also working for newspapers,
11:52and producing his own material, that he carried on doing what he had always done. And it is clear too,
12:00that some of his writing was critical of government and of leadership in the army and the navy. And so I
12:09think we could paint the picture of Bateman's in those years after John's death as one of darkness.
12:19Kipling still worked hard. He directed his energy and experience into writing war poetry. Some of his
12:29verse described how badly the war was being run. Following a disastrous campaign in Mesopotamia in 1916,
12:38Kipling wrote savagely and very memorably about the way in which those in charge had left men to die.
12:45Mesopotamia 1916. They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young, the eager and wholehearted whom we gave.
12:57But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung, shall they come with years and honor to
13:05the grave? They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain, in sight of help denied from day to
13:14day. But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain, are they too strong and wise to put
13:22away? Their lives cannot repay us, their death could not undo the shame that they have laid upon our race.
13:31But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew, shall we leave it unabated in its place?
13:45Okay, we're walking down the great staircase at Bateman's with the wonderful oak panelling.
13:51And as we reach the bottom of the stairs, just before we go straight ahead into the hall, we're
13:56turning right. We're now coming into what nowadays is described as the parlour, which to Kipling would
14:03have been the drawing room. And this is the heart of the family home.
14:07Before us is a phonograph, an Edison phonograph. Kipling himself was more or less totally unmusical.
14:20However, it's known that he would use music, particularly musical songs and hymns when composing
14:27his own poems. It's also known that John Kipling, the son, had a phonograph or some sort of early
14:36recorded music machine.
14:43In 1916, Kipling wrote one of the most moving poems of the First World War,
14:49often thought to be about his own son, John.
14:52In May of that year, at the Battle of Jutland, a 16-year-old ship's boy on board HMS Chester was
15:01fatally wounded. In spite of his injuries, Jack Cornwell stood by his post. When brought back to
15:08England, Jack's body was buried in a common grave. It wasn't long before the newspapers took up a call
15:16to honour him. After considerable public pressure, Jack Cornwell was reburied with full military honours
15:24and a Victoria Cross. By this time, John Kipling had been missing, presumed dead, for almost a year.
15:33Both Jack Cornwell and John Kipling, two very brave young men, have been mixed together and given a
15:43great disservice in our memories. And it is worth, it is worth every time coming back to this point,
15:52because they are representative of a generation which was lost. I think My Boy Jack is such a moving,
16:01wonderful piece of poetry that we owe it to Kipling to understand it better.
16:06Have you news of My Boy Jack? Not this tide. When do you think that he'll come back?
16:16Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. Has anyone else had word of him? Not this tide.
16:25For what is sunk will hardly swim. Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
16:31Oh, dear, what comfort can I find? None this tide, nor any tide.
16:41Except he did not shame his kind. Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
16:49Then hold your head up all the more, this tide, and every tide.
16:54Because he was the sun you bore, and gave to that wind blowing, and that tide.
17:15We're moving up the grand stairs. As we turn right, we go into Kipling's study.
17:24We must remember that Kipling was to go on working. He's a man of 50, and when we examine his later
17:32materials, we have to remember this is an older man.
17:36Kipling remained at Bateman's until his death in 1936. The war poetry he wrote here in his study
17:43is an important reflection, and of great historical record.
17:47Rudyard Kipling's poems found their mark, powered by political dissatisfaction and personal loss.
17:59Kipling's home Bateman's was of course his final home. When he came to Bateman's he rediscovered
18:04Old England. The Old England of the First World War, the Old England of the 19th century, the Old England of
18:12the 18th century. Bateman's is timeless. Kipling, when you read his stories, you understand quickly
18:18that he is writing in layers. Everything to him is one layer of history upon another. The war years here,
18:26obviously very, very significant because of the great loss, compounding the loss of the daughter. But
18:32Bateman's was his holy of holies, his one true and final home.
18:51If by Rudyard Kipling
18:56If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
19:01if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too,
19:07if you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
19:14or being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise.
19:21If you can dream and not make dreams your master, if you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
19:27if you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same,
19:34if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
19:40or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build them up with worn-out tools.
19:47If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss, and lose,
19:53and start again at your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss.
19:59If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone,
20:06and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them,
20:11hold on. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch,
20:20if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much,
20:28if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run,
20:33yours is the earth, and everything that's in it, and which is more? You'll be a man, my son.
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