 |
 |
   |
|
|
|
|
The Hated Wife: Carrie Kipling, 1862-1939Editions
Review
As such she took control of their lives and Carrie had found her role. Married life for the couple started badly when they visited her colourful family in Vermont and briefly flirted with living there. The charm-free and pretentious Carrie quarrelled with her siblings about property and they returned to England. They could not live near the Kipling in-laws who never forgave her, considering her an adventuress. Three children, two girls and a boy, gave Kipling emotional satisfaction in an otherwise sour marriage. When their eldest daughter died while on a visit to the USA, a further pall settled on their gloomy liaison. The death of their son, who had enlisted early in the Great War, dealt them the blow from which they never recovered. Carrie continued her capable services to her husband and his work, a whinging chatelaine overseeing his life, while he, a martyr to severe stomach pains, retreated ever more deeply into his own privacy until his death in 1936. This would be a dull book were it not for the author’s admirable detective work. He has plundered Carrie’s eccentric relations and many of the great literary lions of the period to enliven a stern story. He goes some way into explaining her behaviour and reactions in the face of great adversity and has begun the process of reinstating her reputation from contemporary vilification. - review by Stewart Grimshaw |
|
John Sandoe [Books] Ltd |
When Carrie Balestier met Rudyard Kipling in 1889 he was 24, internationally famous, published all over the world and rich from his royalties. Four years his senior and self-admittedly plain, she had come to London in the wake of her dashing brother Walcott who was trying to tempt English authors with the prospect of secure American sales at a time when literacy piracy was rife. It was not Carrie with whom Kipling fell in love, but her brother. Were they lovers? Adam Nicolson is admirably discreet in the face of inconclusive evidence. Other Kipling biographers have been less reticent. After Wolcott died of typhoid on a business trip to Germany, Kipling proposed marriage and was accepted by Carrie. His family and most of literary and artistic London, including Gosse, Whistler, Ouida, Bram Stoker, Mrs. Humphrey Ward and George Meredith took against her, Henry James famously describing her as ‘this hard capable little person’.
Fax:
020 7581 2084