Imperial Gothic: The Best Horror Stories of Rudyard Kipling

So Much More Than Just The Jungle Book

Imperial Gothic could only mean The Best Horror Stories of Rudyard Kipling. The word ‘Kipling’ is enough to evoke images of Colonial India, of Kim, Mowgli and The Jungle Books. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) is also known for a small number of select horror stories which capture the life of Colonial men and women on the sub-continent, the grass widows, the common soldier or officer doing his duty in the heat and loneliness, some adulterers or suicides. This Indian flavor has been described as “Imperial Gothic”, where the surroundings and strangeness of India invades the propriety and respectability of the English. Kipling’s opening of “The Mark of the Beast” sums up this attitude succinctly: “East of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia, and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and modified supervision in the case of Englishmen.”

Kipling’s “Imperial Gothic” is fed by “…a violent strain in his writing and an intellectual interest in cruelty.” Kipling’s difficult early life in a harsh and unloving boarding school imprinted him with a love of the dark and seedy. It is often these elements that find themselves into his horror stories. His earliest stories come from his teens and early twenties when he worked as a newspaper man for the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, India. As often as not, the terror in Kipling’s earlier stories are based in the grotesque and violent rather than in the supernatural, though he wrote both types of tales. The ghosts and monsters of “The Mark of the Beast” and “The Phantom Rickshaw” are counter-balanced by the non-supernatural situations in “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes” and “The Man Who Would Be King”.

The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes

“The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes” from Quartette (1885) tells of a colonial soldier who falls into a pit where condemned Indians live. Any attempt to leave the “village of the dead” is stopped by rifle fire on one side and by quicksand on the other. The soldier is tormented/torments a high-caste Brahmin who has been trapped there for two years. They escape using a map left by another inmate. The Brahmin knocks out the soldier, who is later rescued by his own servant. The tale weaves a dark setting worthy of Poe, but fails to provide any real punch at the end.

The Phantom Rickshaw

“The Phantom Rickshaw” from Quartette (December 1885) tells of the lives of Englishmen and their fickle natures. A spurned lover who dies because of his indifference haunts the officer in question. He is tortured by visions of a spectral rickshaw inhabited by his mistress and her coolies. The sight drives him to confess his wrongdoings to his new fiancée, who leaves him.

My Own True Ghost Story

In “My Own True Ghost Story” from Week’s News (Feb 25, 1888) Kipling relates an actual event that took place in a run-down dak-bungalow. He builds the short tale in traditional ghost story fashion, only to give the actual explanation in the end. The sounds of a phantom billiards game in a small room prove to be a rat and a window shutter supported by a servant’s lies.

The Return of Imray

“The Return of Imray” or “The Recrudescense of Imray” (1888) is a sequel to “The Mark of the Beast” (which was written earlier but published later), featuring the same character, Strickland, who rents a bungalow once owned by his missing friend, Imray (supposedly returned to England). The narrator visits Strickland and finds the house haunted by a presence, an evil air that Strickland’s dog, Tietjans, also notices. The dog refuses to stay in the house at night. Later, while removing snakes from the attic, the two men discover Imray, his bound body with a cut throat. The murderer proves to be his servant, Bahadur Khan, who killed the Englishman because he gave his small son a fatal fever. Khan kills himself with a snake’s bite and the presence is removed from the house. Like “The Mark of the Beast” the story hinges on an insult to an Indian that results in tragic consequences.

The Man Who Would Be King

“The Man Who Would Be King” (1888) is one of Kipling’s best-loved short stories, made into a film in 1975, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. The narration of this story is largely an autobiographical portrait. The descriptions of life in an Indian newspaper, the deathly heat of the summer, show what Kipling had to endure as a young man. But the newspaper man only provides the frame for the two central characters. Largely an adventure story, “The Man Who Would Be King” features a gruesome ending that qualifies for its inclusion here. Peachey Carnehan and Dan Dravet are two adventurers who go to distant Kafiristan and take over, calling themselves Gods. Later when Dan is proven to be human the natives turn on them. Dan is hurled into a ravine and Peachey is crucified between two pine trees. The crippled Peachey returns to India with his friend’s head and crown.

The Mark of the Beast

“The Mark of the Beast” (Pioneer July 12-14, 1890) was an early story that preceded Kipling’s move to London, where Sir Ian Hamilton brought Kipling to the notice of important editors like Andrew Lang and William Sharp. “…Lang returned the manuscript as abruptly as if he had picked up a snake, with the comment, ‘I would gladly give Ian a fiver if he had never been the means of my reading this poisonous stuff which has left an extremely disagreeable impression on my mind!'” Sharp wrote: “I would strongly recommend you instantly burn this detestable piece of work. I would like to hazard a guess that the writer of the article in question is very young, and that he will die mad before he has reached the age of thirty.”

Despite the cool reception, Kipling fared well in London, though lonely and over-worked. During this time he penned two superior tales, both about India. The first is a story that derives from Kipling’s own poor eyesight. As a child Rudyard had mistaken an apple tree for his grandmother while at playing sword-fighting. A doctor diagnosed this episode as an optical delusion. Kipling suffered from such when overworked. He uses the strange feeling of an attack in this tale.

At the End of the Passage

“At the End of the Passage” (August 1890) from Lippincott’s Magazine tells of a group of Englishmen gathered for comradeship and reflection in a rundown station in remote India. The officer living there fears a strange presence in the room at the end of the passage. Eventually it drives him to suicide. His friends face the strangely unseeable presence but can do nothing to remove or define it.

The Finest Story in the World

“The Finest Story in the World” (Contemporary Review, July 1891) tells of a writer who cultivates a friendship with a younger man so that he might exploit his wonderful talent of reliving the past through visions. Though the writer marvels at the sights his friend can describe, it proves for unsatisfying copy. The young man loses the ability in the end once he discovers the “gentler sex”.

Leaving London in 1892, Kipling’s time as a horror writer had for the most part ended. He met his wife Caroline Balestier in London, moved to America, where he wrote The Jungle Books and Captains Courageous, left there in scandal four years later and resettled in England. Though his years in Vermont ended in bitter controversy, it is the tragedy of 1899 that wounded Kipling so deeply. Coming out of a terrible fever in New York, Kipling awoke to find his eldest daughter, Josephine, had died of the same sickness. Five years later, he would write one of his most tender stories and his greatest ghost story, “They” (1904).

They

“They” is unusual for several reasons. Firstly, its setting is not India, but America, though the story was written in England. And secondly, rather than reveling in the grotesque and violent, it is a reserved and haunting story. Filmed as They Watch in 1993, starring Patrick Bergin as the stricken father and Vanessa Redgrave as the lonely woman who can see the dead. The film departs from Kipling but is more frightening for it, introducing a bird-ghost that haunts the dead.

Wireless

Kipling’s fascinations with machines and new technology is evident in “Wireless” (Scribner’s January 1902) . The idea of radio is so commonplace today that this story seems less haunting than it did to those in the age of Marconi. “Wireless”, though well-written, is dated and suffers for it with modern readers. Rod Serling used a similar idea for the television show The Twilight Zone episode called “Static”.

The House Surgeon

“The House Surgeon” (Harper’s Magazine, September-October 1909) is a weak sample of the psychic investigator school seasoned with unKipling-like humor. Unlike most of his work, the tale takes place in England, in a manor house called Holmescroft. The place isn’t haunted by spirits but has a gloomy atmosphere that depresses the inhabitants. The solution proves to be two of three sisters, the original owners, have created this shadow by dwelling on the other sister’s death. The narrator vanquishes the gloom by convincing the sisters the death was not suicide but accidental. The final result seems almost more spoof than a ghostbreaker tale.

Mary Postgate

For much of Kipling’s later life, writing had taken second place to politics and notoriety. Despite this, he did write one final horror story during World War I, a time when he suffered another great personal loss. His son, John, died at the Battle of Loos, fighting the Germans. The only other horror story set in England, “Mary Postgate” (The Century, September 1915) is chilling perhaps in a way that Kipling did not intend. The plot concerns a wounded German pilot who is found by a colorless and timid woman who is employed as a companion. The pilot, who earlier killed a small girl with a bomb from his plane, must suffer Mary’s vengeful execution. The character, which Kipling uses as a foil for his own hatred, seems cold, ruthless and psychotic. This last bitter entry is neither cathartic nor touching as in “They”. Kipling possessed a fear and dislike of the German people dating back to before the Boer War, but like Cassandra his warnings fell on deaf ears. Though some critics have thought that Kipling’s venom came from the loss of his son, the story was written six months before his son’s death, making this impossible.

Conclusion

In the end, Kipling the horror writer can be said to be the young Kipling, the before-Mowgli Kipling, who saw the world with a pallet of violence and strange sensations, the Kipling who took his inspiration from the Indian sub-continent. Of his later works, only “They” is of remarkable quality, being his swansong, one last gift to his daughter, Josephine, and his millions of readers world-wide. Imperial Gothic is now a page from history but we will always have the best Horror stories of Rudyard Kipling.