3. Rescue

©2024 Barbara Fisher, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0377.03

After rescuing the children from the horrors of Lorne Lodge, Alice was determined to erase the experience from their minds and hearts, a process she believed could be easily accomplished by a few months in the fresh country air. It was clear that Rudyard’s eyes needed a rest. It wasn’t clear what else was needed, what had been damaged and what needed to be repaired.

Alice dismissed Mrs Holloway as caretaker of the children, organized their things, and speedily removed her babes from the wood where she had abandoned them. She took them on a train trip, first to Staffordshire, then on to Essex. Everything was new for Trix, who had hardly been anywhere or seen anything aside from the dull landscape of Southsea. During the short train trip north from Southsea, Trix watched in wonder as the green and gold countryside flew by.

When they arrived at the Golding’s Farm on Clays Lane, on the edge of ancient Epping Forest, they were formally introduced to Mr Dally, a kind and gentle farmer who had been hired to provide a vacation for the children. He treated the children with respectful attention, showing them around the farm, touring them through the various out-buildings and describing their many purposes. Although everything about country life was new to Trix and Ruddy, they found it easy to adapt to its simple pleasures, quickly learning to run wild out of doors.

On the first morning at the farm, Mr Dally told the children the farm’s few prohibitions: NO ‘leaving open gates, throwing stones at the animals, breaking down the orchard trees’. Trix and Ruddy, used to the many restrictions of Lorne Lodge, ‘promised faithfully to do none of these things […] and entered into Paradise’.1 They easily obliged their mother, whose one command was not to come in to meals with the blood and dirt of the stables and woods on their boots.

During the warm summer months, Trix and Rud learned to ride plough-horses, climb trees, milk cows, drive the pigs out of the fields, and collect mosses, ferns, and acorns. They found the cows good-natured and responsive, and considered the lady pigs elegant with well-turned ankles and long eyelashes. Their teacher was Jarge, a farm boy who was about Harry’s age, but who resembled him in no other way. He never teased or made fun of the children’s ignorance, answering their questions seriously and thoughtfully. He let them ride with him in the farm wagon to the mill, where there was an actual windmill, a sight right out of a fairy tale.

For the whole summer, Rud and Trix played together outside in the fields and among the animals, birds, trees, and flowers. After accompanying the children to the farm, Alice left them largely to themselves. Trix was still wary, but knowing that Alice was nearby assured and calmed her.

Lessons had been completely suspended due to Rudyard’s poor vision. He had been prescribed strong glasses and banned from using his eyes for reading or studying. Thus, books were banished from the farm for Trix as well as Rudyard. Used to reading and hearing stories, Trix longed for her books. When she wanted to hear a story, she begged Rudyard to tell her one, and he happily obliged, making them up especially for her. Trix loved his stories, which ‘never began in Fairyland, or in a country so far away that it had a moon and stars of its own, as my attempts at romance did, but started from an old log in the duck-pond, or a ruined cottage half seen in the Forest, and then became wildly exciting. He had the gift, even then, of “hanging with jewels a cabbage-stump.”’²

In the autumn, when an outbreak of scarlet fever threatened the Baldwin home, Cousin Stanley was packed off to the farm to avoid possible infection. Rudyard, who had spent time with Stanley during his holidays, welcomed him to the farm and introduced him to the daily routines. Trix had never met her cousin. She liked him at once because Ruddy liked him. But she was not happy to have to share her brother. She and Rud had been a jolly twosome for the summer months and had been all in all to each other for as long as Trix could remember. Trix had to adjust to her cousin, a natural playmate for Rudyard—a boy who was slightly older than Trix, slightly younger than Rud. Stanley, a sweet and sensitive boy, made it easy for Trix to like him. He made sure to include her as part of a threesome when the older boys became great pals. Stanley tried to introduce Ruddy and Trix to cricket, but the rules of the game were too complicated and restrictive for them. They were in no mood for rules of any kind. Instead, they initiated Stanley into their riotous play, which he entered into with enthusiasm, quickly becoming the wildest of the three.

Trix had only one complaint—against the special rules that applied to her as a girl. When they visited the mill, the boys were allowed to jump around in ‘lovely, rumbling floury places’,3 while Trix was directed to stay still and keep herself neat and clean. She was not allowed to participate in rough and tumble activities with Ruddy and Stanley and was often reminded by Alice to behave properly, to comport herself like a young lady. She had no choice but to accept these restrictions, but she chafed under them. On Guy Fawkes Night, when there was great bonfire, Trix had to sit still and watch the flames, while Ruddy and Stanley pranced and capered through them. She was taught to ride properly on donkey-back, while the boys were allowed to sit face to tail in their shirt-sleeves. Trix wished for the freedom allowed to the boys and longed to have short-cropped hair and wear boy’s clothes like Ruddy and Stan.

When the winter weather arrived, the country idyll necessarily came to an end. Stanley was sent home, and the original Rud and Trix twosome was restored. In November, Alice became ill with shingles, and her sister Georgie came to the farm to look after her, while Rudyard and Trix were sent on ahead to London. Alice had taken lodgings for them in the city with an ex-butler and his wife in a tiny lodging-house in the Brompton Road, at number 227. When Alice recovered in a few weeks, she rejoined the children in London. This was Trix’s first visit to a big city, and she was not terribly impressed. She hardly noticed the grand buildings and broad boulevards, although she could not help but be awed by the huge red brick expanse of the old South Kensington Museum, just across the street from their lodging house. Trix, who was always ready to find romance in her new surroundings, invented a history for their unusual city home, imagining that the small, cozy house was a little country cottage that had been picked up and set down in a London street.

There was a delicious, sweet smell, which seemed to hang about the neighbourhood, and tantalized the children. Rud and Trix were convinced there must be a bakery nearby, which, despite several scouting expeditions, they could not find. One day, they begged their mother to locate the bakery and take them to it. She obliged and walked the excited children around the corner to the bakery. Once inside, surrounded by a variety of treats, they had trouble deciding what looked best. After much indecision, they chose to buy savoury meat pies, which, when tasted, were sadly disappointing. After sampling the pie, Ruddy lamented to Trix, ‘In fact, it is another lost illusion’. When they were alone on the walk home, Trix asked Ruddy ‘if the illusion had ever been in the pie; if so, had it been lost in the baking; and finally, what was it?’ Without any condescension, Ruddy explained the nature of an illusion, and how it was quite apart from meat and pastry. Trix was grateful for his words, which she said, ‘as usual let a flood of light in on my stupidity’.4

Trix was always grateful for Rudyard’s help in explaining the hidden secrets of the world. He and Cousin Stanley were her favourite teachers. She was especially grateful to Stanley for explaining one of the stubborn mysteries of life to her—how to tell the time. She could not learn, although she had struggled long and helplessly with the clock. One day, playing with Stanley at Wilden and still trying to hide her ignorance, she had inadvertently revealed that she could not tell the time. Stanley, less than a year older than herself, in three minutes of simple instruction in front of a clock, explained everything she needed to know.

Unlike Aunty, Ruddy and Stanley understood what it was that puzzled her and knew how to unravel mysteries. From her own experience, she concluded that young children would be best taught by children only a few years older than themselves. Young teachers, who had not lost touch with their students’ minds, would be able to explain difficulties and correct errors that had only recently puzzled themselves.

One day as a special treat, Alice took Trix on an outing along Brompton Road. Trix followed her mother along the crowded street, admiring the colourful shop window displays, until they arrived at the Lowther Arcade, which was a paradise of toys. Hoping to please Trix, Alice took her into a toy store to choose a doll, but Trix wasn’t interested in dolls. She didn’t care about glass eyes, curly wigs, and gaudy frocks. As they walked farther along Brompton Road, they came to a shop called Lorberg’s whose window displayed objects that fascinated Trix—’all steel and iron treasures, knives, scissors, some of them gold-chased and shaped like storks, chains, padlocks, revolvers, tools of every kind, and many of them small and glittering. It was better than any toy-shop, for everything was real’.5 Here was where Trix wished to choose a toy. Trix’s imaginary play featured adventure, violence, torture, and death, where revolvers, knives, scissors, and padlocks played their parts. Dolls had no part to play.

Directly across the street from the house on Brompton Road was the huge old South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). The children were given special student tickets, good for the whole season. Every day, Trix and Rudyard crossed the wide street and passed through the decorated entrance into the vast museum, where they roamed at will through the enormous halls, filled with the treasures of the world. Trix returned again and again to gaze up at a replica of Michelangelo’s David and to visit a large black and white marble Newfoundland dog, resting on a red marble cushion, embellished by fruits made of semi-precious stones.

Trix was fascinated and half-afraid of a watch in the shape of a skull made from ivory, enamel, and gems. After staring at the skull during the day, she was troubled by visions of it at night, where it appeared to be floating in the dark, growing large and menacing. Although she did not confess that the skull terrified her, Rudyard guessed there was something frightening her and told their mother about it. Alice responded sympathetically and had a night-light installed in Trix’s room.

The museum was crammed with wonders—animals, skeletons, minerals, costumes, fabrics, weapons, paintings, books, and more—all inspiration for new stories and games. When Trix and Rud discovered a statue of Buddha, big enough to enter through a little door in its back, they included it in a fantasy jewel heist they planned to pull off. The Buddha would be the hiding place for the stolen goods at the heart of the elaborate robbery plot, which also included disguises—soft shoes, dark clothes, plaited hair, and caps. Sandwiches were to be packed, forged telegrams were to be sent, a special parcel for the swag (a word they loved) was to be provided. The museum was their playground until January 1878 when the holiday ended, as Trix knew it would, and new accommodations had to be found for the children.

At the recommendation of the Macdonald sisters, Rudyard was enrolled at The United Services College, known as Westward Ho! The headmaster of the school, Cormell Price, was an old friend of the family.6 When Rudyard went off to school, Trix divided her time between lodgings in London with her mother and a return to Lorne Lodge.

Sending Trix back to Lorne Lodge seems at first both inexplicable and cruel, but Trix was not unhappy to return to Mrs Holloway and Southsea. While Rudyard wholeheartedly hated the place and its mistress, Trix did not utterly despise the house or the woman. Mrs Holloway had been her close and constant companion for six years, her teacher, and, in some ways, her protector. She had been the only mother Trix had ever known, and she had loved Trix. What troubled Trix the most during her years at Lorne Lodge was helplessly witnessing her brother’s mistreatment and misery. What had also caused her hurt, shame, and confusion was the taunting and touching of the loathsome Harry. But now, with Rudyard far off at Westward Ho!, Trix was freed from having to watch as he was bullied and beaten. With Harry working at a bank and no longer living at Lorne Lodge, she was clear of his unwanted attentions. Thus, the most unbearable aspects of Lorne Lodge were removed, while the familiar presence of Aunty Rosa remained.

The extreme loneliness Trix had suffered at Lorne Lodge was relieved on this second stay by the presence of two other boarders. Trix now had companions, two sisters—Florence (always known as Flo) and Maud Garrard. Although Florence was four years older than Trix, she welcomed Trix’s friendship and appreciated her wider knowledge, learning from her how to read properly, recite verse, and compose letters. Trix thought Florence both simple and sophisticated, with odd areas of wisdom and ignorance. One day when Rudyard came to collect Trix from Southsea in June of 1880, he met Flo and was immediately smitten. He remained enslaved by Flo for eleven painful years,7 while Trix grew apart from her after a year.

Alice chose to enrol Trix in the Notting Hill High School for Girls, an academic girls day school, which Trix’s cousin, Margaret Burne-Jones, as well as Jenny May Morris (daughter of William) had also attended. This time, Alice accepted the suggestions of her sisters for the board and education of her children. The United Services College, where Rudyard spent his school days, and Notting Hill both came highly recommended by family members. Trix entered Notting Hill as an untutored little girl and remained there from the beginning of the summer term 1878 until July 1883. When Trix first entered school at age ten, she was found to be not only poorly educated but oddly ignorant of the world. Her teachers were surprised that she had read a great chunk of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction and poetry and astonished to hear that seemed to know all of Shakespeare’s plays and could quote at length from them. Although she was behind in most of her studies when she arrived at the school, she quickly excelled in French, history, geography, dancing, music, and sewing, advancing properly from grade to grade. With encouragement, she became an excellent student.

During the first two years of Trix’s second stay at Lorne Lodge, Alice remained in England. She led her own life, staying with her sisters, visiting her friends, and occasionally looking in on Trix. Although Trix was comforted to know that Alice was nearby, she never had the expectation that she would live with her mother. When Alice could prolong her stays in England, she did, never feeling completely at ease in India. Lockwood, who had remained behind in India, visited Paris in 1878 in charge of the Indian Exhibits of the Paris Exhibition of 1878. He arranged for Rudyard to meet him there for a memorable five-week vacation, during which Rud had free run not only of the exhibition but of the entire city. Eleven-year-old Trix was not invited to join in this Parisian adventure. In 1879, Lockwood joined Alice in London, but at the end of the year, he sailed alone back to India, while Alice remained. Alice did not return to India until November of 1880, having spent three years in and near London. Before leaving for India, Alice arranged a new situation for Trix, close to the home of the Burne-Joneses.

Alice chose to board Trix with a female trio, the Misses Mary and Georgiana Craik and Miss Hannah Winnard at 26 Warwick Gardens in London. The three old maids had distinguished connections in academic, publishing, and literary circles. Georgiana was herself a prolific writer of children’s books and romances. The ladies ran a salon, attended by many cultured people, including poets Jean Ingelow and Christina Rossetti. The house was filled with lively literary talk, which Trix was encouraged to participate in. She was allowed to borrow freely from the large library and did. The ladies fed her rich food as well as good books. Rudyard frequently called on Trix at Warwick Gardens and spent most of his school holidays there. Initially, he enjoyed the ladies’ kind and decorous company, but eventually he found the ladies tiresome and boring. The ladies were solemn and serious, but Trix, who had an old-fashioned streak in her nature, enjoyed their society. Most of the time, Trix behaved as she had been taught, but at times she felt restless and weepy, acted like a baby, and demanded attention. The ladies indulged her. They encouraged her tendency to show off and appreciated her ability to recite and act.

Alice, back in India with Lockwood at the end of 1880, kept track of Trix’s progress through Rudyard, through the aunts who invited her to their homes, and through faithful family friend Edith Plowden, who visited Trix often.

While Trix’s aunts and uncles had neglected her when she was growing up at Lorne Lodge, they were generous and welcoming to her during this period. They invited her to dinner parties and to spend holidays with them. Finally, Trix got a taste of the intellectual and artistic richness of her aunt and uncles’ homes. She tested her experience against the many stories of almost unbelievable opulence and grandeur she had heard from Rudyard over their childhood years.

While spending the half-term holidays at the Grange in March of 1882 with her aunt and uncle, the Burne-Joneses, she was included in a dinner party where the celebrated Oscar Wilde was the guest of honour.

Excited to attend a party with adults, Trix dressed with care, spending extra time on her unruly hair. Her fringe (bangs), which refused to lie flat, was a life-long torment to her. Although by now she knew the Burne-Jones’s home well, she had rarely seen it displayed with such splendour. The dining room was bright with crystal and silver; white damask covered the heavily laden table. A menu card announced the many courses of fish, meat, game, pudding, pies, and jellies. To her surprise, she was seated opposite the famous wit and, from across the table, she observed him closely. She was not impressed. She thought he looked ‘like a bad copy of a bust of a very decadent Roman Emperor, roughly modelled in suet pudding’. His lips reminded her of the ‘big brown slugs we used to hate so in the garden at Forlorn Lodge’. She thought his pleasant voice was spoiled by his affected manner, and his floppy black bow better suited to her waist than to his neck. Throughout the meal, he talked incessantly, and, at any pause Phil [Philip Burne-Jones], who sat next to him, gasped, ‘Oscar, tell us so and so’, and set him off again. ‘He hardly seemed to look at Margaret who was as white and beautiful as a fairy tale, and took very little notice of Aunt Georgie. Uncle Ned [Edward Burne-Jones] was unusually silent, and winced, I think, when Oscar addressed him as ‘Master.’’8

Fourteen-year-old Trix was a keen observer and a clever reporter. She had strong feelings about unconventional and outrageous behaviour. Trix paid close attention not only to Wilde but also to the others’ reactions to him. She recognized that while both Phil and Ned admired Wilde, only Phil flattered and fawned over him. Wilde completely ignored the ladies, whom Trix found worthy of admiration. Trix’s remark about Wilde’s neglect of the ladies may have been a completely innocent observation or may have expressed her understanding or suspicion of his sexual nature.

Trix’s criticisms of Wilde, his demeanour, dress, and conversation were her own direct observations, but they were typical of the Kiplings’ view of eccentric behaviour. Alice Kipling and her Macdonald sisters socialized with bohemian artists, writers, and poets, yet cared deeply about appearances and propriety. On her own, Trix possessed and exercised the family’s ability to observe and report with acuity, even acerbity, while sharing the family’s bourgeois social values. Attracted to bohemian experiences while burdened with bourgeois values, three of the Macdonald sisters had married artists, but artists of a very respectable kind. At fourteen, Trix shared with her family this contradiction between artistic and intellectual interests on the one hand and social expectations and aspirations on the other. Inviting Oscar Wilde to dinner and then disapproving of his dress, demeanour, and conversation is a perfect expression of the Macdonald/Kipling attitude—intrigued and admiring but also distanced and disparaging.

By fourteen, Trix knew how to read a novel and how to interpret a poem. Living with the artistic ladies at Warwick Gardens, Trix was invited to compare her reactions to their more learned opinions. Shortly after the Oscar Wilde dinner party, Rudyard sent Trix one of his poems. It described a caged bird that had flown away and then been found dead. Mrs Winnard, Miss Georgie Craik, and Trix read the poem over several times and talked about how to interpret it. The older ladies found fault with the poem, considering the emotion expressed over the bird’s death to be disproportionate to the event. Trix explained with precocious certainty that the poem was an allegory about the death of love. The ladies dismissed Trix’s allegorical interpretation, and Mrs Winnard remonstrated, ‘Really Trixie I hoped we had eradicated your unfortunate tendency to think yourself wiser than your elders, but I fear we have only repressed it. Do you seriously think a little girl of your age [14] can understand somewhat abstruse verse better than two educated and mature ladies?’ Trix attempted to placate the ladies by responding, ‘Oh no—of course not. Only I know Ruddy so well, and the way he thinks and writes, that I feel I can understand him better than anyone’. Unconvinced, Georgie wrote to Rudyard expressing her doubts about Trix’s critical abilities. Rudyard replied that Trix’s interpretation was absolutely correct and vindicated her as an excellent reader of poetry and of himself. Trix felt triumphant. She understood her brother better than anyone else, and she understood how to read poetry, at the age of fourteen, better than many people of any age.9 At fourteen, Trix was already confident about her literary interpretations and unafraid to express them.

Rudyard visited Trix frequently while she boarded at Warwick Gardens and reported back to their parents about her progress. Although his reports were positive, Alice fretted over Trix’s state of mind and health and missed her sweet and bright company. She was concerned about the child she knew to be fragile. She beseeched Edith Plowden to take an interest in her, gain her confidence, and help her in whatever ways she could. She did not make these appeals of her sisters, who she felt were too occupied with their own lives to be bothered about Trix. As in the past, she did not encourage her sisters to become overly engaged with Trix, protecting her own place in her child’s affections. Nonetheless, Trix did visit with her aunts during this period and enjoyed the company of her cousins. Edith Plowden fulfilled her role as good friend, frequent visitor, and trusted reporter.

At the age of fourteen, when she began to menstruate, Trix became strangely sad. She was suddenly troubled by morbid religious thoughts. She recalled Mrs Holloway’s strict evangelical teachings and the violent, gruesome, and terrifying images they brought to her mind. When she saw menstrual blood and felt pain in her belly, she imagined these were expressions of her own guilt and sinfulness and was tormented about her own bad behaviour and worse thoughts. She was especially fearful that she would disappoint her parents in some way. When Rudyard visited her, he recognized that something was amiss. He believed his sister was delicate and shy and in need of careful handling, but he didn’t understand what was troubling her and could do nothing to help her. Then, as suddenly as these fears appeared, they vanished. Trix healed herself, banishing her melancholy or disguising its obvious signs for the time.

When Trix was at her most depressed, Rudyard was alarmed enough to write to their parents. Although Alice was concerned by Rudyard’s report, she did not consider returning to England to check up on Trix, nor did she consider removing Trix from England and bringing her back to Lahore. She had established a schedule by which she would return home with Ruddy and Trix in the cool weather in the early spring of 1883. Upsetting Alice’s plan, Rudyard returned home on his own six months earlier in November of 1882.

Trix remained in school in England, where, in her final year of studies, she performed so well that she was encouraged by her school mistress to apply to university. Trix was pleased to be recognized and recommended to go on with her education, but she knew this plan would never go forward. She knew that there was not enough money to support a university education for either child. If there were, it would have been used for Rudyard, who had also been encouraged to continue at university. Lockwood did not seriously consider sending Rudyard to Oxford and reassured himself that Rudyard’s bent towards literature was sufficient to carry him forward. Only Stanley, son of the wealthy Baldwins, attended university.

At the end of the year, Trix and Alice set sail towards home, towards India. On the voyage home, Alice was charged with looking after Maud Marshall, a girl of Trix’s age who had also been at school in England. Her family, stationed in Malaysia, had followed the usual course and had sent her home to be educated. Trix and Maud quickly discovered that they had much in common, especially a love of novels and an ambition to write them. They talked and read together over the long trip, becoming inseparable and promising to continue the friendship once they were settled back with their families. Trix was troubled by sea sickness on the long and often difficult voyage, but this important new friendship eased her queasy stomach. This was the beginning of life-long friendship.