Lot 369

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Lot 369
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Rudyard Kipling ALS on Motherhood, Hired Help, & Publishing
Rudyard Kipling ALS on Motherhood, Hired Help, & Publishing
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Description:

Rudyard Kipling ALS on Motherhood, Hired Help, & Publishing

3pp of a bifolium, measuring 4.5" x 7", Brattleboro, Vermont, dated September 10, 1892. A lengthy, neatly written letter signed "Rudyard Kipling", addressed to Mrs. Mary Hallock Foote. Kipling apologizes for the delay in writing before remarking on Mrs. Foote's sick daughter, his own niece's health, and the role of mothers. He also goes on to playfully chastise Foot for ending "The Chosen Valley" and acknowledges his hypocrisy over hating inquiries about his publications while wanting to ask Foote a myriad of questions about hers. With flattened mail folds. Bold, clear signature. Very fine.

In part:
"…That news about your daughter is not good. When a man or a woman goes down with something it's bad enough but with a child - well…my brother in law's baby, a three toothed little maiden of fourteen months and much dignity. She is not quite well - a cold or something - and you can distinctly hear all our hearts beating all down the road when she sneezes. God certainly made the little ones but Eblis made their diseases. At the best of times one small child is full employment for all the grown-ups within hail. It is glorious to have gifts - two of them - So that you can express in both the ways the shadows of those things which you imagine but I can well see how there must be a big tug now and again between those gifts your own to you, and those other gifts that come to all mothers. I've a notion however that sometimes giving up is accounted as more than giving out. All the same Fate is queer and she lacks tact…Sometimes I wonder but more often I wish I had been born befo' de war. Then I would have taken my dollars down South and bought me a man and a woman and perhaps, got some work of them. How do you manage in Idaho? Chinamen at $60 a month or kidnapped aliens from railway gangs? The subject interests me more deeply than anything else on the top of Earth at present…We've had another indignation meeting and the vote is that this community views with alarm and disgust, the expressed intention of Mrs. Hallock Foote to end 'The Chosen Valley' next month. This community expected a solid year of the said story and refuses to be pacified even by the picture of the girl looking through the window…People drive me wild by asking me a whole lot of questions that I used to call Dee Impertinent but now - if you only know the amount of questions, all personal, all unauthorized, that I want to ask you!..." 

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936) was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. At the time this letter was penned, Kipling was on his honeymoon in the U.S. - staying at his wife's family estate near Brattleboro, Vermont. Kipling's works of fiction include the Jungle Book duology (The Jungle Book, 1894; The Second Jungle Book, 1895), and many short stories and poems, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "Mandalay" (1890). Despite his gifts, Kipling can be a controversial author, with many believing him to be racist, misogynistic, nationalistic, and imperialist in his views—though some scholars have argued that his ideologies were more complicated than he is given credit for.

Mary Hallock Foote (1847–1938) was an American author and illustrator. Upon moving out west, Foote keep a record of her travels and wrote stories for Eastern readers as a correspondent to "The Century Magazine" and other periodicals. She wrote several novels and became famous for her portrayal of the rough, picturesque life she experienced in the old West, especially that in the early mining towns. Foote was also a talented artist and one of America's best-known female illustrators in the 1870s and 1880s. She illustrated numerous stories and novels by other authors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Louisa May Alcott, Bret Harte, and others.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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