AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED (ALS)

Batemans, 19 August 1911. Letter. Folds from mailing. Near Fine. Superb handwritten, unpublished two-page letter on both sides of a 9" x 7" sheet of paper folded in half so that the writing is not back to back. Written to John Fleming, the husband of Kipling's sister, Alice ("Trix"), about Trix's mental health following her mental breakdown after the deaths of their parents, which occurred the previous year. In part: "We are just back from a trip abroad and I find the enclosed letter for Trix waiting for me here. It is some time since I have had news and I have not cared to trouble you because I knew that if there was any news to tell you would have written it, but I should like to know how Trix is progressing. Mr Macdonald has written me that Trix would like to have the painted fire screen from the dining room at The Gables [Kipling's parents' home].... I sent the ... entrée dishes ... to be put with her other things & I sent at the same time an 'Outward Bound' edition which you said you thought she would like to have." SIGNED in full. In the same month this letter was written, Kipling wrote "In the Same Boat," a short story about psychological healing which was published in both HARPER'S MAGAZINE and later in the collection of tales A DIVERSITY OF CREATURES. With a printed description from Maggs Bros.

This was part of a Kipling family archive that came down through Helen MacDonald, a great niece of Rudyard Kipling's mother Alice MacDonald. Alice's three sisters were married to Edward Burne Jones, Edward Poynter, and Alfred Baldwin (father of 20th century British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin).