In ²Something of
Myself² Kipling writes: ³In 1885, I was made a Freemason by dispensation
(being under age) in The Lodge of Hope and Perseverance 782 E.C. because the
Lodge hoped for a good Secretary. They did not get him, but I helped, and got
Father to advise me in decorating the bare walls of the Masonic Hall with
hangings after the prescription of King Solomonıs Temple. Here I met Muslims,
Hindus, Sikhs, members of the Araya and Brahmo Samaj, and a Jewish Tyler, who
was a priest and butcher to his little community in the city. So yet another
world was opened to me which I needed.² We get a little more detail in a letter
Kipling wrote in the London Times, dated March 28, 1935: ³ In reply to your
letter I was Secretary for some years of the Lodge of Hope and Perseverance No.
782, English Constitution which included Brethren of at least four different
creeds. I was entered by a member of the Brahmo Samaj (a Hindu), passed by a
Mohammedan, and raised by an Englishman. Our Tyler was an Indian Jew. We met, of
course, on the level and the only difference that anyone would notice was that
at our banquets some of the Brethren, who were debarred by caste rules from
eating food not ceremoniously prepared, sat over empty plates. I had the good
fortune to be able to arrange a series of informal lectures by Brethren of
various faiths, on baptismal ceremonies of their religions.²
Kipling also received the Mark Master degree in a Lahore Mark Lodge and affiliated with a
Craft Lodge in Allahabad, Bengal. Later, in England he affiliated as an honorary
member of the Motherland Lodge, No. 3861 in London. He was also a member of the
Authorsı Lodge, No. 3456, and a founder-member of the Lodge Builders of the
Silent Cities, No. 4948, which was connected with the War Graves Commission and
which was so named at Kiplingıs suggestion. Another Masonic association was
formed when he became Poet Laureate of the famous ³Canongate Kilwinning, No. 2²
in Edinburgh, the Lodge of which Robert Burns is said to have served in the same
office. Enquiry of Brattleboro Lodge, No. 102, in Vermont, discloses no record
of Rudyard Kipling having visited during his residence in the community. Years
later, however, he accepted a fellowship in the Philalethes Society, an
organization of Masonic writers formed in the United States in 1928. The
February 1963 issue of ³The Philalethes², a publication of this Society,
recalls that, before the original list of forty Fellows was closed in 1932,
Kipling was proposed as the fortieth Fellow. When the Secretary wrote to advise
him that they wished to honour the author of ³My Mother Lodge², ³The Man Who
Would Be King², ³Kim² and other Masonic stories, Kipling accepted.
There seems to have
been some quality deep within his nature to which Freemasonry appealed. The idea
of a secret bond, of a sense of community, and of high principles among men
sworn to a common purpose, fitted his concept of a social order. To quote his
biographer Carrington: ³ Freemasonry, with its cult of common action, its
masculine self-sufficiency, its language of symbols, and its hierarchy of secret
grades, provided him with a natural setting for his social ideals.² On his
first trip to America in 1889, he made use of Masonic introductions whereby his
visit was enriched. An American novelist, Edward Lucas White, became a life-long
friend, and it is said that in their correspondence and association they made
continued use of Masonic terminology. Kipling was essentially a Craft Mason, and
there is no indication of interest in the extraneous branches of the
Institution. The place of his Mother Lodge in his affection is suggested in the
article read to the Leicester Lodge of Research on November 25, 1929 in which
reference is made to a current press item about Kiplingıs sending a ³Masonic
Tool² to his Mother Lodge in Lahore. It is not strange then that these feelings
be reflected in his work.
We find the reflection of Kiplingıs Masonic interest in three areas of his writing. There
are wholly Masonic poems, of which ³ The Mother Lodge² and ³Banquet Night²
are largely familiar to Masons; there are the overtly Masonic-based stories such
as ³The Man Who Would Be King², ³Kim² and those relating to the Lodge of
Faith and Works, No. 5837, English Constitution, such as ³In the Interests of
the Brethren², ³The Janeites² etc.; and there are the numerous Masonic
allusions which colour many of his poems and stories.
The Man Who Would Be King has been called a masterpiece. It is one of his earlier
stories and was written in India, about the strange adventure of two vagabonds, Daniel Dravot
and Peachy Carnegan, with whom the author became acquainted in an unusual way.
In a railway carriage, one of the two accosted the author Masonically and
persuaded him to take a message to the other ³on the square --- for the sake of
my Mother, as well as your own². The two adventurers go off on an unhallowed
expedition, and after two years one returns with a fantastic tale of experiences
in a kingdom beyond Afghanistan, where they found Masonic practices among the
natives, had used Masonry to further designs of power, and had met ultimate
disaster from which only one returned --- maimed, disfigured and demented ---
carrying the shrunken head of his erstwhile comrade. His story, from ecstatic
beginning to gristly end, defies imagination. The unscrupulous pair had found
the crude mountain tribesmen knowledgeable of the E.A. and F.C. degrees but
ignorant of the M.M. degree. Dravotıs fertile mind concocted the devious scheme
of using the Sublime degree as an instrument for control. So the plan
progressed, and a lodge was formed, when, lo, in a dramatic moment, the Masterıs
symbol was disclosed on the underside of the very stone used by Dravot as the
Masterıs seat. It corresponded to that on his Masterıs Apron. ³Luck again²,
says Dravot to Peachy, ³ they say itıs the missing Mark that no one could
understand the why of...² and then Dravot declared himself ³Grand Master of
all Freemasonry in Karfiristan.... and King of Karfiristan, equally with Peachy!²
Then, in Peachyıs words, ³We opened the Lodge in most ample form².
But, it was too good to last. Call it human frailty or moral transgression, the sweet
wine of success was to much for Dravot, and when he looked for a Queen to share his
Kingdom, the god became a man of the earth. Sowing the winds of desire, he and
Peachy reaped the whirlwind of horror as the disillusioned natives turned on
them and left only the mentally-bereft junior partner to escape back to
civilization and death, with the dried and withered head of Daniel Dravot as the
relic of the man who would be king. This story was made into a movie and can be
found in some video stores.
Kim, a picturesque novel of the Indian underworld, has a high measure of artistry and
has been compared with E.M. Forsterıs Passage to India. Essentially, it is the story of
the education of a police spy who counteracted a Russian spying plot in India;
but it contains a thread of Freemasonry. Kimball OıHara was the orphaned son of
a wastrel ex-sergeant of the Mavericks, an Irish regiment, who had married the
nursemaid in a Colonelıs family. With both parents dead, the three year old
child was left with a native woman, who strung around his neck a leather
amulet-case containing his fatherıs entire estate: Kimıs birth-certificate,
his fatherıs ³clearance-certificate² and OıHaraıs Master Masonıs
certificate. Growing up in the native environment, the lad meets many
interesting characters and eventually finds his fatherıs old regiment; the
Masonic certificate is a talisman and as the story unfolds Kim rises to the
challenge of his heritage.
Kipling seems
ever-ready to insert, often in an incidental manner, Masonic allusions suggested
by the ritual, terminology and symbols with which he was so intimately
acquainted, and which had become embedded in his mind. The interested reader,
who is persistent, will find more of such, often when least expected. Sir George
MacMunn wrote: ³Kipling uses Masonry in much the same way he uses the Holy
Writ, for the beauty of the story, for the force of the reference, and for the
dignity, beauty, and assertiveness of the phrase. There is one more effect that
familiarity denies us which is present in the Masonic allusion and that is the
almost uncanny hint of something unveiled.² It is certain that in their search
for a good secretary, the Brethren of ³Hope and Perseverance² found one who
became an exemplar of the great principles of our Art, in his life, work and
influence. Surely his spirit must have been present at the memorable ceremony at
the Ashoka Hotel in New Delhi, India on November 24, 1961, when the new Grand
Lodge of India was consecrated, comprising 145 Lodges over whom the Grand Lodges
of England, Ireland, and Scotland had relinquished their authority. And at this
point, in conclusion, some lines (non-Masonic) seem appropriate as placed by
Kipling at the end of his collected works.
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