{"product_id":"autograph-letter-signed-rudyard-kipling-dear-fleming-jack-3akkftid","title":"Autograph Letter Signed (“Rudyard Kipling”) to \"Dear Fleming\" (Jack Fleming, his brother-in-law) regarding Kipling's sister Trix’s finances, also with a number of references to Kipling’s son (“my boy John”),","description":"\u003cp\u003eConcerning Trix’s finances: Kipling confirms recent deposit into his sister’s account, the interest on the amount, and payments on the account, with numbers for each line, the total reading “£520: 19. 1 ¼” and discussions relating to the money’s investment and various points relating to the interest (“a higher rate […] cannot be obtained for the present”). Mentioning George Macdonald, a cousin of Kipling’s who was also his solicitor.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe letter is also eloquent on the subject of “my boy John’s illness”. John Kipling, who was 16 at the time, “went down with a bad go of mumps after he was officially supposed to have had them three weeks before at school”. The illness caused disarray to the family plans – “all our arrangements were knocked on the head \u0026amp; all visitors had to be put off. So we had barely a fortnight in the house we had taken near Lowestoft”. He also writes that the delay in responding to Fleming’s letter is due to them having “been away for a few days […] getting John off to school”. John died two years later during the Battle of Loos during WW1.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA letter that illustrates part of the collaborative effort between Trix’s brother and husband during a period when Trix was still unwell, recovering from the break down that was precipitated by the deaths of her mother and father. Rudyard and Trix Kipling experienced parental abandonment when their parents went back to India without them when Kipling was six, and Trix, three. They had had no forewarning of this separation, and experienced neglect at the hands of their foster family. The pair both wrote about the experience, it was immortalised by Rudyard Kipling as ‘The House of Desolation’ in his short story \u003cem\u003eBaa Baa\u003c\/em\u003e*, Black Sheep,* and by Trix in her later memoir, ‘Through Judy’s Eyes’. Although the family reunited when the children were older, this abandonment and trauma had a lifelong impact on (particularly) Trix’s mental health. Their parents’ deaths three months apart at the end of 1910, beginning of 1911, impacted Trix as a second abandonment (this time final), and she became so unwell her husband Jack tried several times (unsuccessfully) to have her institutionalised in the year that followed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrix had been very unwell in 1911 and 1912, however, Kipling had seen her shortly before this letter, in July 1913 in Scarborough, and had found her much improved. In this letter he indicates that he hoped to see her again “when she comes down to Harrow”, adding that “I should have gone when I was in Suffolk but my time there was cut up by my boy John’s illness.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePROVENANCE: Kipling family archive via Helen MacDonald, great niece of Rudyard Kipling’s mother Alice MacDonald.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Maggs Bros.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67974148751669,"sku":"218385","price":1000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/store.maggs.com\/products\/autograph-letter-signed-rudyard-kipling-dear-fleming-jack-3akkftid","provider":"Maggs Bros.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}