"RECESSIONAL"

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 19, 24 January 1938, Page 4

"RECESSIONAL"

ORIGINAL FOR NATION

A FAMOUS POEM'S ESCAPE

Lord Baldwin has presented the manuscript of Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional" to the British Museum, where it is now on exhibition, says "The Times" of December 20. In a communication to "The Times" Dr. H. I. Bell, Keeper of the Manuscripts at the Museum, tells the story of how the poem was rescued by chance after its author had thrown it away. Dr. Bell writes: — Kipling's "Recessional" has been read, sung, and quoted by a larger number of people than almost any poem of recent times; but few of those tc whom it is so familiar know the circumstances of its first publication, or how near it came to being never published at all. ; In July, 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Sara Norton, a jaughter'of the distinguished American scholar Charles Eliot Norton, was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Kipling at Rottingdean, Sussex, in a house which they had leased near to that of Sir Edward and Lady BurneJones. On the morning of the 16th hosts and guest were sitting together in. one of the rooms of the house, Kipling at his desk, where he was running through some papers and from time to time flinging one of them into a wastepaper basket close to where Miss Norton sat. IN THE WASTE BASKET. Her attention attracted, she asked if she might look at the contents of the basket. Leave was given and she picked out a sheet of paper on which was written a poem oh the Diamond Jubilee, headed "After." She was at once struck by its quality and protested at the idea of destroying it. Xt ought, she declared, to be published. Kipling demurred to this idea, but finally he yielded to her importunity so far as to say that he would refer the matter to the decision of "Aunt Georgie" (Lady Burne-Jones). A few steps across the village green decided it; Lady Burne-Jones fully agreed with Miss Norton's verdict. The poem must be published; and published it was. Kipling sat down to revise it, reducing its length from seven. to five stanzas. Miss Norton suggested the repetition of the last couplet of the first stanza, Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, ■ Lest we forget—lest we forget, as a refrain in the second and fourth, and this suggestion Kipling adopted, borrowing her pen for the purpose and writing opposite the first insertion " —written with 'Sallies pen—R.K." Then, still using "Sallies pen," he altered the last line to Thy mercy and forgiveness Lord, (a change subsequently abandoned in favour of the original version), added an "Amen" and his signature, and then wrote beneath: — done in council at North End House, July 16. Aunt Georgie Sallie Carrie & me. ■ SENT TO "THE TIMES." A fresh copy was now made and dispatched to "The Times," and next morning, July 17, the poem appeared on the middle page of that journal, under the now familiar title, "Recessional." . • The draft signed by Kipling as described above was given by him there and then to Miss Norton. 'She kept it among her treasured possessions, and it pasesd after her death to her sister. Miss Elizabeth Gaskell Norton. Forty years have gone by since Kipling wrote his "after-thought" on the Diamond Jubilee. The British Empire has this year once more celebrated a great festival, .the Coronation of King George VI; and Miss Norton felt that a more appropriate moment could not be found for marking the kinship and- the common heritage of the two peoples, or a better means of doing so than to present to the British nation the draft of "Recessional." The gift was made to Lord Baldwin of Bewdley, an old friend of the Norton family, in order that he might make the presentation. It has been gratefully accepted by the trustees of the British Museum; and the manuscript may now be seen in the Exhibition Galleries of our National Library.