Autograph Letter Signed (“Rudyard Kipling”) to John Fleming (husband of Kipling’s sister, Alice (“Trix”)) about Kipling's sister Trix, and also mentioning his son, John.

Autograph Letter Signed (“Rudyard Kipling”) to John Fleming [husband of Kipling’s sister Alice “Trix” Fleming], 3 pages 8vo, Bateman’s, Burwash, Sussex, 20 September 1913.

A letter regarding Trix’s finances, also with a number of references to Kipling’s son (“my boy John”) who died in the First Wold War two years later.

“We’ve been away for a few days and getting John off to school or I’d have answered your letter before. Trix’s account at the Bank stands as follows: bank deposit; interest; payments since deposit etc. [The total reading:] £520: 19. 1 ¼ ... I am hoping to get to Trix when she comes to Harrow. I should have gone when I was in Suffolk but my time there was cut up by my boy John’s illness. He went down with a bad go of mumps ... and all our arrangements were knocked on the head & all visitors had to be put off ... we had barely a fortnight in the house we had taken near Lowestoft.”

Alice ("Trix") Kipling was the younger sister of Rudyard Kipling; the pair had a close bond that had been forged through shared childhood misery during their schooling in England. As was usual at the time the young Kiplings were sent back to England to go to school (when Rudyard was six; Trix, three) while their parents remained in India: their school-house at Southsea would later become infamous as the House of Desolation (so-called in Kipling's story Baa baa, black sheep). Trix and Kipling were especially close in their childhood and early adulthood and, although various complications (geographical distance; Kipling’s fame; and Trix’s struggle with mental illness) were at times obstacles to this, they remained devoted friends throughout their lives.

PROVENANCE: 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 (Artists) and Alfred Baldwin (father of 20th century British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin).

Stock Code: 218385