BIB_ID
431404
Accession number
MA 1617.283
Creator
Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936.
Display Date
London, England, 1890?.
Credit line
Purchased as the gift of Edwin J. Beinecke, 1955.
Description
1 item (2 pages) ; 20.4 x 12.7 cm
Notes
This letter is one of eighteen letters from Rudyard Kipling to Henley written between January 1890 and November 1901 (MA 1617.282 - MA 1617.299).
Written from "Embankment Chambers, / Villiers Street, Strand" on stationery engraved with the address.
This letter is undated however a penciled notation in the top left corner of the letter marks it as the 2nd letter of the 18 letters of Kipling to Henley. The published letters cited below date the first letter to January 31,1890 and the third letter to September 23, 1890. This letter appears not to have been published and is not included in the Letters cited below.
Written from "Embankment Chambers, / Villiers Street, Strand" on stationery engraved with the address.
This letter is undated however a penciled notation in the top left corner of the letter marks it as the 2nd letter of the 18 letters of Kipling to Henley. The published letters cited below date the first letter to January 31,1890 and the third letter to September 23, 1890. This letter appears not to have been published and is not included in the Letters cited below.
Provenance
Purchased as the gift of Edwin J. Beinecke, 1955.
Summary
Saying "What is the use of this damned up digging of radishes to see how their roots are swelling? Admitting for the sake of argument that this is the Nineteenth Century and that poetry has been written since it began, surely it is the business of the 20th Century to keep any verse it thinks valuable. As regards the book you wrote me of, I am out of it, withdrawn millions of leagues and disinterested to the last point of disinterestedness. I cannot see why I should be done at all, and less why you whose time is valuable and who have work of your own to do should be told off to do me. Let the proprietor of that menagerie stall up his own beasts, instead of worrying better men / Yours explosively / Ruddy / P.S. If ever I do any good verse you bet I shall be known by it quite sufficiently and any how deliberate hunting for honour & credit is risky before the Gods. Ask your poet-puncher to keep me out / RK."
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