Theme: children's tales in the literary heritage of rudyard kipling contents introduction

Visits to South Africa
In early 1898, the Kiplings travelled to South Africa for their winter holiday, so beginning an annual tradition which (except the following year) would last until 1908. They would stay in "The Woolsack," a house on Cecil Rhodes's estate at Groote Schuur (now a student residence for the University of Cape Town), within walking distance of Rhodes' mansion.
With his new reputation as Poet of the Empire, Kipling was warmly received by some of the influential politicians of the Cape Colony, including Rhodes, Sir Alfred Milner, and Leander Starr Jameson. Kipling cultivated their friendship and came to admire the men and their politics. The period 1898–1910 was crucial in the history of South Africa and included the Second Boer War (1899–1902), the ensuing peace treaty, and the 1910 formation of the Union of South Africa. Back in England, Kipling wrote poetry in support of the British cause in the Boer War and on his next visit to South Africa in early 1900, became a correspondent for The Friend newspaper in Bloemfontein, which had been commandeered by Lord Roberts for British troops. ⁸
Although his journalistic stint was to last only two weeks, it was Kipling's first work on a newspaper staff since he left The Pioneer in Allahabad more than ten years before. At The Friend, he made lifelong friendships with Perceval Landon, H. A. Gwynne, and others. He also wrote articles published more widely expressing his views on the conflict. Kipling penned an inscription for the Honoured Dead Memorial (Siege memorial) in Kimberley.
Sussex
In 1897, Kipling moved from Torquay to Rottingdean, East Sussex – first to North End House and then to The Elms. In 1902, Kipling bought Bateman's, a house built in 1634 and located in rural Burwash.
Bateman's was Kipling's home from 1902 until his death in 1936. The house and its surrounding buildings, the mill and 33 acres (13 ha), were bought for £9,300. It had no bathroom, no running water upstairs and no electricity, but Kipling loved it: "Behold us, lawful owners of a grey stone lichened house – A.D. 1634 over the door – beamed, panelled, with old oak staircase, and all untouched and unfaked. It is a good and peaceable place. We have loved it ever since our first sight of it" (from a November 1902 letter).
In the non-fiction realm, he became involved in the debate over the British response to the rise in German naval power known as the Tirpitz Plan, to build a fleet to challenge the Royal Navy, publishing a series of articles in 1898 collected as A Fleet in Being. On a visit to the United States in 1899, Kipling and his daughter Josephine developed pneumonia, from which she eventually died.
("Kim's Gun" as seen in 1903) "He sat in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammeh, on her old platform, opposite the old Ajaibgher, the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum."
-Kim
In the wake of his daughter's death, Kipling concentrated on collecting material for what became Just So Stories for Little Children, published in 1902, the year after Kim. The American literary scholar David Scott has argued that Kim disproves the claim by Edward Said about Kipling as a promoter of Orientalism as Kipling – who was deeply interested in Buddhism – as he presented Tibetan Buddhism in a fairly sympathetic light and aspects of the novel appeared to reflect a Buddhist understanding of the universe. Kipling was offended by the German Emperor Wilhelm II's Hun speech (Hunnenrede) in 1900, urging German troops being sent to China to crush the Boxer Rebellion to behave like "Huns" and take no prisoners.
In a 1902 poem, The Rowers, Kipling attacked the Kaiser as a threat to Britain and made the first use of the term "Hun" as an anti-German insult, using Wilhelm's own words and the actions of German troops in China to portray Germans as essentially barbarian. In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, the Francophile Kipling called Germany a menace and called for an Anglo-French alliance to stop it. In another letter at the same time, Kipling described the "unfrei peoples of Central Europe" as living in "the Middle Ages with machine guns."