Kipling Rudyard

ref. 41834 — sending "Very many thanks for the Mason Monks & the Power Alcohol - which latter I will read and hold at your service for recall. I'm very glad that the Don begins to move. My. there gives me the idea that he will hasten with an immense slowness - Express trains at 18 m.p.h. do not promise expedition. I'm horribly afraid I shan't be able to be in Oxford on the 17th June but even if I miss that I expect we'll be able to meet a little later on." 2 sides 8vo. Bateman's Burwash Sussex headed paper 2nd June 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 were bought for £9300. 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" The recipient is very likely Kipling's friend Sir Charles OMAN 1860-1946 who was an eminent historian and Member of Parliament for Oxford. Oman nominated Kipling for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 which he was then awarded. He is also remembered for having received a presentation copy of a book from Kipling in 1907 which contained on its flyleaf the holograph manuscript of an as-yet-unpublished and later celebrated poem of Kipling's titled "The Coin Speaks". "The Don begins to move" is a reference to the new express train built by Doncaster Works which entered into service in 1922 but which doesn't seem to have impressed Kipling very favourably. unknown