In the autumn of 1882, having finished his course at school, a position was secured for him on the Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore, and he returned to his parents in India, who had meanwhile removed from Bombay to Lahore, where his father was at the head of the most important school of the arts in India. The Civil and Military Gazette is the chief journal of northwestern India, owned and conducted by the managers and owners of the Allahabad Pioneer, the ablest and most influential of all Indian newspapers published in the interior of the country.
For five years he worked hard and steadily on the Gazette. Much of the work was simple drudgery. He shirked nothing. The editor-in-chief was a somewhat grim man, who believed in snubbing his subordinates, and who, though he recognized the talents of the "clever pup," as he called him, and allowed him a pretty free hand in his contributions to the paper, yet was inclined to exact from him the full tale of the heavy routine work of a newspaper office.
But these were happy years. For the youth was feeling the spring of his own powers, was full of interest in life, was laying up stores of observation and experience, and found in his own home not only domestic happiness, but a sympathy in taste and a variety of talent and accomplishment which acted as a continual stimulus to his own genius. Father, mother, sister, and brother all played and worked together with rare combination of sympathetic gifts. In 1885 some of the verses with the writing of which he and his sister had amused themselves were published at Lahore, in a little volume entitled "Echoes," because most of them were lively parodies on some of the poems of the popular poets of the day. The little book had its moment of narrowly limited success and opened the way for the wider notoriety and success of a volume into which were gathered the "Departmental Ditties" that had appeared from time to time in the Gazette. Many of the stories also which were afterward collected under the now familiar title of "Plain Tales from the Hills" made their first appearance in the Gazette, and attracted wide attention in the Anglo-Indian community.
Kipling's work for five years at Lahore had indeed been of such quality that it was not surprising that he was called down to Allahabad, in 1887, to take a place upon the editorial staff of the Pioneer. The training of an Anglo-Indian journalist is peculiar. He has to master knowledge of many kinds, to become thoroughly acquainted with the affairs of the English administration and the conditions of Anglo-Indian life, and at the same time with the interests, the modes of life, and thought of the vast underlying native population. The higher positions in Indian journalism are places of genuine importance and of large emolument, worthy objects of ambition for a young man conscious of literary faculty and inspired with zeal for public ends.
The Pioneer issued a weekly as well as a daily edition, and in addition to his regular work upon the daily paper, Kipling continued to write for the weekly issue stories similar to those which had already won him reputation, and they now attracted wider attention than ever. His home at Allahabad was with Professor Hill, a man of science attached to the Allahabad College. But the continuity of his life was broken by various journeys undertaken in the interest of the paper—one through Rajputana, from which he wrote a series of descriptive letters, called "Letters of Marque"; another to Calcutta and through Bengal, which resulted in "The City of Dreadful Night" and other letters describing the little-known conditions of the vast presidency; and, finally, in 1889, he was sent off by the Pioneer on a tour round the world, on which he was accompanied by his friends, Professor and Mrs. Hill. Going first to Japan, he thence came to America, writing on the way and in America the letters which appeared in the Pioneer under the title of "From Sea to Sea"; and in September, 1889, he arrived in London.
His Indian repute had not preceded him to such degree as to make the way easy for him through the London crowd. But after a somewhat dreary winter, during which he had been making acquaintances and had found irregular employment upon newspapers and magazines, arrangements were made with Messrs. Macmillan & Co. for the publication of an edition of "Plain Tales from the Hills." The book appeared in June. Its success was immediate. It was republished at once in America, and was welcomed as warmly on this side of the Atlantic as on the other. The reprint of Kipling's other Indian stories and of his "Departmental Ditties" speedily followed, together with the new tales and poems which showed the wide range of his creative genius. Each volume was a fresh success; each extended the circle of Mr. Kipling's readers, till now he is the most widely known of English authors.
In 1891 Mr. Kipling left England for a long voyage to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Ceylon, and thence to visit his parents at Lahore. On his return to England, he was married in London to Miss Balestier, daughter of the late Mr. Wolcott Balestier of New York. Shortly after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Kipling visited Japan, and in August they came to America. They established their home at Brattleboro, Vermont, where Mrs. Kipling's family had a large estate: and here, in a pleasant and beautifully situated house which they had built for themselves, their two eldest children were born, and here they continued to live till September, 1896.
During these four years Mr. Kipling made three brief visits to England to see his parents, who had left India and were now settled in the old country.
The winter of 1897-98 was spent by Mr. Kipling and his family, accompanied by his father, in South Africa. He was everywhere received with the utmost cordiality and friendliness.
Returning to England in the spring of 1898, he took a house at Rottingdean, near Brighton, with intention to make it his permanent home.