Rudyard Kipling Slept Here

Yesterday was one of those dark, rainy, dreary Sundays during which it is hard to motivate myself to do anything useful. There was plenty that needed doing — including a session with the vacuum cleaner but I didn’t do it. I borrowed a DVD from my neighbor and vegged out in front of the video and watched the 1937 version of Kipling’s Captains Courageous. I can’t believe I never saw it before. I can’t believe it is seventy years old.

I read the book in high school and credit it with being the beginning of my longing to live in Gloucester. The fact that Rudyard Kipling spent time here and wrote about it makes me happy on a number of levels — not the least of which is his distinguished credentials as a writer.

I’ve learned so much in the last decade-plus of being here. My first attraction to being here was the art history including the literary history but it is the entire culture of the sea — from fishing to foreign trade to boats — that casts its own particular light over everything. In the scene in the movie where those two great two-masted schooners were racing back to Gloucester I was enthralled — too captivated to knit. If I hadn’t spent last summer working on the Essex Shipbuilding Museum project I wouldn’t have known how distinctive those two boats were but watching them yesterday I knew they were real Gloucester schooners, even though most of the filming was done off the coast of California.

I grew up in Pennsylvania hill country. Anything I knew about boats came from books and television. What little I knew about fish was about trout and porgies and walleyes. Watching the fishermen in that movie hauling in loads of cod and haddock made me think about what it must once have been like for those who made their living from the sea here. One of my friends who has lived here for over fifty years said she wished they would have continuous showings of that film throughout the summer in City Hall so that tourists could see it and see what kind of a life made Gloucester.

It is a very romantic story. The contrast between the two worlds could not be more extreme. The world Harvey comes from, the world of mansions and private schools and big business and lots of money, is beautiful but empty. The world of the fishermen is hard, long hours, back-breaking work, smelly fish, hooks through their hands and danger everywhere, but they are good, humorous, decent men who get into fights and foolishness but are ultimately good. Of course we know that those extremes are the province of myth and that includes the novel but it is still not a bad thing. Frankly, I think the world is in dire need of more of that sort of romanticism. We need it to give us something to aspire to. Kipling knew that.

That’s one of the things I have been thinking a lot about lately — the responsibility of the writer to elevate and inspire. I’m about worn out with tawdry, bleak, shocking but empty novels that leave you despairing for the future of our race. The great artist and art teacher Robert Henri said, “The responsibility of the artist is to lift America into self-awareness so that she might be free.” What a noble sentiment! Idealistic? Perhaps but without ideals what are we left with? The tawdry and the bleak?

I’m glad Kipling spent time in Gloucester and wrote about it. In the final scene, the oceanside memorial service in front of Leonard Craske’s Man at the wheel (which, I will say was not reproduced well in the movie) when the families of the lost toss their flowers into the sea, you’ll feel their tears. You’ll understand that something great has happened during these two hours. Kipling and director director Victor Fleming did a great thing. They showed you what Gloucester is.

Thanks for reading.

Note: This post originally ran on Jan 15, 2007. It is a frequently visited postson this blog and is being repeated for those who have subscribed to our new feed service.