Rudyard Kipling and Freemasonry

As a twenty-year-old journalist on the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, Kipling was initiated in 1886 into what he would describe in a letter to the Worshipful Master of Friendship and Unity Lodge, Bradford-upon-Avon, dated January 10,1931
as "an Indian Mixed Lodge"  called Hope and Perseverance No. 782 in Lahore, in what is now Pakistan.

He went on to say:
" I was entered by a Hindu, raised by a Mohammedan, and passed by an English Master,
but never rose beyond the office of Secretary."

He was advanced to the Mark degree in 1887, when he was also elevated into the Mount Ararat Mark Mariners Lodge
No. 98. He also visited the Lodge of St John the Evangelist No. 1483 now defunct,  which was a a military Lodge in the Lahore cantonment, and borrowed the names of Mulvanney, a surgeon,
and Lt Learoyd RA for subsequent literary endeavors.

On promotion to the Pioneer, a larger newspaper in Allahabad also owned by his employers,
he joined the Lodge of Independence with Philanthropy No. 391 there.
By all accounts, during his travels through India he was a regular and most welcome visitor to other Lodges.
In 1888, during a visit to Bengal, he writes to his cousin Margaret Burne-Jones that at the local St George in the East Lodge, a Lodge affiliated to the East India Railway Company (still in existence today)
there were "men who will talk to me as though they had known me all their lives on subjects which both I and they will be able to discourse about with freedom and camaraderie."

Freemasons' Lodges are known for the warm welcome they give to the visiting Brother
and visiting is a very important part of Freemasonry.

It is perhaps this Lodge that he would describe in his story "The Bold Prentice" (Land and Sea Tales)
as "St Duncan's in the East".

After leaving India he was never again so active in the Craft.

In 1909 he joined the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, as Rose Croix,
a Christian degree which requires a belief in the Trinity by its members.

In 1921 he would be a Founder Member of the War Graves Commission Lodge
"The Builders of the Silent Cities Lodge No. 12" in St Omer, under the Grande Loge Nationale Francaise.

Kipling is credited with having devised this apposite name.

The fictional Lodge in one of his stories " In The Interest Of The Brethren"
will become the setting for three further tales in the same collection:

"The Janeites", "A Friend of the Family", and "A Madonna of the Trenches",
("Fairy-Kist", Limits and Renewals).
In these, ex-soldiers find refuge from a post-war world and can freely exchange their terrible memories.

" In The Interest Of The Brethren"  as the story is told there were many Masons
in London during the war in and so few
places for them to meet. As the story goes it is 1917, and World War I is raging.

The narrator meets a fellow Freemason, a London tobacconist, who takes him to a Lodge
run by a group of wealthy merchants. Contrary to official policy, they have thrown their meetings open
to any soldiers on leave, or convalescent from wounds, who can pass a test that demonstrates their Masonic credentials.

The story describes the leniency of the examiners, with the visitors' pleasure at the familiar ritual,
good food and repose they can find in the secure setting the Lodge provides.
Their various origins allow them to contribute new ideas and experiences to the debate that follows the ritual.
The narrator, agreeing that rules should be relaxed to allow such access to Lodges in wartime,
departs planning to tell the Masonic authorities what is happening.

"The Janeites", "A Friend of the Family", and "A Madonna of the Trenches", ("Fairy-Kist", Limits and Renewals).
In these, ex-soldiers find refuge from a post-war world and can freely exchange their terrible memories.

           

           

           

           

           
 
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