Hill Tales from the Plains

The occupants of Belvedere in the late 1880s were Samuel Alexander or Alec Hill (born in County Antrim in 1851; a science professor since 1875 at Muir College in Allahabad, and now with further meteorological and University duties) and his wife Edmonia (Ted) Kramer Taylor. They had met on a transatlantic steamer in 1883 and married in 1884. Rudyard Kipling was their house guest from roughly July 1888 to March 1889, including at least one spell (in October 1888) when they were away.

Kipling had a lifelong interest in mechanical gadgets, and mastered many forms of rhythm and balladry, but claimed no further skill as a practical musician or singer. Brian Mattinson says in his Kipling and Music article “The musical story starts to unfold in 1890; between February and July thirteen ballads were published in the Scots Observer under the general title Barrack-Room Ballads…”. But, being curious about the Hills of Antrim and Alec’s background, I wondered about the role – possibly earlier than 1890 – of this double-strung Lipp.

Alec had been a distinguished student at the Royal School of Mines and its fellow colleges in South Kensington, and had a professional interest in optical/meteorological instruments; some, of piano-escapement complexity and ingenuity, were as beautiful as the Kensington museum exhibits that Kipling loved from childhood. But who played the piano at Belvedere? Not Kipling; perhaps Alec; a better bet is Edmonia, daughter of a Pennsylvanian Methodist pastor. The 1888 piano is described as Alec’s property, and the 1890 one is probably the same (unsold at the first attempt), not a mere prop or furnishing in the temporary home of a University employee. It was in “perfect order” according to both advertisements.

While in France recently I noticed a friend’s “boudoir” piano – intermediate in size between a baby and a full grand – from Lipp of Stuttgart with the following identifiers:

Made “for India and by Order”, it embodied some recommendations by the Misquith entrepreneurs:

The special feature of the business is the construction of pianos specially adapted for the hot, damp climate of Burma. So many modifications did Mr. Oscar Misquith find necessary in the European-made pianos that he made a special visit to the different factories in England and on the Continent in order to impress upon the makers the essential points in an instrument designed for long service in Burma…The original business of Mr. J. C. Misquith & Sons was established at Ootacamund in 1865. The chief pianos imported at that time were the square models by Schiedmayer & Sons. These were superseded at a somewhat later date by upright grand pianos made by Richard Lipp. Some of these are still in use. In 1875, Messrs. Charles and William Misquith opened a business in Madras, and four years later, while the present proprietor, Mr. W. F. Misquith, was managing it, the fine premises in which it is conducted to-day were acquired. A branch was opened in Rangoon in 1889…

- Arnold Wright, “Twentieth century impressions of Burma : its history, people, commerce, industries, and resources” (1910)

The south London firm (Barker Piano Co. of 68 Westow St., S.E. 19) were probably the intermediaries in the 1950s acquisition by my friend’s parents.

This boudoir model has been heavily restored, but its manufacture can be dated to around 1881 because of its serial number (in the 9000s). It is not far off the technology familiar to Alec, Edmonia and their guest in 1880s Allahabad.

- International Directory of Music Industries (1911)

At least one Allahabad colleague knew the Belvedere piano well, and may have played it. The 1 November 1890 Pioneer ad suggests that George Thibaut was handling the estate after Alec’s sudden death. I do not know whether there was a will or a formal executor. Since there were no children, and (to my knowledge) no other close relatives of Alec in the area, we would expect any sale proceeds and estate assets (after the usual administrative expenses) to go to Edmonia. Thibaut, a professor of philosophy and historian of ancient Indian science and mathematics, from a Huguenot/German scholarly background, was a grandson of the jurist and music historian A F J Thibaut and a grandnephew of the mathematician B F Thibaut. He was later Principal of Muir College.

He translated several important Sanskrit texts; this example is from the February 1889 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal:

Thibaut was elected a Non-Resident Ordinary Member on 2 June 1875 and later served on its Philological Committee. Alec’s death was noted:

Mares and ponies

The horse-related Pioneer ads cast more light on national and international Exhibitions that attracted manufacturers, customers and journalists. The November 1882 ad seems misprinted and we do not learn the age of the mare who was “believed sound”.

The “light easy-running cart” and Johnson’s “Norwich cart”: George Thomson’s Stirling firm had wide connections: www.smithartgalleryandmuseum.co.uk/thomsons-carriage-works. Sundri was and is a tough red wood suited for boats and vehicles.

“CAWNPORE HARNESS, with English Reins”: Kanpur or Cawnpore was a long-established centre for leather work and horse gear, and from the 1860s had a Government Harness and Saddlery Factory.

There were thousands of similar ads in this horse-reliant culture, and thousands of race reports flecked with horse-and-pony jargon.

- The Oriental Sporting Magazine (1872)

Errors and puzzles

The published material about these Hills has surprises, innocent perhaps but worth listing.

An official obituary notice for Alec (Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society) says he was “the eldest son of a clergyman residing at Ballyboley, near Belfast, in the county of Antrim”, and Nature repeats “The son of a clergyman in the north of Ireland”. Edmonia’s father R T Taylor was a “clergyman”, but I see no evidence that Alec’s father John Hill was other than a Ballyboley farmer.

Charles Allen wrote that Alec went to India in 1879 “to join his brother as a teacher at the Muir College” (Kipling Sahib, chapter 9). He certainly went in 1875 and I do not know that his brother David ever did. David was in Ballyboley when their parents John and Eliza died in the 1890s; he was conceivably in India as a young man but it seems unlikely. I do not know of any other brother. I tried to contact Charles, but nothing more emerged before his recent death.

Edmonia wrote in “My Friend – Rudyard Kipling” (The Classmate, September 1938) “Marrying a distinguished professor in Allahabad University in the late eighties, I went to India as a bride”. They met in 1883, married in June 1884, and were in India by October 1884 – so “late eighties” is wrong if it refers to the action “Marrying” and not to the state “distinguished”.

Philip Mason (who credits Charles Carrington’s Kipling: His Life and Work for most of the biographical details in The Shadow, the Glass and the Fire) calls Alec and Ted an American couple; Alec was born in Ireland and Ted was from America.

The final meetings of Kipling with the Hills and Taylors, in late 1889, are prominent in the biographies because people want to know how and why Kipling and Caroline Taylor formed and then broke some understanding, and what role Ted played. I am more interested in her links, if any, with Alec’s family in Ballyboley:

“Mrs Hill, her mother, and her husband were with RK for the first days of this visit” – to Lake Chautauqua – says Thomas Pinney (The Letters of Rudyard Kipling). Then Ted writes “The time has arrived for another parting, as A.'s leave is nearly up. R. K. will meet us in New York, to sail with us on the City of Berlin. We shall leave him in London to achieve his world-wide fame…”. Pinney notes “Hill returned to India in advance of his wife, travelling to the north of Ireland in order to visit his family”, and the Belfast News-Letter (30 August 1889) shows him in Larne on 28 August for the opening of a bazaar “for the purpose of raising funds to purchase land for a cricket and football field for the Larne Grammar School”.

Then the City of Berlin sailed and Pinney says Mrs Hill’s diary records that after she landed at Liverpool on 4 October she went to Belfast (presumably to see her husband’s family) before going on to London, where she arrived on 12 October, only to leave on 16 October for Paris. Before that, on 9 October, she notes in the diary: “Carrie engaged to R.K.”.

Carrington has “They arrived at Liverpool by the s.s. City of Berlin on 5^th October 1889, and all four went on to London” – the four being RK, Ted, Caroline, and Ted’s cousin Edgar Taylor who at one point in Carrington’s book seems to be “Edgar Hill”.

“Mr and Mrs S A Hill and friend” are on the list of passengers for departure “Per S.S. “Ghoorka” – 24th October”; and on 1 November 1889 RK writes a postcard addressed to “all the S. A. Hills” on the SS Gurkha at Port Said. This is not the Goorkha, built by Harland & Wolff and launched 1897; it is the Goorkha built 1882 and scrapped at Genoa 1906.

Thus Alec returned to Britain “in advance of his wife”, but when did they meet again? – what did he do in September and most of October? – and did Ted visit or write to Ballyboley then or at any other time? I have not read her diary, and Professor Pinney has.

Acknowledgements

I thank Joy Lorcery, Andrew Lycett, Thomas Pinney and John Radcliffe, who have kindly corresponded about these problems.

July 2022