How Kipling seemed to a brilliant contemporary is shown by the parody “PC X36” in Max Beerbohm’s A Christmas Garland (1912). The narrator’s policeman friend Judlip spotted an old man with “a hoary white beard, a red ulster with the hood up, and what looked like a sack over his shoulder” standing on a rooftop.

Ordering him down to the street, the constable grabbed his collar. “The captive snivelled something about peace on earth, good will toward men. ‘Yuss,’ said Judlip.

‘That’s in the Noo Testament, ain’t it? The Noo Testament contains some uncommon nice readin’ for old gents an’ young ladies. But it ain’t included in the librery o’ the Force. We confine ourselves to the Old Testament – O T, ’ot. An’ ’ot you’ll get it. Hup with that sack, an’ quick march!’ ”

Beerbohm is right about the often annoying rendering of dialect and the petty violence, but he puts his finger on a more important feature of Kipling’s world: its rejection of Christianity. Kipling lost all that in the Southsea boarding house.

Christopher Howse describes the hard edges of Rudyard Kipling and some of the reasons he became that way. Like his rejection of the gospel, Kipling cut ties with his past repeatedly.