Many years ago I promised Jo that I would write down some of the early memories of my life in Kenya for her and the family.  I will begin with a few details of how we all came to be living in Kenya.  The account is sketchy and I wish I had made my father set down the facts for me. There are a few scraps I can remember and they may not be entirely accurate!

Next: DCV

Best beloved

A note from Jo

Grandpops’ letters to Mum began, not with ‘Dearest Jill’ or ‘Darling girl’ but always with ‘Best Beloved’.

Mum was brought up on Rudyard Kipling and the ‘Just So’ stories and the reference comes from these books, read to her by Grandpops in her early childhood.

This year (2024) I hand stitched a picture for Mum to have in her bedroom as a reminder of those precious days, living at Tulgiwood, their home in Eldoret. In the time it took me to complete my ‘Wonky portrait’ picture(photo below), I looked into the meaning behind Kipling’s ‘Best Beloved’.

This is what I found:

The Just So tales began their life as bedtime stories which Kipling told to his tiny daughter Josephine (or “Effie,” as she was known to her father). Kipling would sit on the edge of Effie’s bed and regale her with his enchanting animal origin stories, the first three of which were published in a children’s magazine in 1897 and 1898. Effie quickly learned these three by heart, and insisted on them being told in exactly the same way, the right way, every time.

As Kipling later explained:

“In the evening there were stories meant to put Effie to sleep, and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word. They had to be told just so; or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence. So at last they came to be like charms, all three of them — the whale tale, the camel tale, and the rhinoceros tale.”

Tragically, just one year later, at the age of six, little Effie died of pneumonia. Kipling, himself recovering from a bout of the same illness, was not told of her death for weeks due to fears that the loss of his beloved firstborn child would cause a fatal relapse.

It was said by Kipling’s friends and family that Effie’s death altered the author in some fundamental way, that he never truly recovered from the blow. As his second daughter Elsie later wrote in her memoir:

There is no doubt that little Josephine had been his greatest joy during her short life. His life was never the same after her death; a light had gone out that could never be rekindled.

The stories, thirteen in all, were published in a single volume in 1902, with each tale addressed to a “best beloved,” the absent original audience who wanted her father’s enchanting animal tales told just so.

It seemed only right to choose this as the domain name for the story of Mum’s life, beloved as she is, by us all.