In the original version, however, there is no room for doubt Cottar grew “under a system of compulsory cricket, football, and paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented himself from these entertainments without medical certificate or master’s written excuse”. This story of the secret dream life of a brilliant young soldier, was revised before inclusion in The Day’s Work (1898), and it was no longer obvious that Georgie Cottar’s public school was at Westward Ho! – though the correct description of the First Fifteen colours and a sentence to the effect that the School helped its boys “to enter the army direct, without the help of the expensive London crammer” would surely have cried “Westward Ho!” to the initiate. His first reference to the School in fiction occurred the following December, when “The Brushwood Boy” appeared in The Century Magazine. Tapp’s United Services College (1933), pp. 58, 17th December, 1894 (and reprinted in H. He was at Westward Ho! again on 25th July, 1894 at the leavetaking of Cormell Price and made a short speech on behalf of the Old Boys, which was printed in the U.S.C. He had visited the School once since his return from India – during the Summer Term of 1890, when he spent a week with Cormell Price, the Head. Nevertheless, though it shows that Kipling’s thoughts were turning back to Westward Ho!, and that he was looking at it with the perspective of manhood, there was no sign then that he had any idea of using the setting in fiction. “An English School” is an important source for an understanding of Stalky & Co., and any commentary on the stories must of necessity refer to it. Chronicle where it appeared in October, 1884, two years after Kipling had left.

The previous writing concerned with the School was a poem contributed to the U.S.C.

This was the first evidence in his published writings of his deep interest in his old School. In October, 1893, there appeared in an American periodical called Youth’s Companion the article “An English School” which was included at the end of Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides thirty years later. Rudyard Kipling went to the United Services College at Westward Ho!, near Bideford, North Devon, as a small capering twelve-year old in January 1878, and left in the autumn of 1882, a precociously sophisticated teenager, to take ship for journalism in India.

Stalky & Co. by Rudyard Kipling