Compass
Category
Scientific instruments
Date
1892
Materials
Brocade, Lizard skin, Metal, Wood
Measurements
96 x 93 mm
Order this imageCollection
Bateman's, East Sussex
NT 761596
Summary
A circular compass in a square wooden case, fitted with sights and plum line. Inscribed on the reverse "Caroline and Rudyard Kipling from H de K and RWG 1892". In a square lizard skin case lined with gold thread brocade.
Full description
Richard Watson Gilder was a poet and the editor of the American Century Magazine, in which Rudyard Kipling and Wolcott Balestier’s story The Naulahka was serialised from November 1891 to July 1892. Helena de Kay Gilder was Richard Gilder’s wife and an American illustrator. On the 27th February 1892 Kipling wrote to Richard Gilder thanking him for ‘the alligator’ which would ‘guide us back to the States again’ (The Letters of Rudyard Kipling, Volume 2: 1890-99, ed. Thomas Pinney, pp. 50-1).
Marks and inscriptions
"Caroline & Rudyard Kipling from H de K & RWG 1892"