The Other Man (Kipling Story)

The story was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on November 13, 1886, in the first Indian edition of Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of that collection.

The story, which is set in Simla, the Hill Station where the British used to spend their leaves during the hot weather, tells of Miss Gaurey, whom "her parents made ... marry Colonel Schreiderling ... not much more than 35 years her senior", who is a good match, if not particularly well off, and has lung-complaints which she nurses "seventeen days in each month". She had been secretly engaged to "the Other Man" ("I have forgotten his name"), who gets himself transferred away to an unhealthy Station. He also has bad health (intermittent fever, and a bad heart valve. Mrs Schreiderling, as she now is, never weeps, but begins to contract every infection on the Station. She becomes ugly - Schreiderling says so, and returns to bachelor habits.

One August, he leaves her at Simla to return to his regiment. The narrator hears that the Other Man is coming to Simla, being very sick. Mrs Schreiderling is waiting for him at dusk on the Mall as his Tonga (carriage) draws up as the narrator is passing - and then she screams. The long journey has killed the Other Man. The narrator sorts out the details, ensuring the confidentiality of the Tonga driver, and takes Mrs Schreiderling home.

"She did not die - men of Schreiderling's stamp marry women who don't die easily. They live and grow ugly." Two years later, she goes Home; and dies.

All quotations in this article have been taken from the Uniform Edition of Plain Tales from the Hills published by Macmillan & Co., Limited in London in 1899. The text is that of the third edition (1890), and the author of the article has used his own copy of the 1923 reprint.
Rudyard Kipling
Novels
  • The Light that Failed (1891)
  • Captains Courageous (1896)
  • Kim (1901)
Collections
  • Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)
  • Soldiers Three (1888)
  • The Story of the Gadsbys (1888)
  • In Black and White (1888)
  • Under the Deodars (1888)
  • The Phantom 'Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales (1888)
  • Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1888)
  • Under the Deodars (1888)
  • From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel (1889)
  • Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, poetry)
  • The Jungle Book (1894)
    • "Mowgli's Brothers"
    • "Kaa's Hunting"
    • "Tiger! Tiger!"
    • "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
  • The Second Jungle Book (1895)
    • "Letting in the Jungle"
    • "Red Dog"
  • All the Mowgli Stories (c. 1895)
  • The Day's Work (1898)
  • Stalky & Co. (1899)
  • Just So Stories for Little Children (1902)
  • Puck of Pook's Hill (1906)
  • Rewards and Fairies (1910)
  • The Fringes of the Fleet (1915, non-fiction)
  • Debits and Credits (1926)
  • Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (1940)
Poems
  • "The Absent-Minded Beggar"
  • "The Ballad of the "Clampherdown""
  • "The Ballad of East and West"
  • "The Bell Buoy"
  • "The Betrothed"
  • "Big Steamers"
  • "Cold Iron"
  • "Danny Deever"
  • "The Female of the Species"
  • "Fuzzy-Wuzzy"
  • "Gentleman ranker"
  • "The Gods of the Copybook Headings"
  • "Gunga Din"
  • "Hymn Before Action"
  • "If—"
  • "The King's Pilgrimage"
  • "The Last of the Light Brigade"
  • "The Lowestoft Boat"
  • "Mandalay"
  • "My Boy Jack"
  • "Recessional"
  • "A Song in Storm"
  • "Sons of Martha"
  • "Submarines"
  • "The Sweepers"
  • "Ubique"
  • "The White Man's Burden"
  • "The Widow at Windsor"
Short Stories
  • .007
  • The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly
  • Baa Baa, Black Sheep
  • The Butterfly that Stamped
  • Consequences
  • The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin
  • Cupid's Arrows
  • Drums of the Fore and Aft
  • False Dawn
  • A Germ-Destroyer
  • His Chance in Life
  • His Wedded Wife
  • In the House of Suddhoo
  • Kidnapped
  • Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris
  • Lispeth
  • The Man Who Would Be King
  • Miss Youghal's Sais
  • The Mother Hive
  • Ortheris
  • The Other Man
  • The Rescue of Pluffles
  • The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo
  • The Taking of Lungtungpen
  • Three and – an Extra
  • The Three Musketeers
  • Thrown Away
  • Toomai of the Elephants
  • Watches of the Night
  • Yoked with an Unbeliever
People
  • John Lockwood Kipling (father)
  • MacDonald sisters (mother's family)
  • Stanley Baldwin (cousin)
  • Edward Burne-Jones (uncle)
  • Edward Poynter (uncle)
  • Alfred Baldwin (uncle)
Related
  • Indian Railway Library
  • The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer
  • The Law of the Jungle
  • Rudyard Kipling bibliography
  • Aerial Board of Control

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