Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Autograph manuscript poem signed ('Rudyard Kipling'), 'The Absent Minded Beggar', n.d.
The complete poem on two pages, 271 x 212mm, on lined paper but written across the lines. Provenance: Sotheby's London, 14 December 1992, lot 92.

Kipling's famous fund-raising poem for British troops.

When you've shouted 'Rule Britannia', when you've sung God Save the Queen,
When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth –
Will you kindly drop a shilling in my little tambourine
For a gentleman in Kharki ordered South?

'The Absent Minded Beggar' was composed on 16 October 1899 in response to an appeal launched by The Daily Mail to support army reservists who by reporting for duty in the Boer War risked leaving their families in poverty, having given up better-paid work and with no guarantee of employment on their return. The text was published in the newspaper on 31 October, and was an immediate success: its popularity was guaranteed when it was set to music by Arthur Sullivan only five days later. The poem and music were widely distributed in differing forms of merchandise (including facsimiles of Kipling's original manuscript), helping the appeal raise the remarkable sum of £250,000.

The manuscript shows a number of variations from the published text: most notable are the adoption of the popular spelling 'Kharki' for khaki, the line-division, with the chorus arranged as four lines rather than the usual six, and an additional line in the last stanza, 'The girls and the wives our Tommy's left behind him'.