Rudyard Kipling’s historic Vermont home aims to weather changing times

DUMMERSTON — A century after becoming the first English-language author to win the Nobel Prize in literature, the late Rudyard Kipling has gone from being one of the world’s most widely read names to, in the charitable words of his latest biographer, a “complex historical figure” tied to the exploitative era of British colonialism.

But Kipling’s reputation isn’t the only remnant of his life facing a shifting climate.

Born in India and raised in England, the Victorian-era writer was 26 when, traveling the United States in 1892, he decided to build a home in the southeastern Vermont town of Dummerston. Kipling designed the 2½-story hideaway — named “Naulakha,” after a Hindi word meaning “a jewel beyond price” — similar in shape to the ship that transported him to America.

“Looking over sweeps of emptiness,” the author went on to write , “we saw our ‘Naulakha’ riding on its hillside like a little boat on the flank of a far wave.”

A century later, the nonprofit Landmark Trust USA purchased the property in 1992, only recently to find the aging vessel taking on water from increasingly punishing precipitation.

Enter the U.S. National Park Service, which has awarded the trust a $400,000 “Save America’s Treasures” grant in support of a $1.25 million improvement plan targeting the storm-battered roof and groundwater seeping into the basement.

“It’s game-changing,” Susan McMahon, the trust’s executive director, said of a grant that will both help preserve the past and, amid climate change, “set up for a resilient future.”

‘A little boat on the flank of a far wave’

When visiting students are told the house was once home to one of England’s greatest literary superstars, they often conjure up thoughts of Harry Potter — the subject of a series of fantasy novels whose first editions were printed at the now-shuttered Book Press just two miles down the still-dirt road in neighboring Brattleboro.

But the oft-forgotten Kipling was once “the most popular and financially successful writer in the world,” according to his most recent biographer, Christopher Benfey, author of “If: The Untold Story of Kipling’s American Years.”

Born in 1865, Kipling was on a honeymoon world tour with wife Caroline Balestier when, visiting her family in Vermont, he bought land and built the house, Benfey notes in his book.

As other histories confirm, Kipling befriended such locals as former Vermont Gov. Frederick Holbrook, hosted barn dances, and traveled by carriage, sleigh, snowshoes or skis — the latter gifted by Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle — to drink lager in a basement bar of downtown Brattleboro’s cornerstone Brooks House.

“Been in Europe, ain’t ya?” one patron was said to have asked the author.

Kipling wrote the classics “The Jungle Book” and “Captains Courageous” and conceived “Kim” and “Just So Stories” (named after his children asked him to repeat a favorite story “just so”) at his Vermont home.

“His astonishingly productive sojourn in New England,” writes Benfey, was “the key creative period in his entire career.”

But such professional highs were offset by personal lows. A border dispute between Britain and Venezuela over the former South American colony of Guyana led some in the United States to criticize Kipling’s homeland, Benfey notes. Feeling pressure to flee back to England, the writer expedited his exit after an unrelated personal quarrel with his drunk brother-in-law sparked the relative’s arrest and national publicity that shattered the family’s privacy.

‘Historic preservation and climate resiliency’

After Kipling left in 1896, the property stayed in local hands, then sat unused (except for interloping raccoons) for 50 years before Landmark Trust USA — an offshoot of Britain’s Landmark Trust conservation charity — purchased it three decades ago.

The author’s life has since faced glaring academic scrutiny, with a recent look by The New Yorker magazine labeling him everything from a “prodigiously gifted writer” to, as author of such titles as “The White Man’s Burden,” “politically toxic.”

“Kipling has a complex legacy,” McMahon, the trust’s executive director, said in a recent interview.

His house, which makes money through short-term rentals , is equally multifaceted.

Downstairs, visitors can see Kipling’s study and its wall of books. Upstairs, they can eye not only his bedroom but also his claw-foot bathtub ringed by wooden armrests. And throughout, they can peer out of large sun-splashed windows designed to illuminate rooms before electrical wires made their way from Brattleboro to Dummerston.

Outside, however, storm clouds loom. Caretakers point to how recent increases in rainfall have threatened the roof, basement, septic system, driveway and clay tennis court (the latter believed to be the first in the state).

“There’s so much water pressure coming down that wasn’t initially here,” McMahon said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Explorer website projects that local precipitation will rise 9% by 2050. That’s why the trust is working to replace the property’s cedar shingle roofs and weatherproof a series of outbuildings and drainage systems.

“Keeping water out of the building is priority No. 1,” said Jeremy Ebersole, the trust’s public outreach manager, “because that is going to ruin it quicker than anything else.”

The trust has raised about three-quarters of its $1.25 million goal, with a final public push coming in the spring and construction starting as early as next summer.

“It’s important for us to be historically accurate,” McMahon said of the project, “but we’re doing so with the understanding that rain is going to be more intense. This is a combination of historic preservation and climate resiliency.”

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