BRATTLEBORO — Three major institutions with a special interest in the English author Rudyard Kipling are joining forces in Windham County Oct. 7 and 8 to present “Kipling in America, 1892-1896.”
This symposium, a project of the Kipling Society, Marlboro College, and the Landmark Trust Society of America, celebrates the author's Vermont years and legacy with a range of distinguished presentations and discussions.
Kipling was a short-story writer, poet, and novelist, and is chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of life in British India and his tales for children.
In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and to date he remains its youngest recipient. Among other honors, he was sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship - and on several occasions for a knighthood - all of which he declined.
Today, people often do not realize the Rudyard Kipling was the most popular writer in England for two decades, from 1890 until 1910, says John Radcliffe, general editor of the “New Readers' Guide to the Works of Rudyard Kipling” (kipling.org.uk/bookmart_fra.htm).
“Nor do many realize that this eminently English author lived and wrote some of his most beloved works in Vermont,” Radcliffe says.
Although Kipling is well known for his stories, poems, and novels based in India, the first ideas for “Kim” and “Just So Stories” came to him while he was living in Vermont. He also wrote some of his most popular books, including the two “Jungle Books,” a collection of stories called “The Day's Work,” and the novel “Captains Courageous,” during his stay in Vermont.
“Although it covered only four years of his life, Kipling's sojourn in Vermont was a happy and productive one: it might have lasted indefinitely if it had not ended as it did, so unfortunately, on a rather sour note,” writes Sally Andrews, former director of the Marlboro College Library.
Radcliffe continues, “After a highly publicized feud when he sued his brother-in-law Beatty Balestier, the American press descended on Brattleboro, and Kipling found himself in the middle of a media storm. He left Vermont and America to escape the ruckus.”
In honor of Kipling's years in Windham County, the London-based Kipling Society for the first time will hold its symposium in the United States, where the two-day event will be hosted at Marlboro College's Ragle Hall and in Dummerston Landmark Trust's Naulakha - the house Kipling built and where he and his wife once planned to make their lifelong home.
The symposium is open to the public, and the Kipling Society says it is particularly keen for as many Vermonters as possible to attend. The basic registration fee is $15.
The first day of the symposium will take place on the college campus in Marlboro. Thomas Pinney, editor of the new Cambridge edition of Kipling's poems, will give the keynote address, “What did the neighbors think?”
“Pinney is considered the doyen of Kipling scholars, and we feel honored to have him give the keynote speech,” says Radcliffe, who is organizing the event. “All and all, we have an impressive array of scholars.”
Speakers will also include noted Kipling scholars from both Britain and America: Daniel Karlin of Bristol University; U.C. Knoepflmacher of Princeton; Tricia Lootens of the University of Georgia; Jan Montefiore of the University of Kent; and Judith Plotz of George Washingon University.
David Richards, editor of the definitive Kipling bibliography, will discuss a recently discovered manuscript with advice about story writing from Kipling to his sister-in-law Josephine.
On its second day, the symposium moves to Dummerston.
There, special tours will be available for Naulakha, Kipling's home, once abandoned but now beautifully and authentically restored by The Landmark Trust USA.
Patterned on the model established by The Landmark Trust of Great Britain in 1965, these restored buildings are rented as unique and inspiring vacation homes while the income ensures that they will not again fall into decay.
Naulakha is not usually open to the public, although it can be rented from Landmark. One of 17 National Historic Landmarks in Vermont, Naulakha offers the unparalleled experience of a stay in a house where Nobel Prize-winning literature was written. Five members of the Kipling Society will stay there during their time in Vermont.
Participants at “Kipling in Vermont” also will be treated to a talk by Charles Fish of the Dummerston Historical Society on “Vermont and Vermonters in Kipling's Day,” as well as readings by Mary Hamer from her novel about Kipling and his sister, “Kipling and Trix.”
Radcliffe says, “We are particularly glad that Marlboro College is hosting the symposium because of its proximity to Naulakha, the remarkable Kipling collection in the Marlboro library, and the generous welcome and help we have received from the college.”
“It was a great honor to be approached as a host for the 'Kipling in America' symposium, and very much in keeping with the rich literary tradition here at Marlboro,” said Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, Marlboro College's president.
The symposium will offer participants the opportunity to explore the remarkable collection of Kipling documents held in the Marlboro College Rice-Aron Library.
According to Marlboro College Library Director Emily Alling, although there are larger Kipling collections at other institutions, notably the University of Sussex and University of Texas, Marlboro's collection is unique in its focus on Kipling's years in Vermont.
“With the theme of this year's Kipling Society symposium being Kipling in America 1892-1896, it made sense for the Society to meet at Marlboro, a repository for so much important Kipling material, and in Dummerston, site of the Kiplings' Vermont home, Naulakha,” Alling said.
The Marlboro collection holds more than 400 catalogued, and several uncatalogued, items.
Howard C. Rice Jr. spent his retirement years amassing and documenting a rich collection of Kipling memoirs and reminiscences, correspondence, family histories, photographs, newspaper clippings and books. His substantial collection was bequeathed to nearby Marlboro College, and came to the Library there after his death in 1980.
In addition to the Howard Rice Collection, a collection of nearly 250 Kipling first editions, both British and American, collected and slip-cased by Otis Guernsey, was sold to the College after his death.
Marlboro also houses a collection on loan from the Landmark Trust, the F. Cabot Holbrook Collection, which focuses on the history of Naulakha as well as material on the Kipling and Balestier families.
Of special interest in Marlboro's Kipling Collection is the contents of the small tin box full of previously unknown Kipling manuscripts forgotten for more than 100 years in the vault of a Brattleboro bank. Having lain undisturbed as “unclaimed property,” it contained the drafts of eight poems and a poster for the play, “The Naulahka.”
Alling says, “Also among the contents of the tin box were original handwritten draft manuscripts, including one of an unpublished poem; the Kiplings' wedding certificate, signed by them and Henry James (one of their witnesses); Kipling's will; part of a letter from Wolcott Balestier; and some correspondence.”
With the intent of retaining the contents in the local Brattleboro area, a decision was made to add these papers to the existing Marlboro College Kipling Collection.
“One of the more significant items in the Marlboro collection is an unpublished manuscript, 'Rudyard Kipling at Naulakha,' by Mary Rogers Cabot (best known for her 'Annals of Brattleboro),' says Alling.
“This little-known but important memoir by a local historian and close friend of the Kiplings gives a rare and intimate picture of their personal lives and relations.”
According to Tom Ragle, former president of Marlboro College, and whom, along with Alling and Andrews will present at the symposium, This work is particularly valuable because the Kiplings were reclusive.
“By the time Kipling came to Vermont, he was a major celebrity,” said Ragle.