Olivia: Alright Jackson, quick—when I say 'Rudyard Kipling,' what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Jackson: Oh, easy. British Empire, stuffy poems, and probably a giant mustache. The guy who wrote the instruction manual for colonialism, right? Olivia: Exactly. The "jingoist Bard of Empire." Now what if I told you he spent his most creative years in Vermont, trying desperately to become an American? Jackson: Hold on. Vermont? The guy who wrote The Jungle Book? You're telling me he was a New Englander? That feels like a historical glitch. Olivia: It’s one of the most fascinating and overlooked chapters of literary history, and it’s the entire focus of the book we’re diving into today: American Kipling: The Adventures of Rudyard Kipling in the United States by Christopher Benfey. Jackson: That’s a bold title. What makes this author the one to tell this story? Olivia: Here's the brilliant part. Christopher Benfey is a top-tier scholar of American literature. He’s not a Kipling apologist; he’s an expert on figures like Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain. So he comes at this British icon from a completely fresh angle, and the book was even named a New York Times Notable Book for it. Jackson: I like that. It’s not just another biography, it’s an outsider’s take on an outsider. Okay, so how does a guy like Kipling even end up in America, let alone trying to become one?

Olivia: It starts with a pilgrimage. In 1889, a 23-year-old Kipling, a young, cocky, but not yet world-famous reporter from India, lands in America with one primary mission: to meet his absolute hero, Mark Twain. Jackson: That’s a bit like a young YouTuber today deciding they’re going to track down and meet their biggest idol. It sounds ambitious, maybe a little unhinged. Olivia: Totally unhinged. And the journey itself was a complete comedy of errors. He gets to America and starts asking where Twain is. People send him on a wild goose chase. He's told Twain is in Buffalo, then Hartford, then maybe Europe. He boards the wrong train, gets stranded, and finally lands in Elmira, New York, where Twain is supposedly staying, but no one will tell him where. Jackson: This is amazing. He’s basically a literary stalker at this point. How does he finally find him? Olivia: After a sleepless night, he rents a carriage and just starts asking around. He ends up at the house of Twain’s brother-in-law, and who greets him at the door? Twain’s daughter, Susy Clemens. She points him to the study, and there he is. Jackson: Wow. So what was Twain’s impression of this random kid from India who just appeared on his doorstep? Olivia: He was completely captivated. They talked for two hours about everything—international copyright, writing, the nature of truth. Twain was so impressed with Kipling’s mind and his command of language that he later said his talk was like "footprints, so strong and definite was the impression which it left behind." Jackson: That’s high praise from the master himself. But I have to ask, why was he so obsessed with Twain and America? What was he running from or running to? Olivia: He was running from the rigid class and caste systems of British India and England. He saw America as this place of promise and freedom, a place where he could reinvent himself. He was deeply influenced by American writers like Walt Whitman and Bret Harte. His ultimate goal, which he announced publicly, was to write the Great American Novel. Jackson: Freedom, or just a new, massive market to conquer with his writing? He was an ambitious guy. Olivia: It was absolutely both. He was a brilliant artist and a shrewd businessman. But the desire to be an American writer seems genuine. He marries an American woman, Caroline Balestier, and after a disastrous honeymoon where a bank failure in Japan wipes out their entire fortune, they decide to build their life in her home state. Jackson: And that’s what brings him to Vermont. Olivia: That’s what brings him to a freezing, remote hillside in Brattleboro, Vermont. And this is where the story gets really fascinating, and where the paradise he was searching for begins to take shape.

Jackson: I’m still stuck on the image of the author of The Jungle Book living in Vermont. It just doesn't compute. What was his life like there? Olivia: It was a period of incredible creative energy. He and his wife Carrie buy a plot of land with a stunning view of Mount Monadnock. They build this very strange, very personal house called Naulakha. He designed it to look like a ship, long and narrow, with his study at the "bow," so he could feel like he was sailing through the landscape. He called it his "ark," a refuge against the world. Jackson: An ark. That’s telling. He’s trying to wall himself off from something. Olivia: Exactly. And inside this ark, he produces an astonishing amount of work. This is where he writes both Jungle Books, Captains Courageous, the first draft of his masterpiece Kim, and many of his greatest poems. He’s at the absolute peak of his powers, the most famous and financially successful writer in the world, and he’s doing it all from this isolated perch in New England. Jackson: It’s such a wild disconnect, isn't it? He's writing these lush, vivid, definitive stories of the Indian jungle... while staring out his window at Vermont snow. How does that even work creatively? Olivia: Benfey argues that the distance gave him perspective. India became a world of memory and imagination that he could shape with perfect clarity because he wasn't in it anymore. He was also writing for his new American-born daughter, Josephine. The Just So Stories began as tales for her. His American life was fueling his Indian imagination. Jackson: It sounds like he found his paradise. But the section is called "Paradise Lost," so I'm guessing it doesn't last. Olivia: Not at all. The ark had leaks from the very beginning. The first major blow was that bank failure in Japan, which left them financially precarious. But the thing that truly shatters the dream is a bitter, ugly family feud. Jackson: Oh, nothing ruins paradise like family drama. What happened? Olivia: His brother-in-law, Beatty Balestier, was a charming but alcoholic and financially irresponsible man. Kipling had a falling out with him over money and land. It escalates until one day, a drunk Beatty confronts Kipling on the road and threatens his life. Jackson: Whoa. That’s not a polite disagreement. Olivia: It gets worse. Kipling, ever the man of law and order, has Beatty arrested. The whole affair becomes a public spectacle, a messy lawsuit covered by newspapers across the country. The famous Rudyard Kipling, who valued privacy above all else, has his personal life and finances dragged through the mud. He felt utterly humiliated and exposed. Jackson: So his American dream completely implodes over a family squabble and a lawsuit. That’s both tragic and kind of pathetic. Olivia: It was the final straw. That, combined with a political dispute between Britain and the U.S. over Venezuela, made him feel like America was no longer a safe harbor. He packed up his family and left in 1896, never to live there again. Jackson: And that’s where that heartbreaking quote comes from, right? The one about Bombay and Brattleboro. Olivia: Precisely. After he left, he confessed, "There are only two places in the world where I want to live, Bombay and Brattleboro. And I can’t live in either." He lost his childhood home and his chosen home. He was an exile for the rest of his life.

Jackson: It feels like after America rejected him—or he rejected it—his views hardened. Is this when we get the "White Man's Burden" Kipling that everyone knows and, frankly, has a very hard time with? Olivia: The timing is exact. He leaves America in 1896. The Spanish-American War is in 1898. The U.S. defeats Spain and suddenly has to decide what to do with the Philippines. And Kipling, from England, decides to weigh in. Jackson: With his infamous poem, "The White Man's Burden." Olivia: Yes, and what most people don't realize is that the poem's subtitle is "The United States and the Philippine Islands." It wasn't a general ode to British imperialism; it was a direct, public challenge to America, urging it to take up the colonial project, to "take up the White Man's burden" and govern what he called its "new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child." Jackson: That is just so hard to stomach. The language is vile. How can someone so brilliant, who wrote with such empathy about animals in The Jungle Book, be so blind and prejudiced when it comes to people? Olivia: It’s the central, agonizing contradiction of Kipling. And it’s why his legacy is so fiercely debated. Just a few years ago, students at the University of Manchester painted over a mural of his poem "If—" in their student union, replacing it with Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise." They felt his name was too toxic to be on their walls. Jackson: I can’t say I blame them. It feels impossible to separate the art from the ideology. Olivia: Benfey's book doesn't try to excuse the ideology. Instead, it complicates it. It shows how Kipling's view of empire was also shaped by his American friends, like Theodore Roosevelt, who was a huge advocate for American expansion. Kipling saw America as the young, vigorous heir to the British imperial mission. Jackson: So he was basically trying to pass the colonial torch. Olivia: In a way. But what's also fascinating is the long, strange afterlife of his work. The book points out that during the Vietnam War, CIA operatives were literally instructed to read Kim as a kind of field manual for counter-intelligence. His ideas, for better or worse, had a profound and lasting impact on American foreign policy. Jackson: That’s incredible. His ghost was haunting American strategy decades after his death. Olivia: And it gets even stranger. American generals in Vietnam kept misquoting a line from one of his poems, saying "You can't hurry the East." But the actual line is "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East." The meaning is completely different—it’s a warning against cheating and deception, not a comment on patience. Jackson: A warning that was completely missed. It’s like his own work was too complex for the empire-builders who claimed to admire him.

Olivia: It really is. And that complexity is what makes a book like American Kipling so essential. It resists easy answers. Jackson: So, in the end, what are we left with? Is he an American writer? A British imperialist? A tragic figure? How do we hold all these pieces together? Olivia: I think Benfey's book suggests he's all of them, and that's the point. He's a man who sought a paradise in America and genuinely found it, for a time. He poured his love for its landscape and its ideals into Captains Courageous. But he couldn't escape the baggage of his own identity, his rigid belief in law and hierarchy, or the messiness of human relationships that ultimately drove him away. Jackson: It’s a story of a failed assimilation, in a way. Olivia: A brilliant, heartbreaking failure. His American years show us that the line between genius and prejudice, between a sense of belonging and a life of exile, is incredibly thin. He was a global soul who never quite found a permanent home, and America was his closest, most painful miss. Jackson: It makes you wonder, if that family feud with Beatty Balestier had never happened, if he had stayed in Vermont, would we think of Rudyard Kipling today as one of the great American authors? Olivia: That's a fascinating question. He might have written the Great American Novel after all. We'd love to hear what you all think. Does knowing about his American life change how you see Kipling? Find us on our socials and join the conversation. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.