IT was an antique sink like any other, with a broad porcelain bowl and vintage fixtures. yet after washing my hands and turning off the nickel faucets, it hit me: these weren’t just any faucets.
They’d been turned, probably thousands of times, by the same hand that wrote novels and poems that have been celebrated around the globe for more than a century, the hand that earned the first Nobel Prize in Literature to be awarded for a work in English.
These were Rudyard Kipling’s personal bathroom sink taps, and I was turning them.
We’d just arrived at Naulakha, the striking Vermont dwelling Kipling designed and inhabited during the last decade of the 19th century. a long, tall structure in the American Shingle style, it is perched high on a hillside overlooking the Connecticut River Valley, exuding the majesty of a galleon and the simplicity of a houseboat.
With his study in the prow, kitchen in the stern, windows along the port side and staircases hugging its starboard wall, Naulakha (pronounced now-LAH-kuh) has been fully restored and contains nearly all original furnishings, including traces of Kipling’s Bombay birthplace and British parentage.
Unlike many former residences of cultural heroes, this is not a museum with audio tours or roped-off doorways. Naulakha is a vacation rental, and every aged book, period chair and elegant bed is available for guests to use, with a tacit expectation of consideration for the home’s historical significance.
David Tansey, president of the nonprofit Landmark Trust USA, which restores historic properties, coordinated the restoration of Naulakha after helping the trust acquire it in 1991, nearly a century after it was built. mr. Tansey is fiercely committed to preserving the integrity of the building.
“I know of only one window pane that’s not original,” he said during a conversation in the loggia, deemed by Kipling “the joy of the house”; it still boasts a 10-foot-long window that can be removed in summer. “The plaster, the woodwork it’s close to 100 percent restored.” Smoothly sliding a pocket door out of its recess, he added, “We found these out in the barn and restored them too.”
A short passage connecting Kipling’s study with stairs leading to the second floor reveals his reclusiveness. If an unexpected admirer or reporter came by, he would quietly exit as his protective wife, Caroline, informed the visitor that her husband was not in.
“He was not antisocial,” mr. Tansey clarified. “They had barn dances and dinner parties, but he didn’t want to be interrupted by strangers.”
Kipling named Naulakha after the book he wrote with Wolcott Balestier, his good friend and mrs. Kipling’s brother, about a precious Indian jewel, and it is filled with a trove of their possessions.
It was not surprising that my initial moment of awe proved to be the first of many. The most mundane of domestic activities sipping tea by the Kiplings’ fireplace, conversing on their porch, breaking bread at their dining room table were infused with a heady cognizance that Ruddy, as he was known, very likely did these things too.
A draw for many visitors is the notion of laying one’s head in the spot where legendary characters like Mowgli and Bagheera might have gelled and simply experiencing the private sanctuary of such an extraordinarily private man.
While he cherished the serenity of his 11-acre retreat since expanded to 55 by the trust Kipling was engaged with his adopted community. During a trip overseas, he confessed to a friend “a desire to be back on Main Street, Brattleboro Vt. U.S.a. and hear the sody water fizzing in the drugstore ... and get a bottle of lager in the basement of Brooks House and hear the doctor tell fish yarns.”
An epicenter of local culture, Main Street is only four miles from Naulakha and retains the architectural patina of Kipling’s time while offering engaging contemporary diversions. Dragonfly Dry Goods, in the old Brooks House, the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, the Latchis Art Deco cinema, and innovative boutiques, bookstores and restaurants make for fine excursions.
Where Kipling Reared Mowgli (in Vermont)
