American Notes | Page 3

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This etext was created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska.

American Notes
by
Rudyard Kipling

With Introduction

Introduction
In an issue of the London World in April, 1890, there appeared the
following paragraph: "Two small rooms connected by a tiny hall afford
sufficient space to contain Mr. Rudyard Kipling, the literary hero of the
present hour, 'the man who came from nowhere,' as he says himself,
and who a year ago was consciously nothing in the literary world."
Six months previous to this Mr. Kipling, then but twenty-four years old,
had arrived in England from India to find that fame had preceded him.

He had already gained fame in India, where scores of cultured and
critical people, after reading "Departmental Ditties," "Plain Tales from
the Hills," and various other stories and verses, had stamped him for a
genius.
Fortunately for everybody who reads, London interested and stimulated
Mr. Kipling, and he settled down to writing. "The Record of Badalia
Herodsfoot," and his first novel, "The Light that Failed," appeared in
1890 and 1891; then a collection of verse, "Life's Handicap, being
stories of Mine Own People," was published simultaneously in London
and New York City; then followed more verse, and so on through an
unending series.
In 1891 Mr. Kipling met the young author Wolcott Balestier, at that
time connected with a London publishing house. A strong attachment
grew between the two, and several months after their first meeting they
came to Mr. Balestier's Vermont home, where they collaborated on
"The Naulahka: A Story of West and East," for which The Century paid
the largest price ever given by an American magazine for a story. The
following year Mr. Kipling married Mr. Balestier's sister in London and
brought her to America.
The Balestiers were of an aristocratic New York family; the
grandfather of Mrs. Kipling was J. M. Balestier, a prominent lawyer in
New York City and Chicago, who died in 1888, leaving a fortune of
about a million. Her maternal grand-father was E. Peshine Smith of
Rochester, N. Y., a noted author and jurist, who was selected in 1871
by Secretary Hamilton Fish to go to Japan as the Mikado's adviser in
international law. The ancestral home of the Balestiers was near
Brattleboro', Vt., and here Mr. Kipling brought his bride. The young
Englishman was so impressed by the Vermont scenery that he rented
for a time the cottage on the "Bliss Farm," in which Steele Mackaye the
playwright wrote the well known drama "Hazel Kirke."
The next spring Mr. Kipling purchased from his brother-in-law, Beatty
Balestier, a tract of land about three miles north of Brattleboro', Vt.,
and on this erected a house at a cost of nearly $50,000, which he named
"The Naulahka." This was his home during his sojourn in America.
Here he wrote when in the mood, and for recreation tramped abroad
over the hills. His social duties at this period were not arduous, for to
his home he refused admittance to all but tried friends. He made a study

of the Yankee country dialect and character for "The Walking
Delegate," and while "Captains Courageous," the story of New England
fisher life, was before him he spent some time among the Gloucester
fishermen with an acquaint-ance who had access to the household gods
of these people.
He returned to England in August, 1896, and did not visit America
again till 1899, when he came with his wife and three children for a
limited time.
It is hardly fair to Mr. Kipling to call "American Notes" first
impressions, for one reading them will readily see that the impressions
are superficial, little thought being put upon the writing. They seem
super-sarcastic, and would lead one to believe that Mr. Kipling is
antagonistic to America in every respect. This, however, is not true.
These "Notes" aroused much protest and severe criticism when they
appeared in 1891, and are considered so far beneath Mr. Kipling's real
work that they have been nearly suppressed and are rarely found in a
list of