Mary Rogers Cabot (Aug 20, 1856 to April 30, 1932) is mostly known for writing a two-volume history of Brattleboro entitled 'Annals of Brattleboro, 1681-1895' (Brattleboro, Vt.: E. L. Hildreth & Co., 1921 ) but her true claim to fame, hardly recognized, was being famed writer Rudyard Kipling's best friend during the years he and his budding family lived in the Brattleboro area until a legal battle between Kipling and his brother in law erupted into a globally publicized circus and the Kipling family escaped back to England. Mary's account of Kipling's time in Brattleboro is the best source of his incredibly productive life in Vermont. The episode also breaks new ground in exploring Kipling and Cabot's shared love for the same man as the basis of their bond. The episode begins discussing Cabot's life as a 'cosmopolitan villager' -- a wealthy, independent, intellectual and world-wise woman of the late 1800s, who possessed an unbridled curiosity about the people and goings-on in the town and its place in the world. Her extensive volunteerism, philanthropic life and approach to town history is presented and the Kipling quote she used as an epigraph to the Annals is offered. We hear her origin story and the source of her father's fortune as a merchant trader in the cotton port town of Wetumka, Alabama. We meet her sister Grace Holbrook and brother William Brooks Cabot, a noted engineer and explorer who documented Canadian indigenous peoples in books ('In Northern Labrador,' 1912) and photographs collected under the William Brooks Cabot collection at the Smithsonian. We learn that Mary was likely the prototype for William Dean Howell's 1888 novel 'Annie Kilburn' and hear a quote from that book. We learn about Cabot's deep feelings for Wolcott Balastier, Kipling's wife Carolyn Balastier (Carrie's) brother. Details of the Balastier family's Brattleboro home, Wolcott's life as a literary wunderkind in London, his shocking death at age 30 and his relationship with Kipling and Cabot are discussed. Mary's voice comes to life in multiple excerpts from ther letters to her sister Grace found in the Howard C. Rice Kipling Collection at the University of Vermont. Sleigh rides at midnight, 'chafing dish suppers', Kipling and his wife's relationship, children and their home 'Naulakha' (still preserved in Brattleboro by Landmark Trust) and aspects of the artistic collaboration between Cabot and Kipling are revealed with select commentary from Kipling scholar Professor Christopher Benfey. We share Cabot's feelings about the feud that ripped the Balastier family apart and experience Kipling's tearful farewell to Cabot and departure from Brattleboro, one of the two places he loved most in the world (the other was 'Bombay'). The episode ends with Mary's last days, how she lived her whole life at the Terrace Street house in Brattleboro that still exists today, her family's burial grounds and how she was remembered by peers of her time.
This episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail podcast was researched and co-written by Angelika Pavlovna and Lissa Weinmann. Narration and editing was by Angelika Pavlovna. The Voice of Mary Cabot was Casey Pareles. Christopher Benfey provided additional commentary. Original music was composed by John Loggia. Lissa Weinmann did the sound design/editing and was executive producer. Alec Pombriant did the final podcast mastering.
All of Mary Cabot quotes were taken directly from Mary's original letters to her sister as archived in the indispensable Howard C. Rice Kipling Collection at the University of Vermont. Thanks to Johnny, Nolan, Van and Helena and the whole BCTV crew for studio help and general support for the Brattleboro Words Trail.
The source of Mary Cabot's letters to her sister Grace and other documentation used in this podcast came from the Howard C. Rice Jr.'s Kipling Collection at the University of Vermont Special Collections: https://scfindingaids.uvm.edu/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&op%5B%5D=&q%5B%5D=kipling+collection&limit=&field%5B%5D=&from_year%5B%5D=&to_year%5B%5D=&commit=Search
Professor Christopher Benfey's 2019 book 'If: The Untold Story of Kipling's American Years' can be viewed at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545931/if-by-christopher-benfey/
One can find an original copy of the Annals at Brooks Memorial Library, and it is also digitized online at the Internet Archive at:https://archive.org/details/annalsofbrattleb01cabo/page/n11/mode/2up
For a great read on Cabot's explorer/indigenous photographer brother William Brooks Cabot, see:https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2001/09/william-brooks-cabot-html
For information on renting/visiting Kipling's home Naulakha in Brattleboro: https://landmarktrustusa.org/rudyard-kiplings-naulakha
MARY CABOT: KIPLING’S BEST FRIEND IN BRATTLEBORO
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
AUGUST 2025
(Brattleboro Words Trail Theme Music by Ty Gibbons rises)
HOST LISSA WEINMANN: Welcome to the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast.
EPISODE MUSICAL INTRO (Original composition for this episode by John Loggia)
VOICE OF MARY CABOT (Casey Pareles): “The place Brattleboro has held in the interest and esteem of the world has been all its own, and is due to the variety of interesting personalities who have left here a rich human tradition.”
NARRATOR (Angelika Pavlovna): These are the words of Mary Rogers Cabot. Mary’s Annals of Brattleboro, 1681-1895, is the best history we have of the town for this time. Published in 1921, it paints a vivid portrait through the eyes of one very interesting woman at the top of Brattleboro society, who captures the late 1800s golden era in the life of the town.
But Mary Cabot’s bigger, though hardly recognized, claim to fame is the intimate relationship she had to British literary giant Rudyard Kipling and the young family he raised in his adopted home.
Mary Cabot was Kipling’s best friend in Brattleboro and according to Christopher Benfey, author of 'IF: The Untold Story of Kipling's American Years', her account of his life here is the most insightful that exists.
CHRISTOPHER BENFEY: He was really intrigued by all of the local lore, and the person who was the great source of so many of the stories that interested him was Mary Cabot.
NARRATOR: Kipling did some of his best writing here, including ‘The Jungle Book’ and ‘Captains Courageous’, before things blew up with him, his wife and her younger brother Beatty Balestier. A dramatic circus ensued, and Mary had a ringside seat to the whole disaster.
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NARRATOR: Mary – Molly to family and loved ones – devoted her life to gathering the details and documents she’d eventually assemble into the Annals of Brattleboro, printed and published by Brattleboro’s renowned E.L. Hildreth & Company press. She said her 1000 page, two volume tome was…
MARY CABOT: … not to be mistaken for an attempt to write a formal history of the town…”
NARRATOR: …but serve rather as a collection of accessible information and portraits that would help illustrate the growth of the town she loved.
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Several dozen manila folders full of Cabot’s letters and photographs are part of a University of Vermont archive on Kipling’s years in Brattleboro created by Howard Rice Junior, a Princeton University librarian and Kipling biographer from the Rice newspaper family of Chestnut Hill in Brattleboro. A diary of hers remains at large, once possessed by a Rhode Island collector now deceased. Rice describes the Annals like this, and I quote:
HOWARD C. RICE JR. /NARRATOR: “The Annals reflect some of Miss Cabot’s own values and those of a New England town of her period. It is also a bit of a social register. I recall that there was, at the time of its publication, considerable tongue-wagging, even heart-burning, about which family genealogies were or were not “in Cabot.”
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The ‘Annals of Brattleboro’ reads as a sort of public chronology of the geography, beginning in the 1670s with the presence of early white settlers. She is one of the few authors of the time to actually acknowledge that indigenous people lived here before the settlers, even if she often mischaracterizes the tribes and events.
Unlike most histories of this era, Mary’s provides valuable biographical material on the contributions of outstanding Brattleboro women such as Esther Housh, Anna Marsh, Clarina Howard Nichols, Mary Tyler and local author Mary Wilkins – later Mary Wilkins Freeman – who was, along with her friend Mark Twain, America’s best-selling author of the time.
Although she never married, Miss Cabot was not the sort of “village spinster” Mary Wilkins often portrayed in her works, but rather what her close friend Wolcott Balastier described as ‘a metropolitan villager’ – cosmopolitan, well-traveled beyond America, and interested in discussing politics and world events. The Annals focus on this ‘cultured community’ of writers, artists, politicians, architects, musicians and genteel families Mary knew in the town she loved. This affection is captured in the Rudyard Kipling quote Mary used on the cover of Volume Two of the Annals of Brattleboro:
MARY CABOT: “God gave all men all earth to love, But, since our hearts are small, Ordained for each one spot should prove Beloved over all”
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NARRATOR: Mary’s love of Brattleboro grew from deep roots. Mary’s father, Norman Cabot, was born in Hartland, Vermont. He made his fortune within the Southern slave economy, settling in as a trader in the cotton-boom port town of Wetumska, Alabama. He married Lucy Brooks, the sister of business associates from Brattleboro, in Wetumpka in 1853. They moved back to Brattleboro just before the Civil War.
Mary was their first child, born at Lucy’s family’s home on Main Street on August 20, 1856. Within a year, Norman had built a beautiful house on Terrace Street, still standing, close to the Connecticut River on the North end of Brattleboro.
Norman led the Vermont Savings Bank for decades, affording Mary the luxury of not having to earn a living. Mary would live in that house with her parents, and then after their deaths, for the rest of her life.
Her brother William was a gifted engineer who worked on bridges and the subway tunnels under New York City, but is better known for his anthropological explorations of indigenous tribes in Labrador, documented in his 1912 book “In Northern Labrador.” His photos and papers are archived as the William Brooks Cabot papers at the Smithsonian Institution.
Her little sister, Grace Cabot Holbrook, married Frederick Holbrook the second, one of her brother’s boyhood friends from another old Brattleboro family. Mary addressed Grace as ‘Infant’ in the hundreds of letters she wrote to her in Cambridge. Grace was Mary’s greatest confidant.
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As a privileged and unmarried woman of the late 19th century, Mary was quite unusual. She managed her own finances, drove one of the first cars through the streets of Brattleboro and was politically active as a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Colonial Dames of Vermont and the Vermont Equal Suffrage Association. She for many years directed the Vermont Peace Society, which was part of a national network of, mostly male-led Peace Societies of the time. She also led the Brattleboro Mutual Aid Association from its start in 1907 until nearly the end of her life. Today, that non-profit still manages the Thompson House Rehabilitation and Nursing center next to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital.
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Mary may herself have been the archetype for author William Dean Howell’s eponymous protagonist in the 1889 novel “Annie Kilburn.” Howell married Elinor Meade of the famous Meade family in Brattleboro and visited the town often. Howard Rice Junior said it was easy to recognize Mary Cabot and Brattleboro in Howell’s fictional ‘Hatboro’ where the local gentry, their farm-bred housekeepers and hired help, the shopkeepers and rising young business men, the earnest young clergymen troubled by doubts, as well as the summer people of “South Hatboro’ are devoted to good causes and cultural uplift. The portrait certainly fits.
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But the biggest story where Mary played an actual role was the Kipling drama that would come to define much of her life.
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NARRATOR: Rudyard Kipling, who was the same age as Mary, was to play a defining role in her life. She fell in easily and closely with the Kipling family by virtue of her early friendships growing up with Kipling’s wife Carrie Balastier’s younger siblings.
Carolyn or Carrie Balastier met Kipling in London where she was living with her younger brother Wolcott Balestier, who she adored. Wolcott was a writer who’d hit his mark in London as an American boy-wonder in the British publishing world of the time. His many friends included author Henry James and Kipling with whom, it was often described, he formed an ‘intimate friendship.’ Mary’s brother Will also visited London and was part of Wolcott’s circle.
Kipling, a young superstar himself, wrote a novel with Wolcott they called ‘The Naulahka,’ an Indian term for a priceless item. It was the first and only time Britain’s first and the world’s youngest Nobel Laureate co-authored anything with anyone.
The exact nature of the intense relationship between Kipling and Wolcott may never be fully known. But we do know that Kipling wasn’t the only one who loved Wolcott – he may have also been Mary Cabot’s one true love.
BENFEY: It was rumored that she had been intended to be the wife of Wolcott Balister, so this was another close linkage for Kipling to really the man who had meant most to him.
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NARRATOR: Wolcott's sudden death from typhoid just before he turned 30 shocked everyone. Kipling rushed back to London from India and almost immediately married Carrie, a surprising decision to some who thought her not up to Kipling’s level.
News of Wolcott’s death hit Mary hard. On December 1891, she wrote to her sister:
MARY CABOT: Wolcott is the only person I ever knew except myself, who felt perfectly certain of a long life …I always cared for his intellectual opinion and his spiritual perception more than for that of any other one … As I live so much within the limitations of country, and village life, and so readily fall into mental ruts,... I depended on him for illumination, and it never had occurred to me that he would not be a perpetual light in my way ... .When I heard that he was dead it seemed that I should live in sordidness.
NARRATOR: It is likely that the foundation of Kipling and Mary’s deep bond was forged by their mutual feelings for Wolcott.
NARRATOR: From here on in, Mary’s letters, mostly to her sister, provide a deeply personal account of Kipling’s life in Vermont and how important he and his family were in her life.
MARY CABOT: Rudyard Kipling came, for the first time, to Brattleboro, February 16, 1892, a month after his marriage to Caroline Balestier. Her grandparents, while guests at the old Watercure, bought a tract of land with wooded hillsides and beautiful prospects overlooking the Connecticut River valley, three miles north of the village, in 1868, and builded a house to which they gave the name Beechwood. Here their children and grandchildren passed many summers, which endeared the place to the entire family. To their grandson, Beatty S. Balestier, on his marriage in 1890 to Mai Mendon, was given Maplewood, an old farmhouse on the estate, with seventy or more adjoining acres, and it was at Maplewood in the winter of 1892 that Mr. and Mrs. Kipling made the memorable visit.
NARRATOR: She describes her first impressions of Kipling:
MARY CABOT: He was boyish in appearance and manner, which was hearty and almost rollicking, and he spoke very rapidly and vividly of the topics of the time and locality…..Kipling is coarse (I think), kept saying “Golly,’ and his atmosphere was not restrained but rather familiar. But the artist in him is tremendous and he was thrilling when he talked art….
NARRATOR: She wrote of the design and build of the unique boat-shaped house that still stands today named, like the book he wrote with Wolcott, “Naulakha”... it was just across the road from Carrie’s youngest brother Beatty and his family, the birth of the Kipling’s first child and the atmosphere of the home.
MARY CABOT: By the time the house was ready for occupancy, little Josephine had come and was ready to move with them, so that their home as well as their house was complete…. They moved in the late summer of 1893, and almost immediately, I was welcomed to their innermost life. It was a quiet and simple life, made up of his regular and constant work, writing from nine until one in the library….
NARRATOR: Mary described other writers who came to visit…
MARY CABOT: (Arthur) Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes author) and a younger brother, fresh from Australia, spent Thanksgiving of 1894 at Naulakha. The dinner was at Maplewood, for who, Beatty said, would dine in an Englishman’s house on Thanksgiving Day?
NARRATOR: She describes dinners and teas, the foods that were served and topics explored, visits with Bishops and other dignitaries, sleigh rides and coming home late at night breathless under star studded winter skies.
MARY CABOT: The Kiplings accepted invitations, coming very often on moonlit evenings when the sleighing was fine, to my Den or Playroom as R.K. called it, for a chafing-dish supper. He was never more fascinating than in that atmosphere of mere relaxation, which he, especially, required. As long as I knew him he lamented the lack of a leisure class in America and said that I was the only one of that class he had yet found.
NARRATOR: It is clear Mary cherished her relationship with the Kiplings…
MARY CABOT: I have just returned from afternoon tea at Naulahka and a most charming time. The Kiplings are nicer to me than ever and it is so really interesting and delightful (their society I mean) that I can hardly believe it true that I am the only person in possession ... .If they really ever go away to live, I should miss the greatest stimulus I have here. I drive down from there feeling as if I was in rightful possession of the entire earth.’
NARRATOR: …She cherished especially her deepening friendship with Kipling himself.
MARY CABOT: At luncheon, he told me of a dinner of eight, in India, everyone of whom, except himself, had killed his tiger. The fact then flashed on my consciousness that the fearless author was uncommonly timid as a man.
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NARRATOR: She commented frequently on his uncommon power of perception and his keen sensitivity to and reverence for nature:
MARY CABOT: In the afternoon we strolled along the road, looking for leaves of wood anemones…He refused to go away while they were in bloom. He said his year would be incomplete if he missed the anemones.
NARRATOR: She shed light on the nature of Kipling and Carrie’s marriage:
MARY CABOT: Mrs. Kipling was, in many respects, an admirable wife for a genius. She guarded his health, assumed the supervision of every detail of the routine of his daily life, published his works, was his business agent, and stood between him and any obstacles to the free and full development of his powers.
NARRATOR: She commented on how Kipling seemed to change as a family man:
MARY CABOT: With the experience of fatherhood and home responsibilities there seemed to come a seriousness of purpose and dignity of bearing to Mr. Kipling. His manners softened and took form.
NARRATOR: Kipling’s negative attitude toward local leaders surfaced around the building of a controversial new trolley in town. Mary documented Kipling’s vivid opposition to the project. She addressed his religious habits:
MARY CABOT: He did not attend church services in Brattleboro, but devoted Sunday mornings to writing hymns which, read to the favored few, found oblivion in the waste paper basket by Monday.
NARRATOR: Like her brother Will, Mary was an avid photographer, and her collections can still be seen in town. In May 1895 she wrote to her sister:
MARY CABOT: I have taken a photograph of Josephine Kipling which is absolutely perfect. It could not be improved. The family are enchanted and wish me to spend a week at Naulakha to take photographs.
NARRATOR: Kipling and Mary discussed writing a great deal. He asked her to help him produce ‘the great American novel’ as he said only an outsider like him could. She brushed him off, doubting his characterization of Americans would be complimentary.
BENFEY: There was an artistic coming together of the both of them….they discussed…a book of country sketches.
MARY CABOT: He offered to pay me (when I told him I wanted to earn money and didn’t know how) for plots for stories. He said I had all the material for a novelist except perhaps the literary expression.
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NARRATOR: As a person close to the Balestier family and the Kiplings, Mary found herself in the middle of the sensational feud Kipling had with his brother in law Beatty Balastier. Kipling made the mistake of pressing charges against his brother in law for threatening his life. A prolonged court case in Brattleboro attracted a media feeding frenzy and eventually drove the Kiplings away.
MARY CABOT: The confidante of both sides, I managed by frankness as well as sympathy with each, to maintain the old friendly relation. On the main issue, I felt that the Kiplings were right, but that they might have dealt with their brother in a more dignified way. Beatty proved himself a bully, yet he had some reason for resentment. My visits continued, and everyone tried to keep them unclouded, but it was impossible. ….A more or less suppressed irritability towards everything American was in the air at Naulahka; across the road at Maplewood (where Beatty lived) there was unmixed triumph.”
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NARRATOR: Mary’s resilience in the aftermath shows her grace in the face of adversity.
MARY CABOT: The Kiplings have determined to return to England in a few weeks—to live—isn’t it hard on me? Once I should have said “Well, this is the end of the world,” but the advantage of age is that you know that something or somebody else will take—not their place—but as big a place in your life.
NARRATOR: The fateful day came in August of 1896:
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MARY CABOT: I went to say goodbye to the Kiplings: she was tearful, but he seemed frozen with misery; he said it was the hardest thing he had ever had to do, that he loved Naulahka. I spoke of the touch of Autumn already on the distant hills, - as he put me in the carriage, - which brought the tears to his eyes; His last words, in a tone of piercing sadness, were “Yes! ‘Tis the Fall! Good-bye Miss Cabot.”
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NARRATOR: After the Kiplings left and the years passed, people tried to get Mary to share her experience and observations about the Kiplings. Beatty Balastier gave his side of the story to writer Frederic Van de Water, later in life, but Mary was reluctant to share details. She wrote to her sister in 1898:
MARY CABOT: I have few anecdotes to relate as I do not care to repeat anything which would seem to Rudyard Kipling … like taking advantage of his friendship and full and free confidence toward me.”
NARRATOR: After a year or so, Mary bought Naulakha. She later sold it to her sister, who used it as a summer home. When Grace moved into the house Mary shared her cobbled-together account of the Kipling saga at the house, the memories we use so liberally in this piece now. She wrote letters to the Kiplings in England, but rarely heard back. Carrie did write in December 1896 to thank Mary for her enthusiastic letter about Carrie’s younger sister Josephine Balastier’s pending marriage:
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NARRATOR READING CARRIE KIPLING LETTER EXCERPT: “As Mr. Kipling never talks of Brattleboro, or reads a letter from America, or does anything which remotely reminds him of that last year of calamity and sorrow, I have not told him this piece of family news….I shall be interested in any plan of yours that looks to our seeing you this side of the water.
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NARRATOR: Their eldest daughter Josephine, ‘the little blonde bouncer’ Mary photographed so often, would die at age six of pneumonia in 1899, just three years after Carrie wrote that letter. Mary would never see the Kiplings again.
Mary spent her final years with her brother Will at her Terrace Street home, reflecting on life, working on a supplement to the Annals, and dealing with a chronic illness that caused the loss of her arm. Mary died in 1932 at the age of 75. She and her entire family are buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery in Brattleboro.
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NARRATOR: In his 1931 “Pendrift” column in the Brattleboro Reformer, Charles Crane wrote an homage to Mary before she died, and I quote: “While Miss Cabot is distinguished as our local historian, she has as keen an eye on the future as on the past. She loves sharing her stories with young people and…Although she is widely traveled and has a store of experiences to draw from, her chief concern is about her own town.”
MUSIC TO END / BRATTLEBORO WORDS TRAIL THEME MUSIC ARISES
HOST: This episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail podcast was researched and co-written by Angelika Pavlovna and Lissa Weinmann. Narration and editing was by Angelika Pavlovna. The Voice of Mary Cabot was Casey Pareles. Christopher Benfey provided additional commentary. Original music was composed by John Loggia. Lissa Weinmann did the sound design/editing and was executive producer. All of Mary Cabot quotes were taken directly from Mary's original letters to her sister as archived in the indispensable Howard C. Rice Kipling Collection at the University of Vermont. Thanks to Johnny, Nolan, Van and Helena and the whole BCTV crew for studio help and general support for the Brattleboro Words Trail. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next month on...the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast.