Gladys Montgomery, "Elegant Wilderness: The Aristocraic Hunting Traditions of the Adirondack Camps"
Lectures and Victorian Tea

Schedule

Description

Berkshire writer and editor, Gladys Montgomery will present an illustrated talk on “Elegant Wilderness: The Aristocratic Hunting Tradition of the Adirondack Camps” on Wednesday, August 18, at 4:00pm. Her lecture is part of the Summer 2010 Lecture Series offered by Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum. Following the talk will be a Victorian Tea, during which Ms. Montgomery will autograph copies of her new book titled Great Camps and Grand Lodges of the Adirondacks, 1855 – 1935.

 

It was in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York, states Montgomery, “that constrictive social proprieties of the Gilded Age relaxed, that city swells hunted in deer-filled forests, and angled in trout-stocked lakes, that women shed their corsets to hike, fish and play tennis and that children learned to appreciate the great outdoors.”

 

The 19^th century, especially during the latter half, was a period of tremendous economic growth in the United States. By 1892, the New York Tribune listed 4,047 millionaires nationwide. Why did the newly rich Americans choose to spend summers in the Adirondacks? Part of the answer is that the region offered the opportunity to own and enjoy – as members of the European nobility had for centuries – vast, private and guarded hunting preserves (some were enclosed with fencing ten miles long), where fish and game were plentiful and an excursion could be organized at a moment's notice.

 

While the wealthy reveled in the Adirondack's scenic wilderness and its recreational pastimes, “they weren't really 'roughing it',” according to Montgomery. Emily Post devotes an entire chapter on the Adirondack house party in her 1923 book on etiquette:  “Let no one...think that this is a 'simple' (by that meaning either easy or inexpensive) form of entertainment. 'Roughing it' in the fashionable world (on the Atlantic coast) is rather suggestive of the dairymaid playing of Marie Antoinette; the 'rough' part being mostly 'picturesque effect' with little taste for actual discomfort.” The Adirondack camp was one mark of the moneyed families that their wealth could and did buy – never far from the servants that did the heavy lifting.

 

Montgomery is a freelance writer and editor, specializing in architecture, design and travel. The editor of Berkshire Living Home + Garden and a contributing editor at Berkshire Living, she has penned more than 200 feature articles for regional, national and international magazines. Other book credits include Storybook Cottage: America's Carpenter Gothic Style, Antiquing Weekends, and Mountain & High Desert Hideaways.

 

Price

$14 member, $16 non-member