The 19th century successes
of the Chautauqua Institution of New York have always appealed to me. I believe
I would have been thrilled to attend the profoundly educational lectures of the
itinerant speakers who followed the Chautauqua circuit. For some Americans—and for
many middle-class women—the Chautauqua offerings were the closest thing they
could get to a higher education.
The Chautauqua Institution was founded
in 1874 as a teaching camp for Sunday school teachers. The concept spread through
the United States. At its peak in the 1920s the movement offered a broad range
of lectures and music on both religious and nondenominational topics, in more
than 10,000 communities.
By 1940 the network of originally
Victorian-style centers of learning and culture had lost their mass appeal,
after enriching the lives of more than 45 million men and women. Today, the
Chautauqua Institution on the original site is alive and well, and still
attracting many thousands of participants annually.
In the late 19th century,
the notion of family vacations was becoming popular, partly as a result of
increasing affluence and the expansion of rail travel. In a recent issue of The Massachusetts Historical Review,
Anita C. Danker wrote:
“…a
significant number of largely middle-class Americans chose to make constructive
use of their increased leisure time, a by-product of industrialization, in ways
consistent with their values and religious beliefs.”
The
Chautauqua centers were attractive destinations. One such place was the New
England Chautauqua Sunday School Assembly at Mount Wayte in Framingham, MA.
From 1880-1918 it offered a steadily diversifying assortment of lectures and
performances, drawing a dedicated audience from the area that would become
MetroWest Boston. Those folks wanted to vacation in comfort and style, and they
also were committed to a high-quality experience. Rail service to Mount Wayte
was busy.
Danker
explains:
“One
form of vacation consistent with middle-class values and the moral climate of
the New England region was the religious retreat…A critical mass of ordinary
Americans displayed another powerful need, compatible with the ideal of a
Christian vacation: the purposeful employment of leisure time for education and
individual self-improvement.”
A
reliable corps of attendees was “middle-class women, whose access to higher
education was restricted by tradition and circumstance […they] formed the
bedrock of the institution.”
Think
of TED Talks without the clip-on microphone.
Source:
Anita
C. Danker, “Redeeming the Time: Learning Vacations at the New England
Chautauqua Assembly,” The Massachusetts Historical
Review, Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 17, 2015, 67-97.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
