Swami Vivekananda at Ridgely manor

This photograph was previously thought to have been taken in Kashmir in 1898 perhaps because of Swamiji’s Kashmiri dress, but it has been identified in Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana’s publication Saint Sara: The Life of Sara Chapman Bull, The American Mother of Swami Vivekananda, as “Swami Vivekananda at Stoneridge [Ridgely Manor], New York, photographed by Ralph S. Bartlett in mid-October 1899.”7 According to Pravrajika Prabuddhaprana this information is from the label on the glass slide, which was loaned to her by Joseph Frost from his collection through the Eliot Baha’i archivist in Green Acre (who had also provided the same information about photo 82). Ralph Bartlett, a friend of Mrs. Bull’s daughter Olea, arrived in Ridgely Manor a few days after Mrs. Bull, who arrived on October 7; he stayed several days and then left. Olea wrote him a letter from Ridgely Manor on October 28.8 The two photographs that he took of Swamiji were taken sometime during this period. ❊ ❊ ❊ [Ridgely Manor, 1899] In the evening, sitting around the great fire in the hall of Ridgely Manor, he would talk, and once after he came out with some of his thoughts a lady said, “Swami, I don’t agree with you there.” “No? Then it is not for you,” he answered. Someone else said, “O, but that is where I find you true.” “Ah, then it was for you,” he said showing that utter respect for the other man’s views. (RSV, 238)