Please continue down the hallway and turn right into the bedroom.
As we continue through the Owners’ Suite, we reach the Owner’s Chamber – a bedroom shared by Tom and Olive Plant during their years here at Lucknow. You may find the twin beds surprising, but outfitting ones bedroom this way was fashionable at the time. Physicians argued that the individual experienced a better, more restful sleep in his or her own bed.
And Lucknow was a place for rest, relaxation, and recreation. One advertisement for the Lucknow Estate printed in the 1930s suggested that Tom Plant had been a worn-out businessman when he retired in 1910. But at Lucknow he “started a new life in the open, kept busy “cultivating his garden” and [was at that time] a healthy contented man.”
Of course, not all was easy at Lucknow. Having fallen into financial difficulty as early as the 1920s, the Plants spent the majority of their years here attempting to sell the estate. In 1930, Joseph Emery, a close personal friend, offered Tom a mortgage that was meant to be repaid within nine months. And although the Plants fell behind on that repayment, Emery generously allowed them to remain on their beloved estate.
Still, the Plants felt the tension. In 1935, Olive bemoaned the financial strain, writing:
“My activities, at least along travel lines, have been curtailed, thanks to that ogre we call Depression.”
And in 1940, Olive wrote her parents:
“Our affairs seem to be reaching a crisis and I cannot be away until they are settled somehow.”
Little did she know that just over a year later, Tom Plant would pass away at the hospital in Laconia. Joseph Emery had passed only months earlier, and while Olive was escorting Tom’s remains to his hometown of Bath for burial, the executors of Emery’s will foreclosed on Lucknow. Olive returned to her mountaintop home to retrieve her clothing and other small items before leaving for Illinois.
Before you leave this room, take a moment to look at the photographs on the bureau. The studio photo of Olive was taken around 1914. The other photo depicts Tom Plant wearing North-African inspired costume. Research suggests that this image was captured sometime in the early 20th century at Rafael Garzon’s Estudio de Casa Garzon en Sevilla, a photo studio in Seville, Spain that catered to tourists.
