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William Baillie Grohman

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Baillie-Grohman in 1885

William Adolph Baillie Grohman (April 1 1851 – February 11 1921) was an Anglo-Austrian author[1] of works on the Tyrol and the history of hunting, a big game sportsman, and a pioneer in the Kootenay region of British Columbia.

Biography[edit]

Grohmann was born in 1851 in Gmunden, the eldest son of Adolf Rheinhold Grohmann (1822–1877) and Francis Margaret 'Fanny' Reade (1831–1908). He spent much of his youth in Tyrol in Austria, and could speak Tyrolese dialect like a native. His early years were spent at the Schloss von St. Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut, which had a famous garden. His father had mental breakdown and in 1861 had to be committed to an asylum. He was educated by private tutors and at Elizabeth College, Guernsey. In 1873 his mother bought the semi-derelict Schloss Matzen[2] in the Tyrol, near the branch of the Zillertal and the Inn Valley.[3] As a young man Grohmann roamed out from the family castle to hunt chamois and deer in the surrounding high alps, wandering for days through the still-remote Tyrolese mountain villages. His two earliest books, Tyrol & the Tyrolese (1876)[4] and Gaddings with a Primitive People (1878),[5] provide a rare first-hand insight into Tyrolese folk customs and the austere, isolated existence of pre-industrial Alpine village communities.[6] He was an expert mountaineer and made the first winter ascent[7] of the Großglockner, the highest mountain in Austria (3798m), on 2 January 1875,[8] and was a member of the Alpine Club. He is credited as being one of the first to introduce skis to the Tyrol, having been sent four pairs by his father in law, the railway magnate Tom Nickalls, who had a hunting lodge in Norway – he started using them in 1893, as is related in an article in The Field in 1937,[9] by his daughter Olga, who herself became an early member of the Innsbruck Ski club. The article in The Field includes photographs of WABG's wife Florence on skis in 1894 – the earliest known photograph of a woman on skis in the alps. Skis were also introduced to the Tyrol the same year at Kitzbuhl[10] by Franz Reisch.

A crack shot and a passionate big-game hunter, he travelled out to the American West many times the 1870s and 1880s to shoot big game when the Rockies and mountain states were opening up to sportsmen. His book Camps in the Rockies (1882)[11] gives an account of his travels through Wyoming and Idaho, both as a "topshelfer" (a rich comfort-laden sportsman[12]) and later on – more to his boyhood taste of stalking with Tyrolean mountain huntsmen – roughing it with trappers and Native Americans. Although written in a style of detached amusement to entertain armchair Victorian readers, this work, like his earlier books about the Tyrolese, has careful and sympathetic passages on American Indian and local customs, and gives a valuable first-hand account of the American and Canadian West just before and after the arrival of the railway. He ranged widely over the Pacific Slope and the Central Rockies and explored unclimbed peaks in the Selkirks.

Baillie Grohman liked the new country he found so much that he returned to British Columbia in the 1880s as a pioneer, investing through the Kootenay Company Ltd,[13] a London registered company which obtained a concession of 78,525 acres (317.78 km2) to develop the Upper and Lower Kootenay valleys.[14] The company was capitalised at £100,000.00 in 20,000 shares of £5 each, (roughly $1,000,000 at the time)mostly raised in Ottowa. [15] [16]. He wrote a number of articles for British magazines promoting the possibilities of British Columbia.[17] In his youth he had seen how the embankment of the Inn River in the lower Inntal had turned unproductive flood land into profitable farmland and so envisaged that a similar control of the Kootenay River and a lowering of the water levels of the Kootenay Lake would create large areas of fertile farmland. This plan was thwarted by political pressure from the Canadian Pacific Railway and others,[18][19] who managed ultimately to get the concession revoked and awarded to rival interests. Probably his restless and outspoken temperament and privileged background was not well suited to the political manoeuvring needed to mollify the Provincial Colonial Administration and counter the machinations of the CPR and other interests.[20]

Before the concession was revoked the Kootenay Company was held to one of the conditions of its grant – that it must build a canal to connect the Columbia River and Kootenay and William Adolph Baillie-Grohman.[21] The canal,[22][23] took a massive investment and because of the railway, was pointless (only two ships ever used it) and the project failed.[24] It is now a historic site at Canal Flats, British Columbia. [25] [26] Between 1883 and 1885 Grohmann lived some time in Victoria, British Columbia,[27] negotiating the concession with the government of BC, and then moved the Kootenay to manage the project, opening the first steam sawmill in the region[28] and the first steam boat on lake Kootenay;[29] he was the first J.P and the first postmaster in Kootenay.[30] His account of his time in BC Fifteen Years' Sport and Life in the Hunting Grounds of Western America and British Columbia (1900)[31] describes some of his pioneering experiences, and also has accounts of hunting the rare white Rocky mountain "antelope goat", sometimes known then as "Haplocerus Montanus" but now assigned the Linnaean name of Oreamnos americanus, as well as the pursuit of many other types of game. Baillie Grohmans's scheme for reclamation was later successfully implemented by others.[32]

His later books include successful works on the history of the Tyrol (by then an increasingly popular destination for English tourists); Tyrol, The Land in the Mountains (1907)[33] and Tyrol (1908)[34] as well as a guidebook to his own castle in German Schloß Matzen im Unterinntal (1907).[2]

A passionate collector, he amassed a large collection of antique European furniture and of European sporting art (his collection of sporting prints was sold at a special sale at Sotheby's in 1923),[35][36] and in his later years he developed an erudite interest in the history and art of sport, building up an extensive library on hunting and game animals, including early ecological studies along with early treatises on hunting in many different European languages. Assisted by his wife, Florence, he produced a lavishly illustrated and authoritative<[37] edition of The Master of Game (1904),[38] the second oldest English book on hunting, a translation (from the French Livre de Chasse (1387) of Gaston Phébus) by Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York. This has a foreword by his friend and later US president Teddy Roosevelt, also an avid big game hunter, who visited him in the Tyrol. In his book on early depictions of hunting Sport in art, An iconography of sport (1913),[39] Baillie Grohman was able to bring together a lifetime's understanding of hunting in the field with an extensive historical knowledge of early sporting art gained through his own collecting and research. An edition of Maximillian I of Austria's Das Jagdbuch Kaiser Maximillians I (1901) with Dr Michael Mayr[40] is also of interest for early game ecology.

As well as writing authoring eleven books, he published numerous articles in contemporary British magazines on both historical and travel subjects. [41]

On the outbreak of the first world war, as British nationals, the Baillie Grohmans faced internment but were allowed to leave Austria after the intercession of Prince Auersperg. They returned after the war and started the Tyrolean Relief Fund to help Tyroleans through the famine that followed the war in the Tyrol. He died in 1921 in Schloss Matzen.

Family[edit]

In 1885 Baillie Grohman married Florence née Nickalls, daughter of Tom Nickalls (1828–1899) and Emily née Quihampton (1834–1909), Tom was a London stockbroker known as the "Erie King" from his many coups in American railway shares,[42] the champion rowers Guy Nickalls and Vivian Nickalls were Florence's brothers. Florence joined William Adolf pioneering in British Colimbia and write about her experiences in an appendix to her husbands account [31] “Florence Baillie-Grohman – Her Unpublished Manuscript,” BC Historical News Vol 1, No 3 (June 1968), p 7-22. https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0190740

Florence and William had a son and a daughter: their son, Vice-Admiral Harold Tom Baillie Grohman RN CB, DSO, OBE (1887–1978), had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy, commanding the battleship HMS Ramillies at the start of the Second World War;[43] and their daughter, Olga Florence Baillie Grohman (1889–1947),[44] who married secondly Oscar Ferris Watkins, became a pioneer in Kenya and the first female Member of the Kenya Legislative Council (MLC).

Legacy[edit]

Mount Grohman (2299 m) near Nelson, British Columbia is named after him as are the Grohman Narrows of Grohman Narrows Provincial Park.

Bibliography[edit]

Books Authored by W A Baillie Grohman[edit]

  • Tyrol & the Tyrolese: The people & the Land in their social, sporting and mountaineering aspects. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1876. [1st Ed, 8vo 278p]
  • Schloß Matzen im Unterinntal: Kurze geschichtlich (in German). Innsbruck: Wagner'sche Universitäts Buchhandlung. 1907a. [1st Auflage. 60pp, mit 34 Abbildunge]
    • Schloß Matzen im Unterinntal: Kurze geschichtlich (in German). Innsbruck: Wagner'sche Universitäts Buchhandlung. 1907. [2nd Auflage. 60pp, mit 34 Abbildunge]
  • Tyrol, The Land in the Mountains. London: Simpkin, Marshal, Hamilton Kent & Co. 1907b. [1st UK. 288pp 82 plates 23cm] Review[45]
    • Tyrol, The Land in the Mountains. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1907. [1st US. 288pp 82 plates 23cm]
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1908). Tyrol. Painted by E. Harrison Compton. London: Adam and Charles Black. [1st UK. Folio, 302pp. 52 pl]
  • Sport in Art: An iconography of sport. Illustrating the field sports of Europe and America from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. London: Ballantyne. 1913. [1st Ed. Quarto 422pp., 8p]
    • Sport in Art: An iconography of sport. Illustrating the field sports of Europe and America from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. London: Simkin, Marshal, Hamilton, Kent & Co. 1919. [2nd Ed. Quarto 422pp., 8p]
    • Sport in Art: An iconography of sport. Illustrating the field sports of Europe and America from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Benjamin Blom. 1969. [Reprint. Quarto]
    • Sport in Art: An iconography of sport. Illustrating the field sports of Europe and America from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Benjamin Blom. 1990. [Reprint. Quarto]
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf; Mayr, Dr Michael (1901). Das Jagdbuch Kaiser Maximillians I: mit drei färbigten Reproduktionen gleichzeitiger Bilder und drei Lichtdrucktafeln [1st Auflage. xxxii, 191 p., [6] plates : ill. ; 34 cm. ] (in German). Innsbruck: Wagner'sche Universitäts Buchhandlung.

Books by W A Baillie Grohman and Florence Baillie Grohman[edit]

Articles by W A Baillie Grohman[edit]

  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1887). "Home-hunting in the Kootenay valleys of British Columbia". The Illustrated London News. Vol. March 5th. London. p. 265.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1889). "Seven years' pathfinding in the Selkirks of Kootenay". The Field. Vol. May 11. London. pp. 657–658.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1895). "Stalking the haplocerus in the Selkirks [11pp]". The English illustrated magazine. No. 140 (May). London. pp. 127–133.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1897). "Sports in the Seventeenth Century. [11pp]". The Century. Vol. 54, issue 3 (July 1897).
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1900). The New South Africa. London: C.Arthur Pearson. pp. 1–16.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1901). "Capercaillie-Shooting in the Alps The Secrets of a Fascinating Sport. [7p]". Pall Mall Magazine. London.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1901). "Austria, by W.A. Baillie-Grohman". In Aflalo, Frederick George (ed.). Sport in Europe. Illustrated from drawings ... and from photographs.[A series of articles by various writers.] London: Sands & Co. pp. 17–44.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1902). "A famous mediaeval hunting-book". Monthly Review. No. January. London.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1903). "Ancient Weapons of the Chase. Article I". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Vol. 3, no. 8. London.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1903). "The Finest hunting-manuscript extant [i.e. the Gaston Phoebus MS.]". Burlington Magazine. Vol. 2. London. pp. 8–21.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1904). "Ancient Weapons of the Chase. Article II". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Vol. 4, no. 11. London.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1909). "Some historical portraits of the Biedermaier Period of German Art". Burlington Magazine. London. pp. 114–119.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (n.d.). "How to reach Klondike. by one who has been fifteen times to the Pacific slope". The New Illustrated Magazine. London.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1894). "The Chamois". Big Game Shooting. Vol. 2. London: Longmans Green and Co. pp. 85–122.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1894). "The Stag of the Alps". In Phillipps-Wolley, Clive (ed.). Big Game Shooting '. Vol. 2. London: Longmans Green and Co. pp. 123–134.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1918). "The Kootenay Country". The Geographical Journal. No. July 1918. Royal Geographical Society.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1918). "A Paradise for Canadian & American Soldiers". The Nineteenth Century and After. Vol. 83, no. April 1918. pp. 762–778.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1919). "A Work by Veit Stoss". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Vol. 35, no. 199. London.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1921). "A Portrait of the Ugliest Princess in History". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. Vol. 38, no. 217. London.
  • Baillie Grohman, William Adolf (1990). Elk Hunting Tales An Anthology of Historic Outdoor Adventures from the Pages of BUGLE Magazine. London, Paris & New York: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. ISBN 978-0-9627248-2-4.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Worldcat: Baillie-Grohman, William A. (William Adolph) 1851–1921".
  2. ^ a b Baillie Grohman 1907a.
  3. ^ Watkins, Elizabeth (2005). Olga in Kenya: Repressing the Irrepressible. Brighton, Sussex, England: Pen Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-1905203741.
  4. ^ Baillie Grohman 1876.
  5. ^ Baillie Grohman 1878.
  6. ^ Draxl, Anton (2013), "Das Karwendel Flurnamen, das "Hinterriß-Thal", Wilderer und Bergsteiger", Das Karwendel : Geschichte, alte Namen, Land und Leute (in German), vol. 2. Vom Kaiser Max bis zum Jahr 1945, Lienz, p. 521{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ^ Baillie-Grohmann 1875b.
  8. ^ Roberts, Eric (1977). "The Grossglockner: Its climbs and Pioneers". Alpine Journal. 82: 197. Made by W.A. Baillie-Grohmann, P. Groder, A. Kerer & K. Gorgasser
  9. ^ Watkins, Olga (November 1937). "The first Skis in the Tyrol". The Field. London: 1274–1276.
  10. ^ "Mit dem Ski auf das Kitzbichler Horn (1994 m) 1 November 1893" (PDF). Der Schneeschuh. 1st volume. Munich. 1893.
  11. ^ Baillie Grohman 1882.
  12. ^ Baillie Grohman 1882, p. 2.
  13. ^ Baillie Grohman 1886.
  14. ^ Jordan, Mabel E (1993). "The Upper Kootenay River Canal". Frontier Days in British Columbia. Heritage House. pp. 74–81. ISBN 978-1894384-01-8.
  15. ^ [Baillie Grohman], W.A. (1887). The Kootenay Company Ltd, prospectus, director's proof. London: The Kootenay Company, 46 Queen Victoria Street >. pp. 1–3.
  16. ^ J. H. Reynolds (1 May 1897). "The History of the Grohman Canal Swindle". Letters to the editor. The Golden Era. No. 46051. p. 2. doi:10.14288/1.0226971.
  17. ^ Articles - See Bibliography
  18. ^ The Kootenay Valley. A report on certain cases involving reclamation and the development of water power in the valley of the Kootenay river, under the terms of article IV of the treaty of January 1 1, 1909 heard before the international joint commission, Ottawa and Washington (PDF) (Report). Ottawa and Washington: Government of Canada. 1935. "and the Canadian Pacific Railway heard with horror that the waters of the Kootenay were to be turned into the Columbia, which river was already giving their line considerable trouble at high water."
  19. ^ Dance, Anne (2015). "The Kootenay Valley. Dikes, Ducks, and Dams: Environmental Change and the Politics of Reclamation at Creston Flats, 1882–2014". BC Studies (Winter2014/15): 17, p20.
  20. ^ Jordan 1993, p. 75.
  21. ^ Jordan 1993, p. 76.
  22. ^ Jordan, Mabel Ellen (1987). "The Upper Kootenay River Canal". Canadian West ((Summer 1987)). British Columbia Historical Society: 76–82.
  23. ^ Welwood, Ron J (2003). "Baillie-Grohman's Diversion". BC Historical News. 36 (4). British Columbia Historical Federation: 6–12. doi:10.14288/1.0190653.
  24. ^ Jordan, Mabel Ellen (1956). "The Kootenay Reclamation and Colonization Scheme and William Adolph Baillie-Grohman". British Columbia Historical Quarterly. 20, 3–4. British Columbia Historical Society: 187–22. doi:10.14288/1.0190586.
  25. ^ Kay, Dave (1976). ""Renewed Interest in Baillie-Grohman Canal". British Columbia Historical News. 9, No 2 (February 1976). British Columbia Historical Society: 23–28. doi:10.14288/1.0190598.
  26. ^ { Netherton, Frederick J. (1976). "The Baillie-Grohman canal of East Kootenay". Selected papers from the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada : annual meeting 1975 and annual meeting 1976.
  27. ^ Bosher, J.F. (April 2010). Imperial Vancouver Island. Who Was Who 1850–1950. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-4500-5963-3.
  28. ^ Jordan 1993, p. 80.
  29. ^ Taming the Kootenay, 1882–1893: W. A.Baillie-Grohman and the Midge. Creston and District Historical and Museum Society. p. 1.
  30. ^ International Joint Commission 1935, p. 30.
  31. ^ a b Baillie Grohman & Baillie Grohman 1900a.
  32. ^ International Joint Commission 1935, p. 76.
  33. ^ Baillie Grohman 1907b.
  34. ^ Baillie Grohman 1908.
  35. ^ Catalogue of the Extensive Collection of Old Engravings, Drawings & Books Relating to Sport (formed by the Late W.A. Baillie-Grohman, Esq.), the Property of Mrs. Baillie-Grohman, of Schloss Matzen, Brixlegg, Tyrol ... which Will be Sold by Auction by Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge at Their Large Galleries on Monday, the 14th Day of May, 1923 [18p]. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge. 1923.. Prints from his collection can be found in the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum New York
  36. ^ "Lot 32, Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, (Bruges 1523 – 1605 Florence), The Wild Boar Hunt".
  37. ^ According to Worldcat,[1] this went through 17 editions between 1904 and 2005.
  38. ^ Baillie Grohman & Baillie Grohman 1904.
  39. ^ Baillie Grohman 1913.
  40. ^ Baillie Grohman & Mayr 1901.
  41. ^ Scott, J. E. (1944). The New South Africa by H. Rider Haggard, William Adolf Baillie-Grohman. Vol. 38. The University of Chicago Press. p. 63-65.
  42. ^ Duguid, Charles (1901). The story of the Stock Exchange. Its History and Position. Grant Richards. p. 250.
  43. ^ Heckstall-Smith, Anthony; Baillie Grohman, Harold Tom (1961). Greek tragedy. London: H.Blond.
  44. ^ Watkins 2005.
  45. ^ "Review of Tyrol, The Land in the Mountains by W. A. Baillie-Grohman". The Athenaeum (4166): 231. 31 August 1907.

External links[edit]

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