Bar Harbor in the Gilded Age

Bar Harbor was a summer world of wealth, visiting families, and social observation. For the young Natalie, the setting belongs to the American society she knew before Paris became central to her life. Its pleasures and restrictions both matter to the fiction.

The Smithsonian’s Alice Pike Barney Papers include family photographs and related research material; catalog records are a starting point for reconstructing where Natalie actually went and whom she encountered.