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An Opinion of East Aurora & the Roycroft

Following is an excerpt from The Book of the Roycroft, published by the Roycroft in 1907, with graphics and cover designed by Roycrofter Dard Hunter. This section of the book was titled, A Little Journey to East Aurora, and was written by the Farrar Sisters. 

“. . . the Roycrofters are simple folks, who, living in an obscure country village, have by the excellence of their lives lifted the place into a fame that is world-wide.

     To search the earth for talented people, bring them together and produce art, would be easy; but for two or three persons to begin in a barn without capital, in an average, little, quibbling, narrow-minded country village where the art impulse is conspicuous by its absence, and educate and evolve skilled workers out of crude material and at the same time make money so as to extend the business - that is an achievement!”

Personally, I doubt that East Aurorans were very pleased with what the sisters had to say about their village. Present day visitors will find delightful restaurants, boutiques, tree lined streets, cute bungalows and savvy villagers. Come enjoy East Aurora and the Roycroft.

• Sue

PS I will have more of the Farrar Sisters hagiography of the Roycroft in coming blogs.

What Do Cleopatra, Socrates & Paganini Have in Common?

What do Cleopatra, Socrates and Paganini have in common? Why the Roycroft Inn of course! Elbert Hubbard brought together politicians, businessmen, intellectuals and artists from across the ages - some he had actually met and others he only figuratively rubbed elbows with. 

A small, “Philistine-sized” promotional pamphlet about the Inn was published in 1923. It described the amusements, the food, Salon and accommodations.  At the end of the pamphlet was a chapter titled “The Roycroft Hall of Fame”, further described as follows: “The sleeping-rooms of The Roycroft Inn are not numbered. Each room bears the name of one of the world’s great; and the furnishings are carried out in harmony with the character of the personages the room is named for.”

These personages (Rooms) are: (Michel)Angelo, Aristotle, Jane Austen, Beethoven, Elizabeth Barrett, (Sara) Bernhardt, Rosa Bonheur, Brahms, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Browning, Burne-Jones, John Burroughs, Chopin, Cleopatra, Darwin, Thomas Edison, George Eliot, Emerson, Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Fry, Hetty Green, Caroline Herschel, William Herschel, Victor Hugo, Alexander Von Humboldt. Anne Hutchinson, Robert Ingersoll, Liza Lehmann, Leonardo (da Vinci), Liszt, William Morris, Paganini, Tom Paine, Pericles, Plato, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rossetti, John Ruskin, Clara Schumann, Socrates, Herbert Spencer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Theodora, Henry Thoreau, Richard Wagner, Alfred Russel Wallace, Whistler, Walt Whitman, Mary Wollstonecraft.

While Elbert was on Campus he would call guests by the name of their room - so you could be Cleopatra or Socrates or Ruskin, et al for the duration of your stay. Today, the rooms are still identified by names and not numbers.

- Sue

Alice Admonishes Elbert

Alice Hubbard wrote Garnet and the Brindled Cow, also Other Mothers. It was published in 1913 and has a delicate vine design on the pages in pale green and tangerine. 1,003 copies were printed and all were signed by Alice.

She writes of Mother Love as she observed it in a favorite horse and cow and in two women she knew. Given Alice’s experience of bearing Elbert’s child out of wedlock, then raising the child without him for almost nine years, Alice’s writing also is a commentary on her own experience and a reprimand to, Elbert then, her husband.

“Mother love is a force. Each mother would fight to the death to keep her inherent right of caring for her child.

The father of these babies?

A force has taken possession of these men which was greater than father love. And they had obeyed the greater force, and are now neither visible nor available. Neither of them gives anything toward the support of his child.”

Alice speaks not only as an observer but from firsthand experience. Next she addresses the need for the women to find work to support their children. Note how this section echoes Elbert Hubbard’s A Message to Garcia of 1899. Some of the words could be taken directly from A Message.

“Now these mothers have been so fortunate as to find employment.

. . . no work is too hard for them.

Do they quibble about what they are asked to do? Indeed they do not.

‘Bring on your work. We thrive on it!’ Is their attitude. They have an incentive to work beyond that of the game of business. It is to earn for their loved ones.”

In a few short paragraphs Alice attacks Elbert and ambushes him using the essence of his own, most famous, article against him as she covertly writes of her indignation at his abandonment years before. Elbert often wrote obliquely about personal issues in his books as well. His first books contained thinly veiled references to his extramarital relationship with Alice; expressing his opinion about free love, all the while he was married to his first wife, Bertha. It is no surprise then that Alice used her writing in a similar fashion to express her personal opinion and her subject was just as transparent to those involved.

- Sue

Sneakerinos, Humanity, Bedbugs, Electricity & Ego

I was looking over a collection of Philistines, reading the front and back cover epigrams, and discovered some real gems:

“The star sneakerino in every school is a cigarette smoker - there are no exceptions.” (Sept. 1905)

“Do not lose faith in humanity, there are over eighty million people in America who never played you a single nasty trick.” (Aug. 1905)

“Bedbugs are all right - excepting in their official capacity.” (Nov. 1906)

“We live on the electricity in the air  much more than we do on the food we put in our mouths.” (June 1907)

“Caste in society is a result of uric acid in the ego.” (Nov. 1908)

- Sue

Nude Torso in a Roycroft Catalog

In a Roycroft 1902 catalog titled, Some Books for Sale at Our Shop, there are text descriptions of the offerings, and photo plates of various subjects: the books for sale, buildings and rooms on Campus, employees, the Cazenovia camp and a very unusual photo portrait of one of Elbert Hubbard's sons, nude from the waist up. He is seated, so one assumes he is otherwise clothed, but it is only a torso and head shot. It is captioned, "Sanford Hubbard Aged 15 Height 5'-11" Weight 176". 

What possessed Elbert to publish this in a catalog we'll never know and how odd it is to have his son's height and weight included. Perhaps at the time this was considered an artistic portrait. I wonder what Sanford thought of this? It reminds me of the uproar last year over teen singer Miley Cyrus' barely clothed photograph in Vanity Fair - is it fair promotional use or unfair abuse of an adolescent? In Miley's case she is a performer and so her promotion is assumed to be a natural part of business. The question in her case was whether unfair advantage had been taken artistically. But in Sanford's case he was only the son of a businessman, not in business himself. What was Elbert thinking and how did the public react?

- Sue