roycroft journal 1

My Little Journey to the Roycroft Campus
by Kim Bullock

September 8th, 2006

My friend Janice McDuffie, the current Roycroft Potter, met me at the Buffalo airport. From there it was a short drive to her house. She took back roads so I could have a view of trees and fields instead of strip malls. Everything was much greener than at home and the temperature, while warmer than expected, was a welcome relief to the 92 degrees at home. Janice called the area we drove through "suburbs" but it looked nothing like any suburbia I'd ever seen.

Janice told me that she's not surprised the original Roycroft pottery - the one Carl ran - produced "rough" work. She explained that it takes a good twenty years to learn to "throw" properly, and that in general painters make horrible potters. Painters are used to having a great deal of control over the work they produce. Potters never know how something will turn out until it is done, and there are several steps along the way where all control is taken out of the artist's hands. There is also a certain amount of brute strength involved, which is something Carl would have lacked by that point in his life.

At night the nature sounds were wonderful, but I was not used to them. I think the main reason for my insomnia was the excitement of being so close to the place Carl and Madonna met. I sensed that there was something about this place, as well as their natures, that brought them together, but wondered how that could be. It was this intangible element I sought here, that I felt I must understand in order to write this chapter of their lives correctly.

September 9th, 2006

It was about a five to ten minute drive from Janice's house into East Aurora, the road winding through rolling hills and forests. I could tell from the opulence of the older houses that there is money in the history of the town. Not only is it the home of Roycroft but also the former home of Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States. Even without the landscape, I would know I was far from home because there were no brick houses, and everything at home is built with brick.

Janice took Maple Street into town and drove a loop before approaching the campus so I could get my bearings. This wasn't really necessary as once we reached the former studio of Eleanor Douglass, Carl's cousin, it was all eerily familiar, yet at the same time in miniature scale. What looked like several blocks of walking on a map was half the distance it appeared to be.

The weather was a worry for me, knowing I must spend most of the day outside. It poured all night, thunder shaking the house. Storms persisted in the early morning. I brought an umbrella and just had to hope for the best. Janice drove in the opposite direction of campus first to show me Carl's old residence. I wrote to the owners a few weeks ago and never got a response, so I was hesitant to approach them. Janice drove slowly and turned around in their driveway, trying to give me a chance to get a good look, but the place filled me with a profound sense of dread and I was anxious to leave.

There was a horticulture festival going on that day. Janice made this sound like a good thing, but I was unhappy to hear it. I did not want to share this space with so many people, especially not with so many cars and other reminders that I was a LONG way from 1900. We parked a couple of blocks from campus. I didn't mind this at all, as we walked along Grove, which would have been part of Carl's daily walk from the campus to his residence. Many of the houses date from Roycroft times and would have been familiar to him. Most were kept up beautifully.

As I feared, the campus was inundated with vendors and tourists. There was nothing quiet or contemplative at all about the place. At first this annoyed me because there was no way to get good pictures, let alone camcorder footage, with all the chaos. Then I reminded myself that at the time Carl and Madonna were here there were already over a hundred workers, and tourists constantly poured into town. Not only would they have had to contend with all the people, but they also had to dodge the boulders littering the lawn (now a parking lot with cars) and hear the constant noise of rocks being broken and buildings being constructed. No wonder Carl would not work in his studio - he hated noise, and the light would have been awful. Even if his window had faced north, all light would have been blocked out by the Chapel. I have seen a photograph of the building he had been in (no longer there) and I was certain that his studio was on the west side of it, as the east side was clearly for blacksmithing. I have a photo of him in his studio and judging by where he sat, the entrance of the room, and the angle of the light, he must have had the south facing window. This window faced the crowds and the construction and would have made for a noisy environment. Hubbard complained that Carl would not work in his buildings, but I would have liked to challenge Hubbard to get any work done there.

For such a small space, Roycroft would have always been a flurry of activity. There is still a special kind of energy about the grounds, and I believed I would

still feel that way tomorrow when everyone cleared out. I wished I could just sit on one of the benches along the Appian Way and write. I knew instinctively that words would flow there, without any thought on my part, despite the activity. I think it was this energy, this odd current in the air, that I had to feel for myself. From the Appian Way I was a mere fifty feet or so from the place where my great-grandparents met (in his studio). While they may very well have been attracted to each other if they had met elsewhere, I wonder if their having met in this place was the element that cemented their fate to be together, against all odds. The attitudes in the Roycroft community at the turn of the century allowed their relationship to develop in ways that would have been unacceptable anywhere else. Everyone I spoke to on campus confirmed that many people fell in love here, some were married to others at the time. Roycroft was one of the few places that allowed women and men to work together on equal terms. This, and all of the tangible creativity in the air, worked just like Cupid's arrow. Affairs were commonplace. Even Elbert Hubbard had one that became public knowledge in about 1901. He divorced and then married his mistress in 1904.

I had pictured the Appian Way, the path leading from the Inn to the shops, to be long, but it is only 260 feet. It is

directly across the street from the entrance to the Inn - which is also the former entrance to the first print shop/Phalanstery building where Madonna (then Martha Niles) worked. The original building was incorporated into the Inn, not torn down.

Janice introduced me to Christine Peters, the Executive Director of the Roycroft Campus Corporation. Christine showed me around the former "Copper Shop" which now houses a gift shop and education room where there was a printmaking class going on. She took me into several rooms that are not open to the public and are in the process of being renovated back to original form. Her organization is trying to acquire all of the original buildings and restore the community back to what it had been like in Elbert Hubbard's time.

Christine asked many questions about Carl and about my project, then invited me to write an article for their publication, called The Fra, which is a continuation of a magazine put out by the original Roycrofters. The magazine is given out free to members of the Roycroft Campus Corporation, which include many people active in the arts and crafts renaissance, and is also given to anyone who happens to walk in the door of the copper shop. Artists and collectors still flock to the campus as if on some sort of pilgimage.

Everyone I met associated with the campus had heard the name Carl Ahrens, but they knew very little about him other than that he founded a pottery and that the pottery failed. Most did not know he was a painter, and even fewer had ever seen any of his work.

I headed out for my first solo walk of the day. I had a little over an hour to kill before meeting my half second cousin, Martha McGowan, on the steps of the Roycroft Inn. It would be the first ever meeting between descendants of Carl's first family (Martha) and second family (me). She lives not too far away from East Aurora, and so we had agreed to meet here, "at the scene of the crime", the place where Carl and Madonna fell in love, and where Carl ultimately made the choice to leave his family to be with her. The irony is not lost on either of us.

The first thing I wished to find was Emerson Hall. The building housed many single women who worked at Roycroft. Madonna referred to her boarding house as "The Old Ladies Home" where she lived on the top floor with other girls. Two different contacts have said she must have meant the building that would become Emerson Hall. The dormitory was a major addition to an already existing home, and it had not yet been done in 1900. It was actually called "The Working Girls Home" but the connotation of that term had changed between 1900 to 1945, when Madonna wrote her memoirs. She likely changed the name.

On the map it appeared that the Hall was a bit of a distance from campus, but this

was not the case. From the Inn I walked two short streets south on Grove Street and turned right on Prospect. The hall was on the left almost immediately. It was massive and can't be missed. It appeared to be a series of apartments now.

It would not have been out of Carl's way at all to walk her home, as I am sure he did. His house was only about two blocks further south, just past Hamlin Park, which was then Roycroft Park. The Roycroft Pavilion is still there, now home to the Aurora Players.

The walk to campus would have been nothing to a person in good health, but there is a slight incline on Grove Street as you approach Roycroft. This is barely noticeable in a car, but on foot it was clear the walk would be treacherous for someone who required a cane. I ended up with a shin splint from it myself, perhaps out of empathy. Pain was a big part of Carl's life, a continual burden with his tubercular hip. As I write from his point of view I often am in pain myself, either from a splitting headache or back pain. It is likely psychological because I get so much "in his head" but I can not seem to rid myself of it until I finish whatever scene I am working on at the time.

As I approached Carl's former residence, my feet grew heavy. It was a house he shared with his first wife, their three children, and his cousin, fellow artist Eleanor Douglass. The simple explanation for this feeling of dread would be imagining what Madonna must have felt as she neared it, or perhaps Carl really hated returning there that much. I didn't think the answer was that simple, though. I have been to other residences Carl shared with Emily and the children and felt nothing like this. Carl only lived in the house a few months and the ultimate split from his family occurred five years later. I couldn't shake the bad vibe, however, and I turned around before reaching it, knowing I already had a photo that Janice took months ago.

The one thing I was curious about was related to a vivid dream I had about a month before the trip. I believed it was supposed to have taken place in that house, and I could confirm my hunch just by standing in the doorway. I remembered the stairway being at an odd angle, and it was immediately inside the door, running parallel to the street rather than perpendicular, which would make the entryway unnaturally cramped. Perhaps I would get the courage to check it out with Martha there. It was the domain of her family and she may very well want to go there.

I walked back to campus and seated myself on the wall outside the entrance to the Roycroft Inn to wait for Martha. Had I known about the festival going on, I would have picked a different location for our meeting. Martha showed up fifteen minutes late due to missing a turn, not the traffic. I recognized her from photos and just jumped into her car. She immediately got teary and gave me a hug. It felt very much like family reuniting, as it should. I was determined to do my best to not make her feel 'other' throughout the day, though I knew she likely will anyway. She had told me before that while she is fascinated by Carl, she has never felt any great connection to him, mostly because she knows that she is "outside the circle of all he cherished in life." Once Carl left her great-grandmother, he cut all ties. His children with Emily rarely discussed him with subsequent generations.

We chatted easily through lunch, already knowing many of the details of each other's lives. I was surprised to find that I towered over her and I am only 5'3". She is a full generation older than I am, even though we have exactly the same relationship to Carl. Her grandfather, Robert, was born in 1888. My grandmother, Chloris, was born in 1912.

After lunch we drove to Eleanor Douglass' former 'schoolhouse studio'. It was now an art gallery and specialty shop. I am certain that Carl was in the studio many times as he and Eleanor were close. I believe their relationship soured over the issue of Madonna. Madonna never mentioned Eleanor in her memoirs.

Our next stop was the Elbert Hubbard Museum on Oakwood Avenue. Don Meade is a contact of mine and he works there. Earlier in the year he had been kind enough to copy everything he found about Carl in the museum archives and I have permission to use any of it, provided I give credit, of course. The museum was actually in a house, one of the few constructed by Roycrofters, and there were many one-of-a-kind items in there. I especially liked the bust of Hubbard by Jerome Connor - a sculptor who worked with Carl in the pottery (go figure). There were even a couple of Hubbard's hats there. Hubbard wore Stetsons often to hide the fact that he was balding. Carl, who had a head full of hair all his life, loved to poke fun at Hubbard about this.

Don gave a wonderful and thorough tour. By the end my back was killing me, but I didn't think they wanted me to take a seat in one of their $15,000 Morris chairs. As we went through the museum I found that all my research had paid off, and that I had inadvertently become more knowledgeable about Roycroft and its key artisans than I had thought. I recognized work by Connor, Denslow, Dard Hunter, Kipp and Fournier at a glance. Martha also recognized many things because her grandparents had a lot of the more practical items in their home when she was growing up.

After the museum, we went back to Carl's old house. As we drove by I saw that there was a truck in the driveway, and the front door was open. When I saw the angle of the stairway - very visible - I almost stopped breathing. It was indeed parallel to the street and I could see a TV flickering off to the left, which was where I had thought the front room was.

The owner was pleasant to us, though I never could shake my uneasiness. He said that the back part of the house was a later addition and that the right side of the house used to be a porch, which has been closed in. This was welcome information because I have records of Hubbard complaining that after the pottery was taken out of Carl's hands, all he wanted to do was sit on his porch, smoke, and write poetry. There is no porch on the house now, so I had been a bit confused. The old porch explained the angle of the stair, as people had once entered the house on the side rather than in front. With the front entrance there is maybe five feet of space when you walk in the door. Thanks to the internet, I know that with the addition the house is only about 1400 square feet. I can't imagine so many people crowding into such a tiny space. The three bedrooms must be very small.

We finally drove back to the campus, where I was supposed to meet Kitty Turgeon, one of the former owners of the Roycroft Inn as well as several other buildings on campus. She took us on a detailed tour of all the buildings. I don't think she realized that Martha did not intend to stay for dinner and she saved the Inn for last. She gave us all sorts of interesting information; for example, the statue Jerome Conner had created as a memorial to Elbert Hubbard had been purchased by the city, moved off the campus, and put on the grounds of the Middle School across the street. Connor had also created a terra cotta piece near the roof of the chapel which is stunning. The bell that once called Roycrofters to work, or alerted them of the arrival of dignitaries, now hangs from a corner of the second print shop. It is unassuming and I would have missed it.

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