mmmmr- 
 

 mifimmii^^m 
 

 The photo of Elbert Hubbard 
 and party (See opposite page) was 
 taken at Stanley Park, Vancouver, 
 British Columbia, 7th October, 1909, 
 upon the occasion of Mr, Hubbard's 
 visit to Vancouver as guest of the 
 Terminal City Club, Mr. Hubbsird, 
 wearing a broad-brimmed hat, is 
 seated in the rear. J. J. Hart in. 
 Chairman of the Reception Committee, 
 occupies the front seat with the 
 chauffeur. Ilr, Kalstead, Secretary 
 of the Club, occupies side seat back 
 of the chauffeur. Mr. Hubbard and 
 his wife were since drowned on the 
 ill-fated Lusitania — victims of 
 Prussian diabolism. 
 
% 
 
University of California • Berkeley 
 
 Gift of 
 
 Daisy Martin Redston 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/bookofroycrofterOOroycrich 
 
Copyright 
 
 1907 
 
 By Elbert Hubbard 
 
CONSECRATED LIVES 
 
j^ [ ' ' '^ "R SFRF/S a thought, Dearie, that I give 
 to you because I haven't a very firm 
 • grasp upon it myself. In order to clarify 
 my mind I explain to you. And thus, 
 \^ . ; . X ^j prnhahly. do I give you something 
 
 which is already yours. Grateful? Of course you are 
 — there! 
 
 The thought is this: — but before I explain it let me 
 tell you what a man saw in a certain cottage in Den- 
 mark. And it was such a little whitewashed cottage, 
 too, with a single, solitary rose bush clambering over 
 the door. An artist, his Wife and their Little Girl lived 
 there. There were four rooms, only, in this cottage — 
 a kitchen, a bedroom, a workroom cuid the Other 
 Room. The kitchen was for cooking, the bedroom for 
 sleeping, the workroom for work, and the Other Room 
 was where the occupants of the cottage received their 
 few visitors. When the visitors remained to tea or lunch 
 the table was spread in the Other Room, but usually 
 the Artist, his Wife and their Little Girl ate their meals 
 in the kitchen, or in sunmier on the porch at the back 
 of the house. 
 
Now the Artist painted pictures, and his Wife carved 
 beautiful shapes in wood ; but they did n't make much 
 money — in fact no one seemed to know them at all. 
 They did n't have funds to accumulate a library, and 
 perhaps would n't if they had. But still they owned all 
 the books written by Georg Brandes. 
 These books were kept in a curious little case, which 
 the Artist and his Wife themselves had made. 
 And before the case of books, was an ancient Roman 
 lamp, suspended from the ceiling by a chain. 
 And the lamp was kept always lighted, night and day. 
 C( Each morning, before they tasted food, the man and 
 his Wife read from Georg Brandes, and then they silently 
 refilled, trimmed and made the lamp all clean and tidy. 
 C[Oho! why, your eyes are filling with tears — how 
 absurd — and you want to hear more about the Artist 
 and his Wife and the Little Girl ! 
 But, bless me! that is all I know about them. 
 However, I do know that Georg Brandes is one of the 
 Apostles of the Better Day. His message is a plea for 
 beauty — that is to say, harmony. He would have us live 
 lives of simplicity, truth, honesty and gentleness. He 
 
•the Roycroft ^op 
 
 i^ruiLS and jbiowcfS 
 
Tlje Cabin 
 
 idiM 
 
A W^ork Room 
 
 The Bookbindery 
 
mm 
 
would have us work for harmony and love, instead of 
 for place and power. Georg Brandes is an individualist 
 and a symbolist. He thinks all of our belongings should 
 mean much to us, and that great care should be exer- 
 cised in selection. We need only a few things, but each 
 of these things should suggest utility, strength, harmony 
 and truth. All of our actions should be suggestive of 
 peace and right. Not only must we speak truth but we 
 must live it. Our lives should be consecrated to the Good 
 — lives consecrated to Truth and Beauty. Consecrated 
 Lives! 
 
 And so this Artist and his Wife, I told you of, were 
 priests of Beauty, and the Little Girl was a neophyte; 
 and the room where the Roman lamp burned was filled 
 with the holiness of beauty and no unkind thought or 
 wrong intent could there exist. 
 Consecrated Lives! that is the subject *^ There is a 
 brotherhood of such, and you can reach out and touch 
 finger tips with the members the round world over "^ 
 Beauty is an Unseen Reality — an attempt to reveal a 
 spiritual condition. Members of this Brotherhood of 
 Consecrated Lives do not take much interest in Salis- 
 
bury's Political Policy, and all the blatant blowing of 
 brass horns that are used on 'Change, in pulpits, or by 
 Fourth of July speakers are to them trivial and childish. 
 They distinguish at once the note of affectation, hypocrisy 
 and pretense in it all. They know its shallowness, its 
 selfishness and its extremely transient quality. 
 Yet your man of the Consecrated Life may mix with 
 the world, and do the world's business, but for him it 
 is not the true world, for hidden away in his heart he 
 keeps buming a lamp before a shrine dedicated to Love 
 and Beauty. The Adept only converses at his best with 
 Adept, and he does this thru self-protection. To hear 
 the world's coarse laugh in his Holy of Holies — no! 
 and so around him is a sacred circle, and within it only 
 the Elect are allowed to enter. 
 To join this Brotherhood of Consecrated Lives requires 
 no particular rites of initiation — no ceremonial — no rec- 
 ommendations. You belong when you are worthy. But 
 do not for a moment imagine you have solved the dif- 
 ficulty when you have once entered. To pride yourself 
 on your entrance is to run the danger of finding yourself 
 outside the pale with password hopelessly forgotten. 
 
Within the esoteric lines are circles and inner circles, 
 and no man yet has entered the inmost circle where the 
 Ark of the Covenant is secreted. All is relative. 
 But you know you belong to the Brotherhood when 
 you feel the absolute nothingness of this world of society, 
 churches, fashion, politics and business; and realize 
 strongly the consciousness of the Unseen World of 
 Truth, Love and Beauty. The first emotion on coming 
 into the Brotherhood is one of loneliness and isolation. 
 You pray for comradeship, aind empty arms reach out 
 i nto the darkness. But gradually you awaken to the 
 thought that you are one of many who hope and pray 
 alike ; and that slowly this oneness of thought and feeling 
 is making its impress felt. 
 
 Then occasionally you meet one of your own. This one 
 may be socially high or low, rich or poor, young or old, 
 man or woman — but you recognize each other on sight 
 and hold sweet converse "^ Then you part, mayhap, 
 never to meet again, but you are each better, stronger, 
 nobler for the meeting. 
 
 Consecrated Lives! You meet and you part, but you 
 feel a firmer impulse to keep the light buming — the altar 
 
 5 
 
light to Truth, Simplicity and Beauty. No other bond 
 is required than that of devotion to Truth, the passion 
 of listening in the Silence, the prayer for Wholeness 
 and Harmony, the earnest desire to have your life re- 
 flect the Good. 
 
 All man-made organization would be fatal to the sweet, 
 subtle and spiritual qualities of the Brotherhood. For 
 organization means officers, judicial robes, livery, arbi- 
 trary differentiation, and all the absurd and foolish pomp 
 of place and power. It means the wish to dictate, select 
 and exclude, and this tokens jealousy, prejudice and 
 bitterness — fifteen candidates for a vacant bishopric 
 with heartaches to match! No organization ever con- 
 tained within its ranks the best. Organization is arbitrary 
 and artificial! It is born of selfishness; and at the best 
 is a mere matter of expediency. 
 The Brotherhood of Consecrated Lives admits all who 
 are worthy, and all who are excluded, exclude them- 
 selves. If your life is to be a genuine consecration you 
 must be free. Only the free man is truthful; only the 
 heart that is free is pure *^ How many compose this 
 Brotherhood — who shall say? There are no braggart 
 
 6 
 
statisticians, no paid proselytes with their noisy bocistings. 
 Two constitute a congregation and where they com- 
 mune is a temple. Many belong who do not know it; 
 others there be who think they belong and are so sure 
 of it that they do not. 
 
 But the Brotherhood is extending its lines; and what 
 think you the earth will be like when the majority of 
 men and women in it learn that to be simple and 
 honest and true, is the part of wisdom, and that to 
 work for Love and Beauty is the highest Good? 
 
 ^«r-i 
 
Ruskin Room 
 
A 1 1 1 TLE JOURNEY TO EAST AURORA 
 
^^ ; ' ' . ' T J AST AURORA is a village eighteen 
 
 miles southeast of Buffalo, New York. 
 
 " In this village live the Roycrofters, 
 
 , ' more than four hundred of them. They 
 
 C.^ , ■ . ' .^! l sill ^^^^ — they work with "Head, 
 Heart and Hand." They have no servants and no bosses 
 — they have teachers and leaders instead. The Roy- 
 crofters tum out books that sell as high as fifty guineas. 
 Some of these books go to Paris, Florence, Leipsic and 
 London, in competition with the finest things in the book 
 line that the world has produced. 
 The Roycrofters paint pictures; and are represented at 
 the Salon in Paris and in the best galleries of America. 
 The Roycrofters make furniture which adoms palaces, 
 and omamental copper and iron work that commands 
 the patronage of connoisseurs. 
 
 And yet 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 vil- 
 lage 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 ! 
 The Roycrofters are organized as a corporation, but 
 work together as a Community. 
 They own and operate a Printing Plant, a Book Bind- 
 ery, a Hotel, a Farm, a Bank, a Blacksmith Shop, a 
 Cabinet Shop. 
 
 They also weave rugs, model in clay, make stained glass 
 windows, and raise flowers, poultry, vegetables, live- 
 stock, and run a dairy ^ They have an art gallery, a 
 chapel, a ballroom, a playground, a brass band and an 
 orchestra. Their Phalansterie is so arranged that one 
 side of all sleeping rooms is open, so practically they 
 sleep out of doors. They have very little use for doctors. 
 C( Their property must be worth half a million dollars. 
 They issue no bonds, give no mortgages and have no 
 debts, making it a rule to expand only as fast as they 
 can pay for the improvements. Now all of the things 
 
 10 
 
BVi 
 
 Furniture Shop 
 
1 
 
 The Well 
 
 St. Peter's Gate 
 
we have just mentioned exist, in degree, elsewhere. So 
 there must be something else, otherwise the eyes of the 
 world would not be turned, as they are, towards East 
 Aurora. 
 
 And this other thing is the vital thing ; and books, furni- 
 ture, pictures and carpets are only the by-products "^ 
 And that vital thing is Atmosphere. And Atmosphere 
 produces Character. 
 
 On a great oaken door at Roycroft is this line from 
 Walt Whitman: "Produce Great People — the Rest 
 Follows!" 
 
 Great people make an atmosphere, and in turn, of course, 
 an atmosphere reacts on the people. As far as we can 
 judge, knowing America fairly well, we should say that 
 there is more of the true Art Spirit in East Aurora 
 than in any other place in the United States. 
 Rich men in any city may subscribe large sums and erect 
 art galleries and lay out parks. These are like fine houses 
 built by contractors, and fumished by professional deco- 
 rators, whose business it is to please the owner. 
 Art must be indigenous, spontaneous. The best art of 
 the Roycrofters is seen in their buildings and homes. 
 
 u 
 
C( In America there is much of the parvenu quality, so 
 we see houses that are mere curiosity shops, in which 
 are jumbled the loot of the world ; and in England the 
 spirit of the bourgeois is found to almost the same degree 
 — coarse, crude, gilt and gaudy displays of wealth ! "^ 
 Very, very seldom do we find harmony and wholeness 
 and absence of fussiness in decoration. 
 And all because the decoration and ornament are pur- 
 chased, bought — produced by one set of men for another 
 set of men who are in a totally different business. 
 "Where the artist is, there is art," said Whistler. To 
 get art you must let the artist make the thing for himself ; 
 whenever you bribe or coerce him you get a departure 
 from the pure type. 
 
 Great art has only been produced by simple, isolated, 
 self-sufficient people — and people, too, who are more 
 or less crude, barbaric and racy of the soil. Such were 
 Michael Angelo, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, the Bellinis, 
 Cellini, Pallissy, Millet, Wedgwood, Turner "^ The 
 artists in literature have been men like Ruskin, Tolstoy, 
 Whitman, Thoreau, Hugo, Shakespeare. 
 Folks who are sophisticated, smart, alert, astute, work 
 
 12 
 
their energies up into foam and erect tenements that 
 collapse, grand-stands that break down, processionals 
 that melt when caught in a shower, street-fairs that 
 dissolve in a high wind. 
 
 But at Roycroft one realizes somewhat of the atmos- 
 phere that built the Parthenon "^ As we stood in the 
 moonlight at East Aurora, and looked up at the great 
 stone tower that rises above the main shop, built of 
 glacial stones gathered in the near-by fields, we were 
 hushed into silence and tears by the strength and dignity 
 of the lines — so self-sufficient, so bold yet so modest, 
 speaking of eternity and telling of the shortness of human 
 life, for these buildings will endure long after the 
 builders are dust. 
 
 And these beautiful buildings are workshops — planned 
 and erected by working people for working people "^ 
 ([ So this is the idea, the Roycrof ters are building for 
 the generations that are to follow — they are influencing 
 a people yet unborn! 
 
 The Roycroft Inn, or "Phalansterie," is a building 
 without decoration or ornament, and so simple and 
 subdued that at first sight it would not command the 
 
 13 
 
attention of the average man. But on closer view one 
 finds it a model of elegance and convenience — an ele- 
 gance so refined that it passes for simplicity. The dining- 
 room we thought quite equal to some of those German 
 creations at Karlsruhe. 
 
 All of the furniture in this little hostelry was made by 
 the Roycrof ters themselves, and in the sparsity of oma- 
 ment, the subdued colors, the beautiful grains of the 
 hard woods, one sees the sure influence of William 
 Morris. 
 
 It has been said that the Roycroft work was founded 
 on the idea of William Morris, but let no one imagine 
 that the Roycrofters are mere imitators — they have, in 
 many respects, passed Morris far. One thing, William 
 Morris inherited a fortune and always had the money 
 to secure the talent he desired, if it was not close at 
 hand. But the Roycroft has had to produce its work- 
 men. And to a great degree the best people now in 
 the Roycroft Shop are those with a tortuous past "^ 
 Some have seen the inside of court rooms, from the 
 criminal dock; others are quite familiar with bankruptcy 
 proceedings, and it almost seems as if all of them had 
 
 14 
 
E'.-srsbn Walk 
 
 Roycpoft Chapei 
 
 ■M 
 
at some time slipped or stumbled; but if they fell, 
 they got up again, and now surely are going bravely 
 forward. 
 
 In the Shops are seen all ages from children to octo- 
 genarians. Then there are the blind, the deaf, and now 
 and then a mental defective — but all at work, busy, 
 happy — losing themselves in useful effort. 
 It would be absurd to say you could build up a com- 
 munity with the defective or broken-down, but if you 
 have enough strength, character, purpose and love, the 
 whole concern will not only float, but will make head. 
 C( So the Roycrofters have among them a deal of firm, 
 moral and mental fibre — men and women who can 
 keep the hoops on the barrel and the chimes in place. 
 C{ The Roycrof t has no figureheads, no hangers-on, no 
 pensioners — everybody works. The Roycrof t is a school 
 and factory combined, and many of the workers fully 
 realize that they are getting paid here for doing what 
 they would have to pay for the privilege of doing 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Next, there is no waste. Poultry and live stock con- 
 sume what is not wanted at the Phalansterie or Inn; 
 
 15 
 
and people who work steadily eight hours a day do 
 not destroy, nor are they given to roystering. 
 Two magazines of world-wide circulation are published 
 by the community, and these to a certain degree, ad- 
 vertise and sell the wares of the concern. Next, Mr. 
 Hubbard's presence is in demand as a public lecturer, 
 and for his services in this way he is paid several hun- 
 dred dollars a night, all of which money goes into the 
 Roycroft treasury '^ At the same time the lectures 
 advertise the Roycrofters, for Mr. Hubbard does not 
 endeavor to conceal the fact that he is in business. 
 Then there is a stream of visitors who go to this won- 
 derful place, and who all leave more or less money "^ 
 Occasionally these visitors remain for weeks to study 
 bookbinding, music or art, and so are a source of income. 
 C( The various departments of the Shop give a chance 
 to try workers in different places — if they don't fit in 
 one place they may elsewhere. Then the care of the 
 grounds, flowers, gardens, etc., afford opportunity for 
 those too old or without the capacity for skilled work. 
 ([ Possibly it is not feasible to have a Roycroft Shop 
 in every town, but surely we can all cultivate the 
 
 16 
 
Roycroft spirit, which is to "live one day at a time, 
 do our work as well as we can, and be kind." 
 Things only happen when some strong man makes 
 them. We think that the real achievement of Elbert 
 Hubbard has been in securing, and to a great degree 
 in educating excellent, earnest people, and then keep- 
 ing them at work together, happy and harmonious. 
 —FRANCIS AND ABIGAIL FARRAR 
 
 ^tir^ 
 
 17 
 
?(€♦> 
 
 OF THE 
 ROYCROFT 
 
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