Roycroft Excerpt

Martha Niles bought the sketchbook only last week, yet its leather cover already bore a permanent crease and the pages within offered glimpses of a life no longer hers. The lake view from her former bedroom window took up a whole leaf, as did the whitewashed saltbox-style rectory, where she lived, and a rubbing from her father’s tombstone. Portraits of family, friends, and servants alike graced the next few pages, though she would not linger over these until she could do so without tears.

On the train from Albany to Buffalo, gentlemen stared at Martha, likely wondering why a proper young lady traveled unchaperoned. Wearing a corset and a crown braid pinned under her hat must imply a fragility she had not possessed last year, when her hair still fell in auburn waves down her back. No one had paid her the slightest attention then, though she often commuted to and from her Boston art school alone. She felt vulnerable without a pencil in her hand now, and sketched absently until hunger dictated she cease. A doughy man in a threadbare suit watched her take her lunch in a manner that made swallowing difficult. Annoyed, she bestowed on him her most haughty glare, and prayed it would deem her unapproachable.

This tactic worked on him but not on the persnickety matron seated to Martha’s left. Her hat contained such an abundance of black feathers it appeared a whole crow nested on her head, and her thin lips pursed in a permanent frown. She glanced at Martha’s sketch of the platform at the Utica train station, their last stop. “You’re wasting your time with that idle hobby, dear,” she said in a clipped tone. “Only men can be true artists.”

“The same was once said of writers. How tragic it would be had Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters listened.” Martha signed her name, and added an orb and cross symbol beside it. Inside the orb she wrote a capital R with an exaggerated tail.

As expected, her companion gasped. “You’re a Roycrofter!”

“I start tomorrow as an illuminator in the book shop.”

“Oh dear, Lord, no,” the matron said. “That place is not for a young woman of class. It’s nothing but an enclave of sin and depravity.”

Martha sighed. She had already heard this argument from her step-father, but thankfully Mother felt otherwise. “I’m to apprentice under Samuel Warner, a respectable gentleman my family’s known for years. My virtue could not be safer.”

“Don’t be so sure. That Mr. Hubbard who runs the place is the devil incarnate, encouraging boys and girls to both work and play together. Why, when I visited there, a brazen woman walked up to a group of men playing baseball and asked to join them.”

“Did they let her?”

“Yes, and she made a frightful spectacle of herself by hitting the ball clear across the park. She later had the gall to try to hand me the bat to ‘give it a go’. Can you imagine? It’s not dignified to perspire in such a manner.”

Martha doubted that the baseball player perspired any more than she did at the moment. The July air filtering in the open windows of the crowded train car felt like a slap from a wet wool blanket. “If you disapprove of Mr. Hubbard, I’m curious as to why you went to Roycroft at all?”

She huffed. “Because everyone who’s anyone eventually does.”

While Martha knew this to be true, the number of people who disembarked at the East Aurora station still came as a shock. Carrying her grip, she followed the crowd through what appeared to be a New York village much like the one she had left behind. She felt a twinge of disappointment at the sight of all those clapboard houses, white picket fences, and quaint churches. This emotion vanished when she reached the stone edifice guarding the corner of Grove and Main, a structure Martha recognized from a postcard she often used as a bookmark.

The building appeared the result of a collision between a castle and a chapel. It was, in fact, called the chapel, and pilgrims of a sort lined up around it. Most stood in their Sunday best, ankle deep in mud, and batted at mosquitoes as they waited to enter the sacred sanctuary of the Roycroft Shop and worship at the altar of Art. J.D. Rockefeller could be in that line today. Or Clara Barton. Perhaps Thomas Edison or Harry Houdini. All had lectured here, and each returned home with at least one handcrafted item bearing the coveted Roycroft symbol. President McKinley may show up months from now, open an edition of verse by Browning and see that the illustrations had been hand-painted by an artist named Martha Niles. Martha smiled. She was but seventeen, yet her work could very well end up in the White House library.

An even larger crowd congregated on Grove Street. Surely someone there could direct her to her boarding house. Elms stood sentry along the both sides of the gravel road, lined up with military precision. Her shoes clacked on the plank sidewalk, her pace accelerating when she glimpsed an L-shaped structure that reminded her of a 19th century village church. The building, along with the manicured lawn and tidy bushes that surrounded it, felt familiar as well, perhaps because Sammy had described the Phalanstery at length in his letters. She would work there, in the room just below the cupola of the tower that joined the two wings.

Sammy had written that Roycroft had become such a popular destination in the months since the turn of the century that East Aurora no longer had enough hotel rooms to accommodate the tourists. Mr. Hubbard, ever the entrepreneur, dreamed of having his own Inn someday. The more immediate concern, though, was that the print shop room of the Phalanstery could no longer accommodate the workers necessary to both print books and fill orders. Anyone with a few moments to spare could pitch in to help build the much larger shop across the street.

Martha watched two men cutting a timber with a cross saw, one in a tailored suit and the other in filthy overalls. Women in embroidered dresses stood by as men used sledgehammers to break off bits of the mammoth boulders that littered the campus lawn. Each time a piece fell, one of the women would scoop it up and carry her treasure over to the partially constructed wall of the new building. The workers that congregated there all wore trousers, but they were not all male. A woman with blond hair twisted into a lopsided bun slapped mortar on a stone and plunked it into place on the wall. What a satisfying splat that would make. If Martha ever added a stone, she would touch it each time she passed the building and think, “I did this.”

Martha had expected a tidy little art colony, not mud, dust and flies, but she did not mind in the least. The air felt magnetic here. It pulled every thought from her mind until all that remained was a single need—to create. She perched on the lone seat she could find—the Phalanstery stairs—and opened her sketchbook and the box of supplies she kept in her grip. She plucked out a charred willow stick, perfect for the bold lines and shadows she would need to capture the energy and movement on the construction site.

The longer she worked the more restless she became. She had lived a life of quiet observation, recording rather than doing, but now she wished to dance like the lines on her page. Get up, they seemed to taunt her. Live as fearlessly as you draw. She had always been as sensible as her name, but now she felt her first surge of rebellion.

A bell rang from somewhere across the street. Within moments a cluster of young women emerged from the Phalanstery and descended the stairs beside her. Easily half were naturally shaped. What heaven it would be to breathe freely, to throw both convention and every corset she owned into the brush fire in the middle of the campus lawn. She could also smash the heels of her shoes against the boulders. Clumsy girls should never be forced to wobble on their toes. She had always longed to debate a stranger, too, especially a man. Perhaps he would find her amusing enough to join her at the community wood pile and teach her how to wield an ax.

Martha doubted she had the courage to actually do any of these things, and settled for throwing her willow stick instead. She grunted in satisfaction when it struck the gnarled trunk of an oak and shattered.

“I did that very thing this morning,” a voice said from behind her. “It’s terrible when the work doesn’t go.”

Martha had not heard the Phalanstery door open behind her, and wondered how long the gentleman had stood there. She turned, her eyes level with his hand. He had long fingers, like a pianist’s, though the dark umber stains under the nails alerted her of his true profession. She felt tempted to lean closer for a familiar whiff of turpentine and linseed oil. Her favorite perfumes. She might have done it had she not seen how heavily he leaned on his cane. His whitened knuckles made her sense it a necessity, not an affectation. “It appears that’s not a problem you share today, Mr.—”

“Carl Ahrens,” he said. “And you couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve done nothing half as good as that sketch since I arrived here a month ago.”

Her eyes rose, but found the center of his chest where his face should have been. It may have been his astonishing height that made him appear frail. His coat was shabby and worn, but his elegant bearing made her imagine him a foreign prince in disguise. Or, oddly enough, an Indian brave, but that may be due to the stray brown streak of oil paint on his forehead. He had thick, dark hair, a prominent nose, chiseled cheekbones and soft, full lips. Faint laugh lines gathered in the corners of bright blue eyes. Her hand curled around an imaginary pencil. She ached to draw his portrait.

“You’re being kind. This is a trifle,” she said.

“Come to my studio anytime and see for yourself. It’s just there.” He pointed to a small wooden shack beyond the construction site.

She frowned. “I just see a blacksmith.”

“Yes, and a blacksmith’s all I hear. All day. Every day. Clang, clang, clang, until I want to tear my damn hair out by the roots.”

She waited for him to apologize for his vulgar language, but he did not, and she liked him all the more for it. “Could you not complain to Mr. Hubbard?”

Mr. Ahrens laughed. “You must be new, Miss—?”

“Martha Niles.”

“Delighted to meet you, Miss Martha Niles.” He paused between each part of her name as though he contemplated its suitability.

“Likewise, Mr. Carl Ahrens.” She imitated his inflection and smiled.

She felt his gaze meander from her hair to eyes to mouth. An occupational habit perhaps, but his appraisal unnerved her. She had never been called plain, but had no illusions of beauty either. She must be quite a sight now, sweaty and rumpled from her travels. The world grew fuzzy and began to spin as she stood. She gripped the staircase rail.

“How long have you been in the sun, Miss Niles?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve traveled all day.”

“Where’s your companion? Surely you had one.”

She raised her chin a notch. “Why? I’m quite capable of getting on the correct train.”

“I imagine you’re capable of whatever you put your mind to.” He touched her arm. The world, still blurry, darkened a shade as he blocked out the sun. “How long since you’ve had water?”

“Lunch, I suppose.”

“Well, it’s almost supper now. Can you walk? I’ll see you home if you tell me where you live.”

“I would if I knew. A boarding house somewhere. Sammy was supposed to meet me in Buffalo—”
“Samuel Warner? The art director here?”

She nodded. “He was my first drawing instructor. He may have forgotten. He’s always been a little—”

“Absentminded?”

“Scatterbrained.”

Mr. Ahrens smiled. “Is it heat exhaustion or are you always this blunt?”

“The latter, I’m afraid.”

“Thank God. I often fear I’m the only one of my kind.”