Elbert Hubbard: An American Original
Conformists die, heretics live forever.— Elbert Hubbard
In the documentary, “Elbert Hubbard: An American Original,” which first aired on PBS in 2009, director/writer Paul Lamont presents Hubbard, a major figure in the American Arts and Crafts Movement, as a man of contradictions. Hubbard was devoted to art, yet motivated by business; interested in the welfare of the common man but his Roycrofters created exquisite items only the wealthy could afford; family played a central role in his life, yet he was involved in a long-lived extramarital affair.
Hubbard’s early life is the stuff of Horatio Alger lore. He began selling soap at the age of 16 for the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York. With a keen mind for business, and perseverance, young Hubbard quickly rose up the ranks in the company by introducing “from factory to family” direct catalog sales. In 1880, Hubbard married Bertha Crawford and began a family. Three years later the Hubbards moved to East Aurora, a village outside of Buffalo.
Elbert Hubbard, photographer unknown.
Source: http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1216826209p5/114059.jpg
Yet with all his success Hubbard felt unfulfilled and began to question the direction of this life. The works of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman deeply moved and influenced him. Later on Hubbard would repackage many of these writers’ ideas as catchy mottoes in order to promote his ideals.
Lamont’s film covers in-depth Hubbard’s pivotal relationship with school teacher Alice Moore, once a boarder in the Hubbard home. Hubbard and Moore shared an interest in literature; the friendship that was at first solely intellectual soon became a more romantic in nature. Eventually this relationship, which lead to scandal years later, became public, upending the lives of all parties involved.
The documentary follows Hubbard’s mid-life departure from the Larkin Company, to an unsuccessful stint at Harvard, then on to an important trip to England where Hubbard was exposed to the ideas of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and then finally back to East Aurora where he would establish his own Utopian community of craftspeople called “Roycroft.”
The Arts and Crafts Movement Hubbard learned about in England was a reaction against the Industrial Revolution and the machine. The Movement harkened back to an earlier romanticized simpler era, and it valued the handmade work of the craftsman over that of mass machine production of goods. Upon his return to the States Hubbard began publishing a pamphlet entitled “The Philistine” in which “Fra Elbertus” wrote articles that attacked the rich and powerful. It was here that he posted mottoes heavily borrowed from his favorite writers. “The Philistine,” was printed by the Roycroft Press. Hubbard would purchase the press and turn it into the foundation of his community of craftspeople. Local townsfolk were hired to create gorgeous hand-bound editions with hand-colored insets. Soon the community would begin to add furniture-making and metal-smithing to Roycroft’s activities.
Roycroft Print Shop, East Aurora, NY, Main Entrance, postcard circa 1900.
Source: http://www.linngroveiowa.org/RoycroftPrintShop.jpg
The documentary film provides a framework for consideration of Hubbard’s place within the American Arts and Crafts Movement by discussing other major figures of the period: Gustav Stickley, Frank Lloyd Wright, and California architects Greene and Greene.
Also covered is Hubbard’s influential essay, “A Message to Garcia” published in 1899, which took early Twentieth Century America by storm and propelled Hubbard into celebrity status. A clip from the silent film based on the book is featured in the documentary.
The Roycrofters, The Motto Book, cover (1909).
Source: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2341/1518739686_3bddedb617.jpg
Details of Hubbard’s life are told through personal correspondence between Hubbard and Alice as well as through commentary by historians Michael Frisch, Boyce Lydell and Marie Via, among others. The film also includes remarks from craftspeople who today make their livelihood working under Hubbard’s principles as “Roycroft Renaissance” artisans on the restored Roycoft campus.
“Elbert Hubbard: An American Original” offers an engaging perspective on a man who might have been equally at home in the beginning of the Twenty-first Century as he was at the beginning of the previous one. The contradictions Lamont presents in the film allow one to see in Hubbard what one chooses to see, but the entire picture of this complex figure remains as elusive enigma.
Note: “Elbert Hubbard: An American Original” is narrated by Liev Schreiber, and Adam Arkin provides the voice of Elbert Hubbard. The documentary can be seen in its entirety on pbs.org; it is also available for purchase on DVD.
Thank you to Bill Bowen for his help in editing this post.
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