Tor House Newsletter

On behalf of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation, I express profound gratitude for your continuing support and encouragement in 2007. This year, unprecedented numbers of guests from all over the world were inspired and awed by Tor House and Hawk Tower. In addition to guiding over 3,000 weekend visitors, our docents conducted tours for fifteen separate groups of students, from the 3rd grade through university. Jeffers is continually being introduced to new generations of readers. Tor House remains one of the most important literary sites in America, comparable to Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst or Longfellow’s homes in Cambridge and Portland, Maine. Visitors to Tor House are, in their enthusiasm, not unlike those who make pilgrimages to Stratford-on-Avon.

The 2008 Fall Festival (October 10-12, 2008) will mark the 30th anniversary of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation. For three decades, the Foundation has diligently protected and preserved the property and promoted the poetry of Jeffers.

For the time being, however, we make our year end appeal to help us fund our activities. At the same time, we continue to ask your help in matching Peter Bennett’s 2005 $100,000 Challenge Grant intended to assure our fiscal solvency. Thank you for all your steadfast and generous support.

Sunday’s Poetry Walk, led by John Courtney and Jean Grace, emphasized the enormity of Time. Assuming Point Lobos the beginning and Hawk Tower the present moment, poets and fans of Jeffers walked Carmel River Beach and metaphorically strolled through the ages of the Universe. The presence of man, in relation to the history of the universe, they learned, is like the filing of a fingernail to the body of a human being. What an enlightening and thought provoking conclusion to a fine Fall Festival!

His knowledge of the natural and cultural history of Monterey County was unsurpassed. He co-authored Images of America: Big Sur, published in 2004, and Big Sur Observed (1994). The Jeffers community will remember him as a frequent speaker at Tor House events. He shared his expertise with participants in the 2000 Fall Festival bus trip down the Old Coast Road to Big Sur. He will be sorely missed.

PATRON MEMBERS

Jerome M Nunes

Contributions ($100 to $499)
Anonymous Board Member
Hugh V. Anderson – In honor of Paula and Jim Karman
Jitka Elton
Joyce Hardy/Gloria Mikuls
David & Susan Wirshup – In memory of Ripple Huth’s father

Additional Contributions (September – November 2007) – to $100
Dona Clark, in memory of Jean Lindley
Carol Sharon
Cecil Wahle
Margaret J. Wanda
Renate-Karin Wunsch

[Please note: listings of contributors and new and renewed memberships reflect only those contributions and memberships received since the last issue of the Newsletter. Generally, the Spring Issue lists donations received during December, January and February. There are no listings in the Summer Issue because of space constraints (Poetry Contest Prize winners are published in the Summer Issue). The Fall Issue contains donations received between March and August of any given year.]

(Excerpts from a talk presented at the RJA Conference and at Tor House during 2007 - Part 1)

There is one area of the Tor House property that few have seen, and that, for insurance reasons, remains off limits to visitors. This is the attic (or the "upstairs," as Una called it) of the west wing cottage. It was here that Robinson Jeffers wrote most of his poetry, from the years 1919 to at least 1947. Separated from the downstairs rooms by a lock and bolt, the family slept there in built-in beds for Donnan and Garth and a bed for Una and Robin. The attic, with a floor-space of roughly 600 square feet, was the family bedroom, work room, den, and retreat. It was a sanctuary, a world separate from the activity of the house below.

The north and south walls slope down almost to the floor. The east wall has a small fixed window facing the tower. Wood-frame sliding windows open onto the courtyard. The west side wall has matching sliding windows that open onto the headland and the sea below. There are also two, fixed, matching, floor level windows, one on the east side and one on the west side of the house. Una Jeffers described them thus: "The two tiny slit windows in the attic (property of Garth and Donnan) near the floor by the built-in beds are glassed with a part of the windshield of our faithful old Ford. Through this glass we have gazed at many a passing scene."

Attic as it appears today

Jeffers’ twin sons, Garth and Donnan going to bed in the early ‘20s

The room was heated by a Franklin stove that Una brought from Mason, Michigan. Lindsay Jeffers, the poet’s grandson, who slept in the attic as a boy, says that he always feared a fire, especially when he lay in his bed at night and watched the cracks in the fire walls of the stove.

The attic has only one apparent entrance and exit, and that through a trap door near the center of the original stone cottage. Seven steep steps, the black walnut treads of which were brought from Mason, Michigan, lead up from the West Wing parlor.

Over Una's desk in the living room there is another, concealed, trap door. It permits larger objects to be moved to the attic.

In the attic, over this trap door and directly above Una’s parlor desk, Jeffers placed his own desk. It was on the east side, the courtyard side of the attic. Directly in front of where the desk stood the small window faces the tower. The photograph suggests that Jeffers placed a dark curtain over this window by his desk.

He could not see the tower while he was writing.

Melba Berry Bennett [see pg. 6] who visited the’ attic when Robin and Una lived there, says, “Upstairs, under the eaves, was one large room encircling the chimney-vent in the center of the room. In four niches were the four beds, one for each of the Jefferses. When the west window was open, the pound of the surf filled the attic room, echoing back and forth from wall to wall."

[to be continued in the Spring 2007 Newsletter]

Jeffers at his desk in the 1940s

The Stone Mason of Tor House

In 1966 Melba Berry Bennett’s The Stone Mason of Tor House was published by Ward Ritchie Press. In 2006, the author's son, Peter Bennett, thought it time to re-issue this important book. Using the book's word-for-word content and overall flavor as a guide, a handsome new volume, hard-bound in linen and enclosed in a slipcase, has now been published by the Tor House Foundation.

Bennett’s biography, with foreword by Lawrence Clark Powell, was highly praised by James Rorty, a major critic of the time. The Stone Mason of Tor House, written by Melba Berry Bennett, a contemporary and close Jeffers family friend, offers a unique glimpse into the writing of Robinson Jeffers and life at Tor House. It is an indispensable addition to any Jeffers library.

Available exclusively through the Foundation Bookstore, the special introductory price of $25, plus postage, is guaranteed until 2008. To order The Stone Mason of Tor House, link to the Foundation Book Store, or phone 831-624-1813.

Thank You

Thanks to Stanley Willis, Jr. for the gift of First Editions of Such Counsels You Gave to Me and Be Angry at the Sun, inscribed by Jeffers, and for a framed note written by Jeffers to Mr. Willis with an envelope addressed by Una.

Thanks to David & Susan Wirshup for three books, including two fine prints by Ward Ritchie and two journals and a critical supplement to a journal, which reference Robinson Jeffers or his associates.

Thanks to Jitka Elton for two Czech translations of Jeffers: Mara, and Ženy od Mysu Sur.

Thanks to Beth Wright for Robinson Jeffers commemorative stamps.

Thanks to Jane Harris for a copy of Not Man Apart donated to the Docent Lending Library.

Thanks to Carol Marquart for a biography of Mabel Dodge Luhan donated to the Docent Lending Library.

Thanks to Barbara Livingston for the gift of an original framed painting of Tor House by the late, revered San Francisco cartoonist/artist Phil Frank

RJA Annual Conference

Mark your calendars! The Robinson Jeffers Association Annual Conference, dedicated to “Jeffers, Language, and Nature,” will take place during the weekend of February 16-17, 2008 at Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA. The keynote speaker is David Mason, Colorado Springs writer, poet, translator, and former Fulbright Fellow to Greece. For further information: see www.rja.org or contact Rob Kafka, at rkafka@unex.ucla.edu.

Poetry

Two Poems by Laura Newmark, Carmel, California

Extraordinary Winter Waves
Carmel Point
Green waves rise high, high,
spume flies,
crests plunge in a storm of spray,
surf hurtles away, away.

Storm Clouds,
Carmel Bay
Storm clouds drift past Lobos.
Mists linger in the hills.
Cloud shadows dull the ocean
but between them silver spills.

Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation 2008 Reading Series

Please see our Events page for details.

The Robinson Jeffers Tor House 2008 Prize for Poetry

Please see our Poetry Prize page for details.

Footprints

The Tor House Foundation regrets the passing of one of our earliest docents, Dottie Moore. Dottie served as a docent from 1983 to 1993 and was a Life Member. As her friend, retired docent Phyllis Kelley wrote: “I have never known anyone with such a love of life, style, charm, and grace. She taught me so much and we had fun doing the flower arrangements for special occasions at Tor House together. She was an avid reader and enjoyed doing research about Jeffers and Tor House.”

*****

In early November the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City inducted Robinson Jeffers into its Poets’ Corner. At the ceremony Jeffers was especially praised for his environmentalism. As Charles Martin, Poet in Residence at the Poets’ Corner stated, Jeffers was a pioneer in attempting to reorient us ‘towards a new understanding of the obligations of our presence in the natural world.” Among other recent inductees were WH Auden and Emma Lazarus.

*****

A major article, “Poetry in Stone,” by Jennifer Reese, appeared in the November-December 2007 issue of VIA, the travel magazine of the Automobile Association of America (viamagaine.com). The subtitle reads: “Robinson Jeffers built a magical, Hobbit-like home on the California coast.,” and goes on to note that Tor House is as “intensely cozy. . . as one of Beatrix Potter’s rabbit holes.” Purists may question the comparison, but the Foundation reports that never in recent memory have they enjoyed such a surge in interest. Visitors may come to see a “Hobbit house,” but they leave having discovered Robinson Jeffers, and appreciating his poetry and his philosophy.

*****

The Association of Fundraising Professionals, Monterey Bay Chapter, at their annual National Philanthropy Day Awards Luncheon honored John Varady, Tor House Trustee. “His sustained, very generous financial and moral support for the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation’s Prize for Poetry, since its inception in 1997, has resulted in the Prize becoming an internationally coveted award.” Honorees in recent years have included Peter Bennett, Howard and Zaza Skidmore, Ripple Huth, Joan Hendrickson, Ollie Collins, and Mary Aldinger, all of whom have, with extraordinary generosity, given of treasure, time and talent to further the mission of the Foundation.

The Last Word from Jeffers

in an election season

The editorial staff of the Tor House Newsletter welcomes a discussion of this poem. Please address comments to Newsletter Editor, Tor House Foundation, PO Box 2713, Carmel, CA 93921 or fdv@redshift.com. Space permitting, letters to the editor will be published in the next issue. All letters will be posted on our web site: www.torhouse.org.