The relationship between Wood, a military man, lawyer, and
author, and Ely was not simply borne by a mutual appreciation of each other’s
crafts, nor was it the avuncular fondness of a man for the daughter of an
artist he admired and knew as a frequent associate (Julian Alden Weir painted a
portrait of Wood in 1901, and a letter from Wood to Weir is featured in Julian Alden Weir: An Appreciation of his
Life and Works). Rather, Wood and Ely seem to have known each other as
genuine friends. The inscription in the Ely-bound copy of Poems from the Ranges reads: “To Caro Weir Ely, from her friend,
with love. Charles Erskine Scott Wood. The Cats – Los Gatos – Calif. 1929”. The
friendship between the elder Wood, who was in his twilight years and would die
in 1944 at the age of 91, and the much younger Weir, who was born in 1885 when
Wood was already in his thirties, certainly follows a pattern of relationships
that Weir held with younger artists and activists in his later life, including
Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck, and Robinson Jeffers. The difference, however, is
that Ely was not based in California or in the Western States at all, instead calling
Connecticut home and finding particular footing at Florence Griswold’s artist
colony in Old Lyme, where Ely herself eventually settled. What bound Ely and
Wood, as it did Adams and Steinbeck and other figures under Wood’s wing but
removed from the West, such as Childe Hassam, Margaret Sanger, and Eugene Debs,
was their continuous and intrinsic awe for place and landscape, their
fascination with the land and the impressions of humans upon it.
For Wood, this passion for nature and nature-dwellers emerged
in his transcription of the surrender of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce at the
end of the Nez Perce War in 1877. While much of his account concerns the
underhanded dealings of one of his fellow officers, Wood goes out of his way,
however briefly, to laud the interactions between the Native peoples and the
land. In one instance, he recounts hunting buffalo with two Native scouts while
the snowy Bear Paw Mountain looms ahead of them (Wood). Other flora and fauna
punctuate the story – the imposing pass into Clark Basin, the plains of the
Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, coyotes, and horses tame and wild – in such a
way as to insist upon the largeness of the landscape and the consequential, or
perhaps continual, smallness of the men. When Chief Joseph emerges to deliver
his speech of surrender, then, with “quiet pride”, he seems the largest, the
most capable of standing against the forces of nature, of any of the figures
mentioned in the narrative (Wood). This attitude translated to Wood’s later
work as an attorney advocating for Native rights, in which he continually
insisted on the primacy of the Native peoples’ ownership, if such a term may be
used, of the lands from which they had been forcibly removed. Wood’s belief in
the inevitable hugeness of the landscape was also clear in his artwork, which
featured vastness of the frontier surrounding Portland, Oregon and other areas
of the American West rendered in watercolors. Wood’s portrayals are hardly
intimidating, however. Instead, his decision to cast the open sky, the thick
arms of the trees, the limitless coast in soft watercolors softens their size.
Likewise for Ely, nature was a constant, comforting
presence, a wild thing to strive with
rather than against, a thing to
admire and leave free. In her youth, Ely recalled, when she traveled with her
family from Branchville to Windham, Connecticut, she reveled in disembarking
the train “hot and dirty”, and with great joy “piled onto the waiting
carriages, breathing the fresh air and enjoying every moment of the four mile
drive over the plains” (Lest We Forget quoted
in Dawson, chap. 2, f.16). A similar attitude colored her written and artistic
recollections of Weir Farm, now a National Historic Park. The farm sported
several gardens, and Ely and her sisters were very likely responsible for the
design and upkeep of the Secret Garden, which Ely praised for its endurance,
stating that it was “still full of the plants [she] put in” twenty years later (National
Park Service, 3). Her etchings and sketches cast the farm in a similar light,
drawing out the balance between nature’s whims and the boundaries and designs
of the humans who lived there. The sure lines of the farmhouse blend with those
of the brush, and the trees cast over the paths and fences insistent shadows.
It is no great extrapolation to suggest the same balance characterizes Ely’s
bindings. In each of the four examples cited here, Ely’s gilt work and tooling
highlights the natural textures of the leather. For Poems from the Ranges, the minimalist exterior draws the eye to the
crackings in the morocco, and makes the brilliant floral paste-paper endpapers
all the more striking. It is as much a celebration of the feel of a book, and of
the materials that make it, as it is a showcase for Ely’s own creative
capabilities.
(28174)
References:
Dawson, Anne E. Rare
Light: J. Alden Weir in Windham, Connecticut, 1882-1919. Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 2016. Chapter 2, footnote 16.
National Park Service. “The Gardens”. Weir Farm. https://www.nps.gov/wefa/planyourvisit/upload/Garden-Site-Bulletin.pdf.
New England Historical Society. “High Thinking and Low
Living in Old Lyme”. New England
Historical Society. 2018. http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/high-thinking-low-living-old-lyme/.
PBA Galleries Sale 464: Fine
Literature with Books in All Fields. October 6, 2011. Lots 400, 402, and
403.
Weir, Julian Alden. “C.E.S. Wood”. Portrait. 1901. Portland
Art Museum Online Collections. http://portlandartmuseum.us/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=3542;type=101.
Wood, Charles Erskine Scott. “The Pursuit and Capture of
Chief Joseph”. Archives of the West, 1874-1877. 2001. https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/six/joseph.htm.
