A slab of granite from the underside of the officers’ billiard table at Ford Ord has been fashioned into a bench. Friends brought “items of interest” from all over the world, and the Jeffers incorporated them into the house and grounds. Wikipedia notes that Jeffers’ philosophy of “inhumanism” was based on the belief that “transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole.” Neither of the Jeffers were “religious ” rather they were “spiritual.” Una, for example, was drawn to unicorns. Here, you can learn all about the Jeffers’ backstory, which began with a scandal (Una was married when they met her ex-husband, an LA lawyer, ended up building his own stone house right down the street). Today you can take a docent-led tour of Tor House and Hawk Tower on Fridays or Saturdays, reservations required. Tor House he called it, “tor” being a Celtic word meaning “outcropping of rock.” With no written plans and no formal training in architecture or construction, he built an English garden-style cottage (later expanded) and, from 1920-24, an adjacent tower of granite.
Jeffers began hauling stones up the hill from the beach by hand. There were no paved roads, no trees, no neighbors. After their twin sons were born in 1916, they bought land on an isolated, wind-swept promontory. He and his wife Una came to Carmel in 1914. Six years later, he was on the cover of Time. He toiled in obscurity, then hit it big around the age of 37, when “Tamar and Other Poems” became a best-seller. He was known mainly for his epic Greek-style poems, modern-day tragedies based on the California’s central coast. In his day, Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) was one of the nation’s best-loved poets.
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