AUGUST 23, 2018

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018
August 23, 2018

Kent and Rockie are in Yakutat today waiting for the Admiral Farragut to arrive and take them to Seward where they’ll catch a smaller vessel to Seldovia. This is the day they leave.

Yakutat didn’t work out and Kent could probably feel summer’s end. Along the South Central Alaska coast the end of summer can come early. Here in Seward, summer’s end hasn’t been subtle. The warmth is gone. It’s been in the mid-50’s and low 60’s, but any real heat is only brief if at all. It rains, and rains, although as I write this on Wednesday, Aug. 22nd – the sun has come out and it’s a warm, beautiful day. The next few days look good which is, ironically, when Kent arrived in Seward. But summer is over and if we don’t actually observe the details on days like today we feel it in our bones. We sense our loss of light, over five minutes a day. The difference is visible all around us. It’s no longer dusky at 11 p.m. or 4 a.m. – but it’s the angle of the sun’s light that’s so different. As an artist, Kent was well aware of how the light was changing.

In the last entry I wrote about the Kent-Kathleen letters in connection with the very personal, emotional baggage Kent carried with him to Alaska. Rockie was a reminder of that. Today I want to finish that for now, and briefly write about those difficult years Kent struggled through after his ejection from Newfoundland and before his Alaska trip – 1915-1918.

Kent resented Kathleen’s unwillingness to let him take Rockie to Alaska, and constantly wrote of his love for her: “It is horrible to me the thought of being companioned for so many months of my life by any woman but you, with whom all my best years have been loved, and Rockwell is dear because he’s yours and because you love him so. I am crying, crying, crying that I must lose him. Oh mother!...No one in the world can ever trespass on that great part of my love that you have had.” This is the heart-wrenching conflict that came between husband and wife during those two weeks before Kent left for Alaska.

Kent couldn’t bear the thought of losing his family. As he would claim later in life, “I wanted it all.” Many emotional letters went back and forth that July of 1918. Kent wrote to Kathleen: “I know my love for you. I have faced since you went away and again more terrible since your letter the anxiety of losing you; your love for me, your faithfulness, your beauty is clear since family in its entirety are so vividly before me that my heart could break. Nothing that I will do shall take you and the children from me, for you are dearer to me than life. If I am to go away without Rockwell and leave you besides in the state of mind toward me to which I have clearly driven you, I would accomplish nothing; for all {of} your love and the future welfare of us all would be gone. I will not go away {and} relinquish the only tie I have upon you.”

So – Kent won’t go to Alaska without taking an important tie to Kathleen and his family. That tie was Rockie. At the same time Kent doesn’t want to leave Kathleen in a negative state of mind. He needs to know she supports him and his quest. He writes: “Oh Kathleen, I am speaking so truly from my heart & you must realize this. I must have the certainty of your true and constant love. I must have with me your prayers for happiness and success.”

But Kent does relent and agree to leave Rockie behind: “Now come little mother and get little Rockwell,” he wrote both giving in and making Kathleen feel guilty. “But you must know the terrible thing that this is to me. You must know that I can make sacrifices to keep your love. Can you come to Alaska with me? Will you come? – I’ll wire when to come here. Oh, god, mother, be true to me and love me.” Kathleen did come to New York to say goodbye, finally relenting and allowing her husband to take Rockie with him. Kent and his son took the train from New York to Montreal where they spent a few days before boarding the Canadian Pacific Railway to Vancouver.

Once back from Newfoundland in 1915, Kent struggled to survive. It was during this time, in the summer of 1916, that he met Hildegarde and began that affair. I’ve quoted from Kent’s letters to Kathleen during this period, but Kent is also writing to Hildegarde. According to Eliot Stanley, from August 1916 to March 1917, Kent’s letters reflect his “intense romantic interest in his lover. Some days he wrote three or four times – from across town! The letters mention numerous phone calls as well. They rhapsodize about nights they spent together or plans they made for the next day or two.” By now he had four children, Rockie, Clara, Kathleen, and Barbara, who had been born in Newfoundland. Barbara told Frederick Lewis for is documentary about Kent -- the story that the artist named her Hildegarde, but that Kathleen changed the name to Barbara when Kent went to Alaska. There is evidence to support this. Rockie wrote to his mother on Aug. 7, 1918 while on the way to Alaska aboard the Admiral Schley. At the end when he gives love to his sisters, he includes the name Hildegarde.

As his third wife, Sally, writes of Kent during these difficult years: “He was a mature man, recognized in New York as a promising painter but unable to earn much of a living. To save money, his family stayed in various places away from New York City, and he lived alone, working most of the time in an architectural firm {Ewing and Chappell} and selling drawings to magazines. {Using the pen name Hogarth, Jr.} Out of this rather desperate situation, however, came his uniquely beautiful paintings on glass.” This technique, according to Stanley, is called verre eglomise, and involves “painting part of a scene on an underpane and other parts in reverse on the inner side of an outer pane, thus giving depth to the overall design.” Kent gives credit to Hildegarde for “assisting” him with this, so it is possible that he learned it from her.

Kent also brought with him to Alaska an uncertainty about his future success as an artist. He couldn’t imagine going on as he was now –scrambling to earn money to support his family anyway he could with no time to focus on his art. As his biographer David Traxel notes in “An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent” (1980), at mid-life and “intensely ambitious, he could not tolerate the failure that seemed his fate. He began to question the point of it all, not just the pursuit of art, but life itself. The idea of suicide was toyed with...”

But there did seem some hope. First, a sold painting for $600. Then a commission to decorate a large room for $1500. He started planning a trip to Iceland, but the Great War put a halt to that. Next the possibility of painting the American Southwest with some expenses covered, but not enough. He couldn’t afford it, and he didn't like warm climates anyway. Then, in the summer of 1918 another painting sold for $1500. His savings grew and he thought about Alaska. Then a patron emerged -- Ferdinand Howald -- agreed to cover Kent’s family’s expenses while the artist was away. Once he knew the trip was possible, Kent began thinking of a companion.

We’ve brought Kent and Rocky to Yakutat. Now we head with them to Seward and Fox Island.

PHOTOS

All photos and captions except No. 2 are from “Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern” (2005) by Jake Milgram Wien. I want to acknowledge and thank Jake for all the help he has given me over the years.

1. “Pool Reflection,” 1918, oil on glass (reverse painting), 8 ½ x 10 in. Wien writes: “The idyllic scene of the lyrical “Pool Reflection” is unique among the series of Kent’s completed reverse paintings on glass in that it suggests the communication of a personal memory. Of the 1916 adventure he and Hirsch shared on Mount Monadnock, Kent recalled the “soft floored parts of the Monadnock forest that we loved so” and the “warm rain-water pools” in which they bathed. The fairy-tale setting and the exaggerated beauty of the figure provide a link between the physical and the spiritual. In particular, the link may be the magnificent long, golden hair characteristic of some Maeterlinck heroines: for the playwright, such hair symbolized “life and death, freedom and fatality, sensuality and spirituality.” The distant slopes of mountains, the curve of the pool, the neckline of the blouse the rise of the thigh, and the overarching cypress bough all work in harmony to heighten the sensuous nature of the painting, which Hirsch treasured for the rest of her life.” (p. 97).

2. Rockwell and Hildegarde in Atlantic City, 1917. This photo is from the Companion Booklet to the Facsimile Edition of "The Jewel" edited by Eliot H. Stanley. The photo belonged to Thompson Flint, Hildegarde’s nephew. Courtesy of Eliot H. Stanley. I want to acknowledge and thank Eliot for his help.

3. Kathleen Whiting in 1909 about the time she married Kent. Kent family album, private collection.

4. “Kathleen Whiting with Cape and Veil, 1917, watercolor over graphite on paper, 7 ½ x 5 in. Kent became close friends with Marie Sterner in 1917, who headed the contemporary art department at Knoedler and Company. Wien writers that “upon entering her social milieu, he began attending a round of parties, Broadway shows, and costume balls. On one occasion, Kent rendered in watercolor ‘Kathleen Whiting with Cape and Veil’, a portrait of his wife in costume he conceived for the upcoming Liberal Club’s Golden Ball of Isis.” (p. 90)

5. Rockwell and Kathleen’s five children, c. 1921. Left to right: Barbara, Clara, Rockwell III (Rockie), Gordon (in Rockwell’s arms), and Kathleen. Kent family album, private collection.

6. Rockwell and Rockie, c. 1912. Kent family album, private collection.

7. “Sleeping Maiden with Book, 1918, oil on glass (reverse painting), 8 ½ x 10 in. As Wien writes, “For Christmas, Kent presented Hirsch with the manuscript of a fantasy he wrote and illustrated. “The Jewel: A Romance of Fairyland” is the simple story of a prince (Kent), a beautiful blue-eyed maiden (Hirsch), and the little dream home they planned to build together in the far North, in a glade carpeted with moss and filled with flowers (their “Hildegarden”).” This provides a story-book setting for the tale. Wien writes, “Kent’s maiden has fallen asleep, which is humorous given the frequency with which Kent exhorted Hirsch to take up books. “Oh, Hildegarde! Read. Please get to know the friends that I have come to know so well thought my reading. (pp. 92-96) My research indicates that Kent’s “Hildegarden” vision became a reality on Fox Island, which gave him even more reason to write Hildegarde, imploring her to join him in Alaska. He was also trying to get his wife and children to join him on Fox Island.