DECEMBER 15 - 20, 2018
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018
December 15-20, 2018
Rockie on Fox Island, from Wilderness
Sunday, December 15, 1918
Time passes by slowly as we head toward the darkest day of the
year and the slow beginning of light gain. “This is another day that is hardly
worth recording,” Kent writes, “one that would not be missed from a life.” As
he writes this, perhaps he is reminded of what he wrote back in late August
after he stood with Olson and Rockie at the end of the trail by the Fox Island
lake: “These are the times in life --
when nothing happens – but in quietness the soul expands.” He’s
experiencing real quietness, real isolation, real soul-searching. Today he
dedicates his journal in Wilderness to
his son. As we all know, children can both drive you crazy and keep you sane.
In Kent’s case, having Rockie around invigorates him, energizes him, gives him
inspiration and hope. The boy enjoys the outdoors – the porcupines, magpies,
land otters, and whales. He doesn’t just play with the goats and porcupines, he
becomes one – browsing with them and actually eating the spruce needles. “Truly
he lives the part he plays when it is one of his beloved wild creatures,” Kent
writes. “Then he tears up and down the beach mounted like a four-year-old kid
on a stick horse, yelling as loud as he can, going to the water’s edge, and
racing the swell as it mounts the slope.” Rockie embraces work with his father
on the crosscut saw with pleasure.
Kent is educating Rockie himself because he’s suspicious of what
mass education can do to innocence and creativity. Cruelty, he believes, appears
where boys herd together. He recognizes his son has a sensitive nature and
realizes what can happen to children like that, noting “that nothing will make
a child more ridiculous in the eyes of the mob child than this most perfect and
most beautiful attitude of some children toward life.” No gain from a mass
education can “outweigh the loss to a child of its loving un-predatory impulses,”
he concludes. Kent gives us much insight into his thoughts not only about
Rockie’s education, but also about Nietzsche’s influence on his elitism in a
Dec. 8th letter to Kathleen:
“I think Rockwell will become an artist. I see no
reason why he should not receive a real living in art, such as neither I nor
any other modern artist I’ve heard of has had. He should begin his
apprenticeship young and begin at once to specialize in his studies. All-around
educations are pretty poor things - like the all-around man – good at nothing.
People who can prattle a little on every subject are so stupid. Isn’t it
refreshing to find occasionally an intelligent man who, of things aside from
his course, is as innocent and naïve as a child?
"More and more I rebel against
the school idea," Kent continues. "Why should we not consider ourselves – with all due humility –
as of a cast different from the rest of mankind and bring up our children with
ideals as of a special knighthood. Most of the finest qualities of man and
womanhood are the result of culture. I can’t endure the thought that the
tendencies toward life that is Rockwell’s loveliest quality shall suffer
ridicule and maybe extinction at the hands of a rude, coarse rabble. We do
belong to a special sphere, you and I and all of us and we have no need to
entertain the thought that our children should be as others are. All of this is
most difficult for us mother dear, but let us try for great things. Rockwell,
much as I loved and admired him before, is a revelation to me here. All of this
you shall picture on our return.”
Monday, December 16, 1918
A mild, overcast and calm day
with rain. Kent borrows Olson’s clippers – and with that and his razor he
shaves his head. “I bear no resemblance to G.B.,” Kent writes, “I swear it.” He’s
referring to painter George Bellows. You be the judge – see below -- Kent is on the left, Bellows on the right.
Born the same years as Kent –
1882 – Bellows trained with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri and was a
fellow student of Kent’s along with Edward Hopper. Bellows and Hopper are associated
with “The Eight,” Henri’s Ashcan School group – those artists were encouraged to get
out into the street and paint American society in all its forms. Bellows died
at age 42 in 1925.
“Well,” he writes, “let it be
recorded that on shaving my head at the age of thirty-six the dome was
discovered to have a texture like the bulging surface of a hair-cloth,
sofa-smooth and glossy with occasional sharp prickles. Or maybe it’s more like
the cylinder of the old fashioned tinkling music boxes. That’s it! and to
change the tune I rub on kerosene and Castor Oil.”
Tuesday, December 17th,
1918
The weather has turned mild
and that often means pouring rain. Warm temperatures and rain create snow melt
in the mountains, and that clogs creeks and rivers that enter Resurrection Bay
with debris. Combined with a full moon and some of the highest tides of the
year, the Fox Island beach is jammed with logs, tree trunks and other
driftwood. Olson is concerned that the high tides will reach his house.
Wednesday, December 18th,
1918
Below, a copy of Kent's illustrated diary for this date as Kent included it in the 1970 special edition of Wilderness, reprinted in 1996 by Wesleyan University Press.
“Today has been wonderfully
mild and comfortable,” Kent writes. “Over the water the clouds have dropped,
hiding the mountain peaks. The sea has been glassy save for the long swell –
and this more to be heard upon the beach than seen.” He and Rockie take a walk
at dusk to the south end of the cove. “We saw the glowing sky where the sun had
set, the mountainous islands to the southward, and our own cove and its
mountain ramparts -- beautiful in the black and white of the spruces and the
snow.” At dinner Rockie insists on giving his father some of his goat’s milk
junket. Later he tells Kent that he wants to be nicer about everything and do
more for him. Kent is confused. The boy hasn't been behaving badly. Kent has not disciplined him. Rockie has no reason to feel guilty. Could this have been a
child’s awareness of his father’s stress and depression? Was this his way of trying
to cheer him up? As the day ends Kent expresses his belief “that in this
country I would gladly live forever.” At the moment Kent most likely believes this with all his heart as much as he experiences his feelings of exile, abandonment
and rejection that he expresses in his most disturbing letters to Kathleen.
Kent begins Chapter 7 of Wilderness titled “Christmas” on…
Thursday, December 19, 1918
A day never to be forgotten, Kent
writes, “so beautiful, so calm, so still with the earth and every branch and
tree muffled in deep, feathery, new-fallen snow. All day the softest clouds
have drifted lazily over the heaven shrouding the land here and there in veils
of falling snow, while elsewhere or through the snow itself the sun shone.
Golden shadows, dazzling peaks, fairy tracery of branches against the blue
summer sea!” Kent and Rockie hike the woods. The boy rolls in the snow and shakes showers of the fluffy stuff down from the low tree branches. They wrestle, work their way
back to the beach, skinny dip and roll naked in the snow.
This looks like a "selfie" Kent took on Fox Island after he went skinny dipping off the beach in front to his cabin. He and Rockie took naked swims on occasion. Notice the towel he has wrapped around him under his coat. Also, in his right and notice what looks like a wire connected to a camera on a tripod.
They sketch outside off and on throughout
the day, but Kent can't focus. The day is too beautiful. While Rockie
plays Kent searches for and cuts down a Christmas tree and starts his holiday
plans that evening with cranberries stewing on the stove. Olson visits and
tells them more stories of his life, which Kent again records.
Friday, December 20, 1918
Rain! The snow is
disappearing and it looks like they’ll have none for Christmas – only five days
away. Kent puts a new handle on his sledge hammer and tries to paint but it's too dark. “These days slip by so easily and with so little accomplished,” he
writes. “Only by burning the midnight oil can much be done.” It’s quite clear he
won’t be going to Seward before Christmas. He had planned for that on his last
visit to town. Olson doesn't celebrate the holiday, telling Kent that for him it will come and go just like any other day. That attitude is unacceptable. Ritual is important to Kent. He takes Olson’s indifference as a challenge. And what about
his son? Rockie turned nine in October. Christmas will be strange enough without
any snow – but not to have a special celebration? Kent will not tolerate that.
‘
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