DECEMBER 29, 2019 PART I: THE ALLURE AND MAGNETISM OF ROCKWELL KENT
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018
Part 1: The Allure and Magnetism of Rockwell Kent
Dec. 29, 2019
ABOVE – The “Swashbuckling” Rockwell Kent (left) with his
traveling companion aboard the SS Curaca bound for Punta Arenas, Chile in 1922.
His first book published in 1920 -- Wilderness:
A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska – was followed in 1924 with Voyaging
Southward from the Strait of Magellan. These two books along with his art
established Kent as the adventurous and masculine artist-writer – an image he
encouraged and that contributed to his appeal to women. During this time he becomes
known for his erotic illustrations to books like Voltaire’s Candide and the Memoirs of
Casanova.
BEL0W – Rockwell Kent in later years with an unknown woman. Both
photos from the Rockwell Kent Gallery at Plattsburgh State University in
Plattsburgh, NY.
Since I’ll soon be posting an
entry about another of Rockwell Kent’s possible affairs during those years
shortly after his return from Alaska – I want to saunter down a precarious path
about his personality and charisma. Kent’s relationships with his many women
were complex. There was real love between Rockwell and his first wife,
Kathleen; and his “other” women, Jennie, Hildegarde, and Ernesta; and his
second wife, Frances; and his third wife, Sally. Some have warned me about
calling him a philanderer. But during his rise to fame in the 1920’s, he was philandering
around as were others during that time.
A reader of this website
recently commented to me how difficult it was to absorb and understand Kent’s
extracurricular love life and how he treated his first two wives. Before
venturing further, I want to be clear that in no way am I justifying or making
excuses for Rockwell Kent’s behavior. He was who he was, and I’m trying to get
as close to that as I can. He wasn’t a
nice man, one person told me. There is some truth to that, but I believe as
with most human beings it’s more complicated. You may recall a letter I posted recently
from his first wife, Kathleen, about their separation and divorce. She still
loved him with all his faults and acknowledged that when he wanted to be, he
could be the kindest and most wonderful person. That quality was also part of
his personality, and part of what made him attractive and desirable to some
women – until, perhaps, they became aware of his other sides.
David Traxel, Kent’s
biographer, told me that at one a writer asked him if there was room for
another biography of Kent. Traxel told her there was and encouraged her to
write it. A few years later he contacted her to see how the research and
writing was going. She told him that she had abandoned the project, that she
couldn’t stand the man and couldn’t imagine spending years with him working on
the book. Kent’s good friend, Carl Zigrosser, said he exhausted his first two
wives. Another close friend, George Chappell, tried to warn him about his
extreme idealism and perfectionism, how it was destroying his relationship with
Kathleen and his family. After Kent’s divorce from Kathleen and marriage to
Frances, Egmont Arens wrote him: I think
of you as we sat and talked one night at Mori’s. You were humbler that night
than I’ve ever know you to be. Humbler and more genuine than you had been for a
time. The real Rockwell is a greater man than the swashbuckling actor who
parades under his hat so often. And Frances, so lovely, so warm, so gay and so
grave – perhaps she will find a way to bring you to peace with yourself. (Traxel,
155-6)
BELOW – A more reflective
Rockwell Kent in later years. Rockwell Kent Gallery at Plattsburgh State University, Plattsburgh, NY.
Arens makes quite a revealing comment. There was
the humble and reflective Kent, visible as I noted in the Alaska letters to
Kathleen. The “Dark Night of the Soul” he experienced during the lonely Fox
Island winter brought him to his knees, literally -- Indeed, at one point he mentions praying
on his knees. This was the Rockwell Kent that Arens refers to, the man beneath the
strutting and swager. His isolation on Fox Island brought that vulnerability to
the surface. Yet, it was that swash that made him so dangerously attractive to many
women. Arens suggests that beneath Kent’s blustery pose was a conflicted man,
deeply disturbed and troubled. “The Devil Drives,” I’ve pointed out, and
Rockwell Kent was driven by many daemons. I refer you to a past entry I wrote
about this.
His third wife, Sally, adored
him, but there’s still much we don’t know about that relationship, and about
Kent in his later years. Much hasn’t been published. Enough time hasn’t passed.
Sally perhaps had one of the most authentic insights into her husband’s
personality. Years after his death
she wrote, What is important to consider…is that Rockwell Kent was an
incurable romantic and that his creative energies were heightened by the focus
being in love gave to his work. He was that way to the end of his long and
exceptional life. Nature, of course, in all its untamed and uncharged
magnificence was the great stimulus to his art. But one has only to look at the
range of his artistic work to see how often the women in his life were subjects
and beneficiaries of his creative genius. (her preface to the Baxter
Society facsimile edition of The Jewel: A Romance of Fairyland, a
handmade, handwritten book Kent made in 1917 for Hildegarde.) Sally puts a
positive spin on this, but there was the negative side. In fairness to his
women, they were not merely beneficiaries. Some he truly loved. Others were
objects of his philandering yet willing participants. These women (especially his wives), suffered as much as
they benefited from their relationship with Kent. Of course Kent suffered, too
– mostly a result of his own behavior.. It’s is interesting to note that Sally
says his incurable romanticism and need for female energy lasted all his life. (She
was married to him from 1940 until his death in 1971.) What that means in terms
of Kent’s private behavior during their marriage is still an untold part of
this story.
BELOW
– Sally and Rockwell Kent. Photo Source
Free
love, rejection of the institution of marriage, agreed upon marital
“arrangements,” affairs and philandering – all this was part of the bohemian
and modernist culture among artists, writers and intellectuals of the period. As
we all know, it’s a part of today’s culture as well. Consider the life of
Dorothy Day -- founder of the Catholic Worker Movement with Peter Maurin, and today in
consideration for sainthood.
ABOVE
– Dorothy Day in 1916 about the time she and her family ventured to New York
City. She is 18 years old. Wikipedia photo.
From
about 1916 and through the 1920’s, Day lived off and on within that radical,
socialist and anarchist Greenwich Village circle – writing for The Masses (later The Liberator), and the socialist
newspaper, The Call. The first letter
in All the Way to Heaven: The Selected
Letters of Dorothy Day (2012), is one she wrote to Margaret Sanger hoping
to get a job with her. Reading Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Eugene Debs, Peter Kropotkin and others moved her
toward socialism, while the works of J.K. Huysmans along with her street life among the Catholic immigrants, moved her toward Rome. These
were years of interior and spiritual conflict for Day. She had several relationships
during this time, including those with Itzok Isaac Granich (who wrote as Michael“Mike” Gold) and Eugene O’Neill.
For
a fascinating insight into Dorothy Day's life within Bohemian New York City during this
period, I recommend a recent book by Dorothy Day’s granddaughter -- Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved By
Beauty, an Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother (2017) by Kate Hennessy.
Hennessy describes O’Neill as Dorothy recalled him: He would devour his friends and lovers because he was devoured by his
talent, his all-consuming urge to write. Dour and melancholy Gene, as Dorothy
described him, with his great sense of futility about life that led him to
reject anything that might save him, couldn't really love anyone. When O’Neill
died in 1953, Dorothy – now a committed Catholic and editing the Catholic
Worker – wrote a seven-page essay about him. Hennessy writes: Though it irked her that some believed her
glory lay in that time when she was Eugene O’Neill’s companion, it was Gene’s
faith that was on her mind as she wrote. People said Gene had no interest in
religion. Dorothy felt differently. He wasn’t interested in politics – he was
interested in man’s relationship with God, and Gene’s relation with his God was a war in itself. Gene, Dorothy said,
rebelled against man’s fate.
Two of her later lovers were connected at one point with the Provincetown Players and had parts in O’Neill’s plays. Smoking and drinking rye whiskey with him at the Hell Hole in NYC, she would sing to him "Frankie and Johnny." Dorothy was twenty years old. Hennessy writes of those times, ...Gene recited with somber eyes, bitter mouth, and a monotonous grating voice {all 182 lines of} Francis Thompson's poem "The Hound of Heaven," his elbows resting on the table, chin cupped in hand, and looking at no one...He recited it to her only, Dorothy thought. No one else was listening.
Two of her later lovers were connected at one point with the Provincetown Players and had parts in O’Neill’s plays. Smoking and drinking rye whiskey with him at the Hell Hole in NYC, she would sing to him "Frankie and Johnny." Dorothy was twenty years old. Hennessy writes of those times, ...Gene recited with somber eyes, bitter mouth, and a monotonous grating voice {all 182 lines of} Francis Thompson's poem "The Hound of Heaven," his elbows resting on the table, chin cupped in hand, and looking at no one...He recited it to her only, Dorothy thought. No one else was listening.
ABOVE
– Eugene O’Neill with his second wife, Agnes, and their son, Shane, at Cape
Codd in 1922. Photo Source
BELOW
– A fascinating interview with young Dorothy Day after the publication of her
novel – first published in the New York Evening World and syndicated here in
the Aug. 31, 1924 Salt Lake Telegram (Utah)
.
BELOW
– A review of Day’s The Eleventh Virgin by Barrett Mann in the May 4, 1924
Pittsburgh Press.
BELOW
– An article in the Aug. 4, 1924 Munster, Indiana Times telling the source for
the title of The Eleventh Virgin.
The abortion left
Dorothy so ill and traumatized, Hennessy writes, that for decades she couldn’t bring herself to admire Emma Goldman,
even though they would, oddly enough, come to share some things in common. Day
twice tried to commit suicide, once with laudanum, and again by gas oven. For a
while she and Moise lived in Chicago. Dorothy continued to fling herself about, Hennessy writes,
taking on jobs wherever whim and fancy took her, still in love with Lionel,
even though he had other women and she also sometimes dated other men... She
finds herself caring for a woman who had tried to commit suicide and to give herself
an abortion. The two are living in an International Workers of the World (IWW) rooming
house, and during a raid she’s arrested as on the false charge of prostitution.
Dorothy eventually leaves Moise.
She
meets Berkley Tobey, from a wealthy Boston family, and they were
married in Connecticut. She was 22 and he was 39. Hennessy writes: Dorothy was his third wife, and there would
be six in total that his children knew of, though he never admitted how many
times he had married. He insisted on marrying Dorothy in Connecticut,
making sure the marriage was not consummated there, which made it invalid in
that state. After time in Europe, now back in New York, Dorothy wakes up one
morning with Tobey. While he sleeps she packs up and leaves him, putting her
wedding ring and all the jewelry he had given her on the kitchen counter.
Hennessy writes: She then went home to
her mother feeling a sense of shame she would never fully overcome “I married
Berkeley on the rebound,” Dorothy said, “I married him for his money.” The
marriage was dissolved, and she rarely spoke of Berkeley again.
Hollywood
buys out rights to The Eleventh Virgin,
and uses it as the basis for a movie they title The Woman Hater. This gives Day enough money to buy a cottage along
the Staten Island shore and settle down.
ABOVE
– An ad for The Woman Hater in the Nov. 15, 1925 Muncie, Indiana Star Press.
BELOW
– The Woman Hater got good coverage in the press. This review is from Dec. 27,
1925 Palm Beach Post (Florida).
BELOW
– A scene from The Woman Hater in the Sept. 13, 1925 Cincinnati Enquirer.
She
meets another charismatic man, William Forester Batterham, an avowed anarchist vehemently against
marriage. They have a child who Dorothy names Tamar Teresa. This birth in a way
redeems her of her earlier choice for an abortion. Her love and joy for Tamar
moves her closer to God. In The Long Loneliness (1952), her autobiography, Day
writes: When the little one was born, my
joy was so great that I sat up in bed in the hospital and wrote an article for
the New Masses about my child, wanting to share my joy with the world. I was
glad to write this joy for a workers’ magazine because it was a joy all women
knew, no matter what their grief at poverty, unemployment or class war. The
article so appealed to my Marxist friends that the account was reprinted all
over the world in workers’ papers. Diego Rivera, when I met him some four years
later afterward in Mexico, greeted me as the author of it. And Mike Gold, who
was at that time editor of the New Masses, said it had been printed in many
Soviet newspapers and that I had rubles awaiting me in Moscow.
ABOVE
– Dorothy and Forester, probably on the beach by Day’s Staten Island cottage. PhotoSource
BELOW
– Dorothy and Tamar. Photo Source
BELOW
– Dorothy and Tamar. Photo Source
BELOW
– Dorothy and Tamar. Photo Source
By
the time she is with Batterham, Day is moving closer toward the Catholic Church –
desperately trying to convince him to marry her at least for the sake of Tamar,
and promising not to even hang a crucifix in the house to upset him. After
Tamar’s birth, he supports them as best he can and occasionally visits. She
converts to Catholicism. There is love, agony and fierce arguments. Their
correspondence goes on through the 1920’s, as she continues to plead with him
to marry her, share her life, and become a father to their daughter. She
eventually realizes that she has to make a choice between her religion and the
man she loves.
After
the war, through the 1920’s, Greenwich Village changed under renovation. Many
artists and writers moved to Chicago, the American Southwest (New Mexico) or
Southern France. Dorothy Day struggled within the midst of this world that
Rockwell Kent moved in and out of as he traveled to Tierra del Fuego and
Greenland. The men Day lived with were no better or worse than Kent – only
different in their own ways. And Day herself was not merely a victim of their
behavior. Although, money and power will always be a factor, she willingly
participated. It was a world where some women, too, sought sexual freedom at
any cost. Some men and women, like Dorothy Day, rejected atheism finding their
own spiritual foundation. Some, like Day, returned to organized religion. Day,
however, brought with her a good dose of the radicalism she had lived. She had
lived and suffered with the poor. She understood their vulnerability from
personal experience. Her love and caring for the poor and vulnerable took root
in the Catholic Worker Movement.
BELOW -- Philandering was a popular topic of conversation and newspaper columns. The discussions were mostly about philandering husbands, but some wrote about women, too. This article from the April 15, 1926 New York Daily News.
BELOW
– Columnist Dorothy Dix gives advice on how to handle a philandering husband in
the June 4, 1921 Oklahoma City Times.
BELOW
– Review of the 1925 novel Replenishing
Jessica by Maxwell Bodenheim about a philandering young woman – in the June
20, 1925 Brookley Daily Eagle. This is a male writer’s perspective. Perhaps what
made Dorothy Day's novel, The Eleventh
Virgin, so interesting is that it presented a provocative story of a "modern" young woman from the woman’s point of view.
There’s
no evidence that Rockwell Kent had any contact with Dorothy Day herself during
these early years. He was 17 years older than she, and his wife Kathleen
was six years older. But the Kents and Day were in and around the city at the
same time and connected with many of the same people and places. During 1917,
both Rockwell and Kathleen are in and out of the city while Dorothy is there;
and in 1918, when Rockwell is in Alaska, Kathleen is in the city. In one of her
letters to her husband in Alaska, Kathleen writes about going to see Margaret
Sanger. It’s most likely the Kents didn’t know Dorothy Day directly, but they
did know many who knew and worked with her, especially those who worked on The Masses and later The Liberator.
Interestingly,
in later years those involved with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement contacted with Rockwell Kent, probably hoping to interest him in the common
causes they both endorsed. In a January 1, 1946 letter, Irene Mary Naughton
wrote to Kent: Francis Carver of Altona,
N.Y. sent me a letter of yours to give to Dorothy Day, editor and cofounder
with Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker. The Catholic Worker is a movement and a monthly
paper with a 4-pt. program. It might be termed Christian Communism and is
opposed to both Communism and Capitalism…Your remark, “the Church has failed”
reminded me of G.K. Chesterton’s remark that “Christianity not been tried and found wanting. Christianity has
been found difficult and left untried…” I’ll close by asking the blessing of a
God on you in whom you don’t believe. She mails Kent some copies of the Catholic
Worker and other items, but says she won’t put him on their mailing list unless
he requests it. She ends: I myself don’t
like to be sent unwelcome lit…P.S. Don’t trouble to answer. In Christ, Irene
Mary Naughton.
Francis
Carver had been writing to Kent, trying to engage him in relevant issues and
recommending books – perhaps hoping he could convince him to work with the
Catholic Worker Movement. The correspondence reflects respect and friendliness
on both sides. On January 26, 1950 Kent wrote to Carver: I have been very tardy in acknowledging and thanking you for your
Christmas gift of “Catholic Radicalism” by Peter Maurin. I have read it with
great interest and with the respect that I would accord to any earnest soul,
however his conclusions might differ from my own. # There are aspects of human
society as visualized by the Catholic Church that I find very moving but which,
by the very nature of my own mind, I must reject as purely Utopian. # Accepting
the doctrine that man is made in the image of God, I turn to man as the
embodiment of all we know of god and, consequently, as the final and only
authority. If I had been a Catholic, I would soon become a Protestant. As a
Protestant I would have become a Unitarian. And, finally, rejecting the
Unitarian’s belief in the divinity of man, I would have become what I am – a
non-believer in anything but in man’s inherent power, with faith in nothing but
himself, to at last and finally establish on earth a society in which there
will be no poverty, no war, no fear.
Kent’s
last few words seem as Utopian and romantic as that of which he complains. The
evolution he suggests from Protestant Calvinism to Unitarian – could end with
Transcendentalist as well as non-believer – as it did for Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Henry David Thoreau. With a good dose of Nietzsche, in 1950 at age 68,
Rockwell Kent is still a romantic transcendentalist.
A FEW LINKS ABOUT THE
LIFE OF DOROTHY DAY
NEXT
ENTRY
Part II
The Allure and Magnetism of Rockwell Kent
Having set a few set pieces on the stage, I’ll delve into some aspects
of Rockwell Kent’s outer personality and character – that swashbuckling façade
his friend Egmont Arens acknowledges. The mask itself is attractive enough, but
perhaps some get a glimpse of the vulnerable and uncertain artist that emerges beneath
it. That may have also made him difficult to resist.
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