Late August -- Early September, 2018

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018
Late Aug. – Early Sept., 2018 Part 1

"Fire Wood" pen and ink from Wilderness

On this day 100 years ago Rockwell Kent took a break from his work on Fox Island and wrote a letter to his friend Carl Zigrosser: “Robinson Crusoe Olson has just left us to return to his cabin and his goats so I can begin on the letter that I have planned to write tonight and send to Seward by Olson tomorrow – And I’m so utterly tired that I cannot, I know, write one.”

The day before – August 31st – was the one-week anniversary of the artist finding Fox Island. He had discovered an “enchanted cabin” on a “pirate’s island” with an old pioneer. Kent tells Zigrosser of their meeting in Humpy Cove and how the old Swede “came along and carried us almost by force to his island. He loves us for it’s been mighty lonely for him here.” It’s probably evening as Kent writes this letter. He is sitting in his cabin at a make-shift table by the “great window” he had put in on the southwest wall. In one corner is a “couch of state” made of “very unyielding lumber.” Rockie is sprawled out on it, snoring. "I’ll write more about this place next time. Mails are so slow. I’ve had so far just one letter since I left. Forgive this letter. Lord knows I have been working.”

Although Kent had written many letters – to Zigrosser, to Kathleen, to Hildegarde and others – he had only received one as of Sept. 1st. Mail service was slow in Alaska under normal conditions, but in 1918 there were special problems which I’ll cover in a later entry. How bad was it? On Dec. 3, 1918, Kent finally received ten letters sent from New York in August.

“Seward, I’ve learned, is much more mountainous than Seldovia,” he wrote to Kathleen while on the Admiral Farragut on his way to Seward. He had met German mountain climber Conrad Birkhofer in Yakutat who recommend Resurrection Bay as a destination. The German joined Kent on the steamship to Seward. “A splendid fellow,” Kent calls him, “a man after my own heart in his regard for wild animals. In all his travels in wild places, and he has explored the wildernesses of Alaska for years, he has never carried a gun. He goes shouting and singing through the woods and the ferocious creatures flee. He has traveled repeatedly in the very tracks of the enormous brown bear, found spots still warm from the great creature’s body, and yet {has}never, ever seen one. He says, ‘why should I want to kill anything?” Birkhofer must have filled him with stories about mountaineering in the Seward area. “I’m so eager to get settled there and to get to work,” Kent wrote. “And in Seward they’ll be at least twice as many mails as at the other places I’ve considered. We’ll tramp around Seward together and look for a place for Rockwell and me to live.” The steamers continued to arrive in Seward as Kent planned for, but not the mail.

We learn more in that August 21st letter to Kathleen. Kent had made many worthwhile friends in Yakutat who wanted to stay in touch. “And I made at least one enemy.” By this time in his life, Kent knew that was the price he’d pay for speaking his mind, sometimes unwisely. It had happened in Newfoundland; in Winona, Minnesota; recently in Yakutat. It would also happen later in Seward. Despite finding Yakutat unsuitable for settling, he was glad they had stayed there. It proved how adaptable he and Rockie could be. “We both rather regretted leaving our fishermen friends and their homely quarters.”

Then, as with most letters to Kathleen, Kent beseeched her to forgive him, love him, and remain faithful to him. And always, he includes a touching description of Rockie. “Sweet little mother, don’t be afraid to love me with all, all your heart. To be away from you now is to me like the dismemberment of my body. Truly these years can never be undone without a mortal injury to me. Oh, mother, if you can only feel so and forgive me much. Rockwell sits near me here fast asleep. He’s such a little man – and yet with such a love for crazy kiddish play. And we talk about his dear mother before we go to sleep at night, and I tell him to think hard of how much you love each other and then the thousands of miles will seem nothing. Now, goodnight my wife. God be with you. At this hour you are asleep and I kiss you so lovingly.” On a separate page he has handwritten the Robert Burns poem, “A Red, Red Rose.” As we’ll see, this was in response to some of what Kathleen was writing him, anecdotes intended to and succeeded in making him jealous, even furious.

As Kent wrote to Zigrosser, he had been working hard. Time for painting and sketching would come later. He and Rockie, probably with Olson’s help, gutted the goat cabin. They carried the garbage to the beach and burned it; put in a new floor; patched and replaced the roof; gathered and dried moss to chink the space between the cabin’s logs, temporarily using their socks and sweaters. Next they began to cut and stack a winter wood supply. Kent combined that with methodically clearing trees to let in more light for his windows. “I sharpen my axe and fell trees with such ringing strokes,” he wrote to Zigrosser that September, “that I think myself a thorough woodsman when – the axe has slipped, my boot ruined and my foot shows a gash that…lays open just so prettily.”

Sept. 1, 1918 was cloudy. Olson made a trip around the island, he writes in his journal. The day before the trio had noticed a steamship working through the fog on its way to Seward. That could mean mail and a chance to send letters home -- so Olson planned a trip to town. But the rain continued with poor sea conditions.

On Sept. 4th Kent wrote another letter to Kathleen: “ It has rained incessantly… and Olson has not yet ventured to shore.” Kent’s job would be to care for the fox and goats while the Swede was in Seward. One of his jobs was to milk the goats. “I haven’t dared say I don’t know how for I am determined to do it someway or other. Rockwell says you must begin at the top and work it down.” Rockie probably learned the milking process from Olson, and now he had to train his father. The 8-year-old loved animals and spent much time with the goats, even though they could occasionally become quite aggressive. “He talks of the goats laying young ones, and the other night when we had scrambled eggs from a can I asked him to guess where the eggs came from, he guessed they were goats’ eggs. Well, my dear,” he tells Kathleen. “you’d be ashamed of your bearded husband now unless you fancy the Jesus type. Rockwell wants me to grow a moustache so I think I will. I must have hair somewhere, you know.” Kent has also shaved his head and includes a sketch of himself in the letter.

The cooking stove now worked and Kent baked some bread late into the evening. “It was quite a success. I’m surprised that cooking comes so easily to me. Rockwell is delighted with things and eats too much. He says everything is ‘delicious,’ and I’ve been having ‘The Marrow of Men’ and it’s really much better than I ever really believed.” Kent is reading Homer’s Odyssey on Fox Island. For barley loaf, Homer uses the phrase, muelos andron, which translates as ‘the marrow of men. “We do like it,” Kent tells Kathleen. “Oh, but mother dear, we miss {making} things really right. When, as just now, I ask Rockwell, ‘Isn’t this a fine little home we have?’ I mean in my heart, ‘don’t we have a hard time pretending it’s nice without mother?’

Along with a cabin plan sketch, Kent describes their 12 x 15-foot home. 

We learn the door is only 4 feet 6 inches high. I had misread it as larger in from an earlier less legible letter. The small west facing window was about the same size. “The new window gets the only real light,” Kent explained. “It’s rough logs inside and out chinked with moss – only that has to be redone…now you can look out all around. We’ve made the place so cozy that Olson is in rapture over it."

 "Darling, I wish you could see it! Kathleen, love me dearly… I know then how much you love me. Kiss the children many many times from us {way}off here. Ever your, Rockwell.”

Kathleen’s letters to him are full of mundane information about the chores and the children. But she also covers the social life on Monhegan Island. There are many dances, especially when the Coast Guard soldiers arrive on the patrol boats. And then – no doubt to Kent’s annoyance and concern -- there is Mr. Walker.

Cabin pen and ink from Wilderness.

Carl Zigrosser (1930). 

Lithograph on cream paper by Mable Dwight. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.