Part I - CHRISTMAS & LATE DECEMBER 2018

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018

Part I - Christmas & Late December 2018

December 20, 1918 moon rise over Mount Alice on the Resurrection Peninsula across from the town of Seward. Capra photo

AS   1918   ENDS

Kent knows since his last trip to Seward that he won’t be getting back there before Christmas. Weather and sea conditions are too iffy. He makes sure of two things during that last trip in early December -- first, he gets all his important Christmas gifts and mail out on the steamships; second, he purchases everything he needs for Christmas on Fox Island. He shares Seward’s indignation toward the steamship companies in a Dec. 21^st letter to Kathleen complaining that the companies have devised a “plot to make the mail scarce on this coast…in retaliation for the revocation of their mail contract” with the U.S. Government. They’re making sure the Christmas mail will be late, he contends.

These days Kent devotes much time each day to writing his illustrated journal – or diary – of the Fox Island experience. It’s all positive, focusing on his pioneering, his painting, little Rockie’s exploits, his trips to Seward, and old Olson’s stories and adventures. Into his correspondence with Kathleen he pours out his heart, makes love to his wife in words, berates her, criticizes her, apologizes for his moods, tries to be positive, but then reverts back to his insecurities fearing that Kathleen is unfaithful and neglectful of him. It’s emotionally confusing for both of them. Their letters may be written on the same dates but the contents have entirely different contexts. By the time they get each other’s letters, weeks have gone by and they’ve already sent other letters that may not match the mood of the new letters they are receiving. Kent is still obsessed with what he considers Kathleen’s hasty and carelessly short letters. He tells her on Dec. 23^rd that he writes at least four pages of personal letters to her each day and adds:

 “A four page letter in the words it holds is the equivalent of about thirteen pages of yours. And with the diary added to this I send you about sixteen pages in your writing every day.” The longest letter he has received from Kathleen is eight pages, he complains, forgetting that disturbing fourteen page one she sent him in mid-November. He’s obsessed with numbers: “Some time ago I counted the length of your reply to all that I wrote. If I remember correctly it was just 91 words! I am not and idle woman prattling along because I’ve nothing better to do. I have written you always earnestly out of a very busy life. I set a high value on what I write to you – if you do not. I give you nothing but the best that is in me. Though you can understand from the figures I have given you why I feel agitated.”

 This Dec. 23rd letter is one of Kent’s disturbing ones to Kathleen, interspersed with apologies and regret. “I cannot control my indignation at you,” he writes. “When it comes it passes all bounds. I am sorry. This day’s letter is now spoiled…I can’t endure this much longer.” Kent reads Kathleen’s beautiful letters to him from the Berkshires over and over again. He wants all the letters to be like that – loving words, admiration for him, stories about the children, of her dedication to him and his work. He obsesses over Kathleen’s words to him in July before he left for Alaska, “You know I am young and foolish,” he quotes her. “Deep down I know I do love you.” Kent analyzes the meaning of “deep down” and writes, “Do you mean to say that you have wanted to be free of me?” If so, he tells her, then “GO!” Then it gets worse: “All that I have written you of love or shall write you must not be misunderstood. I do not plead with you. You shall suit yourself. I love you. But I’ll have no rivals. I demand your whole heart. – and then I look through all your letters for expressions of love and devotion. But for the little half formal terms of endearment there is no love. Are you not full grown? Have you no mind? Don’t you understand things? So day after day my hope and my belief in you sinks. After all, the most perfect quality of yours to me was your honor. Is that gone?” Kent distrusts Kathleen’s friend Bernice. She has lied to her husband, Billy, he claims. “Women are false,” he rants, again claiming his love, devotion and worship for Kathleen, adding, “For all my pain hang your head and weep. At your pain I have sorrowed even while I’ve hurt you.”

In other letters he writes of “raising” Kathleen like a parent does a child. She was 17 when they married; he was 26. Sometimes he addresses her as “child.” He ends the letter with, “Truly you must see that my worship of you is profounder than my little rage.” This is a father talking to a daughter, claiming that his chastising and punishing hurts him more than it hurts her. I do this because I love you, he’s saying. In his home life growing up, Kent didn’t experience a parental, couple relationship. His father died early and his mother never remarried. He observed and internalized the parent to child relationship he had with his mother, and similar bonds perhaps with his aunt Jo and Rosa. These connections were maternal and paternalistic, discipline focused, instructive, and demanding. His paternalism toward Kathleen is clear. Perhaps his wife accepted, even enjoyed that relationship in the early years of their marriage. But Kent’s early affair with Jenny destroyed any illusions his wife had of her husband.

In a Dec. 26^th letter to him, Kathleen is bluntly honest. As you read the quotes below, look for the underlined words. These are words she underlined to expression emotion. Also note the exclamation marks! She’s extremely upset as she writes this letter. So – she challenges – you say that Hilda’s letters put mine to shame? “Think what she has suffered from your conduct compared to what I have suffered. What has she given up…compared to what I have! And still you have me! Haven’t I been true and faithful to you for years & years and written you tender loving letters, and still you have gone off with first one woman and then another! You say some of my letters are a horror to you. Some of yours to me I have the same feeling about." You knew your camping trips to Mount Monadnock with Hilda would break my heart, she tells him, “and yet you went anyway…It is impossible for me to forget the torment I have gone thru! the hundreds of dollars you have spent on other girls (yes, this is true. I know it).” Don’t think you’re fooling me about that, she writes and adds “…I worked like a slave and went without nearly everything. And now you blame me…for living in the city where I can have a few comforts {with} people I care for. My life is not so ‘gay’ as yours last winter for I have…only twice been to two shows & danced only once. I have no sweetheart constantly by my side! As you had, with a faithful wife & family to come home to at night if you cared!”

December 20, 2018 Resurrection Bay sunrise taken from the choir loft of Resurrect Art Coffee House at 10:55. Capra photo.

So – Kathleen challenges her husband – you told me you ended the affair with Hilda – well, prove it. “Dear,” she writes, “I asked you to send me a copy of your letter to H. I’ll tell you why. Rockwell, you have deceived me in many things connected with her and you know it. How easy it would be to deceive me in this! You have also written me very, very loving letters before this, promising to be faithful and kind & to make me happy. Has that come to pass! Certainly it hasn’t or I wouldn’t be writing to you as I am or crying as I am. You blame me for breaking my promise. Many, many, many times have you broken yours to me, and thru that I have suffered tortures, even as you have suffered and more; so don’t blame me for that. I feel that I have a right to see what you have written to Hilda. I must see it if we are to begin anew, with a new love for one another, and if my love for you is to be a pure and happy one.” Next, she once again tries to explain to her husband why often he thinks of her as unloving and unfaithful to him. “You know, Rockwell, for I have told this over & over again, that you’ve made me so unhappy that for my own peace of mind {I} have struggled to love you less. It took me years to do this. When you see signs of my succeeding in this, you go wild at the thought of losing my love. If it is really so precious to you then show it in your actions and earn again for yourself alone the pure true love that was all yours once.” Kathleen is exhausted.  “I have cried all the time while writing this & my head and eyes ache and I must stop. I don’t see what I have done to be so unhappy all the time. Why can’t I have the love and care and devotion others less deserving have?” But she must end with hope. “Good night, my new true lover. I am your lovely and love-thirsty Kathleen.”

Then she adds a P.S. that helps explain more about what’s going on. She is writing all this the day after Christmas 1918. Five days from now will be the tenth anniversary of their marriage. Her husband won’t read the letter quoted above for several weeks. Meanwhile on Fox Island this day after Christmas, Kent is writing letters to Kathleen and depositing them along with Rockies and all his others, into a little mail box he has attached to the cabin wall. Kathleen won’t read any of these for several weeks – and when they do come they’ll arrive in one or two large batches.

The above illustration appears at the end of Kent's Dec. 24, 1918 letter to Kathleen.