PART 2 of 2 - EARLY JANUARY 1918

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018

Part 2 of 2 - Early January 1918

BELOW -- This is what Resurrection Bay looked like at about 12:45 p.m. Jan. 7, 2019. In the distance you can what we call sea smoke rising about the water. This happens when it’s so cold that the water is warmer than the air about. Capra photo.

BELOW -- This shows what the waters looked like around Fox Island on Jan. 7, 2019. Although the sea is relative calm, this is no time to be traveling in an open loaded dory from Fox Island to Seward and back. It’s too cold. Even though it was snowing on Jan. 2^nd, the weather was mild. Olson picked a good time for his trip to Seward. Capra photo.

Today in Seward -- January 9, 2018 – the temperature at my house was about 8 above zero at 7 a.m. The day before, Jan. 8^th -- it warmed up here to about 15 degrees. I judge how cold our winters are over the years by the outdoor clothing I wear. When it gets above about 15 degrees I wear only a fleece and a fur hat with gloves. When it gets below about 10 degrees, especially if there’s a wind, I wear a windbreaker over my fleece. These days I go about fleeced, or sometimes double fleeced.

On Jan. 7^th 100 years ago, Kent and Rockie put on their snowshoes and hike to the south end of the beach to see if they can see Olson returning. On Jan. 8^th they experience a mild period with off and on rain and snow. It is now 7 days since Olson left for Seward to get the mail. Kent is taking care of the animals, and he’s finally mastered milking the goat called Nanny. He gives her a cup of oats to eat and is able to finish the milking before she finishes it. “I have to,” he writes, “for at the finish she leaps madly to escape me.” He makes a special dessert – goat’s milk junket with marmalade.

Kent skips a journal for Jan. 9^th in Wilderness, but writes a longer one for Jan. 10^th. It’s been an eventful and frustrating day. The rain pours down, “as if it had fallen for all time and never would cease.” Olson still hasn’t returned. “Oh Olson, Olson!” Kent writes. “Is it anything to you in our old age to be so madly wanted?” It’s a quiet day. “These are the times in life when nothing happens,” he had written earlier, “but in quietness the soul expands.” He made two good drawings and two small woodcuts. “Nothing has happened,” he writes. Except with the ram. Billy had recently smashed the door to Olson’s shed and Kent repaired it. Today he “burst the door to pieces,” destroying Kent’s repair job. “I caught him at the finish of it,” Kent writes. “I became a maniac at such a time. I pursued the beast with a club in a mad chase through the heavy snow, catching him often enough to get some satisfaction at least in the beating I gave him. He fears me now and that’s something gained. But it’s a bad matter for both Billy and me.”

As usual, he’s up late that night finishing his drawings and writing letters. He tells Rockie that he can work better alone late at night. If you want, his son tells him, you can send me out during the day to stay all day without dinner, if that will help you work better. Kent is touched. Earlier the rain stopped and the sky cleared and Kent observed “as beautiful a moonlit night as one ever beheld. The softest veils of cloud passed the moon and cast over the earth endlessly varied, luminous shadows. The mountain tops, trees, rocks, and all, are covered with new snow; the valleys and the lower levels are black where rain has cleared the trees. It is so beautiful here at times that it seems hard to bear.”

 The moon rises over Mount Alice above the Resurrection Peninsula on Dec. 20, 2018. Capra photo.

Kent has been reading the adventures of King Arthur to Rockie . “He has made himself a lance and a sword,” Kent writes, “and to-morrow I expect to confer some sort of knighthood to him.” As they read stories of the round table, Rockie plants a seed in his father’s head – one that will later grow and flourish. “I don’t think the pictures in the book are half nice enough,” the boy observes. “I think of a wonderful picture when you read the story and then when I see the one in the book I’m disappointed.” After Alaska and once he gains fame and financial security, Rockwell Kent becomes one of America’s premier book illustrators. On Fox Island, while reading Homer he’s already expressed the desire to illustrate the Odyssey. He’s reading many illustrated children’s books to Rockie and noting the deficiency of the illustrations. “And these King Arthur pictures are rarely good in execution,” he notes. “It just shows that one need not attempt to palm off unimaginative stuff, much less trash, on children. The greatest artists are none too good to make the drawings for children’s books. Imagination and romance in pictures and stories a child asks for above all, and these qualities in illustration are the rarest.”

A sketch of Rockie from Wilderness.

Back in New York during early January people are writing him letters. Kathleen pens a note on New Year’s Day. She’s lain awake all night “praying with my whole soul that the new year would really bring us everlasting happiness and peace. I feel sure that it will.” There are always money problems. Kent’s Auntie Joe – his mother’s (Sara) sister -- promised $20 a month to help support Kathleen and the children. While visiting with Sara over Christmas, Kathleen learned that the money has been going to Sara who has been banking it, thinking that her son may eventually want it in a lump sum. Kathleen has been wondering why she hasn’t been getting the money, and want’s Kent to intervene. She has budgeted with it in mind. She tells him she’s living very economically but is conflicted – what if he needs money as much as she does – what is she to do? Kent sent Kathleen a book for Christmas, a collection of essays about Indian women and their spirituality. She hasn’t gotten around to reading it, but she does spend some time New Year’s Day reading. “I am ashamed to say I haven’t even read a newspaper” since she came to the city, she admits. “I wish I didn’t always feel guilty when I take this time to read…I shouldn’t, should I.”

On Jan. 2^nd Kent’s mother writes that she received his Christmas package and wonders whether he received hers. He has, and described its contents in an earlier letter to his wife. Kathleen and the Children spend Christmas with Sara. “Their stockings were hung up at night – & before daylight – they went down stairs to get them,” Sara writes. “After breakfast we had the presents from the tree.” Auntie Joe spends the day with them but goes home worn out. Sara suspects she may have a touch of the influenza.” Everyone is enthralled with his Chart of Resurrection Bay. Kent had sent the master drawing to his friend Carl Zigrosser who made copies and delivered them to Kathleen who distributed many to family and friends.

Kathleen writes to Kent again on January 3^rd. “The mails are all mixed up,” she tells him. “Yesterday came the registered envelop from you with the journal” along with others dated Dec. 1^st. The journal had probably been sent in October and Kent has been complaining to Kathleen, upset that she read it and never responded. She did receive a few other letters from late November, early December just after Christmas. One of Kent’s presents to her, some Alaska Native moccasins he bought in Seward, did arrive on January 3^rd with the message – “Not to be opened till Christmas.” Kent tried to find moccasins in Seward for his children but none were available. “I bought Barbara a pair of moccasins at Macy’s,” Kathleen writes. “They’re made exactly like the moccasins {you sent} only a different shade; but they are heavier – quite a bit cheaper. I told her {Barbara} they were a Christmas present from you. She ‘loved’ them and kissed me for you. She thinks Daddy awfully nice to give ‘me these shoes.’” On Jan. 4^th Kathleen is going to the symphony, guests of Mr. and Mrs. Wagner. “That will be a great spree and I am looking forward to it. I shall wear the black & rose evening dress, for we sit in (front).” In his autobiography of Kent, David Traxel writes that in 1917: “Marie Sterner introduced Kent to Dr. and Mrs. Theodore Wagner of Brooklyn, a couple whose young daughter just died. They commissioned Rockwell to make a hand lettered, illustrated book as a memorial to her, and they later bought a painting.” These are most likely the Wagner’s Kathleen refers to, since she notes that Mrs. Wagner’s husband is a doctor. At the end of this Jan. 3^rd letter, Kent's wife includes a sweet letter and drawing to Rockwell from their oldest daughter, Kathleen

Kathleen writes a long letter on Jan. 6^th. “My lovely flowers are all gone, but…my love has not faded so quickly,” she begins. She describes the symphony outing to see and listen to pianist Joseph Hofman. Kathleen is hobnobbing with some of New York’s elite and making important contacts for her husband – the Wagner’s and their older daughter. She gives a copy of Kent’s Chart of Resurrection Bay to Mrs. Wagner who says she “has completely lost her heart to ‘North Wind.’” Kathleen socializes with the Dicks, friends of Marie Sterner. When Kent first met Sterner, about 1914, she was head of contemporary art at Knoedler and Company. She was instrumental in helping Kent establish himself. Sterner tried but failed to get one of Kent's paintings in a show she was organizing. She borrowed from Robert Henri, one of Kent's teachers, a painting Kent had given him. It was later purchased from Henri by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Kent's teacher was generous enough to give the money to Kent. She also helped him sell a painting for $600 that helped him finance his Alaska trip, and helped him promote his Alaska art upon his return to New York. Kathleen is also in contact with Mrs. du Bois and her daughter, (wife of artist Guy Pene du Bois) who are delighted with the letters young Rockie has sent them from Alaska.

Their daughter Clara has a mild case of the influenza and phlebitis in her leg. Little Kathleen and Barbara have been sick off and on. “It seems as if I no sooner get one out of bed than another one is laid up,” she writes. “However, they all look well except for Kathleen who doesn’t look as well…but has been sick less than the others.” Barbara has been sick, too but “she certainly ought to have been a boy, for she is full of the devil.” As of January 3^rd, when she writes this letter, Kathleen is still optimistic about the change in Kent and their marriage. “I am continually making plans for our home in the country next year,” she writes.

Over and over again, Kent has asked Kathleen to reread all his letters and answer the specific questions he's asked. On New Year’s Eve, after she reads his wonderful anniversary letters and responded with hope and optimism for their marriage -- she promises to write him every day.  "You have broken away from the past & are alone in a new world and can think and see clearly," she writes but adds, "I am here amid the ruins of the last few years and at times it is hard for me to see above them. You must forgive this."

As Kent had asked her, Kathleen begins in early January rereading her husband's letters and responding to some of his queries. As they say, be careful what you ask for. Reading those old letters, drags Kathleen back into memories of her husbands unkindness and infidalities and her suffering. The tone of her letters begins to change. Over Christmas she learned that her husband is still writing to Hildegarde; indeed, he he address the letters to Mrs. Hildegarde Kent.

Resurrection Bay at about 3 p.m. on January 9, 2019. Capra photo.