PART 5 OF 5 THE NOT-SO-QUIET ADVENTURE

ABOVE - Olson’s cabin was located at the northern end of the fox farm. From the cabin site there is a trail east to the lake. This side of the lake is the small pool where Olson and the Kent’s got their fresh water. There are some freshets that come down from the mountain into the lake, but today the pool and the lake are much more brackish than they were in Kent's day, probably due to the drop in land after the 1964 earthquake.  Capra photo.

NOTE– I’ll call this Part 5 of 5 of an expanded version of the lecture I delivered at the Anchorage (Alaska) Museum of History and Art on Nov. 9, 2018 as part of a one-day Rockwell Kent Symposium. But from this point on the entries are really just a continuation of the article as I continue to expand it.

If you’ve reading this website you realize there is much more the story that’s contained on this website. I’ve tried to incorporate some of that information in this draft, but I advise those interested to check out this entire website for fuller context. The article focuses on the emotional baggage Rockwell brought to Alaska using various sources, especially his letters to his amour Hildegarde and his wife, Kathleen – and Kathleen’s letters to him. Kent can escape into the wilderness. There is the “quiet adventure.” But he can escape neither himself nor his demons.  Beneath the surface of his book is…

THE NOT-SO-QUIET ADVENTURE

Rockwell Kent in Alaska 1918-1919

by Doug Capra © 2019

PART 5 OF 5

BELOW -- These were among the oldest sourdoughs in Alaska when the Pioneers organization met in Seward in 1916. Olson is standing at right.

Olson leaves for Seward on January 2, 1919 to pick up the mail. Kent and Rockie expect him back in a few days. It will be 38 days before he returns on February 11^th – a time of not only uncertainty and concern, but also wonder and artistic productivity What has happened to Olson? For all Kent knows, Olson is sick or dead. But then, Kent does have friends in Seward and someone is sure to notified him – like Thomas Hawkins who finances the fox farming venture on the island. But maybe Olson died one night in his small cabin in Seward and nobody even knows about it yet. Eventually Kent and Rockie accept their isolation and lack of mail. And -- the dynamics of the letter writing changes dramatically for both Rockwell and Kathleen.

First there’s Kathleen letter writing: After she reads on New Year’s Eve – their 10^th anniversary -- those two sincere and loving letters Kent as sent to her through Carl Zigrosser and George Chappell – she regains hope for their marriage. Beginning on January 2^nd, her letters to Rockwell become more frequent, longer and more loving. Of course, he won’t receive those until Olson returns on February 11^th.

Second there’s Kent's letter writing. I always wondered why there were no Kent letters to Kathleen during this period. We find the answer in a letter Kent writes to Kathleen on Feb. 13^th, two days after Olson returns from Seward with a batch of letters from her. He writes: “Olson left on the 2^nd of January. We expected his return on the 4^th. So much hung upon your letters that I felt to write in the meantime would be useless even if more days elapsed. I was deeply depressed. In the letters I had sent you I had put so much love and hope and excluded so much doubt and sorry that a reaction overwhelmed me. I past (sic) the days in absolute idleness, mourning, passing the shore looking toward Seward, counting the hours. And then at last, after the lapse of many days, I roused myself. Whether you loved me or not I said that I would live. I began to draw.”

Why write to Kathleen? He reasoned. I emptied my heart out into the anniversary letters and, until I get a response from her either believing or rejecting me, what’s the use? Kent continued: “All day and every night I worked with all my power. A little recreation with Rockwell was all I allowed myself, all there was to be had in fact. And I put you utterly out of my thoughts. I lived without a woman in my life. I draw only men. I wrote from time to time a letter to Carl, my Rock of faith here, and that was always a relief.”

At this point, Carl Zigrosser is perhaps his closest friend, the only person he can write to about his art, politics and culture – topics that will get “women” and Kathleen off is mind. Another close friend, George Chappell, is suspect in his mind. He's written a disturbing letter to him and will receive a response when Olson returns. Kent goes into a kind of trance during these days of isolation without Olson: “Once in a while I’d think of you coldly in a far off way, sometimes I was sad. On the whole I did not live. I worked. And I accomplished a great deal. All the drawings I shall send you so that you can see. And then at last came Olson and your letters! – That period of my work is ended. I think I shall draw us more. My nights and part of my days shall be for your letters. Count each day’s writing as work at least the value of one drawing. And love the letters more for that.”

To get into an artist’s mind – note what Kent says -- that each letter he writes to Kathleen is worth a drawing. His art is his life. Taking the time to write a letter – and his letters to her are long – could be used to paint or draw. This is no doubt why criticizes her for what he considers her short, hurried letters to him – and why he is enthralled and delighted when – after Olson returns on Feb. 11^th --  he begins receiving batches of long and loving letters from his wife. His letters to her represent portions of his creativity that he could be using to produce art. He tries to convince her that, even with their disturbing attacks and criticism, the letters embody his love for her. 

Back in New York City in early January 1919, Kathleen goes on a letter writing binge. Although she doesn’t compose one every day as she promises, she does write frequent and long letters describing her outings, the children, and hopes for their marriage. She also does what Kent has asked – she rereads all his past letters from Alaska and confronts the questions he is asking her. This causes her much reflection and opens old wounds, but there’s less anger and more honest reflection – and as we’ll see – that encourages Kent’s responses to be much the same. They are trying to reconcile. Kathleen tells him that someone sends her friend, Polly Steele, box seats at the Aeolian Hall in the city to hear chamber music and the two women enjoy a night out for the third time.

BELOW -- From the New York Times, August. 19, 1912, p.3.

 “Polly is certainly being good to me,” Kathleen tells Kent in a Jan. 9^th letter. A musician friend from Boston is playing in New York and Kathleen is having a tea for her. She joins her friend Bernice at her Eurhythmics classes -- expressive movement and dancing – for education, performance art, and therapy, also used in anthroposophic medicine. “It was very interesting and cheered us both up,” she writes.

BELOW -- First image, from the Eugene (Oregon) Morning Register, March 5, 1916. Second image, from the Green Bay (Wisconsin) Press-Gazette,  May 5, 1916.

Kent’s daughter Clara and his Auntie Joe are sick. There are always concerns about the influenza epidemic. Kathleen writes that Mrs. Theodore Wagner wants to know prices on some of Kent’s paintings. Her husband is interested. Not long before Kent left for Alaska, the couple had commissioned him to produce a handmade, illustrated book as a memorial to their young daughter who had recently died. Now her husband is considering financial support to keep Kent in Alaska, up to $2000. Kathleen knows Margaret Sanger and goes to visit her but she isn’t in. Her trial is coming up for publishing an article advocating birth control vs. abortion. Now in New York without being under her husbands control, with the support of her friends, socializing within some of her husbands art world -- Kathleen is exposed to more the progressive world of the avant guard. 

About this time she writes that frank letter I quoted earlier about her life’s disappointments, regretting that now nearing 30-years-old she’s hasn’t achieved her dreams. When Kent marries her in 1909 she is talented musician and singer. Now that she’s in New York and often experiencing Broadway and the cabarets, she’s wondering where life might have taken her had she not married and had all these children.This elicits an extraordinarily sensitive and honest letter from Kent – and in a future entry I’ll publish Kathleen’s letter and Kent’s response, which clearly demonstrates how he has changed, how the two are more honest with each other, and trying to put their marriage back together again.

NEXT ENTRY – Kent and Rockie’s life on Fox Island between the time Olson leaves on Jan. 2, 1919 and his return on Feb. 11^th.