PART 2 - FEBRUARY 3 - 11, 1919 -- OLSON RETURNS

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018

PART 2 - February 3 - 11, 1919 OLSON RETURNS

ABOVE -- The City of Seward as it appears today, looking north. When the Kent's were in town, the Alaska Railroad was under construction, and the tracks extended along the area to the right. That whole section of land, along with most of Seward's economy, was destroyed during the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake. Photo by Jim Pfeiffenberger.

The evening of Feb.11^th Kent and Rockie notice a black spot that seems to be moving toward them. Will it enter their cove? “Nearer they come and nearer,” Kent writes. They dash outside and hear and see, Kent writes “men’s voices, the little cabin light, and the vessel gliding toward us.” The vessel drops anchor. “Olson,” Kent shouts. “Is that you?”

“He’s aboard,” a voice with an English accent answers. It’s Skipper George Hogg. Rockie dashes to Olson’s cabin, lights the lamp, sweeps the floor, and starts a fire in the stove to prepare a welcome for the old Swede. Olson, Hogg and one or two others take a skiff ashore. Olson knows how anxious Kent is for his wife to join him. After all, the old Swede has written a letter to Kathleen at Kent’s urging trying to convince her to come to Alaska. In a Feb. 17^th letter to Kathleen, Kent recounts a nasty trick Olson plays on him. “The night Olson came as we were drinking in the cabin Olson said “Your wife’s in town!” “What,” I cried, “Why didn’t you bring her here?” We can’t stay here now, I’ve got to go to-night. If this man {probably Hogg} won’t go I’ll go in my dory.” And I was on my feet with excitement. But the other man took pity on me and pulled me down and told me the truth. Oh, Kathleen you don’t know what longing is!”

George Hogg is no stranger to Kent. The Englishman has towed the Kent’s to his cabin along the west shore of Resurrection Bay when they were having engine troubles. He serves them lunch and tea and fixes their engine at his camp along Caines Head. Hogg is well known in Seward and Nuka Bay. On his next trip to Seward, Kent stops at Hogg’s camp to borrow something to bail out his leaky boat, but no one is home. Kent feels comfortable enough to go into the shed and borrow a bowl. Between 1918-1921, Smokehouse Mike, who homesteaded Mike’s Bay in Nuka Passage – distills moonshine whisky. Alaska votes to go dry in 1916 and the law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 1918. When Hogg is in Smokehouse Mike’s area, he stokes the wood burner of the 30-gallon still for his friend. It's been rumored that Olson does some private distilling himself – so he and Hogg probably have many stories to share. During Alaska’s “Bone-Dry” years, Seward experiences a vibrant under the radar liquor trade. Between the time the dry law passes and goes into effect the town has plenty of time to prepare. Later in February a gas boat stops at Fox Island hunting for a stray boat. Two young men, one with his wife, join Kent and Olson in the Swede’s cabin to chat. Later, Olson tells Kent that they most likely are not looking for a stray boat but dragging for a cache of whisky. Before the “Bone-Dry” law begins, folks in Seward lowered caches of liquor in secret places all around Resurrection Bay, carefully marking the locations on secret charts. Later, they go out and haul up what they need. Or even better, they would try to locate someone else’s secret hiding place. “It’s just like the buried treasure of the days of piracy,” Kent writes.  “Doubtless there are not many charts extant with the position of liquid treasure marked upon them.” Olson always seems to have some liquor available. Some accounts say he had a still on Fox Island, but I’ve never been able to trace that claim to any reliable sources. It’s more likely he’s one of the lucky treasure hunters who has hauled up from Resurrection Bay another’s booze cache.

 ABOVE -- Looking south into Resurrection Bay with Fox Island at right. In the foreground is what's left of one of the seven docks that occupied the shoreline before the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake. Photo by Jim Pfeiffenberger.

For Kent and Rockie it’s like Christmas all over again, but this time with many presents, letters and cards from friends and relatives. On Feb. 12^th Kent writes to Kathleen: “At last your mail has come! Today I have read all the letters. I’ve been from the depth to the heights many times. If I could leave here now and come to you I would at once. I cannot decide what to do.” On Feb. 13^th Kent lists all the Christmas letters. “And such beautiful letters. I’ll send you some of them,” he writes. There are letters and cards from people I’ve mentioned throughout all these entries: his friend Putnam; from artist Gus Mager, his sister Dorothy; Kathleen Enol; Dr. Theodore Wagner, a potential new patron; Carl Zigrosser; his and Kathleen’s friends, Billy and Bernice; several from his mother; and six from Hildearde. But Kent is quick to add that Hilda wrote these letters before she got his letter ending the affair.

We learn more about their late Christmas on Fox Island from a Feb. 17^th letter Kent sends to his mother: “About four days ago Olson returned after an absence of six weeks. We had begun to think there was no more to the world than Fox Island and that all the people were dead. But when he did come he brought with him such a wonderful mail that we thought it all worthwhile. Our bed was piled high. Twenty three books came! {Most from Carl Zigrosser} And candy and things to wear. But your three boxes, yours and Auntie Joe’s were the most fun of all. There were so many wonderful things in them…different things.” Huglers chocolate peppermints, chocolate apples, plum pudding, and cocoa mix --  but “The cover had come off the cocoa box. Can you imagine the mess? Fortunately, it did not soil the books, we collected every bit of it and (figured) that only a table spoon full or so had been lost. The books will be fine.”

In the next few entries on this website, we’ll go back to early January -- for after Kathleen reads her husband’s sincere New Year’s Eve anniversary letters, she begins writing more frequently and more lovingly. And Kent responds similarly. The whole nature of their correspondence changes. They still face difficult issues but they are more honest with each other. Rather than anger and complaints, they try to explain how and why they feel the way they do. Kathleen believes Kent has become a new man. His plan is to take her into the New England countryside upon his return to find a perfect rural home, away from city crowds and temptations – that gives her hope for their marriage. It will be a place, he has told her, where they can raise and educate their children away from the herd. A place where their friends can visit. A place where he can work on his art in peace. Perhaps a place where – if his Alaska venture turns into a failure – he can begin a new life.

Before I summarize Kathleen’s January letters, I want to publish here Kent’s two anniversary letters. He probably sent one to Carl Zigrosser to give to Kathleen, and the other to George Chappell for Kathleen. The letters were probably written in mid to late November and mailed when Kent and Rockie ventured to Seward in late November and stayed until early December. As revealing and sincere as I believe these letters are, Kent reveals even more about himself in his letters through February. These are the letters that gave Kathleen a new hope for their marriage, and changed the tenor of their correspondence during Kent’s last months in Alaska. I’ve added some punctuation for easier reading but left the lack of other punctuation  as written.

ABOVE -- Resurrection Bay on February 4, 2018. Capra photo

The following letters are held at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute.

LETTER NO. 1

Ten Years To-night!

Mother, dear mother:- The grown up part of your little family here is crying, crying, crying. Dear wife, my darling sweetheart, are you happy or are you too crying miserably there alone? Oh, it is terrible to be away from you now. How can I bear it any longer. Let me never again do this. And the loneliness of us both! How could I do what I have done to you? To-night I am so humble mother. All my sins toward you have come before me. I have lain awake hours in the past night and understood so much. And my shame! Mother darling, it will take me a life time to make up to you what I have taken from you.

         Rockwell is in bed. I have been holding him in my arms singing over and over again the little song I printed out for you called Daddy. And I’ve found comfort in tears. They have helped. All day has sacredly been given you, dearest. Rockwell and I have talked of his sweet mother. All day I have worked on a drawing for you and it is now finished. You and I, naked, have just sprung ashore from a little boat on to a flowery strand and are fleeing hand in hand. And we have been but just in time for a dreadful siren of the sea – half woman half serpent, was close upon us and has seized our boat. But we are safe, mother, darling, you and I. We have passed this terrible peril – and now still fast together we shall love each other as never before, with deeper passion and more understanding. I hope you’ll like the drawing. If the siren is a terrible creature you and I are as lonely figures as I’ve ever made.

         Last night – it was toward morning I think when I awoke – I lay in thought over my wrong doing of all these years, one by one. I saw them without one shadow of justification. One thing alone was enough to condemn me; it was that I had made you suffer. I see every unkind act of mine and every word, I see the mistakes I have made and I see how for everything you suffered. Your devotion has {been} so wonderful, so beautiful and so far more than I have deserved that if ever mother you turn from me I will still do everything in the world for you. But tonight I do believe in your love for me. I know it is still deep and true; I know that all I have to do is deserve it. And that is my one and only resolution now on New Year’s Eve. I will deserve your love. You shall be happy and more happy year after year and will make the memory of these unhappy years so faint that they can never even cast a shadow. Rockwell and I drank tonight a toast that I taught him to say, “I hope mother will always be wonderfully happy with you, father.”

         I made lots of false starts. I have time and again sacrificed much of our {lives}) to gain nothing. When we went West with all our things and East again. But then I think we held everything together. Newfoundland was a disaster. It may be that it was of value in my development, maybe we’ll both someday see it as an experience that was worthwhile. And all the things we sacrificed then! We did mean to stay there. But how impossible that would have been! But of all we sold and gave away then I most regret the lamps, your lamps. We gave them to the Millers and that they did not offer them to us again on our return will always be between Miller and me. We’ll never be friends again. About that I am bitter because I know you loved them. But believe in the “someday” mother. I will return it all to you in happiness, I promise. The andirons that we had in Berkshire, I cannot remember anywhere else. Surely we didn’t pack them around with us to 23^rd Street & Perry Street and out west, where we had no fireplaces. I think we must have sold them or given the away in Berkshire. But darling don’t you ever worry about these things. In our wanderings we always sought the place where we could be happy. We have always dreamed the city. I want to be far from it with you alone and you alone. We’ll make our house one that it will be a privilege to visit and always you shall have someone there. Our friends shall come to us and bring right into our own house the best the city has for us – and leave the dirt and the unhappiness there. I think continually of our future life together in the country – of wide fields of daisies for the children to play through, of brooks (to dance), and our orchard and the broad old apple tree for them to play in. There we’ll all be children again! And I think of you blooming under the great happiness of our life, of your beauty growing and yours eyes opening to new depths. Ah, my Kathleen, if I have not half profited by you neither have you by me. Both of us must reveal to each other new beauties or rather old ones till now unseen. I know how much I have hidden from you.

         To-night I sang a little to Olson. He was delighted. Music and dancing are good, he says. They add to people’s happiness. Cards and games like that are bad for they set people against each other. It is true. He said that here in America it was not as in the old country. There everyone could sing and all the time there was singing and music. I thought of course of our (house or home), yours and mine. There it is surely more perfect than we have realized. I think others have come and felt a rare spirit about our hearth. I know it is there. And most of all our music keeps it alive. As the children grow it will be finer still – and for them how wonderful.

         Mother, darling, somewhere in the diary I mention we having whisky. Where Olson gets it I don’t know. But I think he has found a cache of it that was hidden when Alaska was made dry. But I want to tell you that I hardly ever touch even a little drink, even when I’m much upset. I have asked you not to drink, do you remember? Darling, I would feel ever so much better if I knew you didn’t. Wait until I am with you. Can you do this for me? Please. Do answer me. You can understand, can’t you darling, how I worry about you. I will do anything that you ask of me.

         To-night you should have received flowers from me. I sent Carl the money for them – a cheque I received from Wanamaker’s, {Department Store}and the pictures from Rockwell and me and the note from me. If Olson had gone to Seward I would have sent you a cablegram. I picture you as staying at home alone as I asked, and reading my letter. As loving me dearly as I do you. As weeping now as I have wept. Mother darling, I hope there’s little differences in our love. I love you beyond all thought. I don’t know myself the limits of it. And from now on from this tenth year until our ninetieth dear dear wife I want to give you such true comradeship and such devoted love that not one day but shall be a glory of happiness to you. Hand in hand from now on we shall go trusting, loving, helping, serious, only so can I redeem my debt to you.

         Good night, darling Kathleen. Kiss Kathleen and Clara and Hildegarde, {Their daughter born in Newfoundland whose name is eventually changed to Barbara by her mother} hug them and dance with them and do it all (nine) times one and tell them each time that it’s all from daddy. And you, dearest, I kiss ten thousand times. Forever with the truest love, Rockwell.

ABOVE -- The February 8, 1919 front page of the Alaska Weekly Post, which was the weekly edition of the Seward Gateway. There had been two newspapers in Seward during 1916 and 1917 due to political rivalries. They eventually merged.  During that political strife, the Seward Chamber of Commerce broke up. While Kent was on Fox Island during 1918 the chamber began to regain momentum. They saw Kent and his art as a potential boon to the economy and invited him to speak at one of their meetings. I've found no record of Kent speaking there, probably due to his early departure. These old Seward newspapers made available -- Courtesy of the Seward Community Library Association.

LETTER NO. 2

Mother dear; to-night thousands of miles away you sit close beside me as I work. You lean forward from your sewing now and then and with your cheek against my shoulder,-- for you are as close as that – look at my work. So much you now dare to do. The ogre of a husband and the beautiful young wife have become so much one that they see as if through the same eyes, they dance together in the same remote, starlit heaven. And after a time you read to me from a beautiful story book that takes us together through the heaven of another genius. “Ah, mother dear, let’s play for a little while.” And then we make such music, song after song of all those that to both of us have come to have no meaning separate from thought of the other. Oh can I think of that on New Year’s Eve without a breaking heart for old time’s sake. Yes, mother yes. The new day has begun {with} new faith, a new love, a knowledge of what to fear in ourselves and in each other; -- the new year with a plan of happiness before our eyes. That night, darling, I’ll try hard not to be too sad. I will have faith. I’ll go out into the night and cry up at the same stars that shine over us both. I shall look to the eastward and you shall look to the westward and then there must come peace and happiness to us both. Write to me that night, mother dear – write to me hours long, say for once if you can all those unspoken beautiful things that being in your own depths wake the calm of your mien so profound. But you are writing then every night. Well, keep it as you please with me.

         Now my sweetheart. To-night you shall have roses that I send to you from some mysterious source, a picture of Rockwell’s that shows his vision of paradise – our cabin and such a place as he would take us to when we are old, and my vision of an earthly Paradise for all of us. By the children’s years you can see that it is not far ahead. And so it isn’t far dear heart, it is my plan to go away with you for a few weeks in the early summer walking into New Hampshire or in some of the milder parts of New England to look for the framework of such a place as I have pictured. Let’s avoid the city. I can be so content away from the crowd, away from all the vulgar lot that have always persecuted me. Then I shall work and become a prophet over all the land and you shall be my help mate and the children shall grow up with pure and loftier ideals than they can ever know in contact with the masses. So that at best from the beauty and fullness of our lives, these {difficult to decipher} there shall be defused far out over the land and deep and abroad over the sky a radiance such as sacred things give out. And one after another our dearest friends shall visit us so that at no time can we sink away from the most splendid days of that life but always keep it lofty and serene and glorious. To do all this I’ll find a way. I am now doing my best to get the support I need for it – and the work that I am doing here will bring the confidence of those who can help me. But that is my affair. But the search for the place to live, won’t that be a delightful holiday for you and me.

         In the book I sent to you for Christmas are some essays on the women of India that you shall read first. They are you! All that is most beautiful in the ideals of womanhood of that good meditating people is the Kathleen that I am only just coming to (revere) as I should. See in what you read there that there are other and finer ideals than those of America. From no one can you learn to your advantage. Rather you should, if you (have) known, teach this world where its ideals are false. Keep your own beauty above from the contamination of “modern” womanhood. Give out your radiance and for yourself let yourself suffice. How little, or how coarse, how typical of an age of hate, are the women that I see. And the best, even our own friends, are (sand) by the little they have of what is all of you.

         I have looked at times for years & years ahead. I have seen you old and (even) careworn. But always there was about you that heavenly radiance and with all my heart and soul I worshiped you. And your sweet tired face I kissed and stroked and we hung close in each other’s arms for the love of our youth had become infinite.

         Sweet, sweet, mother, have peace tonight. Sleep close, close in my arms, my hand on your brow, my lips to yours, our legs twined wonderfully together. Oh God, for such nights again! Oh mother, mother I am crying as I write now and Rockwell wonders at my sobs. I love you, I love you, dear true and tender wife. Forever, forever we shall be true. Your Rockwell.