March 1-2, 1919 & Late January Letters from Carl Zigrosser & George Chappell

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

March 1-2, 1919 and…

Late January letters from Carl Zigrosser and George Chappell

ABOVE -- This is a river otter. Kent often mentions these animals but calls them sea otters. There may have been some sea otters in the area, but they had been hunted out and were only protected in 1911 under a fur sea treaty. Some considered sea otters extinct by 1918. BELOW -- Notice that the river otter has paws front and back. A sea otter has flippers as rear feet and paws in the front. I took these photos at least 20 years ago by the lagoon on the west side of the Seward Highway across from the Seward Small Boat Harbor. I often see river otters during my trips to Fox Island, and I've had some interesting encounters with them along the trails. Capra photos.

“Fifteen brand-new canvases hang from my ridge pole waiting for pictures to adorn them,” Kent writes in Wilderness to begin the month March. But the snowy weather hasn’t cooperated. It’s Saturday, March 1, 1919 on Fox Island and snowing hard. On Thursday, Feb. 27^th the two adventurers began skinny dipping in the bay. The cold weather had hardened the snow making their snow baths too difficult. “And now at just seven-fifteen – on cloudy mornings, Kent writes, “clothed in sneakers we scamper down the shore and plunge into the waves. Brrrrrrrr! It’s cold, but mighty good.” Olson has warned them about this behavior. It will come to a dire end, he thinks. Nevertheless, the old Swede tries to drag himself out of bed early enough to watch the bizarre event. “But he has not yet been early enough to catch us,” Kent writes.

ABOVE -- This has always been one of my favorite Kent photos. It took me a few years to figure it out. Look carefully. Kent has a towel wrapped around him under his coat. He's also holding something in his right hand -- a cable connected to a camera on a tripod. He's obviously posing. He and Rockie have probably been skinny dipping in the bay. He stepped out and took this picture. The 1918-19 version of a selfie. Photo courtesy of the Rockwell Kent Gallery, Plattsburgh State University, Plattsburgh, N.Y.

Like us in Seward during March 2019, Kent is thrilled at the light gain of about six minutes a day. “It is now after six o’clock in the evening and our lamps not lighted!” he writes. Kent and Rockie have given Olson several pieces of art as gifts, and during his last trip to Seward Olson bought molding odds and ends for framing. “On the little picture of himself that I painted,” Kent notes, “he has what he calls a ‘camoflag’ frame; it’s made of different moldings on the four sides.” His other small paintings are also “gorgeously” framed and he is “mighty proud” of them. To my knowledge, these paintings haven’t survived. Olson may have taken them when he joined the Kent’s in Vermont. After an argument between the two, Olson probably took them to Wyoming where he died in 1922.

ABOVE -- I like this photo of Olson even though it is out of focus. It's the only one we have of him working -- feeding his goats. I was given this photo years ago by Virginia Darling, daughter of Thomas Hawkins of Brown and Hawkins Store. Hawkins financed the fox farm and goat ranch. Virginia remembered Olson well and told me several stories about him. She also had a few memories of Kent. Photos from a Hawkins Family Album. 

But now in 1919, Olson dreads the Kent’s departure. On Feb. 26^th Kent writes to Kathleen: “Olson came over to-night to tell me that I simply must not go. He argues and argues about it. Even says that my whole time here will have been wasted unless I stay.” That’s a reminder to Kathleen that he still wants her to join him. On the one hand he won’t give in to her refusal. On the other hand he adds: As for me, I’m counting the days to when I’ll see you.”  He’s busy painting and framing and packing. “It’s possible I’ll not write you long letters the remaining time here. You’ll understand I’m sure. I have so much to do that I plan to have every night a long sleep. And there’s work for me to do that I should do at night – stretching canvas and painting it.” His letters do become less frequent, more hurried and shorter.

Olson’s health is not good and he finds life on Fox Island lonely. He tells Kent he might find an Alaska Native woman to stay with him. “People in Seward say he talks of us continually,” Kent writes.  “And there it is thought quite remarkable how I have managed with the ‘crazy’ old man. I guess the craziness explains it. I picture with horror having as a constant companion here one of the fine, stalwart, shrewd, honest, wholesome-to-sterility Americans that our country likes to be so proud of.”

George Chappell writes Kent a letter on Jan. 21st. (Chappell letters from the Archives of American Art) He has received a small Alaska painting from Rockwell which he loves and finds charming. Kathleen has shown him some of Kent’s sketches, which he also admires. He writes: “I hope you are doing some larger things in this way, for people will like them, and they are very fine & very much worthwhile. We really need, tremendously, landscapes done in a big simple, universal sort of way which can only be done by a thinker. Nine tenths of the stuff I see at exhibitions seems so dreadfully higgledy-biggledly, mere fussing with paint. Kent has asked George for two very personal favors. You may be sure I did not forget the New Year’s Eve letter, -- and it was delivered on time. I hope Kath liked it. She said she did very much. I go down to see my foster-family as often as I can, - they’re guardianship, - should it ever be necessary – would be an honor. God grant that their Dad may come back to them safely, - but I shall always be on hand in any event. I lunch with the flock about once a week & the daughters three hang about my neck like three great soft, squashy plumbs. Last week I translated from cover to cover the little French book with the amusing pictures of the animated furniture – “Une Histoire Sui finit Mal – “while the children waited with baited breath until the final tableau in which “the old lady gets dead” as little K put it. It was great fun reading among a mass of chubby arms and legs.” George and Zigrosser meet often. There has been talk of how to enhance their friend’s career, and Kent has shared with them his idea of getting out of New York. “Carl Zigrosser and I lunched together a short time ago and talked over the possibility of incorporating R-K. Something of the sort should be done, & I’m going to talk to T. Howell who is an astute old codger and may be very useful. Also I think Mrs. Sterner, as the selling-end, would be most necessary. I will write you news of this as soon as I can get things crystalized. A New England farm for some time in the future seems to me to be just the thing; and we could swap visits to our respective bumps on the landscape. Rockwell has asked George to intervene for him with Kathleen.

BELOW -- Kent's close friend, George S. Chappell, wrote under the pen name of Dr. Walter E. Traprock. This article from the March 16, 1924 Hartford Current, gives us some background about him as well as his photo.

On December 14, 1918 Kent wrote to Kathleen: “Make out for yourself – as I asked George to get you to do – a list of what you must each day do for me. Read my letters over again, make notes on them. Make a list of what I send you and speak of all these things. Talk of our life here – you’ve never spoken of it. Does it interest you? Would you like to come here? Say so, please, - or come and do…please, all that I asked George to get you to do even to the telegram. Send that at once, please.”

George ends Jan. 21^st letter with: “O, you cold cave-man! – never mind – scold all you like – you can’t scare me off. From his letters to Kathleen, it’s clear that Kent is not happy with the results George is getting with his wife. We don’t have Kent’s letters to George, but it’s apparent that he’s “scolding” George for his negligence. What sort of a government have you and Olson set up? – pure Bolshevik I suppose. I hope you are not eating each other up like the poor Russians; if so, be sure to eat Olson first and come backing looking very fat and prosperous.”

 Carl Zigrosser sends a letter on Jan. 27^th. (Zigrosser letters from the University of Pennsylvania) “I have been reading your diary with huge delight. Gosh how I wish I had been up there with you on your pioneering adventure. The adventure of setting out with your boat load of supplies self complete for months! And treefelling by your door! I wish I had been your mate with the crosscut saw and the oar. What talks we could have on books and poetry and education! I am glad you have your black and white work to keep you busy when your light won’t allow painting.” Zigrosser mentions his lunch meeting Chappell and their discussion about incorporation. “I should think there ought to be one man in the world who is both rich and enlightened enough to do this thing in one crack; if he is not enlightened he might have sufficient of this Wall St. gambling instinct to take a chance. If one person won’t do it all, perhaps two or three of the people you suggest might do it together.”

ABOVE -- A pencil portrait Kent did of his friend, Carl Zigrosser, from David Traxel's An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent. (1980).

Chappell and Zigrosser are dedicated friends, helping Kent establish his career. They tentatively decide on $2000 a share, and plan to talk with Marie Sterner, who at the time was still in charge of contemporary art at Knoedler and Company, and with dealer Charles Daniel. Zigrosser had selected one of Kent’s older drawings to appear with the Wallace Steven’s poem “Apostrophe To Vincentine” in the December 1918 The Modern School. Stevens told Zigrosser the drawing was “interesting” but wished it had been an original done specifically for his poem. “The suburban complacency of vines, fat children, steeples on hilltops and so on are the trifles of his vigor,” Stevens commented. “How slashing he could be under a sufficient rending stimulus!” Zigrosser has sent Kent woodblock materials and encouraged him to try this technique. “I am anxious to see what you have been doing with the woodblock. I understand you to say that you were sending a block or some prints about the same time you sent the map and other drawings. It has not come and I hope it has not been lost. Do you want any more wood? Which do you prefer, maple or boxwood? I am going to send you some ink specially for woodblocks, obtained through Ruzicka. He was highly delighted with a print of the map. He is going to show it to Mr. Updike of the Merrymount Press, one of the biggest and best printers in the country. Perhaps something will come of it. Kent’s Chart of Resurrection Bay is receiving much admiration. “Everybody who sees the map likes it immensely. Some, of course are impressed by the amount of minute work on it, but others appreciate it for all its qualities. Ridgely Torrence the poet was greatly taken with it. He is a great friend of Stephanson the explorer, and one of the old inhabitants of Monhegan. You must meet him when you come back, for he is delightful to talk to, and a genuine pacifist.

Kent’s correspondence with Zigrosser is his main venue for political talk. “We all envy you surrounded by sea and mountain air and practicing your art unsullied,” Zigrosser writes. “We down here, in the midst of all, groan and despair of the world. The world is going to be made safe for democracy all right – you know what that means. The peace conference now assembled in Paris is having a jolly time singing that song from the Mikado:

                           You are right

                           And I am right

                           And all is right

                           As right can be!

         And behind closed doors they are doing their dirty work. the reactionaries or rather the snakes like Lloyd George whose utter fine platitudes are everywhere in the saddle. We will get a nice little league of nations, a smug hypocritical middle-class democracy whose watch words are exploitation and machine production, an international strike breaking association, a holy alliance to crush the bright promise in Russia and German. In Germany Rosa Luxenbourg and Leibknecht have been killed in a nice little American lynching bee. And in Russia if the allies cannot down the Bolsheviki by armed intervention they will see what they can do by boycotting them and starving them out. It is making a Bolshevist of everyone who is against the Middle Class. It is possible that there is in Russia a dictatorship of the proletariat. I would rather have that any day than an autocracy of the middle class. We have never had working class rule; there may be possibilities in it undreamed of. Certainly there will be if the Russian experiments are any criterion.

  

BELOW -- A photograph of Marsden Hartley taken in 1916 by Alfred Stieglitz. Kent knew Hartley and had a brief correspondence with him when Hartley was in Germany.

Kent's correspondence with Zigrosser is also his venue for a connection to the art world. Zigrosser writes: “Marsden Hartley is having an exhibition at the Daniel Gallery,” Zigrosser writes, “work he has been doing in New Mexico. It is more or less a return to his earlier manner that is to say he is not painting the absolute but employing natural forms. Some of them are quite pleasing, desert scenes with a large gamut of color. I had a little chat with Mr. Daniel; he spoke of what an extraordinary person you were, your ability, and especially of the fine great spirit that permeated all your work.”

Next entry – Kent tells another humorous story he heard in Seward about Olson. I’ll publish a scene from my play, And Now the World Again, dramatizing this tale of Olson & His Goats vs. The Seward 1916 Civic Fair.