Part 2 - WHERE IS ROCKWELL KENT & WHAT IS HE DOING?

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

April 25, 2019

Part 2 - WHERE IS ROCKWELL KENT & WHAT IS HE DOING?\

ABOVE – April 19, 2019 – My south-facing deck. The snow scene at left was taken at 8 a.m. Six hours later, the same scene at right.  I write this on Wednesday, April 24, 2019. This morning we had three or four inches of snow. By about 1 p.m. it was all gone -- not due to rain. For the last few months we've been getting about four to five minutes of light gain each day. The earth is warming. April snow doesn't last long. If Rockwell Kent had stayed through April, he may have made it to Bear Glacier with Rockie for several days of camping and painting. He could have even made it out to Aialik Bay to see Aialik and Holgate Glaciers. Perhaps even to the Northestern Fiord area. I say "area" because that fiord would have still been most glaciated in 1919. But the weather in April along the South Central Alaska Coast can be difficult to predict. Not many would have recommended he make those trips in his 18-foot dory with that broken-down, 100 pound, 3.5 horse power Evinrude motor.

As 1918 turned to 1919, Kent anxiously awaits word from Kathleen in response to his earnest, heart-felt letters sent out weeks earlier. He’s been on Fox Island since early December. On the new year he sees a steamship enter Resurrection Bay and is impatient to get his mail and send out dozens of new letters. Rockie runs outside barefoot in the snow. He has lost his slipper somewhere in the woods. In the coldest weather the two wash and brush their teeth outside in the snow. Out-of-doors is to us like another room, Kent writes. It is surely nonsense to think that changes of temperature give men colds. Neither of us has had a trace of a cold this winter. Olson finally heads to Seward on Jan. 2 to get the mail and Kent expects him back in a few days – but the days turn into weeks and now it’s early February and the old Swede still hasn’t returned. Kent and Rockie are isolated. Olson could have died for all they know. Rockie is concerned that Seward has burned to the ground and no one knows they’re on the island. Kent hikes to the south end of the beach with his son to show him the lights of Seward in the distance. All is well.

On Feb. 2, 1919 Henry McBride in the New York Herald mentions Kent with a lengthy review of art events. The City Club has arranged an exhibition of modern art and the following artists have contributed to it. Kent is listed with Ernest Lawson, Marsden Hartley, William Zorack, Samuel Halpert, Man Ray, Paul Burlin, Hayley Lever, Alfred Maurer and C. Bertram Hartman. The exhibition, which lasts a fortnight, the article ends, will be open to the public, ladies being admitted during the hours of 11 to 4 p.m.

A week later, on Feb. 9 – while Kent bathes in a snow storm on Fox Island -- Laura Bride Powers in her Oakland Tribune Arts and Art Exhibits column, includes a favorable section about Kent, quoting a Guy Pene du Bois Evening Post article. Kent’s Newfoundland paintings had taken a turn from his Monhegan Island realism to a mystical symbolist style. See BELOW:

Between the printing of these two articles (Feb. 2-9), Kent and Rockie have journeyed far beyond mere cabin fever. They have been alone on Fox Island since Jan. 2. Kent has tried to drive Kathleen out of his mind completely. He’s drawing men, only men, exiling even the idea of women from his consciousness. By Feb. 5^th he’s calculated that it has cost them 64 cents a day, or 32 cents each per day for food. A small homage to Henry David Thoreau and his moratorium at Walden Pond, not unlike Kent’s experiment on Fox Island. The cold and north wind continues along Resurrection Bay, but there’s also brilliant sun with false signs of spring in the air. The two take snow baths every morning. On Feb. 8 Kent spreads out his Mad Hermit series and admires them. They look mighty fine to me, he writes. The Mad Hermit series reminds us of the debt Kent owes to Nietzsche and German romanticism. As Rodrick Nash writes in “Wilderness and the American Mind,” The Wild-Man as superman tradition led to the idea of a beneficial retreat to the wilderness. German writers of the fifteenth century suggested that instead of taming the wild man, the inhabitants of the cities would do well to seek his environment. An idyllic life presumably awaited those who entered the woods. Peace, love, and harmony, it was thought would replace the immorality, conflict, and materialism of the towns from the social restraints that thwarted the full expression of his sensuality. (p. 48 of the Third Edition, Yale Univ. Press, 1982).

ABOVE -- One pen and ink from the Mad Hermit Series in Wilderness.

The day before Olson’s return on Feb. 11 Kent writes: The snow is banked up against the big window to a third of the window’s height. By day the light seems curtained, by night doubly bright from reflected lamp-light. Heavy drifts are everywhere. Last night fine snow filtered in upon our faces as we slept but not enough to be uncomfortable. The cabin is fortunately placed as to drifts and our dooryard remains clear…Rockwell is at work now upon multiplication tables. He’s a real student and is always seriously occupied with something in his hours indoors.

BELOW – Rockies work on his multiplication tables and a letter he sent to his friend, Arthur, which he signs as Sir Lancelot.

Once Olson returns and Kent gets his letters from Kathleen, he makes a decision to return home early for reasons I’ve covered in previous entries. The preparations and packing begins and by mid-March he’s left Fox Island and is in Seward. On March 21, 1919, the New York Tribune publishes an article mentioning Kent, excerpts shown BELOW:

On March 23 Kent is listed again as one of the artists to exhibit in Paris in a piece by Henry McBride in the New York Herald and on March 30 – the day Kent leaves Seward for home– he’s again listed in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Rockwell Kent hasn’t been forgotten in New York’s art world. He’s out there, exhibited with other’s considered modern artists. His switch from the realistic seascapes of Monhegan Island to the symbolist art he brought back from Newfoundland has been noted. It’s known he’s in Alaska, but few realize he’s returning in April. Kent is ashamed he isn’t staying through at least the spring as he had planned. He has told Kathleen to keep his early return secret. He doesn’t want to see anybody right away. He’s also told Kathleen to agree with the narrative he has constructed for his return. It’s because of her unstable condition, her desperate need for him, her loneliness and her unhealthy dependence upon the friendship of another man to keep her faithful to her husband. It’s not that he’s homesick, jealous, and defeated by the severe harsh and isolated wilderness conditions. Kent feels a failure. For the sake of their marriage, the children, and his career, Kathleen agrees to go along with his story. But it puts a damper on her ability to love him the way he wants. For her, it’s just another of the many thankless sacrifices she’s had to make in their ten-year marriage. She wants to believe in his apparent sincere desire to leave Hildegarde and remain faithful – but she has her doubts. The two are unable to communicate adequately in their letters. She doesn't understand what he means when he says hasn't met her expectations, given him the love and care he wants. He tells her in his letters they're speaking two different languages. We have a lot to talk about when you return, she tells him.

Unfortunately, once he leaves Alaska their correspondence stops for several months and we lose insight into the details of those discussions. Shortly after their return, Kent does make good with his promise to find an isolated, rural enclave, distant from the temptations of the city with Kathleen – a place where he begs his wife to build a fortress of thorns around their new life to protect him from the temptations of the city. He’ll even help her build that wall, he tells her. But now he has to focus on a show of his pen and inks and finding a place for his family -- far away from the city.