PART 3 OF 3 MAY 18 - 20, 2019 "SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT THIS ALASKA" - THE YEAR 1919
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018-19
May 18-20, 2019
ABOVE – And Now Where?, 1936, Lithograph
on Stone, 13-1/8 x 9-3/8.
"SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT THIS ALASKA"
As 1919 ended and ushered in
what has been called the Roaring Twenties, the disorder continued, masked to
some extent by progressive social changes like woman’s fashion and those
threatening animal dances. Prohibition didn’t help. It was ignored by many and
it contributed to criminal activities. Attorney Arthur Garfield Hayes in City Lawyer: The Autobiography of a Law
Practice (1942), wrote: The
inevitable letdown in idealism after the war, deepened by Wilson’s surrender to
such reactionaries in his cabinet as Attorney-General Mitchell Palmer and
Postmaster-General Burleson and, of course, the ending of the democratic dream
at Versailles, left the country in an ugly mood.
BELOW – The Grizzly Bear, one
of the popular animal dances of the 1920’s. These kinds of dances were banned
in many communities and some towns enacted ordinances criminalizing them.
Just before he declared war
in April 1917, Woodrow Wilson is quoted as saying: Once lead this people into war and they’ll forget there ever was such a
thing as tolerance. It was during an interview with Frank Cobb, editor of
the New York World – and Wilson’s
words are so foretelling that some historians question whether he actually said
them. Cobb quoted the President: To fight
you must be brutal…and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the
very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman
on the beat, the man in the street. Conformity will be the only virtue. And
every man who refuses to confirm will have to pay the penalty.
Warren G. Harding ran for
President in 1919. It’s no accident that his campaign slogan – “Back To Normalcy”
– easily led him to the White House. People wanted life to be like it was
before the war. Of course, that could never be possible, and most realized that.
The corruption Harding’s administration produced joined the other strife
throughout the 1920’s He died in August
1923 after a trip to Alaska, which included a day and a half in Seward. His
wife, Frances, died the next year, but the Teapot Dome and the Veteran’s
Administration scandals dominated news for many years. The promised Era of Normalcy
turned out to be a much more chaotic and
contested political period – marked by strikes, race riots, agrarian unrest,
cultural conflict, government scandals, and economic depression.
ABOVE – Article from the July
19, 1923 Elmira Star Gazette. BELOW –
Harding and his entourage escorted through the streets of Seward, Alaska.
Resurrection Bay Historical Society. NEXT – From the Oct. 9, 1922 New York Evening World. The Teapot Dome investigation continued through the 1920’s and involved
Alaska oil reserves. Albert B. Fall became the first Secretary of Interior to
go to jail.
As if all that wasn’t enough,
even America’s sacred sport of baseball seemed tainted. The 1919 World Series
was the last to take place without a Commissioner of Baseball. In 1921,
Shoeless Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte of the White Sox (along with six others)
were banned from professional baseball for fixing (or knowledge of the fix) the
1919 World Series. What else could go wrong with the world? Read more aboutthis scandal here.
ABOVE – From the Wikipedia
article linked above. BELOW – From the Oct. 2, 1920 Boston Globe.
Despite all this, everyday
life had to go on, and local communities did have other issue at hand. Some
scholars talk of these years as encompassing a cultural atmosphere in which the flames of hysteria were kindled. Others
say Americans were caught up in fear,
hysteria, and zealotry. There is truth to those claims. Historian Preston Jones,
however, takes a more nuanced approach. One
need only patrol the pages of U.S. newspapers from the period,” he writes, “to see that while the war era marked an
unusual and grim time, the country did not lose its basic rationality. Dinner
had to be made, the lawn mowed, the bills paid, and the dog fed. One still had
to get up in the morning and do something.
Times of change can be an
ordeal for many. It is my impression,”
wrote longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer, that
no one really likes the new. We are afraid of it…Even in slight things the
experience of the new is rarely without some stirrings of foreboding. As a
migrant farm worker in the 1930’s, Hoffer describes how uncomfortable he felt
when after months of picking peas, he had to move along and pick beans. If
that’s how it is with slight changes, he wrote, In the case of drastic change the uneasiness is of course deeper and
more lasting. People can lose their balance, self-confidence, and
self-esteem during times of fundamental change. They can become misfits – unbalanced, explosive, and hungry
for action, Hoffer wrote. Tremendous
human energy can be released during periods like this in both positive and
negative ways. The substitute for
self-confidence is faith, Hoffer observed, the substitute for self-esteem is pride; and the substitute for
individual balance is fusion with others into a compact group.
Rockwell Kent released a tremendous
amount of energy into his drawings and paintings. Could he do the same with his
personal life? He considered himself a misfit. He felt unbalanced. There’s
something wrong with me, he writes in a February letter to fellow artist Gus
Mager, and calls himself an anarchist, saying he doesn’t owe anybody anything
who hasn’t helped him. And though now he looked forward to settling down with
Kathleen and the children – he was often hungry for action. Beneath his pride
and faith lurked vulnerability and lack of self-esteem. He needed faithful,
loyal friends like Zigrosser and Chappell, and a woman’s unremitting love and
assurance. That woman, the only woman, would be Kathleen, he had decided – it
had been his own decision, he told himself -- although in reality Kathleen had
given him an ultimatum. She was willing to leave him if she had to. He would
try to find balance by fusing his life into a small compact group – his family
and friends. And he would separate himself as much as possible from the remnants
of this cock-eyed and shell-shocked new world.
ABOVE – Rockwell Kent
(Self-Portrait), 1919. Kent sent this portrait to Kathleen (as you can read in
the last sentence below) along with other drawings in a Feb. 20, 1919 letter.
The drawings he sent were most likely many of those used in the Knoedler
Gallery exhibition later in May. Kent wrote: A very tired lone writer to you tonight. All day I have sat out of
doors painting and the wind and air and thought besides the usual labor of it,
has used me up. Besides I’ve been getting ready for the Seward trip. I’ve dug
the boat out of the snow and to-night have packed the pictures I am sending you
and assembled the many odds and ends of things that we take with us. A few
words about the pictures. There are four little paintings and 49 drawings of
mine and three of Rockwell’s. Mine are numbered and the numbers are written on
the portfolios. I would keep them in that order more or less and in the
portfolios. They’ll go by Wells Fargo Express and should they not reach you
promptly be sure and notify me besides making inquiries at the New York office.
Do be very careful of the drawings; don’t rub them nor handle them more
than necessary. Remember what frightful damage was done to that cover for
“Stone” when I “flung” it onto the table. Please let only my friends see them.
Take out the portrait of me. It should not be rubbed.
On Feb. 17, 1919 Kent wrote to fellow artist Gus Mager: I'm glad the wars over. I've become a confirmed anarchist. There's something wrong with me. I don't think I owe anybody anything who has never done anything for me.This alienated rebel, this
angry radical, this frustrated progressive socialist vegetarian, this mystic
seeker who resents a world that won’t recognize his genius – this artist --
converts all his negative energy into drawings, paintings and writings that tap
into universal and fundamental human values captivating the America of 1919. Who
doesn’t dream sometimes of escaping the world’s problems by settling on an
island? What father wouldn’t envy the bonding between Kent and his son midst a
sublime wilderness? The simple life philosophy permeated much of the culture.
Who wouldn’t admire the pioneering spirit expressed in the drawings at the May 1919 Knoedler Gallery exhibit? -- and later the story and art in Wilderness?
With the initial
success of his Alaska work, the positive reviews, the anticipation for his
paintings -- and with much needed cash rolling in – Rockwell Kent now looks
toward to his next major goal. He will find that isolated paradise with
Kathleen as he promised, somewhere in rural New England. Here he will, with
Kathleen’s help, build a wall of thorns around him for protection from the
Hildegarde’s of the world. Here he will try to recapture what Kathleen’s
unstable behavior and loneliness had forced him to abandon on Fox Island. Yes,
that was his reason for returning – the narrative now embedded within his head.
It was Kathleen’s fault – and at his pleading she has reluctantly agreed to
accept that story.
Rockwell is
delighted to be back with his wife and children – but now there will be no
camping trip to Bear Glacier with Rockie. He is hopeful as is Kathleen that
with Hildegarde now out of the picture they can restore their happiness. But
now there will be no voyage with Olson out into the Kenai fjords to paint the
glaciers – Aialik, Holgate, Northwestern, Ogive, Anchor and maybe even others
further out. He now has hope for the success and fame he craved – but he misses
Olson, and remains concerned about the old man’s health and loneliness. Now he
has a book to write and paintings to finish. With success and money could he
return to Alaska as he had hoped? During his last two months there he is
promised expense-paid travel with housing and potential commissions. If he
returns with his entire family would it be to the welcome of many friends, or
would that ugly newspaper exchange just before he left still be a fresh memory? He’s home with his family – but still focused
on Alaska. How can he not be? His focus is on the retelling of the “quiet”
aspect of that adventure, and finishing the paintings.
Olson is
correct, and he should know. On Dec. 22, 1918 the old man wrote to Kathleen on
Kent’s behalf, trying to convince her to join her husband in Alaska. His
misspellings help you hear his accent: ther ar something strang about this alaska
that I can not explane nin tint of peple that go out vary sunn coms back to alaska so I am tanking efter
your Husband Coms hom thir vill be no other talk except alaska. Eight days
later, Kent wrote to Kathleen: I told Olson today – he first mentioned the
subject – that I want to be buried on Fox Island. I’m going to write instructions
to him to that effect and I will say that which will please him deeply – that
it is the finest spot and the most kindly and hospitable that I know in the
world. {TRANSLATION – “There is something strange about this Alaska that I
cannot explain. Nine tenths of people that go out very soon come back to
Alaska. So, I am thinking {that} after your husband comes home there will be no
other talk except Alaska.”}
ABOVE – A page
from the Dec. 22, 1918 letter from Olson to Kathleen.
{TRANSLATION OF QUOTED SELECTION – “There is something strange about this Alaska that I cannot explain. Nine tenths of people that go out very soon come back to Alaska. So, I am thinking {that} after your husband comes home there will be no other talk except Alaska.”}
SELECTED SOURCES
for Parts I, 2 and 3
of the 1919 Series
This series is a
rewrite of a longer article I published in the Seward Journal. My main source
for activities in Seward was the Seward
Gateway for 1919. I tried to incorporate dates of specific references
within the text. The Alaska Evening Post
– published a Saturday edition which summed up the week’s news, which I also
used. I also read through all copies of The Literary Digest for the year 1919. Information about Kent comes
from the various sources I have listed throughout this website, except for the quote from Kent's Feb. 17, 1919 letter to artist Gus Mager. I own that original handwritten letter.
I found the following
books most useful: 1919: The Year Our
World Began by William Klingaman; Red Scare: A Study in National
Hysteria by Robert K. Murray; 1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar
by Eric Burns; Women at War: The
Progressive Era, World War I, And Women’s Suffrage 1900-1920 by Brigham
Jane; Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex,
Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern by Joshua Zeitz;
Philip Blom’s two books, The Vertigo
Years: Europe 1900-1914 and Fracture:
Life & Culture in the West, 1918-1938; three of Eric Hoffer’s books, The Ordeal of Change, The True Believer, and The Passionate State of Mind; Mark
Sullivan’s five-volume history of the years 1900-1920 titled Our Times; Preston Jones book, The Fires of Patriotism: Alaskans in the
Days of the First World War 1910-1920; Kevin C. Murphy’s unpublished Phd.
Dissertation from Columbia University (2013) is particularly valuable. It’s
titled Uphill All the Way: The Fortunes
of Progressivism, 1919-1929, and is available online. The most useful books
about World War I were Over There: The
United States in the Great War, 1917-1918 by Byron Farwell; To end All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and
Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild; and To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 by Edward G. Lengel.
I used many internet sources which I
will be glad to share if contacted. It’s too difficult to print some of the long
web addresses. The Wikipedia summary of the Boston Police Strike of 1919 is
accurate, and its source list is balanced. The same is true for the Wikipedia
summary of the Centralia Massacre, although I depended more on the University
of Washington webpage dedicated to the event. The history of the American
Legion can be found on their website. My main sources for the Seattle General
Strike of 1919 came from the Klingaman book listed above, and from an
interesting article in the March 8, 1919 Literary
Digest titled “Mayor Ole Hanson, Who ‘Sat Right’ At Seattle,” reprinted
from the Washington Post. The
“Bol-she-veek!” poem comes from the Murray book listed above. I especially want
to thank the Seward Library-Museum staff, the Resurrection Bay Historical
Society, and the Friends of the Library for allowing me access to their
collections, especially the pages of the Seward
Gateway.
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