NOV. 12 - 15 PART 4: INTO THE 1920s

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL
100 YEARS LATER
by Doug Capra © 2018

Part 4 – Into the 1920s

November 12-15, 2019

ABOVE – This is the image of Rockwell Kent the press presents to the public as his fame trends in the 1920s. He’s not just a painter, he’s the essence of adventurous manhood -- virile and pugnacious; dangerous and desirable; distant, yet an intelligent and sophisticated charmer one could easily meet in New York high society. In the Buffalo Truth for Oct. 23, 1924, columnist Enid Strong writes, Last night I went to the first Playboy ball of the season. Three affairs of its kind are given...by Egmont Arens. {Playboy was a serious art magazine put out by Arens, not the modern magazine of that name} Many celebrities were at this costume ball, including Kent himself, his close friend George Chappell, writer Heywood Broun, Frank Crowinshield, Charles and Albert Boni, Hugo Gellert, S.J. Kaufman, Deems Taylor, and Charles Houson Towne.

BELOW – Two years after its publication, Wilderness is still selling well and getting attention in the press. This review, from the July 1, 1923 Des Moines Register, emphasizes how much the book appeals to advocates of the simple life and back to the land movements popular at the time. We see manhood themes reflected in the father-son relationship and the willingness to face the dangers associated with masculine values of the period. Both Wilderness and Voyaging help to sell the other.

Seduction followed seduction, affair affair…

David Traxel in An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent

I will be good

Letter from Rockwell to his new wife, Kathleen, Nov. 7, 1910

         

Kent travels to Tierra del Fuego during 1922-23, attempting to sail a vessel he named the Kathleen around Cape Horn. Weather prevented that journey, but he did explore on land. Upon his return in 1923 he spends time with his family at their Vermont farm, finished his new paintings and begins another book – a pattern that worked for him after Alaska. In November 1923 he sends Kathleen and the children, Rockie now 14, to France with a tutor. They can live there cheaply but – as Kathleen had written to him earlier – it seems to her that he could only be happy and productive with his family many miles away. Back at the farm – in between trips to New York -- he completes Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan (1924) – which first appears as a series in the Century Magazine. These years, as David Traxel writes in his biography, Kent works and plays at a hectic pace, and his personal life had speeded up even more in America just breaking loose from Victorian restraints. Seduction followed seduction, affair affair… (150).

ABOVE -- Penelope Redd in the June 3, 1923 Pittsburgh Daily Post

One of those affairs was with Irene Rieser, the young wife of Juliana Force’s favorite brother, Charles. In Rebels on Eight Street: Juliana Force and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1990), Avis Berman writes, Juliana had introduced Kent to Charles and Irene in 1921, and had probably brought them together again in late 1923 or early 1924 at one of her parties. Irene fell under Kent’s fascinating spell and the two had a brief affair, but one with destructive consequences. Whereas Kent afterward went on his way unscathed, the Rieser family was devastated. Charles and Irene’s life together had not been ideal before Kent’s intervention because Charles was in the grip of a serious drinking problem. Irene’s infidelity, probably a by-product of her frustration over Charles’s weakness and her consequent vulnerability to an attentive man, strained beyond tolerance the already fragile fabric of their relationship. The Riesers began to talk about separating. Eventually Charles and Irene patched up their marriage, but it never again regained its previous stability, and the children (Allan and Carl Rieser) suffered. (197)

Force was furious not just at Kent, but at herself for introducing him to her brother and his wife. She had known that, as Berman says, Rockwell Kent at this time was a sexual live wire. Everyone close to Kent knew. To think that Kathleen was unaware – that word didn’t somehow get back to her – is naïve. Berman writes of Force, Whereas she could recover from Kent and deal with him on his own terms, Irene lacked her experience or resilience. In her drive to manage their lives, Juliana had only herself to blame for introducing the Riesers into this terribly world milieu of persiflage and nonchalant alliances.

BELOW – The promotion of Rockwell Kent, his new adventure and his new book, from the Feb. 1, 1925 Hartford Courant.

After 1924, Kent no longer exhibited on a regular basis at the Whitney Studio Club. The correspondence he had had with Force ended. She didn’t hold a grudge, professionally – but that pretty much ended their friendship. In 1928, she did buy one of his book illustrations but – ironically – it was from Casanova’s memoirs. (Berman 197-198). Rockwell Kent doesn’t mention this affair in his 1955 autobiography. He’s vague about other affairs as well. Understandably, many involved were still alive. Kent does credit Juliana Force with career help, but admits he did not live up to the standards of the warm conviviality of that intimate artistic circle she brought him into.  He writes …it was those very standards that I was at last to fail to meet. Yet for a time, for years, the Whitney sun shone bright on me. And I was glad. (313-14).

ABOVE – Kent’s illustrations from the 12-volume The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt  (1925) SOURCE

BELOW – It’s the thrill and kick of adventure that impels artists to travel, Kent tells the press, not the seeking of material for art -- from the Nov. 13, 1925 Philadelphia Inquirer.

I must point out that 27-year-old Juliana Rieser -- on the threshold of unalterable spinsterhood in conventional wisdom -- started a relationship with Willard Force, six years her senior and a married dentist with a baby girl. Avis Berman writes, The Forces’ marriage was deteriorating…The two were no longer in agreement about what they wanted, and Juliana’s introduction into the Doctor’s life happened to tip the balance…How well the lovers hid their romance is impossible to gauge, but Hoboken was a small town. The Force and Rieser residences and the school where Juliana worked were all within fifteen short blocks of each other. Encounters would have been noticed and remarked upon. The Rieser’s {Juliana’s family} were aware of the affair and it rocked the household. Respectable women, and certainly not unmarried ones, did not persist in such scandalous connections. An illicit attachment could jeopardize the career of a professional like a dentist in middle-class environs; it would ruin the future of a female schoolteacher. (Berman 87-89) In 1906 Willard Force wrote a letter to his wife, Mary, confessing his desertion thus giving her grounds for divorce. He provided her an allowance and child support, but advised her to move into less expensive lodgings and fire their maid. For seven years Juliana and Willard continued their relationship. The Doctor’s divorce was finalized in 1911, but Juliana wasn’t sure she wanted to marry him. Seeking advice from her employer and friend, Gloria Whitney, Juliana decided to take her advice and go through with the wedding. On June 20, 1912, the couple were married in a private ceremony at the home of Julian’s family. (Berman, 96)

BELOW – Juliana and Willard Force during their courtship, from Rebels on Eighth Street: Juliana Force and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1990, p. 89)) by Avis Berman.

Another of Rockwell Kent’s affairs during this period is worth discussing because we do have some of the correspondence. Jake Wien has written a fine article about those letters and the ones Kent wrote to the follies dancer he met in 1916, Hildegarde Hirsch – “His Mind on Fire: Rockwell Kent’s Amorous Letters to Hildegarde Hirsch and Ernesta Drinker Bullitt, 1916-1925,” in the Autumn 1997 Columbia Library Columns. His article is the second issue down at the THIS LINK. Ernesta Drinker Bullit. Ernesta was quite different from most other of Kent’s women: wealthy, highly educated, cosmopolitan, and a published writer of distinction, Wien writes. Her father was president of Lehigh University. In 1924 she divorced her first husband, war correspondent William Bullitt. She later married composer Samuel Barlow. We don’t know much about how or when they met, but Kent was in the news with his Alaska and Tierra del Fuego books and art. At the time he also had a commission to draw frontispieces of each of the twelve volumes of The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt. Wien writes, Despite the fact that he earlier had defended Casanova to Ernesta, he now grew disgusted with him. He distinguished his behavior from that of Casanova who, Kent observed, had been swept "into the demoralization of heartless libertinage."

ABOVE --    Ernesta Barlow (Drinker) SOURCE

BELOW – An article about Ernesta’s marriage to Samuel L.M. Barlow, from the Morning Call (Allentown, PA) March 12, 1928.

Most of the letters were composed in 1924-25 while the artist was in Arlington, Vermont. Like some of his Fox Island letters to both his wife Kathleen, and to Hildegarde some are brooding and melancholic, written in haste and late at night. He loses his temper and later asks forgiveness. At some point he considered marrying Erestina, divorcing his wife, and sharing the children. Wien writes, Kent wanted to legitimize his extramarital activities by establishing what he called a beautiful relationship between his wife and the other woman in his life. This proclivity to enlarge his family began around 1910 with Janet, with whom he had fathered a child. Just as he had wanted his wife, Kathleen, to get to know Janet and, some years later, Hildegarde, he wanted Kathleen to meet Ernesta, so that she could "have the faith" (as he had) "in the wisdom" of what he and Ernesta were doing. "It is horrible when people who have loved each other turn to hating!" Kent wrote to Ernesta. He did not want to divorce Kathleen in anger, but, rather, in understanding: "it is only out of the real affection between us that 1 would ask for my freedom.”

As Wien points out, Marital fidelity was not Kent's strong suit, and it was an issue which later in life strengthened his bonds of friendship with the scholar and defender of civil liberties, Corliss Lamont. Lamont…wrote about the open marriage in his autobiography. Extramarital sex for both the husband and the wife was to Lamont "a legitimate, life-enhancing activity." He advocated "taking the lock out of wedlock. Like Kathleen, Hildargarde, and Janet -- Ernesta was about ten years younger than Kent, and not particularly thrilled about an affair with a married man. In his 1955 autobiography, Kent may be referring Ernesta as his “problem child.” As Wien notes, his description of her is only half-accurate. He may be consciously or subconsciously combining this affair with another to protect her identity as he did with Hildegarde by naming her Gretchen. It’s sometimes difficult to create a timeline for these sexual encounters – there were so many. Kent’s letters to Ernesta end as suddenly as they began. David Traxel writes, …he fell in love with another of the wild and reckless beauties who caught not just his eye but, through stubborn defiance of his will and a refusal to be dominated, also captured his deeper interest. Though their relationship was tempestuous they discussed marriage. Rockwell left for France to arrange a divorce. (150)

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PART 5

INTO THE 1920s