Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 "There are more types of pretty girls in America than in any other country in the world. I don't offer this as a piece of news...But I doubt if anyone has had a more striking proof of this fact than I have, for as manager of two musical shows, I get a demonstration of it almost every day of the year...the question of beauty is a very complex one, especially when it comes to choosing girls for a musical show. A pretty face is the first essential; there are very few parts for a girl who hasn't also a good figure, and who cannot dance, or at least carry herself gracefully...{but} a girl must have something besides beauty, if she is to create more than a passing impression."          -- Florence Ziegfeld, Jr. "Picking Out Pretty Girls for the Stage," American Magazine, 88 (Dec., 1919) Technology is advancing so rapidly today – and we have acclimated to it so quickly -- that...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 While Rockwell and Rockie are still in Yakutat, I’ll backtrack a bit. Notice how I spelled his son’s name. While reading through the letters I’ve noticed that Kent spells it both with a “y” and an “ie.” His wife, Kathleen, spells it Rockie. So far I’ve been quoting mostly from his letters to Hildegarde Hirsch. Those letters will run through 1919 as Kent is on Fox Island, and a bit further. As I’ve said, Hildegarde’s letters to Kent have not survived, so we can only surmise from his letters how she may be responding.  It may appear from what I’ve written so far that Kent is only writing to Hildegarde. That’s not the case. He is sending Kathleen and his children many letters and postcards from the train and the ship. By Aug. 19, 1918 Kathleen has received a letter from Yakutat and writes him there from Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine where she and the three girls are living. He doesn’t ...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 On August 1st 100 years ago Kent and Rocky rose early aboard the train. By 7:30 they were all dressed up and waiting to arrive in Vancouver for breakfast. "There we shall take the first steamer we can and go north to Skagway where we’ll probably change to another. But this is all guess work." That wasn't to be the case. Kent liked to travel with little planning. From his letters, it's clear that he rarely knew precisely what would happen next.  He wrote many letters on the train -- to his mother, to his wife Kathleen, to Carl Zigrosser, and especially to his lover back in New York, Hildegarde Hirsch. Kent's tiny handwriting script is difficult to read normally, but all the bumps and jolts on the train, which he noted, makes it all the more difficult. At this point he'd given up on getting his wife to join him in Alaska, so he turned that effort toward Hildegarde. "Wha...