Friday, February fourteenth.
The days go like the wind. So warm to-day and yesterday! We live out-of-doors. Now as I write the door stands open and the soft, moist, spring air enters to dispel the fumes of turpentine. I primed eight canvases to-day, six of which I had also stretched. This afternoon I painted at the northern end of the beach almost beneath a frozen waterfall, an emerald of huge size and wonderful form.
PELAGIC REVERIE
Rockwell is in high spirits. I think the augmentation of our diet brought by Olson’s return will do him a lot of good. We had cut down on our use of milk to a can in two or three days. Now we may live on fish which Olson has in such quantities that we’re to help ourselves. Olson has insisted on my accepting a fifty-pound sack of flour for my services during his six weeks’ absence, and I expect to find it hard to be allowed to return the cereals that I am borrowing. What a contrast this free-handed country to the mean spirit of Newfoundland!
Monday, February seventeenth.
Three days! and what has happened? I guess that on the first of them I stretched and painted canvas. On the second all day I painted out-of-doors, it was quite summer-like and the sun shone through diamond-dripping trees. And to-day I have written from early morning before breakfast until now, eleven at night. I have decided to go to Seward in a few days. It has become necessary to go back to New York very soon. I told Rockwell of this to-day and his eyes have scarcely been dry since. He has reasoned with me and inquired into every detail of the situation. He doesn’t want to go to New York nor even to live in the country in the East. There’ll be no ocean near nor any warm pond for bathing. And not even the thought that elsewhere he’d have playmates weighs against his love for this spot.
You should see Sir Lancelot now. His clothes are outgrown and outworn. They hang in tatters about him. His trousers are burst from the knee to the hip, his overalls that cover them are rags. His shirt is buttonless but for two in front. From above tattered elbows his sleeves hang in ribbons. His hair is long and shaggy; where it hung over his eyes I have cut it off short. But, his fair cheeks are as pink as roses, his eyes are beautiful and blue, his lips are red, and his face glows always with expression. So we don’t care a rap for the rest—only Rockwell does! One day after he had regarded for a long time a certain unfortunate photograph of himself in which he looked like an idiot, he said, “Father, I’d like to dress up some day and put on my best clothes and brush my hair,—because I want to see if I really look like I do in this picture.” Rockwell loves to look well and it’s a real treat for him to dress up. So, that being the case and his tidy nature being so well assured I don’t trouble a bit to adorn him. He cleans his teeth regularly and likes to do it. Mornings we get up together and go through a set of Dr. Sargent’s exercises, do them with great energy. Then we go naked out-of-doors. The period of chattering teeth is past. No matter what the weather is we go calmly out into it, lie down in the drift, look up into the sky, and then scrub ourselves with snow. It’s the finest bath in the world.
It rains to-day—or snows. The snow lies three feet deep on the level. At our windows it is above the sills. In Seward,—have I written this before?—it lies so deep that one can’t see across the street. The snow is the deepest, and that last cold snap the coldest, of any winter remembered or recorded. The cold was very many degrees below zero. So we have experienced a true winter. We’re so glad to know it.