At least Rockwell was able to turn to his work for the Post during the fall. Of his next three covers, one would become among his most popular: The Runaway. Its photographic realism gratifying, it suffers from the same compulsive sentimentality that compromised the potential brilliance of After the Prom. Beautifully composed, the triangular figure of vagrant little boy, kindly policeman, and kindly fountain worker overcompensates for After the Prom’s invitation to assume superiority to the participants; the patronizing goodness of the two older men in this scene is cloying enough without tempting Rockwell to further burden it with audience voyeurism.
At various times throughout the autumn of 1958, Rockwell told interviewers that he was planning a sabbatical the following year, in order to see what he would paint if he just worked for his own pleasure. Several times, journalists wished him well; occasionally, someone suggested that any gesture toward real painting was presumptuous on his part.
When the new year opened, few signs pointed to the sabbatical supposedly under way for 1959. Rockwell accepted a promotional assignment for Ford’s new Lincoln Premier Landau that, while not requiring his painting, forced him to let strangers into his studio to photograph him. Worse, he and Mary agreed to do a special with Edward Murrow for CBS. In February, not only their house but also the entire town was upended in order to produce the half-hour special. Worried sick over what Mary would say or do during the taping—by now, her behavior was too erratic to predict day by day—Rockwell and the boys basically just hoped for the best. The session went well, though it is hard to believe that viewers didn’t sense something wrong with the monotoned wife who, sitting in her armchair and infrequently addressed, looked dazed or sleepy.
More interesting than the television show, however, was the publisher Doubleday’s idea that Rockwell should write his autobiography for them. Although little hard evidence dates the concept to an earlier period, a few notes suggest that Rockwell might have planned this book the year before, in which case it motivated his “sabbatical.” Doubleday sent an interviewer to ghostwrite the book, but Rockwell found the writer impatient and controlling. A better system was developed: Tom, now a writer himself and already employed by Doubleday, would be the scribe to whom Rockwell told his story.
The plan proceeded well, though at first Rockwell found the claims on his time every evening cumbersome. But by the summer he was dictating into a recorder, making him freer than he could be even in front of his son, and allowing him a way to unwind at the end of the day by, in effect, talking to himself. Rockwell enjoyed doing new things, and talking to his audience in this fashion was definitely different from the usual visual relationship he depended on.
Tom Rockwell remembers as one of the most interesting aspects of the experience his father’s lack of interest in exploring motivation or cause; instead, he would narrate extraordinary anecdotes, one following the other, including dark periods such as his divorce—without any attempt at interpretation. Tom and Mary had to convince the illustrator to even mention his first marriage; on the tapes, Mary walked into the studio as he was recording this section, and repeatedly she nudged him, “You have to say something about it.”
Rockwell clearly meant to create broad strokes of a genial, folksy autobiography that might make him sound like something out of a Dickens novel. And Tom Rockwell captured his father’s intention and language impressively, a feat noticed by the admiring reviewers. But the extent to which the charm of Rockwell’s autobiography is a kind of fictional gloss on his “real” life is unclear. Inevitably, the audiotapes convey the minutiae of his current daily life—the telling day-to-day details—that speak more eloquently than his stories do. The sixty-five-year-old artist’s determination not to become passive, complaining, or boring as he ages surfaces repeatedly, for instance, whether in his contemplation of a trip into the Peruvian jungles or his frequent exclamation that “I don’t want to just sit on my tail and get old.” Creatively, he searches for solutions to the indignities that age is dealing his body, such as his problem with his vision: no longer easily able to shift his focus between the easel and the stand to its left that held his sketch, Rockwell helped devise a pair of vertical bifocals that he had made in neighboring Pittsfield, unusual enough that they are entered into the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! compendium of anomalies.
Without a doubt, the autobiography does contain many “deep moments,” as critic Arthur Danto remarked. But the long, seemingly exhaustive story so replete with details that one loses track of the years also conceals at least as much as it unveils, in its physical abundance. Michele Bogart comments: “[The] myth of comforting superficiality was sustained by Rockwell in his autobiography, an informal, dictated narrative that purported to reveal more of the ‘true’ man than it actually did. Throwaway comments about Rockwell’s depressions, for example, were followed not by introspection about their causes or significances, but by evasive statements about not knowing why they occurred.”
At the least, the unending repertoire of stories that the painter unfurls suggests more of a raconteur than a man struggling to retrieve long-buried memories from his childhood. Widely praised by friends and colleagues for his easy, graceful, casual speeches, Rockwell records the theatrical anecdotes in his book with the same causal charm, implying that he merely embellished the truths with rhetorical flourishes and narrative exaggerations. Listening to the audiotapes, however, one hears the tones that inflect his syntax. When he discusses his progress on a painting, for instance, the punishing worry, anxiety, and seriousness with which he undertook each new project comes through without relief. Can he do it again? he questions himself without fail, every time he works on a painting.
Although the content of the tapes and the text of the autobiography do not differ substantially, Rockwell’s spontaneous vocal reflections at the end of each workday reveal much about his dramatic mood swings. Always, his happiness is determined solely by the progress in his work. When he laments that he has spent another sleepless night, he invariably explains the problem of his current painting that was troubling his sleep. Sometimes worry overrides his ability to keep painting, and he has to take a Miltown to calm his anxiety in the middle of the afternoon. The biggest bonus of the tapes, however, is the omnipresence of the enchanting, engaging, untutored goodwill that his associates always struggled to explain about the artist. Rockwell’s strong sense of irony, the device that saves him from despair and delivers him through humor, emerges more strongly on the audiotapes than in any other forum, belying his critics’ belief that he didn’t recognize the discrepancy between the way things were and the way he painted them. The famous vulnerability that made people want to protect him exists side by side with a quiet, adamantine strength of character.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1959, he struggled with The Family Tree, even while preparations proceeded for two other projects—The Connoisseur and a mural he was doing for Berkshire Life. To house the oversized mural, he actually converted the old icehouse in the back into an artist’s shed where he and his helpers could work on the insurance company’s project.
His daily agonizing aloud on the tapes over his progress on The Family Tree affords a glimpse of what his family suffered through at countless dinners and other family times. His absorption in the project is so complete that it sounds as if this is the first important painting he has ever done, not a late, and relatively minor, commission. He refers to art sources, he consults knowledgeable friends, he drills Erikson, who pops in every now and then during languid summer afternoons, all to see if each of the heads that he is painting to represent a generation of Americans interbreeding makes sense. The pirate at the base of the tree rankles him most; after all, this was Howard Pyle’s specialty, and the anxiety of influence is so strong it threatens to topple his historical progeny. His family urges him to use a black figure early in the branches of the tree, possibly at the beginning, but he worries that it would be too radical a statement, at least from the Post’s point of view.
In early June, happy that “this Knox gelatin thing [is] practically done,” Rockwell determines to let no more advertising work retard his progress on the family tree picture. Two weeks later, his tired voice carries the weight of his now monotonous obsession with getting the painting right. Although he has just returned from a day and night in Manhattan, he gives that trip five words’ explanation before launching into his latest thinking on the vexing Post project: “I’ve been down to New York—decided to change the founder of the family from the killer type again to a robust rogue. I’m feeling agony over all this—each day I wake up with wild enthusiasm for a new way to do it. Now, I have a great idea for a ribald, seafaring dog—strong, beard, smile on his face, voluptuous gal beside him.” He then refers to Erikson’s recent suggestions, based on his therapist friend’s critique of the canvas: “Dear friend Erikson thinks if I show ribald people I show myself to be healthier. So this is partly due to him. OK, on Tuesday at lunch I went to the Marching and Chowder Club and talked about the Russian exhibit [a show of social realist art Rockwell had seen in New York], but no one was interested. . . . Then Thursday, I woke up and said, I’ll put in both women! Robust, healthy moll AND a Spanish woman! In the meantime, the Indian maiden doesn’t work.”
The Marching and Chowder Club was one of the infrequent but essential recreations Rockwell allowed himself even when he was stumped on an assignment. A group of ten to fifteen men met every Tuesday for lunch at a restaurant in nearby Lenox, where they discussed informally what they were doing that the others might enjoy hearing about. Far less august company than the more formal once-a-month Monday Evening Club, where professional distinction was a requisite to be invited, this group enjoyed finding reasons to laugh loud and to linger long over their food. The change of pace from Rockwell’s ordinary days served his work well, and he knew it. But social encounters alone, however pleasurable, never produced the palpable relief that occasionally flitted to the surface of his dictations at the end of a day of fruitful work. At such times, Rockwell would sign off on his tapes with diction reminiscent of his journal locutions from his Canadian camping trip of 1932: “Good night, ladies, and a fare-thee-well to you!” or “OK, folks, it’s cocktail hour, let’s call it a day.” One night, when he is fairly dancing with joy at the progress he has made on his painting (an emotion at complete odds with his reaction the next morning, on looking anew at the work), he concludes with “Good night, children. God bless you all, you cute little devils.” On the morning that was reserved for special recording, he picks up the Dictaphone and, hamming it up, pretends to lament, “I’m late today, girls. Tommy and Gail came last night—very glad they came—very charming people.” His voice bubbles with happiness.
Throughout the summer, the artist’s preoccupation with the Family Tree cover governed his thought, extending even to his sleep, which was consistently interrupted by his worry over the piece, and by his growing dependence on Miltown to curb his insomnia. Toward the end of the summer, his spirits lifted, although, given the radical ups and downs he exhibited each morning—his daily decision often at odds with his conviction of the night before—such a mood swing is hard to credit for long. But throughout the first two weeks of August, he vows that he has caught on, he can feel it. And, energized by such confidence, he became more available emotionally to his family. Jerry, as he still called his oldest son, living in San Francisco and beginning to sell his paintings with some regularity, had recently visited his parents, and, in spite of the awkward emotional distance between father and son, Rockwell felt good that they got along “pretty well.” He’d even taken an afternoon off to mountain climb, in an effort to “bond,” as he half laughingly, somewhat ironically recorded into the machine one night. And Peter and Cinny were in town, with his daughter-in-law not only helping him on the Berkshire Life mural, but also gently taking over much of the household, making things easier on Mary.
One of his final recorded journal entries, on August 23, worries aloud over things not directly related to the painting, a sign the piece was progressing. He wonders aloud if he handled the newspaper boy’s dilemma well: Glenn Pilley had been saving quite a while to buy himself a bike, and Rockwell had decided to loan him the money and work out a contract with “the kid,” whom the painter liked and admired for his tenacity. “He was getting discouraged and gonna quit the paper because it would take too long to earn the bike money,” Rockwell explains. The bicycle cost $37.75, and so Rockwell would withhold fifty cents a week out of his $1.50 bill until the debt was paid off. He wants, he says, to ensure that he has come up with the right solution, one that will motivate as well as help the boy, while not putting himself in the position of “Santa Claus” that the community tries occasionally to foist on him.
On August 25, the family started the day as usual. Mary and Norman had begun a ritual this past year of having their coffee together upstairs each morning, a time they used to talk about the upcoming day before going downstairs for breakfast. Jarvis was impressed when he saw the changes during his visit: “They seemed to be enjoying being together, more bonded than before. I guess things were improving, though since no one addressed anything out loud, I had to just surmise these things.”
After everyone had finished with the newspaper, they all went their separate ways, Norman to the studio, Cinny to the icehouse to work on the mural, Peter to the bookstore, and Mary to straighten up the house. When they regathered for lunch, Mary was moving slowly, but as her daughter-in-law says, “she had been sluggish off and on for so long we thought nothing of it.” They ate their roast beef sandwiches, made from leftovers from the night before, and Mary said she wanted to go upstairs to take a nap. Later in the afternoon, when Rockwell went into the house to ask his wife something, he had to go upstairs to wake her.
But she wouldn’t respond. He ran out to the icehouse, frantically yelling at Cinny that something was wrong with Mary, to hurry, hurry. Back in the couple’s bedroom, Cinny knew as soon as she saw Mary that her mother-in-law was dead. “I could just tell; she was unnaturally still.” Rockwell walked around in silent shock, while Cinny fetched Peter and called the doctor. The family vacillated between horrified surprise and a confirmed sense of the inevitable.
The official cause of death was listed on Mary Barstow Rockwell’s death certificate as heart failure. Some would say that it fit, no matter what; her burdened heart couldn’t hold out any longer. Apparently, the family’s first assumption was that she had killed herself; Rockwell called his nephew Dick that afternoon with such news: “He told me, ‘Mary committed suicide.’ And when I got all upset, he said, ‘She was so unhappy. Try to think of it as release for her.’ ” To this day, many townspeople believe Mary took an overdose of pills. Jonathan Best, Peggy’s son, insists that “everyone knew it was suicide.” But Cinny Rockwell, one of the first on the scene, says she thought it over carefully, and there was simply no evidence to support this seemingly logical conclusion. No suicide note—although writing was one of Mary’s major outlets when under stress; nothing different about that morning or lunchtime from hundreds of others; no missing medicines.
Why would a fifty-one-year-old woman’s heart give out? Even doctors ill-disposed to ECT dismiss the idea that weeks of shock treatments would have caused the death. Instead, it seems likely that the long-term abuse of alcohol and potent psychopharmaceutical drugs, in conjunction with the electric shock, simply triggered heart failure.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was overflowing at Mary’s funeral. Nancy Wynkoop remembers everything going well until the end, when the family got stuck waiting in the aisle for over twenty minutes. The cemetery that Mary had hated seeing out of her backyard windows became the site of her grave. Back at the house, neighbors had supplied food that would outlast the afternoon’s crowd and provide meals for weeks to come.
Those who interacted with the widower usually mention that Norman Rockwell walked around for the next year like a marked man. His face ashen, his voice still, he s
eemed unable to accept what had happened, or, perhaps, unsure what to do about it. Jarvis Rockwell took a roll of pictures of him at this time, and he remembers that the results were so emotionally dark, even when his father was laughing, that it scared him. The prominent photographer Clemens Kalischer, who began to assist Rockwell more frequently in the early sixties than he had when Mary was alive, remembers seeing him ambling around town like a sleepwalker, disturbed and unfocused. Of all the generous efforts of friends and family to help him, one of the most impressive was the letter from a doctor at Riggs, Margaret Brenman, wife of playwright William Gibson and part of the Rockwells’ social circle as well as one of the professionals whom Mary particularly sought out for her sensitive listening to the depressed woman’s worries:
I could not write to you before now for reasons too complex to detail. I want only to tell you that I wept when I heard of Mary’s death and thought then for several days of her valiance. I thought too of the pleasant phone conversation she and I had had the week before when she told me a little of the development in her painting.
I know that you know letters like this are very hard to write when they cannot be written perfunctorily—and this one cannot. I want only to add, for whatever it is worth, that I know for certain that with all her ambivalences, Mary knew you had given her much to live on in your life together and felt you to be a pillar in her often troubled life. I wish you well, Norman.
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