The Blue Mouse – The Rockwell Kent Forum

The Blue Mouse (1906)

Rockwell Kent and James G. Blaine Ewing

Introduction

Eliot H Stanley, Portland, Maine

The Blue Mouse is considered Rockwell Kent’s earliest attributed “book” (more accurately an illustrated autograph manuscript) dating from 1906. In fact, it was a playful spoof on The White Elephant, a contemporary (1901-1916) family log of the Charles Ewing family, whose brother was James G. Blaine Ewing. Kent and Blaine Ewing were young pals from their days as youths in Tarrytown, New York – Kent’s birthplace. Blaine’s father and brother were attorneys in New York City. The White Elephant is also an illustrated autograph manuscript and has remained in the Ewing family’s possession as of this writing (October 2022).

My first knowledge of The Blue Mouse was in 1993, when I was researching Kent’s love letters from his romance with Hildegarde Hirsch (1916 & ff.) in the collection of the Sutton Place Foundation of New York. That foundation was owned and headed by the late Frederick Koch, one of the wealthy Koch brothers of New York. Mr. Koch lived on 5th Avenue but spent most of his time at his residence in Monaco. The Blue Mouse MS had been acquired at auction by him around 1985, according to Nina Musinsky, Koch’s librarian at the foundation in 1993. She is now a member of the distinguished Grolier Club and is a rare book dealer at musinskyrarebooks.com, New York.

In 2001 Sotheby’s had an auction containing materials from Koch and the Sutton Place Foundation, presumably including The Blue Mouse, and the Mouse became part of the Kent collection in the Columbia University Library where it now resides. The total length of the MS is 117pp, in which there are 57 pages of illustrations – including ink sketches, watercolor drawings and pencil and pastel drawings by Kent using several pseudonyms. He was then 24. It is thought that Ewing wrote most of the text, including various take-offs on members and friends of the Charles Ewing (dubbed CHEWING) family. The two pranksters produced this holograph periodical in an edition of two copies only (vols 1& 2) for their respective mothers (Virginia Larwill Miller Ewing and Ann Holgate Kent). The MS reproduced here was the Ewing family copy; the Kent family copy it is thought was given by Ann Kent to Rockwell’s sister Dorothy (seven years younger than Rockwell), who took it when she moved eventually to the southwest, where it disappeared. What remains is a somewhat sophomoric succession of poems, song lyrics, short stories, a novella and various parodies of advertisements, news stories, letters from readers, etc.

That Kent did not consider The Blue Mouse a significant work in his history as an artist and author is apparent from the fact that he does not mention it in his 1955 autobiography, It’s Me O Lord; nor does his principal biographer, David Traxel, mention it in his book, An American Saga, The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent, 1980. By 1920, when he wrote Wilderness, Kent’s first major book, his writing earned a review by the New Statesman of London that he had written the best book written in America since Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman in the 19th century! By 1900, Kent was developing a more serious interest in art than could be realized in family logbooks, such as The White Elephant and The Blue Mouse. In 1903, he sold his first oils (Dublin Pond and Monadnock) and by 1905 he made his initial foray to Monhegan Island, Maine, where his oil painting career began in earnest.

The Blue Mouse, in which his name appears on the masthead in 1906, never had a signed color illustration in his name. We know of one cover of The White Elephant drawing from March 1901, which shows Kent signing with a reversed RK, a popular style in the early 1900s. Thus, technically this White Elephant cover drawing extends Kent’s art career by two years.

Together, the family logs foreshadow Kent’s development of what I call his “light style” in drawing which found its peak in the illustrations he did for the Random House edition of Voltaire’s Candide, 1928. He wanted a major career in oil painting, which eluded him in life despite great travels and many successes in painting and the graphic arts.

We have some illustrations from the White Elephant, including the 1901 cover image. They can be seen here. Thanks to Eliot for providing these images.

Scroll down to read The Blue Mouse below

Notes: The copyrights on The Blue Mouse prevent us from allowing downloads. Thus, we have presented the book in a readable book format, rather than a standard PDF format. Buttons to allow full screen viewing and zooming are located beneath the book.

The Blue Mouse is presented as it was created in 1906. Thus, the blank pages and other formatting issues are intentional.

The Blue Mouse, 1906, is located in the Rockwell Kent Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

Please contact Plattsburgh State Art Museum, State University of New York and Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York for reproduction questions on The Blue Mouse

Editor’s Notes
I can’t really remember the first time I heard of The Blue Mouse. I suspect it was in 1995 in connection with the great Christie’s Rockwell Kent auction of that year. The Blue Mouse was a centerpiece of the auction catalog. It looked fascinating, even in black and white, but way too rich for me at that time.

I had heard of Eliot Stanley several years earlier. Eliot and I began to correspond because the great Gladys Spector said I should. I would ask Gladys a question and she would often say, in that wonderfully raspy voice of hers, “Oh, ask Eliot in Maine. He knows all about (posters), (manuscript books), (ephemera), etc.” Eliot would always respond with tremendous information. He is an absolute font of knowledge about Kent. Several of his articles are on our website, along with videos of lectures he has given. And through these interactions we became good friends, even though we live on opposite sides of the country.

Fast forward to 2020. My wife Joanne and myself took advantage of the pandemic lockdown to create the Rockwell Kent Forum. Eliot has been an enthusiastic supporter since the beginning. About a year ago he said, “Why don’t you put The Blue Mouse on your website? It is at Columbia, in their Rockwell Kent papers. It is important and you should make it available for people to see.” Frankly, we had never thought of e-publishing something like that.

Some time passed. We learned more about running a website and e-publishing. I also had the opportunity to work with Columbia on my articles about Kent and the Post Office Murals. With that knowledge, I decided to get to work. First, I had to get permission from Tonya Cribb at Plattsburgh State Art Museum to publish The Blue Mouse. That was gotten and then I sent off to Columbia for electronic copies of “The Mouse.” Columbia was very responsive and in a short time we had the material in a shape that we could use. I particularly want to thank the reproduction staff at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Columbia for their outstanding work.

The Blue Mouse is pretty amazing. Kent’s illustrations show hints of future work. Some of them are really great, all are interesting. People interested in Kent’s early life and work will be rewarded. In addition, I believe it is a valuable window into a particular time in 20th Century America.

I want to thank my friend Eliot for persuading me to do this, and for providing the perceptive introduction that puts The Blue Mouse in historical perspective. The Blue Mouse has been seen by just a handful of people in the 116 years since it was created. Joanne and I are proud that the Rockwell Kent Forum can make this important piece of Kentiana available to a world-wide audience.

Will Ross
October 2022