Norman Rockwell (54 page)

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.

28

Picking Up the Pieces

The sons, in spite of their own grief, rallied around their father, and when Peter and Cinny had to return to Haverford, Tom and Gail basically moved in with Rockwell until he became emotionally stronger. To Peggy Best’s condolence letter, the artist answered fervently: “We all loved Mary so much it hits us all at times. . . . My family are truly wonderful. Where would I be without them?”

The artist continued with his weekly therapy at Riggs, and Tom Rockwell recalls that Erikson at one point became worried enough about the possibility of suicide that he took away a gun Rockwell had in the studio. The artist never asked for it back. He began to ask friends such as Clem Kalischer to accompany him to social events, because he so disliked going alone. And now town camaraderie became extremely important to keeping Rockwell from giving in to his depression. Even events such as the Monday Evening Club, where one of the select supper-club members gave a talk after the group dined together at a restaurant, assumed new significance now that he was without Mary.

At least, as always, Rockwell had his work to make him happy. Mary Rockwell would have turned fifty-two on March 31, 1960. The
Post
cover published on April 16,
Stained Glass Window,
has seemed to many close to Rockwell a quiet tribute to his wife. A glorious stained glass is spread across the picture plane, with an artisan dressed in the clothes Rockwell wore to work in, bearing a strong body and face resemblance to the painter, who in fact had posed as his own model. He works on repairing the angels, which decorate the glass.

The
Post
planned to run excerpts of his autobiography in serial form, starting February 13. Doubleday would release the book in April. Rockwell needed to provide a strong cover painting, and he performed what was possibly the most revealing/concealing sleight-of-hand public offerings he would ever present.
Triple Self-Portrait
chronicled the beginning of an amazing burst of innovative work, nurtured by Mary’s absence—potent motivation for the sixty-six-year-old artist to paint his happiness.

In contrast to the first self-portrait Rockwell had created in 1939,
Triple Self-Portrait
takes itself very seriously. Now, the issue is not meeting an imposed deadline, nor coming up with a good idea; instead, far more fundamentally, Rockwell asks the crucial question of self-portraiture: who am I? Once again with his back to us, his face averted, this time the painter has almost completed the canvas on his easel, a painting of an impossibly raffish-looking younger Norman Rockwell. Pinned to the upper right side of the canvas are reproductions of famous self-portraits, including Rembrandt’s, van Gogh’s, Dürer’s, and Picasso’s
Woman in a Red Armchair,
considered by art historians a self-representation as well. Iconographic mementos of the current painter, his self-branding, appear in the form of his pipe, the eagle emblem over the mirror to the left of the easel, a smoldering trash bucket at his feet (reminiscent of his studio fire in 1943), the fireman’s helmet he kept at the top of his easel, and a Coca-Cola, which he sipped throughout the day when he was painting. In place of the support for a sketch that Rockwell would ordinarily be painting from, he looks to the left into a mirror, where he sees the real self, in contrast to the idealized portrait on the canvas. But his glasses cause the light to be reflected into his eyes so that the lenses appear whited out, rendered completely opaque. What the man in the mirror is, his eyes missing and his back turned to us, we’ll never know—except through his art.

The work that stems from this period has been labeled “ironic self-consciousness” by John Updike, who notes that the early sixties was the time when Pop artists made a different kind of full-fledged irony the basis of their art. Rockwell, instead, makes “seeing” his secret subject, similar to that of signature works such as Vermeer’s self-portrait from behind—and Van Eyck, whose couple is reflected in a convex mirror. Velázquez, whom Rockwell frequently lauded as one of his favorite painters, used the conceit of a mirror to create his own self-portrait. Throughout his career, Rockwell had worked this theme, even as obviously as in his April Fools’ Day covers, where he invited the audience to see that a story that looks on first glance to be transparent can prove extremely complicated, even tricky, on reflection.

Critical attention to Rockwell’s
Triple Self-Portrait
would have to wait a few decades, but reaction to the autobiography was swift, and generally positive, though often compliments condescended as they praised. The photograph of Rockwell that appeared on the
Post
’s first installment showed a man shockingly aged in the last six months. The once comfortingly craggy, reassuring face now looked drawn, tentative, and reluctant. Even the bow tie is placed too low to hide the overly large Adam’s apple that he had managed to conceal until now.

In contrast to the laudatory tone of most of the book reviews, the one written by a very young Benjamin DeMott for
The Nation
was scathing. Rockwell, “even less winning in print than in paint . . . [with his] timidity and Gee-Gosh-Shucksism,” stands for DeMott as a “prophet of mindlessness,” in terms of both his career of painting “absolutely mindless versions of the country” and his autobiography, which emphasizes the illustrator’s “flaccidity of mind, moral limpness and silliness.” That the nation would welcome Rockwell’s nostalgia for a culture of leanness, as a substitute for facing squarely the current “bloated age,” raises a key national question about society’s lack of intellectual acumen, according to the impassioned critic.

As if in response to such treatment, Rockwell’s answers to an interview several months later conducted by
Design
magazine are more terse, slightly preemptive, and lacking in any gee-whiz obeisance to higher powers. He tells the interviewer that “you have to be extremely human to be an artist. You have to take all the ills that flesh is heir to, the sadness and the joys, if you’re going to be a human-interest painter. I’ve had a lot of this.” When asked what makes him paint a particular subject, he answers that “I’m interested in why people behave as they do.” He expresses some of his highest praise for Picasso, returning later in the interview to Picasso’s exceptional drawing ability, as he urges students to pay attention to draftsmanship in school. And he cites Rembrandt as most influential to his own development, with Brueghel, Vermeer, and Ingres as draftsmen he admires. Joe Leyendecker and Howard Pyle are listed as having the strongest impact on his student days. Finally, after defining illustration as “making pictures from somebody’s writing,” Rockwell explains, “I’m not an illustrator any more. I do genre. That’s spelled g-e-n-r-e.”

Rockwell took on more projects than he could possibly complete, this time to stave off loneliness. He did finish the illustrations for
Cinderfella,
a Jerry Lewis production, and the comedian’s zaniness proved some reprieve to Rockwell’s gloom. He painted a precise
Post
cover for the August 27, 1960, issue, a flirtation between a sailor and a young woman outside the University Club in Manhattan, and he placed himself in the left corner of the picture, pipe obvious, so that no one could miss him. Perhaps he was reminding himself, if only subliminally, of the possibility of reentering the dating scene. Or maybe he just wanted to reassure his public that he was alive and well.

The Famous Artists’ School was an obvious place to direct his scattered energies, and if the staff in Westport realized that his suddenly revivified interest was a product of his solitude, they didn’t let on. Instead, they wrote gracious letters praising their most famous instructor’s autobiography, and commenting on the obviously real pleasure they received when he showed up at the school.

But Rockwell wanted someone at home when he got back. Stories abound in Stockbridge about the women aged forty to sixty who all took after the most eligible bachelor in town. And it wasn’t long before Rockwell responded, dating in earnest Peggy Best, the divorced mother of two who had befriended both Mary and Norman almost ten years earlier. Letters between the two concerning a benefit exhibit Peggy was coordinating make light note of the oddness of writing to each other; Peggy’s studio is within a half mile of Rockwell’s home. But, by June, one note seems interestingly personal; all it says is “Dear Peggy, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Yours, Norman.”

Peggy Best’s son, Jonathan, remembers that his mother really wanted the relationship to work out. “She hoped to marry him, that was clear,” he recalls. “I remember one painful Sunday, when Norman took us out to the fanciest restaurant in Lenox for a lobster dinner, and I found it excruciating. Everyone looked at us, because they recognized the famous painter; and my mother was doing one of those scenes like, ‘this might be your new father, I want you to get along.’ I liked Norman, but no teenager wants to go through that kind of ordeal.”

Peggy Best was a particularly exuberant, extroverted, flamboyant urban artist, whether she was living in Stockbridge or Manhattan. Rockwell liked her, but he must have suspected they could not live together very successfully. Over the next few months, several interested friends, including Erik Erikson, suggested that Rockwell should meet another teacher they thought he might really like.

Mary Leete Punderson, known as “Molly,” was sixty-four years old. From a family of strict New England ancestry, Molly had been born in Stockbridge. Her father, whom she adored, ran the redoubtable Red Lion Inn and also participated vociferously in town politics and served as a longtime senior vestryman at St. Paul’s. His wife was a semi-invalid along the same lines as Rockwell’s mother, and the Pundersons’ only daughter thought little of her mother as a result. Extremely bright, the young woman had won a scholarship to Radcliffe; after graduating, she studied at Oxford for a year. She then taught English literature for thirty-eight years at Milton Academy, a high-toned boarding school near Boston. Recently retired when Rockwell met her, Molly was in the process of figuring out how to spend the rest of her life.

“Miss Pundy’s” students had adored her. “Some of the other teachers intimidated us,” Shelley Getchell, her student in the late 1940s, remembers. “But never Miss Pundy. She was smarter than everyone, but she was kind and sweet. And she always had something interesting going on, including learning about Esperanto, a language that everyone in the world could learn to speak, and it would break down barriers.” Shelley Getchell also recalls that Miss Pundy was the teacher to dress in feminine blouses and skirts, and that every year when Armistice Day was celebrated around the flagpole, two senior girls were selected by Miss Pundy to hold on to her arms, since she fainted at the yearly anniversary of the day her fiancé had died in World War I.

But such weakness was very likely somewhat a theatrical product of its age; Molly Punderson was a strong woman. And she used her strength to further the education of individuals or the cultural life of communities. Susan Merrill, Jarvis Rockwell’s ex-wife, remembers hearing from her own usually “cold and hard” father that when they (fortuitously) commuted on the same train every Monday, he found himself talking nonstop about his own education, blossoming under the care of the earnest schoolteacher. Lyn Austin, who founded the Music-Theatre Group in 1970, largely through Molly’s crusade on her behalf, could never forget the ferocity with which her teacher fought to revoke the suspension the principal at Milton once imposed on the “eccentric” student. And David Wood, who became one of Molly’s best friends in her later life, still smiles at the thought of Molly’s reaction to forces she thought to be influencing society for the worst: “After she had retired, every Monday morning Molly went to the bank in Stockbridge and got one hundred dollars in certain bills, to be handed out in a careful fashion during the week to pay various debts. One day, as she stood counting her money on the sidewalk, a member of the religious group that was proselytizing in Stockbridge then approached her and asked if they could pray together. ‘Certainly not!’ she replied, thoroughly affronted. ‘You are not supposed to be stopping people to pray in the middle of the town!’ ”

Molly Punderson had never married, and discreet but often self-interested accounts about her private life still float around Stockbridge after all these years. A few months before her death in November 2000, Lyn Austin insisted that Molly had had significant female lovers, one extended relationship in particular. Other friends, Brad and Kay Hertzog, tell the story that Molly’s close friend Sally Sedgwick shared with them about Sally’s stumbling across Molly entertaining her male lover in the cottage Sally had lent her friend for the week. And Peter Rockwell was informed by his father that Molly had sustained a long-term, once-a-year sexual relationship with a married male lover. David Wood, by contrast, attests to Molly’s doctor discussing having to rupture the elderly virgin’s hymen before she got married.

With some ingenuity of the sort that Molly herself would appreciate, the various accounts can be reconciled. But, most important, in the fall of 1960, she was an attractive, unmarried teacher who came highly recommended to Norman Rockwell by several of his most trusted friends. The man who enjoyed pretending, in front of his writer-son Tom, that he preferred the verse of Edgar Guest to far greater writers, signed up for an adult poetry course that Molly Punderson was teaching during the evenings in the nearby Lenox Public Library.