Joseph Pennell: War Work in America

"The Keel" by Joseph Pennell

"Pennell's return from his attempted work in France was complicated. His passports and permits did not allow him a fourth voyage across the Channel in so short a period. He could get back to England only by way of Bordeaux and America, and so to America he sailed. New York was no great improvement, except for the fact that war was more remote. But there was a place for him, as I knew there would be. 

A letter ten days later brought me the news I was waiting for: 'Well they will give me a chance at Washington, and I go there tomorrow. I hope that may not be a fiasco.' He had a good friend at headquarters in Dr. Frederick Keppel, the Third Assistant Secretary of War. When the work Pennell was asked to do was done and he was making acknowledgments, he said 'And finally I wish to thank above all the man who made it all possible. He knows - and I know - I never shall be able to repay him. He is working, and I am trying to work, for our country.'

He had gotten into his stride again, nerves forgotten. He obtained permission to visit every industrial establishment he wished. In every plant, camp, yard, work, fields, in which he worked he was treated with courtesy, and his thirty-six pictures illustrated 'Joseph Pennell's Pictures of War Work in America.' Again his drawings were not done with any idea of helping to win the war, but 'because for years I have been at work trying to record The Wonder of Work, and work never was so wonderful as it is today.' 

There was another source of healing for his frayed nerves. That summer, at the end of a long day's work, he knew he would be welcome at Paul Bartlett's studio, and he would go late in the afternoon, in time for the moon flower in the Bartletts' garden to burst into its nightly blooming and fill the place with its fragrance. 'I have come to see the miracle,' he would say to Mrs. Bartlett, and they would keep him to dinner, and to be with friends rested him after his hours of drawing and went far to complete the cure begun in the munitions works and docks."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, Volume Two" and "Joseph Pennel's Picture of War Work in America.")