"They had lived these full lives before meeting one another, and then began this incredible new life with an absolute rebirth of creativity and joie de vivre." — Jessica Whitehead
One With the River: The Quiet Lives of Harlan and Anna Hubbard
The Ohio River Shantyboat of Harlan and Anna Hubbard (Image provided)
Eastern Standard contributor Tom Eblen sits down with Louisville writer Jessica Whitehead, author of “Driftwood: The Life of Harlan Hubbard,” published by the University Press of Kentucky. You can listen, read a transcript of their conversation, or both. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and flow. Note that passages featuring the voice of Wendell Berry and an actor portraying Hubbard are not included in the transcript.
Tom: Harlan and Anna Hubbard were Kentucky originals. Beginning in the 1940s, the couple lived out a popular American fantasy. They went off the grid and rejected materialist society. First, they built and lived in a shantyboat for eight years. They spent much of that time floating down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, fishing, hunting and stopping for months at a time to grow vegetables. Then they moved to a wooded site at Payne Hollow along the Ohio River in Trimble County. There, they lived a simple life, much like Henry David Thoreau did on Walden Pond, except that while Thoreau did it for a couple of years, the Hubbards did it for more than four decades until their deaths in 1986 and 1988.
Wendell Berry became friends with the Hubbards and wrote a book about them. Louisville filmmaker Morgan Atkinson made a terrific film about them in 2012. And now, Louisville writer Jessica Whitehead has written a proper biography, “Driftwood: The Life of Harlan Hubbard,” published by the University Press of Kentucky.
First of all, tell us a little about Harlan and Anna Hubbard.
Jessica: A fascinating thing about the Hubbards is that there are so many ways, so many entry points that you can come to understand their special lives. And so, I was trained as an art historian and came to Harlan and Anna Hubbard through Harlan Hubbard's artwork first. But if you're interested in literature, if you're interested in gardening, if you're interested in boats, there's something for you in the Harlan and Anna Hubbard story. Harlan Hubbard [is] probably best known for his 1953 book, “Shantyboat,” which is the chronicle of that amazing journey they took down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers together. That's one of the most common ways that people know of Harlan Hubbard.
But he was a prolific artist as well, hundreds and hundreds of paintings and sketches. And he developed this incredible life up until 1943 when he was 43, at which point he met and married a woman named Anna Eikenhout. And they started this absolutely incredible second act together, where they had lived these full lives beforehand. Anna had been a librarian, and they met at the arts library in Cincinnati. And so, they had lived these full lives before meeting one another, and then began this incredible new life with an absolute rebirth of creativity and joie de vivre.
Harlan and Anna Hubbard (Photo provided)
Tom: What led you to want to research and write about them?
Jessica: I attended college in Hanover, Indiana, at Hanover College there near Madison. And that's just across the river, a couple miles upriver from where Harlan and Anna eventually settled at Payne Hollow. And for that reason, the Hubbards had a really fascinating relationship with Hanover College back in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. And sort of the culmination of that relationship was an amazing collection of paintings that Harlan gave to Hanover College.
I became very intrigued by one of these paintings from that bequest that used to hang behind the circulation desk at the library there in Hanover. And it was this beautiful view of that breathtaking scene that you can see from the promontory at Hanover that looks out on the bends of the Ohio River. I found myself looking at that painting every time I was at the library.
Eventually, when it came time for me to start thinking about a culminating project for my degree program in art history, I said, "Hey, I'm gonna do a little bit of research into this Harlan Hubbard guy." And that began a decade long, just love affair with this story, not only through the artwork, but through the writing and through their lives.
Tom: As an art historian, how would you describe for people who haven't seen his paintings what his work was like and what he had to say as an artist?
Jessica: It's challenging to simply describe Harlan Hubbard's artwork because he experimented so significantly with style, with technique. And he also was very prolific in multiple mediums. So, he was intensely prolific in watercolor. That was one of his favorite ways to record these beautiful Kentucky landscapes that he was seeing as he was perhaps canoeing down the Licking or Ohio Rivers.
But he also painted in oil. He painted in acrylic. He was a prolific woodcut artist, a printmaker. And so, there are lots of different styles even within each of those styles that you can point to as he evolved throughout his career. But of course, what you think of, if you have studied Harlan's art, is you think of the river, you think of beautiful, bucolic rolling hills, you think of a landscape that is also capturing pieces of Kentucky's culture that we've largely lost now in the 21st century.
So, looking at steamboats, at towboats, at shantyboats, things that would have been so common to people who lived along the Ohio River in the era that Harlan Hubbard, who was born in 1900, in this era that Harlan Hubbard was growing up, would have been so familiar to those folks, but are really unfamiliar to us now. So, steamboat paintings are one of the niches of his work that however and whatever medium and style he's employing, it's pretty easy to recognize a Harlan Hubbard steamboat, for sure.
River scene by Harlan Hubbard (Image provided)
Tom: They were particularly famous for kind of living this life on their own. I mean, he built their house at Payne Hollow. I guess they built the shantyboat together and they raised up most all their food. And really, the only cash money I guess they had was from what little he got for selling his paintings at the time. What do you think we can kind of learn from that life? I mean, a lot of people kind of, I think, have that fantasy of living off the grid and on your own, but I can't think of really anybody else who has done it for such a long period of time that the Hubbards did.
Jessica: Yeah, they really brought to life Thoreau's experiment of living deliberately. And everything that they did was having the ideas of simplicity, the ideas of beauty, before this was really a major term, ideas of conservation of the natural landscape in mind. So they were really ahead of their time in terms of predicting this sustainability movement that the climate crisis has visited on all of us now, but the sustainability movement that is trying to encourage and teach people just the same kinds of things that Harlan and Anna were employing in their day-to-day lives at Payne Hollow, day-to-day lives on the shantyboat, and even to a degree that Harlan was employing in the years prior to meeting Anna and having this grand adventure.
But yes, the ideas of being self-sufficient, of working with what is at hand. That's a huge quote from Harlan Hubbard that many people who have read his work can point to and say, "Yes, I know that Harlan Hubbard quote." What we need is at hand. So, it's using, reusing, recycling, employing and using creativity to make a life that makes as little impact on the natural landscape as possible.
This also included disconnecting somewhat from what Harlan really saw as this 20th century rat race of being obsessed with success, being obsessed with certain kinds of success, monetary success, fame, fortune, these things that really Harlan and Anna lived in opposition to, in quiet opposition to. And that's something that I would stress about their revolution. Their kind of revolution was not necessarily significantly political. They weren't going out and protesting, and they weren't environmentalists in that sense of the word. What they were doing was trying to live and teach by the example of their living in this beautiful and sustainable way.
Ohio River scene by Harlan Hubbard (Image provided)