Whistled Like a Bird, page 24
As my grandfather would tell a newspaper reporter, “Everyone who is not shackled solidly to the city at some time nurses a dream that he’ll get away from the pavements. I contrived to put my dream into practice.… A friend of mine says that I read a book I had written and believed it.”
In another piece of correspondence he offers sympathy to a friend whose husband just died: “Death is the one inevitable thing in life which cannot be combated. At least it is true that time heals the wounds, desperate as they seem. I know for I have been through all that, as all of us have.”
On January 4, 1950, my grandfather died in a California hospital. He was sixty-three.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1950 “G.P. was cremated… & asked autopsy on his body to try to find out what cause death.”
He had become ill in China while serving in the army air forces and was given a medical discharge. Peg recalls, “When GPP was at that miserable air base in far western China, they had to eat whatever food the peasants put before them—diseased pork—rotten food of all kinds, day after day… bowls of cereal with maggots in them.… They all got sick but the young men in their late teens and twenties could throw off the effects. But G.P.—then between fifty-five and sixty years—could not… he just got sicker and sicker.…” My grandfather never recovered from the deadly parasite that invaded his kidneys.
Even in death, his name was synonymous with his famous wife. Newspaper headlines identified him as “Mate of Late Amelia Earhart.”
George Palmer Putnam was eulogized as a generous, if somewhat difficult, man by his friends and family. An intellectual, he was often misunderstood by those who sought his approval and envied his success.
As Robert Lee recalled,
GPP is remembered more for his eccentricities than his virtues. His fame is clouded by the clout of his candor. He was a genius at befriending large people and offending small ones. Yet, as in our case, he was our staunch friend because of a shared admiration. He dismissed stupidity. He was no celebrity-chaser. One of his best friends was a forest ranger at Whitney Portal named Shorty.…
Although he had written twelve books, and been one of the world’s foremost publishers, my grandfather was never a wealthy man. He left Peg with debts, and she single-handedly operated the Stove Pipe Wells Hotel for many years after his death to satisfy creditors. “When G.P. was buried early in January 1950, there was nothing I could do but go back to Stove Pipe and carry on. The place was much smaller then… I had a big mortgage to confront and no money in the bank,” Peg recalls.
Peg later married Willard Lewis, a pioneer land developer in Bel Air, California.
My grandmother had always fantasized about a log cabin life. During the early days of her marriage to Lew, they sketched plans for their handmade “dream” cabin. In the fall of 1950, following the birth of Dorothy’s granddaughter Cynthia, they drove north to the Smoky Mountains to examine the piece of rocky terrain they had acquired the previous spring. It would be the site of Sundown, a forty- by forty-foot poplar log cabin that would sit dead end at an almost inaccessible road. “Cabin. A ‘smokey’ day and cool. Planted azaleas on hillside below porch. Hope they grow. Read aloud to Lew. ‘Bright Feathers.’”
The following year, they christened their hideaway. Like children playing house, each with their own specific chores, the couple basked in the seclusion of their bungalow, gathering blackberries, cutting wood, baking pies, and reading aloud to one another. “There are myriads of gay yellow helianthus all around the cabin and blue ague, purple iron weed, yarrow.”
The cold creek was dammed up in the backyard to form an icebox for the milk and butter. It often broke loose during the night after a hard rain. “Nice lazy day just the two of us. Samba and marble games. Lew ‘chinked’ holes in the walls and painted outside of east windows.”
It was sad at the end of each season to board up for winter. The trim little log house appeared abandoned from the bottom of the drive. Leaving was particularly hard for Lew, a man who was never happier than when he was chopping wood or hauling brush. A tireless worker, he was rarely unable to perform any task my grandmother wanted. But in 1951 there came a first sign that he was not well. “Lew sick: His left side ‘asleep’—called Dr. C in a.m. Put him to bed. Quiet and rest.”
Two weeks later, Dorothy took him to see a doctor in New York. She herself had lost weight and was worried about her heart. Lew carefully tended to his wife and brushed off any suggestion of his own ill health. “My Lew is much better. Never mentions aches.”
The following month they returned to the cabin one last time before boarding it up for the year. The car got stuck on the hilly driveway and my grandmother writes in her diary that Lew carted everything up to the cabin by hand. He must have had to struggle as he rounded the sharp curve, tripping over loose stones. I cannot imagine anyone with the strength to haul their supplies up such a steep hill, but he never complained.
A few slivers of sunlight still sneaked in between the logs. There were paintbrushes with robin’s-egg blue smeared up the handle that matched the door and window trim, and the bird feeders were hung and filled one last time with sunflower seeds. The stone chimney was cold for the first time in ten days, but Lew’s cord of wood would be seasoned by the following spring. Closing the gate, they said their goodbyes to Sundown.
The drive back to Fort Pierce was always a separate vacation in itself, and my grandmother was an enthusiastic tourist, visiting anything of educational interest en route: caverns, gardens, Rock City, tobacco fields, Marine Land, and so on. She was unable to waste a single minute, and as children we all benefited from her insatiable curiosity.
The Palmers had barely returned home before packing up again, for Dorothy had ordered theater tickets and was planning a celebration in New York City. “Everyone all okay. While George [Junior] and Rene take baby for a ride, two boys stay with Lew and me.”
After a brief stay to put Immokolee in order, they left for their Manhattan interlude. “George took us to the noon train for New York. Bedroom and played canasta. Dinner early and bed twelve hours! Wonderful rest.”
New York was exactly what they needed, and the Bristol Hotel was a simple but comfortable alternative to their rustic cabin. After breakfast in bed, Dorothy and Lew took their morning walk, followed by a Broadway matinee. A few popular musicals and a museum or two rounded out their indulgent days before they drove to Old Greenwich to visit the Binney clan.
My grandmother had never lost her desire to return home, sleep in her childhood bed, and gaze with nostalgia at the unchanging sea from the small window of her room: “Old Greenwich. Alice D. in for tea. Cards with Mother in p.m. Very nice day and Mother very gay and chipper! Fine.”
The grouping of family photos on the mantelpiece was a collection of Alice and Bub’s favorites. In the center was the white-haired patriarch, whom Dorothy missed terribly. Picking up an old photo of her father, the one in which he was standing beside his three young daughters, Dorothy felt her mother’s arm as she also lifted a photo taken recently of Dorothy and Lew in Africa. As Dorothy replaced the framed image, her mother looked directly into her daughter’s eyes and said, “You were a sweet child, Dolly dear, and what a beautiful woman you are today.”
However tender, her mother’s words could never make up for the lifetime of insecurities, and Dorothy choked back her tears.
At this point my grandmother writes in her diaries of feeling tired and ill. She had lost twenty pounds and had undergone a battery of tests. She and Lew returned to New York for a few more days. The first afternoon, they walked along Fifth Avenue before attending the theater. O.G. [Old Greenwich] Helen over for lunch ‘Happy’ to say goodbye. Cotter drove Lew and me to N.Y. City in afternoon. Saw ‘Stalag 17,’ prisoner of war show (Germany). Excellent.”
That evening, they walked in the bitter cold air and Lew wrapped his arm around Dorothy to keep her warm. Catching smiling glimpses from passers-by, they were blissfully happy.
Returning to their hotel suite, Dorothy soaked in a tub of hot water and was grateful to be alone with her husband. Dusting lightly with a rose-scented bath powder, and tying her freshly combed hair back with a thin blue ribbon, she slipped on her new satin nightgown, an anniversary gift from Lew. She had been saving the white peignoir for a special occasion, and excitedly she opened the bathroom door.
In that second, her world collapsed.
Lew was lying motionless on the bedroom floor, his face an ashen mask. Her husband had suffered a fatal heart attack and the grim scene left Dorothy in a near-paralyzed state. She stood frozen for several seconds before falling to her knees weeping, taking his head in her arms and calling his name. The gentle and loving man who was my grandmother’s best and last partner was gone.
NOVEMBER 16, 1951 My Beloved died at 11:10 p.m.?! So without warning—so cruelly quick.
She immediately notified her family, and Cotter, the faithful chauffeur, was sent to the city to bring her back to Rocklyn. “N.Y.—Old Greenwich all night! Police and doctors. Etc. Red tape. Cotter came.… ‘Ferncliff’ crematory. Service 4 p.m.… Many wires and phones and letters, etc. from all over the country. Such loving messages about Lew. Family over. Gill called from Canada.”
NOVEMBER 18, 1951 Dr. Vincent Daniels gave the service and a beautiful personalized prayer. White chrysanthemums. Only family and Louise at service.
NOVEMBER 20, 1951 Old Greenwich. A dull sad day, and endless. Jet I can’t sleep at night. Gill came to be with me and go home with me. So glad to have her.
Gill Bignell, Dorothy’s college friend, came down from Montreal and escorted her home on the train. “O.G. to N.Y. in car (Cotter). And nearly missed our train. Drawing room, and just sat quietly all day. So sad!!” Her grief was overwhelming. As she sat watching the same scenery she and Lew had passed on their way north, she questioned whether she could go on without him: “How will I live the rest of my life?”
The quaint clapboard railroad station with the bold block letters FORT PIERCE was a welcome sight. Following along beside the hissing train until its caboose had cleared the Orange Avenue crossing and the Pullman car had jerked to a stop, David and George watched for their mother. When she first appeared, her sons realized that they had never seen her dressed completely in black. They had just learned to accept their mother as an older woman in love. Now suddenly she was a widow.
At dawn on December 2, my grandmother buried Lew’s ashes inside the pale yellow walls of his Spanish garden. She knew this was where he would have wanted to rest. Closing her screened door, and clutching a small white embroidered handkerchief, Dorothy took the rear stairs down from the loggia. She spotted first the top of the garden wall, beaded with silver bubbles reflecting the morning sun. The tall bamboo held back a wide patch of sunlight, and behind the fountain—guarded by the zebra and tall giraffe tiles—stood a nubby old avocado tree. The upturned soil was softly shaded by wide, draping banana branches.
Opening the spring latch, she remembered the rainy day when the two of them had completed their secret garden. Allowing her tears to run freely now, she wept for the future she had lost with Lew.
“At sunrise in the garden, I said a prayer, and gave my Beloved, forever, to Immokolee which he loved!” On her left hand gleamed a gold wedding band, and beside it was the one belonging to her devoted husband. From that day on, she wore the two rings together, side by side. They would never be separated again. “It has been a year of great contrasts—yet loving happiness too. Loss and a heart full of precious memories.”
Dorothy accepted that her brief love had been richly rewarding and she took comfort in the peace that it afforded her. She vowed: “Try to be extra sweet to all the others, to make up my own loneliness.”
Having researched my grandparents’ lives over the years, I find it sad that they could not have found a way to stay together. In the end, on opposite sides of the country, they both found peace in the simple life they once shared in Bend, Oregon, and so loved. They never lost their passion for the outdoors, and I believe that had there not been an explosive period in the 1920s when the age of aviation sparked the constant challenge of breaking barriers, they might have remained together.
In August 1960, Dorothy returned to New York from a North Cape cruise with two of her grandsons. As usual, before taking the train to Florida, she was picked up by Cotter and driven out to Old Greenwich to see her family. Her mother was ninety-four years old, bedridden and quite frail after a long illness.
On the first day back in Fort Pierce, there was news of a hurricane brewing to the south. “Storm coming and already has hit E. Cuba. Only wish it could blow Fidel Castro off the map!” And on the following morning, September 7, in the midst of a howling storm, Dorothy received a phone call from her niece Hyla Kitchel. “Hyla phoned: mother is sinking.… Later Allan called; she died 3:10 p.m. quietly and in her sleep—Thank God… glad she died peacefully.”
Great-Grandma Binney was a gifted pianist and composer. In 1927, she wrote her own creed. As a child I recall seeing it framed, hanging in our kitchen. When I first began to read my grandmother’s diaries, I discovered that she had transcribed her mother’s creed across two pages, under “Memoranda”:
MY CREED
I think that many a soul has God within,
Yet knows no church nor creed, no word of prayer,
No law of life save that which seems most fair
And true and just, and helpful to its kin
And kind; and holds that act alone as sin
That lays upon another soul its share
Of human pain, of sorrow, or of care,
Or plants a doubt where faith has ever been.
The heart that seeks with zealous joy the best
In every other heart it meets, the way
Has found to make its own condition blessed.
To love God is to strive through life’s short day
To comfort grief, to give the weary rest.
To hope and love—that surely, is to pray.
—Alice Stead Binney
As the years passed, my grandmother remained an inveterate traveler and offered many opportunities to her children and grandchildren. Several times each year we had the good fortune to explore faraway places through Dofry’s eyes. She boasted of introducing all of her “Grands” to the two extreme poles of the earth, and hoped that in the end they would remember the difference between them! “New Yorks—Hotel. Davey and Rick. Busy, over to ship, all excited. North Cape Cruise on ‘M/S Gripsholm.’ Sailed at 10 p.m. Sally and Jack to see us off.” Unwittingly, she had passed on to all of us her irresistible wanderlust. “At sea, foggy and cold. Binney and Sally Hammerfest Village a.m. Bird Rock (auks, puffins and murres) N. Cape 1 p.m. Gals climb it. Great thrill.”
The music room at Immokolee remained alive with the sounds of piano and singing. “Family picnic here—all Putnams 11, 3 Yonges. Swim for kids. Binney and I played, whistled and lovely flute music.” In the springtime of each year, the brightly colored painted buntings left Immokolee and returned to their northern climate just as the whippoorwills began to serenade in the dark. Gardenia petals fell by the handful and lay bruised beneath the huge bush inside the protected garden. Looking down from her bedroom window, Dorothy could see the blooming shrub Lew had planted fifteen years earlier. She often reminded us that she wished to be buried within close distance of its fragrance, beside her husband.
It was also toward the end of the spring season each year that Dorothy left Fort Pierce to open up her cabin. In the summer, when the blackberries were ripe and the sun had replaced the wood-burning fires, she would return. In later years, even as her strength faded, she returned to Sundown with her grandchildren. “Cabin. Indigo buntings, thrushes and catbirds all singing.”
A warm and faithful correspondent, Dorothy continued to marvel at nature’s hand. Her letters to my mother reflect a childlike appreciation for the simple pleasures in life, the joy of a gently aging woman who still regarded wildlife and all animals with innocent wonder.
Nilla dear;
Gosh, how many times these past few days Ruth and I said, “Oh, I wish Nilla were here with us!” The birds are simply marvelous, songs all the time, and thrushes come to bathe in the tiny streams at the back door. Song sparrows keep up their dear little notes and every once in so often I hear a cardinal whistling, but so far I’ve not caught a glimpse of him, but he is nearby. There are now three “runs” under the house of some critter, maybe a hedgehog, or a rabbit, but we have not seen him either. The sheep and the cows come “belling” down the mountainside each evening, and stare at us with wonder near the fence.
Bye and all my love dear,
Mom
The following are a few of my grandmother’s random thoughts; they are among my favorites. Her own words offer the best view into her keen mind.
“Why, oh why, is kindness always whispered while anger is so loud? And how delightful it would be if people shouted ‘I love you’ as though it were an insult.”
“Grasshoppers converse by rubbing their back legs together. (I kinda wish we did too.)”
“There is a definite knack in discovering the best in people’s character, instead of the worst!”
“The stronger the sex urge, the less friendship. Guess friendship and admiration (or respect?) is what holds marriages together. Look around at the older couples near you, their compatibility, yes, sex was there, but the other qualities have taken over and lasted.”
My grandmother never remarried, although she was amused to have several suitors in her later years. She had learned to find happiness in solitude. I will never know whether her life after my grandfather was as rich as she imagined it would be. I believe, though, that her hard-won freedom had been easier to achieve than was the heavy task of sustaining it. “Time is learning to accept a few defeats. But it’s rather fun frustrating the old monster.” The hallmark of my grandmother’s philosophy was her undiminished optimism, and her relentless pursuit of knowledge and adventure. This was her personal bequest to all of us.
