Whistled Like a Bird, page 4
The couple’s first child was born at their house on May 20, 1913: David Binney Putnam arrived at 1:15 A.M., a strapping nine pounds eight ounces. Attending was Dr. U. C. Coe, the local physician. There was also present a close friend of Dorothy’s, who was a concert pianist. Going into labor, Dorothy asked her to play music from Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” at full volume to drown out her cries. The proud father later noted: “The lad himself was spanked by Doc’s huge hand and washed up on the dining table and then, nestled in blankets, set to toast before the open fire.”
David would eventually become a constant source of love and support for his mother, who adored him. He was doted on by both parents and never out of their sight. A curly headed, infectiously cheerful infant, he was carried into the mountains on horseback, and it was not unusual to see the Putnams camping and canoeing with their small son tucked beside them.
After their son’s birth, a young artist and poet named Donald Blanding arrived at the house bearing a garden shovel filled with freshly uprooted wood violets. He carried them directly to Dorothy’s bedside. This talented and eccentric friend, who was working at the local bank, would in later years play an even greater role in her life. “George had long council meeting so I went to Picture Show with Donald then we talked late in front of open fire till George returned. Read aloud.”
In 1914, George decided not to seek reelection as mayor and instead was tapped by the state governor to be his secretary. “George in Portland, appointed Secretary to Governor Withycombe!!” With the latest career change, the three Putnams packed up and moved north to Salem, the state capital.
Reluctant to lose control of the Bulletin, George traveled between Bend and Salem, performing both full-time jobs at once. Although he did not particularly covet a spot in state politics, he accepted the appointment enthusiastically, primarily because it had come from a man he considered a political maverick.
For recreation, the Putnams spent their weekends in the backcountry, on horseback camping trips to the upper glades of the Cascade Mountains. As always, Dorothy thrilled at the abundance of bird life: “Red winged blackbirds, robins, bluebirds and juncos are here for good now.” She continued to swim as she had back home, and impressed even the athletic westerners. News stories summarizing her achievements were pasted in her album full of other Oregon memorabilia:
Mrs. George Palmer Putnam is receiving the congratulations of her friends today over the victory in the 50 yard swimming race at the Women’s National Championships meet Saturday night at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland. Mrs. Putnam is an unusually fine swimmer and won the race easily using the Australian crawl, which is one of the most difficult strokes known.
My grandmother was a champion swimmer. Over her lifetime she taught hundreds of children to swim and always rewarded them with prizes. Today, I treasure the small copper trophy for first prize in watersports she won in 1911.
In 1916, a restless and patriotic George Putnam found another opportunity to go where the action was. In his thesis, Jim Crowell described Governor Withycombe as “a man who preached military preparedness, and when the time came during World War I for the state to do its duty, Oregon led the nation with a volunteer enlistment of 92% of its manpower quota.”
Sharing the governor’s enthusiasm for his country’s need for enlistees, George left for Mexico’s border that June, as a member of Oregon’s National Guard. And in September, just before the troops returned home, an article by G. P. Putnam appeared in the Bend Bulletin: “It’s a long way from Bend to the Mexican border and a big change from newspapering to packing a rifle in the federalized national guard.… We were hurried down here on the jump, our battalion, the Third, going directly across a little valley into Mexico and hear the bugles playing in the quartrell of the Mex garrison.”
By the end of the year, George had turned his small weekly newspaper into a daily publication. For this new expansion, he signed a contract with a young man to provide a five hundred-word telegraph pony service. His name was Hugh Baillie, and his agreement with George was the first contract for the United Press. Baillie would eventually become president of U.P.
With a taste of military service under his belt and the threat of war casting uncertainty over the nation, George enlisted in the army. The three Putnams moved to Washington, D.C. He was appointed to the Department of Justice for a year and a half, after which he received his field artillery officer’s training at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky. Dorothy was also engaged in wartime employment, as she wrote in a letter to a college friend:
I found myself president of a group of college women taking the special war course at Mt. Holyoke College. Instead of going to one of the big munition plants (for which I was preparing) I was called to Washington as head of our group there and became Head of the Inspection Division Department of Civilian Workers branch of Ordnance—that title by the way almost made me a divorced woman! But suddenly there was bedlam among my nine hundred girls in Ordnance all crowding to the streets to cheer for Armistice Day.
George had found the time to write his second book, In the Oregon Country, filled with glowing descriptions of the state’s wild and uncharted interior. This parting gift spoke eloquently for a land with no voice, making his initial decision to go west all the more understandable—“On the river’s western flank, between it and the Cascade Range, is a playland of beautiful pine timber, crystal lakes, and mountained meadows, bounded on one hand by snow-capped peaks and on the other by the broad plains that sweep eastward to Idaho.”
If his father, John Bishop Putnam, and his brother, Robert, had not recently died, George would have taken his family and returned to Oregon after the war. But at the insistence of his uncle, George Haven Putnam, then president of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, George and his family returned to New York in 1919, where he joined the illustrious publishing house, whose authors included Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Cullen Bryant.
George’s first assignment was to travel to Warsaw, Poland, to convince the premier, Ignace Jan Paderewski, that G. P. Putnam’s Sons should be chosen to publish his memoirs. Aside from his political career, Paderewski had been widely acclaimed as the world’s foremost pianist. This noteworthy talent was particularly appealing to my grandmother. With the Putnams on the go again, her diaries contain cryptic notations reminiscent of their honeymoon. There was the usual assortment of fascinating characters on board the steamer France, and once in Paris she took the opportunity to visit the Binney & Smith office.
SEPTEMBER 26, 1919 Paris. A good long sleep and I woke to “first impressions”—the low buildings of four and five stories and the knee nigh skirts of women on the streets and oh, the hundreds and hundreds or women in deep mourning! Every man has a service ribbon in his coat lapel and many are decorated with several medals.
The couple left Paris by train, traveling through Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and then into Poland. They finally reached Warsaw. “Off for Poland thro’ Germany. Risky but thrilling. Took a couple of ‘snaps.’ Thro’ a maze of streets to Poliski Consulat. We must first have a letter of recommendation from the police!” Enduring the often frightening train ride, George wrote of the war atrocities, the teeming hordes of starving families, and of the scorched farmlands. Dorothy was hurriedly typing, trying to keep up with him. At the same time she recorded her own impressions of the battle-scarred countryside.
On October 26, 1919, the Putnams marked their eighth wedding anniversary. Dorothy wrote in her diary that they “were almost too busy to speak of it!” Departing for home, the weary couple cleared customs again, and then collapsed in the dark safety of the ship’s inner cabin. Often seasick, she was determined to be a part of the assignment. Dorothy’s contribution to George’s work continued until his stories about Paderewski were published on the front page of the New York Tribune.
DECEMBER 5, 1919 Oh, we’ll never get there at this rate! And I’m so impatient. Furious with myself, too, because my tummy is too unreliable to do any typewriting and I do want to help George get his stories ready. Our sixth day and we’re still in mid-ocean. Finally—Good luck at typewriting—I finished one of George’s four stories.
Settling down in New York after Poland, Washington, Central America, and eight years in Oregon were two young travelers enriched by worldwide experiences. They had spent their years away from home making their reputations in a high-powered, sophisticated world. They were moving in circles usually reserved for older, more accomplished adults.
I have found little documentation to describe my grandparents’ marriage prior to their return to New York. However, based on the collection of letters, my conversations with Dofry, and the memories and impressions my father passed on to me, I suspect that she valued her work as George’s assistant far more than she did her dutiful role as his wife.
The couple purchased a comfortable four-bedroom house in the center of town in Rye, New York. The Studio House was a working sanctuary rather than a residence and was only a short distance from the Rye Country Day School, which David attended. In this same home on Orchard Avenue, on May 9, 1921, the Putnams welcomed a second son to the family. George Palmer Putnam, Jr. (“Junie”), became his mother’s newest traveling companion. Dorothy’s addiction to adventure had been ingrained since childhood, and she had every intention of passing it on to her two sons, even if it meant taking them out of school for extended periods of time.
By 1922, at the age of thirty-five, George had become a visible spokesman for G. P. Putnam’s Sons. His regular stories in the New York newspapers about Poland and its famous premier had thrust him into the limelight of the printed world. He had also become involved with several other concerned publishers on the issue of censorship of the press. In an article in The New York Times opposing censorship on August 5, 1922, George was quoted as saying:
“It is my opinion that a supreme authority of censorship for publishers is unworkable, unnecessary and unwise. The publishers are, or at least should be, capable of judging the decency of their own output. The proposition of submitting manuscripts in advance of publication to any committee whose advance OK must be secured is to me preposterous.… I’m afraid I agree with Heywood Broun who says that a censor is a man who has read about Joshua and forgotten about Canuete.”
With her husband’s rise to success, Dorothy realized that he no longer needed her to assist him any more. He had emerged as a noted journalist, his byline appearing regularly in newspapers. Dorothy was relegated to the home, and she was not particularly suited to this new suburban domesticity. She adored Junie and David, her garden, and friends; but it was not enough. Travel would soon become her escape. “Oh to be transported here and there in the world on the ‘magic carpet’ of the printed page. The people who travel only thro’ books! No, I want to go myself, always.”
With George spending so much time in New York, and on frequent trips to London, Dorothy grew restless and decided to accompany her parents and two sons to Fort Pierce, Florida.
While cruising on the family yacht Dohema in 1911, Edwin Binney had been struck by the unpretentious beauty of this sun-washed ocean and river town, and in 1913 he built a clapboard farmhouse, which he called Florindia. Before long, the small fishing and citrus village with a population of four thousand also captivated Dorothy. “Quite lovely little creeks and bays all thro’ the mangrove islets with marine gardens at every turn, corals, sponges, angelfish and other colorful varieties. Lovely trip.”
As a child, chasing my own dreams along the same creeks and mangroves, I never pictured my grandmother as a young woman doing the same thing. In retrospect, I can’t imagine a nook or cranny along the Indian River that she did not explore.
By 1924, the Putnams’ Studio House was too small for the expanding family. Dorothy and George had begun to reminisce about their days in Bend, when, sitting on the banks of the Deschutes River, they had fantasized about their dream castle. After several months exploring Westchester County’s outer woods in search of a site, they discovered and purchased a piece of land just off the Old Boston Post Road in Rye. The rolling fifteen acres were dense with enormous hemlocks and elms and wild dogwoods cascading down the hillside. Taking care not to destroy the deciduous landscape with its massive boulders, Dorothy roped off an oddly shaped piece of ground that lay on the top of the knoll. She then drew an outline of the house to fit into the irregular clearing. Without an architect, she and George finished the plans and selected a building contractor. They didn’t expect to begin construction on Rocknoll, as it would be called, until the end of the year, so Dorothy was free to continue traveling.
Her parents had planned a three-month cruise around the world on the steamship Resolute, and they invited their daughter to come along. She and George had discussed the idea of her bringing back tiles and silk fabrics from China for their new home, and he hoped that the project would be a stimulating diversion for his wife. As Dorothy herself observed: “Women grow old prematurely because our badly organized civilization gives them so little to do except talk and dress.” Having lost her role as George’s typist and editor, Dorothy was finding fewer ways to share his demanding but exciting career.
The day before sailing, Dorothy met George at his New York office on Forty-fifth Street, where he was directing a myriad of publishing projects. His small desk was covered with papers and books, pens and telephones. Bookcases lined the walls, except for one that held pictures of friends, airplanes, and dogs that George had clipped from various magazines. It was their standard meeting place before dinner and the theater, but George had planned this evening as a special sendoff for his wife. As it happened, the more he talked of business, the more Dorothy withdrew, and what was planned as an evening of celebration became one of hostility. “Two kinds of people I loathe. Men who see only their business, women who really care terrifically what’s being ‘done’ this year, and who must be invited to so and so’s party!” Years later, as her circle of friends broadened, she would write: “I find myself differentiating people. The ones I like: The highly decorative male and female. And people with keen tongues and brains, and not ashamed to really use them, with minds and tastes (and bodies!), highly sophisticated.”
Her trip was to provide plenty of touches for their home. The discovery of green Chinese tiles for her entrance hall, ornate Oriental rugs, and silk wall hangings embroidered with multicolored majestic birds, added distinction to the new house in Rye. In Tahiti, the final stop on the way back, Dorothy borrowed an old dugout canoe from a native islander and left the ship alone for ten carefree hours. She preferred to discover local beads or stones rather than cultured pearls for herself, and returned laden down with unusual local wares.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons had recently published a book by a noted explorer and naturalist, William (“Will”) C. Beebe, entitled Jungle Days. George and Will had become friends and were equally supportive of each other’s professions. Will valued George’s interests in scientific exploration and was aware of his financial assistance to other scientists over the years. Dr. Beebe was preparing a six-month oceanographic expedition for the New York Zoological Society in the spring of 1925. As director of the Department of Tropical Research, he had selected eighteen other scientists to join him on a trip to the Sargasso Sea, and the Cocos and Galapagos Islands in the Pacific.
Just back from her voyage around the world, Dorothy learned of Dr. Beebe’s project and asked George if he would speak to his friend about the possibility that she and David could join Beebe’s expedition for two months as unpaid assistants aboard the Arcturus. They both went. In typical Putnam fashion, twelve-year-old David Binney Putnam wrote his first book, David Goes Voyaging, to describe the trip:
Mr. Beebe lets me call him Uncle Will, even if he is the head of this big expedition. He was awfully nice to let me go on part of it. I had my twelfth birthday on the “Arcturus” down on the equator, and I know how lucky I was to be taken along. It was great fun and I think I learned a lot, though perhaps it will hurt my school work, being away and everything. Anyway, Mother and I joined the Arcturus—Uncle Will’s ship—at Panama. I spent nearly three months in the Pacific Ocean, studying sea life and visiting seven uninhabited desert islands. And I promised Dad to write a little story about it all.
Not since her trip to Poland had Dorothy been so enthralled by a challenging adventure. When the first phase of the scientific project ended, she volunteered to remain for an additional six weeks, despite the fact that she had a husband and four-year-old son at home. Her cable to George, advising him of her decision, elicited a somewhat forlorn and envious response:
Thursday, May 7, 1925
Dearest:
… This morning at the office came your cable from Panama. To-night you are there. Probably having a grand time. Lord, how I wish I were there, too! (Hell, it’s disheartening to realize this won’t reach you for six weeks or so, anyway, you’ll be glad to find accumulated mail when you get back to Panama. And how glad I’ll be to have you starting north and home to me! You’ll get the most comprehensive loving of your career.)
I never before was quite so lonely. Likely because you are doing things just as I want to do, and love doing. You and I certainly will go next Winter, on a trip together. A grand trip. Then the following summer I want to have that cherished outing out West with Carl Dunrud and David, and I hope you will relent and go, too.…
What a house! Hon, it is enormous. I am plumb terror stricken at it. Not costs, they are all right—but size. We should have cut down all around twenty percent. I realize, more and more, that for the rest of my life I will look back at the comparative quiet, and guestlessness of this old house, with occasional yearning. Inevitably, we will have a hotel all the time. That’s alright. Only, dear girl, once in a while just pretend you like me better than anyone else, and that you prefer being with me all alone, to being with a giddy crowd.… You bet, yes, I urged you to go and you were sportingly willing to exchange places with me. I miss you more than ever.
