PART TWO
Love should have a right-of-way thro’ the
universe—and never be belittled or profaned.
We should like both men & women,
discriminatingly & love very few.
D.B.P.
4
“If a woman takes a lover, I understand it. If she’s single. Or if she’s married, has abundant vitality and finds her husband immodest, impotent or unsavory. But if she takes a lover lightly, then I loathe her. In other words then she is a light woman and soulless. It can be a marvelous experience, but not that way.”
ON JANUARY 29, 1927, AS SHE WAVED good-bye to family and friends, Dorothy was evolving into a different woman. Her moods and her thoughts were consumed by the promise of a new passion. “Junie and I start on the Laconia for a cruise around the whole of South America. We have a comfortable inside cabin on D deck opposite Frances. Daddy, David, George Chamberlain, to see us off. Wires from George Weymouth and many others.”
At any other time, she would probably have welcomed the escape. Now she must have had second thoughts about leaving home. “There is no reasoning out people’s conduct! For we are like the sea, and our movements are far too complicated to explain, and the depth may bring up God only knows what at any moment. Yet we seem to need that life rhythm.”
From the time she had waved good-bye to her family and friends, she knew that this trip in particular was more significant than any she had taken before. During the lengthy cruise, her mood grew more pensive as she examined her choices, spending hours alone with few distractions. Dorothy realized that the three-month holiday, though filled with exotic adventure, would not blur her memories nor diminish her thoughts of G.W. Her questions about the future appeared to be growing more serious.
Highlights of the voyage were captured in her daily entries: “Straits of Magellan. We’re going more and more South. We enter the Straits out of a terrific sea on the west coast. Albatrosses flying at the stern, 8 ft. from wing to wing. Junie and I stay aft to watch them for hours. Mt. Sarmiento in the fog and snow squalls, glacier flanked.” But many of Dorothy’s diary entries suggest a restless heart as she questioned herself, and her future.
Naturally active, Dorothy buried her emotions in shipboard activities. She was most proud of winning first prize in the costume competition. She always packed up and brought along odds and ends from previous trips, clearly expecting to win first place. This trip was no exception.
MARCH 10, 1927 So far I have won all the “first prizes” for costume parties, etc. Head costume, Fancy costume. Original party, etc. It undoubtedly annoys the other women on board and that’s funny. For each time I’ve been grotesque, ugly, comic; really disguised!
Yet there was no permanent relief from her heart. Nearing home, Dorothy stood on the forward deck leaning against the railing as the flickering lights from shore came into view. Those foreign ports with their marimba bands, the verdant jungles and brown faces swathed in Incan colors, were left behind. The ship was silent except for the swish against the cold gray hull. Junie and his grandmother Frances wouldn’t awaken and prepare to disembark for another five hours, but Dorothy needed those final moments alone before daybreak: “The sea—and delicious long idle days of watching a far horizon. Without sense of time or the relation of me to the universe. It’s almost the unquestioned acceptance of childhood again. I seem to shed my encumbrances and responsibilities too easily.”
Running ahead of his mother on the gangplank across the narrow strip of black water, Junie jumped into the outstretched arms of his excited father. Clutching his son’s hand, George dashed to greet his wife, reaching her before she had crossed the rickety walkway. There was the usual flutter of homecoming, and an almost childlike eagerness to share it with loved ones.
APRIL 1, 1927 Such a delightful homecoming! All my family on the dock to see us. Mother’s car waiting. Cold and wintry, out oh so good just to be here.… And everything so fresh and spacious and my own! A treat alter the small quarters on the ship. And Junie telling everyone about Rio and Peru and Ilamas, etc. And the piano.
For the moment, Dorothy was content; and the servants were anxious to have her back again. The estate had been silent too long. Passing through the dining room and into the grand studio where her piano waited, she was pleased by the sight of springtime flowers arranged throughout the house. The familiar faces and sensations gave her a much-needed sense of security. Still, there were nagging thoughts of G.W. She wondered if and when he would come.
Dorothy disappeared upstairs to the privacy of her bedroom. Sitting at the window, noting the forest of tiny spring buds, she thought of the young student. Her restlessness returning, she wandered through the upstairs rooms and out onto the screened loggia. The chatter of conversation rumbled up the back stairwell; she thought she recognized a familiar voice. Treading softly to the stairwell, she leaned over and listened to the group in the kitchen. Her heart jumped. She confirmed that it was George Weymouth, and then tiptoed back to her room. Suddenly, her exhilaration dissipated and insecurities returned. She felt exhausted, anxious about their reunion. She questioned whether she had misread his affection for her and whether she was foolish in believing that he cared. Had it been only a slight infatuation on his part?
G.W. and David were talking in the pantry as she came downstairs and pushed the swinging door open from the dining room, trying to act surprised. There in a single glance was her answer. David excitedly regaled his mom with the news of an upcoming trip to Baffin Land, but to Dorothy only one fact registered: Her lover’s return was more permanent than she dared hope. George Weymouth had been hired by her husband as the ship’s third engineer and her son’s new tutor on board the Morrissey. “Such a lovely welcome and it is so nice to be home again. George Weymouth the nice Yale boy is here living in the house, tutoring David and doing a thousand other jobs.”
George Putnam was relieved to have found someone to help his worldly fourteen-year-old with his failing grades. A month earlier, during Dorothy’s absence, David and his father had gone to dinner with their close friends the Chesters. George Weymouth had also been a guest. During the course of the evening, Putnam learned of the young man’s love for sailing. He was also in need of a job, as his scholarship from the Yale Club of Philadelphia would probably expire at the end of his sophomore year. In one evening, the deal was sealed. George made it clear that young Weymouth must quickly move into Rocknoll, for there was work to be done in preparation for the Arctic trip to Baffin Land that was only two months away.
In the past, my grandmother had responded to G.W.’s amusing and affectionate ways with open innocence. But now her feelings were becoming more serious. Early one spring morning, before the sun broke through the trees, Dorothy was up whistling and making lunch for an outing that she and George Weymouth had planned. The previous day they had walked to the top of Laddin’s Rock, a nature sanctuary covered with hemlock trees where songbirds often nest. They had sat for hours, laughing and telling stories. It was on that first outing together that Dorothy began to use the name “G.W.” in her diary.
Perhaps they had resisted giving in to temptation the day before, savoring the prospect of the picnic planned for the following day. After she dressed with deliberate simplicity, Dorothy rummaged nervously through the kitchen drawers wanting to choose the perfect napkins and dinnerware. Standing at the sink, she washed the fresh strawberries, packing them carefully in a basket beside the chocolate fudge she had made the night before.
Although at first both tried to make light of their excursion that morning, each understood the seriousness of their actions. When they first arrived at Laddin’s Rock, G.W. teased Dorothy that she must have come over the week before, to plant the white violets throughout the meadow. The setting was romantic and Dorothy flushed at their easy intimacy. Placing a worn blanket on the ground, G.W. was careful trying not to disturb nature’s own spring bouquet. But suddenly, they erupted in laughter when he accidentally slipped and stomped on several of the flowers, breaking the tension.
The following day Dorothy recalled those playful hours together:
APRIL 19, 1927 Thank Goof for my humor and my sense or play! It’s always there, even when I#’m soaked with emotion. The most perfect lover is the one [who] even in his most passionate moments is never far from laughter. It distinguishes him from the beasts and endears him to his loved one.
The days that followed evoked a stream of sensuous thoughts and feelings: “Spring is full of love, all kinds. It may be just love of outdoors, of music, or birds, or of man and woman. And there is nothing so dead as an old love. God forbid I should ever blow on its embers. Oh, please let me stop first to avoid this ghastly thing. Rather suffer more.” Clearly, she was tortured by her new passion.
APRIL 29, 1927 Apparently I can’t do without men and yet my time or love has nearly gone and I can’t wholly love one! Does one ever? Do they love us, wholly? To be wholly in love one should have no mental reservations. It’s done every day, I’m sure. Yet why can’t I? One’s whole make-up should cry “Yes” without a qualm. The positive woman does: Ludovici says.
One morning a few days later, she was awakened by bird-song deep in the woods, and lay quietly in bed. Her husband had risen earlier and gone downstairs to begin working on his maps. Slipping into her bath robe, Dorothy began the day with breakfast in the open air of the second-floor porch. Captivated by the distinct smells and noises, and the wind with its moody changes, she was at a momentary peace. Reaching for her small black diary, she wrote: “It’s funny, the less a woman gives and the more she exacts from a man, the more the world respects her, in marriage. But if she gives her self wholly, willingly and asking nothing, the world cries out in horror and scandal.”
As the date for his own expedition neared, George Putnam’s daily life took on an added momentum. As publisher, he was already blessed with boundless energy. Now he wanted to clear up his business affairs before embarking on the Baffin Land trip. For the second year in a row, George had commissioned Captain Bob Bartlett and his schooner, the Morrissey. In an article for the Geographical Review written several months later, he explained the purpose of the trip and named its crew members:
The main objective of the Expedition was a geographical exploration of this virgin territory of Baffin Island—work in the charge of Professor Laurence M. Gould of the University of Michigan, assisted by George Weymouth of Philadelphia, Monroe G. Barnard of New York, and John A. Pope of Detroit. The other general personnel of the party included Robert E. Peary and Wallace R. Hawkins, engineer and assistant; Dr. Peter Heinbecker, surgeon; Edward Manley, radio director, Maurice Kellerman, motion picture photographer; Junius B. Bird, botanist; and two junior members, David Binney Putnam and Deric Nusbaum.
On an early evening in May, the chauffeured automobile idled at the railroad tracks in Rye, waiting for George Putnam’s commuter train to arrive. Manhattan was the pulse of his activities, and he was consumed by the desire to make G. P. Putnam’s Sons the most powerful publishing house in the world. The first sound to announce his arrival home was the bang of manuscripts bound together, hitting the pantry floor. Between the office and home, he carried the drafts about like school papers waiting to be graded.
George called upstairs to ask Dorothy if she had had a chance to speak with G.W. about his dinner plans for the evening. She said she had, and that he had decided to return to Yale that afternoon, where he was busy at the fraternity house doing odd jobs before summer vacation. In fact, she added, he probably wouldn’t be back until the following morning.
After dinner, George collected his weather maps and stood in front of the fireplace waiting to update Dorothy on the expedition’s progress. Two twenty-four-foot whaling boats had been constructed especially for the trip north and were ready to be picked up in Cos Cob. He hoped that Weymouth and David might drive up with him the next day and run them back down to the American Yacht Club in Rye. George was oblivious to the relationship developing between his wife and the young tutor; he was far too consumed with his own interests to notice her change in attitude.
Weymouth’s memories of his role within the Putnam household offer a guarded view of the relationship, as well as an explanation of his job. “Subsequent visits to the Putnam household led to more serious attention to Dorothy and an invitation to go on an expedition on the famous Arctic schooner, the Morrissey, to an undiscovered land, the East coast of Baffin Land.… In addition to my job as third engineer I was also charged with the care and direction and tutoring of David Goes to Baffin Land.” However casual the reference to my grandmother, I know how he must have suffered, keeping this secret from my grandfather and father.
One evening a few weeks later, Dorothy wandered through the huge house, grateful to be alone. With George in Washington, D.C., for two days and Junie at Rocklyn spending the weekend with the Binneys, the Putnam home was deserted. It was a perfect setting for a clandestine relationship to flourish. The only sound came from outdoors; the romantic trill of the wood thrush. My grandmother listened to its pleading call for love and sensed in her own heart a similar desire.
May 19, 1927, would be celebrated for the rest of Dorothy’s life as the turning point when her willingness to accept a passionless marriage ended. She was reborn, and in that new womanly self found mounting strength and desire. Though she recorded the following two days on separate pages, the evening of May 19 and the morning of the 20th flowed into one, with Dorothy and G.W. clinging to a dreamlike reality. Sitting before the fading fire with a glass of red wine, they had stretched out before the warm hearth, their bodies intertwined.
May 19, 1927 A rainy day—with a gray drizzle. Yet there’s an electric something in the air which makes me breathless and panicky. I have to go to town for an errand or two. And G.W. drove to New Haven for fraternity initiations. He returned late, and alter dinner we sat in the studio before the fire. Before going to bed we opened a bottle or delicious old wine 1859—An evening never to be forgotten—music—wine—content!
Beside the date, she drew a secret symbol to record her lovemaking. This private, romantic code has helped me interpret my grandmother’s diaries with greater accuracy and understanding.
MAY 20, 1927 A marvelous dawn—with a thrush singing in the woods. And apparently the whole world has a new significance! At least a part of me long forgotten is here still, and awake in full force. A gay, intense, utterly pagan self. Ruthless perhaps and self willed. Yet, too very sweet and understanding. Contradictory.
Once again, world events were conspiring to interrupt Dorothy’s euphoria. She was forced to abandon her delirious state, for Lindbergh was preparing to fly across the Atlantic; and her own husband and home would become a part of the media event.