Seized by the Sun Read online

  She marveled at the scarlet profusion of poppies rising along the Italian railroad tracks and sent a sketch of the poppies to her sister. She stayed a few days in Venice, her artist’s eye no doubt admiring the lemon-hued sky created by the lagoon’s reflection. Later, Gertrude trekked along the Amalfi Coast to admire the terraced farms of olive and orange trees. She loved the Italian people but was critical of their leader, Benito Mussolini. During the time Gertrude was in Italy, Mussolini was conducting aerial bombing on Ethiopia.

  She was intoxicated with the heady mix of nature and history, and she was determined to continue her journeys. She lived in the moment while traveling, and the past and the future did not seem to exist.

  For the next several years Gertrude was on the move, crisscrossing the Atlantic on ships. She loved the fjords of Norway. In Copenhagen she watched the streets turn to rivers of people riding bicycles. In the Netherlands she visited Haarlem, where Vreeland’s ancestors had lived before leaving for America. She toured Germany. She took a boat up the Rhine and marveled at the ancient castles and the estates.

  She returned to France and visited vineyards. On impulse one sunny fall afternoon, she left her guide and joined grape pickers in the vineyard. She spent the afternoon with the workers, laughing and picking grapes, sharing jokes in French, which sometimes had to be explained to her.

  Am I avoiding the person who I must become? Gertrude frequently asked herself this question, according to Elizabeth. By traveling she could stay ahead of her self-doubt and set aside her anxiety about the future.

  Somewhere in Switzerland she met a woman goatherd who introduced her to a breed of goat called Saanen, named after the Saanen Valley in that country. Gertrude was so fascinated by this breed that she became determined to raise goats when she returned to the United States.

  5

  FINDING HER FOOTING

  True to her dream, Gertrude bought two Saanen goats and established them at the family home in Summit, to the dismay of her father. Raising goats in urban New Jersey proved difficult. Two goats produced only a few quarts of milk a day, hardly enough to distribute to stores. Priced at 80 cents a quart, income never exceeded expenses, as Vreeland pointed out to his daughter, especially since she insisted on giving so much of the milk away.

  Gertrude had placed a classified newspaper ad offering goat’s milk. There were some regular purchasers. A man, woman, and baby appeared at the door, asking to buy the milk. They had taken a bus to get to Summit from their home in Jersey City. Their baby was allergic to cow’s milk. Gertrude cut the price of her milk by half, and the couple returned frequently. Her father accused her of being too softhearted to be a proper businesswoman.

  Why Gertrude Loved Goats

  Goats can indeed make good pets—if you have space for them. Some can even be housebroken. They need shelter outdoors from the weather and like clean water and fresh grass and leaves. Goats seem to enjoy hiking with their owners. They will even carry a pack for your picnic lunch. They can be led on a leash, are very sure-footed, are notorious for undoing simple gate closures, will respond to their names, and may live up to 30 years. A young female goat is called a doeling, and a young male is called a buckling. Any goat under six months is called a kid.

  The neighbors complained. It seemed the goats were great climbers and had gotten over fences and into the neighbors’ flower and vegetable gardens. City officials sent an inspector to the house, and Gertrude was warned about keeping goats. She responded to the city council that many townspeople kept chickens and that there were even a few cows tended by families in Summit. But goats were too much for the city leaders.

  She found a goat breeder in Morris Plains who agreed to take her goats, which she visited regularly. She remained an enthusiastic advocate, and she took the health benefits of goat’s milk the public.

  Elizabeth and her husband, Guy Whittall, had by now moved from his company posting in Madagascar to Cape Town, South Africa. Gertrude arrived for a visit in 1933. Elizabeth’s daughter Penny was an infant, and 22-year-old Gertrude was beguiled by the baby and assisted a nurse in caring for her.

  Spending two months in South Africa, Gertrude spoke to women’s groups. Over tea she stuttered out her enthusiasm for the benefits of goat milk, especially for infants. She found that she thought less about her stutter since she had become involved in promoting the health benefits of goat’s milk to the public. She had become less self-conscious about it, said Elizabeth. Gertrude was feeling a new sense of confidence.

  Leaving Cape Town, Gertrude traveled up Africa’s eastern coast to visit the game parks in Kenya, and then went on to Turkey. She spent six weeks visiting Guy Whittall’s family in Izmir, then called Smyrna. After that, her travels took her to New Zealand, where she made a hit with the press. An undated New Zealand newspaper article about her read in part:

  GOATS AS A HOBBY

  AMERICAN VISITOR’S CHOICE

  ONCE LANDSCAPE GARDNER

  Keeping goats as a profitable hobby in preference to following her original avocation of landscape gardening, for which she holds a diploma, is the unusual choice for Miss Gertrude Tompkins, a young American visitor from New York, who arrived in Auckland by the Monterey, states our Sydney correspondent. Miss Tompkins is a wealthy American girl who, when she is not attending to her goat farm in New Jersey, spends most of her time travelling abroad. Goats’ milk is increasing in demand in the United States … and is a sound economic proposition….

  Miss Tompkins, who was accompanied by her aunt, Miss Towar of New York, spent several weeks motoring through New Zealand…. One of her most pleasant recollections is of a visit to the model pa [village] of Princess Te Puea Herangi at Ngaruawahia. Since then she has been a devoted exponent of the poi.

  “I consider poi dancing to be one of the most graceful forms of recreation for girls that I have seen in any part of the world,” she declared…. As a memento of her visit to Ngaruawahia, Miss Tompkins carried away with her a beautiful piece of greenstone, a gift from the Maori princess.

  In 1936 polio struck Elizabeth Tompkins Whittall, then living in Cairo. Elizabeth sailed back to the United States in September, and Gertrude became her companion throughout the next year, providing mostly company and moral support since Elizabeth had a nurse to care for her physically. Elizabeth would always carry the effects of polio in her right leg, but she never lost her sense of adventure or her interesting lifestyle. She and her husband were next posted to Bermuda by Royal Dutch Shell. While there they entertained famous people, including the photographer Yousuf Karsh, the flier Jimmy Doolittle, and playwright Noël Coward. She did volunteer work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and later, like her mother, for Planned Parenthood.

  Gertrude Tompkins in about 1938. Courtesy of the Whittall family

  When not traveling, Gertrude lived in Summit with her parents. She still considered goats her passion, but Smooth-On, her father’s company, was now experiencing difficult times. The Depression had finally caught up with Iron Cement. Vreeland could no longer support her travels.

  To help her father, and to “keep the money in the family,” as Vreeland put it, Gertrude offered to work for Smooth-On. She was 28 years old, and it was time to move out of the family home. The independence fostered by her travel caused her to feel closed in when she was in her parents’ home, and with her work at Smooth-On she was able to support herself for the first time. She decided to live in New York City and commute to the Smooth-On offices in Jersey City.

  Gertrude went apartment hunting. She found a place she liked in Greenwich Village, a double brownstone at historic 94 MacDougal Street, the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens. Each building had a small courtyard, and there was a common garden for all of the brownstones. The owner of her building, a Yale graduate named Henry M. Silver, introduced himself. In addition to being her landlord, he was an editor at Columbia University Press. Friendly and smart, he and Gertrude shared a love of history and gardening.
/>   From her apartment Gertrude’s commute to Smooth-On took about 30 minutes. She paid a nickel to ride the subway under the Hudson River to Jersey City. At Smooth-On she managed company correspondence, handled government paperwork, and prepared sales letters.

  She took delight in furnishing her new apartment by searching secondhand stores. Her mother insisted that her sofa and bed be new, so she bought them on the installment plan and felt very modern. At night she returned to her apartment on MacDougal and listened to symphonies on the radio while she read.

  Greenwich Village was a hotbed of unrest in the late 1930s. The Communists had their American headquarters there. So did the Socialist Workers Party. The American Student Union, a group of independent, left-wing students who opposed militarism, operated in the Village. Poets and musicians haunted the smoky jazz clubs. One can imagine how Gertrude’s conservative father must have viewed this environment.

  Since Gertrude had to pass Henry Silver’s apartment every day, he often popped out to greet her, making small talk and dropping puns, which he loved (“Deceit is a place to sit down. Defense is what keeps de dog in”). He wanted to take her out for a drink. She said no. He asked her to go to a movie. She declined.

  Henry Silver was 10 years older than Gertrude, and he was recently divorced. His manner was engaging, but she was not interested in a romance with him. He explained how he once stuttered too and told her of his childhood speech problem, which he eventually outgrew. Henry, she learned, had been raised in Manhattan. His father, whom Henry called “Sir,” was a doctor. He’d grown up in a Victorian home, with stringent social repressions. Like Gertrude, Henry knew his father would be appalled if he knew of Henry’s support for FDR and the New Deal.

  Henry wooed her ardently, but Gertrude simply felt no love for him, and the thought of marriage frightened her. Marriage in 1939 usually meant becoming a housewife and not having your own money. It meant giving up travel on one’s own. Gone would be Gertrude’s goats, which she still visited on weekends. Marriage meant subordinating herself to a man, just as her mother had done.

  Conscious of Gertrude’s passion for classical music, Henry used it to his advantage. He proposed an evening at the symphony to Vreeland and Laura. They accepted. How could Gertrude say no after her parents had consented? Thus she was roped into her first date with Henry through the unknowing involvement of her parents.

  Henry had an insatiable intellectual curiosity, and it extended to Vreeland’s business. He asked many questions about Smooth-On. Vreeland and Laura liked Henry from the start, but Gertrude’s heart was about to be captured by someone—and something—else entirely.

  6

  TAKING FLIGHT

  Reading the pages of the New York Times in 1939 and 1940, Gertrude saw hints of cultural changes coming to America. A young singer named Frank Sinatra made his debut. Animated motion pictures were a hit, with Walt Disney’s fulllength Pinocchio premiering in New York City, to be followed later that year by Fantasia. McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California. Bugs Bunny made his first appearance in “Wild Hare.”

  While America was struggling to pull itself out of the Great Depression, war was about to ravage Europe, where trouble had been simmering for years. Gertrude could not have known that the conflicts brewing across the Atlantic Ocean would soon change the course of her life.

  In Germany, Adolf Hitler rose to power through political intimidation and brutality. Many who openly opposed the policies of his Nazi Party were beaten or imprisoned; some were murdered. Becoming chancellor in 1934, Hitler claimed to represent a new Germany, one rising from the ashes of the 1918 German defeat in World War I. Hitler stabilized the German dollar, called the deutsche mark. (At one time the deutsche mark had become so inflated that it took a wheelbarrow load of bills to buy a loaf of bread.) He ordered the construction of superhighways, called autobahns. The economy became more robust as unemployed Germans found jobs. Factories began gearing up for a new war.

  One of history’s most infamous dictators, Hitler was born in Austria in 1898. While serving a prison term for political agitation in 1923, he wrote a book called Mein Kampf, which translated means “my struggle.” In it he blamed Jewish people for most of Europe’s ills and spelled out his vision for a new Germany.

  France and England had been weakened by the Great Depression and had no stomach for another war. Between them they had 8 million people killed or wounded in World War I. They expressed their concerns over Hitler’s aims but remained passive in the face of the dictator’s broken promises.

  Hitler flouted the terms that the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany at the end of World War I, which was often called “the war to end all wars.” He defiantly took over areas of northern France and Czechoslovakia. Austria was absorbed into Germany and ceased to exist as a country.

  Hitler also made a pact with Soviet Russia, which was led by the dictator Joseph Stalin. Together Soviet Russia and Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. England and France reluctantly came to Poland’s aid. World War II had been ignited and would rage for the next six years.

  Germany quickly conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France. England refused to surrender and retreated to its home islands to rebuild its military.

  Germany signed war treaties with Japan and Italy, forming what was called the Axis. They vowed to support one another. By 1940 the Axis seemed invincible.

  Russia remained independent but had gained much eastern European land from its alliance with Germany.

  Japan’s government was under the control of a militant faction. This small island nation needed coal, oil, and metals that they could only get from other countries. They took these countries by force. Beginning in 1931 they occupied large areas of China. Japan also occupied islands in the western Pacific called the Mariana Islands.

  In the summer of 1941 Germany surprised the world and invaded Russia, its former ally, rolling up victory after victory against Stalin’s troops. By autumn of 1941 it appeared that only England and the United States stood between the Axis and their conquest of the world. But America was reluctant to enter the fray.

  In the 1930s a majority of Americans thought the United States should avoid another European war. Over 320,000 American troops had been killed or wounded in France in World War I. It was enough. Congress and many American citizens largely regarded Hitler’s conquests as strictly a European problem. “America First” became a popular slogan, and prominent America Firsters included Charles A. Lindbergh, the American hero who in 1927 had flown solo across the Atlantic Ocean to land in Paris.

  A few military planners and politicians were deeply concerned about America’s isolationism. They realized the airplane had made the world more vulnerable. They felt that a war in Europe might eventually involve America, whether the country liked it or not.

  Amelia Earhart

  Amelia Mary Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and author who disappeared while flying over the Pacific in 1937. She was attempting an around-the-world flight with her navigator, Fred Noonan. They were flying a twin-engine Lockheed Vega.

  In 1932 she became the first woman pilot to fly the Atlantic nonstop. Between 1930 and 1935, Amelia Earhart set seven women’s speed and distance records in a variety of aircraft. She made nonstop solo flights from Honolulu to Oakland, California, and from Mexico City to New York City. Earhart participated in long-distance air racing and competed with Jacqueline Cochran—who would later establish the WASPs—in the 1935 Bendix Trophy air race.

  Her mysterious disappearance near the Pacific’s Howland Island is still controversial. The commonly accepted theory is that she simply ran out of gas and went into the sea. Others are not so sure. One possibility is that she landed on Gardner Island (now called Nikumaroro) and died before she could be rescued. One historian suggests she may have been executed by the Japanese after seeing military installations that had been forbidden by international treaties.

  Some American pi
lots had fought alongside the English and French against the Germans during the First World War. These pilots were part of the US Army, called the Army Air Service. Some women pilots had volunteered to fight but had been turned down. In the 1930s several famous women, including Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt, proposed that the US Army incorporate women into the pilot pool.

  General Henry “Hap” Arnold was promoted to chief of the air force. It was a flimsy, underfunded service, with fewer than 2,000 aircraft in 1938. Germany had more than double that number. America trained only 300 pilots per year. In the late 1930s the idea of using women pilots had been proposed but was rejected by Arnold because of a lack of airplanes.

  There was resistance to an expanded air force by a number of top-ranking generals who believed the military use of aircraft was a fad. Some of these generals still believed in fighting from horseback. Yet there was clear evidence suggesting that aircraft would play a major role in war. Germany showed its air strength to the world when in 1937 it bombed Guernica, a city in Spain, killing hundreds of civilians in the Spanish Civil War. The Japanese use of aircraft in its invasion of China and the devastating bombing of Nanking in 1937 were further proof that air power would be an integral part of future conflicts.

  Gertrude was still working for her father at Smooth-On, and like most Americans the first thing she did upon arriving home in the evening was to turn on her radio and listen to the news. As she fixed macaroni and cheese (which she adored) or broiled a chop, she could feel England’s desperation through the voice of Edward R. Murrow, an American journalist broadcasting from London as the bombs fell.