William Beebe

Isabel Cooper’s work with the muralist Ezra Winter

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This entry is post 18 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

As a boy, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, Isabel Cooper. She was fascinating. Before marrying, she lived an independent, adventurous life, too rare for women born in the 1890s.

Among hundreds of stories I heard, she told me about her time working “above the ceiling” in Grand Central Terminal in New York City.

Grand Central interior, with its ceiling depicting constellations1)By Sracer357 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21753225

Isabel was a painter, an atelier-trained artist who had worked in scientific illustration and decorative arts. In the late 1920s, she took a job working for the mural painter, Ezra Winter. His studio was in Grand Central Terminal.

Winter designed large-format murals for public spaces, and had a team of artists executing his designs. His murals are at Radio City Music Hall, and the US Chamber of Commerce and the Library of Congress reading room in Washington, DC, among other places.

In her eighties, Isabel relished remembering her time at the studio. A favorite story was about a “funny little man” who darted through the studio from time to time. He would cross the artists’ work area, and pop through a small door at the other end. One day, one of the artists stopped him and asked what he was up to. “Why I’m the star lighter,” he said.

In the early 1930s, an un-named correspondent wrote The New Yorker and told the same story. I wonder if it was Isabel.2)Morris Bishop, Charles Cooke, and Robert M. Coates, “Twinkle, Twinkle,” Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, December 23, 1933, pp. 9-10.

In the 1920s, Grand Central Terminal had a map of the heavens painted on its barrel-vaulted ceiling above the main concourse. Sixty ten-watt light bulbs lit the prominent stars in the constellations it depicted. (A restored version of the night-sky ceiling is still there. Through a design error, the entire sky view is the reverse of the actual night sky.)

Somebody had to change burned-out light bulbs. Isabel’s “funny little man” had the job. There are still lights in the ceiling; the bulbs are now LEDs.

Note: Isabel’s stories often involved funny little men.

Working for Ezra Winter

By the late 1920s, Ezra Winter was getting big commissions for murals in public buildings, bank lobbies, and elsewhere, and was growing his staff. He was close friends with naturalist and scientific expedition leader William Beebe, for whom Isabel had long worked on expeditions to South America. She must have known of Ezra Winter through that connection. He offered Isabel work in his studio.

By 1926, when she went to work for Winter, Isabel had met Charles D. Mahaffie, her future husband. My guess is she no longer wanted to leave the country for months at a time on William Beebe’s scientific expeditions, which she had done since 1917.

Work in New York City best suited her new situation, Charles, who lived in Washington, DC, was only a train ride away.

Ezra Winter, undated photo3)National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/people/ezra-winter.htm

Winter’s studio, where he employed a dozen or more artists, was high above the concourse in Grand Central Terminal, though not quite “above the ceiling”.

His attic space was large and had tall, arched windows that let in plenty of light. It had high ceilings that fit canvases of 20 by 40 feet. It sat near the level of the vaulted ceiling of the station, with its painted sky.

A cutaway diagram of Grand Central, showing the space (top right) where Ezra Winter had his studio4)By New York Central Railroad (No author, publisher, or copyright listed) – “The Gateway to a Continent; Grand Central Zone”GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, NEW YORK.Pictorial profile of Grand Central Terminal, the office buildings, apartment buildings, and hotels within the Grand Central Zone which is located from 42nd Street to 51st Street between Madison and Lexington Avenues in New York City. 36pp. 4to (New York, 1939). First Edition.The Cooper Collection of Transportation History (private collection), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47214055

The right kind of artists mattered to Ezra Winter

In a speech to the Mural Painters Society in 1932 or 19335)Typescript of the speech, Ezra Winter Collection, Archive of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, p. 22., Winter talked about how he operated his studio. He commented that union painters tended to have work that was too standardized or too stylized. But, he said:

Among the non-union assistants which I did use in my studio I have always found them so individualized in the character of their work that I could depend on them to do only certain things the way I wished to have them done.

What I am trying to bring out is that artists are all so highly and intensely individual and it is so good and healthy for them to be that way that any attempt at standardization of their work or their time or any outside control is bound to be a hindrance and a handicap to their work.

Isabel’s work for William Beebe, executing scientific illustrations of animals, showed spark and wit. Her animals had personality (see her rendering of a king vulture, below). Winter had probably already seen her work and noticed its qualities when he sought to bring her into his operation. Beebe also had reported on how hard Isabel worked during his expeditions.6)Review of various expedition journals at the William Beebe archive, Princeton University Special Collections He may have recommended her to Ezra Winter as a talented and efficient staffer.

An illustration of a king vulture by Isabel Cooper7)from the author’s collection

The Ezra Winter studio payroll records at the Archive of American Art span 1933-36, which is a period after Isabel no longer worked for him. They show he paid his staff artists between $25 to $60 per week.8)Review of unpublished records in the Ezra Winter Collection, Archive of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. But Isabel wrote in a letter to Charles Mahaffie (see below) that she “worked on time” for Ezra Winter, and was able to mix work for him with other projects. She earned $1,200 at Winter’s studio in 1927, as reflected in her tax return.9)Tax document in the author’s family archives. I don’t have records to show how many weeks of 1927 she worked in the studio.

That year, she also earned $900 from the Encyclopedia Britannica for illustration work, $2100 from the American Museum of Natural History, (for her murals and diagrams for their exhibits), and $1400 for miscellaneous decorating commissions. Her income in 1927 was $6,000. That equates to an estimated $113,859 in 2026.10)using the calculator here: https://smartasset.com/investing/inflation-calculator

A “haven for giddy frolic”

A biographical series of articles by Jessica Helfand on Ezra Winter in the Design Observer relate that Winter and the naturalist William Beebe were close pals. They used Winter’s Grand Central studio for parties.

With his pals Bill (William Chadbourne, a lawyer) and Will (the zoologist William Beebe) Winter soon transformed his studio into a haven for giddy frolic. The parties became a palpable means of escape for the serious painter — a place to dance and dress up, to flirt and cavort and forget, for a few hours, about all the pressing obligations that otherwise circumscribed his days. These soirées proved a kind of temporary escape, a respite from ordinary life to the extraordinary world of make-believe.11)Jessica Helfand, “Ezra Winter Project, Chapter Six,” Design Observer, June 1, 2012, https://designobserver.com/ezra-winter-project-chapter-six/

Winter’s studio, and his fame, brought lots of people to visit, including for regular costume parties. The landlord, owner of The New York Central Railroad, took issue with Winter’s use of the space for parties and for his use of it as an apartment. He denied having more than the rare party there, and claimed he only slept in the studio over night occasionally when he worked late. But even the gossip columns noted he had an apartment there.12)From various newspaper gossip items and articles, and a review of the Winter archive at the Smithsonian Institution.

For key commissions, Winter turned to Isabel

Section of Ezra Winter mural US LOC Reading Room13)Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. North Reading Room, west wall. Detail of mural by Ezra Winter illustrating the characters in the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/2007687083/

Isabel proved her skills to Winter. He gave her work to do developing his concepts for mural scenes from his rough sketches through final painting and installation.

Among the projects where she did substantial work were the Willard Straight Hall at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and the Birmingham Public Library, Birmingham, Alabama.

Isabel and colleagues developed Winter’s sketched designs for those installations into complete murals. He trusted key staff, including Isabel, to flesh them out into complete murals. Below is a scene she worked at Cornell based on Winter’s instructions. She described the Cornell assignment in a letter to Charles Mahaffie in 1926:

You are perhaps wondering just what the dickens I do. Well, this morning, for instance, the inarticulate creature showed me a vast expanse of blankness, about ten feet square, and said to sketch up full-size an intelligent-looking Chinaman, a pile of treasure, and a black tiger, and ease them gently into each other with some inoffensive-looking shrubbery etc. Idea of the group: ‘wisdom and wealth.14)Letter from Isabel Cooper to Charles D. Mahaffie, March 1, 1926

Mural by Ezra Winter, executed by Isabel Cooper, at Willard Straight Hall, Cornell University15)postcard in author’s collection

More in Isabel’s words about this work and Ezra Winter, excerpted below, comes from letters she wrote to Charles between 1925 and 1926. They give a flavor of what she thought of the work, and of Winter.

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Isabel Cooper writing about Ezra Winter and her work for him, 1925-1926

Isabel lived in Manhattan (and also traveled with the William Beebe expedition for about seven months in 1926). She exchanged several letters a week with the man she married a few years later, Charles D. Mahaffie, who lived in Washington, DC.

Below are quotes from Isabel’s letters to Charles Mahaffie that are about Ezra Winter.

December 1, 1925

Tonight I am going to the ‘varnishing’ of the Centennial Exhibition of the Academy with my favorite mural painter, a lanky, vague, artistic, and amazingly capable creature.

Later that night Isabel added:

An assorted crew floated back to the capable mural-painter’s for coffee. Stayed well on into this morning, having the kind of talk which gets nowhere and you can’t remember what it was all about, but the fact remains it was a very jolly slice of talk all the same.

She went on about Ezra Winter:

Mural-painter, the complete host, never says a word, but just shoves edibles and smokes etc. around and looks at you (and probably others as well) as if you were the only person in the room. Nice simple way to please every one. . .

February 3, 1926

By later that winter she was in Winter’s sights as a someone he wanted working for him. She wrote to Charles:

I had planned to work hard as anything in the days and go to the theater every night for the next few weeks, but it now transpires that the nice Winter person . . . being duly impressed with my junk in the architectural show, wants me to plunge into some stupendous decoration job with him, for as long as I want to work at it. Murals, I believe, with a great deal of detail, at which I shall be put. Rather interesting for a while, so I shall shove my own work into the evenings and my reading into the smallest hours and my numerous demanding friends into meal hours.

February 12, 1926

My job is pretty good. I run up and down ladders etc. The murals are about 40 by 20 feet. It is fine to have the ladders. They get you out of the cold draughts. It is a most diverting place, with a variety of persons working at a diversity of things, and odd lots of musicians barging in and out and playing mostly very well on a very beautiful piano which hasn’t got rheumatism yet from the ventilation.

Job has the advantage of being flexible. I work on time, so that I can adapt it to my other activities rather well. Am managing better than you might suppose with my busy life.

February 17, 1926

Am starting some color work on the sketches for the murals, and what do you suppose they use for a medium? A pestilential mixture, dating from the Renaissance period, of raw eggs and vinegar and varnish, all nicely merged with the paint to make it stick or something.

March 1, 1926

A few weeks later, she wrote:

My odd job still interests me. The mural painter is really quite a person. One sees how he came to take the Prix de Rome. He has mastered the art of working hard, and appears to know exactly what he is about. But he can’t explain in words how he wants things done. Lots of men are like that, so I think up out my head what he wants, and then when he comes round and says how nicely I have caught his idea, I merely look duplex and docile.

You are perhaps wondering just what the dickens I do. Well, this morning, for instance, the inarticulate creature showed me a vast expanse of blankness, about ten feet square, and said to sketch up full-size an intelligent-looking Chinaman, a pile of treasure, and a black tiger, and ease them gently into each other with some inoffensive-looking shrubbery etc. Idea of the group: ‘wisdom and wealth.

And I discovered in some delightful archaic literature (the man has a really wonderful art reference library) confirmation of the use of a black tiger guarding treasure—ancient Chinese symbol of wealth.

You understand that the symbolism in murals is always very fatuous, but by the time the thing is all done and up on the wall 90 percent of the people passing it never see it, and the other 10 merely receive an impression of a jolly pattern of colors and lines and let it go at that. So the artist and his assistants can amuse themselves with the ideas to be portrayed, with the additional comfort of knowing that probably no one will ever come forward with criticisms.

The work on these enormous sketches is really rather a lark, particularly so because they leave me alone and let me mess along by myself. And the studio is a most amusing place. Several of my friends who are thoroughly “grata” with the boss have taken to dropping in to chat with me, having discovered that I am never comfortably at home any more. Some of them come and play on the piano by the hour, which is nice. Better than the tinned music which the German draughtsman keeps going.

March 30, 1926

A particular Ezra Winter commission she worked on was for Cornell University. On March 30, 1926, she wrote Charles:

Did ten hours straight at the studio yesterday and today. Am still engaged up on the drawings for the memorial at Cornell. A very hard job, and getting harder and more interesting all the time. My boss is very calm and unruffled about his work, and turns overall all sorts of stuff to me without reflecting that perhaps I am not perfectly adapted to carry it out. So it us up to me to make good regardless. Am now working on a group of Chinese having a chat with a sort of glorified Marco Polo in a grove of brilliant trees, with a mountain range in the back ground. And what sort of occupation is that for a grown woman. . .

May 6, 1926

As the year wore on, Isabel found herself doing lots of varied work, including, but not only, for Winter. She wrote Charles on May 6 that she:

had a business talk with my boss in which he urged me to give him as much of my time from now on as I intend to spend wage-earning. As you may have noticed, I am fairly casual about wage-earning. Just work enough to pay for my overhead and upkeep . . . and put in the rest of my time at more variegated pursuits, so that the sketchy character and excellent pay of the mural work will really suit me quite well. It will be only as permanent as I want it to be, which isn’t very, and as adaptable as I choose, and on my own terms.

She went on to say:

The gentleman has won some competitiveness for some ceilings, with much architectural detail, and also some historical panels. A lot of research work required for all this, which I can attend to while he is absent upstate . . . It seems like an excellent way for me to cash in on my very diversified artistic training and at the same time acquire a few dependable odds and ends of income, which seem necessary to me at present.

May 9, 1926

A little over a week later, she shared more on the Cornell murals:

Have been working very hard. There seems to be no end to these Cornell frescoes. Have been engaged for several days upon the foliage, as I were, of a truculent and pompous old phoenix who is to be strolling in the middle distance of the section representing ‘creative imagination.’ Other features of this group are a lady poet, a handsome sculptor, and a pondering mathematician, all pretty well draped in neo-Greek style without being really dressed, any of them. The boss is having some trouble adapting the mural-painter’s tradition of classical undrape to the needs of a co-educational institution full of mocking young persons.

And their continued to be parties at Winter’s studio. She added:

There is a big blow-out at the studio tonight, which I am wholly omitting. Crowds and crowds of people I don’t much fancy, and not one of them as stimulating on the spot as you, even at the end of an endless line of railway tracks.

May 18, 1926

She wrote about her techniques and the art of mural painting as well:

It [mural painting] will be a problem of continued adaptation of me and of art. And, Chass, I have been doing that for such ages. I invented and maintained standards of drawing techniques adapted to the needs of tropical research in the field, and worked out a graphic type of surgical chart. And of late I have been working hard for a man who doesn’t know what he wants until he sees it.

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Isabel continued to work for Ezra Winter, including on his panels for the Birmingham Public Library well into 1927.

Work with Ezra Winter was a lark for Isabel, fun, challenging, interesting. And it helped pay the rent. She supported herself as a professional artist until she married Charles in August 1928.

References[+]

The 1925 Arcturus Expedition’s Women Staff

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This entry is post 6 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

The picture below is a press photo from July 1925 showing the five women scientists and artists who staffed the Arcturus Expedition led by William Beebe, February to July 1925. My grandmother, Isabel Cooper, is at the right.

Marie P. Fish, Ruth Rose, Helen Tee Van, Lillian Segal, and Isabel Cooper, July 1925, upon their return from a six-month scientific expedition on the S S Arcturus to the Sargasso Sea, Panama, and the Galapagos Islands. They are holding a stuffed albatross

More about the five women
A lot more about Isabel Cooper may be found found here. More about each of Isabel’s Arcturus colleagues is in this post from a few years ago. Also, each of the five has an Wikipedia entry. Isabel’s is here.

The S S Arcturus and the expedition

The wooden steam yacht S S Arcturus, fitted out for oceanographic study, left New York on February 10, 1925 and sailed into the Atlantic Ocean. It found its way to the mid-ocean Sargasso Sea where explorer and naturalist William Beebe (1877-1962) and his staff sampled water and sea creatures at various depths.

Gear on the ship could sample as deep as three miles. Doing so meant spooling out a half-inch cable from where it was wound in drums for three hours. It took three more hours to bring up the sample. The women artists and ichthyologists aboard set to analyzing and illustrating the samples immediately. Here is a post on Isabel Cooper’s work as a ship-board scientific illustrator on the Arcturus Expedition.

The ship discovered some of the first (very) deep sea fish species. One of the reasons to have artists along was that color photography had not yet been perfected, and fish could change in color, shape, and condition once brought out of the water, an issue particularly for fish evolved to live at extreme deep-sea atmospheric pressures. So the artists painted and drew them immediately on the ship.

The expedition continued to Panama, and passed through the Panama Canal, sailing into the Pacific Ocean to the Galapagos Islands for further exploration. It returned to New York City at the end of July 1925.

Why all the women?

William Beebe in 1925

William Beebe favored hiring women for his tropical research stations and ship expeditions. My grandmother, Isabel Cooper, worked for him in the late 1910s through much of the 1920s.

Hiring women and recognizing them for their professional expertise was not typical then. I’ve often wondered why Beebe not only hired women, but seemed to prefer to do so. It’s hard to avoid wondering whether Beebe also had a romantic interest in some of the women.

I’ve posted before on Beebe and the women he employed in this post: “I let too many girl pictures get by me”. But I think there is more to explore.

Prior to the Arcturus Expedition, William Beebe gave an above-board reason to employ women staff. He noted that he “preferred working with women and that ‘If it were feasible I would have my entire scientific party made up of them…Fine minds are as necessary in modern research exploration as fine courage. It is easier to find fine women than fine men.’” 1)From: Cohen, Gene (November 21, 1924). “Women plan to chart ‘port of missing ships’ and to strip Sargasso Sea of its secrets”. Americus Times-Recorder. (Americus, Ga.) . He wrote another time that it was what was “above the ears” that mattered; knowledge, intelligence, and judgment.

It’s likely he first saw the professional competence of women through his collaborations with his first wife, Mary Blair Rice. They collaborated closely in studying pheasants and publishing treatises on birds.

For Beebe, the women collaborators at his first research outpost in Kalacoon, British Guiana (now Guyana) strengthened his perspective on women as colleagues. He recruited more women colleagues as he grew his work exploring nature with research stations in South America, and ship expeditions.

By the time he was planning the Arcturus Expedition, he had found a number of leading-edge experts in fish and other wildlife, and in the artistic illustration of animals. Most of them were women.

Were there affairs among the staff?

That Beebe later had an affair with an expedition colleague (while he was married) suggests that affairs among these colleagues happened. But like my father, Isabel Cooper’s son, before me, I am left without a conclusion about whether Beebe and my grandmother ever had one.

The men and women of Beebe’s staff were young, educated, progressive, modern people. There could have been and almost certainly were multiple shipboard affairs and romances on Beebe’s expeditions. And they didn’t have to just involve Beebe.

What matters most is that throughout Beebe’s years of research and exploration, women contributed centrally to his work and were vital to the expeditions’ success. Nothing that happened socially on his expeditions should in any way reduce what happened scientifically and professionally. In other words, if there were affairs, good for them.

References[+]

“Dad, can I get a monkey?”

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This entry is post 15 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

“Dad, can I get a monkey?”
“Why not?”
“Monkeys are awesome!”
“It could be my service animal”

Versions of this echo in homes everywhere. And Dad or Mom keeps saying no.

But in our house, there was a hitch. On our living room wall are watercolor portraits of two monkeys done by Isabel Cooper, my grandmother, both from her visits as a scientific artist to British Guiana. One is a marmoset, named Sadie Volvisch, painted in 1921. The other is a spider Monkey, named Mishkin, painted in 1922. Russia, or maybe immigrant New York City, was the go to place for pet monkey names for the New York Zoological Society’s Department of Tropical Research staff.

Mishkin, by Isabel Cooper

Sadie Volvisch, by Isabel Cooper

My son didn’t just ask for a monkey once, it became a refrain. At some point he started, when he said it, to glance over at the pictures. And in a moment of failed parenting, I mentioned, “your great grandmother had monkeys, those are some of them.”

Sinbad, by Isabel Cooper
Sinbad, by Isabel Cooper

Monkeys entertained Isabel and her colleagues in the jungle camps of the New York Zoological Society’s Department of Tropical Research, and on the ships they sailed on. One, Sinbad (sometimes spelled Sindbad), was especially a star.  He was a black spider monkey, acquired in Panama by the 1923 Harrison Williams Expedition to the Galapagos. William Beebe bought Sinbad in the streets of Panama, where he had found the monkey being mistreated by locals. Sinbad proved to be affectionate, smart, inquisitive, and fun-loving. He was the first monkey that she ever knew that laughed, wrote the expedition historian Ruth Rose.i

William Beebe also bought Chiriqui, a cebus or capuchin monkey–the type used by organ grinders, when the 1925 Arcturus expedition visited Panama on its exploration of the Galapagos.

And it turns out that Isabel kept a monkey, a red spider monkey, possibly Mishkin, pictured above, in her New York City apartment. This was likely when she lived at 136 West 65th Street, now the site of Lincoln Center.

Isabel Cooper with Sinbad
Isabel Cooper with Sinbad

But her spider monkey proved a bad fit as a house pet. Before long, Isabel’s apartment house neighbors complained about the “fog horn” they were hearing. It was the monkey, and it was late at night. She had to evict him to go live at the Bronx Zoo. I like imagining Isabel stepping out on Columbus Avenue and hailing a cab, the monkey at her shoulder.

I’ve tried to be clear on this last point my son, but I don’t think he’s convinced a monkey can’t be a good pet. His great grandmother had monkeys, and besides, monkeys are awesome!

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i Ruth Rose, quoting a book by William Beebe, Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 1924.

It pays to go to parties

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This entry is post 14 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

In the mid-late-1910s, Isabel Cooper was living in Greenwich Village and working at artistic odd jobs, looking for something different.i [For that part of her story, see: “Resisting the homely snout of commercialism“]

Chance led her to find her way to entirely new experiences. And her story carries a lesson: you don’t know whom you’ll meet who might deliver you opportunity, adventure, or love. People Isabel met socially and through her work led her to all of those. It pays, it seems, to go to parties.

IC with Ruth Rose British Guiana about 1922
Isabel Cooper (r) with Ruth Rose in British Guiana about 1922

Isabel Cooper (r) with Ruth Rose in British Guiana, about 1922

Isabel was an artist, raised well-off and well-educated by Victorian aunts on the Upper West Side of New York City. At 21, she set off to make her own way, and worked in different design and art jobs in the city. But by 25 she was living for months at a time in jungle camps, painting reptiles for the naturalist William Beebe’s scientific expeditions.

How did this happen? Isabel recalled “an odd assortment of men and women to be instruments of fate” in her memior she wrote when she was in her 80s. William Beebe is part of that chain of seven who led her to meet her future husband, Charles Mahaffie on Christmas Eve, 1924.

The memoir gives thumbnails about of these drivers of fate, but she does not name them. Here is the sequence. Some we can identify, and their names are here:

  1. “A quaint little painter…who couldn’t paint” — likely Alon Bement, who taught at Columbia and led summer art institutes at Old Lyme, Connecticut. He also taught Georgia O’Keeffe.
  2. “A flighty young woman with one blue and one brown eye,” whom she met in the summer art class.
  3. “A visionary–a philosopher way ahead of her time, incomprehensible, whom I came to appreciate and understand as the years went on.”
  4. A man “notable for one thing,” he introduced her to:
  5. “A debonair character who seemed to have no special occupation or means of support
  6. “A famous biologist, part scientist and park faker…” “Faker” is a strong word, but William Beebe was more adventurer than credentialed scientist.
  7. Dorothy B. Putnam, “a festive lady who loved people, giving parties, and matchmaking.” Dorothy and her husband George P. Putnam introduced Isabel to Charles Mahaffie, who became her husband.
William Beebe
William Beebe in 1925

But first, Isabel had nine years of adventures in the tropics, living a life nearly unique for her times, let alone for young, single woman. Isabel met Beebe just as he was mounting the first his Department of Tropical Research scientific expeditions. Experienced with nature exploration, he knew the value of a gifted artist to his work.

Isabel knew of Beebe’s incredible knowledge of nature and was fascinated with his globe-spanning exploration. And “he was an enthusiast, and he cared nothing about money,”ii  So he could help her move her are clear of excess commercialism.

Isabel had told an American Magazine interviewer, “You must be enthusiastic,” she says; “it’s the enthusiasts who do things.”iii She saw that in Beebe, and surely he saw it in her.

Having met him, “one word led to another,” and Beebe hired Isabel to bring her skills along on his 1917 expedition to British Guiana. She ultimately traveled as scientific artist with Beebe on nine expeditions, including seven to British Guiana and two to the Galapagos. The adventures she had colored her interests and her art from then forward.

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i John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

ii John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

iii John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

Shipboard work for a scientific artist

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This entry is post 10 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

Isabel Cooper wrote a long article, “Fish Portraits,” on her work illustrating fish, hoping to get it published in Asia Magazine. It was not published. This post offers excerpts of that article, focusing on the work and working conditions, and leaving aside her colorful observations on the different kinds of fish she worked with. The full article manuscript is here: Fish Portraits by Isabel Cooper 1925 in a PDF.

What follow are Isabel’s words.

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The ship as a workplace

Our ship was exceedingly sturdy and staunch, and broad-beamed, and well adapted to the requirements of an ocean laboratory.

On the upper deck of the laboratory-proper, neatly wedged between a chart table and the ship’s laboratory, was my ‘studio’. This may sound a bit cramped and crowded; studios are supposed to be reasonably spacious, with plenty of swinging-room for brushes, at least. But I assure you that the more tightly a floating studio is wedged, the [more] beneficial for the work and nerves of the artist! These boundaries fore and aft, together with the wall on the port side, made three directions in which I could not roll.

Isabel Cooper at work on ship_Arcturus Adventure

Image from William Beebe, The Arcturus Adventure. New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1926

Possibly the most remarkable feature of my sea-going studio was the fact that it never remained quietly in one plane of space for longer than an instant….

By which mild and rather negative statement I really mean the gruesome fact that, in open ocean, the studio and its entire contents oscillated violently and almost continually through one, two, or three dimensions. This activity became really astounding at times. When the ship was merely slanting about, objects on my desk would develop the most interesting and intricate sorts of rhythm all their own. So you can see the necessity of keeping things as compact as possible. …

My immediate surroundings on the “Arcturus” were not bad at all, – if unusual. … To the starboard of my work-table was an open space which collected chairs and people, towards evening, and which was nightly rent asunder by the stress of arguments and discussions, – always the breath of life to me. And out of my wide, salt-splashed port there was continually to be seen the sea, – stormy Atlantic, or sparkling Caribbean, or slow, beautiful Pacific, with the comforting level of the horizon to furnish a refuge for my thoughts, at least, on tumultuous, busy days.

I had a great deal of trouble with my paints and inks and other rolling stock on board the ‘Arcturus‘. All these things would tend, in rough weather, to merge gradually into an indistinguishable mass, right before my eyes, – no matter how many new and fantastic tethering devices and halters and barricades I invented.

Imagine a desk which slants in almost any direction, or else revolves with a strange, shuddering corkscrew motion. And a working light which shines indiscriminately from east or west or north or south. And models who are mostly alive and swimming. And you will have a faint picture of my “Arcturus” studio. I am thinking especially of a wild morning in Mid-Atlantic, when I had definitely made up my mind that the elements were not to hinder me from finishing a special portrait. My desk had been long since hooked firmly to the deck. And I had worked out a complicated system of paddocks for microscopes, ink bottles, brushes, etc. My model was a very small and unprepossessing deep-sea fish, whose tiny aquarium was wired to the microscope slide. As far as I can remember my paints were safely sliding about in [a?] drawer. I was sticking to my chair in much the way that a rider sticks to a frisky horse, – a matter of knee pressure. But we struck a wave whose trough just fitted the wide sides of our ship. Which means that you roll as far as possible without actually turning over completely in the water. Whereupon I was projected across the room, several of my tools jumped the traces, a whole section of heavy scientific literature moved forward in a mass, and caught me amidship. A funny moment. I suppose the microscope must have looked like the Campanile in an earthquake, with a strange pale little fish spinning off through space like a lost soul.

I was obliged to study new phases and phenomena of gravitation which had never before troubled me. And not the least of these concerned the control of my subjects. In order to achieve sketches to suit the scientists’ purposes the fish had to pose alive. And they happen to be the most difficult models in the world. You cannot hold them still with any degree of comfort or success. They are nowhere near as easy to manage as my jungle models, the snakes and lizards and frogs of Demerara. Once you had a good firm grip on a snake’s neck the problem was solved. And some of the lizards and frogs would even sit still of their own accord and and look you angrily in the eye for minutes at a time.

Dealing with fish as subjects

There are just three ways to deal with fish. You can let them swim around in a glass tank, and regard them through the glass sides. Or you can have them flopping about in a pan of water. Or you can hold them up by the tail. If they swam, I considered myself lucky if they moved slowly and peaceably, allowing me a glimpse now and then of the pose which I wanted. But they were much more likely to whirl about in a panic, stirring up a terrific surf in the aquarium, and gulping great gulps of fear and dismay. Or they jumped right out of the water, and landed, slime and all, in the middle of my drawing or my face.

Arcturus Adventure IC plate vi yellow tailed surgeon fish
Yellow-tailed surgeon fish by Isabel Cooper. From The Arcturus Adventure

The most becoming pose a fish can take is in profile, – so that you may catch the full, charming contours of his deficient brain-case, the backward sloping forehead, and the definitely receding chin. But this profile view is almost impossible to get. They prefer to gaze at you head on, concentrating all the sadness and distrust of their bulging, jeweled eyes upon you through the glass, and biting feebly at nothingness, with their strange skeleton mouths.

A fish model who is reclining upon his side in a pan of water is far from satisfactory. He either flops appallingly, or else dies, which is just what must be carefully avoided. When you find yourself with a really adaptable and congenial fish you may be sure it is dead! I arrived long ago at the point where I was willing to hold a fish up by the tail, through they are damp, slippery handfuls at best. But it is not often that I have been able to keep a firm hold upon a living fish. They have the most slithering of contours, as well as a violent power in their flat tapering muscles, against which the strength of the most capable human hand would not function.

The element of speed enters into almost all my work from living creatures. There is always some very good reason why the sketches must be completed as soon as possible. This enforced absorption in my work is an excellent thing, particularly at sea, where it serves to keep my mind off some rather pessimistic reflections upon the activity of the ocean itself, and the very comparative pleasure of working on ships.

The pleasure of the scientific artistic work

Parti-colored bumpheads by Isabel Cooper. From The Arcturus Adventure
Parti-colored bumpheads by Isabel Cooper. From The Arcturus Adventure

I wonder whether I will be understood when I remark that the satisfaction of turning out accurate drawings of these diverse and beautiful creatures of the sea was only enhanced by the rather exceptional difficulties involved. This is quite true. There was an extraordinary pleasure in bringing the precision of fine pen and brush work to the many problems presented by silver scales, and transparent fish finds, and weird iridescence of sculptured fish faces. And all this amid wind and rain and tossing salt spray, in a tiny studio that swung and eddied through space, entirely without benefit of gyroscope!

Art for work, art for play

Isabel was ever the artist, so even when she was not doing her work, she drew and painted. She wrote about this to Charles:

“Island of Indefatigable, alias ‘Santa Cruz’.

My procedure in this harbor is to go ashore early and mess around with feeble landscape sketching ’till it gets too hot even for my sun-helmet, then return to the ship and work all day, except when I play hooky and read or talk or just keep cool in a bathing suit.”i

i Letter, IC to CDM, from Indefatigable, April 10, 1925.

Living on the Arcturus

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This entry is post 9 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

Arcturus diagram

 Arcturus diagram, Popular Science, May 1925 [a click will enlarge image]

This post shares a little about shipboard daily life on the Arcturus. A later post will be about Isabel’s artistic work aboard the ship.

Isabel Cooper got on the Arcturus at Newport News, Virginia, in Mid-February, 1925. The Arcturus sailed first into the mid-Atlantic to investigate the Sargasso Sea. The ship spent about a month in the Atlantic.

Then the expedition passed through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific where William Beebe’s goal was to study the Humboldt Current and return to the Galapagos waters for further study.

Isabel returned from Balboa, Canal Zone, on the Kroonland, along with Dorothy and David Putnam and a few others, leaving on June 24, 1925, and arriving in New York on July 1st.i The Arcturus continued briefly back into the Atlantic and did some dredging off New York.

Life aboard the Arcturus

Isabel Cooper wrote dozens of letters from the journey to Charles Mahaffie, reporting on her experiences and her colleagues.

She had journeyed by ship six or seven times before, on trips to British Guiana, and once prior to the Galapagos on teh Noma in 1923. But this was to be an extended ship-board expedition, and daily life on the ship was a recurring topic.

Early in the voyage, a stop at Bermuda was possible. Though only six or seven days out, that brought thoughts of luxuries she already missed. In addition to the chance for mail and fresh vegetables, she wrote, “Should like a horseback ride. Also a shampoo, though this, of course, I do not mention. All very well for the womenfolk to be dainty and all that, but the processes by which this pleasant condition is achieved are merely tedious and call forth loud sneers on the part of the gentlemen, who can see no reason why you should waste valuable time in beauty parlors and suchlike.ii“

The daily round took up a routine pattern: “I am dreadfully busy: breakfast at 7:30; sketching from 8 to 12; luncheon; more sketching; snatches of reading, etc., when there is not a rush of work; dinner at 5:30, to let the stewards and mess boys get through their pretty hard day as early as possible. Evenings spent in different ways. Sometimes the more learned members give lectures on something–‘jaw bones of eels,’ or something equally stimulating. I mend socks while this is going on… Most evenings, however, I put in at my little flivver of a typewriter. I have an idea of an essay and am working on it.iii“

A New Yorker, “Talk of the Town” account reported a shipboard day this way: The staff “will see each other three times a day around the dining table. For the rest of the day each expects to be so busy with his own work that meeting in the evening will be an event. And from the number of gay shawls and scarfs most of these events promise to be gala.”iv

In other letters to Charles, it’s clear Isabel liked to get proper exercise (as she exhorted him to do repeatedly). On the ship, she looked for chances to do that: “We had one beautiful calm day, nothing but big slow swells. So we climbed over the side on a rope ladder and took a swim. Glorious! It is so hard to get enough exercise on a boat. I have found a substitute for parallel bars: the upper rods of two enormous deep-sea dredges which are now stored in the hold. So I am managing to get thoroughly shaken up at least once a day.v“

As the journey wore on, she didn’t give up the idea of simple luxuries.

“Economy of a life aboard ship is an extraordinary thing. You forget all about bath salts and pleasantly varied temperatures of fresh water in the gruesome problem of finding some combination of alkalis and fats which will consent to dissolve in cold salt water. Eating, too, loses its complex civilized charm. I haven’t seen a leaf of lettuce for weeks, and that is hardship for me! Also, the oranges and apples are becoming more limp and dejected every day. One of the ice plants has cashed in. Result, much meat overboard, and no cracked ice. But as the food deteriorates, our appetites improve. Ratio keeps about even…vi“

Seasickness

Arcturus press photo 1925

The Arcturus, 1925 press photo

An book on Beebe’s work says that Isabel suffered from seasickness (and malaria, which she told me still gave her occasional fevers when she was in old age). “Isabel deserved special credit, as she endured repeated bouts of malaria and never ceased to grow hopelessly seasick whenever there was a swell. The weight and stability of the Arcturus made deep dredging feasible, but the Atlantic was uncooperative. Distant storms produced deep rolling swells that made life miserable enough, but as soon as the captain stopped to make the detailed soundings necessary for dredging, the Arcturus turned across the swells and wallowed miserably, sending Isabel to her cabin with plenty of company.”vii

Isabel didn’t confess to suffering it in her letters to Charles, though she reported sharing her seasickness “dope” with others. She told Charles the “fish sculptor [Dwight Franklin] has been quite consistently green in the face since we left and is afraid to take my dope. Funny thing for a man to be scared of something a mere slip of a girl is able to toss off quite naturally.viii“

But to whatever extent she suffered from seasickness, Isabel kept at her work, and completed hundreds of illustrations for the expedition.

_______________

i Passenger manifest, familysearch.org

ii Letter, IC to CDM, from aboard the Arcturus, February 17, 1925,

iii Letter, IC to CDM, from aboard the Arcturus, March 1925 (date not given).

iv “Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, February 21, 1925.

v Letter, IC to CDM, from aboard the Arcturus, March 1925 (date not given).

vi Letter, IC to CDM, from aboard the Arcturus, April 10, 1925.

vii Carol Grand Gould, The Remarkable Life of William Beebe Explorer and Naturalist, Island Press, 2004, p. 244, 247.

viii Letter, IC to CDM, February 18, 1925.

“The diving helmet, a most enormous lark”

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This entry is post 8 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper
Beebe in diving helmet_Arcturus Adventure
Image: The Arcturus Expedition

William Beebe was keen on close observation of nature, an approach he began with the study of birds, and intensified in the jungles of British Guiana, where he’d map out a small patch of jungle so as to examine and catalog everything he found in it. He had the habit of laying on his stomach on the ground or on a rock to see the tiny details of plant, animal, and insect life most people wouldn’t notice or care to understand. Scuba hadn’t been invented, and other than glass-bottomed boats, and crude scopes for peering just below the surface, the diving helmet was the best way to bring that kind of observation under the water.

He commissioned several helmets for the 1925 Arcturus Expedition. Beebe wrote at length about his dives. But here we focus on the perspective of expedition artist Isabel Cooper, for her unique artist’s perspective, so below is mainly her reporting.

Isabel Cooper, expedition scientific artist, described for Charles Mahaffie the singular experience of going down in the diving helmet:

“I should like to hear what you would have to say about my latest amusement, I have been down in the diving helmet, a most enormous lark to my way of thinking, though I was pretty scared the first time. It is a nasty feeling, having the heavy contraption put over your head and weighted all around with about 60 lb. of lead. Then you begin to sink, while a trusty friend on the bank above pumps air and the water level rises slowly on the glass facade of the thing. You get an unpleasant thickish feeling in your ears, as if you were going through a bad tunnel. Also, the air keeps bubbling out around your shoulders. You can’t have the thing sealed on, because the most important detail is ducking quickly out when you see a shark and swimming to the surface. Sounds bright, doesn’t it. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything to prevent the sharks from coming around, except that they haven’t yet, and a good safe precedent is being built up.

“You feel as foolish as anything under water. After you’ve been down a bit your feet become very light, and you can’t keep them down. They simply waft about in an aimless way, as do the arms of Greek dancers. Also, everything gets distorted. Rock ten feet away looks as if you could touch it. You make a lunge toward it and find yourself flapping around like a jellyfish with an extremely swelled head.

“I went down first in a beautiful deep rock pool. Very outlandish. It gave me the creeps. Dorothy [Putnam] pumped the air for me. Everything looked spooky. Green and marvelously clear, with droves of fish sliding past. The silence is the most uncanny part. Also [the] fact that you can’t realize wetness. Funny-when your face is dry and you are out of touch with air you don’t seem to be able to feel water. Perhaps this is because the warm tropical water is just body temperature. But it seems merely like some strange dull flowing element, with broken light rays all through it, and a sort of molten silver mirror for its upper surface.

“Second time I went down they were trying to get moving pictures and kept poking me to signal about my next footstep etc. Also they got an idea that if they eased up on the pump there would be fewer distorting bubbles, whereupon the water in the helmet rose over my nose. Rather disturbing for a bit. Made me glad I had the end of the lifeline handy.

“…Dorothy went down. Don’t think she liked the idea at all, but of course she was a sport, as usual, and did it anyway. The pumping is a real job. You begin to realize just what concentration is. If you get absent-minded for a few seconds, the diver chokes.i

IC diving helmet Brooklyn Daily Eagle 101825
Fanciful view of Isabel in a diving suit, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 18, 1925

And in a newspaper profile, Isabel wrote:

“I wonder what a fish would think of us, if he could think, and could be fitted out with an invention that would keep his own beloved element flowing comfortably through his gills, and could manage somehow to flop about among our trees and meadows and hills. I wonder whether he would consider our natural backgrounds artistic, if slightly antique, and our expressions unnecessarily cheerful, and our motions unaccountably jerky and sudden, considering how much less pressure we have to contend with in the space about us. He would probably be most interested in the racket we make. A fish is one of the few creatures in the world who do not feel obliged to express themselves with any kind of noise.ii”

William Beebe too reflected, at length, on the fresh, humbling perspective he got using the helmet several times: “If I were asked to prescribe for the worst case of sophisticated world weariness imaginable, I would without hesitation write ‘One diving helmet.'”iii

i Letter, IC to CDM, April 18, 1925.

ii Isabel Cooper, “Artist at Large,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1926, p. 93.

iii “Love, or Life of Adventure?,” Springfield Sunday Union and Republican,” February 21, 1926.

Isabel Cooper’s Arcturus Expedition colleagues

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This entry is post 7 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

BeebeNaturalist William Beebe assembled a rich mix of talents and personalities for the Arcturus Expedition. His staff showed a focus on the practicalities of a scientific expedition, with skills and scientific knowledge in place to explore and gather for a range of interests from microscopic plankton to deep ocean animals to sea birds. But in the mix too were a few distinctly interesting people who may have been along in part because he knew them as gregarious, fun, and adventurous.

The expedition staff numbered about eighteen. There were scientists, artists, a cinematographer, a historian, and several men brought along because they could build, fix and catch things. Some of the scientists were guest professors from universities, and others were from the New York Zoological Society staff.

Two staff were avid pirate enthusiasts. More on them [here]. Another became the president of the University of Miami. Two others later helped make make King Kong.

Here is the rundown, in places with an insight on their colleagues from William Beebe, expedition artist Isabel Cooper, or 12-year-old David Putnam.

John Tee VanJohn and Helen Tee Van

Beebe’s close assistant was John Tee Van of the New York Zoological Society. John had started working at the New York Zoological Society at age 14. He later became its general director.

Helen Tee Van, married to John, was one of the scientific artists. She was the daughter of Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony. She and John were long friends of Isabel Cooper’s after her scientific work ended. Isabel wrote in 1928, that Helen was one of her dearest friends.i The Tee Vans had also been part of the earlier Department of Tropical Research expeditions with Cooper.

William Merriam

William Merriam is variously described on Beebe’s expeditions as “Chief Hunter” and “Field Technician.” In Galapagos: World’s End, about the earlier expedition to the Galapagos, Beebe calls him “Our hunter in chief…the most enthusiastic and ingenious worker who ever outwitted fish, flesh or fowl…ii”

David Putnam, the teenager who traveled on part of the journey, wrote that “In the forward part of the ship there are two rooms fitted out as shops, one belonging to Bill Merriam, the general handy man, who always mends the nets, shapes a new dredge, puts another seat in one of the rowboats, makes a lobster pot, or fixes the motor boats.iii”

Dwight FranklinDwight Franklin

Dwight Franklin, a trained artist, is noted as “Assistant in Fish Preparation,” modeling plaster casts of some of the specimens, and painting them in their natural colors. Dwight Franklin was a sculptor and model maker. David Putnam summed up Franklin’s Arcturus work: “Dwight makes wax moulds and plaster casts of fishes and preserves them, as well as making drawings and paintings.vi” [Image: Dwight Franklinv]

Elizabeth Trotter

Elizabeth Trotter, “Assistant in Fish Problems,” was also an expedition artist. She was from a wealthy Philadelphia family and Beebe acknowledged William Trotter, her father, as an expedition benefactor. Isabel wrote Charles about Elizabeth from Newport News before she got on the ship, “I have been very bright and have arranged to room with the nicest girl in the outfit, the Philadelphia ‘horse-woman,’ as the papers say, who has a nice look-neat, intelligent, and all that sort of thing.iv”

dickermanrevDon Dickerman

Don Dickerman was an artist, entrepreneur and a noted personality in the Greenwich Village community of the late 1910s and 1920s. Dickerman continued a long career after the journey as an entrepreneur, with pirate themed clubs in multiple U.S. cities.

 

Otis_Skinner_&_Ruth_Rose_in_PietroRuth Rose

Ruth Rose was a former stage actress. She served multiple roles for William Beebe, but chiefly was an recorder, historian and wrote about the journey for Beebe, authoring several chapters in his books. [Image: Ruth Rose with Otis Skinner in Pietro, Criterion Theater, 1920]

 

Ernest SchoedsackErnest Schoedsack

Ernest Schoedsack upgraded the Department of Tropical Research’s film capability to a full documentarian’s level, serving as cinematographer. The year after the journey, Ruth Rose and Schoedsack married, and she joined him in filmmaking, working as a screenwriter. He was an established documentarian, but went on to make King Kong (1933), Mighty Joe Young (1949), and other films. [Image: Ernest Schoedsackvii]

 

 

Jay Pearson 1925Jay F. W. Pearson

Jay F. W. Pearson was a 23-year-old ichthyologist who later was the second president of the University of Miami (1952-62). His expedition title was “Assistant in Microplankton”.

William K. Gregory

Dr. William K. Gregory was noted as “Associate in Vertebrates”. He was with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and also taught at Columbia.

Gregory BatesonGregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson was British, a 20-year-old, freshly degreed in biology from Cambridge, who later was noted for his work in Anthropology, and studied by most undergraduate anthropology majors. [Image: Gregory Batesonviii]

Serge Chetyrkin

Serge Chetyrkin was an immigrant from Russia, who joined as the taxidermist and “preparateur”. Isabel wrote: “The old Russian…Eats no meat, eggs, milk or butter. Used to act like that last year in South America, but we thought it was just his little way of avoiding monkey stew.” The real reason, she noted, was that the expedition’s perishables were in an increasingly unreliable chiller.

Lillian Segal

Dr. Lillian Segal was a biological chemist. She was on the trip “for the specific purpose of studying the methods by which the light [of deep sea fish] was produced…”x. Her expedition job title was “Assistant in Special Problems.” [Image: Dr. Lillian Segal (L) with Mrs. C. J. Fish, inspect the fruits of a dredgingix]

Marie Poland Fish

On the staff list for the Arcturus expedition, Marie Poland Fish is listed as “Assistant in Larval Fish,” though her husband C. J. Fish was on the ship, she was a marine scientist in her own right.

C. J. Fish

Dr. Fish was “Associate in Diatoms and Crustacea,” on loan from the United States Bureau of Fisheries.

D. W. Cady

Cady was the expedition’s doctor, but participated also in the exploring and collecting. Isabel Cooper wrote that he let her help with some of the ministering to cuts and scrapes the staff got during their work.

DBPutnam St Lucie Co Hist SocDorothy Putnam

Dorothy B. Putnam, the wife of Beebe’s publicist George Palmer Putnam, and her 12-year-old son David, joined the expedition in Panama for its exploration of the Galapagos Islands, Cocos, and the Humboldt Current in the Pacific. They were noted as among a small number of “Guests of Honor” who joined for part of the journey. [Image: Dorothy Putnam]

 

 

David B. Putnam

David Putnam, was the son of Dorothy and George Palmer Putnam. His publisher father sent him on the journey in part so he could publish a children’s account by David, which was published soon after the trip as David Goes Voyaging. [Image: David B. Putnam from David Goes Voyaging]

 

i Letter IC to CDM, February 18, 1928.

ii William Beebe, Galapagos: World’s End, 1924.

iii David Binney Putnam, David Goes Voyaging, New York, G. P. Putman and Sons, 1925, p. 7.

iv Letter, IC to CDM, February 13, 1925.

v Image from askart.com

vi David Binney Putnam, David Goes Voyaging, New York, G. P. Putman and Sons, 1925, p. 7.

vii Image: Findagrave.com

viii Image: http://www.genmedhist.info/reports/bateson_album/3200.jpg/view 

ix Wild Things, Blog of the World Conservation Society, www.wcsarchivesblog.org

x The Literary Digest, Vol. 86, 1925

 

“I let too many girl pictures get by me”

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This entry is post 5 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

Rising to a crescendo with the Arcturus Expedition in 1925, press stories spilled out about the women naturalist William Beebe had with him on his Department of Tropical Research expeditions. George Palmer Putnam, who headed the Putnam publishing company, led in driving publicity for Beebe, and he was good at it. He was married to a strong, independent woman himself, and later promoted, and then also married Amelia Earhart. Both men recognized the value and potential of women.

Beebe women staff 072124 B Daily Eagle
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 21, 1924

The wrong kind of publicity?

In early 1925, the publicity for Beebe may have gone too far, making his work look less than scientific. One researcher, Gary Kroll, interpreted exchanges between Beebe and Putnam as showing Beebe was upset, or at least that George Putnam thought so:

“The extent to which Beebe made [the Arcturus sensationalism] an issue is unclear. Beyond doubt, however, was Putnam’s almost paranoid perception of Beebe’s concern. As the Arcturus neared home, Putnam sent a telling letter to Beebe that describes to what lengths the two might have gone to preserve the professional representation of the expedition.”

‘You are tremendously nice in your attitude towards me in this whole matter and I appreciate it. I know perfectly well that often I blunder and do things which don’t altogether please you. But in the long run I think you are in reasonably good hands. In the first place, I grant that I let too many girl pictures get by me in that first batch and I know you didn’t like it. Anyway, henceforward the feminine element has been soft-pedaled satisfactorily. Perhaps we will smuggle say Dorothy and David and one girl ashore in the tug. If that does not prove practicable I think a stern order should go out from you, the commander, that the women are to be as little in evidence as possible at the landing. Certainly that none of them is to talk beyond the absolute necessities. The girls should say to the reporters ‘Dr. Beebe will give out all the information.’ And then poor Dr. Beebe, whether he wants to or not, will have to calmly take half an hour and sit down with the reporters and answer every damn question they want to ask. You may as well face the realization of that necessity. And then the young ladies can all disburse in their several directions and we will all be there to cooperate in soft pedaling them as much as can be. Not that there is anything reprehensible in it, but that from your standpoint is wisdom.’i”

Gary Kroll took this letter at face value, but it looks more like Putnam was exaggerating, or having a bit of fun. Most signs in Beebe’s actions and further publicity and publishing show that he not only held high the accomplishments of his women’s staff, he celebrated them, with exhibitions of Cooper’s art, and chapters in his books by Ruth Rose. They did not sneak the women (and the boy, David Putnam) ashore.

i Gary Kroll, Exploration in the Mare Incognita: Natural History and Conservation in Early-Twentieth Century America, PhD. dissertation, University of Oklahoma, Norman Oklahoma, 2000, p. 212.

“Well, I’ve lived near eighty years and I’ve read about it, but I never seen a woman in pants before”

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This entry is post 4 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

In the 1910s and 1920s, the Naturalist William Beebe worked with men and women and to a great extent, treated them equally. The women were adventurous, bold, and progressive in their outlook on their gender during a time when the liberation of women was just emerging. These were professional women, recruited to Beebe’s expeditions for their professional skills.

Arcturus Staff in Galapagos

Beebe employed a number of women as specialists for the Department of Tropical Research. At least one reporter asked Beebe about this.

“What does [William Beebe] think of women in exploration?

“‘If it were feasible I would have my entire scientific party made up of them, just as readily as not,’ he smiles in reply. ‘Fine minds are as necessary in modern research exploration as find courage. It is easier to find fine women than fine men.'”ii

But of course Beebe favored women for more than just their scientific work. He married several, and between and during his marriages had affairs with several more. He loved to dance and hold and attend parties and was a distinctly sociable man.

In his account of the Harrison Williams Expedition, Beebe wrote: “From behind a crag of grey-blue tufa, came one of the girls, swimming lazily, surrounded by all the marvelous fish, with herons and gulls watching her from the nearby lava, and frigates dipping low in flight t see what new fellow islander this was. It was a surprise to realized that she was a mere human, and not what the pool demanded–a mermaid.iii”

Here we can only speculate which one of the girls he meant. Perhaps it could have been any of them.

They dressed the part, favoring, trousers for the practicality, and as the men did, when suitable, bathing suits for work in hot climates and water.

Trousers were unusual on women then. A old British resident of San Cristobal Island (then called Chatham Island) visited the staff on the Noma in 1923. On disembarking, he said, “Well, I’ve lived near eighty years and I’ve read about it, but I never seen a woman in pants before.i”

i William Beebe, Galapagos: World’s End, New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1923, p. 189.

ii Gene Cohn, “Women Plan to Chart Port of ‘Missing Ships’ And Rob Sargasso Sea of Secret,”Winston Salem Journal, November 16, 1924.

iii William Beebe, Galapagos: World’s End, New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1923, p. 326.

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