5 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.
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.
