Dorothy Pulis Lathrop
by William C. Clarkin, Ph.D.
Born of an old American family whose ancestors immigrated to this country in the early colonial period (1634), Dorothy and her sister Gertrude were the daughters of Cyrus Clark Lathrop, an Albany businessman and founder of the Albany Boy's Club, and Ida Pulis Lathrop, a prominent painter in her own right. Gertrude wrote of her mother's influence on them both:
"It was our mother's enthusiasm and reverence for all things beautiful that gave us the eyes to see, and gave to my sister the wish to surround the fairies and animals in her books with an ... endless variety of plants and flowers... Our mother encouraged us to draw all through all our school days... father was a practical man who mistrusted art as a means of earning a living. It was he who insisted that any art
training... should lead to a teacher's diploma."
Three years at Teachers College, Columbia, where she majored in art, gave her such a diploma. After Teachers College, where she studied under Arthur Wesley Dow, Dorothy went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She joined a most distinguished company, indeed. Those who studied there (or taught there) were among America's most eminent artists: Thomas Eakins, Robert Henri, Joseph
Pennell, Mary Cassatt, Charles Demuth, William Merritt Chase. The Academy is America's oldest art school. Dorothy Lathrop's name would give more luster to the venerable school.
Dorothy did teach art for a couple of years but never cared for teaching. It was while teaching, however, that her determination to devote her life to art crystallized. One day, she and a fellow teacher were glancing through the pages of an illustrated book. Dorothy remarked that she wished she could draw like that. “You wouldn't be here if you could." was the reply of the other teacher. Dorothy's
reaction was typical: "I may not be a Howard Pyle, but what am I doing here teaching high school when I want to illustrate?"
Her first work was Japanese Prints for the Four Winds Company of Boston. Alas, the company went bankrupt, with Dorothy being unpaid. But then came Alfred Knopf in 1919 with the famous and beloved The Three Mulla-Mulgars. And she was off on her career! Of all the illustrations Dorothy did, those for Walter de la Marc moved her the most deeply. She loved the English fantasist's work, illustrating also
Down-Adown Derry (1922), and Dutch Cheese (I 93 I). Of The Three Mulla-Mulgars (1919), Llewellyn Jones in The Chicago Tribune, declared that her work for this book ",..placed her, at a bound, in the first rank of American imaginative illustrators." She herself realized what good fortune had come to her and was ever grateful to Alfred Knopf for giving her the Mulla-Mulgar book........ incredible luck for so young
and inexperienced an illustrator-this was my book. ... What a book to fall into the lap of a young illustrator."
As in so many of these tales, there is a quest, whether for a lost homeland or for the Holy Grail. There is always a lost one who must make a long journey to find his way-whether to Emerald City (The Wizard of Oz), the Antique Shop (Hitty) or to the beautiful Valley of Tishnar. The three Mulgars are monkeys without tails. Their father, a monkey prince named Seelem, has three monkey sons-Thimble, Thumb
and Nod, the latter being the hero of the tale. After the death of their father, they set out to find their uncle, Prince Assammon, the ruler of the Valleys of Tishnar. The three have many adventures and go through terrible perils-pigs, elephants, coccadrilloes, etc. beset them. They journey through the mountains of Arakkaboa, where icy trails and fighting eagles await them. Nod and his Wonderstone
bring them safely through all dangers. Nod meets the Water Maiden, who, though icy cold to the touch, is exceedingly lovely. Finally, the three discover the long-sought Paradise, the Valleys of Tishnar.
This was the story Dorothy was given to illustrate. She knew how much she owed Alfred Knopf. "...it is a long time since we have met, but I have not forgotten that it was you who first had faith in me." (November 21, 1935) But, it was Aniniak of the Bible which gave her the Caldecott Prize (she was the first person ever to win that noble award.). It was while accepting this award that she made a rather quixotic speech, telling her audience: "I can't help wishing that just now all of you were animals. Of course, technically you are, but only if I could look down into a sea of furry faces, I would know better
what to say. If only your ears were the movable kind that cock forward or prick to attention, I would know what kind of sounds to make-soothing murmurs ... little thumping noises..."
Dorothy was enormously fond of animals. In her speech, she quoted from William Blake:
A Robin Redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage
She closed her speech with the prophecy of Isaiah: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together." A beautiful but unnatural eventuality, and impossible (unless the kid shall be inside the leopard!) However, how much one may close one's eyes to the cruelty of the world, it is always there. Isaiah not withstanding,
how would the world go on if the shark did not devour other fish? What also would the boa constrictor do to fill its belly? Eat rocks? Eat and be eaten is the basis on which early life is based, sad though that may be to the Dorothys of this world.
However, it was the natural world, whether of animals or plants which gave Dorothy her great spiritual strength. "No one is more convinced of the unity of all life than the artist, who sits before its different phases so long and silently, seeing them in a great intimacy. He not only beholds the flower, but he feels the life that, even while he draws, unfolds the petals, senses the force that pushes new leaves
from the ground."
Many of the animals, birds, and insects drawn by Dorothy were from the locality-certainly the mice, also the squirrels, young chipmunks injured by a cat, turtles rescued from the highway-all came from the neighborhood. Dorothy herself wrote, "I catch my mice in live traps and release them in the woods and fields in which Nature intended them to live, but I kept two white-footed mice with great eyes and a
whisker-spread of at least three inches. I am making a woodcut of them. The chipmunks were most obliging and the porcupine wanted to sit on my lap and the tame gray squirrel rolled over and played a bit like a kitten..."
One of her old friends, interviewed for this article, spoke of her animals, "Dorothy did several books about raccoons. I think she had a couple in the Allen Street studio and I know they were at the Connecticut dwelling a sort of indoor-outdoor cage-a runway. Their outdoor quarters were not in the house proper. Flying squirrels were always a part of their ménage." This from Lucinda Johnson who
also explained away a mystery: Why did they sell their Newburgh house? "For a few years they had a place in the Catskills which they were planning to make a year-round home, when the artists' colony was run over by Hippies, or was it
"Beats" then?" Well, which opens a further question: Why did they move to the Newburgh area? Did they want to be near New York City? Nowhere in the letters or papers which survive and which this writer examined is there a reason given for the move to the Catskills. Certainly, they wanted to sell the Albany home. Their father died in 1931, and their mother in 1937. The old home was far too large for
them, especially since they had, when they returned from Europe in 1923, built their own studio among the apple trees behind the house. This was a large two-room structure, which they hoped would resemble an Italian cloister, but which they admitted had rather the appearance of a barn. In the early 1950's, they were desperate to sell the old house. They spent a great deal of time and money painting, papering -and generally working to a cosmetic effect to put the house in shape for a potential customer.
After many disappointments, they eventually did manage to sell the place. It had become a white elephant, since they were also buying a home in Under Mountain Road in Canaan, Connecticut the "Winter's" place.
As Lucinda phrased it:
“The road was like any farm road, all ruts and rocks… they installed a walk-in refrigerator [land] canned vegetables from the flourishing garden and fruits from their "Winter" orchard. [The "Winter" refers to Ezra Winter, the sculptor, who owned the place before the Lathrops and had nothing to do with the
season.] The house was not all on one floor but sort of a split level, being built to fit rather bumpy terrain... the studio on one end was enormous, about the size of a stable for sixty head of cattle... Winter's designer and completed an immense equestrian statue in it.”
Dorothy described her last, their final home, Winter's house on Under Mountain Road, in her last letter to Dr. Harper:
We are trying to sell our big, old family house here in Albany, having bought a smaller place in the country just below Canaan, Connecticut. Perhaps you know that lovely, mountainous region. Grouse come almost to our door, and we find deer tracks all around the pond and under our apple tree. Occasionally, we see them bounding over the fields at dusk. We love the wildness of it all. If only we
can train the hunters to leave the wild creatures and us alone! We have enormous cedar on the place. I wish you could have seen one little cedar tree as full of cedar waxwings as a Christmas tree of balls!
Despite their joy in their new home, it took rather a great deal of work to put it into shape. They reported to Doris Patee: "We came here several weeks ago and Gertrude is still laboring in the springhouse trying to stop the leak. For the first ten days we lived out of buckets for our water supply,
dragging the water directly from the spring, which is farther away. Unless you have tried it, you don't know how much water even a family of two plus a few little dogs, can use in a day!"
Her most successful book? It was probably Hitty-Her First Hundred Years. This was a book of considerable size, a children's book but a novel which would be enjoyed by adults as well, if only they would allow themselves to be entertained. Hitty was a doll, carved from Irish mountain ash, who lived in the state of Maine with the Preble family. Carved by the Old Peddler over a hundred years ago, she
had more adventures than Little Orphan Annie and more ups and downs than Richard Nixon. On board a whaling ship, the ship burned and Hitty floated to shore-became an idol in a heathen temple-was carried off to India. Lost in a Bombay gutter, she served in a snake charmer's act, was rescued by
missionaries and was finally brought to Philadelphia where she lived with Quakers. She had met the poet Greenleaf Whittier among the Quakers, and in New York City she fell at the feet of Charles Dickens who was giving his successful tour. After a train ride, she was lost in a hay barn to be comforted by mice and swallows. Ultimately, she adventured to New Orleans, dressed as a bride for
the Cotton Exposition. Stolen (again!); lost in the Post Office and finally (!) auctioned off for $51 to land in an antique shop in New York City (where Dorothy and Rachel Field found her).
It was, Dorothy maintained, her idea. Rachel was to write the text, with Dorothy illustrating it. Dorothy made the doll clothing while Rachel had a cabinet maker built a doll house. When the book was published, Hitty traveled from bookshop to bookshop, from library to library. The book was enormously
successful; the story being a fascinating series of adventures, covering as it did a doll whose life of a hundred years lasted from the days of whaling to the days of the airplane. However successful it was, it was also the cause of a certain coldness between Dorothy and Rachel. It was proposed to make a movie of the novel and Rachel, of course, claimed the lioness's share of the royalties. After all, the text
was written by her (the major part of the book). Dorothy Pulis Lathrop fought back vigorously, claiming correctly that the illustrations had made the book at least as much as the text. What Solomonic judgment could possibly have decided as fair split of the profits?
Dear Rachel, I had not realized that you thought my share in the work so negligible, and my share of the proceeds more than it should be. ... The idea… was originally mine… it seems only fair that I should have some share of the proceeds. You say that I will profit by the increased sales of the book. Yes, we both will I am afraid, no matter what sum you receive, you will always feel that I am taking the money out of your pocket.
Despite this conflict, Hitty made a considerable sum of money for Dorothy and for Rachel too. The book won the Newberry Medal in 1930 as the best children's book.
Dorothy, for all her fantasy, was a good business woman. Shrewd and down to earth, she could speak out forcefully when she felt the need to defend herself (and her pocketbook). She sparred as vigorously as she could with her main publisher, Macmillan. In a fight between a rowboat and a battleship, there is little doubt about the outcome. She was hardly in a position to fight a powerful firm like Macmillan. Again and again, Macmillan pushed down her recompense: "... to reprint and even keep a price of $2.75 which is very high ... for a book without color, we ... have to ask you for a cash received royalty. This
means 18 cents a copy which ... is only 2 cents less than you had when the book was published at $2.00. 1 can't promise ... that we will ... go ahead ... even on this basis..." (February 6, 1953). This reduction was for the book, Hide and Go Seek.
Even before this, some two years earlier, they had pushed down her royalties: "If we raise the price to $2.50 we are going to be just as badly off ... I hope you will be willing to hold the 10% royalty. The time is coming when we can not make any more contracts with rising royalties..." This from Doris Patee, Children's Book editor for Macmillan in the case of The Colt from Moon Mountain. And again, in 1954,
for the books Skittle Skattle Monkey and Puppies for Keeps: "Even if we make five years' supply of these books (which is against the rules) and raise the price ... we still can't pay you the royalty that your contract agreed to so long ago. We will ... have to let the books go out of print."
Dorothy, of course, was an individual bargainer in an age of collective bargaining. She watched helplessly in the Fifties as the unions fought with management for higher wages and fringe benefits, knowing that individuals had no such power as the unions. She could not go out on strike! The story had been different years before when in the Thirties she dealt with Macmillan: "... I don't see how I could
possibly make twenty-one drawings for $350. ... This is a much lower fee than I received for any book ... For the Little Library books each time I receive $500... For Stars Tonight, I received $800... I know these are bad times and all that, but the depression has brought me so many added financial obligations, some of them toward relatives in not of my immediate family, that I simply can't afford to tie up too much time for too little money." This to Macmillan, her main publisher (September 17, 1934).
In the previous decade, when she was not nearly so well established, she had flatly told her editor at Macmillan, "I don't ... see how I can undertake The Princess and the Goblin for $ 500. I am unwilling to cut down on the number of illustrations in order to fit into the sum you offer in whatever series the book was listed, I should have to have a good sum for the illustrations... This is the second book at this price
so I don't feel that I could cut that in half. since what you offer is the figure at which I began illustrating a number of years ago. Do please find a lot more money...... This to Louise Seaman (June 1, 1925).
Strong-minded Dorothy certainly was. Or, to put it another way, she was stubborn. Certain things were very important to her, especially her illustrations. She did not hesitate to take on even so important a person as Sara Teasdale. Again writing to Louise Seaman (September 1, 1930), "I hope Sara Teasdale had written allowing us to use the two drawings intended for full page as such. It seems to me that she
is exercising more power than is generally conceded to an author if she can override not only the illustrator but her publisher in the matter of illustrations. Do convey to her that I shall be far from pleased if she changes the size of my drawings." But in the same letter, not only the author but the
engraver has come under Dorothy's displeasure: "... look at the proof of the drawing for Summer Evening-the girl with the birds-and see that the engraver has sliced off the end of the girl's nose and so completely changed her nationality!" Louise at once wrote to say that Sara Teasdale had withdrawn her suggestion about the small pictures.
She was just as spunky some thirty years later, on February 22, 1953: "You would not have to ask me to take such a cut in royalties from 30 cents to 18 cents! This is too much to ask ... I hope you can refigure the costs to include a fair profit for the book's creator; illustrators and writers as well as publishers have serious money troubles." On April 4, 1953, she again wanted a larger royalty: 15% not
12 1/2%.
Now she was resolute in her other arrangements. She crossed out parts of her contract with Macmillan because that company wanted to retain ownership of the original drawings. After all, they were eminently saleable. Her drawings, colored or black and white, always fetched a good sum and she
wanted them for herself. Dorothy noted (letter May 15, 1930 to Stephen Fritchman) that the New York Public Library bought the Hitty frontispiece with money supplied by a friend of the library. The Albany Public Library also had one of her drawings (included in the exhibition) with money given by a benefactor. She received $ 1 00 to $150 for her water color illustrations and $35 to $75 for her black and whites. (This in the middle of the Depression!) She would donate to a public collection, cutting the
price in half if there was any donor available.
Again, writing to Marie Gaudette on December 25, 1935, she would sell the drawings for Who Goes There at the studio price of $50 each, while at various exhibits, they would be $7 5. These prices, for the Thirties was remarkable. And she did sell them! In a letter to Doris Patee dated December 29,
1935: "... I'm feeling so comparatively rich ... Why a week ago, I sold three color drawings!"
In the midst of her busy life, Dorothy as well as her sister had the normal and far from normal cares of the family. In January, she had written to Doris Patee that they had been having such difficulties the bills from the hospital were frightful and they kept rolling up! They had a ninety-one year old cousin in the hospital for ten and a half months with a broken hip, which they discovered was simply not healing.
They believed they would have to bring her home to care for her. That would be a burden! They also had another relative, an aunt, far gone in senility. She had to have a day and night nurses. Yet, she got out of bed and broke her hip. To bring her home would be just too much of a strain on their mother, who wasn't at all well. By February, Dorothy reported to Doris that the one whose mind was still alive had been taken by pneumonia into the next world. Ever practical, Dorothy opined: "The other one whose mind is very weak, and whom we would much rather have lost, has been reported dying for a month... ."
As a shrewd businesswoman, she even designed Christmas cards, but never for commercial Christmas card houses. For several years, she had such cards in various stores in New York City and Boston but in the middle Thirties, busy with her illustrations, she tried to give them up altogether. "I have always preferred to keep my hand on the paper and printing, even if it meant limiting my sales."
It was in the middle of the great depression that she painted one of her few murals, this for a Jack Johnstone of the Lord and Thomas firm. He was enchanted with her illustrations and proposed an animal painting for his newly built house in Connecticut. At first, he proposed an oil of young lions, tigers, etc., but this grew to a project in what was to be called "the nest" in the Lathrop Room. The
painting was executed on an arch on canvas mounted on a Masonite presswood panel. Nor was it tinythe width was 6 1/2' and the height about 3 1/2'. It had to be large since it eventually held a scene of a Hansel and Gretel rooftop, with a red chimney. A nest was held close to the chimney with a mother stork guarding a clutch of baby lions, baby tigers and leopard cubs. Also included were a baby deer, a
little hippo and (suggested) even a baby bear's head. In the distance Poppa stork is to fly in with a baby elephant.
Dorothy was to do the job for $700 (which again was a lot of money for 1936-casily the price of a Ford car!). Johnstone was, as much as Dorothy, in love with animals-he had wrought iron fixtures with geese swooping down after fish, mother robin feeding gaping young redbreasts, gulls diving into the ocean after herring. Even the newel posts in the hall were carved oak heraldic boars, unicorns, and griffins.
Other artists had paintings in the house as well, so Dorothy wasn't the only artist to have her work there. The owner told Dorothy, "...with many people, your painting is the most fascinating thing in the house... ninety percent of the folks who visit the house are more enamored of your painting that of any of the
others..." The project was proposed in early December 1936 and was finished in record time by early July 1937.
Animals, as we have seen, were central to Dorothy's life. This was true of Gertrude also-in fact, her friends alluded to her lambs, chipmunks, squirrels, monkeys, Pekinese, etc., as her "children." No doubt, they took the place of children in the lives of these unmarried women. One is forced to wonder: did they ever have suitors? Their father sadly noted in a letter to his cousin on May 12, 1927, "I have
not been accorded the pleasure and distinction of becoming a grandfather, a state of bliss I have envied in my other friends. Both Dorothy and Gertrude are wedded to art...
It was her father, practical in all things, who had insisted Dorothy train as a teacher. Dorothy had no love for that particular profession. Indeed, to those who do not love pedagogy, the profession can be a dreary and tiresome task. Dorothy had taught in 1917 in the Albany School of Fine Arts, where she taught design three days a week. The school was small, located at 52 South Swan Street. The
principal in charge pointed out the discipline problems and the keeping of marks was negligible. The following year she taught at the Albany High School, again part time-Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Evidently, her experience was not an especially happy one, as a letter to Louise Seaman tells us (May 5, 1926): "If you don't want to see me abandon ... illustration for the teaching of art to the
very young, tell me, if ... I am to count on you for a book next fall. ... I admit I am not all keen to teach and that all that interests me ... is the certain ... salary involved."
Evidently Louise Seaman answered "Yes" since we have a gushing letter of December 17: "I am not at all sure that you are not the nicest editor in New York City . ... It was ever so good of you ... listen to this, 0 Editor, and give me all the nice books you can think of...." Her happiness was completed by the sale of a painting. "Do you remember the flower painting I showed you one day in your office? It has been
hanging in the Academy and yesterday I had word that it had been sold. You could have knocked me over with a hummingbird feather, for it is the first thing I have ever sold in a regular art exhibition... I didn't work over a week on it and it sold for $250...... Never again would Dorothy resort to the tiresome business of teaching.
Dorothy certainly did not live in povertyville. She was, in fact, a very successful artist. By 1923 she had illustrated seven books (most of which are in the exhibition). The sale of her prints continued to swell the Dorothy Lathrop purse when the Brick Row Book Shop in New Haven sold her prints for the tune of
$754-not a small sum for that time. It was in 1923 that Dorothy and Gertrude went abroad-a trip which took them to England where they met (among others) Dorothy's hero, Walter de la Mare (of whom she made a drawing). Then they traveled to Italy and to Greece, saying, "we should like to have stayed for months."
It cannot be denied that Dorothy and her sister were vigorously opinionated beings, as people who are solitary frequently are. They practiced their art in solitude (some artists tolerated spectators, idle or otherwise standing about and gossiping in the studios-John Singer Sargent, for example). Dorothy, in her advice to a young would-be artist, asked: "Are you a gregarious person, one who likes constantly to
be with other people? ... Remember that art is a solitary profession." And, she warned, "People don't have to have art. ...see how many buy paintings, sculpture or even prints ... people think they must have radios, television, fur coats ... ask them why they don't buy a painting and they will stare at you as if you were mad.
Dorothy, strong-minded, gave her opinion freely, as Lucinda Johnson witnessed: "I used to meet both Dorothy and Gertrude at board meetings [of the Print Club of Albany]. They usually brought a large black poodle wearing a becoming hair ribbon and behaving beautifully. Lathrops were the somewhat dictatorial type of board members, but I think we all respected their attainments and connections
enough to agree with anything they suggested." As one who knows well the artistic type and has sat through many board meetings, this writer knows well how it was, even though he never (sadly) met either of these two dominant women.
It may be impossible to put together a complete pastiche of the life and works of Dorothy Lathrop. However, many of her papers survive and it is from these that one constructs various aspects of her life. As we have noted, Dorothy herself declared the artist's life to be a solitary one. Yet, from time to time she did indulge in a social life. From letter, dated November 28, 1930 she writes, "Mrs. [Franklin D.]
Roosevelt was here the other day for a little luncheon, and she spoke to me about seeing what you have done. She said something about not being able to get in touch with you for a little while, but is very eager to do it as soon as possible. You might call her secretary Of course, this was at a time when her father was very ill and would soon die. Reluctant as Dorothy must have been to break up her worktime (even for the Govemor's wife), she did, on occasion, go to a party. She was not immune to the enjoyment of other people. An undated letter to Helen Fish shows Dorothy at her gossipy best:
About the Macmillan… Louise was there ... sitting in a wheelchair Mrs. Hirschman was the perfect hostess,...triumphantly introducing everybody, and I certainly was never left stranded. Lynd Ward was there and I had quite a chat with his pretty little wife. Lynd, I had seen recently when we were on an art
jury together Padraic Colum was there, small and wizened, looking as if he should have been wearing a green coat and a peaked hat, an appearance enhanced by a tuft of hair on the very end of his nose. ... The Haders, but Elmer was in bed with a cold
After all, you see, not many persons of my vintage there. And I kept thinking of those others who should have been there-Rachel Field,. Elizabeth MacKinstry, Anne Carroll Moore, who so loved parties. ... It was a very conservative crowd. Only one hippie hair-do and beard- a poet someone said-and one pair of violent violet stockings on a very pretty young girl who sat on the edge of a table and swung her
pretty legs. ...Wish I could tell you more, but it is now only a pleasant blur of voices and faces, and was then.
All through the letters (especially those to her publisher), is the concern she voiced about the reproduction of her work. She was especially anxious over the new process (lithographic in nature). To Doris Patee, on December 3, 1935:
"I ... hope that the new printing goes through all right and that the printer isn't too confused by our talk so that he try to do anything radical.
... After talking with Artzybasheff and Elizabeth MacKinstry, both of whom had a book reproduced by this process ... I realize that there are limitations... that I didn't dream of. ... But anyway, the general effect is very good, and ... carries a softness and fur texture that no pen and ink drawing can hope for…”
A soothing letter came back the following week from Doris Patee: (Children's Book Editor, Macmillan Company)
"...I was not really upset about your talking to Elizabeth MacKinstry but I felt that she of all the artists I know, was the most difficult to satisfy with a lithographic process and that it was a bit untimely that you should see her in your state of mind. Of course we do all understand her and I have the greatest respect in the world for her opinions of anything."
(Elizabeth MacKinstry was an artist living in Lenox, Massachusetts. She had studied sculpture with Gutzun Borglum as did Gertrude, but after an accidental fall from a horse, was unable to perform the strenuous work required by sculpture. She turned to book illustration and calligraphy, instead. In these fields, she became a very fine artist.
One of the greatest services Dorothy performed was as President of the Print Club of Albany. She ruled the Club during the ferociously difficult wartime, keeping it alive. A few stalwarts helped her, especially the constant friend of the Club, John Taylor Arms. Her letters to him and his to her make for
fine reading. A mutual admiration society, these two splendid artists loved each other's work. It was, after all, Arms who, as President of the National Academy of Design, invited Dorothy to show her work at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. It was Arms who congratulated her on receiving the Eyre Medal (for Pixie-A Flying Squirrel) from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Dorothy's reply gives us
an insight into the wheels within wheels which turn and turn and turn ... .
"Dear Mr. Arms. ...You must know how delightful ... it was to receive the Eyre Medal and I do thank you and the committee for the honor. I have the greatest admiration for your work to have you on the jury which made the award The directors of the Print Club are to meet soon and we all hope to find a way ... to ask you this early to ... time to make a plate for us... ." (October 16, 1941, Albany). Arms replied that
it was impossible for him literal impossibility ... that organization of the Print Club] is especially dear to me... ."
Arms was one of the movers and shakers in the American print world, a man of vast influence in the world of American art. He was the President of the Society of American Etchers and as such invited Dorothy to become an Associate Member. He was, furthermore, the President of the American National Committee of Engraving. This committee set up exhibitions and enlisted speakers which was important for Dorothy's scheduling of events for the Print Club. But Arms regarded himself as a personal friend
and sent greetings to her not only from himself but also from
"Wilibald Perkheimer, my inseparable companion... a long, low dach who sent Dorothy a cordial tail wag and hand like. ... He is a gentleman of discriminating and distinguished taste!" To which Dorothy replied that the " ... pups appreciated the greeting from Wilibald Perkheimer ... the Bechtel's dachshunds, the first I every really knew to speak to, taught me to like the astonishing breed." Arms declaring in return
(February 12, 1944), "... while the Lathrop sisters have their fingers in the art pie of Albany, the city will always be distinguished in this regard."
In relation to the drawing of animals, Dorothy had her own philosophy. Writing to Harriet Hatch (February 20, 1935), she explained,
“... I am afraid that you and I think of animals in a different way. He likes to put human thoughts and motives and emotions in their minds and human words in their mouths. You like to dress them in clothes such a [sic] humans wear. I can only think of them as animals and, being animals, something quite wonderful as if they could talk and act as we do. I never make them talk. I never make them act
in any way that wouldn't be possible to them as animals. I infinitely prefer a turtle's shell with its beautifully intricate pattering, to pink talaton, and then cunningly graduated scales of his feet, to slippers, even silver ones.”
Again, Dorothy preferred to draw living things: (January 20, 1930) to Louise Seaman:
I have read the poems ... and I can't see a great deal to make drawings of. Poets can talk very convincingly of night and stars, and such things make very lovely poems, but when it comes to drawing night and stars and birds and flowers so that they make interesting drawings, that is a different matter. ... Some other things I feet much more confidence in my ability to draw. I'm having a grand time with a
full color sketch which has fairies and field mice and snails and toadstools and fireflies!
Dorothy was an excellent lecturer, and had many engagements to speak. One of the most important was arranged by Macmillan in November 1938. She left Thursday, November 3, on the Lake Shore Ltd., arriving in Chicago to call at the book department of Marshall Fields; then to Kansas City and on to Los Angeles arriving November 9 (Wednesday). Then began the fun! Her first public appearance in
California was at San Diego, where the Public Library was paying all her expenses, with a speech in the library, then a tea and then dinner. At the Long Beach Public Library with a dinner for school and public librarians, highlighted by Lathrop's speech. Then there was an autograph party at the Butlocks-Wilshire (the best book department in Los Angeles); then a school librarian's dinner and a talk. From then on it was one long whirl of teas, autograph parties, appearances at bookstores and libraries. Finally the tour
came to an end on November 22, with Dorothy taking off on the train for the East via the Grand Canyon and Santa Fe. The highest of high spots was the tour of the Walt Disney studios, where she was shown around by Walt Disney himself! What more could an illustrator ask for? Although Dorothy had to speak many times, it apparently wasn't as difficult as it appears since she could and did reuse the talk for the
Caldecott Medal. Also, she had the added support of Gertrude who traveled with her on this journey.
In all her prints, she tried to feature some animal in fact, the first woodcut she ever did was of her Pekinese. She did a drawing of the tiny dog, transferred it to a block and "holding my breath, cut it ... at no time have I had any instruction in ... that medium." To illustrate Walter de la Mare's Mr. Bumps and His Monkey , she bought a monkey since the nearest zoo was 150 miles away. "What a realist you
are!" wrote her editor when she told him she had bought the monkey. "I am glad I didn't send you a story about a lion!"
Despite the fact that, as she said, she had no instruction in woodcut, she won prizes for her work in that medium. In 1944, she was asked to make the Print Club print-a wood engraving. This turned out to be one of her most successful pieces-her famous Gold Fish. Her sister wrote of her wood engraving: "Between the making of books, she has turned to wood engraving and has already won four prizes for her prints. She enjoys the cutting of the blocks ... pulling the print ... under her own hand... the fantail
goldfish ... I remember thinking that this print would never be finished, for dozens of proofs were pulled and correction after correction made before she was satisfied ... with the laborious task of making each print of edition of 150 by hand." One of her finest pieces, Kou Hsiung, was the member print for The Woodcut Society.
Her difficulty was in selecting what to draw. In a letter to Helen Dean Fish, her editor from Frederick A. Stokes and Company (May 13, 1937):
“Well, here is the list. I have cut out the ones we agreed on and inserted the leviathan, the behemoth, and the scapegoat, I found a perfectly grand description of leviathan, Job, of course, all of chapter 41. ... I'll never be able to draw up to it! Talk about the sailor's tales of sea serpents! Job put it all over any of them. ... As for the eagle, I really don't know whether I like the Psalms or the Isaiah passages best. ...
As for the nativity, I lean very strongly to that with the animals rather than the Wise Men and the camels. After all, we've got Rebeka's camels. We have to use the Luke version, since that is the only one that mentions the manger. ... The Matthew version of the Palm Sunday ass, is much the nicest as for Peter's cock, you will have to decide. ... I lean to either Mark or Matthew.”
Earlier her plans had been explained to Helen (February 15, 1937):
“I hate to do the Prodigal Son and the Pigs because Helen Sewall has done such a ... beautiful picture of that. I'd rather do for pigs the swine into which the devils entered Matthew 8:23-33. ... And the foxes whose tails Samson tied together with burning brand [sic] and loosed them in the standing corn. Judges 15:4,5. ... No wonder Samson came to a bad end! the sheep have more than their share of pictures. I'd like the scapegoat leaping off into the wilderness with a ribbon on his born. Leviticus 16:10, 21, 22. If
it's bears you want, I have a great affection for Elisha's bears that punished the children for mocking him.2 Kings 2:23,24.”
Bertha Mahony Miller in the Horn Book, July, 1938, described her visit with Dorothy's mother some two years earlier.
“Then Dorothy and Gertrude were away closing their camp in the woods. [Taconic Lake, Petersburg, New York]. The house was filled with the fragrance of grapes, for Mrs. Lathrop was making grape jelly. A remarkably lovely person to see and know, she remains a clear memory. She was small, with short, crisp, curly white hair, remarkable eyes, quick movements, friendly and direct in manner. She took us
down through the orchard garden to the pink stucco studio with the sculptor's austere room high enough for a horse to pose in; and into the illustrator's room, filled warmly with books, paintings, drawings”
As Dorothy herself went about with us on our last view, we talked about the drawings for Animals-all the research necessary for a book like this, and the physical labor involved in making thirty pictures with a lithographic pencil. The Persian gazelle hound is just one instance of the study required. What kind of dogs were common in Palestine when Christ lived? Study revealed that the Persian gazelle hound was mentioned in contemporary records. Miss Lathrop decided to use this type, but the next step was to find her a living model. She soon found one that could be borrowed. So this dog lived for a time with the Lathrops, was modeled by Gertrude and drawn by Dorothy.
By 1938, Dorothy had illustrated some twenty-nine books, and of these some twenty-four have been directly concerned with the fairy world. But always, always, always, there was her consuming love for animals. In a letter to Dr. Harper about his book, The Barren Ground Caribou of Keewatin, Dorothy argued to one already converted:
Perhaps its astonishing migrations are no more amazing that [sic) those of the seal and many of the birds, but it seems strange that so large and [sic] animal should have been born in a climate which makes migration necessary. Your statistics on the needless slaughter of so gentle and trusting an animal makes my heart heavy. Where did man get the idea that all other creatures were created solely for his cruel use and pleasure? Certainly he seems to be doing his best to blow the world to bits. ... There are only a few of us, I am afraid, who find all creatures fascinating and feel that they belong in the world as much as we do.
Having such strong beliefs, Dorothy did not hesitate to write to Secretary of Agriculture in Eisenhower's administration, Ezra Benson (March 13, 1956):
:It is bad enough that animals must die to feed human beings, but that these creatures who have always looked to man for care and protection should not be killed as quickly and painlessly as possible instead of brutally and with long drawn out suffering is unthinkable. I urge you to change your mind in this matter, for to pass the problem on to the individual states for local jurisdiction is to delay indefinitely any nationwide reform in the slaughtering of livestock. And during this delay millions of animals will die ...
slow and agonizing deaths.”
Her anger was equally strong against the Metcalf-Hatch Animal Seizure Act (New York State). The same day she wrote to Benson, she also wrote James McQuiness of the New York State Legislature: "... support the repeat of the ... Act. That animals lost, frightened and homeless ... are being turned over to laboratories for experimentation and resultant torture, is unthinkable...."
Looking back a century from this year, it is hard to believe that South Allen Street was then rather a country place-as Gertrude describes their location: "Before civilization crowded in from every side, the windows overlooked field after field rolling back toward the distant Helderbergs and Catskills." It was really country, and gave scope for wild things -and tame ones too. They kept raccoons there, as well as
pet lambs, mice, dogs, monkeys, and all the things they drew. The book for which she received the Caldecott Prize, Animals of the Bible, must truly have been a joy for Dorothy, with her love for animals, to do.
The two sisters made their final home in Falls Village, Connecticut, surrounded by their numerous dogs and animal friends, living their complete rural life. They continued their art work; painting, modeling, drawing, as ever. Dorothy died in 1980.
The Print Club of Albany has fortunately obtained the papers of Dorothy Lathrop. These, together with the evidence of her work, show that Dorothy Pulis Lathrop was one of America's foremost artists; an artist of whom Albany can be proud.
