Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World by Glenn Stout Read Free Book Online
Authors: Glenn Stout
forgot everything and simply floated in the water, feeling the buoyancy of her own body and the gentle ocean swells that lifted her up and down but always held her, embracing her on all sides.
She could swim. And then her sisters popped back out of the water and reached out for her again, and she followed them into the waves, grinning and giggling as the three girls all floated together.
Trudy loved this feeling—nothing would ever be the same—and the ocean, which had always been a barrier before, now opened to her like another world, a place where there was nothing to block her view or stop her but herself.
4. The Painter
T RUDY WAS NOT the first person to fall in love with the embrace of the sea and swimming.
In the spring of 1832, George Catlin, a slightly built, thirty-seven-year-old former attorney, paddled up the Missouri River from St. Louis in search of subjects for painting. He stopped some eighteen hundred miles later, just north of what is now Bismarck, North Dakota, where the Knife River, after winding several hundred miles through the lush grassland prairies, intersects with the Missouri. There Catlin made contact with two little-known bands of Native Americans, the two-thousand-member Mandan tribe, who lived in two adjacent villages at the confluence of the rivers, and their allies, the Hidatsa, a smaller band of about five hundred natives whose village bordered those of the Mandan.
They were not entirely unknown, having first been "discovered" by white explorers in 1738, and in 1804 Lewis and Clark spent time with the tribes. But where others had simply met the natives, traded for or simply taken what they needed, and moved on, in 1832 Catlin stayed and studied them, making sketches that he later planned on turning into paintings and taking detailed, written notes on all aspects of their culture.
Catlin felt far more comfortable among the Mandan and Hidatsa than he had been in either the courtroom or the drawing room where he had sketched many of the subjects of his portraits. They had looked down on him as if he were some kind of craftsman, like a boot maker, uninterested in the process of his art, solely concerned with whether the final product was flattering.
Then there were the critics, the swells with classical backgrounds who had journeyed to Europe and, even though they were American themselves, looked with disdain toward artists of their own nationality. They found fault with almost every painting Catlin had ever made, particularly taking him to task for his inability to render perspective. Anytime he was called upon to paint more than one or two figures, as in a group meeting, Catlin had struggled mightily, unable to capture the relative changes in size that denote distance.
The natives gave him no such criticism. To them, Catlin was a curiosity, but one upon which they cast no judgment. They soon grew accustomed to watching him sitting quietly and sketching upon a pad of paper, and gave him great latitude to move among them. He was no threat, made no demands, and was welcome to observe them as he wished.
Although Catlin convinced some natives to sit for portraits and spent hours observing both rituals and more mundane daily tasks, at other times he went off on his own, roaming the bluffs surrounding the villages, where he could view the Mandan and Hidatsa from afar. Nearly every day he witnessed the natives gathering along the shores of the Knife River, both for the purposes of bathing and for pure pleasure.
For years, westerners had noted that natives in the Americas, Polynesia, and the Far East could not only swim, but that they swam better than anyone in the West. As one Virginia colonist noted, "They strike not out both hands together, but alternately one after another, whereby they are able to swim both farther and faster than we do." It was a curiosity, but despite the fact that some members of the upper crust were gingerly stepping into the water and testing their skill and
She could swim. And then her sisters popped back out of the water and reached out for her again, and she followed them into the waves, grinning and giggling as the three girls all floated together.
Trudy loved this feeling—nothing would ever be the same—and the ocean, which had always been a barrier before, now opened to her like another world, a place where there was nothing to block her view or stop her but herself.
4. The Painter
T RUDY WAS NOT the first person to fall in love with the embrace of the sea and swimming.
In the spring of 1832, George Catlin, a slightly built, thirty-seven-year-old former attorney, paddled up the Missouri River from St. Louis in search of subjects for painting. He stopped some eighteen hundred miles later, just north of what is now Bismarck, North Dakota, where the Knife River, after winding several hundred miles through the lush grassland prairies, intersects with the Missouri. There Catlin made contact with two little-known bands of Native Americans, the two-thousand-member Mandan tribe, who lived in two adjacent villages at the confluence of the rivers, and their allies, the Hidatsa, a smaller band of about five hundred natives whose village bordered those of the Mandan.
They were not entirely unknown, having first been "discovered" by white explorers in 1738, and in 1804 Lewis and Clark spent time with the tribes. But where others had simply met the natives, traded for or simply taken what they needed, and moved on, in 1832 Catlin stayed and studied them, making sketches that he later planned on turning into paintings and taking detailed, written notes on all aspects of their culture.
Catlin felt far more comfortable among the Mandan and Hidatsa than he had been in either the courtroom or the drawing room where he had sketched many of the subjects of his portraits. They had looked down on him as if he were some kind of craftsman, like a boot maker, uninterested in the process of his art, solely concerned with whether the final product was flattering.
Then there were the critics, the swells with classical backgrounds who had journeyed to Europe and, even though they were American themselves, looked with disdain toward artists of their own nationality. They found fault with almost every painting Catlin had ever made, particularly taking him to task for his inability to render perspective. Anytime he was called upon to paint more than one or two figures, as in a group meeting, Catlin had struggled mightily, unable to capture the relative changes in size that denote distance.
The natives gave him no such criticism. To them, Catlin was a curiosity, but one upon which they cast no judgment. They soon grew accustomed to watching him sitting quietly and sketching upon a pad of paper, and gave him great latitude to move among them. He was no threat, made no demands, and was welcome to observe them as he wished.
Although Catlin convinced some natives to sit for portraits and spent hours observing both rituals and more mundane daily tasks, at other times he went off on his own, roaming the bluffs surrounding the villages, where he could view the Mandan and Hidatsa from afar. Nearly every day he witnessed the natives gathering along the shores of the Knife River, both for the purposes of bathing and for pure pleasure.
For years, westerners had noted that natives in the Americas, Polynesia, and the Far East could not only swim, but that they swam better than anyone in the West. As one Virginia colonist noted, "They strike not out both hands together, but alternately one after another, whereby they are able to swim both farther and faster than we do." It was a curiosity, but despite the fact that some members of the upper crust were gingerly stepping into the water and testing their skill and
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