Amelia Earhart (18 page)

At the close of this letter Amelia said she would try to get to Philadelphia to see Amy, who was visiting relatives, but that she was “full of antitetanus serum so not feeling up to snuff.”

There can be no doubt that she was “not up to snuff.” No matter what his faults, Amelia had never stopped loving her father. His death was a painful loss, coming at the close of a year of exhausting work in a kind of perpetual motion. She had met all her goals, fulfilled all her contracts, kept all her promises. Spokesperson for her colleagues, airline officer, lecturer, writer, and breadwinner, she was now in the records books of the FAI. She had been named by famed journalist Ida Tarbell as one of the fifty living women who had done the most for the United States,
showing ability “to initiate and create, lead and inspire.” A
commemorative column to her had been unveiled at Burry Port, Wales, in honor of her Atlantic crossing. But the pace was a killing one, so demanding that she might not have been able to maintain it alone.

Help was being offered. George Palmer Putnam, the man who had “discovered” her, managed her, and published her, wanted to marry her.

O
n December 19, 1929, Dorothy Putnam divorced G. P. Within hours reporters were calling Amelia, asking if she would be the second Mrs. Putnam. They were given a curt
denial. Twenty-five days later, when Dorothy Putnam married again, there were more calls and more denials from Amelia. “There is nothing to the rumor,” she said. “I am not engaged to anyone. Mr. Putnam is my publisher—that’s all.”

When she saw Marian Stabler in New York in January she told her, “
Everyone thinks G. P. and I are going to be married.”

“Are you?”

“No.” Amelia replied. “I think the divorce is a shame.… A marriage that’s lasted eighteen years with two children shouldn’t be that easy to break up.”

Amelia did not want to marry G. P. or anyone else. To a friend she wrote: “
I am still unsold on marriage. I don’t want anything all of the time.… Do you remember in ‘If Winter Comes,’ how Mabel was always trying to get her husband a ‘den,’ how he hated it? He said he wasn’t a bear. A den is stuffy. I’d rather live in a tree.”

During the next two years G. P. proposed six times but, like Simpkin the cat with whom Amelia compared him—storing up numerous spare mice for other meals—G. P. did not neglect numerous other projects
he had planned. One of them was working with
Byrd’s agent, Hilton Railey, on an upcoming Putnam publication, the explorer’s second book,
Little America
. G. P. monitored the script, as he had Amelia’s
Twenty Hours Forty Minutes
, to make sure the book would be in the stores while the author’s name was still in the headlines. He arranged for Byrd to write much of the book before his return from the Pole and for Railey to meet Byrd at the Panama Canal Zone and bring whatever was finished back to New York.

In July G. P. gave a
luncheon at the Barbizon-Plaza, ostensibly for Byrd, at which he announced the forthcoming publication of seven books on the expedition to be published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Not long after, Putnam’s friendship with Byrd ended, as well as his own affiliation with G. P. Putnam’s Sons. G. P. said his difference with Byrd arose from his suggestion to the admiral that Byrd offer the contributors to his expedition a rebate from profits he was making on book royalities and lectures. “
Dick,” Putnam said, “didn’t see it. He felt that as he took the risks, he was entitled to the rewards.” Putnam’s departure from the firm his grandfather had founded followed the death of its president, his uncle, George Haven Putnam. G. P. sold his shares to his cousin, Palmer C. Putnam.

Already an artists’ representative with offices in the Seymour Hotel at 2 West 45th Street, G. P. joined publishers Brewer and Warren, which soon became Brewer, Warren and Putnam. He also wrote a biography of Salomon August Andre, pioneer arctic balloonist who was lost in 1887 and whose bones were found in 1929 on a desolate arctic island. The book, dedicated to “a favorite aeronaut,” came out on October 27.

Twelve days later a marriage license was issued to George Palmer Putnam and Amelia Earhart. On Saturday, November 8, Amelia was met at the Groton, Connecticut, train station by G. P. and taken to the house of his mother, Frances (Mrs. George Bishop) Putnam, in nearby Noank. The license was issued by Probate Judge Arthur F. Anderson, a friend of G. P.’s who accompanied G. P. and the town clerk, Henry L. Bailey, to Mrs. Putnam’s house for Amelia’s signature. But when Amelia found out that G. P. had alerted the press she left in a huff early the next morning for New York and
flew to Washington later that same day.

On Monday the
Associated Press reported that Amelia denied she and G. P. were married. Carl B. Allen, aviation reporter for the
World
(later for the
New York World-Telegram
), who was a friend of Amelia’s, called G. P.’s mother. Frances Putnam said she did not know if they were
married yet but “newspapers up here published all sorts of garbled reports.” G. P. could not be reached at his Sutton Place apartment.

When Allen called Amelia in Washington and asked if a license had been issued, she evaded his question with, “I have not been married.” Did she plan on being married immediately, Allen asked. “Well, not immediately,” she replied. In New York G. P. would answer only two of Allen’s questions. Was he married? “No.” When would he be? He didn’t know.

Allen wrote that the Putnam-Earhart story would be a trilogy. The first volume, covering Amelia’s withdrawal from Noank to Washington, he titled, “Amelia Goes Voyaging.” (David Putnam’s first book for boys had been
David Goes Voyaging
, written when he was twelve years old, after accompanying an expedition to the Galapagos Islands as the ship’s cabin boy.) The second volume Allen called “G. P. in Baffle Land,” parodying
David Goes to Baffin Land
. The third, Allen concluded, “may be expected any day now.” He was wrong. Rumors that there would be no
marriage were soon circulating.

In late December, after a press conference on a proposed flight by Amelia, she telephoned Allen at the
World
. “I need some advice,” she told him “and I need it today.” She wanted to talk to him and another aviation reporter-friend, Lauren Dwight “Deke” Lyman of the
New York Times
. Could they come to her apartment? They could.

After receiving their promise of confidentiality, she told the two men that although she had “squelched G. P. in denying reports of the marriage,” and he “sulked about it a while,” he had apologized for alerting the press, “and he still wants to marry me.”

Should she, she asked, marry Putnam? Allen and Lyman were stunned. They had never discussed her personal life with her and did not like being forced by competing newspapers to cover the marriage story. After a long, embarrassing silence, Allen answered. “It seems to me, Amelia, that the question you have just asked Mr. Lyman and me really contains its own answer: either you should be able to make up your own mind or you should put off getting married until you yourself can decide.”

As they were leaving Amelia extended one hand to each of them in a “firm and prolonged triangular leave-taking,” while she told them that just talking it over had helped. In a later recollection of that
meeting, Allen wrote that he told Amelia that Putnam loved the reflected public glorification
that she received and was certain that he had helped to create it. “It may be,” Allen added, “that you need him as much or more than he needs you—and one of the supposedly solider cornerstones of marriage is mutual need and mutual respect.”

There was nothing in Allen’s assessment of G. P. that Amelia did not know. The charming, erudite editor counted among his friends and acquaintances many who were famous and few who were not. G. P. liked
celebrities.
^*
Amelia also knew that G. P. was a hard-bargaining, often penny-pinching, volatile, hot-tempered man who shouted profanities (although not at her) when frustration induced one of his choleric rages. Her cousin, Lucy “Tootie” Challis, who was working as an editor in New York, commented that “
keeping an eye on him would apt to make one cross-eyed. Tho I have always been fond of him, he is unpredictable to say the least.”

G. P. admitted to being bossy, saying he “
deluged Amelia” with instructions about her clothing, her hats, and her speeches. But years later his fourth wife, a beautiful and intelligent woman who never knew Amelia, said, “
He could be arrogant, but only with his equals—not with a brick layer or gardener.… He was a charming man, a great raconteur, who had marvelous manners and a wonderful sense of humor.”

Putnam claimed, “Amelia Earhart knew me better, probably, than anyone else ever can,” adding that their tastes were often the same but their temperaments were not. She was calm. He was not. She hated to hurry. He always did. She wanted to do one thing at a time. He wanted to do many. She remained poised under pressure. He stamped and shouted. He had to be busy. She “
was subject to seizures of idleness, times when she was determined not to see anyone and to do absolutely nothing but stay by herself and think.”

In January Amelia made up her mind. If
G. P. needed to bask in her limelight, she needed him to maintain that limelight. He had other interests that allowed her the freedom she needed. Her absences in pursuit of her career he would understand. As her manager he would arrange for most of them. He would take care of the “grubby” work.

Her decision to marry was opposed by her mother who said G. P. was “
twelve years her senior and a divorced man.” (Actually he was ten years older.) Amelia ignored Amy’s protest and did not tell her when she would be married. Three days before the ceremony she wrote, “
I shan’t be home over this weekend.… I’m due in Washington tonight and have a luncheon at
Newark today.”
^†

She married G. P. three days later, on February 7, 1931, at Frances Putnam’s house in Noank. Present for the ceremony were G. P.’s mother, his uncle, Charles Faulkner, Judge Anderson who officiated, the judge’s son, Robert, who was Mrs. Putnam’s lawyer, and twin black cats. Young Anderson, two years out of law school, recalling the day in November when she signed the marriage license, thought that she was “devoted to George” but that she was afraid that
changing her name somehow would diminish her stature. He was right. On the eve of the
wedding she wrote to G. P.:

A.E.

Before the ceremony young Anderson sat with Amelia on a couch in a small sitting room at the back of the house. He thought her much more attractive than depicted in the press, “quite delicate looking, with beautiful color.” She told him about the autogiro, a new type of aircraft she had flown for the first time in December. After her brief exchange of marriage vows with G. P., she returned to the couch and resumed her description to Anderson of the new aircraft!

When Judge Anderson came forward to wish her happiness, calling her “Mrs. Putnam,” she told him she would continue to use her maiden name in her work. A month later the
New York Times
used “Mrs. George Palmer Putnam (Amelia Earhart)” for the first and last time. After that she was
Amelia Earhart Putnam.

Amelia sent a telegram to
Muriel asking her to “
break the news gently” to Amy who was in Philadelphia, where her sister, Margaret Balis, was dying of cancer. The bride was childless but not without a dependent family. As early as four months before her marriage Amelia had written to Amy about the monthly checks she sent to her: “
I know how easy it is for you to give it [the money] away to Pidge and the Balises. However, I am not working to support either.… I don’t know when I shall get over to Philadelphia for a visit. I come over fairly often on business.” She did not visit her mother or her aunt and when Margaret Balis died in January, Amelia did not go to the funeral, claiming the telegram had not reached her until after the services.

Amelia insisted that Amy use her allowance for herself and to regard Muriel’s needs as a separate issue. When Muriel and Albert asked for a loan for the purchase of a house, Amelia wrote to Amy that she might ask her to look at it and give her opinion, but, she added, “If she [Muriel] hasn’t mentioned it to you, don’t say anything.”