Daughter of the sky

by Jr. Paul L. Briand

Born in 1887 into a family of wealth and position, George Putnam was a gentleman, a gentle man, yet was capable of an irritability easily aroused by what he considered stupidity in others. He was capable with the right provocation of changing from a person of charm and grace into one of explosive anger and violent fury.

In his lifetime GP wrote ten books in his spare time. He could produce a book “with his left hand,” while with his right he went about his daily business of publishing and promoting. His books reflected his many interests: four on travel, four biographies, and two novels. With the eye of a close observer he recorded a perceptive understanding of the land and the people of Central America, the Oregon country, the Arctic, and Death Valley. His ability to see through the deceptive surface and into the reality of his own life and the lives of others produced the biographies of Salomon August Andrée, the gallant Swedish aeronaut; of Amelia Earhart, his famous wife; of Captain Bob Bartlett, “the mariner of the north”; and Wide Margins, the story of his own life. Combining his knowledge of people and places, he wrote the novels Duration, about an older man and his son, who are both involved in World War II, and Hickory Shirt, which is laid in the Death Valley of 1850.

Frequently charming, kind, generous—anything but the tough guy he wanted people to believe he was—George Palmer Putnam would rather be hanged than have anyone discover he was soft behind the hard shell. Typically, he was ever quick to respond to distress in others.

Blanche Noyes, a famous woman flier, who is now chief of the Air Marking Staff, National Aviation Agency, remembers the George Putnam who didn’t want to be found out. She writes:

The thing that I shall always remember of “G.P.” was my first public appearance after my husband’s death, when I was mistress of ceremonies in New York at a large luncheon, at which time I was to introduce these celebrities without benefit of notes. However, this time I felt a little shaky and asked “G.P.” to write my introductions for me, which he did, but swore me to secrecy. It was quite annoying, after the luncheon, to have two people come up and thank me for the lovely things I said about them, but each said that the only thing that spoiled the luncheon was the fact that they sat next to “G.P.,” the man they disliked intensely. I wanted to tell them that all the flattering things I had said about them were “G.P.’s” thoughts and words, not mine, but he had sworn me to secrecy. Someday I am going to tell them how wrong they were in their thoughts of this grand person....

Grand indeed. When Mrs. Noyes’ husband Dewey was killed in 1935, AE had insisted that Blanche come with her and GP from New York to the West Coast and stay with them as long as she could at their home near Toluca Lake, California. From time to time on the trip Amelia would see Blanche crying in the back seat. Husband and wife up front would whisper; then they would detour off the main highway, sometimes to see a rodeo, to see a friend whom they thought Blanche might enjoy, or to spend the night at some interesting historical spot. AE was like that, and so was GP.

When George was a boy, his father, Bishop, and his two uncles, Irving and Haven, were the publishing firm of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. In their time, George Palmer, the founder, and George Haven, his successor, were the deans of American publishing. Authors on the Putnam list were famous; they are now required reading in any course in American literature: Washington Irving, James Russell Lowell, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Cullen Bryant, Francis Parkman.

GPP II at the time when his father and uncles were running the firm had little interest in the classics of literature, either British or American. He was having a marvelous time growing up.

Like the elder Putnams, GP went to Harvard, but he soon transferred to the University of California at Berkeley; then, like Francis Parkman before him in the 1840’s, he went to the wilds of Oregon. The road was mud, ruts, potholes, and bumps; but up and beyond, as far as his eyes could see, was the most magnificent scenery he had ever seen. Rolling hills to the east, the Cascades on the west, California’s valleys to the south, and rock-rimmed ruggedness all the way to the Columbia River to the north.

Twenty-three years old, and with three hundred dollars in his pockets, GP settled in the valley of the Deschutes River at Bend. He was soon elected mayor of the town. The previous incumbent had died; he had fallen out of a second-story window of a bawdy house and landed on his head. GP had needed the job, for he had prevailed upon a young lady in Connecticut to come out to Oregon and marry him. Dorothy Binney came northwest, and became his bride in October, 1911.