Maiden Flight (3 page)

It did my heart good to see Harry and Orv hit it off that summer at Hawthorn Hill. They were so much alike that it seemed only natural they should become friends. I couldn't forget how sympathetic Harry had been when I wrote to him before the war, and how readily he had sprung to Orv's defense in our scrap with Glenn Curtiss. At the same time, I couldn't help noticing that he asked
me
to get Orv's reaction to the Hughes report, instead of going straight to
the horse's mouth. If I hadn't known better, I might have suspected him of cooking up an excuse to write to me!

From then on he bent over backward to keep in touch with us both. One time—it was in 1919, I think—Orv and I drove out to Kansas to attend a family wedding. Bubbo had taken a road trip out west earlier that summer with Colonel Deeds and some other men. Their route took them through Kansas City while Harry and Isabel were away in Colorado on vacation. When Harry got home and discovered they had missed each other, he kicked up a fuss and insisted we make amends by stopping over on our way back to Kansas in October. Bubbo replied that we would be only too happy to “afflict” the Haskells with our presence—and so we did!

Harry and Isabel lived in a pleasant suburban neighborhood, not far from my brother Reuch and his family. While Harry took Orv downtown to meet his colleagues at the
Star
, Isabel and I stayed home and talked a mile a minute—real, honest-to-goodness
conversation
it was too, not the empty-headed small talk that so many of my sect go in for. Isabel was as smart as a whip. Though I hadn't known her well in college, I always enjoyed her company. Only later did we learn that the poor, dear creature was dying of cancer. Harry had managed to keep her condition a secret from both Isabel and their son, but young Henry seemed to sense that something was troubling his father. I remember how he sat right up against Harry all evening long, holding hands, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a high school–age boy to do.

I had always had a happy life and didn't want to be married, frankly. But seeing how devoted Harry and Isabel were to each other, and how their son doted on them both, got me to thinking good and hard about what I had missed. Young Henry would be
heading off to college soon, and I knew what a wrench it would be for his parents to let him go, his father especially. Imagine—at Oberlin I didn't think Harry had much feeling! I would have banked on his intellectual strength and character, but I never dreamed he cared much for companionship of any sort. How my dear old friend has changed, I said to myself. Surely it must have been married life that had developed those strong feelings in him.

When Orv and I returned to Kansas City a year later, Isabel and Harry had built a new house for themselves in a lovely residential district that put me in mind of our neighborhood in Oakwood. The move had put such a strain on Isabel's nervous system that she had contracted a severe case of hives. I was nearly undone when Harry took me upstairs to see her. She was frail and drawn, a pale shadow of the vital, energetic woman I had laughed and joked with a mere twelve months earlier. Harry clung by her side, petting and kissing her all the while. He looked terribly worn down himself, poor dear. Yet in spite of all the hard things that had come to them, neither of them uttered a word of complaint.

The Haskells' house—
our
house I s'pose I must call it now—was a white Dutch colonial with green shutters, set on a gently sloping corner lot. A pretty dry-laid stone wall edged the property, overhung by graceful elm trees and shrubbery. Harry and Isabel had planned and furnished the house together, just the way Orv and I had done at Hawthorn Hill. There were bright, floral-pattern curtains in the windows, oriental carpets covering the hardwood floors, and built-in bookcases downstairs and up, filled to overflowing with Harry's precious books. Isabel was an avid reader too, though she was less bookish by nature than Harry. They seemed an ideal couple, perfectly matched and happy as larks—but of course
I knew it couldn't last, what with Isabel's failing health, and the whole thing made me unspeakably sad.

Orv was giving me no end of worries himself at that very time. For years he had been suffering from acute pain in his left hip. We suspected that his injuries had been poorly treated by the army doctors at Fort Myer in 1908. The pain became so intense that we had to bring in two nurses to help me care for him at home. Little Brother was pretty much flat on his back—he hadn't even felt up to driving out to Kansas City for Reuch's funeral that spring. Finally, one of Harry's doctor friends referred us to a specialist at the Mayo Clinic, and we headed straight up to Minnesota after leaving the Haskells. The new X-rays showed that Orv's sacroiliac joint had been injured in the accident and was mechanically irritating the sciatic nerve. The doctor fitted him with a tight belt to make the joint work as it should—and, lo and behold, it did the trick! Orv went home and started running up and down the stairs without any pain at all.

What with Orv's and Harry's problems, piled on top of poor Reuch's passing, my spirits had taken a terrific beating. Then something marvelous and utterly unexpected happened—almost a miracle, really. Just when I most needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, who should come into our lives but Stef! Orv invited him to Dayton to compare notes on their scientific work. I remember the first time we laid eyes on him in the fall of 1919. Stef looked every inch the dashing Arctic explorer, with his dark, wavy hair, high forehead, and broad, sensitive mouth. Orv and I were spellbound by the vivid accounts of his adventures in the far north. Both of us sized him up right away as being absolutely truthful—and
very
interesting.

A few months later, Stef—everyone calls him that because his
real name, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, is such a mouthful—came back to Dayton to give a lecture. That was another day I'll not soon forget! As Stef was winding down his talk, the color abruptly drained out of his face, just as if somebody had pulled the plug. Orv and I looked at each other in alarm, and without saying a word I slipped onto the podium and escorted Stef out front to Orv's waiting car. It didn't take long for the doctor to find out what was the matter—our distinguished speaker had the Spanish influenza! Naturally, Stef was ordered to stay off his feet for several days, and while he convalesced at Hawthorn Hill, we put the long hours to good use by getting better acquainted.

By the time Stef felt well enough to go home to New York, Orv and he had become firm mutual admirers. As for me, I found Stef a lovely character, full of whims and “insistent ideas,” and yet so gentle and considerate—as well as interesting and absolutely genuine and truthful. I was a woman of years—forty-five years, to be precise—and some experience and observation. I thought I had known just about every emotion that life had to offer. But something was stirring deep down inside me, something strange and unsettling and yet inexpressibly warm—unlike anything I had ever felt before.

It was a funny thing about Stef and Harry: one day it seemed we were just getting acquainted, and the next I knew they were old family friends. Didn't Will always say that Kate and I had a way of stepping right into the affections of nice people we met? If you
want my honest opinion, Swes makes friends far too easily for her own good—mine too, I might add. A great deal of trouble could have been avoided for us both if she had only learned to exercise more caution in her relations with men. Granted, I was the one who invited Stef and Harry to Hawthorn Hill in the first place, but it didn't take long for me to cotton that they weren't beating a path to our door merely for the pleasure of
my
company.

For a man who has no technical training in aeronautics and engineering, Stef is singularly well informed. Many's the night we've sat up for hours on end discussing our scientific work. If the truth be told, I do most of the talking—but Stef never seems to begrudge giving me the floor for a change. What he and Kate found to talk about while I was away at the lab is anyone's guess. Swes doesn't have a scientific bone in her body, and as for Stef—well, I never pegged him as a ladies' man. Though, now I think of it, there
has been talk about him and that lady novelist whose name I never can remember—Fannie Hurst, that's it. There's probably nothing in it, but you never can tell. The way that Greenwich Village outfit carries on, it's a wonder they get a lick of real, honest-to-goodness work done.

Not that I've ever known Stef to be at a loss for words. Harry always said he was as good a writer as he is a speaker. I remember the first time he came up to our summer place in Canada. He brought along the manuscript of
The Friendly Arctic
for Kate and me to look at, and we both had about the same reaction: if the book kept on as it promised, she told him, it was sure to be a “hammer.” I don't see how Stef does it. He thinks nothing of turning out a new book every year or two. It's easy for a man like that to say I should write up the story of the invention of the aeroplane. Stef and Harry
aren't far wrong when they argue that it's the only way to settle my dispute with the Smithsonian for good and always. But I'm an engineer, not a writer, and that's all there is to say.

Every time I think of those self-styled aeronautical “experts” in Washington, my blood starts to boil. It's as clear as the nose on my face that Will and I built the first man-carrying flying machine. We have the evidence to prove it—notebooks, photographs, eyewitnesses. The whole world knows that Langley's aerodrome never could have stayed up in the air—the Smithsonian people are just too proud and stubborn to admit it. The press agent gang are no better. If it weren't for men like Harry Haskell, Arthur Page, and Earl Findley, I don't believe a one of them would lift a finger to check their facts. I had to smile that time Harry sent me a couple of wildly inaccurate clippings from the
Star
about the Langley machine. It amuses me to see how responsible he and my other reporter friends feel for letting those stories slip into their papers.

Harry, Stef, Kate, Mr. Page—they're all in this together. It's a conspiracy, that's what it is—a conspiracy to get me to sit down against my will and write the book. God knows, I'd sooner turn it over to one of them and be done with it if I could. But I'm the only one who can do the job right. Nobody else knows the full story—what the problem of flying consisted of, what the state of the art was when Will and I tackled it, what we originated, what we used that others originated, to whom we owed most, how we came to succeed in actually flying, and so forth and so on.

Book or no book, though, you can be sure the Smithsonian won't give in without a fight. One time I was in Washington for a committee meeting and Langley's successor, Dr. Walcott, took me to see the rebuilt aerodrome. Although he took unusual pains to be
courteous, I felt obliged to point out that the machine on display in the museum was not the same as the one Curtiss flew at Hammondsport in 1914. Walcott stood most of the time looking down at his hands, which he kept in nervous motion. He asked me to send him photos and details of the changes that Curtiss had made. He certainly was very uneasy about the matter, which I considered a hopeful sign. But that was a long time ago, and the Smithsonian hasn't backed down yet.

In my opinion, Griff Brewer said the last word on the subject way back in 1921. In his address to the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, he stated categorically that it was untrue to suggest that Langley's machine of 1903 had ever flown or ever could fly—and he had the facts to prove it. Everyone who understood anything at all about aeronautics was bound to be convinced by Griff's presentation. Harry agreed that he had turned out a bulletproof case, no matter what dust throwing the other side might resort to. Stef and Harry swung into action drumming up publicity for Griff's talk in the
New York Times
and other papers, while another friend of ours at Johns Hopkins brought it to the attention of the scientific journals.

Kate said Harry was on the job every minute, working like a horse to make sure our side of the story got out. And Stef talked Griff's paper up to everyone he saw. We have him to thank for that fine piece in the
New Republic
and the corker of an editorial that Mr. Page published in the
World's Work
. Then
Nature
weighed in with a tendentious article that was clearly inspired by the urgent appeals of the Smithsonian people
.
For years they had been quietly spreading their propaganda, putting us in the position where an answer to it would have looked like an unprovoked
attack on Langley. Now the editor of
Nature
deliberately brought this point into the issue by asserting that Langley had done all the
scientific
work, while Will and I merely contributed the
mechanical device
that brought his scientific knowledge into practical use!

We saw then that we were in for a long, hard struggle—much to Kate's gratification, no doubt. She used to marvel at my calmness, but I saw no point in getting all worked up over the Smithsonian's mendacity. What did she expect, after all? Human nature is much the same in all times and places. Didn't Father teach us that the natural state of mankind is depravity? Speaking as a man of science, I see no reason to question the validity of that hypothesis.

All the same, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to force Walcott and his cronies to eat their words. I recollect coming across one of the Smithsonian's misleading pronouncements one time and calling out to Sterchens, “The conflict deepens. On ye braves!” It felt almost like the good old days, when Father and Will confronted his false accusers in the church: the Wright family against the world!

Orv was like a new man after we got back from the Mayo Clinic that fall. He worked from morning to night and drove his automobile all around town without experiencing any pain whatsoever. We were having some ups and downs in the course of the fight with the Smithsonian, but that was to be expected. The main thing was that we were making some important points. There had always been an impression that the Langley machine antedated the Wright flyer by many years. People were coming to realize that the two
machines were contemporaneous. The public now knew for the first time that Curtiss had made changes in the Langley machine. We hadn't convinced some of them that the changes were important, but in time I was confident that we would get all the facts out in the open.

Stef was one zealous missionary for our cause. He never lost interest or quit, even when Orv was in the doldrums. A good, everlasting friend he was to us both—but how I would have hated to have him for an enemy! Stef always insisted that it was the cause of truth he was trying to serve, but he couldn't make me believe that there wasn't a lot of personal devotion mixed up with it. His attitude toward Orv was almost touching. One day, out of a clear blue sky, he declared to me that he admired Little Brother more than any living man he knew. Then he paused, just to make sure he meant what he had said. “Yes,” he added presently, “I mean just that.”

Stef reminds me of the boys in his precise way of expressing himself. If only writing came half as easily to Orv as it does to him. Stef's account of his exploits in
The Friendly Arctic
is simply entrancing. He is a born storyteller—even if he does believe a few too many of his own tall tales! Little Brother has a way with words himself. He can write as clearly and interestingly as anyone I know, and on his own subject no one can touch him. But, gracious me, how he does hate to put words on paper! He has almost an inhibited will when it comes to writing letters and speeches and such. He doesn't even care to
receive
letters. At our summer place on Lambert Island he doesn't take a bit of interest in his mail. He is always afraid there will be some letters for him!

Orv's story of the invention of the airplane would make a great and immediate impression. It would carry conviction too, because there would be no careless statements in it. You never saw anything to equal Bubbo's ability to get things exactly straight. It is a joy to see him go after an opponent in an argument. He simply won't get off the track, no matter how alluring this side issue or that one may be. His memory has never been much good on the book he has just read or the play he has seen, but it is like a steel trap on the facts in aeronautical science and history.

Everyone agrees that the book ought to have been written ages ago. Orv himself has long seen the necessity of doing the job, but his bad back and his natural aversion to writing always held him back. Harry told me once that if he hadn't known the Wright brothers and did not have personal confidence in them, even his faith would have been shaken by that boneheaded editorial in
Nature
. He argued up and down that it was essential for Orv to get his story out before the article became part of the standard literature on the subject—and he expected
me
to take Little Brother in hand, if you please!

I finally did get Orv to send Griff Brewer some suggestions for an article on Langley's work. And I felt sure he would agree to collaborate with Burton Hendrick on a series of articles for Arthur Page's magazine, the
World's Work
. We met Mr. Hendrick at the Pages' country house on Long Island, and afterward Orv told our host that if the book finally had to be turned over to someone else, Mr. Hendrick would be his choice. Of course, nothing came of it in the end. I've about given up hope that Orv will ever get around to writing the book. At bottom, he feels just as I do—that it is ridiculous for a man to have to howl and howl to call attention to
what he has done, when it is as plain as day to anybody with eyes to see. Orv has no time for personal advertising, that's all, and I respect him for it.

Harry was such a trump through the whole business. What a blessed relief it was to find one modest person among writers! The more I saw of him, the more I admired him and wanted to be his friend. He and Isabel had both been so fine and brave. I wished with all my heart that Orv and I could do something besides sit at home and worry about them. I valued Harry's friendship more every year because I saw clearly what a priceless possession it was. As Stef so nicely put it, “Understanding another human being is a delicate task.” Harry has always understood me. Even in college, he was a kind of safety valve. I knew he would make allowance for my explosive nature and my foibles and no harm would be done, no matter how silly I was. Yes, a warm, steady friendship is about as good a thing as there is in this often disappointing world.

When I think of a good friendship, the two things I always associate with it are steadiness and serenity. Yet those are the very two things that I
can't
put into my friendship with Stef. He is a poet when it comes to human relations, and he has such exquisite, delicate ideas. Almost without realizing it, I allowed him to become a big part of my life in those years—so much that it scared me just a little bit. For a time I almost couldn't bear the joy our friendship gave me. It felt like a miracle, and the preciousness grew on me continually, in the most substantial, wholesome way. It was one of the best things that had ever come into my life, and by what a queer chance! To be able to have such a feeling about anyone is a blessed thing.

It did my heart good to bring Harry and Stef together and see them become fast friends. I never had any inkling that they might be rivals as well—at least, not until the time their paths nearly crossed at Hawthorn Hill. Stef was on a lecture tour in Ohio and sent me a telegram from Cleveland a few days before Christmas. It was just a quick note letting us know about his itinerary, but the first sentence brought me up short: “This is the day Haskell should be with you and I can get no nearer than the Portage Hotel at Akron.” Was my imagination playing tricks, or did I detect a whiff of jealousy in Stef's words?