by David Marcum
I regarded Holmes with a raised eyebrow. “Plimpton,” I began, “Mr. Carpenter makes an excellent point. Your approach would also nullify our wager, as you have not given me a fair-enough advantage.”
“If that is how you intend to behave, Watson, then the wager shall be declared null and void.”
“Wager?” Carpenter asked. “There’s a wager involved? Well, gentlemen, never let it be said that Edgar David Carpenter would stand in the way of a wager!” Holmes explained our wager to Carpenter, leaving out the prize should I win, but stating that he stood to gain £300.
“Why, Mr. Plimpton. Mr. Watson,” Carpenter enthused, “You may still carry out your plan. You see, few people learn at the same rate. Some, whether they have read my book or not, have a natural skill. Some do not. I will train one of you and my partner, Mr. Grissom, there,” he said, pointing to another man who until this moment was hidden behind the farthest machine working on the motor, “will train the other. Both of us learned to fly from Orville Wright himself! Therefore, we are equally skilled.” He said this with a wink to Grissom. “So the playing field will be very level. One of you will surely solo first, and your wager will be won.” Grissom nodded and returned Carpenter’s wink. I suspected that they were forming a little bet of their own.
Holmes and I looked at each other. “What do you say, Watson? Sounds fair to me.”
“It suits me fine, Plimpton. The prize shall remain the same?” I caught Holmes wince.
“Agreed,” said Holmes. “Now then, Mr. Carpenter, your fees. I believe that you advertise £65 each for the entire curriculum. Is that acceptable to you, Watson?”
Before I could respond, Carpenter interrupted. He had that engaging smile on his face that I assumed would make all the ladies swoon. “For the sake of the wager, sirs, I will offer you both our services for £50 each. Let us call it the ‘Gentlemen’s Rate’. Deal?” He extended a grease-coated hand. Without pause, Holmes grasped the hand. “Agreed!” he said.
Then it was my turn. “Also agreed. But, Plimpton, I haven’t fifty quid on me,” said I.
Holmes gave me a baleful glance, reached into his trouser pocket, and extracted a wad of bills. He counted off ten £10 notes. “I will pay you immediately once we return home, Plimpton. You know you can trust me.” I could not resist a smile.
The fees paid, we then turned our attentions to some trivial legal documents in which we both agreed to reimburse “Carpenter Aviation Academy and Sales” for any and all damages to aeroplanes or premises which were the result of our own actions. Once all was properly signed, Carpenter clapped his hands together and said, “Now, since it is late in the morning and the weather looks to be turning against us, let me introduce you to your aerial steeds.” He affectionately patted the machine nearest the hangar doors. “This is Victoria. She’s a 1910 Wright Model B, and the perfect machine for learning the skills of an aviator. You can see she has two seats, side-by-side - one for you, the student, and one for me, the instructor. We’ll have to shout to each other, as the engine is quite loud, but we can communicate with ease, and you can watch as I, or Grissom, handle the controls. That baby yonder,” he indicated a similar machine squatting on the opposite side of the hangar “is Dorothy. She’s Victoria’s sister.” He turned and pointed to the third machine, the one Grissom had been working upon. This machine was markedly different from Victoria and Dorothy, for most of the canvas of the wings had been stripped off.
“We call that one Brazen Betty. She wears almost nothing. There’s a reason for that. You’ll both be starting off with Betty. You can’t fly with her. She’s just for rolling back and forth on the ground. Teaches you how to handle the controls, get used to taxiing, get a feel for the machine in winds and gust on the ground, where it won’t hurt you if you make a mistake. A couple hours of rolling around with her and you get to go up with the Sisters. Here, let me show you how the controls work, and then we can all go to lunch. Students’ treat, eh?”
Carpenter climbed up in Victoria’s seat, placed his feet on a wooden bar, and grasped two handles with his hands. “This bar controls the rudder...” He went on for the next half-hour, explaining what each control did, and why and when it was used. He permitted Holmes and me to climb up beside him and let us try the controls.
“Right, then,” he concluded, “A couple hours rolling with Betty. When we’re satisfied that you can handle the crates well on the ground, we move on to the Sisters. We’ll have you do little hops across the field, each time a bit higher. Then into the skies with Grissom or me, until we’re comfortable with how well you understand your lessons. Then off on your own. After that, it’s just a matter of learning to do figures-of-eight and one or two flights across country, say to Brooklands or Heston and back. Then you get your certificates.”
“How long should all this take?” I asked.
Carpenter rubbed his chin. “Usually, depending on whether one has the knack or not, it could take a week or two. However, I’ve never let a student go sooner than a month, weather permitting. Just a matter of wanting to be confident that my students really get the knack of it. Well, then! Let’s grab some lunch! There’s a nice café across the field...”
The train ride back to Sussex was silent once more. This time, both Holmes and I had our faces planted in our lesson books. Mr. Carpenter gave me a signed copy of his book as part of my lessons. I was becoming truly enthralled at the prospect of soaring among the clouds. I barely slept that night, reading and rereading until dawn.
For the next three days the weather kept Holmes and me from the aerodrome. On the fourth day of our adventure, even though it was overcast and windy, we arrived at Mr. Carpenter’s hangar to begin what he called our ground school. The weather conspired to keep us ground-bound, so Carpenter and Grissom had Holmes and me practice working the controls while in the hangar. The daily commute to and from Hendon was becoming tiresome, so Holmes and I acquired lodgings near the airfield and rented bicycles.
Mr. Carpenter personally saw to Holmes’s training and Mr. Grissom became my instructor. Grissom was the polar opposite of Carpenter: Soft-spoken yet taciturn, and he rarely smiled in the same gregarious manner as his partner. His brown eyes always seemed to have a touch of sadness in them. He proved to be a very skilled and patient instructor. Once the weather cooperated and the sun shone brightly, we practiced rolling the machines across the marinated grass using Brazen Betty. I was informed the process was called “taxiing”. Betty’s engine was cantankerous and had a tendency to splutter just when one wanted full power.
Carpenter seemed to be rapidly growing impatient with “Plimpton”, as I could occasionally hear him bellowing at some failure or other. Grissom, by contrast, was consistently calm and explained exactly what I was doing wrong and how to correct it. Not once did he ever shout at me in anger, particularly on one occasion when I failed to see a rut in the sodden grass and nearly flipped Betty onto her back.
Holmes consistently seemed to frustrate Carpenter. One day, he showed Carpenter a chart he had made illustrating the exact distance one required to move the controls to perform a specific maneuver. Carpenter bent over double laughing at the chart. Once he recovered himself, he asked to see the chart again, then, tore the offending cardboard up and threw it into the wind. “Feel the controls, Plimpton! You think too much! Feel!” he explained. Holmes looked perplexed. Carpenter shook his head and stalked back to the hangar, mumbling, “I need a stiff belt.”
Holmes was truly over-thinking the entire affair. I came to realize that his entire concept of flying was logic and calculation over the natural feel of the craft, reacting to the wind, working with the atmosphere, instead of willing the environment to conform to one’s desires. I quickly learned that lesson from Grissom. Holmes regularly put Betty into a drainage ditch, ran her into the side of the hangar, or flipped her on her back. Holmes over-controlled or under-controlled, relying upon his intellect
and calculations rather than responding to the craft. Fortunately, Grissom was a skilled mechanic and he repaired Betty within an hour of each mishap.
Flying in those days was like riding a horse. One not only had to prepare for what one wished to do, but respond to the vagaries of the air and the machine. Holmes could not seem to grasp that pure intellect was insufficient to the task. I could see his frustration grow each day, and heard him give vent to that frustration each night.
The weather once again interrupted our lessons for several days, so Holmes interned himself in our room to study his books, determined to prove that pure intellect could solve his problem. I took the drizzly days and explored the aerodrome and other companies, examined other aeroplanes such as the Valkyrie pushers at the Aeronautical Syndicate, and the Graham-White biplanes. I also spent time with Grissom lending a hand repairing Betty and tweaking the engines of Victoria and Dorothy. I learned quite a bit about aeroplanes and their motors during that period.
The following days saw Holmes and me progressing to powered hops across the field, occasionally dodging other aeroplanes and lorries. On his third hop, Holmes reared the machine up too steeply into what is called a stall. An aeronautical stall, unlike stalling a piston engine, means that the wing loses all lift and the machine plummets. Recovery from a stall at altitude is merely a matter of lowering the nose and waiting for speed to build up and for lift return, (I had learned this from Mr. Carpenter’s book, but had yet to experience it). Betty crunched down onto the field, breaking a skid and dumping Carpenter into a puddle. He leapt up, bellowing incoherently as Grissom and I ran to the scene. Meanwhile, “Plimpton” calmly unbuckled himself from his seat, clambered down, and began to examine the wrecked machine dispassionately. Carpenter stood before him, his eyes dark with fury, staring. Grissom had started slowly walking around Betty, examining her and assessing the damage and how long to fix it. Carpenter then whirled on Holmes and roared, “Look at my machine! Look at what you’ve done to my beautiful Betty, Plimpton!” He gave forth a wordless howl, and then continued to berate Holmes. “Plimpton, you are hopeless! Do you hear me? Hopeless! You’d be better off learning to sail! Anything but flying! I suggest that you pay your wager to Watson now, you ham-fisted clot! It will be a miracle if you ever get off the ground, and woe unto any aviator whom you’d meet in the air. You’d probably frighten them into a crash!”
Carpenter began to storm off in the direction of the hangar. Suddenly, he stopped and turned to face Holmes. “I’m charging you another fifty pounds for all the damage you have caused above and beyond our agreement, and for whatever damage you cause in the future. Why, I ought to charge you for two aeroplanes, if I had half a brain!” He turned and pointed at Grissom. “We’re switching students, Grissom. See if you can rattle some sense into his head. Our bet is off! You win. And if he pulls out another of his damned charts...” And off he stormed, gesticulating and hollering all the way to the hangar.
When Carpenter was surely out of earshot and Holmes was studiously examining the damage to Betty’s undercarriage and wing-tip, neither Grissom nor I could contain ourselves any longer. We both broke out into howls of laughter. Holmes, kneeling by the wingtip, glanced up at us with a raised eyebrow and returned to his inspection. This only made Grissom and me laugh all the harder.
After repairing Brazen Betty, Grissom began teaching Holmes the rudiments of taxiing across the field. Carpenter resumed my instructions in Victoria and after only a few runs, he pronounced himself satisfied with my abilities to control the machine, and we proceeded to make progressively higher hops across the field. Each time we came to the dirt track circling the grass field, Carpenter would hop from his seat to the ground, scramble to one wingtip or the other, and manhandle the machine to face the opposite direction. Then he would jump back to his seat and we would repeat the process again. Each time, he would turn us in a different direction, mostly into the prevailing wind, sometimes perpendicular to it. Our hops progressed the rest of the morning, until I was regularly soaring fifteen or more feet above the ground, working the controls to correct for drift, crosswinds, and downdrafts. He taught me how to deal with stalls the same day. To the man’s credit, not once did Carpenter vent his frustration about Holmes’s lack of ability with me. In fact, he seemed relieved to be away from Holmes.
Meanwhile, Holmes and Grissom continued to roll back and forth in Betty. Never did Holmes rise from the ground, but while I watched, during the periods when Carpenter would re-fill Victoria’s petrol tank, he came close to several turnovers and once ran straight across the perimeter track and into a shallow ditch. After we had resumed our hops, Carpenter turned to me and said, “What do you say we give ourselves a treat? You have progressed quite well. Grissom has done a good job with you.” I nodded, unsure of what he meant by the remark.
We turned Victoria into the wind at the edge of the field and then Carpenter removed his hands from the controls and folded them in his lap. He took his feet off the rudder bar. A wave of apprehension washed over me.
He leaned in to me and shouted over the blat of the motor, “You’re pointed right, Watson. Now advance the throttle. There you go. Keep her straight with the rudder. Excellent. Now, feel how she wants to fly? Ease back on the stick. Very good. A touch more. Perfect!” The rumbling of the wheels ceased and we were in the air. I was expecting Carpenter to tell me to ease off the throttle so the machine could settle back onto the ground, but he stayed silent.
Our shadow was now racing along behind us. We were climbing inexorably into the sky. “Correct for gusts with the stick. There you go. Keep the throttle open,” he said. I chanced a glance at Carpenter to see him grinning from ear to ear, his bright blue eyes sparkling with joy. “Let her nose drop a tad. Just relax the pressure on the stick a bit. Good, keep her there. We’re climbing nicely.” I glanced at the crude altimeter between us. We were passing through five-hundred feet! Higher than I had ever been before. The pointer continued to slowly revolve. Six hundred feet!
“Now, throttle back a little. Yes, just like that. Maybe a little more. Good. Ease off the back-pressure on the stick. Let her nose come down gently. Easy. Not too far. Excellent. Wonderful, Watson! You are truly flying now!”
The controls responded to the tiniest whim. A nudge on the rudder bar and the nose pointed in the right direction. The stick vibrated in my hand as though the machine were alive. Without a conscious thought, I instinctively manipulated elevator and ailerons to keep the Wright level and smooth. A bump in the air, a gust of wind, and the machine seemed to respond automatically. The sensation of such control was intoxicating! I had seldom felt so alive.
The countryside spread below us in all its summer splendor. I watched, enthralled, as our shadow galloped across fields, sprinted across thatch-roofed cottages and farmhouses, and danced among hedgerows and carriage roads.
Carpenter touched my arm. “Try a gentle turn to the left, now. A little more opposite rudder to prevent the nose from falling too far. Perfect. Now, reverse the controls and roll out of the turn. Good. Wings level. Watch off the left wingtip. When you see that church steeple touch the edge of the wing, I want you to start another turn to the left and hold the turn.”
I did as he instructed and was rewarded with the steeple relatively fixed below the wingtip as we made several turns about it. Our shadow clambered up one side of the church and down the other, repeatedly.
“Okay, Watson. Now, when the skids bracket that triangular field over there, see it?” I nodded. “Good. Roll out of the turn and return to straight and level.”
For the next exquisite fifteen minutes, Carpenter and I soared and cavorted above the countryside. We could see, far off in the distance, the smoke and haze of London. All too soon, it was time to return to Hendon Aerodrome. Without once touching his controls - although I did notice his feet and hands occasionally twitch towards the stick and rudder - Carpenter showed me how to circle the aerodr
ome, gauge the wind direction and speed, and how to make my landing approach. To say I felt as though I was frantic in working my controls is an understatement. I was very, very busy with rudder, elevator, and ailerons. A gust of wind threatened to upset Victoria as I neared the edge of the field, but I responded fluidly. We crossed the perimeter track at fifteen feet and settled none-too-gently to the earth. With several jarring bounces, I set the machine firmly on the grass and we wallowed across the field towards the hangars. With gentle movements of the throttle, I rolled Victoria to the front of the open hangar doors. Carpenter jumped from his seat, ran to a wingtip, and heaved the Wright around, while I assisted with quick bursts of the throttle. Once we were pointed back towards the middle of the aerodrome, Carpenter signaled for me to shut off the motor.
I was elated! I had flown! I really flew! All my trepidations and worries evaporated as a fog in the morning sun. I dismounted and joined Carpenter at the front of the hangar in time to witness Grissom standing in front of Brazen Betty, turned turtle with wheels and skids pointed to the sky like a dead crow. Holmes was insolently standing on the far side of the hangar, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette. He had a sour look on his face and took no notice of anything around him.
Grissom, always so calm and patient, let fly at Carpenter. “You can have him, Carpenter! I’m through. Twice! Twice,” he repeated forcefully, “while you two were swaning about, having the time of your lives, that pompous fool tried to kill me. Look what he did to Betty! If he keeps this up, we’ll run out of aeroplanes! There won’t be a flying machine left in England.” For once, as I glanced at him, Holmes looked truly chastened.
