by Susan Butler
The Friendship was out of gas.
11
Golden Girl
• • • • Amy Guest was waiting impatiently with her family in London. She had a lot riding on the outcome. It was her dream, her creation, that the world waited upon. She had chosen Byrd, she had set the standards for the woman who would take her place, she had passed on all plans, including the choice of the Fokker. And she had extended herself financially. Not only had she bought the plane and financed its refitting and new equipment, paying the agreed-upon sums to the pilots, paying the living expenses for Amelia, Slim, and Bill for the duration of the adventure—picking up the tab in Boston, in Halifax, in Trepassey and (hopefully) in England—her commitment extended to paying for the transportation, hotel and peripheral expenses of Hilton Railey and his assistant, now into their ninth day of waiting in Southampton, where the Friendship was expected to land. And she would have to get them all home.
It was in Southampton that Bill Stultz found Hilton to report that they had landed in Burry Port and that Amelia was waiting aboard the plane. Hilton requested that Bill ask Amelia to remain aboard the Friendship until he could join them. Now Amy Guest, exhibiting her usual style, gave the nod to Hilton Railey to charter a seaplane from Southampton-based Imperial Airways so that he and Allen Raymond of The New York Times could immediately fly to Burry Port.
Three hours after the Friendship landed, the Imperial Airways plane glided to a stop a few hundred yards away, and the two men saw Amelia seated cross-legged in the doorway of the plane, apparently oblivious to the clamor caused by the two thousand astounded inhabitants of Burry Port lined up at the water’s edge, talking among themselves and staring at her.
They went ashore to find, as would happen again and again all over the world, that the assemblage only had eyes for Amelia. As she stepped on land, the crowd surged toward her—some to touch her flying suit, some to get her autograph, some to shake her hand, some just to see her up close. Fingers grabbed a corner of the bright silk scarf sticking out from under her flying suit, tugged it off her neck, and moments later the scarf was a souvenir being distributed among the onlookers. She was almost crushed. At which point the high sheriff of Carmarthenshire, Burry Port’s three policemen, plus helpers, locked arms to form a ring around Amelia and slowly fought their way into the offices of the nearest building a hundred yards away, locking the doors behind them. They stayed there until more policemen and the motorcars Hilton Railey had arranged for arrived to take them to the Ashburnham Hotel, a ways outside the town, where they could safely spend the night.
The next morning they motored back, and quickly boarded the Friendship, bound for Southampton, their original destination. Carrying only the fifty gallons of gas Bill had put aboard the afternoon before, the big plane took off effortlessly, even with the added poundage of Hilton Railey and the Times reporter.
Southampton went wild when the Friendship came into view. The ships waiting in the harbor let loose their sirens, and as the fliers stepped onto the landing platform, there was again a wild outburst of enthusiasm among the eager throng, some of whom surged forward, almost pressing people into the water.
There on the dock amidst the various local officials—everyone from the mayor (who happened to be female) on down—waited Amy and Frederick Guest. There on the dock Amelia and Amy met for the first time. One can imagine them forthrightly shaking hands and congratulating and thanking each other, but the words are lost to posterity. Together they all escaped into waiting cars and were driven to London.
There the continuing tumultuous interest initially stunned Amelia. In her wildest imaginings nothing came close to the appalling furor the trip had created; she could find no place to hide. Even with Hilton Railey running interference, the first twenty-four hours in London were rocky indeed. For a fleeting moment she was overwhelmed, bursting out, “I am caught in a situation where very little of me is free. I am being moved instead of moving.... It really makes me a little resentful that the mere fact that I am a woman apparently overshadows the tremendous feat of flying Bill Stultz has just accomplished. But having undertaken to go through with this trip I have to go through with it.” Reporters even managed to gain entrance to her room at the Hyde Park Hotel that first morning, catching her, as they carefully noted, wearing a too-large borrowed silk frock as she plowed through the mountains of telegrams and cablegrams. Escape became imperative. At this juncture Amy Guest again stepped into the breach, offering Amelia forthwith the hospitality and privacy of her home, and so Amelia moved into her house in Mayfair.
Part of Amelia’s outburst of course was due to exhaustion. As the world marveled at the sheer nerve of the exploit, without ever learning about the crucial role Amelia had played in getting the plane off the ground in Trepassey, it also conferred fame upon her without appreciating the amazing grit, the unusual tenacity that enabled her to write about it. All anyone knew was that they couldn’t get enough of her. What was helping to fuel the excitement was Amelia’s personal achievement: she had scooped the world press. Even though fighting exhaustion, Amelia didn’t collapse in the plane in the three hours she had waited for Hilton in Burry Port. She had a ten-thousand-dollar contract with The New York Times and The London Times for her story, and showing remarkable composure, clear-sightedness, and detachment, she had written the first installment of the story of the flight while she waited—an incredible achievement for someone who had barely slept in over twenty-four hours. So that by the time they arrived in London, the newspapers were full not just of the facts of the achievement and the profiles of the participants—her story under her own byline was running simultaneously in The London Times and The New York Times.
She had truly hit the ground running. “I have arrived and I am happy—naturally. Why did I do it?” was how Amelia opened her first article. Then she went into details of the trip, and plainly and carefully stated the obvious before everyone forgot: that she had been merely a passenger and that the men deserved the credit. And each day for the next several days, no matter how full her schedule, Amelia wrote a sequel. The second article started with a wonderful hook. “Some day women will fly the Atlantic and think little of it because it is an ordinary thing to do”—in its day a totally mind-boggling notion. The articles were all anyone could hope for—readable, accurate, and informative.
And novel. No other adventurer—for that was what she had become, the first female adventurer—had pulled off such a clever feat, for the simple reason that no other adventurer could write. Even if she hadn’t laid a hand on the controls, she was a flier and brought to her writing the informed perspective of a flier. It immeasurably enhanced her image.
And so, because it was such a scary accomplishment, because the fear factor was still so high, because people still didn’t want to fly—wanted rather to see the planes and read about the exploits but stay on the ground—all the world’s great lined up to sing Amelia’s praises. President Coolidge was just one of many who sent her a congratulatory telegram; Henry Ford put a limousine at her disposal. The London Times editorialized that the flight was “A Woman’s Triumph” and reported virtually every word she uttered. When she was discovered sitting in the royal box at one of the big movie theaters, she was given a ten-minute ovation. She had lunch at the American embassy, took tea with the prime minister, was guest of honor at a dinner given her by the Guests, saw Helen Wills Moody play at Wimbledon, was Lady Astor’s guest in the House of Commons, and was invited for Sunday lunch at Cliveden. She attended Ascot, where she was photographed looking very chic and feminine in an elegant frock, and laid a wreath at the Cenotaph and a bouquet of roses in front of the statue of Edith Cavell.
Hilton Railey, meanwhile, kept hiring secretaries (he stopped at four) to help him deal with the onslaught, and still he could not keep up with the telegrams, letters, and offers of everything from jobs to marriage that were pouring in. By the second day Amelia had gotten her second wind. “I don’t want to be known always merely as the
first woman to fly the Atlantic,” she was quoted as saying, and took pains to remind everyone she was a social worker. “Aviation is a great thing, but it cannot fill one’s life completely.... I am bringing a message of good will and friendship from American to British settlement houses.”
As Amelia hit her stride, she began to do more things her own way. She went to visit Toynbee Hall, the famous settlement house in the East End of London started by a group of Oxford men that, she reminded everyone, was the model for all the settlement houses in the United States and most particularly Denison House. She also took the time to visit a Denison House friend of hers in Sheffield.
She spoke, along with Winston Churchill, Lady Astor, and the Duke of Sutherland, at a luncheon given by the Women’s Committee of the Air League of the British Empire. She was perfectly at ease both in one-on-one conversations with these famous people and on her feet speaking before them—so much so, it was a subject for commentary: “She spoke calmly and with perfect poise,” summed up one observer. Instead of talking about the flight, her speech dwelled upon how much farther ahead England was in popularizing flying, both in number of air passengers carried and in developing new light airplanes and the pilots to fly them, and what steps the United States should take to catch up.
In spite of her protestations, she suddenly didn’t sound like a social worker.
She sailed for home on the steamship SS President Roosevelt, arriving on July 6 to another tumultuous frenzied welcome. New York City’s official welcoming yacht, the Macon, full of august officials, steamed out to meet the President Roosevelt to transfer her to shore, and as it approached the pier, circling fire boats pumped streams of water into the air and blew off their whistles. The trio was given a triumphal parade up Broadway, followed by a reception at city hall; Commander Byrd, who continued to act like the proud father (and, with the Guests still in London, with even more success) gave them a star-studded luncheon.
The pattern established in England—that Amelia, the passenger, was accorded more acclaim than the crew—held true as well in her own country: “City Greets Miss Earhart; Girl Flier, Shy and Smiling, Shares Praise With Mates” ran the banner headline in The New York Times, reflecting national sentiment.
In spite of it all, Amelia managed to be lionized with a minimum loss of control. One thing that softened the blow was that she still didn’t quite realize that her life as a social worker was over. She kept telling New Yorkers she would be going back to Denison House “if I haven’t been fired.” She enthusiastically submitted to the lunches and dinners, teas and receptions George Putnam set up for her those first few days, most of which, at her direction, were heavily weighted toward women’s organizations and social work: she attended and spoke at a lunch at the Women’s City Club and at a reception at the United Neighborhood House, and she always talked up the roles of Lou Gordon and Bill Stultz, who were usually by her side.
But it was summer, and it was sweltering hot in the grand limousine that ferried her around the baking streets, and on her second day in New York, emerging from the children’s ward at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital at 158th Street, instead of getting back into the limousine with Dorothy and George Palmer Putnam, she calmly climbed into the empty sidecar of one of the police motorcycles escorting them and blasted off. The patrolman, Officer Minnett, obligingly opened up his siren, and, it was observed, “the flier’s tawny curls became a snarled cluster of yellow as the motorcycle picked up speed.” With the siren’s wail opening up traffic before them, Minnett streaked down Riverside Drive, down Broadway, turned onto Seventy-second Street, fled past the lawns and trees of Central Park, and then roared down Fifth Avenue, to the Biltmore, at Forty-fourth Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, where Amelia was staying. When she got out, it was observed that her cheeks were pinker than usual and that there was “a brighter light” in her eyes. “It was wonderful,” she said, “I’d sneak out any time for a ride like that.”
Her trip to Boston for the great reception planned for her there was like a royal tour. The Ford Company provided her with a Ford trimotor and pilot. A second plane took Bill and Lou. Also on the plane was a Paramount News photographer and three reporters, one of whom breathlessly datelined the resultant story “Aboard the Earhart Plane”—plus of course the Putnams. Unfazed, she napped a little, sat in the cockpit with the pilot, Nathan Browne, asked him questions about the trimotor, so similar to the Fokker, and tried her hand at flying it for a little while. Porter Adams, the clean-cut ex-naval officer, improbably the nation’s first aerial policeman (in Los Angeles in 1916), now a Boston banker and august president of the NAA, was standing on the tarmac to greet her, flanked by more than a quarter of a million people waiting to catch a glimpse of their hometown girl. Among all the scheduled events—the NAA lunch honoring their newest Boston vice-president, at which she impishly held up three five-dollar bills she had just extracted for signing up three new members, and the speeches at the state house and city hall and to the thousands gathered on Boston Common—she fit in a visit to Denison House. She thrilled all the families—the parents and the children whom she knew so well, greeting them as naturally as she had ever done, picking up where she had left off. “What did she say? What did she think of the flight? How did she like her reception in Boston?” asked a reporter of one of the women. “That I don’t know” was the reply. “I don’t know those things. She didn’t say. She just asked about us.”
Nevertheless Amelia was acutely aware of the uproar her appearance created, and after that she made no more statements about returning to Denison House to work.
The extraordinary attention continued. Wherever she went, she was mobbed; whenever she traveled, she was treated like royalty. When she left Boston, the president of the railroad gave her his private car and had the train make a special stop at Rye, where she was visiting the Putnams.
Besides the reception in Boston, George Putnam had picked, among the many eager supplicant cities who wanted to throw triumphal receptions for the three of them that summer, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Bill Stultz’s hometown, Williamsburg, Pennsylvania. Chaperoned by George and Dorothy Putnam, Amelia, Bill, and Slim traveled by private railroad car, and at each station, as their train ground to a halt, bands played, crowds cheered, and cameramen gathered.
Chicago claimed her as its own. Amelia visited her old school, Hyde Park, spoke to the assembled students, then stepped from stage to piano to reach the audience, much to the horror of the principal and the delight of the audience. She went to the race track and presented a bouquet of roses to the winner of a six-furlong sprint named in her honor, saw three innings of a Giants—Cubs baseball game, made a brief radio speech, and in the sweltering heat, managed to fit in a swim in Lake Michigan. She also visited Hull House.
Pittsburgh was the next stop, a two-hour layover on the trip back east. Upon their arrival they were driven to city hall so that Amelia could be given the keys to the city. It was still sweltering, and after the hot limousine ride back to the railroad station, instead of getting into the private car with her group, she pulled another switch on her companions—she calmly requested, received, and donned overalls, cap, and goggles and climbed into the cab of the engine at the front of the train. As the train rolled out of Pittsburgh, there is a marvelous photo of her leaning far out the cab window of the locomotive and waving a final adieu. But it wasn’t an experience she would repeat—it was much hotter, standing above the firebox, and much dirtier than she expected; when she got out in Altoona, she had to scrub down before rejoining her companions.
By the last weekend in July, Amelia was again ensconced at the Putnams’ house in Rye working on the book of her flight that Putnam’s would shortly publish. It was an easy place to take. Dorothy and Amelia got on famously; Dorothy was as taken with Amelia as her husband, and in fact the scarf that had been torn from Amelia’s neck at Burry Port had been a gift from Dorothy.
By this time Amelia knew both Putnams as well as anyone else in the world. Both of them
had been her constant escorts, shepherding her to every function: in New York sitting with her in the limousine and reduced to watching her take off in the motorcycle sidecar; flying with her in the trimotor to Boston; and going on the train to Williamsburg, Pennsylvania, where Dorothy and Amelia had sneaked off and gone shopping. They had also been her companions on the long train ride to Chicago and back.
Yet if Dorothy had any idea that her husband was falling in love with Amelia, she didn’t show it. Amelia settled down in the spacious Putnam home in Rye across from the eleventh hole of the Apawamis Club and in two weeks finished the manuscript that Putnam’s would almost immediately publish. She dedicated the book to her hostess: “To Dorothy Binney Putnam under whose roof tree this book was written.” George gave it the title of 20 Hrs. 40 Min., Our Flight in the Friendship, very much in his usual style—which leaned to the tongue-in-cheek-informational. When he wrote his own autobiography, he called it Wide Margins: A Publisher’s Autobiography.
Time magazine profiled George Palmer Putnam as a person with a dangerous combination of literary ability, business acumen, and energy; brash, effusive, unstoppable, and very bright. From a conservative family, he had grown up in Rye, New York, the son and grandson of publishers. His grandfather, for whom he was named, had started G.P. Putnam’s, a publishing house that, by progression, by the time George was growing up, had become G.P. Putnam’s Sons and was run by George’s father and his two brothers.
Washington Irving had been one of the early Putnam writers. (The “Irving Table,” upon which the author had written many of his works, resided in the Putnam library; Amelia undoubtedly used it too.) Putnam’s had published the early editions of Poe, Lowell, Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne, and Parkman, and their volumes lined the walls of George’s family library. Yet George was proud to boast that although the atmosphere in his home was decidedly literary, he was not: “Just as ministers’sons are supposed to go bad ... I fell from literary altitudes early, and often.” More than anything else, he loved the great outdoors—the untended, untouched, if possible unexplored parts of the world. As a child, he favored adventure books about daring boys and the great outdoors, with titles such as Cab and Caboose and Canoe and Saddle. And when he grew up, his tastes were the same—the only substantive difference being that his adventurers were now daring adults.
