Maiden Flight

by Harry Haskell

  I understood Harry’s saying that he wouldn’t have cared so much, for himself, to go on living after Isabel died. When Will was taken from us, I had the same feeling of emptiness—the world seemed to have lost its meaning. Yet life does go on, willy-nilly, and I did my best to convince Harry that the future was far from bleak, for both him and me. I told him that we had a good many years before us, years that were sure to be filled with satisfaction and happiness. I was right about that, at least, however cloudy my crystal ball may have been about other things. We have made each other very happy indeed. I’m not altogether pessimistic, if I do growl and fuss a good deal. When all is said and done, I have found a few people who make living well worth my while!

  Was Stef one of those people? I used to think so, but now—now I’m not so sure. My mind is in an uproar. Some of the best memories of my life are bound up in my friendship with Stef. There was a time when I wanted to write to him every single day. I longed to know where he was and what he was doing when we were apart. Then, practically overnight, our friendship simply fizzled out. After that agonizing visit when Orv and I let him know how we felt about his disgraceful conduct in the Wrangel Island affair, his letters pretty much stopped coming. About every three months I would receive a line or two saying that he was very busy—that was all. I didn’t blame Stef. Liking goes by favor. But it felt funny to be discussing solemnly whether he and I were friends any longer. If not friends, just what were we, I’d like to know?

  Try as I might, I couldn’t drum Stef out of my head. I kept hoping I’d find a letter in the mail when I got home from a trip. I wondered if he ever missed me, just the least little bit. Then I’d pinch myself and say, “It’s all right if he doesn’t. I don’t know why he should miss me nor why I should wish he would. Everything is all right just as it is.” Stef was a dear comfort to me when Reuch died and Orv was having such a bad time with sciatica. I never can forget the lovely things that existed between us. I wished with all my heart that I could do something worthwhile for him—not to make demands or be “forward,” as he put it, but just to let him know that I thought of him with sympathy and affection, and that I would lighten his sad times and increase his happiness if I could.

  But the case was hopeless—I see that now. The longer I thought about Stef and how little I could actually do for him, the clearer it became that he wasn’t to blame for my restlessness. The real reason I was so unsettled was that I had nothing to do. I couldn’t comfort Harry or Stef. I couldn’t force the Smithsonian to do the right thing. I couldn’t even get Orv to write that blasted book! No one ought to be without some useful occupation, yet women and girls nearly always are. There is no incentive for us to go out and find something meaningful to do. On the contrary, we are actually blamed if we take up any regular, honest-to-goodness work outside the home—as if it meant taking a job away from someone who needed it more. No wonder so many women don’t do anything but give orders to servants and dress and fill up their time with nothing!

  It isn’t that I am bored—far from it. I have never been bored in all my life, except for a few hours at a stretch. Why, then, do I find myself with the same old weariness every afternoon? It has always been my besetting weakness, this getting so tired, ever since college. It often comes over me that I could hardly earn my own living anymore—if it should ever be necessary, I mean. I have so little endurance, so little strength, so little sustained energy. I don’t know what makes me so mortally exhausted all the time. Maybe it’s just pure laziness. My honest opinion is that I would be less tired if I had some good, hard work to do!

  Harry

  In the first few months after Isabel died, it was only my writing that kept me going from one day to the next. Never have I been so grateful for deadlines; without them, even the best of us might wake up one morning and find that he has nothing left to say. The articles I mailed to the Star from Europe were a lifeline for me. My colleagues reported that they went over well with readers, and Katharine even encouraged me to put them between hard covers. After reading the first draft of my manuscript, however, she changed her tune. Her Criticalness declared that my “Notes from a Kansas City Traveler” were all very well for a newspaper audience, but when it came to writing a book, she was sure I could “do better.” Well, what did I expect? I asked for her opinion, and she has never been shy about speaking her mind.

  In any case, I had other things on my plate after my sabbatical. Henry had decided to see the world for himself and spend a year at the University of Toulouse. Shortly after he set sail, in the fall of 1924, my mother’s health fell into decline. I held off going to Oberlin as long as I dared, for fear of alarming her, and by the time I arrived she was so weak that she could talk only with considerable effort. One day, to break the routine of reading aloud to her, I told her about one of the widows back home who had been pursuing me. Her son, it seemed, had suddenly become one of the most eligible bachelors in Kansas City. As my sister was putting her to bed that evening, Mother burst out indignantly, “To think of those widows going after Harry. They deserve to have their necks wrung, every one of them. I guess they will learn my son is capable of selecting a wife for himself when he wants one!”

  Later Mary told me that when she broached the idea of my marrying Katharine, Mother dismissed it out of hand. “She will never leave her brother,” she declared. For a long time I too took it for granted that no matter how much Katharine cared for me, in the end she would be unable to tear herself away from Orville. It was the combination of Mother’s death and Henry’s absence that brought home how much Katharine’s companionship had come to mean to me. I resolved to unburden myself to her on the subject the first chance I got. But before a suitable opportunity presented itself, another springtime was upon us, Henry was coming home from France to take a job on the Wichita Beacon, and the Smithsonian controversy was bursting back into bloom like a hardy perennial.

  In April 1925 the New York Times belatedly caught wind of Orville’s plans to send the flyer to London. He promptly put out a statement confirming the report, without volunteering further details. Off the record, he told me that the loan would probably be permanent, but he preferred to say nothing to the press. Then, to my surprise, Orville went on the offensive. He publicly challenged the accuracy of the Smithsonian’s label describing the Langley aerodrome as the first machine in history “capable of sustained free flight.” This salvo produced the desired effect of ruffling the feathers of officials in Washington. The Smithsonian’s secretary, Dr. Walcott, duly issued a statement of his own in which he reviewed the Hammondsport trials of 1914 and concluded that the label was fundamentally correct.

  Katharine accused me of “taking to the woods” just as the story was breaking, since I had gone to Quebec to meet Henry’s ship. On my return I instructed the Star’s Sunday department to get up a general piece on the controversy. Meanwhile, I turned out another in a long series of editorials taking the Smithsonian to task. Not that I was under the illusion that it would do any good. I had told Katharine more than once, at the risk of making myself a terrible nuisance, that the only way to settle the matter once and for all was for Orville to publish his monograph. She protested that her brother was so worn out nervously and so lacking in vitality that she didn’t think he could do it, and that it distressed her to have it urged. Much as I hated to be disagreeable, I insisted that it was a vital matter and really must be done.

  Orville’s resistance was nothing short of heroic. No force on earth could shake him loose. Each time after issuing a statement to the press, he would duck down out of sight, grumbling that the row about the machine going out of the country had so interfered with his work that there was no telling when it would be ready for shipment. I was just about ready to throw in the towel when, one day at the beginning of June, a large, flat package arrived in the mail from Dayton. Inside was a copy of the famous photo of the first flight at Kitty Hawk, inscribed to me by Orville. I knew what that meant. It was his way of saying that I was no
longer just a friend of Katharine’s but a trusted ally, almost one of the family. Nothing could have pleased me more.

  Orville’s magnanimous gesture demanded a response. But what did I, a humble denizen of Grub Street, have to offer a man of his stature? The problem occupied me for some time. At length I realized that the solution was literally staring me in the face. I recalled the portraits of Stef and other friends that I had seen on the Wrights’ bookshelves in Dayton. I would send them a photograph of myself to add to their collection. Katharine wouldn’t consider it immodest of me, I felt sure, and if Orville happened to notice, he wouldn’t give the gift a second thought. To tell the truth, I was warming to the idea of being something more than a bird of passage at Hawthorn Hill.

  Katharine

  I was awfully glad to have Harry’s picture, and it pleased me that he wanted to send it. A real “speaking likeness” it was too. I half expected he would open his mouth and start talking to me when I looked at it! He pretended to be surprised when I wrote to thank him, but he knew perfectly well how much I liked to have it. I told him I intended to keep it out in plain sight somewhere, either in the library or in my bedroom. That way, I told myself, Little Brother wouldn’t get any silly ideas into his head. Not that there was anything for him to have ideas about—not just yet!

  I tried to get up the nerve to send Harry a portrait of me, but my activities in that line had not met with a very enthusiastic response. The most recent photograph was the one that had been published in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine when I went on the board of trustees. Orv and Lorin and the children all made more or less insulting remarks about it, saying that it made me look like a “delicate old lady.” I hinted as broadly as I knew how that my feelings wouldn’t be hurt if Harry didn’t want the photograph—but he went ahead and asked for it anyway. Serves me right for making the offer! So there I sit on the bookcase in his study, perched between Isabel and his dear, sweet mother.

  Poor Harry—to lose both the women in his life one after the other. I had hoped he was through with his troubles for a while. I only saw his mother twice before she died. How I wish I could have been something to her, for his sake. Some way, Harry brings out all my mothering instincts in spades. And why shouldn’t I mother him, I’d like to know? A mother’s is the most lasting and genuine of all kinds of love. Harry’s love for his mother was as fine as his devotion to Isabel. It was because he and Isabel had been so much to each other that he was lost without her. They grew up together and while they were still young learned to adapt themselves to one another, just as Orv and I did. Everything, on both sides, in their life together was a revelation to me of the lovely possibilities of marriage.

  Katharine Wright Haskell. I still can’t quite believe it’s real—my new name, my new husband, my new home. Everything has changed so quickly! Four years ago I was a confirmed old maid with no thought or hope of marrying. All my plans, all my interests had gathered around the kind of life I had been living up to then, with Orv my central interest and Harry, Stef, and a few others a very dear and necessary part of my existence. Then, seeing that living was such an anxious and almost overwhelming thing to Harry, I began to transfer more and more of my interest to him, until at last I was drawn into his orbit and away from Orv’s, like a stray asteroid captured by a passing planet.

  I had a funny whim about wanting Harry to show me little attentions. I often wished that Orv would do some of the nice little things that other men do when they don’t think half so much of any woman as he thought of me. Harry understood that without a word on my part. One Christmas, before his mother died, he sent me the most exquisite scarf to go with a blue velvet dinner gown I was having made. The scarf was a different shade of blue, and much prettier. It caught the same tones in the changeable velvet at times and was sometimes much deeper. For the fun of it, I cut a swatch of the dressmaker’s fabric and slipped it inside a letter I sent to Harry. How deliciously daring it felt to have our own little secret!

  Orv never pays the slightest attention to my clothes, whereas Harry is forever paying me dear little compliments. A shameless flatterer he is—and one more-than-loyal supporter too. He proved it when the Smithsonian flap reared its ugly head again. Orv and I were awfully sorry that Harry wasn’t around when the storm broke in the spring of 1925. He had always done more than anyone else, and we did want him that time. It was nice of him to offer me his shoulder to cry on afterward, but I need a good open space when I really let loose. Bubbo had half a notion that Harry was the source of the leak to the New York Times. All I’ve got to say about that is—bully for him if he was! We thought he could probably start something, and Orv was so glad to have his help.

  The tide was beginning to turn in our favor—for one thing, the aeronautical journals were all coming out on our side. But there was no doubt that Walcott would fight to protect himself. We never underestimated his prestige and power as the head of the Smithsonian. He was one of the best politicians in Washington and knew all the influential people in Congress. Orv always wanted an investigation by scientific people, but he had to be very careful not to let it fall into Walcott’s hands. I have my suspicions about his successor, Dr. Abbot, too. Anyone can see how the so-called scientists have to curry favor with these men. So much money and so many opportunities for advancement lie in their power to distribute.

  My opinion is, if people don’t want the machine to stay in England, they will have to stir Congress up to take hold of the Smithsonian and do something about it. If they are not interested enough to do anything, I don’t see how they can reasonably blame Orv for trying to get the machine settled in a permanent home while he is still here to see about it himself. Little Brother is very bitter and disgusted beyond words with the howl that has gone up. The nervous shocks have reduced his vitality and energy beyond belief. No one but myself can understand that.

  I know what they all think—that if he had published more stuff and so on that it would be different. What people don’t understand is that Orv looks on the writing as only a minor obligation. He truly despises the idea that telling about what you have done is the chief thing, that the actual doing is liable to be thought nothing at all unless you keep calling people’s attention to it. It isn’t because Orv hasn’t written a book that the Smithsonian has been able to get away with murder. It is because talking and writing impress “scientists” much more than any “scientific” doing ever could. The scientists have been cowards, every one of them. No one who should have taken an interest and could have done much has done anything to help us. I despise the whole superficial spirit of the scientific world. Scientific fiddlesticks!

  I knew, and Orv knew even better, that it would be more work to do the thing well through another person than for Orv to do it himself. Yet year after year it was the same old story. Each fall I would be looking forward hopefully to getting to work on the book, but Bubbo always had some plausible excuse. When I got too insistent, he would report that he was “looking up things” and getting all the material ready to use—“indexing” and so on. It was almost comical. He looked and acted exactly like a small boy trying to dodge a disagreeable chore.

  Orville

  Toward the end of 1924, I finally felt fit enough to set up the 1903 machine on the floor of my shop. Before it went to England, I needed to check that everything was exactly as it had been originally. A few pieces had been replaced when the flyer was sent to New York for exhibition some years earlier, and they were not quite right. I had hoped to get the flyer safely out of the country before news of its going got out, but unfortunately there was a leak at New York. I suspect Harry told someone out there confidentially and, like most confidences, it didn’t keep. But we could hardly fault him for having no stomach for a fight. When I sent him the photograph of the first flight as a token of our appreciation, he wrote back, “Yours for knocking Walcott into a cocked hat!”

  As a consequence of the leak, a mighty hue and cry had broken out over letting the flyer go abroad. One congre
ssman even threatened to introduce a bill to prevent the exportation of such historic relics—as if that would have solved the problem. Kate said she wanted to pass a law against people expressing opinions on things they wouldn’t take the trouble to read up on. Hardly any of the people who were creating such an unholy uproar understood the first thing about my dispute with the Smithsonian. A reporter from the New York World spent two days here, and I was frantic with the job of trying to explain anything to him when he didn’t even know what an aileron was. That took all the life out of me.

  I have tried and tried to get these elementary points across, but it’s no use. Aeronautical engineering is simply too complicated a subject for general discussion. Everyone says it is a great pity that I dislike writing so much and am so unwilling to hand it over to anyone else. If they only knew how hard it is to get anyone to understand and to do anything but ball things up when it comes to the technical stuff, they would have more sympathy. Even Kate never seemed to get things quite right. If she tried to write anything, she missed the point just enough to exasperate me. In the end I always have to word the statement myself or it will make me look ridiculous before aeronautical men.

  The most important thing, as far as creating an impression goes, is for other people to talk in a general way about Will’s and my work as scientists. It isn’t because anyone has read Langley’s book that he is established as having contributed the scientific foundation for the aeroplane. Not at all. It is because the Smithsonian bunch and their supporters have continually talked and written, in vague generalities, about Langley’s “scientific” work. They are the ones who deliberately began the references to Will and me as “mechanics.” That didn’t just happen. It was methodically planned and persistently done.