Meanwhile, over in merrie olde England, Griff was standing beneath the 1903 flyer at the Science Museum in London, addressing a meeting of the Royal Aeronautical Society. By all accounts, he gave an admirably full and succinct summary of our work. Dr. Abbot and his associates at the Smithsonian could learn a thing or two from it, if they took the trouble to read the press reports. In fact, so many articles on the first flight have come out in the past few weeks that a person would have to go out of his way to avoid them. The McCormicks came to the house for dinner over the holidays, and I showed Anne the big spread on the anniversary in Airway Age. She paused when she came to the picture of Kate, as if she expected me to say something. But I held my tongue. Swes walked out of my life two years ago, and it will take more than an old photograph in a magazine to bring her back.
Katharine
I have had my share of ups and downs these past few weeks, sure enough—the ride has been almost as bumpy as my maiden flight in an airplane! First thing after Thanksgiving I came down with the flu and kept to my bed for ten days with a blazing fever. By the time the big celebration for the boys rolled around on Wright Brothers Day, I was pretty much right as rain. Even so, I stayed away from the anniversary dinner in Kansas City for fear it would annoy Orv if anything was said about me—especially after one of the Cleveland newspapers dug up that old wives’ tale about me chipping in my own money to help Will and Orv. “Without Kitty Wright there might have been no Kitty Hawk”—what bosh and nonsense! I have written to the Associated Press to request that their members remove that old, worn-out Hampton’s Magazine story from their morgues. It must be on its last legs by now, but it positively refuses to lie down and die!
I did write a letter to Mr. Kent Cooper of the AP—my recollection is quite clear on that point. But did I ever put it in the letter box? I s’pose it’s just conceivable that it might have slipped my mind. My memory is getting to be awfully wobbly. I certainly mixed things up royally on Christmas morning. After we got through opening presents, I found that table runner, unaccountably, with no card near it. The only reason I am sure it came from Dayton is that it was in a Rike-Kumler Department Store box. For the life of me I still don’t know who sent it to me. And for the longest time I couldn’t think what my friend Irene had given me—though I opened the package myself and later wore the apron! Then all of a sudden when I went to get another apron to get dinner, on Ollie’s night out, it came over me in a flash—the nice apron Irene made for me. Can you beat that? My only excuse is that I was terribly tired, and I’m always a perfect dunce when I get really exhausted.
It didn’t do much to improve my performance to know that Harry wasn’t feeling any too zippy himself. Fortunately, he is not as slow off the mark as Orv and I are when it comes to taking medical advice. When Dr. Bohan examined him and identified a kidney stone as the cause of his discomfort, he phoned the Mayo Clinic straight away and made an appointment to have it out at the end of January. Everyone in Minnesota was very nice to us, just as they were the time Orv was treated there for his sciatica. The Mayos—Dr. Will and Dr. Charlie—stopped in to see Harry on their rounds every morning, and he got a lot of information from them on the early days of the clinic. I’ll bet my last cent that sooner or later he’ll turn it into an article or editorial. Newspapermen are almost as bad as scientists—never off the job for a minute!
It felt strange for me to be nursing Harry, instead of the other way around—but the tables were turned right back again soon enough. It’s just my luck. I hadn’t quite gotten over the flu that laid me low before Christmas, and the weather in Minnesota was bitter cold—anywhere from about ten to twenty-eight degrees below zero. Anyhow, the day after Harry left the hospital, I came down with a terrific cold—I was practically an invalid the whole time he was recuperating from his surgery at the hotel—and it has only gotten worse since we came home. Poor Charlie Taylor! He has never been one of my personal favorites, though Will and Orv were devoted to him, but we were pretty poor company the day he stopped off here on his way west. Anybody could see how he was dying to talk about the old days and working with the boys on the flyer—and there we sat, Harry and I, like a pair of thick-witted bumps on a log.
All I could think of the whole time Mr. Taylor was here was how we had to save up our strength for our big trip. I’ve been busy as anything—trying to get my clothes ready, my teeth fixed up, my passport photo taken, and any number of odds and ends that have been neglected. It has only been in the last two or three days that I could get out at all. There is so much to do—and less than two weeks left! Harry has taken care of all the arrangements. We sail from New York to Naples and plan to go straight on to Athens, if he feels equal to it. The Lords are living there this year—Louis is the annual professor at the School for Classical Studies—and this is the year of all years for us to see Athens. I ’spect we’ll spend most of our time in Italy, though, and maybe come home by the North Atlantic, stopping in London to see Griff. Harry is so delighted over going to Italy. He says it takes the curse off his operation!
We’ll visit Rome, of course—I wouldn’t miss that for anything. I wonder if the Hotel Russie is still open for business. The boys and I stayed there in 1909. It backed up against the slope of the Pincian Hill and had a lovely garden with a fountain, where meals were served in mild weather. I fell for Italian cooking almost as hard as I fell for the fountains. Maybe we’ll stop in France too, or maybe not—we don’t know exactly. We’ll see how strong Harry is. I used to dream that Orv, Harry, and I could get up a little party and take a cruise to that part of the world. I am bound and determined to see the South of France again before I die. It’s my special place—my Carcassonne, you could say. Tout le monde a son Carcassonne—“Every man has his Carcassonne”—and every woman too!
“My friend, come, go with me,
Tomorrow then thine eyes shall see
Those streets that seem so fair.”
How sad it is to think that the peasant in the poem didn’t get his wish—
That night the church bell’s solemn toll
Echoed above his passing soul.
He never saw fair Carcassonne.
But I will—I will see Carcassonne! Can it be that my wish is actually coming true, after all these years? How delightful it will be to go back to the dear old places with Harry by my side—to bury myself in his arms, without a care in the world, and sightsee to our hearts’ content. My head spins like a top to think of it! It’s like another dream—a tale of star-crossed lovers, only this time with a happy ending. We’ll spoon and coo like a pair of lovebirds, the way we used to do in the “blue room” at Hawthorn Hill. We were bold and shameless, mister, I must say—with Little Brother asleep right down the hallway!
Harry, dearest, do you remember that magical Illumination Night at Oberlin? The campus was all aglow with Japanese lanterns, you were coming on to me, and I was growing sillier by the minute. An enchanted evening! It was all so unreal, almost as if we were suspended in time. One more breath and we would be sitting across from each other at dinner in Mrs. Morrison’s boardinghouse—or walking back from chapel together the day I received the prize for my essay on the Monroe Doctrine. I do believe I would have agreed to marry you right then and there if you had asked me, Mr. Haskell! But I’m not sorry about the past. We could have been a good deal to each other, but we have each other now and that is so exquisite—and we have so much more to give each other than we would have had all those years ago. No, my own darling, we won’t spend any vain regrets over those thirty-four years. We’ll just make the most of the time that is left for us to be together.
Time—bless my soul, how it does fly! May I tell you a little secret, Harry dear, a very secret secret, something I have never told anyone before? Every now and again I feel as if I have slipped these mortal coils and am riding alone in my own personal flying machine. Up and up and up I climb, higher and higher and higher, until my head is poking above the clouds and I catch a little glimpse of heaven
. If only my friends back home could see me now—little Katie Wright from Dayton, Ohio, doing the bird act! And who is that, way down below on the ground? Why, it’s Orv, propped up on his crutches and gazing up at me with love in his eyes. If I bend down, I can practically touch him—but no, now he’s gone, vanished behind a cloud. Where are you, my darling Little Brother? And Will? I hear your voice calling to me—“Swes! Swes!”—but you are nowhere to be seen. Won’t you come back, come back to your Sterchens?
Ah, Lorin, here you are, at least. What a good brother you have been—sweet and thoughtful and true! Yes, it’s Phiz, standing before my very eyes, large as life. Now, where can Orv be? Lost and gone forever, I fear. But wait! Someone is leaning over me, someone is whispering in my ear—whispering Orv’s name—his blessed, blessed name. Here he is!—Little Brother, right by my side, smiling that sweet, crinkly smile of his. Of course I know him—how could I not? Or is this just another fairy tale, a dear, insubstantial fancy? Come to me, Orv! Come to me, Harry! My darling boys, come to me and let me release you. I can never have you both, I see that now—I can never go home again—but I can still dream. Yes, I still have my dreams! Truly, tout le monde a son Carcassonne!
Epilogue
Orville
First Will, then Reuch, and now Swes. Three of us gone before their times, and two left to tell the tale. Would I have done what I did if I had known Kate was going to die so soon? I guess I’ll never know. In hindsight, that letter from Harry’s sister should have tipped me off. He had written to her before Christmas to say that Swes was in bed with the flu and a 103-degree temperature. Mary Haskell was quite upset, understandably, but there was more behind her letter than that. I have a notion that Kate’s illness gave her an excuse to ask me for something. She seemed to want me to grant Harry a kind of absolution. Here, let me read the letter and you can judge for yourself:
“I may be all wrong,” Mary writes, “but I kept on wondering—You see when I have written to ask Harry whether he was forgiven for taking away Katharine, he did not answer, and I did not repeat the question, only wondered. When Harry called me to Kansas City in ’26 to tell me of this prospect, I thought I had never seen him so happy—the only sorrow being that his gain was your loss. But he said, ‘Katharine will just have to commute between Dayton and Kansas City.’ He also remarked, ‘Of course, Katharine’s being sorry for me has much to do with her marrying me.’
“Before our Mother died we spoke together of the possibility of that marriage and Mother said, ‘She will never leave her brother!’ But you see it is true that Harry was more alone than almost any man, because all the rest of the family were missionaries and our interests became so far apart—and our sympathies. Perhaps dear Katharine reasoned it out that if she married Harry she could spend lots of time in Dayton and so make you both happy, but of course if she were not married, she couldn’t go freely to Kansas City and so couldn’t help Harry much.
“Is not love blind sometimes in its reasoning? I felt dreadfully about the dilemma myself, but then I concluded that Harry too is a human being, and if God had pity on him in giving Katharine this love to him, would not the great Father in some way make up the loss to her brother—even tho it be to show him the difference between the finite and the infinite?”
Mary meant well, I expect, but she jumped to the wrong conclusion. She assumed my quarrel was with her brother and not with Kate. Harry is a good man, an honorable man. Anyone could see how broken up he was when his first wife passed away. God knows he is entitled to all the happiness he can find in this vale of tears. But I know of no law of man or nature that says his loneliness as a widower should rightfully take precedence over mine as a brother. Family comes first with the Wrights. That is why I never married. That is why I can never forgive Kate for leaving me. And that is why I had no choice but to shut the door behind her and get on with my own life.
Mary’s letter was an omen. No sooner had I gotten back from Washington at the end of February than Lorin came over with the news that Swes had contracted pneumonia and her life was in danger. I knew then and there that I would have to swallow my pride and go to Kansas City. In fact, I went out and bought my train ticket that very day. Lorin pressed me to come with him immediately on the overnight train, but I froze up. I couldn’t seem to make myself do what I knew had to be done sooner or later. Finally Lorin said nobody in the family would ever speak to me again if I didn’t go to Kate’s bedside, the way she came to mine after the accident at Fort Myer. That was no idle threat, you can be sure. I packed my bag and wired Harry to expect me the next afternoon.
By the time I arrived at the house, the death watch had already begun. There was nothing the doctor could do except keep Kate sedated and comfortable. And there was nothing any of the rest of us could do—Lorin and I, Harry and his boy—except gather around her bed and wait quietly for the end. Swes woke up for a moment or two before she died and recognized me, or so Harry said. Perhaps he was just being kind—that would be like him. Only then did it hit me that Kate and I never said good-bye.
Harry
We returned on February 13 from my operation at the Mayo Clinic and were planning a trip abroad for my recuperation. Katharine had a cold but had recovered and had started out shopping for her clothes. On Thursday, February 21, we engaged passage on the Roma sailing the ninth of March. On Friday morning, she had a severe chill without any warning—no cold, no head symptoms, no cough. I had her go to bed at once and sent for a doctor and nurse. Her temperature shot to 104 that day. Dr. Bohan suspected pneumonia, but could detect none of the characteristic symptoms—no coughing, shortness of breath, or pain in the chest.
Monday he was able with the stethoscope to get the localization of pneumonia in the bottom of the right lung. But she began Sunday night having chills, and Dr. Bohan told me he was disturbed because that indicated complications and infection outside the lung. Tuesday she almost collapsed, and we were thoroughly alarmed. After that she was out of her head most of the time and didn’t realize how sick she was.
By Friday the pneumonia was clearing up. But the infection had entered the blood stream, and it was a general infection that overwhelmed her. That morning, though still irrational, she asked for Lorin, and I called him immediately on long distance. He arrived Saturday morning. Friday afternoon a telegram from Orville said he would arrive Saturday afternoon. When Lorin came we were able to rouse her for a moment. She smiled and said, “Why, it’s Phiz,” and then drifted off. When Orville arrived she was still weaker. I asked her if she knew him, and finally she aroused and said, “Of course I do.” But that was all. She was unconscious until her death Sunday evening.
Bishop Spencer of Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral conducted the Episcopalian service at the house on Monday afternoon, and we all left for Dayton that night. I felt that as Katharine had so long been identified with Dayton, she would like to be buried there. The funeral took place at Orville’s on Wednesday. President Wilkins of Oberlin and Professor Stetson were there, as were various members of the Wright family, several of Katharine’s old college friends, and the McCormicks. So she finally was reunited with her loved ones. The homecoming came too late, but Katharine would have enjoyed it, I feel.
Orville was cordial and sympathetic toward me and invited me to visit him. Before I left Dayton, he told me that Katharine had died for him three years earlier and that he had gone to Kansas City on my account, not hers. But I think he deceived himself. Obviously, he did not go on my account. He went because he could not bear not to—and his action is more significant than his own explanation of it. As I see it, in going to Kansas City he finally admitted defeat in one of the important attitudes of his life. His attitude had changed; he had been obliged under the tragic event to abandon his fixed position. So while he insists that he was not defeated, the facts are against him.
It is still hard to realize what has happened. But in accepting life we accept its dangers, and the only thing to do is to go on and do the best we can. I b
elieve Katharine had two interesting and happy years in Kansas City. They were wonderful years for me. We had the same interests and tastes, and our home life was perfect. She was the most vital, radiant spirit I ever knew. Now she rests where she belongs, beside her father and mother and brother in the city she left under such unhappy circumstances. “Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill.”
Orville
In the end Sterchens did come home, though not in the way either of us would have wished. Harry and I escorted her body from Kansas City on the train, and she was buried the next day on top of the hill in Woodland Cemetery, between Will and the plot I’ve set aside for myself. Phil Porter, the rector of Christ Episcopal Church, conducted the service. The house was filled with floral tributes—that would have pleased Kate, with her love of flowers—and aeroplanes from Wright Field strewed roses over her grave as Reverend Porter read the last rites.
So many letters of condolence arrived over the next few weeks that I despaired of responding to each of them personally. It was easier to recite the conventional formula than to find words of my own: “Mr. Orville Wright acknowledges with grateful appreciation your kind expression of sympathy.” Until then, I don’t think I fully realized how many friends Kate had all over the world. Old Colonel Lahm wrote from Paris that he “never heard any woman more generally spoken well of, by those who knew her.” The Oberlin trustees issued a citation praising her as “intelligent, devoted, unselfish, courageous, inspiring.” The Kate I knew and loved was all of those things, and more. Griff was his usual tactful self. “Don’t worry to write,” he said. “I understand.” Does he really understand, I wonder? For that matter, do I?
Maiden Flight Page 19
