to shore. AE, kerchief and helmet off, her hair in small tightly curled
locks, her face bright in a wide smile, was the center of attention.
She was besieged by autograph hounds before she could get a foot out of
the boat. A boatload of people drew up alongside, and someone reached
out a hand and pulled both boats together. They wanted the fliers’
autographs now, all kinds of people: a handsome dark-haired man in a
gray homburg; a woman in a tweed coat and a cloche hat; a boy in a cap
and short pants; policemen, functionaries, workers.
The public acclaim had begun. To Amelia’s despair, the clamor of the
crowds failed to distinguish her as a mere female passenger. She looked
for Bill and Lou, the men who had done what everybody was praising
her for. It was their show, not hers. Despite her smile, she felt
miserable. She did not like to be taken for what she was not: she hated
phony heroines. At last three policemen escorted her through the crowd
into a factory building.
The wife of the factory foreman brought tea for the three fliers.
Amelia, despite the tumult outside the factory, maintained her
composure and grinned. “Now I know I’m in Britain,” she said
cheerfully, raising her cup and saluting the hostess. In answer to the
cheering crowd outside, AE went three times to the window and waved.
She was beginning to feel the need for the man who had agreed to manage
the publicity.
Hilton H. Railey had crossed the Atlantic earlier by boat. He was
waiting for them in Southampton, where they were supposed to land.
When he heard that they had arrived safely at Burry Port, he left
Southampton immediately by flying boat to join them.
Captain Railey went into action as soon as he saw his charges. Seeing
that they were tired and worn from the long flight, he whisked them off
to a nearby hotel and locked the doors to all well-wishers. He settled
Stultz and Gordon in one room and Amelia in another.
AE sank into a deep chair, threw one trousered leg over the arm of the
chair, and stretched the other leg out straight. She raised her arms
high and yawned wearily.
Railey thought Amelia looked dissatisfied. “What’s the matter?” he
asked. “Aren’t you excited?”
Her answer came slowly. “Excited? No.” Amelia took her leg off
from the arm of the chair and sat up straight. “It was a wonderful
experience, but all I did was lie on the floor of the fuselage and
take pictures of the clouds. We didn’t see much of the ocean. Bill did
all the flying--had to. I was just baggage,” she said, “like a sack of
potatoes.”
“What of it?” Railey replied quickly. “You’re still the first woman to
fly the Atlantic, and, what’s more, the first woman pilot to do it.”
Amelia was not convinced. “Oh, well,” she said, “maybe someday I’ll try
it alone.”
9. _In the Public Eye_
The next morning they flew the _Friendship_ out from Burry Port to
Southampton. For the first time during the trip AE sat at the controls
and did some of the flying. During the letdown for landing Bill Stultz
took over. In the harbor, boats of all descriptions dotted the water.
There was not enough space among them to bring the plane in. A green
light flashed from a launch moving farther out. Bill followed the
signal and eased the _Friendship_ onto the water.
In the launch Amelia looked back at the big plane. It was the last that
any of them saw of the _Friendship_. The plane was sold and later it
crashed on a flight to South America.
Among the welcomers at Southampton was Mrs. Frederick E. Guest, the
sponsor of the flight, and the woman whom AE had replaced as passenger.
It was the first meeting for the two. Mrs. Guest took Amelia by one
arm, Hilton Railey took her by the other. Sponsor and manager would see
the young woman flier through acclaim she could not believe existed in
a country famous for its restraint.
The lady mayor of Southampton, Mrs. Foster Welch, greeted her
enthusiastically. “Well, now,” said the mayor, the long gold chain of
office about her neck, “I’m going out to the States myself next year,
and it gives me pleasure to see you here, for when I get out there I’ll
feel that at least I know someone!”
Amelia was delighted, and smiled broadly at the footman who attended
the mayor and whose mien was so serious behind a long waxed mustache.
From the tumult that was Southampton Amelia was taken to London by
Hubert Scott Pain, director of Imperial Airways. They rode in his
Rolls-Royce, which was the same color as her “yellow peril” back
in Boston. Amelia was still wearing her heavy flying suit, her only
wardrobe, and one brightly colored scarf. Her other scarf had been
snatched by an eager souvenir hunter. As they drove along they were met
on the road by people returning home from the Ascot races; the racing
fans, having heard about the flight, waved at the famed woman flier. AE
smiled and raised her hand. She was anxious to get to London and out
of her flying clothes. Having but a toothbrush and comb, she looked
forward to a whole new outfit.
Rolling into Winchester, the Rolls passed the cathedral. Amelia asked
if they might stop. She wanted to see the famed resting place of
Canute, the shrine of William of Wykeham who built Windsor Castle, and
the place where Alfred the Great was crowned and buried. She might not
come by this way again, she explained.
AE went inside. The stillness of the cathedral came over her like a
cloak. Here the followers of William the Conqueror had built a monument
in thankfulness to God. Amelia walked silently through the church,
stopping occasionally to admire the interior. She loved the skill and
zeal, but not the faith, that marked this marble prayer of arches, like
hands joined and raised.
She planned to stay in London for only a short time, but she remained
for two weeks. With Hilton Railey as her escort, she was caught up in a
succession of teas, parties, exhibitions, testimonials, and visits. She
met hundreds of people, all of them full of compliments for what she
had done. As in Wales, she felt embarrassed: it was Stultz and Gordon
who deserved the praise, not she.
Captain Railey was proud of his charge. At every occasion she was
gracious, charming, modest. He never agreed with Amelia when after a
compliment from him she insisted that she was plain and unattractive.
For whenever he escorted her from Mrs. Guest’s Park Lane home she was
quietly triumphant, tall and lovely in a straight-lined, long-waisted
black dress, with matching coat and cloche hat, gloves, and pointed
silver-buckled shoes.
One of the high points of the London visit was the meeting with Lady
Astor. Amelia found her American-born hostess both “gracious and
brilliant.” Lady Astor was not particularly impressed by Amelia’s
transatlantic flight. “I’m not interested in you a bit because you
crossed the Atlantic by air,” she said frankly. “I want to hear about
your settlement work.”
AE was pleased to find someone who treated her as other than the false
celebrity she considered herself to be. She spent the rest of the day
with Lady Astor discussing Denison House in Boston and its model in
London, Toynbee Hall.
Inevitably, like all visitors to London, Amelia watched the changing
of the guard at Buckingham Palace; then, later, she saw a Tattoo at
Aldershot, where RAF fliers performed in the air while the soldiers
went through their maneuvers on the ground. Amelia wished she were in
one of the planes, with the men in the sky. At a flying exhibition she
would much rather be a performer than a spectator.
During an interview with newspaper reporters, AE was asked: “Should you
like to meet the Prince of Wales?”
Before Amelia could say a word, an American official answered for her:
“That depends on His Highness’ wishes.”
The published account of the interview made AE laugh for many years
to come. “Wal, I sure am glad to be here,” she was quoted as saying,
“and gosh, I sure hope I’ll meet the Prince of Wales.” If there were
a reason for not having met the prince, Amelia chuckled, it was the
implied nasal twang in that newspaper story.
At a luncheon given in her honor by the Air League of the British
Empire, AE met Lady Mary Heath, the famous woman aviator who had flown
from Cape Town, Africa, to London. Lady Heath made the flight in a
small light plane called an Avian.
Amelia decided she would like to have a plane like it. One early
morning she stole from Mrs. Guest’s home and took a taxi out to Croydon
Airport. She had made a date to go up with an English pilot in Lady
Heath’s little two-seater Avian. While they were in the air, Amelia
made up her mind. She would make Lady Heath an offer.
A few days later, when they sailed home on the _Roosevelt_, the little
plane was lashed to the deck. The boat trip across the Atlantic was a
wonderful opportunity to relax. The skipper, Captain Harry Manning,
realizing the strain Amelia had been subject to, set aside a deck for
her exclusive use. “Can’t you take us to South America instead of
New York?” she asked him one day. She did not look forward to more
receptions. Often AE went into the chartroom and discussed navigation
with Captain Manning. One day, they decided, they would make a long
flight together.
During the voyage Wilmer Stultz behaved erratically. Although
the flight was accomplished through his skill as a pilot, and he
was $20,000 richer because of it, he nevertheless sank into deep
melancholy. To deaden the long days of the ocean trip, he had brought a
case of brandy with him aboard the ship. With the liquor he found what
he craved: an escape from mundane realities; in neat water tumblerfuls
he finished off one bottle after another.
One afternoon a friend entered Stultz’s cabin. The flier was naked. In
his right hand he held a full glass of brandy; with his left hand he
gripped the rim of the water basin. He stared dolefully at his face in
the mirror. Suddenly the ship lurched. Stultz slipped from the basin,
swung across the room, and crashed into the portside bulkhead. He lay
sprawled and unconscious on the floor, the water glass broken in a dark
splash of brandy.
Later that day, when he recovered, Wilmer Stultz found his way on deck.
“Drunkenness,” he said to anyone who cared to listen, “is the only true
form of happiness.”
Amelia, Hilton Railey, and the others were stunned by the little,
gentle, modest pilot who from drink could turn into a complete stranger.
Perhaps Bill Stultz knew that he had been marked by the gods; for
within the year, on July 1, 1929, he was killed in an airplane crash
one quarter of a mile short of the runway at Roosevelt Field, New York.
AE walked the lonely upper deck and fussed with her thoughts. She
stopped at the railing and looked down at Lady Heath’s Avian tied down
on the fantail of the ship. Up the metal ladder from the deck below
came the clatter of feet. It was her good friend and manager Captain
Railey.
“Hilton,” she said to him, “I dread all the things coming up--the
business I suspect GP has been promoting in New York in my behalf.” She
paused. “I’m not the type.”
Railey smiled half-seriously. “Ticker tape, receptions, dinners,” he
said. “At least that.”
“You don’t have to tell me what’s in store for me,” she answered.
“I know.” Her forehead wrinkled; she continued: “But why? All I
contributed to the _Friendship_ flight--apart from the fact that
accidentally I happen to be the first woman to fly across, or rather
to be flown across, the North Atlantic--was to lie on the floor of the
fuselage like a sack of potatoes and admire the lovely clouds we were
flying over. That’s all I did, Hilton.”
Captain Railey did not interrupt Amelia, now fierce in working out her
own thoughts. He watched her long fingers grip the railing and turn
white as they tightly turned back and forth around the wood.
Amelia looked out over the waves; then she swung around quickly. “But
someday,” she said strongly, “I will have to do it alone, if only to
vindicate myself. I’m a false heroine now, and that makes me feel very
guilty. Someday I will redeem my self-respect. I can’t live without it.”
Hilton Railey understood. She did not want to be the symbol of
something she was not. Now she would have to spend the next few
years becoming what she was already in the eyes of the press and the
public--a woman flier who deserved the acclaim she had received.
Amelia looked again at the Avro Avian below. The fuselage was covered
with medals and mementoes to which was added: “To Amelia Earhart from
Mary Heath. Always think with your stick forward.”
She had bent her thoughts forward and they had carried her to a
resolute conclusion: she had to become a recognized flier in her own
right.
PART TWO
_THE WORLD OF FLIGHT_
1. _Wealth and Independence_
The accident of sex made Amelia Earhart front-page news. After her
arrival in New York, she received thousands of letters, telegrams, and
invitations. They grew in piles about her feet. Some of the letters
hailed her as a “gallant pioneer”; others called her a “foolhardy
nitwit.” Those that began, “The presence of your company” had to be
accepted or refused.
Thirty-two cities asked the three fliers to visit them. Overnight
Amelia became the native daughter of Boston, Kansas City, Chicago, Des
Moines, Los Angeles, but she still claimed the place where she was
born, Atchison, Kansas, as her native city. Taking the advice of Hilton
Railey, GP, and others, the heroes of the hour decided to accept the
invitations of New York, Boston, and Chicago.
The receptions were wild, frantic, tumultuous. The American people gave
the fliers the same thunderous acclaim they had given Charles Lindbergh
one year before. The two men and their woman passenger were showered
with ticker tape and torn telephone books, and they were given the keys
to each city in turn.
The festivities over, Amelia sought to retire into peaceful seclusion,
but she soon realized that she had become, undeniably and perhaps
irrevocably, a public figure. Opportunities were offered to her which
could not be ignored. G. P. Putnam presented her with a contract to
publish her account of the historic flight, manufacturers wanted her
to endorse their products, and an offer for the syndicated rights to
her story promised her $10,000. Amelia quietly made her decisions, and
within a few months she had earned more than $50,000.
Never had she even dreamed of making so much money. She was now
financially independent, and this new freedom meant that she could act
and do exactly as she pleased. Yet the new wealth plagued Amelia’s
conscience. If, as she painfully realized, she did not deserve the fame
for having crossed the Atlantic, how could she accept the fortune that
came with it?
New feelings of guilt compounded with the old. She would have to regain
her self-respect by someday flying solo across the Atlantic, or die
in the attempt. She could not live with the nickname “Lady Lindy” for
simply having been a passenger; she, too, would have to be a “lone
eagle.”
For the writing of her book Amelia accepted the hospitality of George
Palmer Putnam and his wife at their home in Rye, New York. There, with
the solicitous guidance of her publisher, AE studied her log of the
flight and her many notes; then, slowly and carefully, she began to
join one word to another. The job of writing, she discovered, took much
longer than she had planned, much longer than the actual time of the
flight, which was twenty hours and forty minutes. She dedicated the
book, aptly called _20 Hrs., 40 Min._, to her hostess, Dorothy Binney
Putnam.
Amelia had often been warned about GP; mutual friends had told her
that he would not hesitate to divorce his wife if he thought AE would
capitulate to his charms. But in 1928 Amelia did not seem particularly
interested in any man, although she had become the center of a triangle
of men that included GP, Hilton Railey, and Samuel Chapman.
Samuel Chapman, according to some sources, was supposed to have been
her fiancé, even at the time of the _Friendship_ flight; yet such
a commitment was denied by her, most emphatically, when she was
approached on the subject by a reporter in Boston. “No,” she said to
him, “I am not going to announce my engagement. I have seen Samuel
Chapman since I have been here, but I have seen a great many other
people also.” GP, who had been acting as a buffer between AE and the
press, clearly indicated that the subject was closed.
Pressed further about plans to get married at any time, Amelia
announced: “You never can tell what I will do. If I was sure of the
man, I might get married tomorrow. I am very sudden, you know, and make
up my mind in a second.”
Despite this comment, many years before AE had decided that marriage
for her would never be an escape. Even in her teens she had observed
that too many girls used it for a storm cellar, that, afraid to meet
life head on, they ran from their first real problems to hide behind a
husband.
Amelia had assumed an attitude of almost imperial independence; about
men and a possible husband she was never sudden. It was not until three
years later, and then with considerable reluctance, that she became
Mrs. George Palmer Putnam. She had learned to go it alone, without any
reliance upon any man. She had become, in spite of appearances to the
contrary, a “loner.”
Hilton Railey, her discoverer and manager, had developed a deep and
abiding affection for Amelia, and in spite of tentative signs of
encouragement from her when they were in England and returning home on
the _President Roosevelt_, he was still deeply in love with his first
wife and had every intention of remaining that way. Over the years that
followed, there continued between them a strong friendship, and it was
Railey who was the first to speak seriously to Amelia about GP.
It was just before he discontinued his connection with her as her
unpaid manager. During Amelia’s welcome in the harbor of New York,
Commander Byrd had asked Railey for his help in financing the
forthcoming expedition to the Antarctic as soon as he could break away
from the _Friendship_ celebrations. A few days later, in Amelia’s hotel
room in New York, Captain Railey jotted down on a piece of paper the
one word “brushfire,” and gave it to AE. He told her to consider it
as a code word and to use it whenever she needed help in warding off
George Palmer Putnam. Amelia grinned, took the paper, folded it, and
put it in her purse. She never found the need to use it.
While she had been writing _20 Hrs., 40 Min._, AE was approached for
many new endorsements. The one she remembered and talked about the
most, because it was the funniest, was the offer to sponsor canned
rabbit; the “stunt” was to have _her_ picture on the can. A promotion
which she did agree to, however, was one to help finance Commander
Byrd’s next expedition. Although she was a non-smoker, Amelia signed a
statement for a cigarette advertisement.
For her endorsement she received $1,500, which she immediately gave
to Byrd. It was a gesture of good will that Commander Byrd deeply
appreciated; later he presented her with copy number two of the limited
edition of his book, _Skyward_.
While Amelia was correcting proofs of her book, Lady Heath’s Avro Avian
was finally delivered. AE kept the plane at the nearby polo field of
the Westchester Biltmore Country Club in Rye. She was eager to test it
out. Hastily she finished making her corrections and gave the proofs to
GP.
The Avian was everything she wanted in a plane. It was small, light,
maneuverable, and fast; it reminded her of her first airplane, the
yellow Kinner Canary which she had owned in California, except that the
Avian had two open cockpits in tandem. Amelia walked across the soft,
firm grass to where the plane was parked. She lowered the panel from
the left side of the rear cockpit, and holding her plain black dress
against her legs, she climbed in. She buckled a white helmet under her
chin and adjusted the goggles at her forehead.
She started the engine and watched for the instruments to respond while
it idled, carefully checking the oil and fuel temperature and pressure
and engine revolutions per minute--rpm’s. She fingered the strands of
pearls about her neck and waited for the engine to warm up.
[Illustration: Amelia Earhart (_Courtesy of the Institute of the
Aeronautical Sciences, New York_).]
[Illustration: AE’s parents.]
[Illustration: AE, the fledgling flier.]
[Illustration: AE’s birthplace.]
[Illustration: AE after her first solo flight in an autogiro.]
[Illustration: Learning to fly. AE (_right_) and her first instructor,
Neta Snook.]
[Illustration: AE and Lady Heath’s Avro Avian.]
[Illustration: AE at Southampton. The _Friendship_ is in the
background.]
[Illustration: AE, suddenly famous, signs her autograph at Burry Port,
Wales.]
[Illustration: AE after her transatlantic solo, 1932.]
[Illustration: AE and the Lindberghs.]
[Illustration: Famous Fliers, 1928: (_standing, left to right_)
Eielson, Wilkins, Chamberlin, Balchen, (_seated_) Stultz, Earhart,
Gordon.]
[Illustration: AE and GP and the King and Queen of Belgium.]
[Illustration: AE and President Hoover, after he awarded her the
National Geographic Medal, 1932.]
[Illustration: The Lockheed Electra, AE in the cockpit.]
[Illustration: Paul Mantz, AE, Harry Manning, and Fred Noonan before
taking off for Honolulu from San Francisco, March 7, 1937, in the
Lockheed Electra. (_Courtesy The Smithsonian Institution_)]
[Illustration: Fragment of wood about 23 inches long, possibly
associated with AE’s last flight, 1937, found by Robert D. Weishaupt
at Baranof Island, Alaska, in 1942. (_Courtesy The Smithsonian
Institution_)]
[Illustration: Josephine Blanco Akiyama, who affirms she saw AE on
Saipan in 1937.]
[Illustration: AE and Fred Noonan at Calcutta on the last flight.]
AE curled her long, tapering fingers about the stick and worked the
ailerons and the elevator. She taxied down to the edge of the field,
carefully easing on and off first the left then the right brake as
she zigzagged across the close-cropped grass. She turned into the
wind, held both brakes hard, pulled the stick all the way back into
her middle, then revved up the motor to check out the magnetoes. She
reached up and turned the switch: the rpm’s dropped within the minimum
for first the left then the right, and finally held for both magnetoes.
Amelia smiled in satisfaction.
With her left hand she slowly advanced the throttle. The prop blasted
back hard and loud. Faster and faster the plane moved down the turf,
and she eased the throttle ahead as far as it would go. She held the
stick forward, bringing up the tail, then forced the plane to stay on
the ground until it fought to get into the air. She pulled back on the
stick. The plane clattered noisily off the ground. Amelia grinned. This
little craft soared into the air quicker than the sandpiper she had
owned in California.
Clearing the way ahead, she made climbing turns to gain altitude. At
10,000 feet she looked down, then out to the left and right and to the
back and front. The sky was clear for acrobatics.
Stalls, spins, loops, rolls, Immelmanns: she skillfully commanded the
plane through each maneuver. She slipped and climbed and dived swinging
and dancing the Avian along the reaches of the sunlit sky. The plane
handled perfectly. After an hour of skylarking over the polo field she
felt that she and the plane were ready for a long flight, one perhaps
to California and the National Air Races.
Amelia knew that she needed much more experience in the air before
she could consider herself a qualified pilot. The cross-country trip,
she finally decided, should season her for all kinds of flying--over
large cities, plains, and mountains. Although she had never made such
a flight before, her preparations, considering the distances involved,
were happy-go-lucky and without design. She bought navigation maps and
made her flight plan: she would fly over railroads, rivers, and big
cities whenever possible; once she arrived in the Far West and the
Rockies, she would then determine what to do. Summarily she announced
her plans to the Putnams, thanked them for their hospitality, and was
off.
2. _Vagabond of the Air_
Once in the air and on her way 3,000 miles to the west, she surveyed
the land below. It was a quilted patchwork of green and brown, and
woven through it, now the thick and now the thin threads of light and
dark rivers and tributaries. Even the mighty Hudson and the Palisades
had seemed from 8,000 feet but the thickest thread and the deepest
brown.