Before Amelia (7 page)

He began teaching her how to swim, and shortly she moved like a little fish in the water. By the time she was four, reportedly, she could swim four kilometers. Felix was overjoyed.

In 1880 the family moved back to Metz to be near Elisabeth's family; Felix took his place again with the PTT (Post, Telegraph, and Telephone). The Germans still occupied the city, and business and education were conducted in German. Marie learned a new language when she started school with the sisters of Sainte–Chrétienne de Saint–Vincent, but, a rebel at heart, she answered class questions to herself and voiced her inner thoughts in French.

The Moselle River was a place of enchantment for swimming, canoeing, and walking its length, none of which Eugène could do with his sister. She was loving toward him and amused him with stories, hoping that one day he could join her. Felix, resigned to the boy's condition, concerned himself even more with Marie's education. He recognized early on her unusual ability and spirit, so unlike that of the fragile female in need of protection, which was the contemporary attitude. Elisabeth, worried that her daughter was being pushed into activities too masculine, was partly mollified when Marie started school with the sisters, but as Marie observed years later, it isn't easy to change the leopard's spots. She remained an active, daredevil performer who accompanied her father in swimming, hiking, and mountain climbing while Eugène stayed with mother, who, like her son, was delicate.

When Marie was fourteen, her mother died after a period of debilitating illness, during which Marie had taken over much of the activity of running a household, hoping this would restore her mother. But it was not to be. Felix, overcome by his loss, retired and moved the family to Nancy, where they settled into the top–floor apartment at 8 place de la Carrière. Nancy was a delight to Marie; she became a thorough Nancéienne and remained one all her life. On a free day, she enjoyed strolling through the Place Stanislas, watching the well–dressed taking the afternoon air, followed by tea at the café in the Place Thiers.

At home, Marie assumed the role of housekeeper with all its responsibilities, a demanding task on top of her schooling. Reading became her refuge; she devoured books on exploration and science that explained the world outside. At school, she entertained and delighted her classmates with her spirited antics, such as taking over the control of one of the new locomotives running between Metz and Nancy as it pulled into the stop where her classmates waited to board. The good sisters, who liked docile young girls, were less than pleased.

When the Circus Rancy came to Nancy, Marie begged her father to be allowed to go, eager to learn how to vault into a net like the performers. Ever a loving father, Felix agreed, and Marie, age fifteen, learned gymnastics like a circus performer. She had the body, the agility, and the required discipline. Reportedly, Alphonse Rancy, the celebrated horseman and circus owner, gave Marie her training, including lessons in
la haute école,
the complicated horse maneuvers performed without any visible or audible command from a rider. At one unannounced performance, Marie astonished the spectators by doing a vault at a gallop, the first feat of its kind.

In 1897, Eugène died. It was not a shock, but it was a loss for father and sister, both of whom loved the gentle young man with the ready smile. Marie apparently made up her mind that she would pursue a life of sports; marriage, with its incumbent housework, was not for her. She had had enough of that!

Marie's decision was opportune. The newly organized Olympic Games were strictly for men, but the efforts of Marie and women like her gradually opened the door for feminine sports in the new world evolving in the twentieth centur y. During 1908—10, Marie dominated winter sports, winning prizes in skiing, ice–skating, luge, and bobsledding. Earlier she had opened the first civilian ski school. Cycling, equally a passion among males and females, had helped pry the door open for women in competition.

In 1899, already an experienced cyclist, Marie learned to drive an automobile and won her license. She was off ! The list of her achievements began to grow as she took up tennis, golf, polo, jujitsu, boxing (she was photographed hitting a punching bag), and shooting (she was honored by the minister of war for her prize work). In 1905, she canoed from Nancy to Koblenz, traveling the Meurthe and Moselle Rivers. There was nothing she would not try and usually do well at. She loved to compete, she loved public recognition, and she was an excellent promoter.

In July 1906, fifteen professional swimmers took part in a swim in the Seine River around Paris, among them an Australian, Annette Kellermann, who placed third. Two weeks later, among a group of amateurs sponsored by a French society to encourage swimming, Marie swam the same course and placed fifth, with a time of four hours, eleven minutes, and twenty–three seconds, which beat Kellermann's record by one hour and ten minutes. She was hailed as France's best woman swimmer and secured that title the following year at Toulouse, where she won first prize, swimming twenty kilometers in the sea.

In between, she found time to ice–skate, ski, bobsled, and fence. Earlier, she had started mountain climbing, a sport usually pursued by men, which won her much attention. She was the first woman to scale the Dent du Géant, which only two men had done before her, and she followed up with ascents of Mont Blanc and Trélaporte. In 1908 she took part in the Tour de France, cycling 4,488 kilometers to finish the grueling course as 1 of the 36 athletes out of the 114 who started. It was the high point of her cycling career, but she made other trips—Paris to Strasbourg, Paris to Marseilles—and would continue to ride a bicycle even as a very old woman, when, a month shy of eighty–six, she bicycled to Paris from Nancy during January's cold weather and was hailed along the way for her performance. At dinnertime on that trip, she would pick the best restaurant in the area, wait to be recognized by the maître d'hôtel, then seat herself at a good table, where she held court to customers wanting her autograph. Naturally, there was no bill. Marie expected royal treatment, and she got it.

In 1907, an international ski competition at Chamonix did not have one woman; the next year, nine women, including Marie, finished a course of three kilometers. Two years later many ski competitions were open to women, due in part to Marie's efforts. Hailed in the French press as “queen of sports,” her exploits kept her in the public eye and helped promote women's sports.

As early as 1901, Marie had turned her gaze skyward. Ballooning was a popular sport among the well to do, and where men had gone, women followed. In Nancy, Marie took up this new sport enthusiastically, traveling first with experienced ballooners to learn the ropes of spher ical ballooning before she applied for a license. That same year she received license No. 145 to pilot a free balloon, and from then on appeared at balloon gatherings regularly.

Her most remarkable exploit was a balloon trip from Nancy across the North Sea to England. Early on the morning of October 26, 1909, the balloon
L'Ètoile Filante (“Shooting Star”)
was slowly filled with hydrogen while the necessary equipment to be carried was checked: statoscope, telescope, barometer, lantern, cushions, lunch, heavy cloaks, dragline, and ballast—bags of sand.

Traveling with her was Colonel Emile Garnier as passenger and assistant. When all was ready, the let go was given at 11:07
A.M.
and the balloon rose rapidly in the morning air until it settled at about a thousand meters in a current heading north. Garnier held the map and called off the landmarks as the round bag sailed gracefully along, passing over the Krupp factories in Essen, where the wind shifted and carried the balloon northwest over Holland toward Amsterdam. “We were in the clouds most of the time, but we thought after we reached Amsterdam that the most dangerous part of the trip was over,” recounted Marie as the North Sea loomed in the distance.

At 8:15
P.M.
, the
Shooting Star
floated over the sea, as the balloon began to lose altitude. By 9
P.M.
, the basket and instruments were beginning to ice up, then a snow squall covered the balloon with ice and snow, sending it rapidly downward, where high waves drenched the basket and its contents. Tossing a sack of sand overboard had no effect. More sand went over before the balloon rose to a safer altitude. Through the clouds Marie and Garnier could see the billowing waves that had lashed the basket, glad to be above them, then far ahead a light. At 1:30
A.M.
, Marie gave a cry of joy—England was just ahead. The cliffs loomed up, but an updraft carried the two travelers over the top.

Once over land, with the Southwold lighthouse to the right, Marie tried to valve the balloon to release air and bring it down. At first the rope, drenched by the elements, wouldn't budge. Finally, a great tug freed the valve, and the balloon dropped downward and settled in a tree with a sharp jar, tumbling Marie from the basket. She went for help, while her passenger stayed trapped with the bag. By four o'clock, all was in order. The local police had the balloon anchored and attended, and the two travelers were put up in a local hotel with dry clothes.

From there they went to London, where they were given a grand welcome by international journalists, who praised their accomplishments, particularly since it took place in the midst of a violent storm. Marie chalked up another first: first woman to pilot a balloon across the North Sea. The travelers had made the two hundred–kilometer trip in five hours, while the regular pack boats from Holland to England took eleven hours. Overall, the
Shooting Star
had traveled nearly a thousand kilometers in fourteen hours. There was great satisfaction in the accomplishment, which, in later years, Marie considered the most dramatic adventure of her life in the air.

She made two more prominent trips in a spherical balloon in 1910: the Grand Prix of the Aero Club of Paris, organized by the Stella Society, and a race organized by the Aero Club of the East at Nancy. In the first, Marie was the lone woman pilot; the Stella ladies went as passengers with male pilots. In the second, Marie won the Premier Grand Prix, traveling from Nancy to Neufchâteau, in Belgium, reportedly in fifteen hours, to beat one of her teachers, Georges Blanchet, three time winner of the Aero Club of France Grand Prix.

In 1912, Marie took part in the tenth running of the Paris–Sea of Ireland race, organized by the Aero Club of France. There were twenty–four participants, including Marie in her
Shooting Star,
with Quénardel de Warcy as passenger. It was an exhilarating experience; the wonder is that she was content to stop in Ireland.

Even when she turned to flying an aeroplane, ballooning remained a pleasurable experience for Marie. The uncertainty of where she might end up, the search for the right air current to carry her in a desired direction, at a desired speed, suited her adventuresome soul.

In 1908, Marie had visited the Voisin brother's factory at Châlons and decided the new sport had potential. When Roger Sommer took her up for a ride in September 1909, she was elated—and hooked. By the following year, she had signed up for lessons with Hubert Latham at Mourmelon to learn to fly his Antoinette, an elongated, graceful monoplane considered, by some, difficult to fly. The pilot sat well back from the wings because the weight of the machine was distributed among its parts, unlike the Blériot aeroplane, whose weight was centered in the front. Marie was the only woman pupil at Latham's school. Between early lessons, she made her historic balloon trip, and, on March 15, 1910, she was presented with the Médaille d'Or of the French Academy of Sports. Her activity was prodigious.

Aviation was a world of its own in those years. The enthusiasm and excitement that flying generated in the first decade of the twentieth century—the fever to explore the heavens—was shared by a small band, bound by camaraderie and the constant possibility of death. Marie did not dwell on the subject, nor did the others, but part of the attraction of flying was knowing the risk and overcoming it. She wrote about flying frequently, describing it as “intoxicating,” stressing her belief that the true aviator's soul found the struggle with the atmosphere “a rich compensation for the risks.” To fly like a bird was the ultimate romantic quest.

Early in her aviation training, on a flight with Latham, Marie was initiated into the rolling and pitching that typically buffeted an aeroplane maneuvering through gusty air currents. On landing, Latham, who selidom showed emotion, remarked that he had never been so violently shaken. Another time, flying with Charles Wachter at thirty meters high, their aeroplane almost collided with a biplane. Marie thought disaster was imminent, but at a few meters' distance, the biplane turned upside down, with no injury to the pilot, and Marie and Wachter flew on. Marie believed that the close calls she had with her teachers prepared her for whatever might come when flying alone. (Charles Wachter was less fortunate. He was killed when a wing collapsed while he was flying at Rheims in July 1910.)

In her 1910 article “The Intoxication of Flight,” Marie described a close call that occurred on the morning of her license tests. As she began her second flight, a biplane flew off sixty meters from her. Instinctively, she left the course and rose to a height of eighty meters to avoid his wake and continued on her circle of the course without sighting the other machine. When she landed, Marie learned the two aeroplanes were within twenty meters of each other at one moment, but because of her machine's wing structure she was unaware of this. A change in the aeroiplane's wing design would soon do away with this “inconvenience.”

A first solo flight is always memorable. September 4, 1910, was just this for Marie, who called it “the most stirring.” She had gained confidence from her training with Bernard Lafont, but she admitted a strange sensation—she rarely if ever had “nerves.” The monoplane quickly rose to sixty meters, performing better than the one she usually flew in. On the first turn she was uneasy, but on the second that feeling “turned into joy unalloyed.” Landing bothered her a bit, but it proved “quite normal,” and on the ground, joy and relief mingled. It was done; she had soloed.