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Authors: Harry Haskell

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BOOK: Maiden Flight
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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 congressman 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.

It is ridiculous, when you come to think of it, how the Smithsonian has succeeded in twisting all this. Langley didn't contribute nearly as much as Lilienthal did. Lilienthal was a much better engineer than Langley, yet he is never mentioned. Langley got his idea of using curved surfaces from Lilienthal. He used them after visiting Lilienthal but never mentioned Lilienthal in speaking of it. Of course, I know exactly what Lilienthal did and what the rest did. Walcott and Abbot don't know. None of them has ever studied the subject as Will and I did. I don't think I ought to have to call attention to the points in which Will and I excelled the rest. Our work is all on record.

Nothing will be gained by belaboring the issue further, especially now that the machine is safely out of sight in England. When the news of its going first became public, though, Kate and I were of two minds whether it would be better to give out the exact wording of my agreement with the Science Museum or let the matter drift along. After all, what difference did it make that I reserved the right to bring the machine back to this country after five years if a proper home could be found for it? At bottom, I expected that it would have to stay in England permanently, and I did not like to open a possibility of a lot more explanations. Even now I don't expect that the Smithsonian will ever make the wrong right—and I refuse to let them have the machine until they do.

As a last resort, I let it be known that I was open to keeping the machine in the United States provided the Smithsonian truthfully labeled the Langley plane, published both sides of the controversy in its annual report, and identified the Wright flyer as the first man-carrying aircraft in the world. But the Smithsonian didn't rise to the bait, even after the president of the National Aeronautic Association called attention to the fact that the Langley machine on display in the museum had no way of being launched. He said you might as well hang up the body of a legless man and label it capable of winning a footrace in the Madison Square Garden races!

Two distinguished scientists did suggest a revised label that the Smithsonian finally deigned to accept. They dropped out all reference to Curtiss's Hammondsport trials of 1914 in favor of a bland statement that “in the opinion of many competent to judge,” the Langley machine of 1903 was capable of flight, et cetera, et cetera. Practically the only thing left to criticize now is the expression “competent to judge.” So that is where things stand today.
The Smithsonian has come down from the claim that the Langley machine
did
fly in 1914 to the opinion of some that it
could have
flown if it could have been launched. Eventually, that claim will go too—but I don't expect I will be around to see it happen.

Katharine

By the spring of 1925, Little Brother was looking more tired and frustrated than ever. His strength and spirit had been pretty severely tried by the Smithsonian's scheming. I suppose none of us quite realized what a tremendous strain he had been under the last twenty years. Will and he had had to win the patent suits for themselves. No lawyer could handle them all. Sometimes it was maddening to have to let the lawyers talk for them when the lawyers themselves didn't half understand the fine points in the case. After Will died, I tried to convince Orv that he shouldn't put so much of himself into the fight. Curtiss didn't, after all. But Orv would always shoot back, “Yes, and Curtiss loses all the suits too, and I can't afford to do that.”

Just as I was coming to my wits' end, Harry reawakened my slumbering genius for worrying. Something he said about the widows in Kansas City, when he came to Dayton that Easter, made me uneasy. A woman's eye is awfully sharp when she gets the least inkling of schemes afoot. I can jump at conclusions fifty feet away! I was ashamed of my sect that some of those “vidders” should have such dreadful taste as to be out hunting already. Try as I might to put the idea out of my head, when I heard of Mrs. Kirkwood having him over to meet her friends, and of his going out to a lecture with Isabel's former nurse, and later his letters in which he spoke
of his loneliness and his not enjoying going around alone—well, the whole combination was too much for me. I felt like screaming, “Tell all the matchmakers to go to thunder and please,
please
don't let anyone make your future life for you!”

With Harry's fine ideas of honor, you see, I was afraid he might slip into something that didn't really satisfy him just because it was expected of him—or, worse still, that he had decided to drift along and see what happened. I had wanted to say something ever since Isabel died, but I'd always held back. At last I decided that I must tell him how I felt. I wouldn't for the world have interfered with any of Harry's private affairs. I only knew that I would have been glad to have a friend suggest a similar thing to my brother if he were to be left alone. How I used to laugh at the thought of Orv marrying. Harry must have laughed too at my grandmothering care of him!

I won't deny that my concern for Harry wasn't entirely disinterested. It came over me that maybe one reason I had thought what I thought and felt what I felt was that I saw a probable end of any—what shall I call it?—active friendship with him. I knew that I would never feel any differently toward
him
, and I wanted so much that he would never feel differently toward
me
. For so many years we had helped each other the best we could to weather the storms. But I knew how easily we could lose the chance to express the old friendship. Even so, I told myself that I could get along with that if it meant seeing him have what he deserved—comfort and peace of mind and real companionship.

Mind you, Harry was caught in a situation that wouldn't be easy for anyone. Many calamities have befallen very fine people under similar circumstances. As one grows old, one's powers of
adaptation diminish. When we were both young and had nothing and were too inexperienced anyway to look for our own advantage, we could be freer and surer of ourselves when it came to falling in love. But Harry and I were long past that stage in life. I wanted him to have real companionship and thought he might possibly find it someday, but there was no chance of it just then. What he needed, more than anything, was understanding and sympathy and comfort. How I longed to be his fairy godmother and give it all to him!

My biggest fear was that Harry would end up disliking me if I kept on talking about these intimate things. Or that he would avoid telling me anything for fear I would read all kinds of things into nothing. It would have broken my heart to bring him uneasiness and uncomfortableness, when I wanted to do just the opposite. It was because in all my long friendship with him I had seen absolutely nothing I could not admire that I had this deep feeling about his future. He was so generous with me—to allow me so many privileges and to put the best possible meaning into what I did and said. Our long, long friendship meant so much to me. I would have been the unhappiest of unhappy mortals if we had lost what was really a prize to us both. There was never any real danger of that happening, of course, but sometimes perverse Fate does try to get the best of such a friendship. Here's for snapping our fingers under her nose!

Early that summer I went to Geneva, Ohio, to see my friend Mella's daughter, Katharine Wright King, graduate from high school. Mella and I have been friends since college. Katharine took special honors—she and one boy, a regular Harry Haskell from the look of him. The boy had a higher average, but Katharine had been in high school only three years and was the youngest in her class.
It was sweet to see her so happy and altogether lovely in her simple graduating dress, looking forward to everything with eagerness and a certainty that her dreams would come true. Katharine deserved nothing but the best, for she had a good mind, a fine start in character, and an attractive, winning personality. She wasn't pretty, exactly, but she was charming—at least to her “Aunt” Katharine.

All through the ceremony I couldn't stop thinking of Harry and me at Oberlin and how bright and eager
we
had been. The Order of the Empty Heart indeed! My girlfriends and I weren't exactly starved for attention from the opposite sect. When I think how naive I was about accepting Arthur Cunningham's engagement ring, it makes my heart go down to my boots. Well, the very first thing Mella told me when I got to her house was that Harry had sent a book to Katharine for her graduation. And when she said how pleased she was that he wanted to send her daughter a remembrance, there did flash through my mind the least suspicion that
he
was pleased to be sending it to
my
namesake!

Mella, in some way, gave me a little feeling that she had her own thoughts about my frankly confessed interest in and concern about Harry. It was a peculiar look she had when I said I had been writing to him a good deal since he had been alone. She said she had often thought of writing to him, to say she felt sorry for his loss, but lacked the confidence to actually do it. Well, I didn't know quite how to respond, so I just said, “Harry is safe with me”—thinking that maybe he wasn't quite safe among all those “vidders” in Kansas City. Ha ha! If I had known what lay in store for me when I went up to Oberlin for commencement that year, I would have turned tail and scampered straight home to Dayton!

BOOK: Maiden Flight
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