9.In the Public Eye
The next morning they flew theFriendshipout 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 theFriendshiponto the water.
In the launch Amelia looked back at the big plane. It was the last that any of them saw of theFriendship. 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. Whilethey 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 theRoosevelt, 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 anairplane 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 theFriendshipflight—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.