Amelia Earhart (11 page)

For the remainder of the
day, crowds gathered to see Amelia wherever she went. In Southampton, four mounted policemen struggled to hold back hundreds of eager autograph seekers who thrust bits of paper
at her through the open windows of the Lord Mayor’s Rolls Royce. During a fifty-mile drive to the Hyde Park Hotel in London, track fans returning from Ascot waved to her from their cars. More admirers gathered in the hotel lobby and on the sidewalk outside, pushing and jostling to catch a glimpse of her.

In her flower-banked room she sat on a sofa, barricaded behind a tea table while photographers’ flashguns flared and reporters fired questions at her. Asked if she was afraid during the flight, she said, “Mr. Stultz is such an expert pilot that I never felt afraid.” She cited Stultz again in an answer to the congratulatory telegram sent by President Calvin Coolidge: “The crew of the
Friendship
desire to express their deep appreciation of your Excellency’s gracious message. Success entirely due to great skill of Mr. Stultz.” When Byrd called from New York she told him, “The success is yours too, Commander, for it was your wonderful ship that brought us through.”

George Palmer Putnam couldn’t have produced better quotes if he had been there to dictate them to her. By the time she sent her second dispatch to the
Times
her first was on the front page under an eight-column, three-line head: “
Amelia Earhart Flies Atlantic, First Woman to Do It; Tells Her Own Story of Perilous 21-Hour Trip to Wales; Radio Quit and They Flew Blind over Invisible Ocean.”

On her first morning in London she awakened to an avalanche of editorial praise from American and foreign newspapers. As an aviator she was commended for her “
unquenchable determination to go on attempting the hitherto unachieved, no matter how great the dangers” and for her intent “
to render service to commercial aviation, not to make a sensation.” As a woman she was acclaimed for “
a feat none of her sex had accomplished, though many had attempted it.” She had not failed “
to bring home to everyone the fine spirit of audacity shown by her sex in this age.”

Criticism was minimal, the most cutting in the
Church Times
: “
The voyage itself … is a remarkable achievement made possible by the skill and courage of the pilot.… As the
Evening Standard
has properly pointed out, ‘her [Amelia’s] presence added no more to the achievement than if the passenger had been a sheep.’ ” In the French newspaper,
Liberté
the public received more criticism than Amelia: “… 
the palpitating interest of the world in these great adventures comes from the taste for agony and death which all humanity shares, from that dark frenzy which pushed the
Romans to watch the bloody spectacles of the arena.” Deeply hurt by these comments the neophyte celebrity kept her feelings to herself and fibbed to reporters, “… 
from first to last my contact with the press has been thoroughly enjoyable.”

That first day in London Amelia was besieged with invitations, business propositions, requests for autographs, cables of congratulations and even a
proposal of marriage from a Kent farmer, “provided she was well off, financially.” By mid-afternoon she was exhausted in spite of aid from Railey and two secretaries. Help arrived in the person of her sponsor, who had decided Amelia was not only a “suitable person” for the flight but charming enough to be a houseguest. Amelia was moved from the hotel to the Guests’ Park Lane mansion, where shopkeepers were summoned to provide her with a wardrobe before she was dispatched in a chauffeured car on a restful, solitary
ride around London. The limousine was a seven-passenger Lincoln from Ford of England, “placed at the disposal of Miss Earhart during her stay.” Mr. Ford also sent her a congratulatory
telegram from Detroit. In the ensuing eight days Amelia would be introduced to London society, have tea with Bernard Shaw, and dance with the Prince of Wales. She had entered the world of the rich and famous.

At dinner that night she met
Lady Mary Heath who had recently flown an Avro
Avian, a small, single-engine plane, from Cape Town to London—eight thousand miles. Mary Heath wanted to sell the plane. On June 26 Amelia bought it with credit extended by G. P., who already held Amelia’s contract for a Putnam’s Sons book on the
Friendship
’s flight.

On her second day at the Guests, her hostess took her shopping and introduced her to H. Gordon
Selfridge, the American owner of a Mayfair department store. It marked the beginning of a continuing friendship with Selfridge and with his daughter, Violette, and her husband, Vicomte Jacques de Sibour, both of whom were avid pilots.

Next to befriend Amelia was one of the most influential women in England,
Lady Nancy Astor. The former Nancy Langhorne of Virginia, she was the first woman to become a member of Parliament, a seat she held from 1919 until her retirement in 1945. Nancy Astor was not interested in aviation. She wanted to hear about Amelia’s work at Denison House. Amelia was charmed by this beautiful, witty social activist and advocate of women’s interests. A paradoxical feminist who disapproved
of bobbed hair and bachelor girls, a divorcée before her marriage to Viscount Waldorf Astor, Amelia’s new friend was a staunch supporter of marriage and family. She also sought pensions for women, employment of women on the police force, reform of legitimacy laws, and improved labor conditions for both sexes.

Lady Astor arranged a number of meetings with Amelia. At a luncheon given by the Women’s Committee of the Air League of the British Empire she dropped her disapproval of bobbed hair and asked Amelia to remove her hat so the guests could see her “
tousled golden curls.” Lady Astor also took her friend to tea at the House of Commons and the Olympia horse show. “
Everyone I have talked to in England thinks this girl is a great credit to womanhood and to her country,” she told reporters. “She has charm, intelligence and above all, character.” Amelia, who discounted mass admiration, was delighted.

On Wednesday, June 27, nine days after landing at Burry Port, Amelia was driven from Lady Astor’s town house to Wimbledon to see America’s greatest woman tennis player, Helen Wills, win a match. From there she went on to Southampton to sail on the next day for New
York on the S.S.
Roosevelt
with Stultz and Gordon.

Amelia had seen very little of either of the two men while they were in England. Removed from his natural element—the air—a grounded Stultz was a drunken Stultz. He also made awkward statements to the press. On his first day in London he said that if he had to return to New York by sea he would insist it be on an American ship because he doubted the safety of
foreign vessels. The sea-going English were not pleased. On another occasion Stultz inadvertently insulted the heir to the throne. After a flight with Gordon to Le Bourget in France, they were forced down on the return trip by gales on the coast and missed an appointment with the
Prince of Wales.

Things were no better aboard the
Roosevelt
. Stultz was noticeably intoxicated for most of the voyage and Amelia feared he might endanger the continuation of what she perceived to be the
Friendship
’s mission. G. P. may have viewed the flight as a stunt in the creation of his new heroine-client but Amelia—saleswoman for Bert Kinner and part owner of Dennison Airport—was determined to use this opportunity to boost commercial aviation. After G. P. sent her his schedule of homecoming celebrations, Amelia confided her worries about Stultz to Harry Manning,
the captain of the
Roosevelt
. “
It’s bad enough in London where people are tolerant,” she told Manning, “but what will happen if I can’t keep him sober for these
New York affairs?”

Her worries were well-founded.
Stultz would continue to drink his way through the festivities and was often absent or late. Less than a year later, while stunting, he was killed along with his two passengers in a crash at Roosevelt Field. He was drunk, flying a plane declared unsuitable for aerobatics by a board of inquiry investigating the accident.

Amelia’s New York arrival was carefully choreographed by G. P. and directed by the city’s colorful meeter and greeter, Grover B. Whalen. On the morning of July 6, Amelia stood on the promenade of the
Roosevelt
looking down at the launch
Macon
as it drew alongside the big ship. Whalen, in top hat and cutaway, followed by Byrd and his aide in full dress uniform, bounded up the gangplank while strains of “Home, Sweet Home” played by the New York Fire Department band blared across the harbor. Amelia was wearing a blue crepe suit and cream silk blouse, her hair hidden by a hideous cloche of feathers which fortunately did not hide her handsome face and blue-grey eyes. Stultz stood at her right, the collar of his suit riding up over a crumpled shirt, his necktie askew, his greying hair blowing in the wind and his blunt-featured face puffy with dissipation. On her left was Gordon, tall, thin, grinning, as relaxed as Stultz was tense.

Aboard the
Macon
, Amelia was led by G. P. and his wife, Dorothy Binney Putnam, to a cabin where reporters surrounded her. One noted that she not only looked like Lindbergh but she spoke like him, gazing straight at the questioner, then “giving a little shake of the head and a long, drawn-out, ‘Well …’ ”

Among the women aviators invited aboard the
Macon
by G. P. was
Ruth Nichols. Amelia recognized her from a newspaper photograph and immediately launched into an accolade for aviation country clubs, a project of Nichols’s. After G. P. retrieved Stultz from his mother and a delegation of hometown friends, Amelia directed the reporters’ queries to Stultz but his replies were cut short by an ear-splitting blast from the
Macon
’s siren. Fireboats pumped streams of water into the air, whistles blew and a crowd of five thousand clustered along the edge of Battery Park rushed toward Pier A where the
Macon
docked.

Amelia was seated between Stultz and Gordon on the backseat of an open car that made its way from the Battery up Broadway in a blizzard of
tickertape and pages torn from telephone books and newspapers. Neither photographs nor newsreels can convey the emotions generated by a New York parade of the twenties or thirties. Like most Americans of the era, allegedly postwar disillusioned New Yorkers were actually fervent believers in vaguely defined concepts of “progress,” “science,” and “opportunity” (which only knocked once). They wanted heroes and heroines who expressed these mythical values. Amelia, whose earlier allusion to the “sideshow” was not amiss, was now in the center ring of an ebullient, electric circus of the street.

At City Hall, where the parade ended, Amelia’s assertion that “most of the credit should go to Mr. Stultz,” was greeted by a roar of approval. For the next fourteen hours, with time out for costume changes, Amelia was on display for her public. The closing event at midnight was an Olympic Fund benefit at the Palace Theater. When she offered a small flag carried on the
Friendship
for
auction, Babe Ruth pushed the bids to three figures but auctioneer Charles Winninger, star of
Showboat
, secured the flag for $650, a sum equaling ten times that at present-day prices.

The sideshow continued for two more days with dawn to midnight appearances scheduled by G. P., who solved the problem of the elusive Stultz by insisting that all three of the
Friendship
’s crew stay at the Putnam house in Rye.

On the fourth day Amelia moved on to Boston. Waiting there was
Amy, who had experienced a gamut of conflicting emotions—surprise, humiliation, worry, and, finally, pride. Although she was used to Amelia’s penchant for sudden, secret decisions, when she was told that her daughter was on her way to Newfoundland in an attempt to cross the Atlantic by air, Amy had snapped, “I thought she had too much sense to try it.”

Later she told Amelia her unfortunate comment was the result of learning the news from a reporter before Sam Chapman could deliver Amelia’s explanation that “it was an experiment for me and it was better to spare you the worry until I started.” When first informed of Amelia’s safe arrival in Wales, Muriel was reported near collapse but Amy, “
rigidly erect of carriage, determinedly unmoved in feature,” showed no outward signs of the strain she must have been under. “Well,” she said, “now that it’s all over I’ll have a chance to catch up on my mending.”

While Amy, who had not seen her daughter in six weeks, waited in an office at the airport, Amelia was delayed on the field, first by the reception committee, then by Stultz and Gordon who had wandered off into
the crowd as soon as they arrived in a second plane. Amelia, her arms filled with flowers, was taken at last to Amy, who rushed to embrace both daughter and flowers. “Amelia!” she cried. “Darling!” Amelia murmured before the door was closed, leaving them alone. This intense, if brief, display of affection would be the most overt Amelia ever gave anyone in
public.

After leaving Amy, Amelia had only a moment in which to greet Muriel and Marion Perkins before she was hustled into the official car. Although her mother, her sister, and her friend attended all the events of that day, there was never time for any real conversation. At the end of the day Amelia drove Amy and Muriel back to Medford in the yellow Kissel Kar but returned immediately to the Ritz Carlton in Boston. The young NAA secretary, Bernard Wiesman, was one of the friends who went to call on her there late that night. “
She was just the same,” Wiesman said, “hadn’t changed at all.”

Wiesman was wrong. Amelia was just the same to all those who shared her interest in aviation. But the flight with its ensuing opportunities and obligations left her with less time for and different interests than those of her family and friends at Denison House. The next day in Medford she told Amy and Muriel that she could not resume her social
work until she finished the book for G. P., who also assured her that she could make money giving lectures. The money was important to Amelia. She wanted it to maintain a plane, to buy books and clothes, to send Amy a monthly allowance, to live comfortably with bills paid and money in the bank.