The Trail of the Hawk: A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life
expenses to undergo. Now have $30,000 stowed away, and have sent
mother $3,000.
To fly against my good old teacher M. Carmeau, and Tony Bean, Walter
MacMonnies, M. Beaufort the Frenchman, Tad Warren, Billy Witzer, Chick
Bannard, Aaron Solomons and other good men. Special NY Chronicle
reporter, fellow named Forbes, assigned to me, and he hangs around all
the time, sort of embarrassing (hurray, spelled it right, I guess) but
I'm getting used to the reporters.
Martin Dockerill has an ambition! He said to me to-day, "Say, Hawk, if
you win the big race you got to give me five plunks for my share and
then by gum I'm going to buy two razor-strops." "What for?" I said.
"Oh I bet there ain't anybody else in the world that owns _two_
razor-strops!"
Not much to say about banquet, lots of speeches, good grub.
What tickles me more than anything is my new flying garments--not
clothes but _garments_, by heck! I'm going to be a regular little old
aviator in a melodrama. I've been wearing plain suits and a cap, same
good old cap, always squeegee on my head. But for the big race I've
got riding breeches and puttees and a silk shirt and a tweed Norfolk
jacket and new leather coat and French helmet with both felt and
springs inside the leather--this last really valuable. The real stage
aviator, that's me. Watch the photographers fall for it. I bet Tad
Warren's Norfolk jacket is worth $10,000 a year to him!
I pretended to Martin that I was quite serious about the clothes, the
garments I mean. I dolled myself all up last night and went swelling
into my hangar and anxiously asked Martin if he didn't like the
get-up, and he nearly threw a fit. "Good Lord," he groans, "you look
like an aviator on a Ladies Home Journal cover, guaranteed not to
curse, swear or chaw tobacco. What's become of that girl you was
kissing, last time I seen you on the cover?"
_August 25_: Not much time to write diary on race like this, it's just
saw wood all the time or lose.
Bad wind to-day. Sometimes the wind don't bother me when I am flying,
and sometimes, like to-day, it seems as though the one thing in the
whole confounded world is the confounded wind that roars in your ears
and makes your eyes water and sneaks down your collar to chill your
spine and goes scooting up your sleeves, unless you have gauntlets,
and makes your ears sting. Roar, roar, roar, the wind's worse than the
noisiest old cast-iron tin-can Vrenskoy motor. You want to duck your
head and get down out of it, and Lord it tires you so--aviation isn't
all "brilliant risks" and "daring dives" and that kind of
blankety-blank circus business, not by a long shot it ain't, lots of
it is just sticking there and bucking the wind like a taxi driver
speeding for a train in a storm. Tired to-night and mad.
_September 5_: New York! I win! Plenty smashes but only got jarred. I
beat out Beaufort by eight hours, and Aaron Solomons by nearly a day.
Carmeau's machine hopelessly smashed in Columbus, but he was not hurt,
but poor Tad Warren _killed_ crossing Illinois.
_September 8_: Had no time to write about my reception here in New
York till now.
I've been worrying about poor Tad Warren's wife, bunch of us got
together and made up a purse for her. Nothing more pathetic than these
poor little women that poke down the cocktails to keep excited and
then go to pieces.
I don't believe I was very decent to Tad. Sitting here alone in a
hotel room, it seems twice as lonely after the fuss and feathers these
last few days, a fellow thinks of all the rotten things he ever did.
Poor old Tad. Too late now to cheer him up. Too late. Wonder if they
shouldn't have called off race when he was killed.
Wish Istra wouldn't keep calling me up. Have I _got_ to be rude to
her? I'd like to be decent to her, but I can't stand the cocktail
life. Lord, that time she danced, though.
Poor Tad was [See Transcriber's note.]
Oh hell, to get back to the reception. It was pretty big. Parade of
the Aero Club and Squadron A, me in an open-face hack, feeling like a
boob while sixty leven billion people cheered. Then reception by
mayor, me delivering letter from mayor of Chicago which I had cutely
sneaked out in Chicago and mailed to myself here, N. Y. general
delivery, so I wouldn't lose it on the way. Then biggest dinner I've
ever seen, must have been a thousand there, at the Astor, me very
natty in a new dress suit (hey bo, I fooled them, it was ready-made
and cost me just $37.50 and fitted like my skin.)
Mayor, presidents of boroughs of NY, district attorney, vice president
of U.S., lieut. governor of NY, five or six senators, chief of
ordnance, U.S.A., arctic explorers and hundreds like that, but most of
all Forrest Haviland whom I got them to stick right up near me.
Speeches mostly about me, I nearly rubbed the silver off my flossy new
cigarette case keeping from looking foolish while they were telling
about me and the future of aviation and all them interesting subjects.
Forrest and I sneaked off from the reporters next afternoon, had quiet
dinner down in Chinatown.
We have a bully plan. If we can make it and if he can get leave we
will explore the headwaters of the Amazon with a two-passenger Curtiss
flying boat, maybe next year.
Now the reception fans have done their darndest and all the excitement
is over including the shouting and I'm starting for Newport to hold a
little private meet of my own, backed by Thomas J. Watersell, the
steel magnate, and by to-morrow night NY will forget me. I realized
that after the big dinner. I got on the subway at Times Square, jumped
quick into the car just as the doors were closing, and the guard
yapped at me, "What are you trying to do, Billy, kill yourself?" He
wasn't spending much time thinking about famous Hawk Ericson, and I
got to thinking how comfortable NY will manage to go on being when
they no longer read in the morning paper whether I dined with the
governor, or with Martin Dockerill at Bazoo Junction Depot Lunch
Counter.
They forget us quick. And already there's a new generation of
aviators. Some of the old giants are gone, poor Moisant and Hoxsey and
Johnstone and the rest killed, and there's coming along a bunch of
youngsters that can fly enough to grab the glory, and they spread out
the glory pretty thin. They go us old fellows except Beachey a few
better on aerial acrobatics, and that's what the dear pee-pul like.
(For a socialist I certainly do despise the pee-pul's _taste_!) I
won't do any flipflops in the air no matter what the county fair
managers write me. Somehow I'd just as soon be alive and exploring the
Amazon with old Forrest as dead after "brilliant feats of fearless
daring." Go to it, kids, good luck, only test your supporting wires,
and don't try to rival Lincoln Beachey, he's a genius.
Glad got a secretary for a couple days to handle all this mail.
Hundreds of begging letters and mash notes from girls since I won the
big prize. Makes me feel funny! One nice thing out of the mail--letter
from the Turk, Jack Terry, that I haven't seen since Plato. He didn't
graduate, his old man died and he is assistant manager of quite a good
sized fisheries out in Oregon, glad to hear from him again. Funny, I
haven't thought of him for a year.
I feel lonely and melancholy to-night in spite of all I do to cheer
up. Let up after reception etc. I suppose. I feel like calling up
Istra, after all, but mustn't. I ought to hit the hay, but I couldn't
sleep. Poor Tad Warren.
(_The following words appear at the bottom of a page, in a faint, fine
handwriting unlike Mr. Ericson's usual scrawl.--The Editor_):
Whatever spirits there be, of the present world or the future, take
this prayer from a plain man who knows little of monism or trinity or
logos, and give to Tad another chance, as a child who never grew up.
* * * * *
_September 11_: Off to Kokomo, to fly for Farmers' Alliance.
Easy meet here (Newport, R.I.) yesterday, just straight flying and
passenger carrying. Dandy party given for me after it, by Thomas J.
Watersell, the steel man. Have read of such parties. Bird party, in a
garden, Watersell has many acres in his place and big house with a
wonderful brick terrace and more darn convenient things than I ever
saw before, breakfast room out on the terrace and swimming pool and
little gardens one outside of each guest room, rooms all have private
doors, house is mission style built around patio. All the Newport
swells came to party dressed as birds, and I had to dress as a hawk,
they had the costume all ready, wonder how they got my measurements.
Girls in the dance of the birds. Much silk stockings, very pretty. At
end of dance they were all surrounding me in semi-circle I stood out
on lawn beside Mrs. Watersell, and they bowed low to me, fluttering
their silk wings and flashing out many colored electric globes
concealed in wings and looked like hundreds of rainbow colored
fireflies in the darkness. Just then the big lights were turned on
again and they let loose hundreds of all kinds of birds, and they flew
up all around me, surprised me to death. Then for grub, best
sandwiches I ever ate.
Felt much flattered by it all, somehow did not feel so foolish as at
banquets with speeches.
After the party was all over, quite late, I went with Watersell for a
swim in his private pool. Most remarkable thing I ever saw. He said
everybody has Roman baths and Pompei baths and he was going to go them
one better, so he has an Egyptian bath, the pool itself like the
inside of an ancient temple, long vista of great big green columns and
a big idol at the end, and the pool all in green marble with lights
underneath the water and among the columns, and the water itself just
heat of air, so you can't tell where the water leaves off and the air
above it begins, hardly, and feel as though you were swimming in air
through a green twilight. Darndest sensation I ever felt, and the idol
and columns sort of awe you.
I enjoyed the swim and the room they gave me, but I had lost my
tooth-brush and that kind of spoiled the end of the party.
I noticed Watersell only half introduced his pretty daughter to me,
they like me as a lion but----And yet they seem to like me personally
well enough, too. If I didn't have old Martin trailing along, smoking
his corn-cob pipe and saying what he thinks, I'd die of loneliness
sometimes on the hike from meet to meet. Other times have jolly
parties, but I'd like to sit down with the Cowleses and play poker and
not have to explain who I am.
Funny--never used to feel lonely when I was bumming around on freights
and so on, not paying any special attention to anybody.
_October 23_: I wonder how far I'll ever get as an aviator? The
newspapers all praise me as a hero. Hero, hell! I'm a pretty steady
flier but so would plenty of chauffeurs be. This hero business is
mostly bunk, it was mostly chance my starting to fly at all. Don't
suppose it is all accident to become as great a flier as Garros or
Vedrines or Beachey, but I'm never going to be a Garros, I guess. Like
the man that can jump twelve feet but never can get himself to go any
farther.
_December 1_: Carmeau killed yesterday, flying at San Antone. Motor
backfire, machine caught fire, burned him to death in the air. He was
the best teacher I could have had, patient and wise. I can't write
about him. And I can't get this insane question out of my mind: Was
his beard burned? I remember just how it looked, and think of that
when all the time I ought to remember how clever and darn decent he
was. Carmeau will never show me new stunts again.
And Ely killed in October, Cromwell Dixon gone--the plucky youngster,
Professor Montgomery, Nieuport, Todd Shriver whom Martin Dockerill and