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Early Letter by Katherine Wright to a Journalist that Covered The Wright Brothers Early Aviation
Early Letter by Katherine Wright to a Journalist that Covered The Wright Brothers Early Aviation
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Description:

Wright Orville

Early Letter by Katherine Wright to a Journalist that Covered The Wright Brothers Early Aviation

“if we take one passenger we will be besieged with requests from people whom it will be almost impossible to refuse.”

 

Autograph Letter Signed, to Arthur Ruhl, May 23, 1910, Dayton, Ohio.  2 pp., 4.75" x 6.5."  Condition: Usual folds, very good.

 

Complete Transcript

                                                                        7 Hawthorn St., Dayton.

                                                                        May 23, 1910.

Dear Mr. Ruhl,

            You have put me in the light of being a swindler but I can’t find it in my heart to be very furious about it. The sweet peas were so lovely and delicate that I enjoyed them tremendously, regardless. Thank you very much.

            We all enjoyed your visit and hope you may find it in your way to come again. With kind remembrances from us all, certainly <2> not excluding the brothers, believe me,

                                                                        Sincerely yours,

                                                                        Katharine Wright

 

Journalist Arthur Ruhl, who was a regular contributor to Collier’s Weekly national newspaper, published in New York, had made friends with pioneer aviators Orville and Wilbur Wright through visits to Ohio, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. Ruhl had written admiringly of the Wright brothers’ accomplishments for Collier’s Weekly.

 

After nursing Orville back to health from a terrible crash in September 1908, Katharine Wright accompanied her brother to France, where they joined Wilbur and became some of the most famous people in the world at the time. In Pau, France, Wilbur Wright gave rides to many statesmen, military officers, and journalists. On February 15, he even gave a ride to his sister Katharine.  After their return to the United States, Katharine joined her brothers in a visit to the White House, where President William Howard Taft awarded gold medals to her brothers.

 

She continued to assist her brothers with their correspondence. On April 22, Katharine Wright wrote to journalist Arthur Ruhl, who had followed her brothers’ experiments and achievements closely, about a new shed on their grounds at Huffman’s Prairie, eight miles east of Dayton.  She continued, “we expect to do some flying there within the next week or two and we would suggest that if you are not in too great a hurry that you had better come to Dayton for your story. We shall be delighted to assist you in your story in every possible way.”

 

Two days after Katherine Wright wrote this letter, Orville Wright piloted two unique flights. In the first, he took a six-minute flight with Wilbur Wright as his passenger. It was the only time the Wright brothers ever flew together, as they had promised their father they would never do so to avoid a double tragedy. He gave them special permission on this occasion. In the second, Orville Wright took his father on a seven-minute flight, the only one of his life. When the plane rose to about 350 feet, his father called out, “Higher, Orville, higher!”

 

On June 17, Ruhl wrote to Orville Wright, enclosing photographs that they were not using in an upcoming story in Collier’s about their work at Dayton. Ruhl was “delighted to hear of Brookins’ record-breaking flight.” Brookins, one of the Wrights’ students, broke the record for height at 4,939 feet in a flight at Indianapolis.  Publication of Ruhl’s article had been postponed several times, and Ruhl worried that “things have been traveling so fast lately that I don’t know how much people will care to read about an ordinary flight around a pasture.”

 

Ruhl’s story, “Up in the Air with Orville,” appeared in the July 2, 1910, issue of Collier’s. Ruhl offered an evocative description of “quite an ordinary American cow-pasture” and the extraordinary things happening there. After Orville Wright landed from a solo flight, Ruhl wrote, “And then he gave an invitation which had been sought ever since a baking spring morning two years ago, when six weary and tick-bitten correspondents rowed, waded, tramped, and crawled for several hours to an ambush under Kill Devil Hill and there saw the Wright machine in successful flight across the Kittyhawk sands. ‘You’re elected,’ said Orville, and I climbed in.” Ruhl described take-off as “a sort of sublimated tobogganing…exciting and delightful.” The experience of flight reminded Ruhl of an elevator dropping or rising, and Orville flew him in tightly banked circles creating “a sensation quite thoroughly to be recommended.”

 

Katharine Wright Haskell (1874-1929) was born in Dayton, Ohio, exactly three years after her brother Orville (1871-1948). She was the only surviving girl in the family, and after their mother’s death in 1889, she was especially close to her brothers Orville and Wilbur.  She graduated from Oberlin College in 1898 and began teaching at a high school in Dayton. When her brother Orville was seriously injured in a demonstration flight crash in Virginia, she rushed to his side and remained with him during his seven weeks of recovery in the hospital. In early 1909, she and Orville reunited with Wilbur in France. More outgoing than her shy brothers, she became immediately popular in France. With her brothers she received the Legion of Honour, the highest French order of merit, and became one of very few American women who have received it. After Wilbur Wright died in 1912, she became an officer in the Wright Company and took on business responsibilities. In 1914, she, Orville, and their father moved to Hawthorn Hill, their new mansion in a Dayton suburb. Their father died in 1917, and Orville became more dependent on her. When she married newspaperman and widower Henry Joseph Haskell in 1926, Orville refused to attend the wedding. After several attempts at reconciliation that Orville refused, he was present at her bedside when she died in Kansas City in 1929.

 

Arthur Brown Ruhl (1876-1935) was born in Rockford, Illinois, and graduated from Harvard University in 1899. While at Harvard, he wrote for The Advocate and Lampoon, and ran on the track team. After he graduated, the New York Evening Sun employed him as a reporter, and he was soon published in Century Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and Collier’s Weekly.  He traveled widely and wrote on a wide variety of topics, from sports to theatre to politics. He wrote about Latin-American affairs and was an authority on international relations. He wrote about a Mexican revolution, a volcano erupting in South America, the German and Turkish lines at Gallipoli, the world heavyweight boxing match in Reno, theatres in Moscow, a George Gershwin concert, the Wright Brothers’ experiments with flight, and many other topics. He died in Queens from pneumonia, contracted ten days earlier. He married Zinaida Yakovnchikoff (1904-1952), who was born in Russia and spoke German, in 1926, in Berlin, Germany. They had one son Arthur Paul Ruhl (1929-1997).

 

 

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