Chasing Icarus Read Online Free PDF

suitors, they couldn’t keep up. In the same week that Grahame-White arrived in Boston, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that Sears, “the society girl who plays polo, golf, tennis, rides to the hounds, shoots, hunts and fences, with a vim and a dash that have won her worldwide reputation, has two rivals for her hand.”
    One, the paper continued, was the arctic hunter Paul J. Rainey, who had traipsed “almost to the north pole to get her some bear pelts,” and the other was Harold Vanderbilt, who had first come across Miss Sears in the fall of 1909 when, as a Harvard law student, he unsuccessfully defended her in a Boston court on charges of overspeeding her automobile. Vanderbilt was not a natural athlete, commented the Tribune , but so strong was his ardor that he “had to play tennis in the broiling sun, golf till the soles of his feet cracked and try out occasionally a bucking broncho [ sic ], when he would have much preferred reclining upon a silken divan.”
    But with Rainey now in the snowy wastes in search of more pelts and Vanderbilt touring Europe, Sears saw nothing wrong in broadening her horizons. Of course, she had to put the opposition in the shade, and her flight time of eleven minutes and thirty seconds was a record for a female passenger in America. “It was perfectly heavenly!” she cried to reporters afterward. “Just the finest thing I ever enjoyed . . . Really, honest and truly, I wasn’t scared a bit. Mr. Grahame-White just makes you feel that it is all coming out all right. I knew from the time we left the ground until we landed that I wasn’t in the least danger when he was driving.” Miss Sears autographed a wing of the plane, as was the habit among Grahame-White’s admirers, then handed over the check for $500 with a promise that it wouldn’t be the last.
    One person who hadn’t been persuaded to take a trip with Grahame-White—even a free one—was President Taft. He had been a fascinated spectator at the Boston Meet on September 9 but declined the invitation to fly with a quip about his 250-pound size. TAFT INTEREST PLEASES WHITE was the headline in the Boston Globe , leaving one to wonder if the Englishman hadn’t now usurped the president in national importance. John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, the mayor of Boston (and the grandfather of John F. Kennedy), accepted an offer and later praised Grahame-White’s “perfect control of his machine.” The three men got on famously, underlining the Englishman’s magnetic personality. Princes, presidents, pressmen, Peter Pan—they all appeared to be under the spell of Grahame-White.
    But the nine-day Boston Meet had a serious side, and Grahame-White never let himself be distracted by a pretty face or a big name. He was in America to win, and at Boston he did so spectacularly, taking four first prizes, including in the blue-ribbon event, the thirty-three-mile race from the airfield to Boston Light * and back. That earned him $10,000, bringing his total earnings during the meet to $22,500. At a time when office clerks earned on average $5 a week, store assistants $7, and railway conductors $10, it was a fantastic sum. Boston threw a dinner in his honor, and a starstruck Mayor Fitzgerald handed over the check along with a silver loving cup on which was inscribed FROM BOSTON FRIENDS, IN ADMIRATION OF HIS SKILL AND SPORTSMANSHIP AS AN AVIATOR.
    Grahame-White was now arguably the most famous man in America, and the size of the offers he received reflected his enormous pulling power. He accepted a $50,000 contract to fly at the Brockton Fair in Massachusetts in early October (but turned down a series of speaking engagements with the Keith vaudeville agency at $2,000 a throw), then left for New York with his manager to discuss with the event’s promoters the possibility of entering the International Aviation Cup race. Of course, he would make sure he found time to take in a Broadway show, perhaps Our Miss Gibbs at the Knickerbocker