The Salt Lake tribune. [volume], July 28, 1912, Magazine Section, Image 38

About The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current

Image provided by: University of Utah, Marriott Library

                
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 28, 1912. j
I "LITTLE MISS DRESDEN CWWBHBHM
: BROKEN AT LAST l
1
fir ' 8!
- ' v. -.. Jftrf fcBtawL -':;-
Harriet
Quimby,
Aviation
(! , I
Costume, 9HF tBpRtaZL7
As She jgNWfcjy
Appeared Hpu
B Before yy Hm
' j "The Giant Cloud Finger,
V iB Tired of Playing with Her
VMachine' Gave Its Tail That I
Final, Fatal Flip' I
IT Is a heavy human toll that is
exacted by the sport of aviation,
but In the long list of such sac
rifice of life none so affects the
popular Imagination as that of Har
riet Quimby the most daring of
airwomen, yet so dainty, pretty and
essentially feminine that she came
to be known as the 'TDresden China
Aviatrlce.'
In keeping with her outward as
pect of frivolous femininity, too.
were her odd and peculiarly fem
inine superstitions. Always when
In the air, though she handled her
powerful craft with all the cool skill
and courage of any of her masculine
rivals, she was obsessed by the notion
of a mischievously malicious giant
hand stretched forth from the clouds
behind her, snapping Its great fin
gers perilously near her outstretched
planes, or, with the tip of one of
those Immense digits flipping up
ward the tall of her craft as though
for the pleasure of seeing It dive
headlong to the earth below.
At last that giant cloud-finger suc
ceeded In its experiment Miss
Qulmby's 1 00 horsepower tflerlot
machine suddenly stood on Its head,
up a mile In the sky above the city
of Boston, pitching the daring
woman and her male passenger in
to the shallow waters of Dorchester
Bay. Her odd superstition was
realized; "Miss Dresden China," as
she had half-expected to happen,
was broken at last.
Harriet Quimby will be forever
famouB as the first airwoman to fly
across the English channel. When
she was about to leave New York
last March, bent on accomplishing
that feat which the mt rugged
and experienced of man-flyers at
tacked with trepidation her friends
sought to dissuade her on th
grounds of her frail physique and
her generally feminine disadvan
tages. "Why," said one. "your appro
prlate environment Is the blue and
gold walls of s satin-uphol6tered
boudoir in the Louis XV. style.
You're not a medieval German Ama
ton by Plloty; you're a Watteau
ShepherdneBS, Why, everybody la
calling you the 'Dresden ChlDa
Avtatrlce."'
"Oh, I don't ilk that," laughed
Miss Quimby. "Dresdeu China la
so easily broken! But 1m going.
Just the same.''
During that perilous channel pas
sage she could almost feel the pre
ence of that giant-cloud hand flip
ping its fiDgers playfully about her
rudder like a cat playing with a
mouse. Long before that, soon af
ter she had secured her pilot's license
and was venturing into the skies
alone she said to one of her In
timate friends:
"Frequently when I have been
flying it has seemed to be as If a
huge cloud-hand were mischievously
rocking my slender little monoplane.
It seemed, with a pin yf til finger, to
be lifting the tall of tuy niachLue
higher than it. should be.
I actually had to fight
with my levers to keep
the machine from stand
ing on its nose particu
larly when coming down H
through the lower clouds.
That giant hand grows
more and real the longer H
I fly Whenever I get
among the clouds T can
feel it playing with the H
ta.il of my machine "
Curiously, nothing so
well as her own belief In
this supernatural agency HptS
explains the mystery of
that fatal plunge Into
Dorchester Bay. Her in
structors. M, Andre Hau
pert, whose training en
abled her to pain her pi-
lot's license, has made
this significant statement: !
"It was no lack on the
part of MIrf Quimby that H
caused the drop of" worn- HgMg
sn. man and machine to
the earth There wa3
nothing the matter with
her machine. It. was in HBHi
perfect, working trim Rut, wM&F
so far as we can fpl.
something happened which
destroyed Its equipoise
and Instantly she was at
the mercy of the air." f Jfl
"Something happened" f W
As Miss Quimby has said I fg$i
that something" almost I
happened whenever she
was among the cloud,
maliciously playf,, s,ant' r
tTrffrm flipp,nt? the
nlhf V mach'ne too
high for her safety and
now. at last It gaveVfllP
with force enoueh to
make resistance ueeleas
Hve'wrJEf J'1"1' r en Imaglna-
opprip in V 'S,could' finally. B0
It" victim as?lndJtn" of
of th 11; Produce reactions
oj the muscles used In irnldln Mm
machlnp that vmiM 1 -"mnig rns
i ii.i l WOUIa CnilSe S i"")tnc.
trophc Identical with ih
JhfJ - ,M,S5 Q"'by. Believing
red X frMc dooMlSf wa
1 with hor mnrhlnf,
and had given its tail a final, fatal
flip, her hands on the guiding levers
"consciously reversed their usual
procedure
Miss Quimby was a story writer.
J PWt" dramatist In fat a
dreamer with, a mind extrHordinarlly
setlre on its Imaginative side. Her
belief In that cloud hand was no
stranger than the- beliefs of the an
cient Greeks in the immortal brings
which controlled all the manifesta
tions of nature
Whr-n Icarus fle'v high above rh
Medlfprraufan witli wings made of
wax he knew that It was in the pow
er of Phobus.Aiollo, rolling the sun
across the heavens In his charlor. to
bring disaster upon him by melting
bis wax wings, which Is exactly what
the sun did, and the ancient Greek
mythological aeroplanist took his
fatal plunse Into the sea.
To personify mysterious forces far
abow the earth, picturing in her
mind cloud forces concentrated In
an intelligent, ali-powerful hand, wa
a not unnatural obsession in one of
hi. st, Quunby's temperament and
i , 1 1
ApartrmercrAn Conventional Costume, Which Shows Her toHave
menrai constitution. Considering her
hazardous performances In cloud
land. There was another superstition of
Miss Quimby .-; thai bad a certain
bearing on the catastrophe of her
career. Sho wore a number of Ori
enta decorations that, with her com
plexion, made her resemblance to
fabied queens or Egypt more than
merely fanciful. She had. m partic
ular, a string of weirdly colored
stones that, she obi lined from a Cairo
rnuietepr. "nioss these were around
ner m-ck she would not fly. Her own
narrative of how she got them Is il
lustrative of the woman behind .be
girt. "I had noticed a most peculiar
combination of stonps which were
around the mule's temples as p,irt
of his head-stall, a number of queer
little Oriental gods and goddesses
were suspended Irregular!? from this
strlog of stones. A close examination
of them showed that thev were all
really the samp god or iddesfl I do
not know which, and that Gane.sba
was the r.ame I think he Is a Hiniu
god of Luck.
"I ottered the boy a guinea for the
string of stones, but he wauted
three times that much. We finally
compromised for two guineas, And
my luck changed that "very )-iy! I
have never bp.n so happy a? since I
bought thoe litib- charms.'
But Ganesha was to play a part In
Miss Quiniby'a life that, aU unfor-
I
fon was tragic almost beyond words.
In the office of a London newspaper
which had financed her flight acros-t
tli'- Channel, she met with a large
replica of Ganesha. The strange
lao-l, with its elephant head, three
legs, ni,d (hrce arms, all on a human
DOdy, bad been sent to the news
paper office to be destroyed The
newspaper had collected from Its
readers n number of unlucky talis
mans, and Ganesha was among
them.
Miss Quimby, spptns that h
matched the smaller Idols which had
hung oQ her Cairo mule's headstall
begged f-ohard for Ganesha that tho
figure was reluctantly turned over
to her. And hero id Miss Qulmby's
version of what happened.
'Any one would suppose that after
I had rescued Ganesha from 5UCQ ftn
untimely end as burning he would
be grateful and wouid behave like
his lutle children did. But almost
Immediately I begau io have bad
luck."
When Miss Quimby returned to New
York after her triumphal crosslnc
of the Channel, Ganesha kept oq
misbehaving ,ad sue decided finally
that she would guillotine bin, So
she had bis head cut off and put the
head In a desk drawer, while she
used the body of the Idol for a
paper weight. The day that Mis
Quimby was killed In Boston a
Mend of herB was near her desk
and saw Ganesha, with his cut-off
head resting again on his 8,IB
and sti. Ing h,''n'!!:ilT-M
Quimby had reohioed the
day she went to Boston. J
It was Miss Qulmby's oft
statement that "happy rPj'jM
long to the same ' " !lE"
she did everything i3Fl
make people happy She ((
cheerful as could be. and 1 'ty
which the posted on b-r
nerodromo th n MSt
death she laughingly nfJJKS;
to sliow how 1 lrrle mk- f"iirJ ,JK
thing will happ-Ti to l:''r ,JfBj,b
how she refuses to take 'ltB
iously The quotation, wBrM
deutly answ. red ' f'irl!f. ija
careful told how impr19
"That Youth's sweet sceQ'w
script should close." to
Mib.i Qulrub'b amhU-'on
earn enough money before Josji
thirty -the s.. tin-' JW
from daily woik t '"ieT1), flJ
book one big play- .uuS
dents of 11,1 -dolor, the "'m
French resort on the EDg'T,,
nel. hO'l pi-canted ivr n. ,MkH
galow and a lare I'.Tflk
for her .:ros-channel NPJg
wantel to tliere in ttv 3IB fe
when she retired from b"?5B U
fairs, and to live her W
southern California. WDC" 1
owned an orange rnnrh. M
But the cloii'i hand r(, J6w
for her It lifted the tsU mV
monoplane once too often. j