Now, I do not see how anyone could hope to be an architect without seeing the works of this old country. I never knew what design or interior decoration or landscape gardening were before. Every day reveals a new jewel whose impression may leave an idea for future work. Certainly the unconscious assimilation of ideas and proportions will be invaluable. I am not endeavoring to drive myself into following any of these new interests, as I feel it essential to conserve all physical and nervous energy for what will probably be the greatest tax on my life at the Front. My natural tastes seem good enough for the present to lead me to an enjoyment of the best, and I am experiencing the novelty for the first time in my life of living entirely according to my natural taste—not that I have ever been cramped, but family environment and educational influence have always dictated my course in life. Now I am swimming entirely alone, and it is pleasant for a new man. This living abroad puts one in tune with the ways of the world.
My love to you all.
Your son,
Dinsmore Ely.
Dear Father:
My first experience, a bit exciting, came rather early. On my second solo flight when I was half way around and going with the wind at a height of one hundred meters the motor stopped. That is about as bad as can happen at such a height for a student. The minute your motor stops you have to peak at thirty degrees and land into the wind. When my motor stopped, I looked for a landing, and peaked. The landing was a little behind me, so I made a short turn with a steep bank and managed to straighten her out just in time for a bare landing. It is very difficult to turn and bank with a dead motor, and I feel rather elated; and the best of it was that I was not frightened or worried in the least. It all went just as easily and naturally as I believed it would when I took up aviation. The great problem is not to lose speed, you know. In the Nieuport hangars they hang a motto: “Loss of speed is death.” Well, the field I had landed in was a bit rough and weedy, but there was a smooth, long stretch adjacent, so I decided to try to get her out myself. You see, the engines we use are Gnome rotary, an archaic type, and very impractical. At the field men hold the machine while the mechanic adjusts the carbureter, and then at a given signal it is released and soars skyward. The charm is that when shut off it won’t start again till you prime it, and the mechanic adjusts the carbureter over again for full speed. Well, a Ford was just passing, and they stopped and waited to see what I’d do. I went over and got a can from them to prime the engine with gas, then I cranked the thing and when it started up it darn near ran away with the poor scared man before I could get to the seat, so then I taxied the “girl” up to the far end of the field and wheeled her around. It takes two hundred yards to get to twenty feet height. I had three hundred yards to adjust the carbureter in and clear a row of trees thirty feet high, into the wind, of course. Well, they had explained the thing to us, and I had watched the mechanics, so I gave it to her and didn’t look up till I got the engine going. By that time the trees were one hundred yards ahead. She rose a little and I kept her low till she gained speed, and twenty-five yards from the trees I pulled her up and she fairly bounded over the road. I made an “S” curve and just got over the field at the school when the engine died again, and I came down by the bunch with a cylinder burned out.
November 15, 1917.
Dear Father:
Where the sky turns from an azure blue to a rosy pink the delicate new moon rests with its points toward the evening star. From these two jewels of heaven, the sunset sky grades away to a misty, mysterious horizon. The gray distance is offset with a delicate lacework of the autumn-stripped hedge of poplars with their slim, graceful lattice work, reaching to points in the pink, and where the dark earth and the white road come to the foreground, two great apple trees with their gnarled autumn boughs frame the scene of simple beauty as it fades to night. As I entered the kitchen of a little old farm house, which people who eat there choose to call the “Aviator,” cheery voices and appetizing odors greeted me in preparation for the evening meal. The clean tile floor, the whitewashed walls, the low-hung, richly stained rafters, and the old walnut chest by the brick fireplace all made me think of Aunt Maggie’s old kitchen where the pies and the cookies were kept, and that makes me think of other fireplaces and other rafters—and the folks at home.
So I just sit down to the oilcloth-covered table and try to tell them what a restless, twentieth-century lad thinks of the environment of his parents’ childhood.