Katharine Wright to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, March 8, 1924 (1)
"I've always been a dreamer. It is a survival of a part of my childhood. I was always dreaming of what wonderful things Will and Orv would do. That isn't an after-thought, Stef. All my college friends remember how my interest was in Will and Orv, always. When I was home for vacations I was down with them half the days and at night we all staid home together. They fascinated me and I never enjoyed any one else so much. It has always been so, really." (1)
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| Orville Wright, Katharine Wright, and Vilhjalmur Stefansson at Orville's cottage on Lambert Island, 1920. "Stef" age of 40 in this picture. Image courtesy of WSU Special Collections and Archives. |
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| Vilhjalmur Stefansson, May, 1928. Image courtesy of Boston Public Library, Digital Commonwealth Massachusetts Collections Online. |
Orville and Katharine Wright's friendship with the arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was put to the test in 1924 related to his involvement with an attempt to claim Wrangel, a remote island north of Siberia for the British Empire. To lay claim, Stefansson's plan left a landing party of four men and one woman on the island in 1921 with provisions for a year, with the intention then to bring additional provisions in 1922.
First, a summary of the Wrangel island adventure will be presented in the words of Stefansson, followed then by some letters written by Katharine, first to her friend Harry Haskell, and then to "Stef" himself. Stef had met with Katharine and Orville in February of 1924 to explain his side of the account, and likely did a poor job of it. Perhaps if Katharine and Orville had had the benefit of reading his account in his book "The Adventure of Wrangel Island", (the book not published till 1925), they may have had more confidence and trust in his actions.
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| Wrangle Island northwest of Alaska, north of Siberia. Image courtesy of Google Earth. |
From his book "The Adventure of Wrangel Island" by Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1925, the explorer tells his side of the story. The following is in Stefansson's words, drawn from chapters 8 & 9 of his book, condensing the account as follows:
The Difficulties of 1922
When pleading with the Canadian Government the spring of 1922 for help (since my money and borrowing power were exhausted) so that a supply ship could be sent to Wrangel, I had made the alternative proposals that they should send in a ship themselves, give us money to send in a ship, or give us a lease of the island which we could sell or otherwise use to raise money for a ship.
While negotiating with the Government I had been negotiating by cable with Nome and found available the schooner Teddy Bear, whose captain, Joe Bernard, I had known since 1910....I made a bargain with Captain Bernard that he would try his best to reach Wrangel Island, receiving a certain sum if he failed, but double that amount if he succeeded.
One thing I seemed to be unable to make impressive enough at Ottawa was how rapidly the summer was passing and that it was now or never.......I finally appealed for money to a personal friend and secured it on the plea of life and death. I said to him in substance that, while we could assume the safety and comfort of everyone on Wrangel Island on the basis of continued good health and absence of any accident, there were dangers of sickness and accident sufficient to warrant my saying that there was a possibility if not probability that lives might be sacrificed if nothing were done that year. I had not appealed to this friend earlier partly because he was an American citizen and, although I thought of him sympathetic to my plans in every way, I did suppose he would have the feeling that there ought to be enough wealth and public spirit in the British Empire to finance so small and altruistic a British enterprise. This same feeling had prevented me from appealing to any of my other American friends.
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| Check for $3000 written by the American citizen and friend, to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, August 15, 1922. With these funds, Captain Bernard could set sail August 20, 1922. $3000 in 1922 would be the equivalent of $53,193 in 2024, adjusted for inflation. |
With American money at last available for carrying supplies to a party of British pioneers, I cabled to Nome, closing the bargain with Captain Bernard. The season was already at its most favorable stage. Knowing this, the Captain made the hastiest preparations and set sail on August 20, 1922.
A vote of three thousand dollars was given me by the Canadian Government before the Teddy Bear actually sailed, but not in time to affect the sailing date, which had been determined by the help of my American friend.
The vote was made on the basis of the following....
Statement regarding men now in danger on Wrangel Island-
"The facts with regard to the Expedition now on Wrangel Island are in the hands of the Prime Minister of the Interior. The men went to Wrangel Island to hold it for the Empire and Canada, and I had no other motive in sending them there. I have spent on this enterprise all my own money and all I can borrow. Our claims to the island are clear and we should hold it. But the four men there have now been isolated for one year; they may be ill for all we know. They were confident, as I was that I could get support to send a ship to them. We could have borrowed the money had we received a lease at the time, but this in now probably too late. A ship can be chartered in Nome to take supplies to Wrangel and to bring out such of the men as want to come out- total cost of charter and supplies about $5000.00. Can the Government advance this money in some way- details of repayment, etc., to be settled later?....."
The season of 1922 proved to be particularly icy in the region north and northwest of Bering Straits....Captain Bernard made a faithful attempt. He followed the edge of the ice westward. Sometimes he ventured a little way out into it and was nearly caught, an event to be carefully guarded against here, although not serious in the arctic north and northwest of Europe.
If you get your ship fast in the ice of the European arctic you drift south into open water and freedom. If you get fast in the ice to the north of Alaska or eastern Siberia you drift with it to the northwest, being inevitably frozen in and carried across the polar ocean unless the ship is broken and sunk.....Had the Teddy Bear been frozen in, it would have meant not only the loss of the ship, but also that she would have been powerless to help the men on Wrangel Island. No one could be better aware of this than Captain Bernard, and so he was wise in running no risk of being caught. He retreated again and again barely in time and followed along westward until he came to where further progress was impossible because the ice touched the Siberian coast. He climbed high headlands in one or more places and saw the ice lying heavily packed twenty or thirty miles out to sea....
On September 23, 1922, Captain Bernard returned to Nome and the Lomen Brothers reported to me by wireless his failure to reach the island....
The Summer of 1923 And The Tragic News
No man in England was in such close touch with what I was trying to do as an old friend, Mr. Griffith Brewer. I had not been saying much to him about my worries lately, for I knew his kindness of heart and feared it would hurt him to have to remind me that he did not have the money needed for sending the necessary relief ship. But the last week of July he came to me and asked outright whether I did not think that the season was getting dangerously late and that it was becoming a matter of life and death to send a ship within a week or so. When I agreed and stated further my doubt that I could get any help from the Government quickly enough, Mr. Brewer said he would pledge his property at a bank and get the necessary money to cable to Alaska immediately as an advance against subscriptions, which he felt sure he could secure if I would authorize him to make a public appeal for funds through the Times. I at once consulted the Editor of the Times, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson. When I found him willing to carry the appeal, Mr. Brewer arranged for borrowing the money, assuming the risk of getting it returned to him if and when the subscriptions came in. The amount he eventually advanced was more than $10,000....
I found that there was available the schooner Donaldson, owned by an old friend, Alexander Allan....Like Captain Bernard the year before, Captain Allan was willing to go for a very reasonable minimum fee in case of failure, with the amount doubled for success.
September 1st (1923) brought unbelievable news from Wrangel Island. The Donaldson had returned to Nome and reported that Crawford, Galle and Maurer had died on the ice between Wrangel and Siberia and that Knight had died on the island, leaving the Eskimo woman as the only survivor.
In 1926, the Soviet Union claimed Wrangel Island, and the island remains under the control of Russia to this day.
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Katharine Wright to Harry J. Haskell, February 25, 1924 ( partial of 4 page letter from WSU Special Collections and Archives)
Dear Harry:
....I do not see that anything is a bit different from what it was before Stef came except that there is always a little relief from strain when you talk a thing over. The not pushing relief harder in 1922 seems a little more excusable to me but it leaves me with a deep distrust of Stef's ideas of his obligations. Orv told him that he thought if the families of the young men knew he had six thousand dollars at his disposal and only used twelve hundred of it to try to get a boat up to Wrangell, they would be astonished, to say the least. When Stef told me that he was "glad in a way", when he heard the boat had not got through the ice, because the Canadian government had not yet taken the responsibility of the occupation, I reminded him that he had said to Orv in his letter asking for the money that lives might be at stake. That embarrassed him for the first and only time I have ever seen him embarrassed.
As for the argument that the boys tried to get to Siberia for other reasons than the necessity of relieving the demand upon the supplies on the island, that is a fanciful argument. It is true that they had planned to go months before but they finally went because they saw there was not food for all if they staid. I think it is true they might have gone anyway and all that but the fact remains they THOUGHT they had to go when they did go.
I cannot worry over this business any longer. Stef defends everything he has done. From his point of view, which is that his schemes are very important both for his own ambition and for the advance of "science", he is justified in getting his plans through by any method that will get then (sic) through. I do not think his superiority in intellect gives him the right to everything he can get by the strength of his determination and the charm of his personality. His intellect is superior but his judgement and other faculties are not. He evidently honestly thinks he is a special pet of the gods and has some special privileges. Stef is not all bad, by a long way. But as I think over the whole thing, it is not a natural friendship for me. Stef can't possibly enjoy companionship with me. I think he could enjoy Orv thoroughly. When there is nothing to disturb us we three could have a good time together. I could come in on the edge. But Stef's whole life is his ambition and that is absorbing him so completely that it gives the direction to all he does..... All this has finally given me a deep distrust of Stef and I can't reason it away though I have tried. I may be doing him some injustice but I can't see now how Stef can have any reason for being a friend of mine. I am sure he must find me insufferably stupid and we haven't other things in common to make up for that. It is a very great loss to me for, as he expressed it once himself, I had given him an "idealized friendship". I had thought he was something altogether different from what he was. I never in my life so misread anyone. I haven't "got it in" for Stef now. I just see that there is no substance to one of my dreams.
I hope I am through with trying to see my way out of this tangle. There is no way out except to cut the ties and they are very hard to cut. But I am done now with bothering you with it! ..........
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Two days later, Katharine writes the following letter to Stef:
Katharine Wright to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, February 26, 1924 (8 page letter) sent in care of the Athletic Club in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (1)
Dear Stef:
I have no addresses- except the one for next Saturday Minneapolis which you gave me in the letter of February 24th from Chicago. I have had none since February 8th except those of last week.
I do not know what to say. If I acted on what I have learned from experience and observation, to be the best for me, I would be too "busy" to say anything. But because I have talked too much in the past, you will misunderstand me more if I am silent than you can possibly misunderstand what I say. You are always too busy to explain much to me and I don't blame you for that.
You haven't very much patience with me or with my ideas about anything. I feel that very strongly though it no longer hurts me as it did. I shall not apologize again for what I think. While we may have some views that are extreme, I believe that most people would not consider them more extreme than some of yours.
It was really too bad that by the time I had any chance to talk to you, I was so tired that I said little that I wanted to say and almost nothing as I wanted to say it. I do not feel critical of you- but so eager to believe the best! Some way we got off on the wrong tack and most of what we talked about was of little concern to me. For instance, I do not consider the actual outcome of the Wrangell expedition the main thing. So, as far as you are concerned, it doesn't matter to me whether the boys started for Siberia because they were short of food or because they just wanted to do it. They couldn't make it just as the others couldn't but I don't know why. I could take your view of that as well as any other. What does concern me is whether you fulfilled all your obligations and did your best for them regardless of your own interests. I do not think any one but yourself knows whether you let your ambition to succeed in your undertaking overshadow your concern about anything else. That is the point with me- not the questions of judgement on this or that. I do not undertake to judge you- but that the thoughts ever had to come into my mind is one of the two or three worse things of all.
Then, either you did think that the boys were in some danger if you did not get a ship to them, or you didn't. We both understand from your letter asking for the money to provide the ship that you did think there was some danger. You said you didn't have complete confidence in their judgement. We had very little, if Knight was the main reliance, as we understood he was. After reading your letter, telling what your situation was, in a financial way, we both thought that when you were lecturing as much as you were that year- all spring and summer- if you hadn't saved enough for this emergency which you knew was coming- it wasn't likely that you would ever manage your affairs so you could pay what you said you were owing other people- much less pay us. But we were concerned about those boys and their feelings and we know you would be bitterly criticized, especially by the "gang" that wanted to down you, and we never discussed whether we could or couldn't give the money. It was hard to hear you say in N.Y. that you were rather glad the ship didn't get through! Orv had it written on his books as a loss and we cut off some unnecessary but very pleasant expenses to put the money back into our capital again. But we never regretted any of it as long as we thought it had been spent to try to get a ship to Wrangell. I could do without any thing, almost, gladly, to save you from trouble. I don't mind being thought "stingy"- as people are thought to be sometimes when they like to spend money as much as any one but like even more to have the money for things not known to those who are criticizing.
But to find out over a year later, in an unexpected way- not from you at all- that our money hadn't gone for what we thought and that what the Canadian government gave was more than enough for the ship- and Griff had thrown over a thousand more of ours into the mess of unmanaged affairs! The latter was exasperating but the former gave a blow to my supreme confidence in you that I can't get over no matter how hard I try to see the affair from your point of view.
And your "point of view" is what I do try to get. You don't know and I can't tell you how much I would give if I could see some things as you do and if you could see some things as I do. Won't you please think back over our five years of friendship and see if you can recall ever having said you might be wrong about anything. I have been foolish to take the attitude of always being wrong. I never do quite-as well on anything as I ought and I can see it so clearly that I am always quick to think I am to blame for everything. But I haven't done one thing to bring in all this trouble and I have tried so hard to be loyal. I don't know whether you care much about my part. I doesn't matter, really. I have done only what I wanted to do. But now I must quit worrying about it, and get it out of my mind. I spend hours over what probably gets only a moment's thought from you now and then. I must stop it.
I wanted you to have a good time when you were here and I did my best- which was poor enough. (But oh- Stef- what an awful thing to find my "shining palace" built upon the sand! It was an impossible thing and you aren't to blame for all my vagaries.) I was sorry that the tears got so near the surface for I did not want to make you uncomfortable. Some day I shall sit down and cry! But that will be only when I can't do anything else. Orv's distress was harder to bear than my own- much. He is very very dear to me and I know what every look means. Will both be all right in no time!
I shall appreciate and like any book that comes from Rikes. Many thanks for the kind thoughts. - I didn't, after all, think to ask you about the price of the specially bound "Friendly Arctic" when you were here. You must tell me, please. It was awfully nice of you to take so much trouble for me. For every lovely thing you have ever done for me, I am so grateful- the new interests and new friends Mr. Akeley's elephants- all the books- the gentle consideration when I did not deserve it- the dear letter that was the best comfort in the world just when I needed comfort- the lovely day in New York when we went to the Museum and you gave me the Ingoldsby Legends and we had dinner with Ridgely Torrence and Mr. Spinden and wound up with that awful evening at the Engineer's Club when Orv got the John Fritz Medal. And I have appreciated more than I could ever tell any body everything you have done for Orv. I have only begun to name over the things that are in my memory- memories that really "bless and heal". I have been incredibly stupid and clumsy. Stef- and I know it- so well. Please remember the little bit of "best" in me. I wanted to be something quite- different for what I have been. Good bye-
Katharine
There are lots of things I would love to talk to you about but I am not presumptuous enough to imagine I could contribute- any thing in the way of ideas and so I am in the dark and can't see ahead.
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Not receiving a response to her letter sent February 26, Katharine writes another letter to Stef, finding that those ties, (as shared with Harry Haskell- "I hope I am through with trying to see my way out of this tangle. There is no way out except to cut the ties and they are very hard to cut.")- are indeed hard to cut.
Katharine Wright to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, March 8, 1924 (partial of 10 page letter) (1)
Dear Stef:
I have not heard from you since I sent a letter to the Athletic Club, Minneapolis but I want to write to you.
Please, Stef, remember that I have idealized you and idolized you- and do still. Please remember also that I have been attached to you in an unusual way- for me- and am yet.
I shall be able to keep my "idealized friendship" with you and without making too much demand upon you. Do you remember that you and Harry were speaking for a few moments about plays and that you talked about Jane Cowl in Romeo and Juliet? For one second, it gave me a little stab that you didn't recall seeing that with me but only for a moment. When I had time to think about it I realized how I have been learning to make a little pile of the things I want but can't have- and still can't not want!- and I have really been trying to use my "cheerfullest" philosophy on doing without them. We all have these things I suppose. And I have really made a gain on that. I see so clearly, Stef- why you can't possibly remember any particular thing you have ever done with me. That doesn't keep me from wishing you would sometimes think of me in connection with this or that. I believe that is just "human nature". At least it is my human nature, with my particular friends! But there isn't going to be any more feeling hurt over what I can't possibly have, ever. I'll just cheerfully put that wish away- and not feel the least bit "abused" either. I don't want to get over wishing for some of these things I can't have. Isn't that just the contradiction of human nature? Some of the very best and most precious things I've got are those I can't have, "if you can see what I mean" as Ray Roberts, the Washington correspondent of the K. C. Star is always saying....
I've always been a dreamer. It is a survival of a part of my childhood. I was always dreaming of what wonderful things Will and Orv would do. That isn't an after-thought, Stef. All my college friends remember how my interest was in Will and Orv, always. When I was home for vacations I was down with them half the days and at night we all staid home together. They fascinated me and I never enjoyed any one else so much. It has always been so, really.
You are the only other person in the world that ever appealed to me in that way, Stef. Some way I began fitting you right into all my interests in a good deal the same way that I did with my brothers. I don't know now why I couldn't see that it couldn't be done- that there were two sides to it, yours as well as mine. At first I imagined that you felt as I did about it, when I saw you and Orv together especially......
Copyright 2024- Getting The Story Wright
Notes-
1. Letter from Author's collection.
