Before Amelia (18 page)

The Farman brothers were impressed by Hilda's enthusiasm, her familiarity with the working parts of a motor, and her ability with French, and permitted her to work in the shops along with Blondeau and the mechanics on occasion. They talked and breathed aviation, despite the dispiriting cold and dampness. Hilda admitted she wanted to cry many times from cold feet while standing about on the windswept plain waiting for something to happen. She soon learned to wear warm “gouties” and sabots, like the natives, which helped her feet. Clothing, never of importance to Hilda, was a practical thick jerkin, bloomers that reached well below her knees, a woolen balaclava helmet, and cat-skin gauntlets over fingerless mitts. There was no escape from the waiting, but Hilda came to believe that it served a purpose. Watching repairs being made on a broken machine, aeroplanes in flight, or attempting to fly all provided insight into the new science; demonstrations by students and builders allowed the spectators to judge the faults or virtues of each machine, leading to much discussion around the dinner table.

Students at the various camps tended to congregate in one of two hotels, according to their type of machine, biplane or monoplane. Rivalry was keen between the two groups. The Farman gang was housed at the Hotel de l'Europe along with the Voisin biplaners. The Antoinette monoplane students stayed at the Hotel Marillier with fellow monoplane enthusiasts. Dinner at the Farman hotel was often a spirited meal with discussion led by Henry, who pointed out the failings of various aeroplanes and explained their shortcomings. Farman learned Esperanto to communicate with foreign students, notably the Russian Efimoff. English, French, German, and Italian were commonplace at the table, including a patois that used the evolving aviation terminology.

During the day, if a student was lucky to be chosen from a crowd, and the weather agreeable, he or she climbed up behind either Maurice Herbster or M. Van den Born on a tired Farman with an old motor to pick up flying skills. There was some explanation, but students learned by watching the instructor handle the controls. According to Hilda, Blondeau had three lessons in as many months before he flew alone. She admitted she could never learn that way.

In May the long-awaited Farman was ready, a two-winged contraption with long, fabric-covered wings separated by wooden struts, the whole tied together with piano wire. The pilot sat on a bucket seat fastened to a ladder on the lower wing, with feet placed on the rudder bar and the control stick between the legs. The only instrument was an oil pulsator, which was timed on the ground for a minute or two to be sure the engine was making full revolutions. A student sat behind the pilot on the ladder and reached over the pilot's shoulder to hold the stick.

Blondeau practiced on the new machine with its Gnome motor, then took his license test and received his certificate from the Aero Club of France on June 10, 1910. In July the partners packed their treasure, named
The Blue Bird
at the suggestion of Maurice Maeterlinck, a friend of Maurice's, and brought it to Brooklands in England, where they set up shop. Maurice had stopped at Mourmelon on his way from Italy to see how the partners were doing. During his visit, he had a ride on the Farman and bought shares in the fledgling Hewlett-Blondeau Flying School, which was being organized.

It took ten days to assemble and tune
The Blue Bird,
watched all the while by skeptical locals at Brooklands, where within the raceway a few ditches had been filled in and some leveling done to provide a large broad area for motorcar or aeroplane, making training and testing of aeroplanes fairly safe and easy. From this unlikely location, three quarters of British aviation would emerge. When the new machine was wheeled from its hangar, a small crowd gathered, full of gloomy predictions: “Brooklands is a death-trap for flying, what with the river and the sewage farm”; “The Gnome engine is not the one for here, it hates the damp air”; “Look, the machine does not look right, no one knows how to tune up a Farman, it's a secret.” They were dumbfounded, therefore, when the Gnome started on the first pull of the propeller, and the Farman glided smoothly away and rose steadily into the air to circle the field before making a perfect landing close to its starting point. The crowd was impressed. So was T.O.M. Sopwith, who was curious about aviation and signed up for a flight around Brooklands with Blondeau for a “fiver.” Two circuits of the track and he had caught “the bug.” From that beginning, Sopwith would make aviation history.

Hilda Hewlett was a talented aviator, flight instructor, and airplane builder. In 1910, she and Gustave Blondeau started Great Britain's first aviation school at Brooklands. Here she poses in front of one of the Hewlett-Blondeau airplanes they designed and built.
BROOKLANDS MUSEUM

Following Blondeau's demonstration, life was easier at Brooklands, where an active aviation village was growing inside the motor raceway, which opened in 1907. The partners were no longer considered oddballs but serious aviation workers. Blondeau gained a reputation as a Gnome motor expert and pilot, and advertisements in the aviation journals soon had people coming to him for passenger flights and flying lessons. In September, Hewlett and Blondeau opened a flying school in shed No. 32—tuition was seventy-five pounds, which included breakage—but the demands on the one machine for flights, lessons, and prize competitions meant that Hilda had little time to practice for her pilot's license. The two decided to build another machine and saved every penny to buy a Gnome motor.

The school, the first in England to graduate a full-fledged pilot and the first to graduate an army-officer pilot, flourished with pupils who were devoted to Hilda Hewlett and Gustave Blondeau. An advertisement in the aviation journals touted the school's record—“Has never had a smash nor damaged an aeroplane”—and Blondeau's reputation: “a good teacher means safety and rapidity.” Holidays and spare time were spent at the school, doing any job whatever, sharing primitive meals and washing up. In summer, the pupils swam in the river Wey; otherwise there was a minimum of washing. Pupils slept in the hangars or in the large packing cases outside, enjoying a strange communal life with endless aviation shoptalk day and night, not unlike the Farman school at Châlons. (Gertrude Bacon, a journalist and aviation enthusiast, writing of the early days of aviation, observed in one book that Hilda Hewlett slept in a hangar with her aeroplane, which Bacon probably considered bizarre. Bacon wrote enthusiastically about various male pilots but had nothing more to say about Hilda, although one would expect an active member of the Women's Aerial League to promote women in aviation.)

By the summer of 1911, the Hewlett-Blondeau School was in full swing, with some half-dozen pupils, which continued to limit the time Hilda could practice for her license. Nervousness about her first solo flight was intensified by fear, lest she damage the school's only machine. Blondeau told her that whatever she did, “don't go near those lumps where the house was pulled down, nor to the sewage farm.” Hilda started off fine, gathered speed, and headed straight into the piles of old bricks, where she stuck. Fortunately, the machine was not seriously damaged, and she proceeded to make a successful flight, preserving the school's reputation.

On August 18, 1911, at forty-seven years of age, Hilda Hewlett passed her tests to become the first English woman to obtain a pilot's license, No. 122, issued on August 29. Representatives from the Royal Aero Club, down from London, were curious observers when she took her tests. As the first woman to try, they were rooting for her. She took off, did the required turns, the altitude and landing tests, and became an entry in the record books. The press noted her achievement, identifying her as “wife of Maurice Hewlett, the novelist,” but she was never featured, as Raymonde was in the French press, probably because aviation was still a limited sport in England and primarily for men. But for a short time, Hilda was showered with telegrams, letters, and gifts; the scoffers took back their comments—she was almost a celebrity.

The difference between the acceptance of women in aviation in France and England was considerable. French numbers alone indicate that women, who endured the sometimes grueling training, were treated with respect as members of the flying community. In England there was mistrust and even open hostility. Claude Grahame-White, the leading English aviator, had served notice: there was “no place in the air for women.” According to Grahame-White, the only reason women had escaped serious accidents was because they were flying exclusively in aerodrome flights, which were very different from cross-country work and the hazardous achievements undertaken by men. In spite of these critical comments, the Grahame-White schools did offer training to a few women, but only one received a license, Mrs. Stocks. Lily Irvine, when she married American James V. Martin, went to the United States without a license. Aviation in England was very much a male pursuit.

Two days before Hilda's successful tests, the British Army staff gained a certified pilot, one of the first, Brigadier General David Henderson, chief staff officer to Sir John French, who studied under the name of Henry Davidson at the Bristol Company's school at Brooklands. (The first army officer to earn a pilot's license was Snowdon Smith, a Hewlett-Blondeau graduate in 1910.) A diary of Henderson's course showed that in seven days he made seven passenger flights, some long and some short, and practiced rolling on the ground for a total time of a half hour. On the sixth day, he flew as passenger again, then flew three flights alone for a total of thirty-five minutes, at an average height of 60 feet, rising to 150 feet at one point. Reportedly, he flew no straight flights but took off and flew circuits. The next day he successfully passed all tests for his license. Aviation circles cheered his achievement, believing that it would be helpful to have such a high-ranking officer at the War Office qualify as an aviator and that aviation would receive needed government attention.

Three months later another Hewlett joined the ranks of licensed pilots, when naval Sub-Lieutenant Francis E.T. Hewlett, taught by his mother, received license No. 156, issued November 14. According to the family, young Hewlett learned to fly over a weekend, in forty-eight hours. By the end of the year, the Hewlett-Blondeau School had taught eleven pupils to fly without breaking wood. Two more pilots were certified before the school closed early in 1912 to do full-time construction. Hilda never flew again once the school closed.

The school's first graduate was Maurice Ducrocq. Hilda described Blondeau's method of training him for the
Daily Mail.
First, the student makes one or two long passenger flights with the instructor to get used to the sensation of speed and the noise of the motor. Next, the student takes partial control of the machine in flight so that gradually he or she is ready to make brief “hops” without the instructor. This gradual approach, Hilda believed, made all the difference between success and failure when the crucial time came to actually take control of the machine.

Ducrocq, a Frenchman living in England, wrote an appreciation of the Hewlett-Blondeau School in which he stated that no school in France or England could have served him better. Ducrocq had investigated so-called schools in England and found them wanting. Then he heard of Blondeau's debut using a Gnome and, after more inquiries, he went to Brooklands and arranged for lessons. His teacher, Blondeau, was a very quiet man who never lost his head or his temper. On the first lesson, Ducrocq was treated to a cross-country flight at a considerable height to allow him to enjoy the thrill of flying, sense its possibilities, and lose any fear he might have. After that, the student went round the course at a lower altitude for several days to observe how the machine was run before being allowed to touch the lever and feel his hands on the machine. After eleven lessons, he began to fly in straight lines forward and back along the ground, then leaving it for short hops until the aeroplane was finally in the air. Twenty-one lessons later, Ducrocq was licensed by the Royal Aero Club of England.

Following her licensing, Hilda was invited to address a meeting of the Women's Aerial League in October. She used the occasion to warn that England was two years behind France in aeronautics. Ever a realist, she pointed out the best way to change this situation was not to ignore it but to admit the nation's shortcomings. She was especially concerned by the practice of copying French aeroplanes and advertising them as original designs: “This was unworthy and mean.” She proposed that England buy the licenses from French firms with the best machines and build aeroplanes in England from those designs. This way English firms would have current models—aeroplanes change rapidly—and England would benefit with every improvement, the same as France. As it was, French builders hid their new designs and inventions until a race was to take place, to keep competitors from winning the prizes on copied French designs. On a less sober note, Hilda said that women were capable of piloting their own machines just as well as men, but not in races, like Beaumont and Védrines (two successful French long-distance racers who, for a week, wearing the same clothes, slept on the ground at night, their wings the only cover), whose nerves were strained almost to the breaking point. As students of the science, women were as capable as men, and they didn't have to give up society, as she had done, to take part. Most important, women could help form public opinion so England wasn't left behind in aviation.