Free Conquerors of the Sky by Thomas Fleming Page B

himself the center of attention in
Pound’s small dark apartment in Kensington. A dozen guests, most of them women, listened wide-eyed as he proposed to demonstrate the central idea of flight. He took a piece of paper and curled one end of it over a pencil. Raising it to the level of his lips, he blew on it. The paper rose. “I have just produced lift,” he said. “You are now in the world of aerodynamics.”
    Why does air traveling over a wing create lift? “The air on top of the wing moves faster than the air under the bottom. In the eighteenth century, a Swiss mathematician named Bernoulli experimented with water flowing through a pipe. He proved that the faster it flowed, the lower the pressure in the pipe. Later, an Italian scientist named Venturi proved the same thing was true for air. That’s why the higher pressure of the slower air under the wing creates lift.”
    â€œExactly how emotion works in a poem or story!” Pound cried.
    â€œThe other components of a plane are weight, drag, and thrust,” Frank continued. “These are easier to understand. Drag is created by the resistance the surface of the plane meets as it moves through the air. Weight is the force of gravity and thrust is the forward motion we get from the engine.”
    â€œIn a poem or story,” Pound said, “Drag corresponds to the writer’s ability, weight to the reader’s stupidity, and thrust to the publisher’s greed.”
    So it went for the length of the lecture, Pound finding literary analogies for all Frank’s aeronautical terms. Pound was particularly fascinated by the way air flowing over the wings and down the fuselage of a plane formed negative vortexes that created a phenomenon known as flutter, which could tear a wing or a tail apart.
    â€œPrecisely the way the wrong metaphor can wreck a stanza, the wrong rhythm can ruin a poem, the wrong character can mangle a story!” Pound said.
    A blond young woman in the center of the semicircle asked: “What is the future of this marvelous machine?” She had the face of a Pre-Raphaelite angel—the pale cheeks, the wide blue eyes, seemingly vacant, waiting to be charged with emotion.
    â€œIts future is as unlimited as the sky above our heads,” Frank said. “The plane can abolish distance, annihilate frontiers, unite peoples in Tennyson’s wonderful vision of a Parliament of Man!”
    â€œTennyson!” Pound exclaimed. “My dear fellow—that’s a name we don’t allow in this house. He’s a has-been.”
    â€œHe never will be, to me,” Frank said. His mother had read the great English poet aloud to him almost every night in his boyhood. “The Idylls of the King” was his favorite poem.
    â€œThe danger of teaching mechanics to read has now become visible,” Pound said. “They form their own opinions.”
    â€œBut Ezra,” said the blond young woman. “He also likes your Canzoni.”
    â€œThat only demonstrates, to use an aeronautical term, his instability,” Pound said.
    The highlight of the evening was a midnight supper cooked by Pound, a delicious oyster stew, complemented by an Italian white wine that he served with an inimitable toast. “Come let us pity those who are better off than we
are. Remember that the rich have butlers and no friends and we have friends and no butlers.”
    The conversation swirled over art and politics, with the blond girl quizzically probing Frank’s opinions. Her name was Penelope Foster and she was unquestionably attracted to him. “Do you think we shall have peace or war, Mr. Buchanan?” she said in a liquid voice that sent shimmers of desire through Frank’s flesh.
    â€œOh, peace,” Frank said. “War would be a ridiculous waste of time and energy.”
    â€œThe British upper class can hardly wait to go to war with Germany. Proving, among other things, their