stefansson-wrangel-09-14-024

October 23, 1923.

Dear Katharine

I met Grif at the train at seven o'clock yesterday morning and went with him on to the "Aquitania." Unfortunately, the papers say that she met a terrific gale beyond Long Island. It was hard luck, for Grif isn't the best possible sailor. I think the trip over here was a good rest for him but he needed a little more rest on the way back.

Grif thought we would all be glad a year from now if we do not discuss the Wrangel Island situation until all the information is in. Unfortunately, there is likely to be trouble here with Noice, as Grif may have told you. He is trying to pocket privately the proceeds of the rather sensational newspaper stories which he has written while we think the money should go either towards the relief expedition or to the heirs. If it goes to the heirs, it will probably take the form of a memorial.

I am afraid that one of the many ways in which I have been at fault is in not telling you fully all the circumstances of the expedition. I am leaving this afternoon for a trip in the West, to be back in New York about November 12th or 15th. I am asking my secretary after I go to make and send you copies of all letters written me by the boys on Wrangel Island and by their relatives.

I know that any letter written to you is a letter to both you and Orv, so I might as well say here also that the reason why the $3,000. loan from Orv did not appear in the statement of the company was that I considered it a personal loan to myself at a time of great need, and not one to the company. Orv told me strongly at the time that he wanted the matter very confidential. The only people who knew about the loan were Mr. Taylor and my secretary until I told Grif in England.

I hope you will read the articles written by Noice which I suppose will be printed in one of the daily papers, or at least in some paper in Ohio. He is, of course sulky because we are preventing him from getting his hands immediately on the money for the stories, and that is one of the reasons why some of the statements in it are a little malicious. I have only seen those that are already published, for I decided that of two evils it would be better to have the story written by a man known to be hostile to me go out unedited than to be under the charge of having doctored it. In that case the last condition would be worse than the first, for Noice would come out in a statement

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asserting that his original story had been perverted, and as he is getting angrier day by day the statement would be the worse the later it is issued.

I hope you will agree with both Grif and me in thinking that apart from my giving you the documentary evidence in our files and your reading what is published in the papers, we had better not discuss the case much until all the diaries and records are ready for publication, which will probably be in February or March.

Miss Katharine Wright, Hawthorn Hill, Oakwood, Dayton, Ohio