With due respect to Wales and the Welsh, I would have thought that, in those pre-war years, one of ‘those magnificent men in their flying machines’ might have made a better living out of making one-stop aerial appearances in and around London and the home counties. So might it have been that flying ‘at various fetes and carnivals’ was not his only reason for a sojourn in Wales throughout nearly the whole of August 1913?

In August 1913 he was in mostly Wales, but also had appearances Worcestershire and one date in Cumbria. In the July he made several appearances in Yorkshire. In September he was in Cornwall. In October he was in Worcestershire again, also Staffordshire. He toured wherever he was booked to go.

Gladys Cooper

Gladys’ autobiography was entitled simply ‘Gladys Cooper’ and was published in about 1930 by Hutchinson, and is now very hard to find. She does rather confusingly jump from one subject to another throughout, but admitted in it that she and Gustav Hamel were ‘excellent friends’ (as in more than good it’s naturally presumed – and most readers perhaps would come to the same conclusion as to what more than good friends are). She also publicized a rather intimate note he had sent her. In her 1979 biography, her grandson Sheridan Morley mentioned her ‘intimate friendship’ with Gustav Hamel, but did not elaborate, other than to detail her sueing a London newspaper (in January 1915) for exposing a friendship that was strongly indicated as being something more than should exist between a young married woman and a youthful single man. Young Mr. Hamel’s name was still being bandied about as a co-respondent in her divorce some eight years after his death (when Gladys did eventually divorce her first husband – on grounds of his adultery!) To add fuel to the fire of speculation, Miss Trehawke Davies (Mr. Hamel’s closest friend) was very ill and off-the-scene during the early part of 1914, though whether his association with Miss Cooper which was occurring at that very time had anything to do with it is anyone’s guess. Probably it was.