* From Rudy's: My Private Diary: We left London by motor and made head for Croyden, the aviation field. I had done considerable aviating before the war, and so it was, in a sense, no new experience for me. Excepting that I had never used the closed machine, as it were. I mean, like sitting out with the pilot, the winds of all the heavens blowing on you, free, disembodied, as near a flighted bird as man can be. Sitting as we did on this trip, in the stuffy enclosure of a tonneau effect with some eight or ten other people (not to mention the four dogs) took the very essence of the sport out of the flight for me. Now and then some of the passengers would be affected with a degree, mild or otherwise, of air-sickness, and that took a great part of the romance out of the trip as well.
Natacha and I had wondered how the little Pekes would take the strange and unusual excursion, but they took it with the very sublimity of fatalism, stronger in animals than it is in Man. they didn't even seem to know that they were flying, and if they did know it, their composure and sleep proclivities were absolute.
On the whole, we had a pleasant enough trip, and Natcha, for one, enjoyed it better, I think, than she would have done in an open plane. this one was kinder to her hat and hair.
We landed, gracefully and without accident, at Le Bourget. To be frank, no one of us was sorry.

When I first saw this photo from the book, Rudolph Valentino The Man Behind the Myth, I thought, Rudy didn't like that flight but Natacha seemed to enjoy it. Above he writes how he enjoyed flying earlier in his life with the air on your face and being right behind the pilot. But in an enclosed plane without the pilot near, he didn't enjoy it as much.

Also, I am glad Rudy was able to fly in his life time. I would think way back then that wasn't the norm and even remember at one point feeling sorry he never had the pleasure because I thought he'd like the experience. Rudy, outside of the Internet, I think was able to enjoy a great many things that are still with us today. So if he happened to come back from beyond for a visit he wouldn't be hit with a lot of culture shock and would probably get up to date very quickly...