A military band provided appropriately rousing music and, as the guests read in the menus at each of their places, the evening’s sumptuous feast included jambon d’York aux épinards (ham with spinach), faisan rôti aux croutons (roasted pheasant with croutons), salade Russe (Russian potato salad), and Glace a lananas (pineapple ice cream).
All was quite befitting the occasion—as a statement of national pride and the elegant taste of the time, and as recognition of an infinitely promising turning point in history.
In presenting the Gold Medal, the president of the Aéro-Club, M. L. P. Cailletet, spoke of the great change in public opinion that had swept over France and the world in general since Wilbur Wright began his performance at Le Mans. He spoke of how Wilbur and his brother had endured a period of ridicule and abuse such as had seldom been known in the history of scientific investigation. France, he said, was now at last showing its appreciation of their merit.
Wilbur received a sustained ovation, and Louis Barthou, minister of public works, delivered a “hearty speech of congratulation,” lauding Wilbur and Orville for achieving “through straightforwardness, intelligence, and tenacity . . . one of the most beautiful inventions of the human genius.
Mr. Wright is a man who has never been discouraged even in the face of hesitation and suspicion. The brothers Wright have written their names in human history as inventors of pronounced genius.
Photographs were taken. Then Wilbur rose from his place at the center of the head table. Baron d’Estournelles de Constant translated as Wilbur spoke.
For myself and my brother I thank you for the honor you are doing us and for the cordial reception you have tendered us this evening.
If I had been born in your beautiful country and had grown up among you, I could not have expected a warmer welcome than has just been given me. When we did not know each other, we had no confidence in each other; today, when we are acquainted, it is otherwise: we believe each other, and we are friends. I thank you for this. In the enthusiasm being shown around me, I see not merely an outburst intended to glorify a person, but a tribute to an idea that has always impassioned mankind. I sometimes think that the desire to fly after the fashion of birds is an ideal handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air. Scarcely ten years ago, all hope of flying had almost been abandoned; even the most convinced had become doubtful, and I confess that, in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for fifty years. Two years later, we ourselves were making flights. This demonstration of my inability as a prophet gave me such a shock that I have ever since distrusted myself and have refrained from all prediction—as my friends of the press, especially, well know. But it is not really necessary to look too far into the future; we see enough already to be certain that it will be magnificent. Only let us hurry and open the roads.
Once again, I thank you with all my heart, and in thanking you I should like it understood that I am thanking all of France.
At the point when Wilbur expressed his gratitude for the warm friendship he had experienced in a country not his own, his “habitually rigid mask softened,” according to one account, “his voice, usually so clear, quavered slightly.”
The members and guests responded with a standing ovation. The band played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and for some time afterward Wilbur stood patiently signing two hundred or more menus. “He knows the little chores that are incumbent upon our heroes to perform,” observed the account in L’Aérophile approvingly.
In the weeks that followed, Wilbur returned several times to Paris to receive additional tributes and awards and to be hosted at more dinners in his honor. When not being celebrated at such gatherings, he could be seen striding alone up and down the Bois de Boulogne or exploring the avenues, looking in the windows of curio shops or standing quietly studying the architecture of one of the city’s monuments.
“He has a half dozen invitations for every day,” wrote a correspondent for the New York World, “and some few of them he accepts, putting on his hat and coat to go out and meet ladies and gentlemen who have spent an hour or two with their maids and valets in order to make themselves sufficiently beautiful for the honor of meeting him.
They drive up in carriages and pairs with gold-braided coachmen and footmen, and Wright shoulders an umbrella for a walk through the rain to the house where the dinner happens to be. . . . He is just himself in the most refreshing way.
During an extended conversation with Wilbur one evening at the Bergs’ apartment on the Champs-Elysées, it became clear to the correspondent how greatly Wilbur enjoyed Paris. “He has too keen an appreciation of the beautiful not to do so.”
In early December, with winter setting in, Wilbur sent the Comte de Lambert to the southern reaches of France to look over the fashionable resort town of Pau, close to the Pyrénées Mountains and the border of Spain, as a possible location at which to continue the demonstrations. It was where de Lambert had grown up, a town of some 34,000 people known for its fourteenth-century castles, its foxhunting and eighteen-hole golf course (the first on the continent), and what was considered one of the most appealing winter climates in Europe.
The prospect of visiting a destination so popular with the high society of England and Europe might also, Wilbur hoped, further entice Orville and Katharine—Katharine especially—to join him there for an extended stay. A few months in such a place would do them both great good, he wrote to her. “I know that you love ‘Old Steele’ [her high school], but I think you would love it still better if the briny deep separated it from you for a while. We will be needing a social manager and can pay enough salary to make the proposition attractive. So do not worry about the six [dollars] per day the school board gives you.”
But she had already made up her mind. “Brother and I are coming over as soon as we can,” she wrote only a few days later, in advance of his letter reaching Dayton. She had only to make satisfactory arrangements for the Bishop, who had just turned eighty and was not up to such a trip.
In Paris, where new toys being sold were part of the “streets sights” of the Christmas season, the most popular was a little reproduction of the Wilbur Wright airplane, of which much was made in the newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune.
It is quite a wonderful toy, for even the smallest details have been perfectly carried out, and the tiny machine will start from the ground, make its miniature flight, and then descend in a manner that is most remarkable. “Mr. Wright” himself is seated in the toy and operates it in the most life-like way. The features of the inventor have a distinctly more Parisian than an American cast, but for all that no one but knows for whom it is intended and the sale of them has been quick and large.
In Le Mans, despite increasingly cold days, Wilbur, having switched to wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, was busy practicing takeoffs without the use of a catapult. He had decided to compete for the Michelin Cup, a prize newly established by the French tire company, and in the competition such launching devices were not allowed.
On the day of the event, December 31, the last day of the year and Wilbur’s last big event at Camp d’Auvours, in spite of rain and cold he was barely able to endure, he put on his most astonishing performance yet, flying longer and farther than anyone ever had—2 hours, 20 minutes, and 23 and one fifth seconds during which he covered a distance of 77 miles. He won the Cup.
He was sorry to have missed Christmas at home, he wrote his father the next day. “But I could not afford to lose the Michelin Prize, as the loss of prestige would have been much more serious than the direct loss. If I had gone away, the other fellows would have fairly busted themselves any record I left. The fact that they knew I was ready to beat anything they should do kept them discouraged.”
After landing he prepared to go up again, no matter the cold and rain, and t
his time took the minister of public works, Louis Barthou, with him. “He informed me that the government had decided to confer the Legion of Honor upon both Orville and myself.”
II.
For many, even veteran travelers, the prospect of crossing the Atlantic in the middle of winter would have kept them happily safe and comfortable at home. But Katharine Wright, who had never been to sea, never even set foot on board an ocean liner, seems to have had no misgivings or hesitation whatever. On January 5, 1909, in New York, she and Orville went aboard the German liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, Orville hobbling up the gangplank as best he could beside her, bound for France. She who had so long been confined by work and family responsibilities was now at last, at age thirty-four, embarking on a venture such as she had only been able to dream of, scarcely imagining it might one day happen.
She had made her first visit to the dress shop in Dayton in early December to choose a traveling ensemble and hat, and ultimately packed her trunk with two new evening dresses as well, one pink, the other black. When asked by friends and reporters about the purpose of the trip, she and Orville would say it was for “a sort of family reunion.” In their absence, Bishop Wright would be looked after by Carrie Grumbach, who, with her husband and child, had moved in with him at 7 Hawthorn Street.
Katharine’s primary responsibility would be Orville, who was walking now with a cane instead of crutches, but was still quite unsteady on his feet, with a decided limp, and needed somebody with him to make sure he did not fall. Except for one rough day at sea, the crossing turned out to be extremely smooth. Even so, Orville had trouble walking the deck.
They were traveling first-class, enjoying good service and in “pleasant company,” as Katharine wrote their father. Clearly all was as she would wish.
They landed at Cherbourg the afternoon of January 11 and by boat-train reached Paris at one in the morning to find Wilbur waiting at the station to greet them—“in silk hat and evening clothes,” no less, Katharine was delighted to record. He had come all the way from Pau, and with him were the Bergs and Arnold Fordyce, who stepped forward to present Katharine with a large bouquet of American Beauty roses from which protruded an American flag.
They all went to the Myerbeer Hotel on the Champs-Elysées, near the Bergs’ apartment. Once the others said good night, the three Wrights sat up talking until three in the morning.
The following day the brothers met for lunch with André Michelin, the automobile tire manufacturer, who presented Wilbur with the $4,000 that went with the Michelin Cup. Katharine, meanwhile, went shopping with Edith Berg, “a pretty woman and very stylish,” Katharine reported to the Bishop later that night. “She will be down at Pau with me and that will make it more pleasant. She will take her automobile and take me about in the country.” Wilbur and Hart Berg had already left for Pau. She and Orville would follow shortly.
Orville asked her also to tell the Bishop that as of now, from French syndicate payments, prize money, and cash awards, Wilbur and he had $35,000 in the bank in Paris.
Orville and Katharine left Paris for Pau, 194 miles to the south, by overnight train the evening of Friday the 15th. En route, at about seven A.M., the train crashed head-on into a freight train, killing two passengers and seriously injuring a half dozen others. She and Orville were “not even scratched,” Katharine assured their father. “We happened to take a compartment ‘de-luxe’ which was all that saved at least one of us from a bad fall.” In fact, Orville, while not injured, had been badly shaken up and subjected to severe pain.
After a delay of five hours, they reached Pau the following afternoon and checked into the Grand Hôtel Gassion, next door to the birthplace of France’s most popular king, Henry IV.
The hotel was grand indeed and set on the brink of a steep bluff with a commanding view of the green valley below and the spectacular, snowcapped peaks of the Pyrénées, some ten thousand feet in elevation, that stretched the length of the horizon approximately thirty miles to the south. To provide further enjoyment of the spectacle there was also a beautiful promenade running a mile along the top of the bluff. Never in their lives until now had Katharine and the brothers seen such mountains. “I never saw anything so lovely,” wrote Katharine, struggling to find words to express what she felt.
Wilbur would not be staying at the hotel but at a flying field called Pont-Long about six miles from town, or twenty minutes by automobile, where the city fathers had provided him with luxurious living quarters—or at least luxurious by his standards—and with most all the comforts, including his own personal French chef. The chef did not last long, however, Wilbur finding the cuisine too fancy. Neither did a successor satisfy. Finally, a third chef caught on to what the American liked to eat and all seems to have gone well thereafter.
At a reception for the three Wrights put on by the mayor of Pau, some five hundred guests gathered in the Pau Garden, at the Grand Hall du Palais d’Hiver at the eastern end of the promenade. Outside the encircling palm trees and flowers another thousand people or more looked on.
Wilbur had yet to conduct any of his “experiments,” but as reported in the Paris Herald, Pau had “simply gone mad about aviation.
Nothing is talked about but mechanical flight, everyone is buying a new camera to snap aeroplanes, painters are busy at their canvases, the long-neglected roads are being repaired, and society is inviting the Wrights to many more gatherings than they can possibly attend.
A few days later a photograph of Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine out for a stroll in Pau appeared on the front page of the Herald. She and her brothers were “the whole show” everywhere they went, wrote Katharine. Until a year ago Wilbur and Orville had worked practically in secret. Now they were the toast of Europe and she was with them.
“Every time we make a move, the people on the street stop and stare at us. . . . We have our pictures taken every two minutes.” She minded this not in the least. “The Daily Mirror of London had a man here who got a dandy picture of Orv and me.”
With the onset of February and warmer days came a marked increase in the arrival of notables of the kind Pau was known for—counts and countesses, dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, many of them English. There were members of the French cabinet, generals, lords of the press, and a number of American millionaires, as well as a former prime minister of England and two kings.
Never in their lives had the three Wrights been among so many who, by all signs, had little to do but amuse themselves. Nor did they feel out of place or the least intimidated by such company. They felt that they, in their way, were quite as well-born and properly reared as anyone. Never did they stray from remaining exactly who they were, and more often than not, they found themselves most pleasantly surprised by those they were meeting.
At a luncheon at their hotel, their host, Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the London Daily Mail, was much to their liking, though a man worlds apart from Wilbur and Orville. He had immense wealth and all the glamour of power and success, but appealed greatly all the same. Further, he was keenly interested in the development of aviation and he liked Americans.
On another occasion, they were with Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, and his wife. “We all liked them very much,” wrote Katharine. She wrote also of a “rousing good time” at lunch with Lord and Lady Balfour.
Arthur Balfour, former prime minister of England, was so eager to take part in preparations for Wilbur’s flights at Pont-Long that along with Lord Northcliffe he helped haul on the rope that lifted the catapult weight into place. Seeing a young British lord also assisting, Northcliffe remarked to Orville, who was standing close by watching, “I’m so glad that young man is helping with the rope, for I’m sure it is the only useful thing he has ever done in his life.”
Katharine had the thrill of a day’s expedition to the Pyrénées by automobile with a wealthy Irish couple and, as she reported to her father, knowing how it would please him, she had begun taking French lessons
for two hours every morning, and with her background in Greek and Latin her progress was rapid. One of those helping her with her French was the son of Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Another she greatly liked was the Comtesse de Lambert, the attractive wife of Wilbur’s student the Comte de Lambert.
Her complaints were few. On those days when there was no sun, the cold and dampness were such as she did not care for. Besides, Edith Berg, whom she had liked at first in Paris, was getting on her nerves. She was “a regular tyrant and as selfish as anyone can be. We will be glad when she goes.” But to judge by her letters, that was as “wrathy” as Katharine turned during the time in Europe, and though Edith Berg stayed on, Katharine appears to have had no further complaints about her.
More press arrived, more photographs were taken, more articles written for Le Figaro, the Paris Herald, the London Daily Mail, the New York Times, and papers back in Ohio. One story sent by the United Press from Paris claimed a French army lieutenant had charged Wilbur in a divorce case. The story was a complete fabrication that none of the French papers carried, but in Dayton, where it did appear, it caused a temporary embarrassing sensation. Wilbur wrote an angry denial. Family and friends at home rose quickly to his defense, saying he was not that sort of man.
Since arriving in Paris in January, Orville had told reporters that, given his physical state, it would be foolish for him to attempt any exertion. At Pau, he mainly stood and watched, saying little. With his derby hat, well-pressed suit, his polished shoes and cane, he could have been another of the European aristocrats.
A writer for Flyer magazine. H. Massac Buist, was surprised to see how small Orville was, indeed, how different both brothers were from what he had expected, judging from press accounts. “I have never seen them taciturn, or curt, or secretive, or any of the other things which I had been led to believe were their outstanding characteristics.” Recalling a line attributed to Wilbur—“Well, if I talked a lot I should be like a parrot, which is the bird that speaks most and flies least.”—Buist wrote that in the course of a day Wilbur talked quite as much as most men; the difference was his words were to the point.