The one American, Walter Berry, represented the French ambassador to the United States. An international attorney, Berry spent most of his time in Paris, where he figured prominently in the social life of the noted American novelist Edith Wharton and was well attuned to moving in influential circles on both sides of the Atlantic.
The year 1906 thus far had not been particularly promising for the brothers. Their work proceeded on a new, more powerful engine, but they were doing no flying. Meanwhile, in France there was growing excitement over the progress in aviation being made by French manufacturers and such glamorous aviators as Louis Blériot and the Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont, while the Paris Herald, an English language paper, mocked the brothers in an editorial titled “Fliers or Liars.”
The Wrights have flown or they have not flown. They possess a machine or they do not possess one. They are in fact either fliers or liars. It is difficult to fly. . . . It is easy to say, “We have flown.”
Now here were the brothers sitting down with a French delegation that had come to talk seriously. That it could be a most important step forward for all involved went without saying.
As Bishop Wright recorded, they met above the bicycle shop every day for more than two weeks, and with the Bishop, too, sitting in on the discussions. On the evening of March 24, at the invitation of Katharine Wright, Fordyce, Commandant Bonel, and Walter Berry “supped” with the family at 7 Hawthorn Street.
The brothers refused to show the delegation their Flyer III, but willingly provided photographs and eyewitness testimony of the plane in flight. In little time even Commandant Bonel, the skeptic of the group, was convinced, impressed primarily by the Wrights themselves and despite the language barrier.
While no agreement resulted, the possibility of a future working arrangement with the French had been strongly reinforced and respect on both sides greatly strengthened, a point the brothers emphasized in a letter to Bonel written April 6:
Notwithstanding the failure to reach an agreement at our final conference last evening, we shall always remain very friendly to you personally and to your country. . . . Allow us to express our hearty appreciation of your uniform fairness and courtesy throughout this long conference.
But by now, much of the scientific world and the press had begun to change their perspective on the brothers, with Scientific American making the most notable change. In its issue of April 7, 1906, the magazine carried an article titled “The Wright Aeroplane and Its Performances,” in which eleven eyewitnesses to flights by the brothers at Huffman Prairie, in answer to twelve specific questions, affirmed that they had seen one or the other of the brothers fly in their machine in varying winds and perform all manner of movements with complete control throughout. Included, too, in the article was a letter from Charles Webbert, from whom the Wrights rented the bicycle shop, telling how in October he had witnessed Orville flying the machine for about half an hour and how the machine had traveled in large circles of about a mile around, and how the Flyer was “absolutely free from the time it left the rail upon which it started until it touched the ground in making its final landing.”
On May 22, 1906, the patent applied for in 1903 was at last issued on the Wright Flying Machine, patent number 821,393, and through the rest of that spring and summer, preoccupation with a new engine for Flyer III went on, and flight tests continued at Huffman Prairie into the fall.
In France, Alberto Santos-Dumont, flying what looked like a motor-powered hodgepodge of box kites, had made a public flight covering 726 feet. French aviation enthusiasts went wild with excitement. Santos-Dumont was said to have “gained the greatest glory to which man can aspire.” He had achieved “a decisive step in the history of aviation,” and “not in secret.”
“I fancy that he is now very nearly where you were in 1904,” wrote Octave Chanute to Wilbur. “Fear that others will produce a machine capable of practical service in less than several years does not worry us,” Wilbur would reply confidently. “We have been over the course and understand how much yet remains for them to do.”
Then came overtures from Flint & Company, a New York firm with extensive experience in marketing war materials in Europe. By December the overtures had become serious. Flint & Company was offering the Wrights $500,000 for the sales rights of their plane outside the United States. The Wrights would maintain the American market.
By nature the more entrepreneurial of the two, Orville showed the most interest, and it was he who went to New York, met with the head of the firm, Charles Flint, and made a “deal.” Or so it seemed. Further issues required further discussion. So, early in the new year, 1907, both Orville and Wilbur took the train to New York.
The tempo of financial possibilities was picking up considerably. In February, Germany offered $500,000 for fifty Wright Flyers, and the brothers agreed that Flint & Company should be their sales representative—but only their sales representative—on a 20 percent commission everywhere except in the United States.
Then in May came an urgent message from Charles Flint, saying the company’s European representative, Hart O. Berg, had become skeptical about the Wrights and their machine and wanted one or the other or both to come to Europe as soon as possible and make their case themselves, all expenses, of course, to be covered by Flint & Company.
Wilbur thought Orville should go. Wilbur wanted to see to the finishing touches on the new engine and prepare the Flyer III for shipment. “I am more careful than he is,” Wilbur would explain to their father. Further, the one who went to Europe would have to act almost entirely on his own judgment without much consultation by letter or cable. Wilbur felt he was more willing to accept the consequences of any errors of judgment on Orville’s part than to have Orville blaming him if he were to go.
Orville stubbornly disagreed, insisting that Wilbur would make the best impression in France, and Orville was right, as they all knew, including Wilbur, who “grabbed a few things” and left for New York. By Saturday, May 18, he was on board the RMS Campania, sailing past the Statue of Liberty on his way out to sea.
An entirely new adventure had begun, unlike anything he, or any of the family, had yet experienced. Wilbur had just turned forty that April and was to be on his own far from home, separated from his family, for longer than he had ever been or ever imagined, and tested in ways he had never been.
II.
“I sailed this morning about 9 o’clock and we are now something over 200 miles out,” Wilbur wrote in a letter addressed to Katharine but intended for all at home. “The St. Louis and another ship started at the same time, but we have run off from them.” The Campania, part of the Cunard Line, was known as one of the finest vessels of its kind, and one of the fastest, a “flying palace of the ocean,” which Wilbur particularly liked. The ship was 622 feet in length, with two tall stacks, and burnt some five hundred tons of coal per day. The predominant interior style was Art Nouveau, with staterooms and public rooms paneled in satinwood and mahogany, and thickly carpeted.