Berg also noticed Wilbur’s luggage consisted of a single leather grip the size of a doctor’s bag and his wardrobe left much to be desired. But on the way to the hotel, it was Wilbur who suggested it might be “advisable” for him to buy a new suit. At a tailor shop in the Strand, Berg “fixed him up” with both a dress suit and a tuxedo. When Wilbur’s account of these purchases reached home, Katharine wrote at once to tell him how “Orv had marched off to Perry Meredith’s [haberdashery] this morning and ordered the same for himself.”
Intent on wasting no time, Berg told Wilbur there was little likelihood of doing business in England and the sooner they left for France the better. The main effort would be made in Paris. They also found themselves disagreeing on the best approach—whether to deal with governments primarily or with individuals, Berg much in favor of individuals. Either way, both agreed it would be best not to make much of Wilbur’s presence in Europe, not for the time being at least.
Summing things up, at the close of his long memorandum to Charles Flint, Berg stressed how pleased he was with Wilbur’s whole bearing and attitude. “He inspires great confidence,” Berg wrote, “and I am sure he will be a capital Exhibit A.”
How Wilbur felt about Berg at this point is not clear. Though fellow Americans of roughly the same age, their backgrounds and experiences in life could hardly have been more different. Born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia and raised in New York, Berg had attended private schools until sent off to Europe to be trained as an engineer at Liège in Belgium. In the time since he had become a pioneer in the manufacture of pistols, machine guns, automobiles, and submarines. He had worked at the Colt firearms factory in Hartford, Connecticut, maintained his own sales office in Paris, and spent three years in Russia, where he obtained orders from the czar for building ten submarines.
Where Wilbur was lean and rumpled, Berg was stout and immaculate in attire. Berg was fluent in several languages and well connected, with contacts in high places throughout Europe. And though arms dealers—“merchants of death”—were an anathema to many, he seems to have been well liked and respected by nearly everyone. Berg and his wife, Edith, also an American, had lived in Paris for years, and the French held him in high regard. In 1901, he had been made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
From London down to Dover, then across the Channel, Wilbur and Berg were joined by another Flint executive, Frank Cordley. They arrived in Paris on the evening of May 27, when it was still daylight, and checked in to the luxurious H?tel Meurice on the rue de Rivoli.
“The Tuileries Palace and the Louvre are only a couple of squares to our left,” Wilbur reported that same night to Katharine and the family.
The column Vendome is behind us, and the Place de la Concorde and Arc [de] Triomphe are farther up the Champs-Elysées. We are right in the most beautiful and interesting part of the city.
He was also residing in one of the finest hotels in all Paris, indeed, in all Europe. The “New Hotel Meurice,” as said, had only just reopened after major “refurbishments.” The old “Hotel of Kings” had been made more sumptuous than ever. Its restaurant, in decor and cuisine, was now one of the finest in the city and a “rendezvous of fashion.” One could take a magnificent new elevator to a roof garden, and for panoramic views of Paris there were few to compare, or, for that matter, from those guest rooms fronting on the rue de Rivoli, one of which, room 329, Hart Berg had reserved for Wilbur.
“Stay in Paris and taste the pervasive charm, the freshness of beautiful summer nights. The sky dusted with stars is radiant,” read an advertisement for the Meurice.
The electricity shines through little lampshades, the flowers give out a fragrance. We are only a few steps from the Concorde, but one would think himself so far away, transported into a town of dreams.
Wilbur wrote nothing of the roof terrace or the magnificent crystal chandeliers in the main dining room, or the fancy livery worn by the elevator operator. Interestingly, in all he would write about his time in Paris, he never mentioned his plush accommodations. Probably he had no wish to incite envy at home. Or to magnify concern over his being corrupted by high living. Except for the hotel stationery on which his letters were written, one would never have known where he was staying.
Nor did he make mention of the women of Paris, or the fashions on parade, or the shops, the opera, the theater, or the French in general, or the American tourists, of whom there were a great many.
What he did write about in the days that followed, apart from all he reported on his dealings with Berg, Cordley, and the French, were the great buildings and art treasures of Paris, revealing as he never had—or had call to—the extent of his interest in architecture and painting.