Such keen interest as he had in art was not only remarkable in someone so committed to technical innovation, but a measure of a truly exceptional capacity of mind. As weeks, then months passed, Wilbur, of his own choice, visited the Louvre fifteen or more times.
What he did not report to those at home was the extent to which he was being scrutinized by the press, and the stir he caused at public occasions. Any hope of anonymity was already gone. To a reporter for the Washington Post who stopped him in the lobby of the H?tel Meurice, Wilbur refused to say anything about his machine or his plans. When the subject turned to the difference between flying and going up in a balloon, Wilbur said he had yet to go up in a balloon, but that it was “entirely another thing from flying which affects one with intoxication. After having once flown it is almost impossible to turn to anything else.”
In mid-June he went with Hart Berg to see the balloon races at St. Cloud. Amid a particularly elegant crowd in which were to be seen Gustave Eiffel and the American ambassador, Henry White, Wilbur drew more attention than anyone. A reporter for the Paris Herald asked, “You are over here on pleasure, are you not, Mr. Wright?”
“To some extent,” Wilbur said. “I am enjoying myself splendidly and seeing all manner of new things.”
“You like Paris?”
“It is a marvelous city.”
“Mr. Wright talked carefully,” the reporter wrote.
It was obvious that he feared to be caught in a trap concerning his remarkable machine and what he wants to do with it. At the end of each question his clean-shaven face relapsed into a broad sphinx-like smile.
That this same American bicycle mechanic from Ohio was spending hours with the masterpieces of the Louvre was apparently not of interest to the press.
The business sessions arranged by Berg had begun their first full day in Paris. Wilbur had been taken to meet an active patron of ballooning with a strong interest in aviation, Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe, whom Wilbur described for Orville as “the Standard Oil King of France.” There were sessions with Arnold Fordyce, Commandant Bonel, and officials of the French government. Berg was a “pretty slick hand,” Wilbur told Orville, and things were going well. Berg was “very practical,” and Wilbur liked the way he was always at hand to explain what was being said in French and said so often at an extremely high speed. Berg could be depended upon to do his utmost. Besides, he was “about as enthusiastic now as a man could be, and he really has a remarkable faculty for reaching people.”
The business talks often seemed endless, but thus far the prospects for an agreement looked encouraging. In general outline, the Wrights were to receive $350,000 for their Flyer, once a public demonstration was made in France, before any agreement was struck. The French insisted on seeing the plane and seeing it operate, which was clearly their right.
“The pot is beginning to boil pretty lively,” Wilbur reported. But then one French faction tangled with another, political intrigue intervened, progress slowed.
Not so many years before, Wilbur had decided he was unsuited for “commercial pursuits.” Now he found himself in the thick of extremely complex commercial dealings, playing for extremely high stakes with highly experienced entrepreneurs, politicians, and bureaucrats, and in a language he neither spoke nor understood. The whole game, the players, the setting, the language were all new to him. Yet he was more than holding his own, and in good spirits, aware as he was of the derision to be found behind the scenes. At the war ministry it was being said the Wrights were “bluffers like all Americans,” “worthless people” trying to sell to France “an object of no value” that even the Americans did not believe in.
Alert, patient, closely attentive, Wilbur “never rattled,” as his father would say, never lost his confidence. He could be firm without being dictatorial, disagree without causing offense. Nor was there ever a doubt that when he spoke he knew what he was talking about.
Most importantly, he remained entirely himself, never straying from his direct, unpretentious way, and with good effect. If anything, his lack of French, his lack of sophistication, seemed to work to his advantage. He was, indeed, as Hart Berg had anticipated, a capital Exhibit A and more.
That Wilbur neither drank or smoked or showed the least interest in women remained, of course, a puzzlement to the French.
The whole while he was keeping those at home, and Orville in particular, fully abreast of all that was happening, by mail and by cable, often in lengthy detail, describing the various configurations of how they were to profit financially depending on who put in what money. An experienced financial reporter could hardly have provided clearer coverage.