For occasional relief, Hart Berg would treat Wilbur to a pleasant chauffeur-driven drive with him and Mrs. Berg in their grand automobile through the Bois de Boulogne or out to Fontainebleau or Versailles.
One Monday morning, while Wilbur was lying in bed, a hotel clerk knocked at the door to say a dirigible, known as La Patrie, was flying over Paris. La Patrie, as Wilbur knew, was the first “airship” ordered by the French army. He dressed at once and went up to the roof garden.
La Patrie (The Homeland), was a giant, sausage-shaped gas bag with an open gondola for the crew hanging below. It passed over the Arc de Triomphe and almost directly over the Meurice at what Wilbur estimated to be 15 miles per hour. He judged it a “very successful trial.” But as he was shortly to write, the cost of such an airship was ten times that of a Flyer, and a Flyer moved at twice the speed. The flying machine was in its infancy while the airship had “reached its limit and must soon become a thing of the past.” Still, the spectacle of the airship over Paris was a grand way to begin a day.
Most mornings only meant more meetings.
The primary question at issue had become whether to sell to the French government or set up a commercial company with Henri Deutsch. The possibility of a contract with the government seemed all but certain, until the French army insisted the Flyer trial be conducted in winds too strong and demanded an exclusive agreement for three years, neither of which Wilbur would agree to.
Then, for the first time, it became clear that Flint & Company was expecting a commission of 20 percent not only on what they sold, as had been agreed on, but also on what the brothers retained. (“Don’t worry over Flint’s commission,” he told Orville. “We can hold them level.”)
Next thing, Wilbur was informed confidentially that if he, Orville, and their associates were to raise the price to the French government by $50,000, this sum could be “distributed among persons who had the power to put the deal through.” In other words, those in power would need to be bribed substantially. This Wilbur refused even to discuss.
The longer the talk dragged on, the more obvious it became that little would ever be decided until a demonstration was staged, and Wilbur kept urging Orville to speed up progress at home. “I presume you will have everything packed and ready before this letter arrives,” he wrote. “Be sure to bring everything needed in the way of spare parts. . . . Bring Charlie Taylor along, of course, when you come. . . . It will pay to have enough trustworthy assistance when we come to experiment.”
This was written on June 28. Wilbur had had no word from Orville for nearly a month.
In a letter from Katharine, dated June 30, he was to learn that things were not going at all well at home, that she and Orville felt left out of what was happening in Paris. “Orv can’t work any,” Orv was quite “uneasy,” Orv was “unsettled,” “really crazy to know what is going on,” “wroth” over how things were being handled in Paris without him. Clearly she was, too.
She and Orville had lost all patience with Flint & Company and questioned whether they could be trusted. She had had little or no experience with Jews, but having seen a photograph of Hart Berg, she wondered if he might be one. “I can’t stand Berg’s looks,” she wrote. “It has just dawned on me that the whole company is composed of Jews. Berg certainly looks it.”
A few days later, she let Wilbur know the situation at home had become even worse. She was nearing a crack-up, and it was largely his doing. “What on earth is happening to your letters?”
Her letter became a storm of anger, blame, self-pity, and desperation far beyond her “wrathy” nature. She had had more than enough of the “whole business.” “We are all so nervous and worn out with the suspense that we can’t any of us keep from being cross. Orv and I regularly fight every time we get together for five minutes. And poor Daddy does nothing but advise us to ‘be calm, Bessie, be calm,’ while he is so excited that he can’t hear anything we say.” She had never been so tired in all her life. “I want to cry if anybody looks at me.”
Some of their letters to him were being returned because of the wrong address. “Why couldn’t you tell us sooner that you weren’t getting your mail?
It makes us desperate to sit here and be perfectly helpless while they [Flint & Company] are working every scheme they can to get advantage of you. What business had they getting you into that French business? You could have done better there by yourselves. . . . I despise the whole lot of them. . . . Orv is so worried and excited and tired out that I feel some concern about him. He can’t stand this forever—neither can you, for that matter.