The problem, Wilbur would later explain privately in a letter to his father, knowing the Bishop would understand, was that Orville appeared to be “in one of his peculiar spells” and “not really himself.”
The morning of July 17, from his room at the Meurice, Wilbur wrote a long reply to Katharine setting straight for her and Orville the situation in Paris, how he was going about his part in it, his concern for them, how he had tried to spare them aggravation, and why they need not worry. It was noticeably candid and entirely confident in tone, and as revealing of his own estimate of himself as almost anything Wilbur ever wrote, his message being that he was the one on the scene in Paris, he was in command, knew what he was about, knew the people with whom he was dealing, and there was no call for those at home to get worked up.
“In view of the fact that I have written, alone, three or four times as many letters home as I have received from all of you together,” he began, “it is a little amusing to read your continual complaints that you get so few from me.” In the two and a half months he had been away, he had received, on average, a letter a week from home, whereas he had been writing to them three to four times a week, except for a ten-day stretch when things were in such an unresolved state that there was nothing to report.
He had felt from the start, he continued, that anything he wrote to Orville would unsettle him, but he felt Orville had a right to know what was going on. As for Flint & Company, he did not remind Katharine and Orville, as he could have, that it was Orville who had most wanted to get involved with them in the first place.
“I have done what I know he would have done if he had been here and understood all the facts. In such cases the man at a distance only does harm by trying to give instructions which do not fit the case.”
Within days after reaching Europe, he had felt confident he could handle the situation. His only worry was whether Orville would be ready to follow as quickly as possible with the machine. “It is not my custom to voice my complaints, but this business of never being ready has been a nightmare to me for more than a year.”
As for Berg and Cordley, they had at first considered him “merely sort of an exhibit.”
But their eyes have gradually opened, and now they realize that I see into situations deeper than they do, that my judgment is often more sound, and that I intend to run them rather than have them run me. . . . Now I control everything and they give advice and assistance. In this role they can be of great service to us and I see no reason for breaking with them.
He was very sorry those at home were so worn down by excitement. He himself, he assured them, was feeling better than he had in several years.
They must stop worrying. There was no need.
In closing, he reported, arrangements had been made by some Americans for him to go that afternoon on his first balloon flight.
They took off from the Aéro-Club grounds at St. Cloud, eventually sailing into the clouds to emerge at about 3,000 feet out into bright sunshine and blue sky. It was higher into the sky by far than Wilbur had ever been, and the view was utterly spectacular. They were fifty miles from Paris by then, crossing open country. “The alterations of rich brown newly plowed soil, with green fields of grass, and grains of different shades and the light brown and yellow fields ready for harvest made a wonderful picture,” he wrote. He loved seeing the little towns with their red tile roofs and the white roads reaching off in every direction.
They flew nearly eighty miles in just over three hours and landed in a wheat field about ten miles west of Orléans. But beautiful as it had been, ballooning was not for him any more than it had been for Otto Lilienthal. Once on the ground you had to hike to a nearby village, find somewhere to spend the night, then, because of the prevailing winds, go back to where you started by a slow local train. (“What we are seeking is the means of free motion in the air, in any direction,” Lilienthal had written.)
On the evening of the same day that Wilbur was heading back to Paris by train, Orville left Dayton on an overnight express for New York, also on his way to Paris. The Flyer III had at last been finished, packed, and shipped off to France, to be stored in the customs house at Le Havre until needed. Orville, as Katharine said, had gone off looking “pretty well fizzled out.” He had also, as he discovered en route, forgotten to bring Wilbur’s hotel address in Paris.
III.
Early on a Sunday morning in late July, the brothers were reunited. Having enjoyed an uneventful crossing on the steamer Philadelphia, Orville succeeded in finding his way to the Meurice, where he discovered Wilbur looking better than he had in years.