The French press, aware of Wilbur’s return, had a “tendency” to be hostile, he reported to Orville. But to almost anyone else it would have seemed considerably more than a “tendency.” The popular L’Illustration, as an example, ran a heavily retouched photograph of the Flyer taken at Kitty Hawk, saying, “Its appearance seems quite dubious and one finds in it every element of a ‘fabrication,’ not especially well done moreover.”
Further, there was a resurgence of popular enthusiasm over French aviators and their daring feats. Earlier in the year Henri Farman had flown for nearly two minutes, and that spring at the end of May, Farman made news when he took a passenger up for a ride. As Wilbur reported to Orville, Farman and Delagrange were also putting on demonstrations elsewhere in Europe and with much success.
As for themselves, Wilbur wrote, “The first thing is to get some practice and make some demonstrations, then let the future be what it may.”
Hart Berg assured a correspondent for L’Auto that within two months the Wright plane would fly before the people. The period of secret trials was over, Berg said. The French public would be the first to see with their own eyes.
But where? On June 8, he and Wilbur went by train to Le Mans, a quiet, ancient town of some 65,000 people on the Sarthe River in the department of the Sarthe, 125 miles southwest of Paris. A prominent automobile manufacturer, ballooning enthusiast, and leading local citizen named Léon Bollée, hearing of Wilbur’s need for a suitable field, had sent a message to Berg suggesting Le Mans, where there was plenty of flat, open space.
Bollée met Wilbur and Berg at the station in one of the largest and handsomest of his automobile line and took them off on a tour. As it turned out, no one could have been more genial or helpful or generous with his time than Léon Bollée.
Short and dark bearded, he was extremely fat, weighing 240 pounds. The physical contrast with Wilbur was more pronounced even than between Wilbur and Hart Berg. Like Wilbur, Bollée had not attended a university, but instead joined his father’s bell foundry business and eventually began building automobiles with much success. (“Léon Bollée automobiles are constructed using only top quality materials in the vast and beautiful factories of Le Mans,” read a recent advertisement.) His English was reasonably good and Wilbur liked him at once. As things turned out Bollée would do more to help Wilbur than anyone, and never asked for anything in return.
Of possible sites, the Hunaudières horse racetrack, about five miles out from town, seemed to Wilbur most suitable. The course was entirely enclosed by trees and the ground was rough. Still, as he would report to Orville, he thought it would serve their purpose. Bollée said he would see what could be arranged. He also offered Wilbur full use of a large room at his factory in which to assemble the Flyer, in addition to the help of some of his workers.
Three days later, back in Paris, Wilbur received word from Bollée that the Hunaudières racetrack was available, and the day after Wilbur was busy getting ready, buying overalls, work shoes, and a straw hat.
One evening in the elegant Louis XVI salon of Berg’s apartment, Wilbur sat for an interview with a young French aviation journalist, Fran?ois Peyrey, who knew it was the first interview Wilbur had agreed to do in France. Berg had made the arrangements. They talked of the experiments at Kitty Hawk, of motors and patents, and why Le Mans had been the choice for the demonstrations. But it was Wilbur himself, about whom Peyrey had had his doubts, who became the subject of greatest fascination.
“Mr. Hart O. Berg warmed up for the interview by offering me a cup of coffee and laid out a box of cigars,” Peyrey would write. “I felt my doubts fly away one by one in the blue smoke. Through curls of smoke I examined Wilbur Wright, his thin, serious face, lit by the strangely gentle, intelligent and radiant eyes. . . . I had to admit: no, this man is not a bluffer.”
The interview marked an important beginning. In the months to come, Fran?ois Peyrey was to provide some of the most insightful, firsthand observations about Wilbur ever published.
Wilbur arrived back in Le Mans close to midnight, June 16, and settled in at the H?tel du Dauphin in a room overlooking the main square, the Place de la République. Eager to get started on the reassembly of the Flyer, he began opening the crates at the Bollée factory first thing the following day and could hardly believe what he saw. At Kitty Hawk two months before, he had found the old camp a shambles. Now he was looking at the Flyer in shambles and could barely control his fury.
A dozen or more ribs were broken, one wing ruined, the cloth torn in countless places. Everything was a tangled mess. Radiators were smashed, propeller axles broken, coils badly turned up, essential wires, seats, nuts, and bolts, all missing.