Neither his left arm nor the Flyer was in a condition he would have liked, and a first public demonstration that failed in almost any way would be a serious setback.
Reporters on the scene were becoming increasingly impatient and, to Wilbur, increasingly annoying. A correspondent for the London Daily Mail, Joseph Brandreth, would write, “We voted him ‘mule-headed,’ ‘eccentric,’ ‘unnecessarily surly,’ in his manner toward us, for it was impossible to discover from such a Sphinx what he intended to do or when he intended to do it.”
“I did not ask you to come here,” Wilbur told them. “I shall go out when I’m ready. No, I shall not try and mislead you newspaper men, but if you are not here I shall not wait for you.”
When the exasperation with the press became acute, the genial Berg would appear out of the shed and tell them some amusing story that would almost always put everyone in good humor again.
Bollée talked happily to reporters about Wilbur and his ways, describing how he would not let anyone touch his machine or handle so much as a piece of wire. He even refused to allow mechanics to pour oil into the engine, Bollée said, so sure was he that “they don’t do it the correct way.” Their nickname for him was Vieille Burette, “Old Oilcan.”
Somehow the Daily Mail reporter, Brandreth, managed to get a peek at how the American eccentric was living:
In a corner of the shed was his “room.” This consisted of a low packing case from which the top had been removed. Resting on the edges of the case was a narrow truckle bed. Nailed to the side of the shed was a piece of looking glass and close by a camp washstand. This together with a cabin trunk, a small petrol cooking stove—he cooks his own breakfast—and a camp stool, comprised the whole furniture. He takes his baths from a hosepipe attached to a well sixty feet away. He sleeps practically under the wings of his aeroplane. And early in the day he starts to work, whistling the while.
III.
Saturday, August 8—the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the new century—was as fine as could be hoped for. The sky overhead was a great blue vault with not a cloud. A northwest breeze was a little gentler than Wilbur would have wished, but he was up to go.
Word of the preparations at the racetrack had spread rapidly, and by the looks of the day it seemed certain the show could now begin. Those who gathered were nearly all from Le Mans and though not impressive in numbers, they looked appropriately festive as they began filling the little wooden grandstand, quite as if turning out for the horse races—gentlemen sporting straw boaters and Panama hats, ladies in full summer skirts, their oversized summer hats covered by veils as further protection against the sun.
Here and there in the trees encircling the track could be seen perched a number of youngsters from the town. The spirit was of a summer outing, the whole scene as different, as far removed from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, as could be imagined. Some couples carried baskets with picnic lunches. As the hours passed, waiting for something to happen, nearly all kept on happily chattering.
Here and there among the crowd could be seen several notables not from Le Mans. There were two Russian officers in uniform and Ernest Archdeacon of the Aéro-Club de France, noted for his skeptical opinion of the Wrights, and, of greatest interest to the others gathered, the celebrated French aviator-hero Louis Blériot. What Blériot may have been thinking as he sat waiting is unknown, but Archdeacon was busy proclaiming his confidence that Wilbur Wright would fail and was happy to explain to those close by in the grandstand all that was “wrong” with the Wright plane.
Archdeacon’s open scorn of the Wright brothers had been made especially clear at an Aéro-Club dinner in Paris in October 1907 when he declared:
The famous Wright brothers may today claim all they wish. If it is true—and I doubt it more and more—that they were the first to fly through the air, they will not have the glory before History. They would only have had to eschew these incomprehensible affectations of mystery and to carry out their experiments in broad daylight, like Santos-Dumont and Farman, and before official judges, surrounded by thousands of spectators.
On hand, too, and in substantial numbers as expected, were the representatives of the press, reporters and correspondents from Paris, London, and New York, all waiting for what could well be one of the biggest stories of the time.
Wilbur, who had been up early as usual, showed no sign of nervous tension or excitement. Such “quiet self-confidence” was reassuring, said Hart Berg afterward: