That evening, the light fading, Wilbur flew again, this time making two giant figure eights in front of the crowd in the grandstand and landing exactly at his point of departure. An aircraft flying a figure eight had never been seen in Europe before.
Blériot had been so impressed by what he had seen on Saturday that he had returned to watch again. Present also this time was the pioneer French aviator Léon Delagrange, who, after hearing of Wilbur’s performance on Saturday, had halted his own demonstrations in Italy to hurry back. Both men were as amazed as anyone by Wilbur’s figure eight. “Well, we are beaten! We just don’t exist!” Delagrange exclaimed.
As a thrilled Léon Bollée declared, “Now all have seen for themselves.”
With the mounting popular excitement over the news from Le Mans came increasing curiosity about the man making the news. The Wright machine had been shown to be a reality. But what of the American flying it? Of what sort was he?
Correspondents and others on the scene did their best to provide some clues, if not answers. In a memorable portrait written for the Daily Mail, Joseph Brandreth seemed a touch uncertain whether he liked Wilbur. (Nor, it is known from a letter he wrote to Katharine, did Wilbur much like him.) Brandreth was struck most by how greatly Wilbur resembled a bird, an odd bird. The head especially suggested that of a bird, “and the features, dominated by a long prominent nose that heightened the bird-like effect, were long and bony.” From their first meeting, Brandreth wrote, he had judged Wilbur Wright to be a fanatic.
A writer for Le Figaro, Franz Reichel, fascinated with the flecks of gold in Wilbur’s eyes, came to much the same conclusion. “The flecks of gold,” wrote Reichel, “ignite a passionate flame because Wilbur Wright is a zealot.
He and his brother made the conquest of the sky their existence. They needed this ambition and profound, almost religious, faith in order to deliberately accept their exile to the country of the dunes, far away from all. . . . Wilbur is phlegmatic but only in appearance. He is driven by a will of iron which animates him and drives him in his work.
Without wanting to diminish the value of French aviators, Reichel wrote that while Wilbur Wright was flying, they were only beginning to “flutter about.”
Léon Delagrange, who before becoming an aviator had been a sculptor and painter, could not help puzzling over what went on behind Wilbur’s masklike countenance, and, being French, found it hard to comprehend or warm to someone who seemed so devoid of the elemental human emotions and desires. “Even if this man sometimes deigns to smile, one can say with certainty that he has never known the douceur [sweetness] of tears. Has he a heart? Has he loved? Has he suffered? An enigma, a mystery.”
That said, Delagrange openly declared in the article he wrote for L’Illustration, “Wilbur Wright is the best example of strength of character that I have ever seen.
In spite of the sarcastic remarks and the mockery, in spite of the traps set up from everywhere all these years, he has not faltered. He is sure of himself, of his genius, and he kept his secret. He had the desire to participate today to prove to the world he had not lied.
To Fran?ois Peyrey, who had seen more of Wilbur than had others and knew more, he was “un timide”—shy, a simple man, but also a “man of genius” who could work alongside the men of the Bollée factory, just as he could work entirely alone, who could cook his own meals and do whatever else was necessary under most any conditions and quiet by nature. He went his way always in his own way, never showing off, never ever playing to the crowd. “The impatience of a hundred thousand persons would not accelerate the rhythm of his stride.”
Further, Peyrey, unlike others, had discovered how exceptionally cultured Wilbur was, how, “in rare moments of relaxation,” he talked with authority of literature, art, history, music, science, architecture, or painting. To Peyrey, the devotion of this preacher’s son to his calling was very like that of a gifted man dedicating his life to a religious mission.
At the close of one long day at Le Mans, Peyrey had caught Wilbur gazing off into the distance as if in a daydream. It reminded him, Peyrey wrote, “of those monks in Asia Minor lost in monasteries perched on inaccessible mountain peaks. . . . What was he thinking of this evening while the sun was dying in the apricot sky?”
On Thursday, August 13, Wilbur flew again, this time circling the field several times. It was his longest flight yet at Le Mans and before the biggest crowd, which cheered every round he made. So loud was the cheering that he flew to nearly 100 feet in the air, in part to lessen the distracting effect of the noise.