The Bishop's Boys (61 page)

She had prepared for the trip with some care, ordering two evening gowns in Dayton, one rose and one black. She also bought a neatly tailored traveling suit and a new hat. Her only piece of jewelry was a small diamond ring that had special significance—Orville had presented it to her on the day she graduated from Oberlin. While in Paris the year before, Wilbur had joked with his sister about spinsterish
schoolteachers touring the Louvre. She spent her time in Paris shopping, getting two more suits and some stylish hats.
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Katharine and Orville, still recovering from the crash at Fort Myer, joined their brother in France.

Wilbur moved south to Pau on January 14, allowing Orville and Katharine two extra days in Paris before joining him. He made sixty-four flights at Pau between February 3 and March 20. His first task was to complete flight training for Count de Lambert, Lucas-Girardville, and Tissandier. Ultimately, however, the sense of spectacle overwhelmed everything else. For a time Pau once again became a winter mecca attracting the cream of European society.

The newsmen and members of the aeronautical crowd who had filled the spectator seats at Les Hunaudières and Camp d’Auvours were replaced by kings and queens, captains of industry and heads of state, who trekked to Pau to witness the miracle for themselves. Alfonso XIII of Spain came with a camera slung over his shoulder, as though hoping to be mistaken for a tourist. Edward VII watched two flights, on one of which Katharine flew as a passenger.

Lord Arthur Balfour, once prime minister of England, requested the honor of “taking part in the miracle” by helping to hoist the catapult weight. Lord Northcliffe, noting that a young British lord was also assisting, remarked to Orville: “I’m so glad that young man is helping with the rope, for I’m sure it is the only useful thing he has ever done in his life.”
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The great and near-great of Europe were fascinated and impressed by the Wrights. There was a straightforward honesty about them, coupled with rare poise, common sense, and wit. Men of wealth and power would never turn the heads of these three American heroes. “Kings,” Katharine remarked to a reporter, “are just like other nice, well-bred people.” She praised King Alfonso as a “good husband” for keeping a promise to his wife that he would not fly, and found J. P. Morgan and his sister to be “very pleasant people.”
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Privately, their reactions were a bit more acerbic. Wilbur described “His Gracious Majesty &c.,” King Victor Emmanuel, as so short that “his feet failed to reach the floor by at least a foot when he sat down.”
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The Wrights were the first great celebrities of the new century. No newspaper or magazine seemed complete without a story on the three Americans. The popular appetite for images—photographs, sketches, caricatures, and motion pictures—was insatiable. Milton saw Wilbur for the first time in over a year on April 19, 1909: a local vaudeville house was headlining films of the flying at Camp d’Auvours.
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The smallest details of their lives seemed endlessly fascinating. It was reported that the frying pan on which Will had done his cooking in the hangar at Camp d’Auvours would be displayed at the Louvre. Wilbur did most of his flying in a soft cloth cap that Orv had bought in France the year before. Now “Veelbur Reet” caps appeared on heads all over France.

Stories about Katharine abounded. She was said to have financed the work on the airplane, solved abstruse mathematical problems for her brothers, and to be familiar with every inch of the machine. It mattered little that none of it was true. They admired Katharine for her wit and honesty, not for her supposed contributions to the invention of the airplane. King Alfonso pronounced her “the ideal American.” Most of Europe agreed.

Wilbur made his last flight at Pau on March 23. Giovanni Pirelli, who had flown as a passenger at Le Mans, offered a $10,000 contract for a series of demonstration flights in Rome and flight training for
two Italian pilots. Wilbur turned the airplane flown at Le Mans and Pau over to Lazare Weiller and the members of the syndicate. A new machine, its parts shipped from Dayton and partially assembled in Pau, was sent on to Rome.

Wilbur and Hart Berg arrived in the Eternal City on April 1. He would fly at Centocelle, an open plain near a military fort some twelve miles from the city. “There is a beautiful big shop here,” Wilbur told his brother. “It makes a splendid place to set up the machine.” The grounds were splendid as well, with a marvelous view across an ancient aqueduct toward the
campagna
and the city of Rome and the Alban Mountains in the distance.
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Lieutenant Mario Calderara of the Italian Navy was his first student. Neither Wilbur nor Orville was particularly fond of him. He smoked cigarettes, a vice they could not abide. Still, Calderara was an apt pupil. Wilbur did not begin training the second student, Army Lieutenant Umberto Savoia, until April 26, his next-to-last day at Centocelle. He trusted Calderara to finish the job after his departure.

The level of excitement was as high in Italy as it had been in France. Wilbur missed only three days of flying between April 15 and 27. Newsworthy onlookers, from the king and the dowager queen to cabinet ministers, ambassadors, and the great J. P. Morgan, were on hand to cheer each takeoff. Wilbur did not attempt any record flights, but he did accomplish one important first. On April 24 he took up a Universal newsreel cameraman who returned with the first motion-picture footage ever taken from an airplane in flight.

That film remains as breathtaking today as it did in the spring of 1909. It offers a real sense of what it was like to sit there beside Wilbur, exposed on the lower wing of the machine. A string—a simple instrument to enable the pilot to judge the attitude of the airplane—blows back toward your face. The horizon rises and falls at the command of the elevator. You catch a glimpse of the aqueduct looming in the distance, then flash over it and brace yourself as the pilot banks into a turn. It is an extraordinary piece of film.

By the end of April, the U.S. Army commitment was looming once again. The Wrights had been granted only a year’s extension. It was time to go home. They traveled to London by way of Paris and Le Mans, fêted at every stop. Arriving in London on May 2, they were anxious to conduct a few bits of business and be on their way. The itinerary included a visit to the War Office where they met their correspondents of so many months before. A side trip to inspect the Short Brothers balloon facility at Battersea was far more important.

Wilbur moved on to Centocelle, near Rome, where he flew in April 1909. This photograph was taken by Hart 0. Berg from the basket of a tethered balloon.

Two of the Short brothers, Oswald and Eustace, operated one of the most successful balloon factories in England. When the English automobile magnate Charles Stewart Rolls, who had seen Wilbur fly in France, became determined to own a Wright machine of his own, he approached the Shorts with a construction contract. The notion appealed to the brothers, who enlisted a third member of the family, Horace, and left for France to discuss the possibility with Wilbur.

Will concluded an arrangement with the Shorts, who prepared the first full set of drawings of a Wright Flyer based on measurements of the craft in France. Over the next few months, the Wrights received other inquiries from potential English buyers. Rather than create a new syndicate or turn the business over to the CGNA, they contracted with the Shorts to produce a total of six Wright machines for delivery to English customers. Wilbur and Orville were reassured by their quick visit to the factory—the Shorts could do the job.

They were in England for only two days, and attended gala banquets both nights. “If the Wright brothers and their sister had the faintest desire for social fame,” one society editor noted, “they could
have been fêted from Buckingham Palace downwards.” They were old hands at this sort of thing, though only Katharine seems to have enjoyed it. Wilbur had summed it up back in September. Invited to offer a few after-dinner remarks to his old friends of the Aéro-Club de la Sarthe, he commented: “I know of only one bird, the parrot, that talks, and he can’t fly very high.”
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Loaded down with gold medals, honorary diplomas, and the good wishes of an entire continent, they boarded the North German Lloyd liner
Kronprinzessin Cecile
on May 4. An armada of small boats awaited them as they passed through the Narrows and into New York Harbor on the morning of May 11. This was no ordinary arrival. Other ships in the area, their decks covered with cheering, waving passengers, dipped their flags in salute. The band playing on the afterdeck was all but drowned out by the whistles and bells of the small craft moving toward the liner.

An enormous crowd was watching as they walked down the gangplank in Hoboken. Off-duty officials, anxious to shake hands with the returning heroes, packed the customs shed. There was a cursory search of their luggage. “The inspector obliged Wilbur to exhibit his medals,” one reporter noted, “but it was more to satisfy his curiosity than to fulfill a duty.” Then they climbed into a waiting cab provided by the reception committee and were whisked away to the Waldorf for lunch.
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New York officials had originally planned to stage a major homecoming celebration for the Wrights. The Congress of the United States, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Aero Club of America had each voted to award them gold medals. Congressman Herbert Parsons invited President Taft to present all three awards in a ceremony in New York soon after the Wrights’ return to America. But Governor James M. Cox of Ohio lodged a stern protest, arguing that the Wright Brothers’ Home Day Celebration being planned in Dayton for June 17–18 would be a more appropriate occasion for such a presentation. President Taft humorously invited Parsons and Cox to debate the issue at the White House.

The Wrights settled the dispute. They cabled New York while at sea, explaining that they wished to return to Dayton as soon as possible. There was work to be done—preparations for the Army trials at Fort Myer.
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The Wrights were no more pleased by Dayton’s homecoming plans. “The Dayton presentation has been made the excuse for an elaborate
carnival and advertisement of the city under the guise of being an honor to us,” Wilbur complained to Chanute on June 6. “As it was done against our known wishes, we are not as appreciative as we might be.”
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Approaching Dayton on the morning of May 13, they hoped for nothing more than a quiet reunion with family and friends, but were prepared for the inevitable crowd of newsmen on the platform. At Xenia, ten miles from home, Ed Ellis and several other friends boarded the train with a bouquet of American Beauty roses for Katharine, and news that ten thousand people were waiting to greet them in Dayton.

The boisterous welcome, which included an all-day party, was only the beginning. Mayor Burkhardt and a delegation from City Hall called at 7 Hawthorn Street the next day, outlining plans for the “real celebration” being planned for mid-June. Wilbur and Orville spent every spare minute over the next few weeks back at the old bike shop and in a new work area set up in the barn behind Lorin’s home. They were putting together the parts for the airplane that would be flown at Fort Myer, testing propellers, and generally working to ensure a successful demonstration.

They also did some traveling, visiting Russell Alger at the Packard plant in Detroit in late May. Alger was one of a group of industrialists considering the establishment of a company to produce Wright aircraft. Two weeks later they returned to Washington for a full day of business and ceremony. Unable to attend the celebration in Dayton later that month, President Taft had invited the Wrights to the White House to accept the Aero Club of America medal.

Their train arrived at Union Station, the splendid new gateway to the nation’s capital, at 8:40 that morning. The waiting reporters, many of whom had covered the Army trials at Fort Myer, recognized Orville and Katharine at once. Katharine, who had a good memory for faces, startled several of the newsmen by remembering their names.