Most of my time has been spent on things I should not have to do at all. . . .
So far I have the main surfaces [of the wing] together and wired with new wires in a number of places. The skids are on and the engine is mounted and adjusted ready to run with the jump spark magneto in place. I have yet to put on the transmission and screws [propellers] which should be a small job. But I have the front rudder and framing and wiring yet to do and also the rear rudder.
Those who worked with him at the factory marveled at his meticulous craftsmanship, how he would make his own parts when needed, even a needle if necessary, and how at the sound of the factory whistle he would start or stop working just as they did, as though he were one of them.
On the evening of July 4, at about six o’clock, Wilbur, contrary to his usual work pattern, was still on the job. Only Léon Bollée remained on hand to keep him company. Having by then mounted the engine, Wilbur was standing close by, his sleeves rolled up, giving it a speed test, when suddenly a radiator hose broke loose and he was hit by a jet of boiling water. His bare left forearm took the worst of it, but he was scalded as well across his chest.
Bollée eased him to the floor and ran for help. “Fortunately we had picric acid in the factory’s pharmacy,” he would report to Hart Berg, “so that in less than a minute after the accident he was swathed in bandages soaked in picric acid.”
Bad as it was, the press, as usual, made the accident sound still worse, and for the family at home Wilbur, as usual, made light of it, spending much of a letter, written three days later, describing how the local physician went about tending the wounds as would a horse doctor. Nonetheless, Wilbur insisted, all was practically healed, the pain gone, when in fact it would be a month before he could use his left arm and the stress he was under had been greatly compounded.
Yet despite everything, by the first days of August he was seeing to the finishing touches on a machine reconstructed from the smashed and broken remains of the original, an airplane that was thus different from those he and Orville had built at home and one he had never yet flown. Testing it, even under ideal conditions, could be highly dangerous. Besides it had been three months since his last flight and that had ended in a crash.
It was nearly dark, the evening of August 6, when Wilbur, Léon Bollée, and Hart Berg folded back the front framing of the Flyer, set a couple of wheels under the skids, hitched the whole affair to Bollée’s stately automobile, and hauled it down the road to the Hunaudières racetrack five miles to the south. There it was put away in a shed, and to Wilbur’s delight the press was never the wiser. For all the hovering, all the surveillance by reporters, none had taken notice.
To keep guard over the plane Wilbur would sleep beside it that night and the nights to follow. The shed was much like those at Kitty Hawk, except here there was a privy and an outdoor hose for bathing. In addition, a small nearby restaurant served “very good meals,” and at a farmhouse not more than a hundred feet from the shed, he could get milk and enjoy visits with a small boy of five or six who spoke some English and had all the appearance of “a truthful little chap.”
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.