Orville asked her also to tell the Bishop that as of now, from French syndicate payments, prize money, and cash awards, Wilbur and he had $35,000 in the bank in Paris.
Orville and Katharine left Paris for Pau, 194 miles to the south, by overnight train the evening of Friday the 15th. En route, at about seven A.M., the train crashed head-on into a freight train, killing two passengers and seriously injuring a half dozen others. She and Orville were “not even scratched,” Katharine assured their father. “We happened to take a compartment ‘de-luxe’ which was all that saved at least one of us from a bad fall.” In fact, Orville, while not injured, had been badly shaken up and subjected to severe pain.
After a delay of five hours, they reached Pau the following afternoon and checked into the Grand Hôtel Gassion, next door to the birthplace of France’s most popular king, Henry IV.
The hotel was grand indeed and set on the brink of a steep bluff with a commanding view of the green valley below and the spectacular, snowcapped peaks of the Pyrénées, some ten thousand feet in elevation, that stretched the length of the horizon approximately thirty miles to the south. To provide further enjoyment of the spectacle there was also a beautiful promenade running a mile along the top of the bluff. Never in their lives until now had Katharine and the brothers seen such mountains. “I never saw anything so lovely,” wrote Katharine, struggling to find words to express what she felt.
Wilbur would not be staying at the hotel but at a flying field called Pont-Long about six miles from town, or twenty minutes by automobile, where the city fathers had provided him with luxurious living quarters—or at least luxurious by his standards—and with most all the comforts, including his own personal French chef. The chef did not last long, however, Wilbur finding the cuisine too fancy. Neither did a successor satisfy. Finally, a third chef caught on to what the American liked to eat and all seems to have gone well thereafter.
At a reception for the three Wrights put on by the mayor of Pau, some five hundred guests gathered in the Pau Garden, at the Grand Hall du Palais d’Hiver at the eastern end of the promenade. Outside the encircling palm trees and flowers another thousand people or more looked on.
Wilbur had yet to conduct any of his “experiments,” but as reported in the Paris Herald, Pau had “simply gone mad about aviation.
Nothing is talked about but mechanical flight, everyone is buying a new camera to snap aeroplanes, painters are busy at their canvases, the long-neglected roads are being repaired, and society is inviting the Wrights to many more gatherings than they can possibly attend.
A few days later a photograph of Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine out for a stroll in Pau appeared on the front page of the Herald. She and her brothers were “the whole show” everywhere they went, wrote Katharine. Until a year ago Wilbur and Orville had worked practically in secret. Now they were the toast of Europe and she was with them.
“Every time we make a move, the people on the street stop and stare at us. . . . We have our pictures taken every two minutes.” She minded this not in the least. “The Daily Mirror of London had a man here who got a dandy picture of Orv and me.”
With the onset of February and warmer days came a marked increase in the arrival of notables of the kind Pau was known for—counts and countesses, dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, many of them English. There were members of the French cabinet, generals, lords of the press, and a number of American millionaires, as well as a former prime minister of England and two kings.
Never in their lives had the three Wrights been among so many who, by all signs, had little to do but amuse themselves. Nor did they feel out of place or the least intimidated by such company. They felt that they, in their way, were quite as well-born and properly reared as anyone. Never did they stray from remaining exactly who they were, and more often than not, they found themselves most pleasantly surprised by those they were meeting.
At a luncheon at their hotel, their host, Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the London Daily Mail, was much to their liking, though a man worlds apart from Wilbur and Orville. He had immense wealth and all the glamour of power and success, but appealed greatly all the same. Further, he was keenly interested in the development of aviation and he liked Americans.
On another occasion, they were with Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, and his wife. “We all liked them very much,” wrote Katharine. She wrote also of a “rousing good time” at lunch with Lord and Lady Balfour.
Arthur Balfour, former prime minister of England, was so eager to take part in preparations for Wilbur’s flights at Pont-Long that along with Lord Northcliffe he helped haul on the rope that lifted the catapult weight into place. Seeing a young British lord also assisting, Northcliffe remarked to Orville, who was standing close by watching, “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.”
Katharine had the thrill of a day’s expedition to the Pyrénées by automobile with a wealthy Irish couple and, as she reported to her father, knowing how it would please him, she had begun taking French lessons for two hours every morning, and with her background in Greek and Latin her progress was rapid. One of those helping her with her French was the son of Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Another she greatly liked was the Comtesse de Lambert, the attractive wife of Wilbur’s student the Comte de Lambert.
Her complaints were few. On those days when there was no sun, the cold and dampness were such as she did not care for. Besides, Edith Berg, whom she had liked at first in Paris, was getting on her nerves. She was “a regular tyrant and as selfish as anyone can be. We will be glad when she goes.” But to judge by her letters, that was as “wrathy” as Katharine turned during the time in Europe, and though Edith Berg stayed on, Katharine appears to have had no further complaints about her.
More press arrived, more photographs were taken, more articles written for Le Figaro, the Paris Herald, the London Daily Mail, the New York Times, and papers back in Ohio. One story sent by the United Press from Paris claimed a French army lieutenant had charged Wilbur in a divorce case. The story was a complete fabrication that none of the French papers carried, but in Dayton, where it did appear, it caused a temporary embarrassing sensation. Wilbur wrote an angry denial. Family and friends at home rose quickly to his defense, saying he was not that sort of man.
Since arriving in Paris in January, Orville had told reporters that, given his physical state, it would be foolish for him to attempt any exertion. At Pau, he mainly stood and watched, saying little. With his derby hat, well-pressed suit, his polished shoes and cane, he could have been another of the European aristocrats.