One of the most memorable descriptions of the spectacle was provided by the American writer Edith Wharton, who had just stepped from her chauffeur-driven limousine at the front entrance of the H?tel de Crillon on the Place de la Concorde and noticed several people looking into the sky, as she recounted in a letter to a friend:
And what do you think happened to me last Monday? I was getting out of the motor at the door of the H. de Crillon when I saw two or three people looking into the air. I looked also and there was an aeroplane, high up against the sky . . . and emerging on the Place de la Concorde. It sailed obliquely across the Place, incredibly high above the obelisk, against a golden sunset, with a new moon between flitting clouds, and crossing the Seine in the direction of the Pantheon, lost itself in a flight of birds that was just crossing the sky, reappeared far off, a speck against the clouds and disappeared at last into twilight. And it was the Comte de Lambert in a Wright biplane, who had just flown across from Juvisy—and it was the first time that an aeroplane has ever crossed the great city!! Think “what a soul was mine”—and what a setting in which to see one’s first aeroplane flight!
What she had neglected to say was that the Comte de Lambert had soared over the top of the Eiffel Tower, the tallest structure in the world, and thus had been flying at an elevation of at least 1,300 to 1,400 feet, “high up” indeed.
Word of what happened had already reached Juvisy by the time de Lambert returned and landed. Thousands had gathered to welcome him. Stepping from the plane, “pale but radiant,” he was instantly engulfed by reporters and an adoring crowd. There also, to his great surprise, were Orville and Katharine Wright. How they heard the news and how they got to Juvisy are not known.
De Lambert insisted he was not the hero of the hour. “Here is the real man,” he said, turning to Orville. “I am only the jockey. He is the inventor,” by which he meant both Orville and Wilbur. “Long live the United States! It is to that country that I owe my success.”
Once Wilbur, Orville, and Katharine reached home, they hardly had time to unpack before their time and attention were taken up with business decisions and patent issues, Wilbur heading off to New York one day, Washington another, then Wilbur and Orville going together to New York, then Wilbur going alone again. And except for Christmas, so it continued on into the new year.
A Wright Company for the manufacture of airplanes was incorporated, with offices on Fifth Avenue in New York. Ground was broken for a Wright manufacturing plant in Dayton. There were more dinners in their honor, more medals and awards, including the first Langley Medal, given by the Smithsonian. And there were more patent suits.
With the increase in the number of people flying, there were increases in serious accidents and deaths. In France aviators Eugène Lefebvre, Ferdinand Ferber, and Léon Delagrange were all killed in crashes.
Extremely distressing, too, for Wilbur was an unfortunate falling-out with Octave Chanute that began in January 1910 and stretched into spring. Chanute thought the Wrights had “made a blunder” bringing suit against Glenn Curtiss and said so in a letter to the editor of Aeronautics. Specifically Chanute did not think that the idea of wing warping was original with the Wrights.
In a letter dated January 20, Wilbur stated clearly to Chanute, “It is our view that morally the world owes its almost universal use of our system of lateral control entirely to us.” In response Chanute wrote, “I am afraid, my friend, that your usually sound judgment has been warped by the desire for great wealth.”
Besides, Chanute was offended by something Wilbur had said in a speech in Boston about how he, Chanute, had “turned up” in the Wright shop in Dayton in 1901. This, Chanute felt, gave the impression that he had thrust himself upon Wilbur and omitted to say that Wilbur had been the first to write to Chanute in 1900, asking for information.
Wilbur and Orville found Chanute’s letter “incredible,” and in one of his longest letters ever to Chanute, Wilbur let him know. Concerning Chanute’s charge that greed had taken hold of the brothers, Wilbur dismissed it saying simply, “you are the only person acquainted with us who has ever made such an accusation.” He centered his considerable fury instead on the way Chanute had given the French the impression that he and Orville were “mere pupils and dependents” of his, and the fact that Chanute had never once until now expressed any question about the brothers’ claim to the invention of wing warping.