Ladies and gentlemen - or gentlemen and ladies - British feminism had a heroine several decades before Emmeline Pankhurst.
Windham may not have learnt from his father that flying in gales was to be avoided, but he appears to have developed a greater sense of making money as a ballooning professional. Viewing the balloon at Burlington House was a paid-for-only privilege, and huge fabric screens were erected to block any interloper’s view. Only those with a valid ticket passing through security stations manned by armed guards could see the globe.
Dissatisfied with merely viewing “the ladies of status sitting in windows outside with much promenading”, several ticketless spectators tried scaling the walls to gain access to the balloon. The hired heavies pulled most of the freeloaders from the wall mid-climb, dissuading “several courageous fellows from mounting the parapets”. A daring few managed to avoid security, and “when out of reach of the guards thought it proper to laugh and express their contempt which afforded the mob no small share of mirth”.
In common with many of both Sadler senior and junior flights, the hydrogen inflation took longer than anticipated. The Lancashire Gazette published a full statistical table of the balloon’s proportions and capacity, declaring it to be 236 feet in diameter, manufactured from 2,950 yards of silk and requiring a disconcertingly specific 20741/2 pounds of hydrogen to render it airborne.
Eventually “they ascended in a style of magnificent violence,” as the London Chronicle described it. They quickly rose to such a height that “the water trickling down the gas pipe froze immediately”. Shivering with cold, whilst the frozen vapour and condensation threatened to block the vent, Windham succeeded in relieving the obviously over-pressured balloon of some of its hydrogen. The orb then descended at an alarming rate, necessitating ballast jettisoning to regain a steady altitude. Miss Thompson, writing observations, recorded that at one stage the ballast was not sinking as fast as the balloon - which is probably a good time to start panicking. Hurling everything they could overboard slowed the descent.
Very soon afterwards they broke through the low cloud cover to discover they were eight miles from the North Sea coastline. Had the balloon not been over-vented by Windham, their destiny would have been a wet one. Such was the strength of the gale that they had flown 49 miles in only 40 minutes. Navigation charting their position was rendered almost impossible by unbroken low cloud. The cloud was by now so low, and the declining light so murky, that Sadler later admitted he could hear the mooing of cattle in the fields beneath him before he could see land.
Hitting the ground at speed, the balloon bounced back airwards from the first cornfield where the duo attempted to land, before a grappling hook finally caught in a hedgerow’s roots. This anchored the basket, though the resultant pullback and violent trajectory into the fierce wind inevitably tore the balloon. A nearby surgeon Mr. Willsher, out on horseback, came to the pair’s aid and informed them they had landed at Great Tey four miles north-east of Coggeshall in Essex.
Miss Thompson was travelling back to London at 3am the next day when she was involved in a crash - the post boy fell asleep and the cart came off the road into a shallow ditch. The discrepancy between safety in the two transport modes - balloon and coach - was much discussed by playful supporters of aeronautics.
1 AUGUST 1814: JOHN SADLER’S ASCENT
Another Sadler flight occurred in August 1814, with another Sadler ascending. Confused? So are some of the press reports at the time, and subsequent books of the period written on aerostation, but a third Sadler was now also undertaking public balloon flights.
James Sadler’s eldest son John Sadler launched from St. James’ Park near Buckingham Palace to mark the twin celebrations of Lord Nelson’s victory in the Nile, and the centenary of the House of Brunswick’s’ accession to the English throne.
Although it was announced that Mrs. H. Johnston would accompany Sadler’s oldest son, the pre-flight balloon inspection found some alarming problems with the valve and netting, with only a single dangling string left to secure it to the top of the balloon hoop. The Duke of Wellington was quoted in some newspaper reports as strongly advising the party against flying. A compromise deal was cut, where Mrs. Johnston stepped out of the balloon, but Sadler - another clear inheritor of the family gene for fearless flight bordering upon recklessness - took off alone for a solo flight. A Japanese kamikaze pilot would have refused to fly on safety grounds. A rational, or more accurately, irrational, explanation was provided by one newspaper correspondent present: “Feeling for the disappointment of the pubic, and for his own honour, Mr Sadler was determined to go up.”
Flying over the massed spectators below attending the day’s festivities to mark the joint celebrations, John Sadler dropped two bags of tiny paper parachutes bearing a jubilee message. Continuing in an easterly direction he reached Woolwich, where disaster, as rather predicted, occurred.
The rope that secured the envelope within the netting broke. It slipped violently, and Sadler had to grasp at the dangling rope to stop the balloon parting ways with the basket.
A separation of balloon and basket at an altitude other than on terra firma does not make for a successful ballooning experience. All the time Sadler had been gaining altitude, and lacking the experience of his father and younger brother, had dispensed with too much ballast overboard.
Faced with a frozen vent, a balloon continuing to ascend and a slipped net barely keeping balloon and basket together, John Sadler used a knife and stabbed the balloon. This was the part of the trip where he got lucky, as he managed - presumably without any former experience of stabbing a balloon - to release hydrogen at the correct rate to ensure a safe landing.
Then his luck turned to bad again, as he was about to land in the middle of the Thames estuary. The breeze, like his luck, changed direction once again. He finally landed with only a sprained ankle incurred in the process on the Essex side of the estuary. A passing fisherman retrieved his balloon from the water’s edge, and acted as a river taxi by taking John Sadler several miles upstream to Gravesend, where he summoned a post chaise back to Burlington House to recount his averted catastrophe.
Unlike his brother and father, this scare was sufficient to end John Sadler’s aeronautical career and he reportedly never flew again.
15 AUGUST 1814: YORK
A few days later, James Sadler senior, Windham and Miss Thomson all headed to York to undertake another flight - though it is likely that only Windham (still seventeen years old) and the new female star of ballooning - credited with revitalising the public’s appetite for the medium - occupied the basket.
The balloon took off from Kettwell’s Orchard near York Minster. After the windswept horrors of their Burlington House ascent, the twosome were finally paid back with some good weather fortune. Their globe remained visible in the unblemished blue sky for the entire flight duration of around 45 minutes until they landed in Easingwold, twelve miles due north of York. Following normal practice, the promoters had exhibited the balloon for several days before the ascent, this time charging a hefty, pocket-emptying whole shilling just to see it on display in York’s Assembly Rooms.
17 SEPTEMBER 1814: PONTEFRACT
Linking their York flight to their next aerial venture on 17 September 1814 at Pontefract was horse racing. During the race meetings at York and Pontefract, large holidaying crowds would provide a festival air and a source of customers requiring entertainment.
Both Yorkshire ascents featured Windham and Miss Thompson as a double act. Huge crowds were attracted in Pontefract, where several years earlier James Sadler had experienced an extremely harsh landing that could easily have proved fatal.
26 NOVEMBER 1814: PLYMOUTH
After ascending from Exeter in a flight described by the press at the time as his “seventh ascent”, Windham Sadler stayed in the West Country for his next aerial excursion in late November 1814. Late November w
as a decidedly risky time of year to stage a flight on a date advertised in advance, and this was confirmed when he was caught in strong winds and icy conditions after taking off from a frosty Plymouth.
Trapped in an inescapable descent, Windham sustained several injuries jumping out of the basket as it collided with the Devon earth at considerable speed. Lightened by the absence of a pilot, the basket instantly took off again only to be found later wrecked in Tavistock on the edge of Dartmoor, with the wooden cart fragmented.
Even though the once fashionable practice of aeronauts parachuting cats had long since stopped, Windham was using up a worrying amount of his nine lives.
***
I am at a wedding. This means I have accepted an invite (especially since I am not the gate-crashing type).Though, truthfully, this has been mainly motivated by the opportunity to travel somewhere connected with Sadler: Manchester.
Since I briefly worked with the bride, I am relegated to the lowest possible status among the wedding guests. I am allocated a place at a reception table so far from the head table that I struggle to see the bride, groom and best man - due to the earth’s natural curvature - until they stand-up to make a speech. Everyone keeps asking me who I am. I evolve my reply from “I’m Richard, I used to write with the bride” to “I’m not a gate-crasher - look, here’s my invitation card”.
By some considerable margin, I am the oldest person on my table. This statistic would remain true if I was thirty years younger. I’m seated next to Ryan. He is eight, and after making small talk about football, he concludes it necessary to start talking down to me. His slightly older sister silently observes our conversation for a few minutes before joining in, selecting an entrance level where she clearly feels compelled to talk down to me from an even greater height. “So,” I ask Ryan and his sister Sasha, “how come you’re ‘out alone’ as opposed to ‘home alone’?” “Our parents are on the top table,” replies Ryan.
Being placed on the children’s table does at least mean that the complimentary yet frugally quantified one bottle of red and white utilitarian Romanian house wine/sink unblocker, provides a fortuitously increased glass-per-adult share ratio. “Have you got a wife?” asks Sasha with a bluntness thankfully usually lacking in adult conversations. “Yes.” “Where is she?” enquiries Ryan with clear suspicion implied in his choice of tone. I tell Ryan that she’s invisible. He rightly points out that he is eight and not three. Fair enough. “Where is she?” they ask again. I explain that she just couldn’t come. “Doesn’t she like you anymore?” he presses. “What? Er, I hope so, I don’t know. She just couldn’t come.”
“How does that make you feel?” asks Sasha. “Well, I feel that... hang on, do you work for Relate?”
Then a sudden jolting reminder, like an unexpected breeze that arrives out of nowhere, causing you to adjust your footing to avoid being blown over. “Sasha’s boyfriend dumped her!” “He wasn’t my boyfriend and besides I dumped him, you ...”, and she whacks him with disturbing violence. Frozen in shock, I sit with my mouth open.
Then I realise I’m the adult here; the seemingly responsible one. “Er... that was... you shouldn’t do that... why did you...?” But the narrowly opened window of opportunity to intervene has gone, and it’s already been slammed shut on my fingers. The time for intervention is over, the deadline for any UN appeasement policy expired. A huge blob of chocolate fudge cake is lobbed straight into Sasha’s face, the “Alpine glazed triple chocolate sauce with pomegranate trace” - why do you need a creative writing degree to compile a menu these days? - dribbling down her posh lemon dress.
Instantly we’re surrounded by proper adults. Unlike pretend adults such as me, they know what to say and do. Ryan is led away for routine questioning, and a furious uncle appears and drags Sasha off. Sasha manages a convincing “(sob)... he just flung it at me... there’s something wrong with him... I didn’t do anything,” neatly omitting the obviously irrelevant detail that she landed a slap on him that would have floored most professional boxers.
It was indubitably a serious incident - the wine could easier have got knocked over. Ten minutes later, and the two protagonists reappear. Sasha is wearing a strategically placed cardigan to cover the chocolate splat, and Ryan has a red swelling on the side of his face which has evidently been deemed ice-pack-worthy. They both act like the incident has not happened, and go back to talking down to me. “Do you want a new wife?” asks Ryan. “Um... no I wouldn’t. I’d prefer the one I have to start liking me again,” I reply. “Mum doesn’t like daddy anymore, so maybe you could have his wife one day?” offers Ryan. “Er, thanks, Ryan.” My brain cannot resist projecting this image in front of my eyes: “Hi Ryan’s mum, we’ve never met, but your son says we must have an affair. So, um, shall we book a cheap motel room for some purely recreational sex? Do you mind going halfsies - £29.50 each?”
It seems paradoxically inappropriate, yet simultaneously highly appropriate, to be discussing the merits of spouse retention at a wedding. “Pass me that bottle,” commands Sasha. Instinctively I comply with the request, and pass over a bottle while maintaining my gaze on Ryan. Both my brain and my hand have joint responsibility for passing the bottle, assuming it was a soft drink - otherwise, why (a) would Sasha ask for it (bad reason) and (b) why would they leave a wine bottle on the children’s table? (Probably for the same reason they left an adult there.) I don’t avert eye contact with Ryan as I want to continue my conversation and try to be a responsible adult with an opportunity to maybe teach a youngster something i.e. you can’t change a spouse once they go out of fashion like a pair of trainers.
“What are you doing?” shouts Ryan. “Sorry, wasn’t thinking!” Like a patient snapped out of hypnotherapy, I’m suddenly conscious of what I’ve just done - namely pass a bottle of white wine to a twelve-year-old. “She only drinks red,” says Ryan, the colour being the cause of his outrage. “You’ll get in trouble,” he warns, somewhat prophetically. I feel like I’m their supplier, and decide I have to finally act like a responsible adult, and make a parental intervention to reclaim the wine.
Looking after children properly doesn’t necessary reward you with popularity. That’s a given. But I am newly charged with a strong desire to do the right thing so ask firmly for the bottle back, counselling “you’re too young to drink. Please give me the wine back.” “Relax,” Sasha begins in her calmest, most grown-up, most - it later transpires - manipulative voice. “I drink wine with meals at home - we started in our French house. Mum and dad wanted to introduce us to responsible alcohol consumption, so we only drink one glass of red wine and always with a meal.” “Er... that’s very modern. Er... but I don’t know if you should drink here in public, it’s different from at home.” “Oh, you’re not going to be a boring adult are you?” Clever. Much cleverer than me. And she’s twelve. Who wants to willingly subscribe to being a boring adult? Normally, I’d say “no”. So “no”! “You’re not going to start fighting if you get boozed up are you?” I check. Like a politician on the Today programme, she avoids answering the question by changing the subject, whilst glugging her glass full to the brim.
“Did you marry the wrong woman?” Ryan continues. This is the sort of cut-to-the-chase honesty that kids do well. Or, more accurately, do horribly. “No, I don’t think that at all.” “Then you should try harder to make it work,” adds Ryan, the eight-year old agony uncle. “Er... I don’t know if it’s redeemable.” “Then get a new wife,” Sasha adds, simply. “There’s lots of women here.” I pick up her wine glass and say that we will all get in trouble if she drinks any. Needless to say, she does not respond to this opinion with nodding supine agreement. “Oi, give me that back!” So I drink her wine. In one. “God that was horrid,” I say. I was not acting.
Twenty minutes later and Sasha approaches me, and introduces Emily like she’s a postman with a package to sign for. This is Emily. She works...” Sasha has clearly forgotten w
here Emily works in the twenty seconds since she asked her. “...she works... er... somewhere.” Emily wears glasses, is clearly fifteen years younger than me, and doesn’t look like she is enthused about receiving any male attention today. She has a look of the librarian about her. But she is just want I want - a potentially intelligent adult human being whom I can interact with. “Shall we go upstairs?” she says. Part of me wants to say in mock protest, “but we’ve only just met”, but thankfully I realise that would be a potentially crass and damaging remark. “But we’re only just met,” I hear myself saying, promoting an internal dialogue between my brain which says to my mouth in angry tones “I thought we agreed NOT to say that.” “Well,” replies my mouth to my brain, “you were the one who put the thought there, so what do you expect? And you couldn’t come up with any other line.”
“Sasha said you’re a comedian,” says Emily, before causing me to seriously question her judgement at evaluating other humans by remarking: “Sasha is very grown-up.” “Yeah, she’s great,” I say, agreeing to something that was the exact opposite of my own experience. “Think they wish her brother could catch some of the maturity off his sister - apparently he lobbed a chocolate cake at her in an entirely unprovoked attack,” she adds. “About that... Sasha told you?” I check. “Yes,” she confirms. “Nothing,” I say.
“Have you got any children?” she enquires. “No,” I reply, “and I think I may have missed the boat. In fact, I’m still nowhere near reaching the dockside.” “Well, unlike us, you can still have plenty of time,” she counsels, “and now you’re divorced you can meet someone else.” My brain thinks about saying “What? Divorced? How come you’ve heard before me?”, then my brain offers me a stupid joke but tells my mouth not to say it out loud. This time my mouth pays attention, and the words remain unspoken. “So, would you like to go upstairs?” she asks again. “What? These really steep spiral stairs with no backs?” I check. “Yes, the ones that lead to the balcony. I’m told you get a good view from the top,” Emily replies. “Er... probably not,” I say shamefully, although I want to continue talking to her. “Oh, I er... oh...” she stammers, understandably taken aback. Just as I am ordering my brain to allocate all departments immediately onto finding the right thing to say to her next, we are suddenly distracted.
The Man With His Head in the Clouds Page 27