The Man With His Head in the Clouds

by Richard O. Smith

  That’s because I am sitting next to his grave. Sadler was buried in the hushed grounds of an Oxford college -or rather he is now. He was initially interred in the churchyard of St. Peter-in-the-East, and the church’s core remains relatively intact today from the twelfth century, with its origins even earlier (it is referenced in the Doomsday Book, the publishing sensation of 1086. I wonder how many publishers turned down the pitch: “So you want to create a tax inventory by listing every town and village’s property? And you think there’ll be interest in this after 1086?”

  Intimations of mortality before the flight (Richard O. Smith)

  Having existed as a place of worship for Oxonians since the tenth century, St. Peter-in-the-East closed to public access in 1965 when it was deconsecrated, and it re-opened its now pew-less space in 1970 when it became the library of St. Edmund Hall - one of the current 38 colleges and six Permanent Private Halls that form the collective whole of Oxford University along with the institution’s faculties and libraries. Books are stored on a spiral staircase ascending the church tower - so it must really annoy the librarian if you ask for a book near the top of the tower. Then, having patiently waited for the librarian to descend with the requested book, ask for “volume two as well, please”. Timing is important in comedy.

  Sadler was what is termed by some contemporary vicars as “a four-wheeler”. This means he used the same church for being christened, married and buried - a christening, wedding and funeral nowadays ensuring that the service’s top billed protagonists arrive by car - hence the terminology. Though the expression usually implies that it is the only time they set foot inside the church, this seems unlikely in Sadler’s case. Certainly his family had continued involvement with what was their parish church. Sadler’s younger brother Thomas was baptised there in July 1756. Indeed, the church/library continues its connection with Sadler today by displaying a plaque to mark his historic achievement of being the first Englishman to fly. Erected by the Royal Aeronautical Society, it was unveiled in 1928. It bills him as “James Sadler of this city”, avoiding any ambiguity as to which side, Town or Gown, claims his legacy. Located in the west wall of the church, unflatteringly hidden behind a bookcase, it nonetheless accurately depicts the type of balloon Sadler built, encapsulating his spirit by depicting him waving his trademark pair of flags, and is clearly well maintained by its current owner Teddy Hall.

  Sadler, like most successful pioneers in history, possessed the required good fortune to be around at the right time. Had Alexander Graham Bell been born a hundred years later, his “I have invented a new wired speaking device” would have merely prompted pitying sighs and the common response, “pretty sure we’ve already got one of those, mate - plus mine does email and Angry Birds”. Instead, he’s a household name. Likewise, had Churchill delivered “we shall fight them [the Germans] on the beaches” in the present rather than twentieth century, then people would assume he was talking about obtaining the best sunbathing spots or winning the beach volleyball. Undoubted visionary and committed polymath as Sadler was, he would have realised that the age had provided him with his opportunity - but the grasping was very much down to him.

  There is a paucity of personal information available about Sadler. Archives hint that he was successful at keeping his emotions hidden from public scrutiny nearly one hundred years before the Victorians made such a choice popular - though Sadler clearly antagonised several powerful people. There is little of the man seeping into the papers left behind. Letters are merely written in work mode, devoid of any insight into the internal workings of the man - with the exception of one angry exchange. The exception is the querulous letter fired off to the Derby committee. Otherwise there is infuriatingly little of the man in all the papers left behind.

  Even accounts allegedly written by Sadler are most likely pieces of sanctioned ghost-writing. Other early balloonists had form in this area too; Lunardi’s ostensibly self-written account of his flights was widely dismissed as a fraud at the time, though that didn’t stop healthy sales figures. It fed an insatiable public requirement for anything balloon-related. A popular item during the height of balloonomania was a doorknob bearing Sadler’s miniature colour portrait. The range was even extended to include a smaller desk draw knob featuring an even more miniature Sadler likeness. Lunardi now appeared in the format of an actual knob - one for irony fans everywhere to enjoy.

  Press reports of the age jostle each other in a race towards hagiography, with Sadler consistently portrayed as a Great Briton in an age of great British wonder. And yet it is through such trivial details, the everyday miniature - the bonding mortar of the trivial that holds the elaborate decorative tiles in place - that causes the pattern to emerge to the viewer. Away from the grandiloquence and deepest purple of prose that many newspapers of the age advanced, small observations about Sadler’s personality can be deduced. He is often reported as coming out to wave to crowds, even greeting them in walkabouts. One evening in Cheltenham, he appears at his hotel balcony “although already fatigued from the day” many times to appease the crowd, reported as a gesture of appreciation rather than feeding diva tendencies.

  Elsewhere he is reported as calmly accepting that hardly anyone has bothered to pay the advance admission fee to see him fly. And this latter point is significant, as ballooning was extremely expensive - without an aristocratic patron, the only source of funding would be public subscription and admission - and Sadler does not appear to have pursued the fortune that many commentators suggest could have been his for the banking. Only when he reappears as an aeronaut in the second decade of the nineteenth century is he correctly more cautious with collecting admissions fees. This change can only be accountable to his earlier bankruptcy.

  Despite the late eighteenth century’s perceived embrace of hedonism, eventually prompting revolution in France and intense fear of copycat revolt in Britain, Sadler appears aloof from any distinct stratifications of class. He is claimed as a utilitarian man of the people, uneducated yet undisputedly brilliant. Meanwhile he is also comfortable in exalted company, interacting with the noblemen and titled gentlemen of his age, and - at least initially - claimed by the University of Oxford as one of their adopted own.

  Sportsman, musician, actor and TV presenter were not yet career routes to celebrity for those born outside the nobility, so a meritocratic rise to the top was a rare and cherished opportunity. This may partly explain the public’s ffection for Sadler, proven by countless letters to contemporary magazines. It was easy for the public to believe he was one of them. Yet teasingly we know hardly anything of the man’s emotional make-up. This is hard to accept from our vantage-point. Today we expect out celebrities to be emotionally incontinent.

  So I sit down next to Sadler. His gravestone was renovated by the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1928 to mark the centenary of his death. The crumbling headstone, which was then further restored in 1984 - yes, the year is significant as the restoration deliberately coincided with the bicentenary of Sadler’s first historical launch nearby.

  A brief, one-line obituary is chiselled into a well-maintained gravestone, rightly pronouncing him as the first Englishman to fly. Next to it lie the fragments of the original gravestone. Across the path from Sadler’s grave stands another headstone, marking the final resting place of Sarah Hounslow. Bizarrely, the engraved date of death is given as “31st February”. No one knows why. I hope Sarah’s family got a substantial discount from the stonemason responsible for that.

  Stepping out of the graveyard, I walk twenty yards towards the High Street. The location of Sadler’s cake shop and bakery is a mere scone’s throw from his final resting place. Behind the Examination Schools which now occupy the site of Sadler’s café, just beyond Merton Street to the south, lay the expansive fields leading to the Isis (or River Thames to anyone not from Oxford). Here an ancient path, clinging to the walls of Merton College, is known as Dead Man’s Walk. This sinisterly
name recalls the Jewish funereal route, when the city’s Jews were forbidden from burying their dead within the city wall. The ancient Jewish cemetery where the path concluded became the Physic Garden, now the Botanic Garden, but Dead Man’s Walk survives in both route and name. In 1984 a plaque was erected marking the bicentenary of the flight. Illustrated with a balloon, the small shrine to Sadler declares him: “The first English aeronaut who in a fire balloon made a successful ascent from near this place 4 October 1784 to land near Woodeaton.”

  Unsurprisingly, Sadler doesn’t reply to my questions. And seeing his grave intensifies my feelings that he did not receive a proper obituary when he died. Incredibly, Oxford University’s official newspaper deemed him worth of only a one line death notice - and took up most of the space in that one line mentioning his brother!

  Maybe this book will provide Sadler with the lengthy obituary he deserves. After all, I am eligible to write his obituary. My first professional writing job was compiling obituaries for a local newspaper. By my calculations, I must have written about 500 obituaries. And yet, did any of the subjects ever thank me? No!

  But in spite of Sadler’s unwillingness - OK, mainly his inability - to answer my questions, there is still one big question that will have to be answered tomorrow. Will I be able to fly?

  High Noon in a Balloon: Can I Fly?

  Getting a balloon ride organised is unlikely to be a straightforward exercise. Here’s how it works. You book onto a flight and then check with your balloon operator a few hours before launch time if the intention is still to go ahead. Changing climatic conditions decree if you fly or not. One fellow balloon passenger told me that they had booked onto eighteen flights: all were cancelled.

  Moreover, it is extremely unusual to ever see a balloon crossing the skyline other than at dawn or dusk, when the atmospheric conditions governing air temperature are most favourable. Such optimum flying conditions are sought, and any threat of forecast wind or rain will result in another cancellation. If flying in the morning, which can often mean 5.30am or earlier take-off times, booked passengers have to phone a weather advice line at around 11pm the night before to hear whether their adventure is likely to go ahead and determine how early they have to set their alarm clock.

  Quite what Sadler would make of this is intriguing, since he routinely flew in the middle of the day, which we now acknowledge as the worst possible time for ballooning. Mind you, he also took off in strong gales and driving rain. Maybe he would consider us modern beings to be unadulterated sissies, but I suspect he would just marvel at our scientific knowledge.

  My first flight was cancelled. Having spent at least 72 hours with pre-flight anxiety, vibrating like someone who has just drunk eight double espressos, the flight was cancelled at five hours’ notice. This surprised me, as it was a calm day with an unblemished blue sky. Yet a rising breeze from the east was forecast, so the launch was postponed.

  Flushed with pride after completing my counselling course, and being released back into the wild by Claire and Steve better adjusted - if not completely cured - to deal with height anxiety, I wanted to accomplish the balloon flight.

  Ostensibly, I am ready for my balloon flight. OK, more accurately my balloon trip is ready for me. It’s time.

  ***

  Flight day omens are hardly positive. I take a number 13 bus towards the launch site. Upon arrival I immediately spot a solitary magpie. Earlier that same morning my wife dropped a make-up mirror - she doesn’t explain how, but I suspect it may have been while walking under a ladder. By now my planned balloon trip has been cancelled on twelve occasions. My brain helpfully works out that this means that when I actually take to the skies today it will be number thirteen. That’s lucky.

  As I arrive at Cutteslowe Park in North Oxford the weather is doing its best to replicate one of those old fashioned summer days that we don’t seem to get any more - the sort you remember from childhood, when it was warmer, sunnier and the sandwiches tasted better. Once everything is cocooned in the safety of the past, it’s immediately better. There is a miniature railway in the park, though, lamentably, there is a height restriction forbidding me from riding the train. How heightist is that! But there is no height restriction on the balloon ride I am about to take. Unfortunately.

  Then the meeting time arrives, as do my fellow passengers (or “daredevils” as I refer to them). But the launch hour comes and passes. Meanwhile a balloon, which I consider a fairly essential piece of kit for the experience of taking a balloon flight, remains mysteriously absent. Eventually, nearly an hour after the arranged take-off time, a Land Rover arrives, impatiently squealing into the car park at speed before braking noisily.

  But it only just arrives. The front windscreen is smashed. The passenger door is missing. The bumper is crudely tied on with string. The driver’s side, where the window used to be, is now mainly fragmented glass. Presumably the damaged vehicle has shed parts of itself en route like a clown’s car. The ground crew explain that they have been involved in a serious road accident, and the police only reluctantly allowed them to continue. I ask if the balloon may have been damaged. They reassure me it is still airworthy - far too quickly for my amygdala’s liking.

  They set about uncoupling the trailer, and unpacking the balloon - all 3,300 cubic feet capacity of it.

  ***

  My friend Rebecca, sensitive to my on-going height anxiety, had kindly bought me a pre-flight Good Luck card and gift. She presents me with Enduring Love - the book by Ian McEwan, not the concept. After encountering those twelve flight postponements due to unfavourable weather conditions, I have plenty of time to start reading the kind present she had given me ahead of my next scheduled flight attempt. The book opens with a hot air balloon crash. Very funny, Rebecca.

  Reading a few pages changes my feelings from laughter at Rebecca’s clever joke to sudden fear. It is probably a good decision to read the rest of the book after my flight has been accomplished, should I ever have an emotional reunion with terra firm.

  ***

  I know that stepping into that basket shortly is one of the hardest things I will ever do. Conversely I know it is an event so appealing to most of the population that they have willingly paid over £100 each to enjoy the experience. But to me it is as hard as beating acute shyness or a stutter. Or standing up to a bully - and in a way, overcoming a phobia is standing up to a bully. And that’s not easy. Why is always doing the right thing constantly the hardest available option? Sometimes, why can’t doing the right thing involve having a nice sit down with a latte and a chocolate fudge cake?

  But this is one of the hardest things I’ve done - harder than asking Charlotte Jones out at the bus stop years ago and receiving a burning rejection. Harder than going up the steps of Tattershall Castle when I was eight.

  Here are two consecutive entries from my diary, recorded nearly a year before my upcoming flight:

  25 Feb. Spend evening with veteran balloon flyer. Begin to feel glimmer of reassurance for first time about the safety of being up in a balloon. They tell me that the drive home from the balloon landing site is statistically more dangerous than the preceding balloon flight.

  26 Feb 7am. The main item on this morning’s Today programme is a balloon crash in Luxor, Egypt. At least 19 people dead.

  A few months later and another balloon crash headline appears. This time in the Netherlands when a balloon crashes into a lake. Then, shortly afterwards, news breaks of a balloon crash in England. A balloon comes down in a children’s play area in Shropshire.

  Hot on the heels of the cataclysmic crash in Egypt the BBC broke the story to a perturbed nation that a... er... lamp post was slightly damaged by a hot air balloon landing in Shrewsbury. No one is injured. The balloon apparently landed into a playground to avoid being stuck over the town centre when the breeze suddenly dropped.

  This rams home a perennial problem with
balloons: they only go where the wind is blowing. Should the wind suddenly change direction, then so do you. Don’t expect a steering wheel on a balloon. And if the wind ceases to blow and the breeze knocks off early, then you are basically stuck levitating in one place, which is, with any luck, a suitable place to land. Hopefully this is not above somewhere unsuitable for landing a balloon - like an active volcano, or worse: Swindon.

  Oddly, my pre-flight feeling of acute anxiety is mixed with relief. Relief because I have endured so many cancellations that I now want to get the experience achieved and behind me. Whenever the flights were postponed previously, I initially felt a rush of relief flooding my brain, as my being emitted an audible sigh of “phew, that was a close one” and I instantly felt happy that I had cheated having to go through the fear. But the effects were inevitably short-lived; the relief was like a temporary sugar high that only lasts a short while before an inevitable dip. Then feelings of guilt set in - like someone who has just consumed a whole packet of chocolate biscuits in a sugar binge. My guilt was a realisation that I am rejecting and running away from life experiences.

  Other phobia suffers must experience this too - the instant yet unsustainable high provided by the relief of avoiding whatever activity would have brought you into contact with the anxiety. Then a sudden drop into guilt at the realisation of having avoided something that would have forced you to confront your irrational fear. This behaviour fortifies rather than reduces the phobia, as your spirit plummets towards the understanding that you have lost out on yet another worthwhile life experience.

  ***

  But not today. There is a Radio 4 crew with me. People have come from London. There’s a magazine photo shoot with models. This helps galvanise me into going through with it.

  It takes a while to get a balloon off the ground. Before the envelope is attached I am asked to sit in the basket for a pre-flight safety briefing. In doing so, just by climbing inside a wicker basket, I am aware that I am about to entrust my life to an oversized picnic basket - the sort of thing that Yogi Bear would attempt to steal from the park where we are due to take off.