The Man With His Head in the Clouds

by Richard O. Smith

  Sadler the aeronaut is a pensioner at the Charterhouse. How scheming, beggars a man. He was a pastry cook in good business in Oxford. He drank tea at the Lodge the other day, being an old crony of my father. He says he used all his powers of persuasion with Harris to abandon the voyage, for he knew him to be ignorant of the management of a balloon. Sadler has made fifty voyages.

  The letter confirms one of Sadler’s last known whereabouts, and crowns him as the achiever of fifty flights.

  Lieutenant Thomas Harris, whom Sadler apparently attempted to dissuade from aeronautical adventure, had been killed on 25 May 1824 when falling out of his balloon basket after hitting an oak tree near Carshalton in Surrey. Courageously, Harris’ uncle immediately announced his intention to fly in the same balloon that had cost his nephew his life, in order to raise funds to support Harris’ widow, who had also been in the balloon basket at the time of the fatal crash, yet survived with serious injuries. The Morning Chronicle reported a few days later that the fundraising flight had been a success and crucially not claimed any more lives.

  Charterhouse in Smithfield, London, still provides the same function today, housing forty “brothers” who require financial assistance in alms houses. Daniel Defoe, credited with inventing the novel, was moved to observe obsequiously in 1722: “Charterhouse is the greatest and noblest gift that was ever given for charity, by any one man public or private in this nation.” Nice try, Defoe, but clearly not obsequious enough as he wasn’t offered a place.

  Sadler was conferred as a Brother of Charterhouse by none other than reigning monarch King George IV, and was also given a civil pension allowance to match. He lived here from 1824 until the winter of 1827, when he returned to Oxford. The need for state charity revealed his abject lack of wealth in spite of being a household celebrity for over half a century.

  Indeed, Sadler died in penniless obscurity, admired in his lifetime but destined to be uncrowned by future generations. The ODNB merely confirms: “Wealth at death: very little.” Yet had Sadler even begun to collect the fortunes in admission fees owed to him from his exhibition flights, and placed proper patents for his cannons, steam engines, rifles and naval inventions, then he would have been a wealthy man.

  Sadler’s name ought to be remembered as long as there is an England. Unfortunately that appears unlikely to happen. The winds of fashion change course. And although Sadler was successful at finding the wind direction he wanted in his lifetime, his subsequent fame has encountered fluctuating conditions. Over two hundred years later, that wind is perhaps changing direction again. Sadler’s reputation may yet rise into the jetstream of not only aeronautical history, but British history too.

  Fittingly, Sadler’s great-great-nephew was Professor Herbert Charles Sadler. He certainly inherited the family genes, being employed by the US Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Moreover, he was instrumental in pioneering flight - this time in glider designing. He took part in exhibition flights with the Wright Brothers and other pioneering aviators of the age in Boston, Massachusetts. Bet he baked a mean pastry too.

  But as Sadler knew, no one can control the direction the wind blows in - and that is true of the winds of fashion. Just as no historical biography these days could possibly open with its subject’s date and place of birth and conclude chronologically with details of their death.

  James Sadler died in George Lane (now George Street), Oxford on 27 March 1828.

  Epilogue: The Beginning? King of the Castle At Last

  Fully forty years since my last visit I am back at Tattersall Castle. This is my Everest.

  I set up base camp in the Castle’s seating area, munching on posh crisps bought from the shop, while strategising my ascent. To conquer Everest mountaineers endure exhaustion, thinning oxygen, extreme cold and vertiginous altitude, but not the menace that I have to beat if I am to reach the summit of Tattersall Castle’s battements: people persuading you to join the National Trust.

  They are very persuasive. Join today and you get your first heritage building admission refunded - like a drug dealer keen to give you your first gram of smack for free. Maybe a lot fewer castles would have been breached in history if, instead of battlements and moats, defenders had placed National Trust salesmen to repel invaders. “If you are planning to invade and ransack only two more castles in the next twelve months, then you are definitely better off joining today.”

  Somehow I make it inside by paying only the entrance fee. Inside, other visitors give me a “how did you manage to do that?” look. A couple are visiting from Russia, the only time they’ve been to the UK, and somehow they got suckered into the annual membership. No one leaves the National Trust. You think you can, but you can’t.

  Drink, crisps and a reasonably priced sandwich from the castle’s shop downed in the tea room (thankfully they no longer sell Cresta), I head straight for the steps. No distractions. Yes, there is a room with an impressively large fire place and some tapestries, but I am here for a set purpose, a mission. It’s time to complete the task I so spectacularly failed forty years ago.

  The stairs are still intimidating. They really are. A seemingly endless spiral staircase, with a red brick wall constantly circling away to my left, steps fanning out from a central stone pole. There is dust on the steps. Instinctively I head to the extreme left, utilising the widest part of each step. My heart is pumping. My brain is anything but calm. I clutch the stone handrail set back into the wall. But only briefly, as I want to increase my pace.

  Already I know I can do this. I am not enjoying the experience, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is my confidence that I will succeed. I know I can. Just keep going.

  I attempt to radio-jam the anxiety signals my brain is transmitting by getting another part of my conflicting mind to emit CBT mantras. “The danger is imagined not real.” Determined, I keep going. My pace picks up. I think about Miss Harrison. I guess where my tears would have fallen, where I froze and could not continue. Back then I was physically incapable of moving my healthy legs. If anything, today my legs are moving too fast. I am rushing to accomplish this. Snatching not taking the opportunity. Yes, I want the ordeal to be over. As quickly as possible. But I make myself slow down. That will make striding up the stairs easier. And safer.

  Remembering the breathing techniques Claire and Steve taught me, I think of their shared determination that I can do this. I recollect the advice the Aussie model gave me, how that posh schoolgirl spotted so easily my bathmophobia affliction, and that time I was stuck in fear on church tower steps with my first girlfriend. I recall the perceptive insights Dr. Hannah gave me, rolling back my ignorance to reveal how a phobia works. Once you understand how the circuitry works, you can start tampering with it. I am the captain of my brain ship. I’m the one at the wheel of HMS Richard’s Brain. And she’s steering a course full steam ahead.

  I climb the 149th step out of the 150 on the spiral. I pause. This time voluntarily. Raise my head high and take a big final stride towards the daylight.

  What, no raining ticker-tape? No knightly trumpeted fanfare?

  My reward is the view from the roof. No, I am not ready yet to approach the edge. Or go anywhere near it. I am not yet completely rehabilitated. But there are fine 360-degree views of the Lincolnshire flatlands. Rows of cabbages in a nearby field are lined up in military precision like soldiers awaiting inspection, planning to attack the castle’s defences.

  My other reward, bigger than an admittedly splendid view, is the accomplishment. I am as proud of my helpers as I am of myself. A bathmophobe who is finally king of the castle, even if forty years late. If I can do this, then there is hope for others whose lives are restricted by phobias. A glossophobe can address a room of people. A lifelong arachnophobe can pick a spider out of the bath, even one of those spiders that are so big they probably change TV channels whenever you vacate a room. A crocodyliphobe can... hang
on, having a debilitating fear of crocodiles is not irrational - in fact it comes highly recommended.

  I can now go upstairs on a bus. In fact, most staircases no longer bother me, to the extent that I would no longer consider myself bathmophobic - more of an ex-bathmophobe. It is surprisingly how quickly the new norm replaces the old normal. Although I still do not willingly embrace heights, I can now tolerate them enough for acrophobia to stop being a barrier excluding me from life experiences.

  However, I am unlikely to sit on a girder eating my packed lunch alongside those workers who built the Manhattan skyline, as depicted in that iconic photograph.

  That’s for two reasons: 1. I’m not an idiot. OK, make that three reasons. 2. I am only partially rehabilitated 3. Though I’m crucially free of the restrictions I previously placed on myself by avoiding stairs and heights, I cannot manage unnecessary exposure to extremely dangerous heights.

  But here’s the thing. The Big Thing. I never expected to be cured. This is why my counsellors disqualified the term “cure” from being used in our sessions. Instead, I have crucially learnt to manage, and thereby control, my anxieties and phobias. And from there I expect them to recede naturally, not grow exponentially as they did when remaining unaddressed for decades. It is as if trained engineers, counsellors and educators have begun rewiring my brain, altering my neuro plasticity, allowing me to begin viewing the future with an unrepentant optimism.

  About the Author

  My publisher requires a list of my achievements for an ‘About the Author’ section. Hence, here is a list:

  1. I’m rubbish at compiling lists.

  3. And even worse at counting.

  2. Told you.

  4. I co-wrote the UK screenplay for the 2014 movie Foosball starring Rupert Grint and Rob Brydon directed by Best Foreign Picture Oscar-winner Juan José Campanella.

  5. Hugh Dennis said my 2013 book documenting the world’s stupidest criminals, As Thick As Thieves, made him “regret not taking up a life of crime”. It was an Amazon no. 1 Bestseller.

  6. I write for BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz and The Now Show. Yes, that’s how I met Hugh Dennis.

  7. I wrote a book about Britain’s Most Eccentric Sports. It was described by Dr. Phil Hammond as “very, very funny!” German comic Henning Wehn said, “it’s better than all 26 days of a cricket match.”

  8. Before that I wrote Oxford Student Pranks: a History of Mischief & Mayhem, TV’s Dr. Lucy Worsley said, “I was expecting it to be a jape-filled jamboree of jollity, but it turned out to be full of sex and violence as well.”

  9. I also write for BBC2’s Dara O’Briain’s Science Club.

  10. Somehow I once won the National Football Writer of the Year Award and am a Chortle comedy award winner.

  11. I pen a monthly Oxfordshire Limited Edition column for The Oxford Times.

  13. Unluckily, my counting has not improved.

  Acknowledgements

  Enormous thanks to top archivist and librarian Scott McLachlan. Without Scott’s research skills this book would not have been accomplished. He helped me track down the myriad contemporary newspaper sources, as well as the later specialist aerostation literature, which help form the recognisable form of Sadler’s strange life.

  Thanks to: Sophie Clarke, Kim Curran, Mark Davies, Hugh Dennis, Jennifer Elliott, James Ferguson, Matthew Ledbury, Oliver Ledbury, David Raymond, Dr. Hannah Stratford, Martha Tilston, Catherine Wolfe-Smith, Dr. Lucy Worsley, Adventure Balloons Company, St. Edmund Hall Oxford and all my counsellors, especially the real Steve and Claire.

  Special thanks to biographer extraordinaire Frances Wilson for confirming that this book was a Very Good Idea and boldly encouraging me to write it.

  If you have been affected by any topics raised in this book, then further information is available from:

  Cognitive Behaviour Therapy:

  http://www.babcp.com/Default.aspx

  Comedy books:

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-O.-Smith/e/B005FXQP1A/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

  Also Available