Balloonomania Belles
For David and Luc
Balloonomania Belles
Daredevil Divas who First Took to the Sky
Sharon Wright
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
PEN AND SWORD HISTORY
an imprint of
Pen and Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire S70 2AS
Copyright Sharon Wright, 2018
ISBN 978 1 52670 834 2
eISBN 978 1 52670 836 6
Mobi ISBN 978 1 52670 835 9
The right of Sharon Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Acknowledgements
As with so many of the best adventures, researching Balloonomania Belles was undertaken in a spirit of comradeship between women and men. I could not have written this book without the unfailing help of Brian Riddle, chief librarian of the National Aerospace Library in Farnborough home to glorious early ballooning archives the Major B.F.S. Baden-Powell Collection of Aeronautical Cuttings and Cuthbert-Hodgson Collection and John Baker, archivist at the British Balloon Museum and Library, the official museum of the British Balloon and Airship Club.
Neither ever batted an eye as I squawked with delight at every new discovery. They glided around, handing me the archives as I thundered on. I will never forget Brians comment when I pondered whether censorious Victorians had decided to cover up the show-stopping va-va-voom Letitia Sage very definitely had on display in 1785. I can honestly say, in all my years at the Aerospace Library, I have never been asked to study cleavage. And from John as I struggled to discover the names of women forever referred to with Mrs tacked onto the name of their husbands, Ive found it, her actual name. I am indebted to the trustees of the Dolly Shepherd Pioneer Parachutist Archive and Haworth historian Steven Wood. Also to Luci, for our sustaining Fridays.
Thanks too to Jennifer Jones, retired chartered librarian, translator of Enlightenment French, eagle eyed and educated reader and unstinting friend. Anything I may have wrong is, of course, down to me.
I hope this entire book is an acknowledgement of the forgotten female heroes of early flight. These women were astonishing, their lives shot through with the courage and joie de vivre of true pioneers. Their lives were packed with adventure as they seized a freedom in the air that was to be found nowhere on the ground. They are not forgotten any more. Welcome back, ladies.
Chapter 1
Wonder Women
In 1783 the balloon went up in more ways than one. Radical thinking swept across Europe and America, the spirit of change churning the air of politics, philosophy, fashion and art. The months were so stuffed with marvels they became known as an annus mirabilis, year of wonders. A giant comet cut a fiery path across the heavens and epic volcanic eruptions in Iceland sent sulphur pouring into the jet stream to cause weather chaos. Events in the sky above Enlightenment Europe were as dramatic as those on the earth when most wonderful of all, humans learned how to fly. A beautiful balloon hung in the French sky at Versailles above an astounded crowd of Parisians. As brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-tienne Montgolfier unlocked the secret of soaring above the earth, the watching women, from Queen Marie Antoinette down, shared a single thought: the eighteenth century equivalent of whats not to love?
Balloonomania was unleashed, spreading like wildfire through France, then all Europe and quickly on to America. Commentators also called it balloon mania and when it proved so infectious, balloon influenza. It was a craze, a rage and all so maddeningly thrilling it held European and American society in thrall. From the earliest days, women were in on the act. The first female aeronauts were flamboyant, fashionable or just plain fearless as they embraced ballooning and all it promised. The craze swept the world and its pioneering women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, evolving into a fabulous story of female flight that stretched across 120 years before the first aeroplane left the ground.
Balloon legend puts women at the very dawn of ballooning. One theory is that Joseph Montgolfier saw a washerwoman place a petticoat on a wicker frame to dry over a stove and it began to rise. Another has the unmentionables of Madame Montgolfier drying as her inventive husband became fascinated by how smoke drifted upwards to lift a chemise. As he and tienne puzzled over how to prevent a smoke-filled paper bag from leaking, did the widow next door poke her head through the window to suggest they tie the bottom? The story was good enough for Victorian balloonist Gertrude Bacon but whatever their real role at the birth of ballooning, women were at the heart of everything that followed. Down on the ground they were trapped in subordinate roles imposed by the law and rules of society. Up in the sky they were free.
The mania for balloons happened very quickly. A string of historic breakthroughs came thick and fast over just six months in the year of wonders. The Montgolfiers fired the starting pistol in the south of France where they lived. Scientists by inclination, they were paper manufacturers by profession. The family had made paper for generations and in 1783 they were suppliers to the king, Louis XVI. Two brothers among sixteen siblings, unkempt Joseph was a drifter and a dreamer who once ran away from the family trade, while tienne trained as an architect and had a good head for business. They had nothing in common until they invented the balloon.
They unveiled the floating linen bag, fastened by buttons and lined with paper, in Annonay on 5 June 1783, three months before they risked it in front of royalty. Eight sweating men hung on for dear life as the red and yellow balloon measuring 110ft around was filled in front of invited VIPs. At the signal to let go astonishment spread among the dignitaries in the town square, and terror among the peasants where it landed. The balloon rose to 6,000ft, flew for ten minutes and bobbed to earth a mile and a half away. There it caught fire and was left to burn by field hands convinced the moon had fallen from the sky and the day of judgement was upon them. It caused a sensation. News flew by letter and word of mouth to Paris. The sensation earned a name aerostation and the Montgolfiers became its first megastars. The inflatable invention, immediately dubbed a montgolfier, was the talk of the town. The race was on to replicate the experiment. For French scientists, philosophers and leaders of fashion, nothing really counted until it had happened in Paris.
