Part 4

The course of the balloon was along the Thames, in the direction of Gravesend. The grappling iron first touched ground near the village of Cliffe, in Kent; and, after slightly catching several times, took a firm hold. The voyagers enjoyed themselves much.

This imposing spectacle having passed off satisfactorily, and a large amount of curiosity having been gratified on my side, I was now ready to start for Amsterdam. A berth was secured on board the “Romona,” and I left St. Katherine’s Wharf in tolerable spirits; but in passing Southend and Sheerness I fell into a dejected mood, when I contrasted my youthful longings with the present mercantile mission to Holland. It was of no use, our interests with the Navy and Army authorities had been neglected, the heads of the family had taken a more serious turn, and it was absolutely necessary that I should do something for my living.

On leaving the Nore and getting well out to sea, our passengers on deck had wonderfully decreased; there was a stiff breeze on, and the attendance at dinner fell short of the steward’s expectations. Those who were equal to feeding became none the less sociable, and I was glad to sit by the side of a communicative young merchant bound for the Rhine. Among other topics, the subject of aërostation was broached by my fellow-traveller; he, too, had seen the ascent of the great balloon, and longed some day, like myself, to have an aërial excursion.

The more we got away from land, the stronger it came on to blow, in fact we had a very dirty night of it, but crossed the bar all right soon after daylight, and got up to Rotterdam about the time we were expected. My brother John, who was there to meet me, proposed that we should go to the Dutch capital by a canal boat: I was agreeably surprised to find how fluently he could chat to the men, and with what apparent ease he smoked an enormous pipe and drank black coffee.

After a week’s wandering about Amsterdam, I was introduced for the first time into a counting-house. I made a great effort for some weeks to take an interest in the proceedings and to do as I was requested, but natural aptitude failed me. I did not take kindly to a single duty and became conscious that I was looked upon as a dunce. A sharp bilious attack followed my novitiate, and it was pretty evident that whatever my element might be, I was not in it at that particular time and place.

As the long evenings came on, my brother used to read and translate the newspapers.

About the second week in November he observed some intelligence which was sure to please and excite me.

“Now, do pay attention, Henry,” he added, “Mr. Green has crossed the Channel, with two other gentlemen, in the Vauxhall balloon, and landed in Germany.”

“Read on, I am all attention John.”

I then heard the full particulars of that extraordinary voyage. The result was a balloon fever, which was by no means suited to my position at that time.

My brother and Herr von L---- observed in me a greater distaste than ever to counting-house duties, and I was heartily glad when an unexpected turn in our affairs was brought about, by which we were to leave Amsterdam and return home.

A change of our family residence was the next movement of any importance in my history. We had resolved upon going up to London. My brother John was now provided for, and I was to watch his advancement, and, if possible, follow in his steps, as there would be no difficulty in getting a berth for me.

Eventually I tried my hand at it, but it was of no use; I sickened and gave it up, much to the disappointment of my friends.

Whatever was to be done with me now? That, indeed, was a serious question.

“I think,” said an observing acquaintance one evening, as he placed his hand towards his mouth as if in the act of removing some artificial teeth, “I have thought of an occupation that will suit Henry. This morning,” he said, “I had occasion to visit my dentist, and he inquired if I knew of any youth of a mechanical turn of mind who would like to become his pupil.”

The idea was no sooner broached than it struck me as being in the right direction.

I caught at it and agreed to turn it over in my mind, nor did I fail to do so. Forthwith I waited upon several surgeon-dentists, and at last had an interview with a very clever practitioner, who had formerly been a surgeon in the navy. This gentleman was eminently calculated to ingratiate himself, and to present to my notice the kind of work which a dental student would have to perform.

It was not long before an agreement was drawn up, and I embarked in the undertaking.

The right vein was here hit upon, it was thought. I set to with a will, and ere many weeks had elapsed, I brought home such specimens of workmanship as warranted the expectation that I should soon take to, and excel in my new vocation.

As it happened, both departments of dental surgery became equally attractive; that is the surgical as well as the mechanical. By the time I was proficient and just of age, I became entitled to an amount of cash, which enabled me to order a brass plate and commence business with patients on my own account. I had to form a connection, however, and to bide my time for the coming in of fees.

Unfortunately, perhaps, this uphill beginning left a deal of spare time on my hands, so that ever and anon I required--or thought I did--a little recreation.

In taking up a newspaper to see what was going on in the way of rational amusement, I happened to observe an advertisement of an intended balloon ascent by Mr. Hampton.

This notice, coupled with a desire for change, led me to decide upon an outing. My taste for ballooning grew apace, and soon became a passion. Whenever an ascent was advertised I was almost sure to be there, and, as a strong liking for any adventurous and scientific calling leads to acquaintance with kindred spirits, I became familiar with a number of regular attendants at balloon _fêtes_, and soon acquired a reputation for knowing as much--and some said more--than many of those who had been brought up to it.

From my seventeenth up to my twentieth year I had seen most of the aërostatic sights that had engaged public attention near London. I had witnessed a balloon race from Vauxhall, and saw the aërial competitors come in actual collision without doing injury. I had seen Mrs. Graham ascend and her husband as well. I had seen the great Nassau balloon before and after it took Messrs. Hollond, Green, and Mason to Germany, as already described.

In the year 1837 I went into ballooning with a will, and my visits to the balloon grounds were regular, but I was prevented from seeing Mr. Cocking’s parachute attached to the great balloon, although I saw it suspended in the air from London Bridge as it bore down Eltham way, and was struck with its cumbrous and rigid convex form, so ill adapted, I thought, to offer sufficient resistance, and to possess adequate strength for reaching the ground in safety.

After the death of Mr. Cocking I saw Mr. Hampton descend in a parachute from Bayswater, and this led to my becoming acquainted with that gentleman some little time afterwards.

I was disappointed of an ascent with Mr. Hampton, as his balloon “Albion,” which was rather small, would only take the aëronaut when I wished to make my maiden ascent. This was the year (1837), a period when I became a diligent student in aërostatics, and, it is not too much to say, that I had shown similar application in dental surgery, indeed I found that all I was called upon to learn was so easy and pleasurable in acquisition that I made light of my duties, and failed not to devote considerable attention to my hobby as well.

One day I met Mr. Hampton in Westminster, full of trouble and anxiety at the way he had been treated by those who had reason, as he alleged, to be his friends. We walked and talked together, entering upon a chapter of misfortunes, which touched me much at the time, and induced me not only to sympathize with him, but to use my best endeavours to assist his cause.

There is no necessity for entering into the way in which he had lost his balloon, suffice it to say that I did all I could to redeem it, and in return the aëronaut took great pains to give me all the information he could about aërostation, and he promised the moment he had a new balloon to take me up with him, and he moreover presented me with a good portrait of himself, the massive frame to which was made by Mr. Hampton’s own hands. This intimacy, and the espousal of the aëronaut’s cause, drew upon me the frowns of several persons connected indirectly and professionally with ballooning.

Knowing some of Mr. Charles Green’s friends I was rather hankering to see more of the air-captain, as the Germans style us, but I knew by experience that “two of a trade seldom agree,” and I was naturally reluctant to offend my patron by being intimate with Mr. Green, whose fame was of long standing and very properly universal.

Circumstances soon brought us together, but on meeting I was impressed with the belief that I was regarded as the advocate of an opposition aëronaut, and not as one upon whom Mr. Green would lavish his experience, or whom he would take up either as a paying passenger or pupil. I was evidently considered a dangerous fellow, and as Mr. Hampton had once stated that he thought I should one day become an aëronaut, although at the time I had no serious intention of doing so, this was quite sufficient to cause me to be shunned by all the family of the Greens, or, if not exactly shunned, at least viewed with caution and suspicion.

For three years I was in the habit of meeting Mr. Hampton and of talking over ballooning, until I grew well nigh surfeited with the tongue part of aërial voyaging, and longed for the reality, which was delayed until the year 1844. Mr. Hampton was then enabled with my assistance to start a new balloon, and I had an opportunity of seeing the construction of it. His first engagement with this was at the Old Vauxhall Gardens, in Birmingham, and thither I went to be his companion, but, to my mortification, the balloon would not raise two persons, so that I had to remain on terra firma, and suffer the taunts of several spectators, who chose to attribute to motives of fear my getting out of the car after having been once in for the ascent.

My third attempt was successful. Mr. Hampton was solicited to make an ascent from the White Conduit Gardens, Pentonville, on Monday, August 19th, 1844, and I was without fail to accompany him.

Many years had elapsed since the ascent of a balloon from these famed gardens; the attraction was accordingly very powerful.

The balloon was filled at the Imperial Gas Works, Battle-bridge, and the car placed on a cart, to which it was secured by ropes; it was conveyed to the gardens by six o’clock on Monday morning, an extra supply of gas being provided to keep up the loss by condensation.

Before the public entered the grounds, it was rumoured by the privileged few who were present that a _Mr. Wells_ was to be the aëronaut’s companion, as that gentleman had recently been disappointed at Birmingham. Some other persons, mentioning my name, declared that Mr. Coxwell was to be the favoured party.

An appeal was then made to me for authentic information, and as I was now within a stone’s throw of my residence in the Barnsbury Road, Pentonville, where I had recently commenced practice, it was expedient I should frankly declare that I had previously assumed the name of Wells in order to prevent anxiety among my friends, and that the candidate _Wells_ and the aspirant _Coxwell_ were one and the same person.

This being understood, and the motives which actuated me in taking upon myself an _alias_ being respected, Mr. Hampton, at six o’clock, accompanied by Mr. Wells (as “the Illustrated News” recorded it), stepped into the car, and the balloon rose in majestic style, travelling easterly over the metropolis, and descended in a field belonging to Mr. T. Rust, at East-ham Hall.

This, then, was my first real ascent; but such was the amount of thought I had bestowed on the subject in previous imaginary flights, built upon the descriptive accounts of others, that I seemed to be travelling an element which I had already explored, although, in reality, I was only for the first time realising the dreams of my youth. In most respects I found the country beneath, including the busy humming metropolis, the River Thames, shipping, and distant landscape, pretty much as I expected, and had been tutored to see in the mind’s eye; but the extraordinary and striking feature of this ascent was the enchanting way in which these appearances unfolded themselves in a manner so opposite to what one would picture by looking at a balloon in the sky. This is owing to the peculiarly imperceptible way in which a balloon rises, and herein consists the difference--the delightful, fascinating difference--between heights accomplished by balloon ascents, and altitudes attained by climbing hills, mountains, monuments, and buildings. In Alpine travels the process is so slow, and contact with the crust of the earth so palpable, that the traveller is gradually prepared for each successive phase of view as it presents itself; but in the balloon survey, cities, villages, and vast tracts for observation spring almost magically before the eye, and change in aspect and size so pleasingly, that bewilderment first, and then unbounded admiration is sure to follow, and when one reflects that all these wonderful panoramic effects are produced by the noiseless, unobserved, ascension of the balloon, we are reminded of the motion of the earth which rolls us round the glorious sun, and the heavenly orbs, so that they, the sun, stars, and planets, appear to be rising and setting.

It is just so with the balloon--a wide-spread carpet of variegated country is changing form, hue, and dimensions, or rather appearing to do so, as the observers rise and descend, and assume various elevations.

Our journey only lasted twenty-five minutes, but it seemed to me when we descended that the balloon had not been more than five minutes in the air. After we anchored I felt that it was a tantalising short-lived piece of grandeur and only enough to whet the appetite for more.

But a second chance was at hand. Mr. Hampton had been asked to ascend from Bromley, in Kent, where such an exhibition was quite a novelty. The undertaking, however, was of too formidable a character for the small gas-works and diminutive pipes in that locality. Visitors who congregated in a meadow selected for the festivities were not gratified with the ascent on the day it was announced to take place; consequently fresh exertions had to be made in the production of gas, and not until the following evening was the balloon fit to ascend, and, even then, it would barely take two, so that I had another narrow escape of being left behind after arranging to go. It was necessary to part with very nearly all the ballast in order to rise.

We started sluggishly, but got up two thousand feet, and there had a splendid view over the garden of England, as the county of Kent has not inaptly been styled. Short and sweet was the order of this second trip of mine, but, as we had a remarkably picturesque country to gaze upon, I was much annoyed at not being longer aloft, and I don’t know but that I vowed--at any rate the idea flashed through my mind--that I would one day have a balloon of my own, even if it were for unprofessional ascents, as these hasty, short views were most aggravating and by no means worth the expense.

Shortly after my being thus initiated into practical ballooning, Mr. Hampton undertook a tour to Ireland; but there, in Dublin, he had the misfortune to descend near a house, the chimney of which was on fire, and his balloon, blown in that direction by a sharp breeze, ignited, but the aëronaut happily escaped with his life.

It was a long time before Mr. Hampton was in a condition to ascend again. In the meantime other balloonists had made my acquaintance, viz., Mr. Gypson, and Lieut. Gale, both of whom sought co-operation, and frequently offered me seats in their cars, as some acknowledgment for the advice and assistance I had rendered them.

Mr. C. Green invariably gave me the cold shoulder. I was rather sensitive about this at the time, but in later years, when I began to obtain a reputation for myself, I came to the conclusion that it was the greatest compliment the greatest aëronaut of the day could award me, inasmuch as it indicated that I was somebody to be studiously kept in the background for an obvious purpose.

During the autumn of 1845, I projected and edited “The Balloon or Aërostatic Magazine,” a publication designed to advance aërostation. A good reception greeted the little serial on the part of the press, but the demand for information on this subject was not equal to my enthusiasm, and as a monthly repository of travels by air, it did not pay, so that its periodical appearance was discontinued, and afterwards it was only published occasionally.

In the year 1847, three new balloons were constructed by the aëronauts, Green, Gale, and Gypson, respectively. Mr. Green, junr, also made one about this time, intending to use it principally on the continent.

With two out of these four balloons, I had a great deal to do, as will soon be seen.

Let us commence with Mr. Gypson’s, as it was the first on the stocks, and the first to make a perilous ascent and descent. When this balloon was finished, Mr. Gypson and myself determined upon a private ascent; we desired a long trip, and would not even object to cross the Channel, if the breeze should waft us in that direction. The Imperial Gas Works, at Haggerston, in London, was the place we started from. The new machine was taken there to be inflated on the day selected, which was favourable, the wind being from the S.S.E., so that we had a long run before us, and a good opportunity of reaching Scotland.

Owing to the close proximity of the balloon to the gas-holders, the filling proceeded very rapidly; it appeared to me that the inflation should be checked somewhat, but the aëronaut considered his arrangements equal to any pressure that could be put on by Mr. Clarke, the gas-engineer. It was soon evident that the network was not liberated so quickly as it should have been; the consequence was that a lateral and unequal strain began to be imparted, and just as I had gone away to speak to some gentlemen who had arrived, by invitation, the netting began to break towards the lower part, but the damage was not apparently sufficiently serious to prevent the ascent being made. We therefore got into the car, and notwithstanding several broken meshes, prepared for a start, but while sitting in readiness, a sudden gust drove the silk with considerable force towards the fractured cordage, which continued breaking, until the lower part of the silken bag protruded, and then, the entire balloon surged through the opening, leaving the network behind, which dropped on our heads, so that the balloon itself escaped, leaving us in the car to receive the ironical congratulations of our friends, who had come to see us go up.

Not many seconds after the silken bag had bounded away, it split up, and descended in a brickfield, not far distant. It is almost impossible to imagine a more ridiculous position for expectant voyagers to be placed in than this.

The assembled spectators pronounced it a mercy that we had not ascended, and that the breakage had not happened in the air. They believed we must have been killed had not the balloon escaped just when it did; but I was of a different opinion, believing that if once we had got away, no bad results would have occurred while we were travelling aloft.

The balloon was forthwith repaired, and a second private attempt made on March 18th in the same year. This time we had a successful day, and came down all right at Hawkhurst, in Kent, not far from the residence of Sir John Herschel. In the evening we were invited to Collingwood, where we spent a most agreeable and instructive time with the eminent astronomer.

Soon after this event Lieutenant Gale’s balloon was launched at the Rosemary Branch Gardens, Peckham.

Here, too, I was invited, and almost persuaded to make the first trip; but as I had condemned certain new fashioned valve-springs, which I considered unsafe, I preferred to witness rather than participate in the ascent. Mr. Gale wished also to use a pair of supplementary small balloons to receive the expanded gas; but these, I thought, were open to objection, so that I could not possibly join the lieutenant at the time he was applying appurtenances, which I had pronounced dangerous.

The balloon, a very fine one, was duly filled, and the ascent nicely made. A Mr. Burn took my place, and I was rather joked, I remember, when the new balloon floated majestically in the still atmosphere.

Events, however, soon took a sudden turn. Gale had promised to travel far down towards the coast, and had, it appeared, suddenly altered his mind, as the balloon began descending fast.

“Perhaps,” said some one, “he has forgotten something as it is coming down so soon, and will go up again and continue his journey.”

But the rate of descent increased so rapidly, that Mrs. Gale ran to me and inquired anxiously for my opinion.

I was obliged in candour to say, as I was considered an authority, that I feared the flat valve-springs had not quite answered Gale’s expectation; “but he will be all right,” I said, encouragingly, “even if he has a good bump.”

Ballast was soon observed to pour out profusely, and there was no doubt of the voyagers being sensible of the frightful pace at which they were coming down. The lower part of the balloon was seen to contain no gas, so that its collapsed condition was visible to everyone present.

Several persons started off to see the cause of so sudden a descent. As to myself I remained with Mrs. Gale, making light of what really looked serious, in order to allay her alarm.

A messenger soon arrived to say that neither the aëronaut nor his companion were seriously hurt, but that they alighted with terrific force at Peckham Rye, owing to the valve-springs not having acted properly.

Gale, himself, soon put in an appearance, inquiring for me. He said, “You are quite right as to those springs; I will abandon them, and you shall ascend next time.”

It was not long before I did so.