The Age of Wonder (86 page)

186
‘On the Construction of the Heavens’, 1785, WH Papers 1, pp247-8

187
Ibid., p27

188
Ibid., p25. See J.A. Bennett, ‘The Telescopes of William Herschel’,
Journal for the History of Astronomy,
vol 7, 1976

189
Bonnycastle, pp341-2

190
WH Papers 1, p256

Chapter 3: Balloonists in Heaven

1
JB Correspondence 2, p299

2
Exchange of Banks-Franklin letters, 1783, Schiller Institute, ‘Life of Joseph Franklin’ (internet)

3
WH Letters, p62, to Franklin, 13 September 1783

4
Ibid.

5
L.T.C. Rolt,
The Aeronauts,
1966, p29

6
‘Dossier Montgolfier (1)’, Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris

7
Rolt, p 30

8
Schiller Institute, ‘Life of Joseph Franklin’ (internet)

9
Auduin Dollfuss,
Pilâtre de Rozier,
Paris, 1993, p26

10
Ibid., pp17-22

11
Marquis d’Arlandes’s original account given in ibid., pp27-42;
‘la redingote verte’,
p41. Discussed in Rolt, pp46-9

12
Rolt, p50

13
Dr Robert Charles’s original account appears in Raymonde Fontaine,
La Manche en Ballon,
Paris, 1980

14
Dr Charles’s original account in ibid. (photocopy)

15
‘Dossier Montgolfier (1)’, Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris

16
David Bourgeois,
Recherches sur l’Art de Voler,
Paris, 1784, pp1-3

17
Ibid., p3

18
J.E. Hodgson,
History of Aeronautics in Great Britain,
OUP, 1924, p103

19
Rolt, p31

20
WH Letters, p67, to Franklin, 9 December 1783

21
Ibid., p62, to Franklin, 13 September 1783

22
Ms Album of balloon accounts, British Library catalogue 1890.e.15. See also WH Correspondence 2, p304, Blagden to Banks, 16 September 1784; and Hodgson, p97, footnote

23
Hodgson, p66

24
Samuel Johnson to Hester Thrale, 22 September 1783,
Collected Letters,
vol 4, pp203-4

25
WH Mss 6280, Watson, letter 9 November 1783

26
Horace Walpole, letter to H. Mann, 2 December 1783; see Rolt, p159 and Hodgson, p190

27
Joseph Franklin, letters to Banks, 21 November 1783 and 16 January 1784; see Rolt, p158

28
Gilbert White, 19 October 1784, in
Life and Letters of Gilbert White,
vol 2, pp134-6. See also Richard Mabey,
Gilbert White,
pp195-6. The solo pilot was in fact the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard

29
Charles Burney, letter, September 1783. See Roger Lonsdale,
Charles Burney,
p385

30
Rolt, p60

31
Horace Walpole, June 1785, from Hodgson, p203

32
Rolt, p65

33
Sophia Banks Ms album, BL 1890.e.15. See also Hodgson, p97, footnote, and broadsheet poem ‘The Ballooniad’ (1784)

34
Portrait of Lunardi reproduced in
Catalogue of Well-Known Balloon Prints and Drawings,
Sotheby’s, 1962, p42. See also ‘Le triomphe de Lunardi’, a series of six allegorical paintings by Francesco Verini, c.1787, held at Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget

35
Account assembled from Vincent Lunardi,
My First Aerial Voyage in London,
1784; see also Lunardi,
Five Aerial Voyages in Scotland,
1785

36
Lesley Gardiner,
Vincent Lunardi,
1963, pp53-60

37
Amanda Foreman,
Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire,
HarperCollins, 1998, p173

38
Gardiner, p56

39
Charles Burney, letter 24 September 1784, in Lonsdale, 1965, p365

40
Gardiner, p59

41
Johnson, 13 September 1784,
Collected Letters of Samuel Johnson,
edited by Bruce Redford, vol 4, p404

42
Johnson, 18 September 1784, ibid., p407

43
Ibid., p408

44
Johnson, 29 September 1784, ibid., pp408-9

45
Johnson, 6 October 1784, ibid., p415

46
The glamorous threesome were celebrated in a famous coloured lithograph by John Francis Rigaud,
Captain Vicenzo Lunardi, Assistant Biggin and Mrs Sage in a Balloon,
now held in the Yale Center for British Art. In the event, only two actually took off.

47
Mrs Sage,
A Letter by Mrs Sage, the First English Female Aerial Traveller, on Her Voyage in Lunardi
’s
Balloon,
1785. British Library catalogue 1417.g.24

48
Gardiner, p60

49
Ibid., p44. On p77 she also describes ascending through a snow cloud

50
Tiberius Cavallo,
History and Practice of Aerostation,
1785

51
Gardiner

52
Kirkpatrick to William Windham, in Hodgson, pp147-8

53
Hodgson, pp143-4

54
Johnson, 17 November 1784,
Letters,
p438

55
Johnson’s gift is confirmed in James Sadler’s memoir,
Balloon: Aerial Voyage of Sadler and Clayfield,
1810. See also Hodgson, pp150, 403n

56
See Foreman and Hodgson

57
John Jeffries,
Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages with M. Blanchard as Presented to the Royal Society,
1786. ‘The First Voyage’, pp10-11 (the ‘Second Voyage’ being the historic Channel Crossing). British Library catalogue 462.e.10 (8)

58
Jeffries,
Two Aerial Voyages,
pp55-65

59
Ibid.; but also drawn from a slightly racier account published exclusively for American readers as ‘The Diary of John Jeffries, Aeronaut: The First Aerial Voyage across the English Channel’, in
The Magazine of American History,
vol XIII, January 1885, and supplied to me as a pamphlet reprint (1955) by the Wayne County Library, USA

60
Photograph supplied by Musée de l’Air, Le Bourget, Paris

61
Jeffries, Diary, p16

62
Jeffries,
Two Aerial Voyages,
p69

63
Jeffries, Diary, p21

64
Erasmus Darwin,
The Botanic Garden,
1791, Part I, Canto IV (Air), lines 143-76, footnote on Susan Dyer

65
Rolt, p91

66
Darwin,
The Botanic Garden,
Part I, Canto IV (Air), lines 143-76

67
Rolt, pp 99-104

68
James Sadler,
An Authentic Account of the Aerial Voyage,
1810; see Hodgson, p150

69
Reproduced in Henry Beaufoy, ‘Journal Kept by HBHS during an Aerial Voyage with Sadler from Hackney’, British Library catalogue B.507 (1); see also Hodgson, fig 36

70
James Sadler,
Across the Irish Channel,
1812, p16

71
Ibid., p23

72
See Holmes,
Shelley: The Pursuit,
1974, p149

73
Windham Sadler,
Aerostation,
1817. British Library catalogue RB.23.a.23973

74
Windham Sadler, ‘Progress of Science, while Ballooning neglected’, an Appendix to
Aerostation,
1817, p16

75
Richard Hamblyn,
The Invention of Clouds,
2000, which includes beautiful illustrations of Howard’s cloud paintings. Gavin Pretor-Pinney,
The Cloudspotter’s Guide,
2006, suggests cloud study as both a science and an entire philosophy of life

76
Carl Grabo,
A Newton Among Poets: Shelley’s Use of Science in Prometheus Unbound,
North Carolina UP, 1931

77
Erasmus Darwin, ‘The Loves of the Plants’, 1789, from Part II of
The Botanic Garden

78
Coleridge
Notebooks I,
entry for 26 November 1799; see Holmes,
Coleridge: Early Visions,
pp253-4

79
Wordsworth,
Peter Bell,
1819, stanza 1, lines 5-6

80
Shelley at University College, Oxford in 1811, as recalled by T.J. Hogg in ‘Shelley at Oxford’,
New Monthly Magazine,
1832; republished in his
Life of P.B. Shelley,
1858

Chapter 4: Herschel Among the Stars

1
WH Mss W.1/5.1; and see ‘Description of a Forty-Foot Reflecting Telescope’, 1795, WH Papers 1, pp485-527 (with magnificent engravings of the telescope, the gantry, the moving mechanisms and the zone clocks and bells)

2
Michael Hoskin,
The Herschel Partnership as Viewed by Caroline,
Science History Publications, Cambridge, 2003, p79

3
J.A. Bennett, ‘The Telescopes of William Herschel’ (with illustrations),
Journal for the History of Astronomy,
7, 1976

4
Hoskin, p79

5
WH Mss W.1/5.1; further details in ‘Astronomical Observations’ (1814), WH Papers 2, p536, footnote

6
Hoskin, p81

7
Journal of Mrs Papendiek,
in WH Chronicle, p174

8
WH Chronicle, p145

9
WH Chronicle, p152

10
Journal of Mrs Papendiek,
in WH Chronicle, pp145-6

11
Ordinance Survey map, Royal Berkshire, 1830, reproduced in Hoskin, p58

12
CHA, p81

13
WH Chronicle, p172

14
John Adams, April-May 1756,
Diaries and Autobiography,
edited by L.H. Butterfield, 1964

15
CHA, p83

16
Ibid.

17
CHA, p86

18
CHA, p89

19
Sketch of ‘small’ sweeper in CHA, p70

20
Michael Hoskin, ‘Caroline Herschel’s Comet Sweepers’,
Journal for the History of Astronomy,
12, 1981; and CHA, p70

21
WH Mss C1/1.1, 34-5; and CHA, p88

22
CHA, pp89-90

23
James Thomson, ‘Summer’, lines 1,724-8, from
The Seasons,
1726-30

24
Claire Brock,
The Comet Sweeper,
Icon Books, Cambridge, pp150-1

25
WH Mss 6267 1/1/3, for 2 August 1786

26
WH Mss 6267 1/1.1. Memorandum made 2 August 1786

27
Hoskin, p85

28
CHM, p68

29
WH Papers 1, pp309-10

30
Howse,
Maskelyne,
p155

31
Hoskin, p83

32
Fanny Burney,
Diary,
September 1786, from WH Chronicle, p169

33
Ibid.

34
Ibid., pp169-70

35
Ibid.

36
Sophie von La Roche,
Diary,
14 September 1786, from Brock, pp154-5