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Artillery Company. By the 15th of September all incidental difficulties, the mere enumeration of which would unduly swell these pages, had been overcome by sheer persistence, and Lunardi stood in the enclosure allotted him, his preparations in due order, with 150,000 souls, who had formed for hours a dense mass of spectators, watching intently and now confidently the issue of his bold endeavour.
If Lunardi went up and came down, there was the matter settled. We prefer to grant the point. We do not want to see the experiment repeated ad nauseam by Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley. Ah! if they would go up and not come down again! But this is by the question.
Vincent Lunardi, an Italian, Secretary to the Neapolitan Ambassador, Prince Caramanico, being in England in the year 1784, determined on organising and personally executing an ascent from London; and his splendid enterprise, which was presently carried to a successful issue, will form the principal subject of the present chapter.
As a gull from the cliff, the Lunardi slanted downwards, and passing the brig by less than a cable's length to leeward, soused into the sea. I say "soused": for I confess that the shock belied the promise of our easy descent. The Lunardi floated: but it also drove before the wind.
"Sheepshanks 'nmanageable; can't carry his liquor like a gentleman: thought it funny 'pitch out ballast. Byfield lost his temper: worst thing in the world. One thing I pride myself, 'menable to reason. No holding Sheepshanks: Byfield got him down; too late; faint both of us. Sheepshanks wants ring for 'shistance: pulls string: breaks. When string breaks Lunardi won't fall tha's the devil of it."
It is recorded that George the Third was in conference with the Cabinet, and when news arrived in the Council Chamber that Lunardi was aloft, the king remarked: "Gentlemen, we may resume our deliberations at pleasure, but we may never see poor Lunardi again!"
The fever ran from France to England and in 1784, only a year after the first Montgolfier experiments, Lunardi, an Italian aeronaut made an ascension from London which was viewed by King George III. and his ministers, among them William Pitt. But the early enthusiasm for ballooning quickly died down to mere curiosity.
I suppose you have not time to give to such questions minutely, as your reply would lead one to infer that Gossamer proceeded from spiders in general; and if it be meant that all true spiders spin, it is no doubt correct; but the Gossamer which "A Young Inquirer" asks about is the production of a small black spider about the size of a flea, which was a true aeronaut long before Montgolfier or Lunardi, and if "A Young Inquirer" has access to either the "Linnean Transactions" or the first series of Loudon's "Magazine of Natural History," he will find particulars in the latter, showing that a violent controversy raged through the three first volumes between Mr.
Meanwhile, interest in the new discovery spread across the Channel, and on September 15th, 1784, one Vincent Lunardi made the first balloon voyage in England, starting from the Artillery Ground at Chelsea, with a cat and dog as passengers, and landing in a field in the parish of Standon, near Ware.
As one of the gentry concerned I may be permitted to remark that I am unmoved. I care not a Tinker's Damn for his ascension. No more I breathe it in your ear does anybody else. The business is stale, sir, stale. Lunardi did it, and overdid it. A whimsical, fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts for I was at that time rocking in my cradle. But once was enough.
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