BALLOONOMANIA

Image: The Montgolfier Balloon from The English Pleasure Garden 1660-1860. Image courtesy of Sarah Jane Downing Collection

In the early 1780s the greatest ambition for science was to conquer the natural environment. New developments in design and engineering were bringing speed to land and sea, the canal network was transforming the map of Britain, but what of mastering flight? There were great fears that any encroachment into the heavens would meet with inevitable doom or perhaps even God’s wrath. The first flights involved hapless farm animals who without the means or ability to control their hot air balloons inevitably suffered crash landings, sometimes in flames.

It was with great daring then that the first aeronauts took to the skies. The first manned flights drew much attention and scepticism, many thought it a hoax, many more thought it would end in crashing disaster, but all wanted to see. The Montgolfier brothers successfully launched a balloon of silk taffeta lined with paper at Versailles in 1783, followed just eight months later by Madame Élisabeth Thible on 4 June 1784. Dressed as the Roman Goddess Minerva she took to the skies singing an operatic aria before bravely stoking the balloon’s fire box throughout the flight and suffering a turned ankle when the balloon crash landed 4km away.


Image: Lunardi's Balloon on display at The Pantheon 1784. Image courtesy of Sarah Jane Downing Collection

Later that year Vincenzo Lunardi made the first balloon ascent from London and Balloonomania swept Britain! The handsome Italian aeronaut was commemorated in fashion with the Lunardi hat as worn in a portrait of Letitia Ann Sage. Sadly but not unpredictably, despite the fact that the Georgian actress flew with Lunardi her part has been expunged from history.


Image: Lunardi’s Balloon by Robert Dighton from Pastimes and Pleasures in the Time of Jane Austen. Image courtesy of Sarah Jane Downing Collection

The Lunardi hat was a large puff of silk over a wire frame with a shallow straight brim of straw lavished with ribbons. Particularly useful to compliment the wide frizzled hairstyles of the 1780s popularised by the Duchess of Devonshire, they were often worn with a cap beneath offering a pretty border of lace to the face. Although the Lunardi name disappeared after a couple of years, the ‘Balloon Hat’ lasted longer, and the construction of silk crown and straw brim continued in various forms into the next century.


Image: 'What You Will' by John Raphael Smith. Image courtesy of Sarah Jane Downing Collection

The portrait of Letitia Ann Sage is part of the permanent collection at The Science Museum in London. Read more of Letitia Ann’s aeronautical activities at: The First English Female Aerial Traveller - Science Museum Blog. Read more about Lunardi in my book Pastimes and Pleasures in the Time of Jane Austen and more about Georgian balloon ascents in my book The English Pleasure Garden 1660-1860.