Читать книгу Bravo Brown! - Terence FitzSimons - Страница 11

CHAPTER 1 1843

From Mr H. Davies, Cheltenham, April 4, 1843.

This is a response 17-year-old Brown received to a letter written to Henry Davies, the editor of the ‘Cheltenham Onlooker’. Davis was very active in the social and civic life of that town, though his forte was music rather than aeronautics. William Russum, the aeronaut, was a person with whom Brown claimed to be ‘very intimate’, but later Russum came to be distrusted and considered unhelpful.

I have to apologise for not replying earlier to your letter of Dec 31/42 enquiring as to the balloon ascent of Mr Russum from this place in August 1841 but truth to tell my daily avocations have so completely occupied my time that I had no leisure to turn to the subject before and I am not able to add much to the information you already appear to possess. I quite forget the peculiar circumstances of Mr Russum’s ascent but this I recollect, that after the many brilliant ascents made from this place by Green in the Nassau balloon, by Mr and Mrs Graham, and by Mr Hampton, that of Mr Russum proved quiet a disappointment to us.

Mr Hampton, you are doubtless aware, made a very remarkable and successful parachute descent the most brilliant affair of the kind, considered as a spectacle, that was probably ever exhibited.¹ The first balloon ascent that ever took place in Cheltenham was I believe in 1813 when Mr Sadler Jnr ascended in a balloon inflated with gas procured from sulphuric acid and iron filings 35 cwt of the former, and a ton and a half of the latter being used. When inflated, the balloon would not carry Sadler by himself, and consequently his son, aged 16, too his place.

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Green made an ascent in 1822, accompanied by Mr S. Y. Griffiths. This was the first balloon inflated with the common coal gas, and we have had ascents almost without number of late years. The complete arrangements of our gasworks have favoured these experiments. Very full accounts of all the ascents from Cheltenham could be obtained from the files of the different papers of the time.

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1 Hampton made this descent on October 3rd, 1838, at the Montpellier Gardens, Cheltenham.