JULES HENRI GIFFARD

Flight of Fancy

‘Our recollection, our expectation was of a peacock;

The reality is a bullfinch.’ (Proust)

*

“I leave the Hippodrome at quarter past five. The wind is blowing with considerable force. There is no one but me up here, 1500 metres above the city, suspended beneath a hydrogen filled bag. Looking down as I begin my journey, I have much to tend to as the machine makes its way eastwards driven by the three-bladed propeller. No doubt my many colleagues will be interested in the details of this mechanised flight, the first by any man, but I shall also keep this record of my thoughts as the flight develops.”

[« Je laisse l'Hippodrome à cinq heures et quart. Le vent souffle avec une force considérable. Il n'y a pas que moi ici, 1500 mètres au-dessus de la ville, suspendu sous un atome d'hydrogène remplis sac. Regardant vers le bas alors que je commence mon voyage, j'ai beaucoup à tendance à la machine fait son chemin vers l'est entraîné par l'hélice à trois pales. Sans doute mes nombreux collègues seront intéressés par les détails de ce vol mécanisé, le premier par n'importe quel homme, mais je vais aussi garder cet enregistrement de ma pensée que le vol se développe. » ]

So begins Henri Giffard’s personal journal of his historic flight on 24^th September 1852 and we now know what Giffard thought as he flew. This journal, only recently discovered in the archives of ‘Le Musée des Curieux et Onirique’ in Paris, has yet to be fully translated and published. The delicate task is in the hands of Tagore. But this account of the very first flight by man in a mechanical device- an airship propelled by steam engine- offers many insights into this very private man’s thoughts as he flew above Paris and the countryside leading to Elancourt, near Trappes, where he made his landing.

Previously the only contemporary record was the brief account given in ‘La Presse’ the day following this singular achievement.

[‘A l’Hippodrome aujourd’hui vendredi la première expérience de la navigation aérienne par la vapeur (système Giffard)…Cette curieuse machine qui fait l’admiration de tous les savants réunira l’élite de la science et de la société parisienne qu’une si haute question intéressera vivement. Les exercices équestres seront généralement suspendus. Les bureaux ouvrirent à quatre heures et demie…’]

The Hippodrome was the area for the display of horsemanship outside the ‘barrière de l’Étoile’, a large road junction today called the Place Charles de Gaulle. Here they could capriole, croupade, courbette, levade and piaffe to their heart’s content.

Ballooning was a popular amusement in those days at the beginning of the Second Empire. Jules Verne was to write a fictional story (‘La Science en Famille: Un voyage en Ballon’) about a flight, concentrating more on “action” than the experience of the flight. We may assume that he was one of those who witnessed Giffard’s departure; perhaps he even threw his hat in the air! There was quite a to-do after the dirigible had disappeared from sight as gentlemen sought to recover their hats and disputes and fights broke out. Whether or not Jules Verne recovered his hat we leave for the historians to decide. Scientific enthusiasts proliferated. Monarchs, diplomats, ladies and gentlemen of culture and distinction- bewigged, bejewelled, bedevilled or bald- all wanted to soar into the sky so that they might look down on the world and think thoughts nobody else had thought (or they thought had not been thought). Quizzical birds would cock their eyes as they fluttered past and think what a cumbersome device that was. Angels, discreetly hidden by clouds, would tut-tut and mutter to each other about Icarus. It was the generally received wisdom (accepit sapientiam) in the Vatican that if man had been meant to fly he would have been given wings, or at least some kind of membranous in-built parachute system which would allow him to leap from cliffs and other high spots (such as skyscrapers, when they were invented, or ziggurats, when they existed) and to glide bat-like o’er the green sward and roiling oceans. One of the great dangers of ballooning was that the globule might be punctured by the pecking beaks of curious or naughty birds- starlings were the worst. It was only when specially trained claw-clipped cats were employed to patrol the globule that the danger of ‘deflation by pecking’ was controlled sufficiently to allow pleasure flights for profit to boom.

Giffard was a chess enthusiast and to stave off boredom, as much as for the sheer hell of it, he had arranged to conduct a game of chess with his friend Pierre Saint-Amant, recently returned from California, as the flight progressed. (The score of this game, abstracted from Giffard’s journal and also found in Saint-Amant’s papers at Algiers with commentary, is given at the end of this article.) Saint-Amant was seated comfortably in the Café de la Régence and the moves were to be transmitted between the two friends by means of a system of mirrors.

Since the route of Giffard’s flight could not be predicted in advance, other than by knowing the general direction in which the wind was blowing, a series of riders on horses galloped along the several outlying roads to the east of Paris to pick up the flashing messages from balloon and Café. Special Uzbek nosebags full of prime oats were affixed to milestones along the way to give sustenance. A telephone would have been nice, but they hadn’t been invented. Semaphore would have involved a lot of waving but the French weren’t particularly skilled at that. In any case they had replaced semaphore with Morse telegraph that very year, all the flags being turned into fashionable dresses for ladies of breeding. Pigeons would simply have flown home, missing the dirigible in motion by miles. No, mirrors it had to be (the heliograph having first been used by the clever ancient Greeks to bemuse the not so clever Persians) especially as Giffard wanted to shave during the flight to test the tensility of the badger’s tail at altitude. (It was known that badgers were averse to flying and would burrow deeply to avoid the sky.) What the results of that test were we do not know though Giffard was eminently presentable and clean-shaven (he grew his beard again quickly) when he returned to Paris later that evening.

*

As well as the small chess board and pieces which he had brought with him, not knowing how long the game might last and fearing that time might drag once the novelty of flying had worn off, Giffard had taken along a selection of books to read. These included Pushkin’s ‘Gabriliad’; Li Yu’s tale Cuìyǎ lóu (萃雅樓, "House of Gathered Refinements"); Jean Charles Nodier’s little known erotic classic ‘La Coquille’; Eugène Sue’s ‘ Les Mémoires du Comte de Colombin’; Lamartine’s ‘ La Discipline des Jumelles ’; and Dumas père’s ‘Marie Graillon et le Mataf ’. When towards the end of his twenty-six kilometre flight the coke was running out Giffard had to feed these rare tomes one by one into the steam producing boiler in order to maintain his altitude and forward motion. Being a scientist first and foremost he detailed with minute care the combustibility of each work. Though Dumas père’s tome had it for sheer weight and size it gave the lowest thrust and momentum; whereas Nodier’s slim volume burnt slowly and yet fiercely, propelling the dirigible towards its desired target with estimable steadiness. Pushkin’s work (in Russian) gave rather erratic results (‘урывками’ as they say on the Volga). Lamartine, Li Yu and Sue were much of a muchness, emitting heat roughly in proportion to their content. On reflection he thought that one volume of de Sade (e.g.‘Histoire secrète d'Isabelle de Bavière, reine de France, dans laquelle se trouvent des faits rares, inconnus ou restés dans l'oubli jusqu'à ce jour, et soigneusement étayés de manuscrits authentiques allemands, anglais et latins’) could have replaced the entire consignment of coke, leaving room perhaps for some bottles of wine and canapés.

*

“These are the moments I savour” he wrote, “the moments as the wind takes me where it wills! Below, so far below now, lies the babble of the many voices of those come to cheer my departure. The great cacophony of noise drove the nesting birds from the rooftops. They all shout and demand and cheer. The tongue can do more harm than the sword ever could. There are languages and dialects that are extinct, glyphics that are indecipherable; and then there is this silence, this cold silence broken only by the rumble of the steam in the boiler. Who amongst us would prefer silence? We are not taught so to be. We are imprinted with language and the need to utter, to communicate. As well as casting stones we can cast words. For us silence is a torture, a prison. The mute we regard as impaired. Yet up here what a blessing! How marvellous to be free of all that which makes you cling to the ground! Up here I am pure observation, an all-seeing eye that encompasses as much as can be seen. Around this craft the birds serenade and escort me, as though I was a colossal cousin visiting from another continent. The clouds shyly part like virginal thighs to permit my passage. How the winds blow, the mirages swirl and the horizons allure!”

Perhaps he should have chosen more catholic reading matter.

*

“Do the insane have a concept of time different from ours? Do birds have a sense of time? If so, is it similar or dissimilar to ours? Is time one thing or many? I wonder if the sense of time is real or just something we learn, like the alphabet. We use concepts such as year, month, day, hour, minute, life-time to differentiate the passage of time. So much of our thought, so many of our actions, are dictated by these concepts and imperatives that seem to enmesh us. To the Buddha it is all ‘unreal’, that from which we must free ourselves. Up here, for a brief while- time again! - I feel freer than on my natural platform, terra firma the earth beneath. Let me float above these things for ever!”

*

What the animals on the ground made of the overhead passage of that shape akin to a whale out of water we don’t know. Did they regard it as a ‘chindogu’ (珍道具)? Perhaps we’ll never know; and if we did know we don’t know that it matters at all. Most of the animals carried on with their routines as though they were on the stage at the ‘Théâtre du Vaudeville’ in the place de la Bourse- chewing the cud, chasing each other down holes, sticking their tongues out and trapping flies, clucking and strutting and scratching and neighing and oinking and mooing. Some hopped, some skipped and some took piggy-backs. From the contraption drifted down a voice singing ‘Hey get along, Jim along Josie, Hey get along, Jim along Joe!’ in that strange language they’d probably last heard when Wellington’s troops skirmished with General Vandamme near Clamart. It would take a lot more than something like that to impress the wildlife of Seine-et-Oise!

*

Giffard was at a height of 1800 metres when, wanting to land before nightfall, he began his descent. This involved putting out the fire in the boiler, releasing its contents and making a rapid descent in a cloud of steam which blotted out everything around him until with a bump he landed in a field near Elancourt, narrowly missing one of the scarecrows which the birds used for target practice. Whose field he landed in is still a matter of dispute. The locals, who had been nearby playing a game of la soule, helped him to deflate the balloon and unhook the undercarriage.

*

At Trappes he waited for the train that would take him back to Paris. Near the station was the large Étang de Saint-Quentin the water of which fed the fountains at Versailles. Also near the station was the site of the abbaye de Port-Royal des Champs, the monastery having been founded in 1204 by Mathilde de Garlande. It was here that Racine had been educated after his parents had died. Giffard thought of those lines of Racine’s as he glimpsed the lake:

Que c'est une chose charmante
De voir cet étang gracieux,
Où, comme en un lit précieux,
L'onde est toujours calme et dormante!

The train drew away and travelled across the wide, fertile plateau of Trappes. All around grew wheat and barley and long lines of fruit trees stood on either side of the roads. Clumps of woodland began to dot the more undulating land as the train approached Saint-Cyr, where he could see the edifice of l’École militaire. Giffard recalled that it was for the boarding school girls of Saint-Cyr that Racine had broken his silence and written his later tragedies ‘Esther’ and ‘Athalie’. To the right lay the woods of Satory and then the train pulled into Versailles. Where once there had been a ramshackle impoverished village, brush and scrub and muddy potholes there now stood the Palace. Onward the train ran, through the wooded hills near Viroflay and past Chaville until it stopped once more at Bellevue, where Madame Pompadour had had a château. Nearby was Sèvres, famous for its porcelain production started by the Marquis de Fulvy. Then over the viaduct de Fleury, past the Château de Meudon near Clamant and between the forts of Vanvres and d’Issy (where the first French opera ‘Pastorale’ was said to have been performed and where Bossuet and Fénelon debated ‘quietism’). As the train drew closer to its destination Giffard could see the darkening plaine de Montrouge, known for its windmills, and through the other window the plaine de Vaugirard, known for its Mécontents in the sixteenth century. He thought back fondly to his days as a train driver and to when aged fourteen he played hookey to watch the passage of the first locomotive from Paris to St. Germain. Finally the train drew to a halt in the Gare Montparnasse and as he stepped out on to the platform the clock was striking ten. His friends- David, Mousser, Sciama, Téter, Alpion, Pacsin and others- cheered him and tired though he was after the long day he permitted them to embrace and congratulate him.

We know that to celebrate his historic flight and safe return a few days’ later Giffard’s friends arranged a triumphal meal at Véry’s. The party consuming sole Dugléré, ducklings à la rouennaise, ortolans on toast and lobster à la parisienne; and the floor show was provided by the dancer Jules- Joseph Perrot. Afterwards they took him to see the first performance of the comedy in two acts at the Gymnase Theatre. The play had been announced via the following advertisement in ‘La Presse’:

«  Une personne inconnue a déposé dans les premiers jours de septembre, au théâtre du Gymnase-Dramatique, un manuscrit intitulé ‘La Pariure de Jules-Denis’. Cette pièce a été examinée, reçue, lüe aux acteurs, on l’a mise en répétition aujourd’hui même ; elle sera jouée jeudi 30 septembre dans une représentation extraordinaire donnée au bénéfice de Mme Rose-Chéri…L’auteur de cet ouvrage est prie vouloir bien faire connaître dans le plus bref délai son nom et son adresse à l’administration du Gymnase… »

The authoress was later revealed to be a mature woman of 33 (who should have known better) named Mme Élisa Adam-Boisgontier, who wrote under the pseudonym of Mme. Rocheblave Dubourg. The year before she had written ‘Nouveau Théâtre des demoiselles’ and she now, in a blessed leap year which gave us Turgenev’s ‘Zapiski Okhotnika’ (A Sportsman’s Sketches), inflicted this upon the public! The only relief for the hero at Waterloo was that the Duke of Wellington had died on September 4^th and thus been spared the performance. Giffard, who was warm-hearted and generous to a fault, conceded that Louis Marie Lafontaine had been wickedly superb as the young sailor and that Rose Chéri as La Lise had been virtue personified. But he was heard to say sotto voce that the moment he enjoyed most after the Chorus had opened the proceedings with (to the Air de M. Delioux) ‘Ah! Quel heureux jour pour tout l’voisinage! Toujours! Toujours! Danson en ce jour, c’est la fête au village !’ was when « le rideau baisse ».

*

The fate of that dirigible has given rise to much speculation over the years. The orthodox view is that Giffard, once it had been deflated and wrapped up, had it transported back by train to Paris where he had repaired the various small rents before using the apparatus for a future, less successful flight. What is more likely is that the local farmers spirited the pieces away. The fabric of the aérostat was used to cover hay stacks. The boiler was used to make the unlicensed Médard liqueur discreetly distilled in the ‘Commanderie de Templiers’, which used to be ‘un étape de repos pour les pèlerins en route vers la Terre Sainte’. Its fame is whispered discreetly in the ears of those who chance to pass through the area. Some of the guy-ropes were used for skipping purposes by local youngsters. Other scraps may have turned up on the shelves of ‘Au Bonne Marché’ in the rue de Sèvres.

His private journal like that of many other travellers he forgot and left on the seat of the carriage when he disembarked in Paris. How it found its way into the museum is a mystery.

***

Pierre Charles Fournié de Saint-Amant v Giffard, Henri [B01]

Paris (and mid-air), 1852

1. e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 3.d4 Bg4 4.Bb5+ Nbd7 5.f3 Bf5 6.c4 a6 7.Ba4 b5 8.cxb5 Nxd5 9.bxa6 Nb4 10.Nc3 Rxa6 11.Nge2 Rxa4 12.Qxa4 Nc2+ 13.Kf2 e5 14.Be3 Nxe3 15.Kxe3 exd4+ 16.Nxd4 Bc5 17.Kf4 Qh4+ 18.g4 0–0 19.Nxf5 g5+ 20.Ke4 Re8+ 21.Kd5 Nb6+ 22.Kc6 Qf2 23.Qd1 Qxb2 24.Qc1 Re6+ 25.Kb7 Qb4 26.Qxg5+ Rg6 27.Qd8+ Bf8 28.Ne7+ Kg7 29.Qd4+ 1–0

© R.L.Paige 2010