Exploring Balloonomania: Paris’s 18th Century Craze

I was lucky enough to spend lots of time in Paris last year, and fell in love with the Musee Carnavalet. There were lots of insta influencers taking photos in the garden there, just as I imagine there would have been when Balloonomania hit Paris in 1783, when the Montgolfier brothers first took to the air. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

When I visit a museum – rather like I do in a garden – I like to let my mind wander a bit, seeing what catches my attention. This time it was this beautiful room. What would it be like to live in a room like this?

But then, something else drew me in. That clock! It was not just bucolic, but also, surely, slightly, er, balloony… I went closer. And then I started to see balloons everywhere!

When I got home, I started to explore Balloonomania, the craze for hot air ballooning, that took over France in the late 18th century. People weren’t just jostling to go up in the balloons but they were bringing them into their homes in the form of furniture, paintings, china and even fashion.

Every time I clicked on a different link, I found another story. Here are a few of my favourites.

1. The first balloon launch took place on June 5, 1783, organised by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier using a pice of fabric billowed aloft by a fire of wool and damp straw. Not surprisingly it garnered attention and they were soon asked to demonstrate in front of Louis XVI and the Royal Family. It was thought too dangerous still to send humans up so instead a sheep, duck and cockerel were put in the wicker basket. The animals were called ‘heroes of the air’ and given a place in the Versaille menagerie.

1. There’s even been a duel held in balloons. In 1808, Monsieurs Granpree and Le Pique fought for the hand of Mademoiselle Tirevit in the skies above Paris, launching from the Tuileries Garden (next to the Louvre). They used blunderbusses, because pistols ‘could ot be expected to be efficient in their probably situations’. M. Granpree shot down M. Le Pique’s balloon, and apparently he and his second were dashed to pieces on a house-top. So that’s jolly. I can find no link to what Mademoiselle Tirevit thought.
2. One of the Montgolfiers’ rivals, Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles, built a rival balloon using hydrogen, launching it from Champ de Mars. It landed fifteen miles away in the village of Genoesse where, apparently, it was attacked by frightened peasants. I’m not surprised. Can you imagine what it must have looked like if you’ve never seen one before?
3. One of the balloon-inspired gimmicks was a porcelain bidet with a ballon design painted on the interior. Also ‘Many sexually suggestive cartoons… the inevitable balloon-breasted girls lifted off their feet, monstrous aeronauts infated by gas enemas, or ‘inflammable’ women carrying men off into their clouds.’ (The age of Wonder, Richard Holmes)

God, I can’t begin to tell you what fun I had finding out more about this craze! Let’s go on and have two more, because there are so many goodies.

4. Balloonomania wasn’t just restricted to men. I particularly liked Sophie Blanchard, who was ‘only comfortable in the air’. One of the many things she did (besides suffering frostbite when she ballooned over the Alps) was to set off fireworks on tiny parachutes from her balloon to celebrate the 1810 marriage of Napoleon and Marie-Louise. Richard Holmes in The Age of Wonder describes her special balloon as capable of lifting her up on ‘a tiny, decorative silver gondola… virtually like standing in a flying champagne bucket.’

5. And women got involved in England too. Letitia Ann Sage, ‘the first English Female Aerial Traveller’ describes ‘the General Appearance and Effects of her Expedition with Mr Lunardi’s Balloon’ in her letter addressed to a ‘female friend’ which you can read here. It’s just brilliant.

SO much inspiration. Here’s a poem in which I tried to imagine what it must have been like to see a balloon for the first time.

Watching balloons from a park bench

Sitting on a red blanket

in the eye of the crowd,

we gaze up

at June’s empty sky,

a gust of fire, luck of wind,

and we sigh as a blue moon

floats over. Our shouts rise

like startled starlings.

We all want a taste.

Silent, weightless,

a moment of time to wear

in our hair, sit on

in stuffy dining rooms,

measure our dull days with

as if we too could walk on clouds.