The one great, but melancholy, sensation of Baum’s management was the episode of ‘Monsieur de Groof, the flying man.’ Vincent de Groof was a Belgian who had constructed a flying machine on which he made some ascents with doubtful success in his native land. He came to England in 1874, and with some difficulty persuaded Baum to let him go through his dangerous performance at Cremorne. Certainly the flying man made a good advertisement, and on the evening of June 29, 1874, there was a great concourse in the gardens. The machine was suspended by a rope, 30 feet long, from the car of Simmons’s ‘Czar’ balloon, and while the tedious process of inflation was going on the spectators had time to inspect a flying apparatus strange and wonderful. It was constructed of cane and waterproof silk, and was made ‘in imitation of the bat’s wing and peacock’s tail.’ Evidently De Groof, like his inventive predecessor in _Rasselas_, had considered the structure of all volant animals, and found ‘the folding continuity of the bat’s wing most easily accommodated to the human form.’ His wings were 37 feet long from tip to tip, and his tail 18 feet long. In the centre was fixed an upright wooden stand about 12 feet high, in which De Groof placed himself, working the wings and tail by means of three levers. He ascended from Cremorne about eight, and as the balloon rose seemed like a big bird perched in his net framework. He was meant to descend in the gardens, but the wind carried the balloon away to Brandon in Essex, where he made a perilous descent from the balloon, almost unseen, but apparently without injury. The Cremorne habitué felt that he was cheated of a sight, and on July 9 the experiment had to be repeated. At about half-past seven the machine was once more taken up by Simmons’s balloon, and this time there was no changing of the venue. The balloon soared to a great height, but for fully half an hour continued to hover over the gardens. Then the wind bore it rapidly away in the direction of St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea, till the machine was perilously near the church tower. No one quite knew what happened at this moment. Simmons seems to have called out, ‘I must cut you loose,’ and De Groof to have responded ‘Yes, and I can fall in the churchyard.’ Suddenly the rope was severed, the machine, without resistance to the air, was seen to collapse, and wind round and round in its descent, till it fell with a heavy thud near the kerbstone in Robert Street. {18} A great crowd had collected, and De Groof was picked up in a terrible state, and taken into the Chelsea Infirmary to die. The fate of the balloon was an anti-climax: it was carried away to Springfield in Essex, where it came down on the Great Eastern railway-line after a narrow escape from a passing train. The whole affair caused great excitement in London, and the details were copied into papers like the _Indian Mirror_.