DEATH OF NADA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 846, 31 May 1910, Page 4

DEATH OF NADA.

INTERESTING PARISIAN CHARACTER. One of the most interesting personalities of old Paris that is last disappearing went the way of all flesh on March 20. It was M. Felix Tournachon, better known as Nadar. In his time he had been medical student, journalist, artist, political), engineer, photographer, and aeronaut. Nadar, who had reached the age of 90, belonged to that almost extinct type o, true Bohemian, which in the last century flourished on the congenial suil of France, and no man in his time played more parts. As long ago as the early sixties he outlined the heavier-than-air principle of the modern aeroplane, and, although his ideas became the butt of the cafe concert and the comic press of the gay Paris of the Second Empire, he lived to say when he heard of M. Bleriol’s flight across the Channel, 11 Now I can die happy ! ” With his shock of flaming red hair, Nadar was a typical boulevard celebrity. He was in turn journalist, pamphleteer, cariccatnrist, revolutionary, aeronaut, and photographer, and in each capacity he achieved fame. He was an intimate of Baudelaire. Alphonse Daudet, Theophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, and Offenbach. His goodness of heart was unbounded. He delighted to do good by stealth. He risked his life by concealing a refugee Communard from governmental reprisals in 1871. It was he who hid the famous General Bergaret in his house, and who boldly went to Thiers, and asked for a passport for his friend. “ Hullo,” said Thiers, when he saw him, “haven’t you been shot yet?” ‘‘No, general,” was the reply, “ that depends on you.”

lu the fifties he turned his attention to photography, and, besides contributing considerably to the development of artistic camera work in France, this extraordinary man became one of the precursors of colour photography. In 1862 he took up ballooning, and constructed the biggest ballon on record, Le Geant, which carried 14 people, and contained 215,363 cubic feet of gas. His first ascent with 14 persons in 1863 was successful and created an enormous sensation, but the Geant came to grief on its next trip. After a terrible experience, the monster fell to the earth near Hanover. None of the occupants were hurt, but Madame Nadar, who accompanied her husband, found that her hair had turned white during the trip, and Nadar was prostrated for weeks by the shock. Nadar exhibited the Geant at the Crystal Palace in the same year. From his ascents in the Geant Nadar hoped to obtain funds to build a “dirigible aeromotive,” as he called it, but he lost all his fortune, and turned once more to photography, opening a studio, which soon became a social centre of Paris. During the siege of Paris, he was a commander of a balloon corps, and made several thrilling sorties over the enemy’s lines with dispatches to the Provincial Government.