  “Carriages without horses shall go,” is the “prophecy” attributed to that mythical fifteenth century pythoness, Mother Shipton; really the ex post facto forgery of Charles Hindley, the second-hand bookseller, in 1862. It should not be difficult, on such terms, to earn the reputation of a seer. Between 1823 and 1838, the era of the steam-carriages, that prognostication had already been fulfilled: and again, in another sense, with the introduction of railways. But it was not until the close of 1896 that the real horseless era began to dawn. Railways, extravagantly discriminative tolls, and restrictions upon weight and speed killed the steam-carriages, and for more than fifty years the highways knew no other mechanical locomotion than that of the familiar traction-engines, restricted to three miles an hour and preceded by a man with a red flag. It is true that a few hardy inventors continued to waste their time and money on devising new forms of steam-carriages, and were only fined for their pains when they were rash enough to venture on the public roads, as when Bateman, of Greenwich, invented a steam-tricycle, and Sir Thomas Parkyn, Bart., was fined at Greenwich Police Court, April 8th, 1881, for riding it. That incident appears to have finally quenched the ardour of inventive genius in this country; but a new locomotive force already existing unsuspected was about this period being experimented with on the Continent by one Gottlieb Daimler, whose name—generally mispronounced—is now sufficiently familiar to all who know anything of motor-cars. Daimler was at that time connected with the Otto Gas Engine Works in Germany, where the adaptive Germans were exploiting the gas-engine principle invented by Crossley many years before. MOTOR-CARS In 1886 Daimler produced his motor-bicycle, and by 1891 his motor engine was adapted by Panhard and Levassor to other types of vehicles. The French were thus the first to perceive the great possibilities of it, and by 1894 the motor-cars already in use in France were so numerous that the first sporting event in the history of them—the 760 miles’ race from Paris to Bordeaux and back—was run. THE “OLD TIMES,” 1888. For whatever reason, the Light Locomotives Act was passed so quietly, under the Ægis of the Local Government Board, as to almost wear the aspect of an organised secrecy, and the coming of what is now known as Motor-car Day was utterly unsuspected by the bulk of the public. It even caught the newspapers unprepared, until the week before. But the financiers and company-promoters had been busy. They at least fully realised the importance of the era about to dawn; and the extravagant flotations of the Great Horseless Carriage Company and of many others long since bankrupt and forgotten, together with the phenomenal over-valuation of patents, very soon discredited the new movement. Never has there been a new industry so hardly used by company-promoting sharks as that of motor-cars. “MOTOR-CAR DAY” No inkling of subsequent financial disasters clouded Motor-car Day, and as at almost the last moment the Press had come to the conclusion that it was an occasion to be written up and enlarged upon, a very great public interest was aroused in the Motor-car Club’s The Motor-car Club is dead. It was not a club in the proper sense of the word, but an organisation promoted and financed by the company-promoters who were interested in advertising their schemes. The run to Brighton was itself intended as a huge advertisement, but the unprepared condition of many of the cars entered, together with the miserable weather prevailing on that day, resulted in turning the whole thing into ridicule. The newspapers had done their best to advertise the event; but no one anticipated the immense crowds that assembled at the starting-point, Whitehall Place, by nine o’clock on that wet and foggy morning. By half-past ten, the hour fixed for the start, there was a maddening chaos of hundreds of thousands of sightseers such as no Lord Mayor’s Show or Royal Procession had ever attracted. Everybody in the crowd wanted a front place, and those who got one, being both unable and unwilling to “parse away,” were nearly scragged by the police, who on the Embankment set upon individuals like footballers on the ball; while snap-shotters wasted plates on them from the secure altitudes of omnibuses or other vehicles. Those whose journalistic duties took them to see the start had to fight their way down from Charing Cross, up from Westminster, or along from the Embankment; contesting inch by inch, and wondering if the starting-point would ever be gained. At length the Metropole hove in sight, but the motor-cars had yet to be found. To accomplish this feat it was necessary to hurl oneself into a surging tide of humanity, and surge with it. The tide carried the explorer away and eventually washed him ashore on the neck of a policeman. Rumour got around that an organised massacre of cab-horses was contemplated, and myriads of mounted police appeared and had their photographs taken from the tops of cabs and other envied positions occupied by amateur photographers, who paid dearly to take pictures of the fog, which they could have done elsewhere for nothing. THE “COMET,” 1890. “Ain’t this bloomin’ fun, sir?” asked the driver of a growler, his sides shaking with laughter, “Even my ole ’oss ’as bin larfin’.” “Very intelligent horse,” we said, thinking of Mr. Pickwick, and determining to ask some searching questions as to his antecedents. “Interleck’s a great p’int, sir. Which ’ud you sooner be in: a runaway mortar-caw or a keb?” “Neither.” “No, I ain’t jokin’, strite. I’ve just bin argying wif a bloke as said he’d sooner be in a caw. I said I pitied ’is choice, and wouldn’t give ’im much for his charnce. ’Cos why? ’Cos mortar-caws ain’t got no interleck. They cawn’t tell the dif’rence ’tween nothink an’ a brick wall. Now a ’os can. If ’e don’t turn orf ’e tries ter jump th’ wall, but yer mortar simply goes fer it, and then where are yer? In ’eaven, if yer lucky, or in——” But the rest of his sentence was lost in the roar that ascended from the crowd as the cars commenced their journey to Brighton. They went beautifully for a few yards, chased the mounted police right into the crowd, and then stopped. “It’s th’ standin’ still as does it—not the standin’ still, I mean the not going forrard, ’cos they don’t stand still,” said the cabby, excitedly. “Don’t they hum?” he cried. “They certainly do make a little noise.” “But I mean, don’t they whiff?” “Whiff?” He held his nose. “I say, guv’nor.” shouted cabby to a fur-coated foreigner, “wot is it smells so?” Then the cars moved on a bit, amid the cheers and chaff of a good-humoured crowd. Presently another stoppage and more shivering. “’As thet cove there got th’ Vituss dance?” inquired the elated cabby, indicating a gentleman who was wobbling like a piece of jelly. “That’s the vibration,” explained another. “’Ow does the vibration agree w’ the old six yer ’ad last night?” cabby inquired immediately. “I say, Chawlie, don’t it make yer sea-sick? Oh my! th’ smell!” and he gasped and sat on his box, looking bilious. When all the carriages had wended their way to Westminster we asked cabby what he thought of the procession. “Arsk my ’os,” said he, with a look of disgust on his face. “What’s yer opinion of it, old gal? Failyer? My sentiments. British public won’t pay to be choked with stinks one moment and shut up like electricity t’ next. Failyer? Quite c’rect.” Meanwhile the guests of the Motor-car Club were breakfasting at the Hotel Metropole, where appropriate speeches were made, the Earl of Winchilsea concluding his remarks with the dramatic production of a red flag, which, amid applause, he tore in half, to symbolise the passing of the old restrictions. There had been fifty-four entries for this triumphal procession, but not more than thirty-three cars put in an appearance. It is significant of the vast progress made since then that no car present was more than 6 h.-p., and that all, except the BollÉe three-wheeled car, were precisely what they were frequently styled, “horseless carriages,” vehicles built on traditional lines, from which the horses and the customary shafts With the combined strategy of a Napoleon, the patience of Job, and the strength of Samson, the guests were at length piloted through the crowd and inducted into their seats, and the “procession”—which, it was sternly ordained, was not to be a “race”—set out. THE FIRST CARS The President of the Motor-car Club, Harry J. Lawson, since convicted of fraud and sentenced to some months’ imprisonment, led the way in his pilot-car, bearing a purple-and-gold banner, more or less suitably inscribed, himself habited in a strange costume, something between that of a yachtsman and the conductor of a Hungarian band. Reigate was reached at 12.30 by the foremost ear, through twenty miles of crowded country, when rain descended once more upon the hapless day, and late arrivals splashed through in all the majesty of mud. The honours of the occasion belong to the little BollÉe three-wheeler, of a type long since obsolete. The inventor, disregarding all rules and times, started at 11.30, and, making no stop at Reigate, drove on to Brighton, which he reached in the record time of two hours fifty-five minutes. The President’s car was fourth, in seven hours twenty-two minutes thirty seconds. At Preston Park, on the Brighton boundary, the Mayor was to have welcomed the procession, which, headed by the President, was to proceed triumphantly into the town. A huge crowd assembled under the dripping elms and weeping skies, and there, at five o’clock, in the light of the misty lamps, stood and vibrated that presidential equipage and its banner with the strange device. By five o’clock only three other cars had arrived; and so, wet and miserable, they, the Mayor and Council, and the mounted police all splashed into Brighton amid a howling gale. The rest should be silence, for no one ever knew the number of cars that completed the journey. Some But, after all, looking back upon the hasty enthusiasm that organised so long a journey at such a time of year, at so early a stage in the motor-car era, it seems remarkable, not that so many broke down, but that so large a proportion reached Brighton at all. The logical outcome of years of experiment and preparation was reached, in the supersession of the horsed London and Brighton Parcel Mail on June 2nd, 1905, by a motor-van, and in the establishment, on August 30th, of the “Vanguard” London and Brighton Motor Omnibus Service, starting in summer at 9.30 a.m., and reaching Brighton at 2 p.m.; returning from Brighton at 4 p.m., and finally arriving at its starting-point, the “Hotel Victoria,” Northumberland Avenue, at 9 p.m. With the beginning of November, 1905, that summer service was replaced by one to run through the winter months, with inside seats only, and at reduced fares. The first fatality on the Brighton Road in connection with motor-cars occurred in 1901, at Smitham Bottom, when a car just purchased by a retired builder and contractor of Brighton was being driven by him from London. The steering-gear failed, the car turned completely round, ran into an iron fence and pinned the owner’s leg against it and a tree. The leg was broken and had to be amputated, and the unfortunate man died of the shock. But the motor-omnibus accident of July 12th, 1906, was a really spectacular tragedy. On that day a “Vanguard” omnibus, chartered by a party of thirty-four pleasure seekers at Orpington for a day at Brighton, Meanwhile, amateur coaching had, in most of the years since the professional coaches had been driven off the road, flourished in the summer season. The last notable amateur was the American millionaire, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who for several seasons personally drove his own “Venture” coach between London and Brighton; at first on the main “classic” road, and afterwards on the Dorking and Horsham route. He met his death on board the Lusitania, when it was sunk by the Germans, May 7th. 1915. |
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