Motors and Motor-Driving/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
THE CHARMS OF DRIVING IN MOTORS
By the Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Jeune, K.C.B.
This is an old country, and one of our most valuable pieces of inheritance is the ancient asset of good roads penetrating every corner of the island. New countries may have fine railways, but though, and perhaps because, they have fine railways they have not, and never will have, roads equal to ours. And it is not only an ancient, it is also a well-preserved asset. It is the duty of any one who uses the roads of Great Britain for motor-cars to express his gratitude perhaps to the ancient Romans, certainly to the old turnpike trustees and to their modern successors the county councils, and I say this the more emphatically in the hope of encouraging the county councils to persevere in their good work. These roads are the sphere of the motor-car, and my belief is that, could we consult our friends the horses, there would be whatever in the case of horses corresponds to a plebiscite in favour of utilising it to the fullest extent.
Many persons did, and, I am afraid, some persons do still, accuse us of a love of too rapid progression. I feel inclined myself to plead guilty to the limited extent of acknowledging that there is a glorious exhilaration in the mere motion of a motor-car, strong, unwearying, unresting, with no drawback of regret for strain of exertion on man or beast. The mere sense of motion is a delightful thing; the gallop of a horse over elastic turf, the rush of a bicycle down-hill with a suspicion of favouring wind, the rhythmical swing of an eight-oar, the trampling progress of a four-in-hand, the striding swoop on skates across the frozen fens—all these are things of which the reminiscence and the echo come back to us with the dash and pulsations of the motor-car. Even Dr. Johnson thought that nothing was so delightful as the rapid motion of the post-chaise. I should like to have given the sage a lift in a motorcar, and gained for the world the testimony to a sensation of delight by a philosopher theretofore undreamt of in his philosophy.
And in this pleasure of motion we are, if not independent of the weather, at least almost independent of seasons. The hotter the sun the more agreeable the fanning of the air through which we pass, and the cold of winter, guarded against in proper fashion, carries with it its own exhilaration. To my mind the greatest pleasures and the greatest advantages derivable from the motor-car are the power of traversing large areas of the beautiful country in which it is our happiness to live. The use of motors in town is increasing and, doubtless, will greatly increase. It is no small advantage to be able to go from place to place with no thought of tiring horses and no fear of cold through waiting. But even to those living in towns, the country contributes most to the pleasure of possessing a motor. At one of the dinners of the Automobile Club, when it was suggested that motors had a future in bringing agricultural produce to the large towns, the audience agreed with the observation that, if it was. desirable that the motor should bring cabbages to the workman, it was still more desirable for the motor to take the workman to the cabbages. For myself, after a long day in Court, I often feel that I am a workman who wants to be taken to the cabbages. I remember hearing it said that, in his last illness, Lord Beaconsfield derived great pleasure and benefit from driving in the lanes of the north of London, amid surroundings of the rural character of which, so near London, he had hitherto little idea. Where are those lanes now after an interval of only twenty years? The ring of suburban habitations grows constantly deeper and denser, and it is, I think, an invaluable function of the motor-car that for many years to come it can, even in an idle hour or two, carry us from the heart of the metropolis into the woods and fields of genuine country. It is a case of civilisation providing an antidote for its own poison, and I for one am glad to be able to enjoy both the poison and the remedy.
The country is, however, and I think it always will be, the best sphere of the motor. I am afraid I cannot help recurring to my personal experience, but judging from that, a motor justifies its existence best from the great, the never-ending, the ever-changing delight of travelling through many miles of country surroundings.
To many of us come all the pleasures and excitement of exploration. I am sure most persons know of a corner of their counties, previously as inaccessible as the North Pole, which can now be visited with no fear of a chill welcome at the end, and with the prospect of the consumption of something better than the train oil of the Esquimaux gourmet. If we live near a range of hills there is the perpetual curiosity as to what is to be seen on the other side. I believe that the 1 )uke of Wellington used to say that the best general was the man who knew what was on the other side of a hill. We are all of us in that sense qualifying to be generals now, with the difference that the knowledge we gain is that of friends and not of enemies. Even if the country through which we pass is familiar, there is not only the pleasure of seeing it under the different aspects of weather and season, but there is the interest of observing the behaviour of our faithful car, as it traverses distances and mounts hills, of the difficulties of which we are often possibly only too well cognisant. And there are not many districts, I should suppose, which have not at least one hill to excite the aspiration of unsatisfied ambition.
But we clip the wings of the possibilities of motors if we limit them to travels of which a home is the immediate centre. The trials organised by the Automobile Club point to the practicability of journeys for which our country is so admirably adapted. The motor-car may become a land yacht with more variety of scenery than its marine prototype, and an absence of the frequent disconcerting motion peculiar to the sea. I do not at all depreciate the pleasure of travelling over a beautiful country in a railway. No one who has looked down from the Brenner Pass into Italy, no one who has climbed up the spiral line to Andermatt, or who has speeded over the sunny plains of France or even the expanses of Russia, at least in the luxury Russian railway-carriages afford, will doubt that railways can give an adequate experience of scenery of a grand and far-reaching character. But what do they know of England who only England know from the window of a railway-carriage?—the great plain or valley, even with its sunlit varieties of grass and corn and wood, contributes only a small part of the beauty which England has to show, but which she declines to disclose to the railway-traveller.
The voyager by road thinks less of a great expanse of scenery, bounded though it may be by the long waving line of mysterious hills, than he does of the thousand sights of beauty and interest under his eyes. A railway has no foreground, unless telegraph posts on an embankment half-clothed, and not at all ashamed, can be said to constitute such a feature. To a road and the traveller on it the foreground is everything. The hedges, the trees dappling the road with shade and sunshine, the cottages, the village greens and ponds, the village itself through which we pass with a fleeting interest in its life, the glimpses down side lanes into their infinite suggestions of light and colour—these are sights repeated in the endless variety of nature and rural life, and of which the changeful pleasure is unending. I am not sure whether the motor-car is as popular in the rural districts as it is, or at least I believe was, in France, but I fancy that to-day, if we choose, we shall not find our neighbour anything but cordial. We revive in these later days very much of the spirit of the old coaches, and we may perhaps revive something of the interest in them of the country inns and the people of the country. Speaking again for myself, I have never found the country people anything hut kindly and interested, and indeed quite ready to enjoy the new experience. I remember once somewhere in Somersetshire a herd of most leisurely beasts slowly preceding us on their way to market, entirely declining to make room for us to pass, as is their fashion, and followed by their herdsman. Gradually the procession assumed the form of the beasts travelling at a somewhat, though not much, accelerated speed, the car close behind and the herdsman panting in the rear, till with a complete appreciation of the situation, he hurried up to say, 'Seems to me, measter, if you be going to drive them beasts all the way to market you had better take me up.' The market fortunately was not far distant, but I think the herdsman would not have objected to a similar ride as each market day came round.
The old people seem to manifest more curiosity than the young. The school children, it is true, usually line the road and utter shouts of which I have never been able to discern the significance, or seek the delight, to me, I confess, wholly unintelligible, of throwing their caps under the advancing car. But when a car stops old people invariably surround it with criticism and inquiry. The witticism, 'Seems to me, measter, your horse can't get on without drinking any more than ourn,' never fails, and many an old lady gladly accepts the experience of a ride to the end of her village and back again. I wish I could add that horses in the country manifested more indifference than their owners. But I am afraid it is just the old agricultural horse, who looks wise enough to know better, that exhibits an unexpected excitement, unless indeed he is standing unlocked after by his master, in which case his indifference to the passing car is usually beyond all praise.
We have in the motor-car of the good type to-day a new and growing source of health, of pleasure and advantage, and we, who have been the first to avail ourselves of it, may without undue exaltation congratulate ourselves on our wisdom and those who follow us on our example.