The Brighton Road Part 4

Mention has already been made of the "Old Times," which made such a fleeting appearance on this road; but justice was not done to it, or to Selby, in that incidental allusion. They require a niche to themselves in the history of the revival--a niche to which shall be appended this poetic excerpt:

Here's the "Old Times," it's one of the best, Which no coaching man will deny, Fifty miles down the road with a jolly good load, Between London and Brighton each day.

Beckett, M'Adam, and d.i.c.key, the driver, are there, Of old Jim's presence every one is aware, They are all nailing good sorts, And go in for all sports, So we'll all go a-coaching to-day.

It is poetry whose like we do not often meet. Tennyson himself never attempted to capture such heights of rhyme. He could, and did, rhyme "poet" with "know it," but he never drove such a c.o.c.kney team as "deny"

and "to-dy" to water at the Pierian springs.

VII

"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 misp.r.o.nounced--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.

[Sidenote: MOTOR-CARS]

In 1886 Daimler produced his motor-bicycle, and by 1891 his motor engine was adapted by Panhard and Leva.s.sor 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "OLD TIMES," 1888. _From a painting by Alfred S.

Bishop._]

The following year Mr. Evelyn Ellis brought over the first motor-car to reach England, a 4 h.-p. Panhard, and a little later, Sir David Salomons, of Tunbridge Wells, imported a Peugeot. In that town, October 15th, 1895, he held the first show of cars--four or five at most--in this country.

Then began an agitation raised by a few enthusiasts for the removal of the existing restrictions upon road traffic. A deputation waited upon the Local Government Board, and the Light Locomotives Act of 1896 was pa.s.sed in August, legalising mechanical traction up to a speed of fourteen miles an hour, the Act to come into operation on November 14th.

For whatever reason, the Light Locomotives Act was pa.s.sed so quietly, under the aegis 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.

[Sidenote: "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 proposed celebration of the event by a great procession of the newly-enfranchised "light locomotives"

from Whitehall to Brighton, on November 14th.

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 advertis.e.m.e.nt, 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 antic.i.p.ated the immense crowds that a.s.sembled 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 "pa.r.s.e 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 alt.i.tudes 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 ash.o.r.e on the neck of a policeman. Rumour got around that an organised ma.s.sacre 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "COMET," 1890. _From a painting by Alfred S. Bishop._]

Time went on, the crowd grew bigger, the mud was churned into slush, and everybody was treading upon everybody else.

"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?"

Meanwhile there was a certain "something lingering with oil in it,"

permeating the fog, while a sound as of many humming-tops filled the air.

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.