The Brighton Road Part 5

"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 pa.s.sing 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 Bollee 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 were painfully missed. There had not yet been time sufficient for the evolution of the typical motor-car body.

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.

[Sidenote: 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 Bollee 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 a.s.sembled 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 said twenty-two, others thirteen; but it is certain that the conditions were too much for many, and that while some reposed in wayside stables, others, broken down in lonely places, remained on the road all through that awful night. The guests, who in the morning had been unable to find seats on the "horseless carriages," and so had journeyed by special train or by coach, in the end had much to congratulate themselves upon.

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, was proceeding down Hand Cross Hill at twelve miles an hour when some essential part of the gear broke and the heavy vehicle, dashing down-hill at an ever-increasing pace, and swerving from side to side, struck a great oak. The shock flung the pa.s.sengers off violently. Ten were killed and all the others injured, mostly very seriously.

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 "cla.s.sic" 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.

VIII

[Sidenote: THE ROAD OF RECORDS]

Robinson Crusoe, weary of his island solitude, sighed, so the poet tells us, for "the midst of alarms." He should have chosen the Brighton Road; for ever since it has been a road at all it has fully realised the Shakespearian stage-direction of "alarums and excursions." Particularly the "excursions," for it is the chosen track for most record-breaking exploits; and thus it comes to pa.s.s that residents fortunate or unfortunate enough to dwell upon the Brighton Road have the whole panorama of sport unfolded before their eyes, whether they will or no, throughout the whirling year, and see strange sights, hear odd noises, and (since the coming of the motor-car) smell weird smells.

The Brighton Road has ever been a course upon which the enthusiastic exponents of different methods of progression have eagerly exhibited their prowess. But to-day, although it affords as good going as, or better than, ever, it is not so suitable as it was for these displays of speed.

Traffic has grown with the growth of villages and townships along these fifty-two miles, and sport and public convenience are on the highway antipathetic. Yet every kind of sport has its will of the road.

The reasons of this exceptional sporting character are not far to seek.

They were chiefly sportsmen who travelled it in the days when it began to be a road: those full-blooded sportsmen, ready for any freakish wager, who were the boon companions of the Prince; and they set a fashion which has not merely survived into modern times, but has grown amazingly.

But it would never have been the road for sport it is, had its length not been so conveniently and alluringly near an even fifty miles. So much may be done or attempted along a fifty miles' course that would be impossible on a hundred.

[Sidenote: SPORTING EVENTS]

The very first sporting event on the Brighton Road of which any record survives is (with an astonishing fitness) the feat accomplished by the Prince of Wales himself on July 25th, 1784, during his second visit to Brighthelmstone. On that day he mounted his horse there and rode to London and back. He went by way of Cuckfield, and was ten hours on the road: four and a half hours going, five and a half hours returning. On August 21st of the same year, starting at one o'clock in the morning, he drove from Carlton House to the "Pavilion" in four hours and a half. The turn-out was a phaeton drawn by three horses harnessed tandem-fashion--what in those days was called a "random."

One may venture the opinion that, although these performances were in due course surpa.s.sed, they were not altogether bad for a "simulacrum," as Thackeray was pleased to style him.

Twenty-five years pa.s.sed before any one arose to challenge the Prince's ride, and then only partially and indirectly. In May, 1809, Cornet J.

Wedderburn Webster, of the 10th (Prince of Wales's Own) Light Dragoons, accepted and won a wager of 300 to 200 guineas with Sir B. Graham about the performance in three and a half hours of the journey from Brighton to Westminster Bridge, mounted upon one of the blood horses that usually ran in his phaeton. He accomplished the ride in three hours twenty minutes, knocking the Prince's up record into the proverbial c.o.c.ked hat. The rider stopped a while at Reigate to take a gla.s.s or two of wine, and compelled his horse to swallow the remainder of the bottle.

This spirited affair was preceded in April, 1793, by a curious match which seems to deserve mention. A clergyman at Brighton betted an officer of the Artillery quartered there 100 guineas that he would ride his own horse to London sooner than the officer could go in a chaise and pair, the officer's horses to be changed _en route_ as often as he might think proper. The Artilleryman accordingly despatched a servant to provide relays, and at twelve o'clock on an unfavourable night the parties set out to decide the bet, which was won by the clergyman with difficulty. He arrived in town at 5 a.m., only a few minutes before the chaise, which it had been thought was sure of winning. The driver of the last stage, however, nearly became stuck in a ditch, which mishap caused considerable delay. The Cuckfield driver performed his nine-miles' stage, between that place and Crawley, within the half-hour.

The next outstanding incident was the run of the "Red Rover" coach, which, leaving the "Elephant and Castle" at 4 p.m. on June 19th, 1831, reached Brighton at 8.21 that evening: time, four hours twenty-one minutes. The fleeting era of those precursors of motor-cars, the steam-carriages, had by this time arrived, and after two or three had managed, at some kind of a slow pace, to get to and from Brighton, the "Autopsy" achieved a record of sorts in October, 1833. "Autopsy" was an unfortunate name, suggestive of _post-mortem_ examinations and "crowner's quests," but it proved not more dangerous than the "Mors" or "Hurtu" cars of to-day. The "Autopsy"

was Walter Hanc.o.c.k's steam-carriage, and ran from his works at Stratford.

It reached Brighton in eight hours thirty minutes; from which, however, must be deducted three hours for a halt on the road.

In the following year, February 4th, the "Criterion" coach, driven by Charles Harbour, took the King's Speech down to Brighton in three hours forty minutes--a coach record that not only quite eclipsed that of the "Red Rover," but has never yet been equalled, not even by Selby, on his great drive of July 13th, 1888; his times being, out and home respectively, three hours fifty-six minutes and three hours fifty-four minutes.

In March, 1868, the first of the walking records was established, the sporting papers of that age chronicling what they very rightly described as a "Great Walking Feat": a walk, not merely to Brighton, but to Brighton _and back_. This heroic undertaking, which was not repeated until 1902, was performed by one "Mr. Benjamin B. Trench, late Oxford University." On March 20th, for a heavy wager, he started to walk the hundred miles from Kennington Church to Brighton and back in twenty-five hours. Setting out on the Friday, at 6 p.m., he was back at Kennington Church at 5 p.m.

Sat.u.r.day, having thus won his wager with two hours to spare. It will be observed, or guessed, from the absence of odd minutes and seconds that in 1868, timing, as an exact science, had not been born; but it is evident that this stalwart walked his hundred miles on ordinary roads at an average rate of a little over four and a quarter miles an hour. "He then,"

concludes the report, "walked round the Oval several times, till seven o'clock."

To each age the inventions it deserves. Cycling would have been impossible in the mid-eighteenth century, when Walpole and Burton travelled with such difficulty.

When roads began to deserve the name, the Mail Coach was introduced; and when they grew hard and smooth, out of their former condition of ruts and mud, the quaint beginnings of the bicycle are noticed. The Hobby Horse and McAdam, the man who first preached the modern gospel of good roads, were contemporary.

[Sidenote: THE HOBBY-HORSE]

I have said the beginnings of the bicycle were quaint, and I think no one will be concerned to dispute this alleged quaintness of the Hobby Horse, which had a certain strictly limited popularity from 1819 to 1830. I do not think any one ever rode from London to Brighton on one of these machines; and, when you come to consider the build and the limitations of them, and then think of the hills on the way, it is quite impossible that any one should so ride. It was perhaps within the limits of human endurance to ride a Hobby Horse along the levels, to walk it up the rises, and then to madly descend the hills, and so reach Brighton, very sore; but records do not tell us of such a stern pioneer. The Hobby Horse, it should be said, was an affair of two wooden wheels with iron tyres. A heavy timber frame connected these wheels, and on it the courageous rider straddled, his feet touching the ground. The Hobby Horse had no pedals, and the rider propelled his hundredweight or so of iron and timber by running in this straddling position and thus obtaining a momentum which only on the down grade would carry him any distance.

Thus, although the Hobby Horse was a favourite with the "bucks" of George the Fourth's time, they exercised upon it in strictly limited doses, and it was not until it had experienced a new birth and was born again as the "velocipede" of the '60's, that to ride fifty miles upon an ancestor of the present safety bicycle, and survive, was possible.[4]

[Sidenote: THE BONESHAKER]

The front-driving velocipede--the well-known "boneshaker"--was invented by one Pierre Lallement, in Paris, in 1865-6, and exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1867. It was to the modern pneumatic-tyred "safety" what the roads of 1865 are to those of 1906. It also, like the Hobby Horse, had iron-shod wooden wheels, but had cranks and pedals, and could be ridden uphill. On such a machine the first cycle ride to Brighton was performed in 1869. This pioneer's fame on the Brighton Road belongs to John Mayall, junior, a well-known photographer of that period, who died in the summer of 1891.

This marks the beginning of so important an epoch that the circ.u.mstances attending it are worthy a detailed account. They were felt, so long ago as 1874, to be deserving of such a record, for in the first number of an athletic magazine, _Ixion_, published in that year, "J. M., jun.," who, of course, was none other than Mayall himself, began to tell the wondrous tale. He set out to narrate it at such length that, as an editorial note tells us, the concluding portion was reserved for the second number. But _Ixion_ never reached a second number, and so Mayall's own account of his historic ride was never completed.

He began, as all good chroniclers should, at the very beginning, telling how, in the early part of 1869, he was at Spencer's Gymnasium in Old Street, St. Luke's. There he saw a packing-case being followed by a Mr.

Turner, whom he had seen at the Paris Exhibition of 1868, and witnessed the unpacking of it. From it came a something new and strange, "a piece of apparatus consisting mainly of two wheels, similar to one I had seen, not long before, in Paris." It was the first velocipede to reach England.

It is a curious point that, although Mayall rode a "velocipede," and although these machines were generally so-called for a year or two after their introduction, the word "bicycle" is claimed to have been first used in the _Times_ in the early part of 1868; and certainly we find in the _Daily News_ of September 7th in that year an allusion, in grotesque spelling, to "bysicles and trisicles which we saw at the Champs Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne this summer."

But to return to the "velocipede" which had found its way to England at the beginning of 1869.

The two-wheeled mystery was helped out of its wrappings and shavings, the Gymnasium was cleared, and Mr. Turner, taking off his coat, grasped the handles of the machine, and with a short run, to Mayall's intense surprise, vaulted on to it. Putting his feet on what were then called the "treadles," Turner, to the astonishment of the beholders, made the circuit of the room, sitting on this bar above a pair of wheels in line that ought to have collapsed so soon as the momentum ceased; but, instead of falling down, Turner turned the front wheel at an angle to the other, and thus maintained at once a halt and a balance.

[Sidenote: JOHN MAYALL JUNIOR]

Mayall was fired with enthusiasm. The next day (Sat.u.r.day) he was early at the Gymnasium, "intending to have a day of it," and I think, from his account of what followed, that he _did_, in every sense, have such a day.

As Spencer had hurt himself by falling from the machine the night before, Mayall had it almost wholly to himself, and, after a few successful journeys round the room, determined to try his luck in the streets.