He used to envy my place in Fleet Street, and say that if he were not a priest, he would like to be a journalist.
XIII
It is most astonishing as a reminder of the rapid progress of mechanical science during the past twenty-one years that a journalist like myself, still young, and almost a babe compared with veterans of Fleet Street still on active service, should have seen the first achievements in aviation, the first motor cars plying for hire in the streets, and the first moving pictures—three inventions that have changed our human destiny and mentality in an incalculable way, and the last not least.
It was, I think, in 1900 that I encountered the first motor “taxi” in Paris, one of those rattle-bone machines which, as far as Paris is concerned, have not improved enormously since that time. But it seemed nothing short of a miracle then, and it was not until several years later than they ousted the dear old hansom of London, which now survives only as a historical relic.
It is difficult to think back to the time when the klip-klop of horses’ hoofs was the most characteristic noise of London by night, when one sat in quiet rooms above the street. It had a sound of its own, and a touch of romance which is missed by the older generation, accustomed now to the honking of motor horns. The younger generation cannot imagine life without that trumpeting.
I remember being sent by my paper to describe a night journey in a motor car as a new and exciting adventure, as it certainly was to me at that time when I traveled down to the Lands End, and saw, for the first time, the white glare of headlights on passing milestones and bewildered cattle, and passed through little sleeping villages where the noise of our coming was heard as a portent, by people who jumped out of bed and stared through the window blinds. In those days a man who owned a car was regarded as a very rich and adventurous fellow, as well as something of a freak, and he was ridiculed with immense enjoyment by pedestrians when he was discovered, frequently, lying in the mud beneath his machine which had hopelessly broken down. Indeed, many people had a passionate hostility to motorists and motoring, and a great friend of mine so hated the sight of an automobile that he used to throw stones after them. He was a rich man, with carriages and horses, which he vowed he would never abandon for “a filthy, stinking motor car.” Now he never moves a yard without one. I am the only consistent enemy of motor cars left in the world. I hate them like poison.
For professional purposes, however, I have been a great motorist, and I suppose that during the four and a half years of war I must have covered sixty thousand miles. I have hired motors in England, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Asia Minor, and the United States. I have had every sort of accident that may happen to a motorist this side of death. Wheels have come off and gone rolling ahead of me down steep hills. Axles have broken beneath me. I have been dashed into level crossing gates, I have escaped an express train by something like three inches, and I have had my car smashed to bits by a collision with a lorry which laid my right arm out of action for three months.
Yet I was not such a “hoodoo” as a motorist as a delightful friend of mine named Coldstream. Whenever he sat in a motor car he used to expect something to happen to it, and it always did. The door handle would drop off, just as a preliminary warning. Then one of the cylinders would miss fire, as another sign of impending disaster. Then the back axle would break, or something would happen to prevent any further journey. Once, going with him from Arras to Amiens, we put two motor cars out of action, and then borrowed an ambulance, about ten miles from Amiens. After the first four miles it broke down hopelessly, and, finally, we had to walk the rest of the way.