Narratives of Motoring in Britain 1896-1930 Esme

Perspectives on the Road: Narratives of Motoring in Britain 1896-1930 Esme Anne Coulbert A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy This research project was carried out in collaboration with the Coventry Transport Museum. October 2013 This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed in the owner of the Intellectual Property Rights. This thesis benefits from an Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Award, established by Nottingham Trent University in conjunction with the Coventry Transport Museum. The museum has supported this project by granting unrestricted access to its archives and records for the purposes of research. Some of the research gathered for this thesis has also featured in exhibitions at the museum and at the Coventry Festival of Motoring. Supervisors: Professor Tim Youngs, Nottingham Trent University Dr Carl Thompson, Nottingham Trent University Steve Bagley, Coventry Transport Museum Acknowledgements I would like to thank first and foremost my fiancé, family and friends for their unrelenting support and patience; and particularly my son who, for the past four years, has only been able to catch mere glimpses of me behind my desk. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my supervisors Tim and Carl for their time and expert care throughout the duration of this project. My special thanks also extend to my friends and colleagues at the Coventry Transport Museum who have given me so much help along the way, with particular thanks to Damien Kimberley, Steve Bagley and Lizzie Pearson. I am also indebted to John Hissey and Julia Henderson for their encouragement, advice and support; they faithfully provided me with innumerable documents, letters and pictures relating to J.J. Hissey to use in this thesis. Abstract This thesis is a study of the travel writing inspired by automobile journeys in Britain in the period 1896 to 1930 and the new modes of subjectivity afforded by the motor car. In permitting greater access to the countryside away from railway stations, motorists were able to gain fresh perspectives on the landscape. Their journeys in the countryside invited them to ‘rediscover’ England and shape new versions of national identity based on a revival of pre-industrial pastoral idylls. This model of Englishness was directly influenced by car travel, particularly ideas of getting ‘off the beaten track’. A comparative study of the travelogues of American writers visiting Britain looks at their search for a shared heritage and the contrasting vision of England that they convey. The different experience of automotive travel and freedom to use the car as described by female writers in the period is also explored in two case studies. Many of the texts analysed in this work have never been discussed in scholarly studies and so this thesis aims to apply new material to the catalogue of home tour narratives, and to shed new light on the early years of automobile travel. This thesis also explores the car’s relationship to modernity in the narratives and concerns about the impact of motorised tourism on the landscape. By weaving together different theoretical concepts from travel writing, such as notions of the tourist and traveller, with historical studies of the car’s cultural impact in Britain, this work aims to establish the travelogues featured as a distinct sub-genre of travel writing studies. Perspectives on the Road: Narratives of Motoring in Britain 1896- 1930 Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. The Open Road 14 3. Driving Through Modernity 41 4. National Identity 76 5. ‘She was either a lunatic or a pioneer, according to the way people looked at things’: the Automobile and Gender Identities 116 6. Abroad: American Narratives of Motor Tours in England 160 7. Conclusion 195 8. Bibliography 203 1 Introduction The chauffeur could not travel as quickly as he had hoped, for the Great North Road was full of Easter traffic. But he went quite quick enough for Margaret, a poor-spirited creature, who had chickens and children on the brain. ‘They’re all right,’ said Mr Wilcox. ‘They’ll learn—like the swallows and the telegraph-wires.’ ‘Yes, but while they’re learning—’ ‘The motor’s come to stay,’ he answered. ‘One must get about. There’s a pretty church—oh, you aren’t sharp enough. Well, look out, if the road worries you—right outward at the scenery.’ She looked at the scenery. It heaved and merged like porridge. Presently it congealed. They had arrived.1 E.M. Forster, Howard’s End (1910) This brief extract from Howard’s End voices a number of the fundamental issues concerning the introduction of the car that this thesis will address. Depicting an exchange between the wealthy businessman and car enthusiast Henry Wilcox and his fiancée, the intelligent and idealistic Margaret Schlegel, the scene firstly shows the divisive nature of the car as Margaret’s disinclination towards this new rapid form of transport is juxtaposed with Henry’s enjoyment of speed and the car’s practical efficiency. Secondly, it shows how the car exposed motorists, both as drivers and passengers, to new sensory experiences. The narrator describes the scenery as congealing like porridge; such perceptions of how travel by automobile influenced the way that landscape was perceived and its literary representation are central to this thesis. In 1910 travelling through the countryside at unprecedented speeds in an open top vehicle was still a novel experience, and as Henry Wilcox insinuates, many believed that the greater exposure to the experience one gained, the more one’s eyes and wits would become accustomed to their new demands. It was a case of developing a more efficient mind and sharper eye to make out details and shapes. Some, like travel writer J. E. Vincent, even thought that it would improve the mind and adapt it in an advantageous way. 1 E.M. Forster, Howard’s End (New York: Penguin, 2000), p. 169. 1 Henry Wilcox’s dismissal of Margaret’s nervousness of having ‘chickens and children on the brain’ also exposes some contemporary attitudes towards female motorists. This was a contentious issue as the car was firmly entrenched within notions of masculinity and authority. As this work will go on to discuss in the fourth chapter, women re-defined female identities around the car which allowed them to embrace automobility for both private leisure and professional capacities. Wilcox’s laissez-faire attitude towards road safety also demonstrates some of the problems faced by the population struggling to develop a new set of responses to motorised traffic. The car became a powerful symbol of danger and destruction and sparked numerous campaigns to improve pedestrian awareness and safety, and motorists’ responsibility. This thesis attempts to explore all these issues in an assessment of how automotive technology impacted on the way that we travel, and perceive travel itself, via an examination of its literary representation in narratives of journeys made around the British Isles in the early period of motoring between 1896 and 1930. Through these travel narratives it is hoped that this thesis will be able to draw a detailed and unique picture of perceptions of the car and motoring in a period that saw the invention of cars and their gradual proliferation on the roads in Britain. Arriving as it did at the dawn of the twentieth century, the car heralded a new age. The steam- powered epoch of the 1800s was being left behind for a new century of modernity and everything that technology could bring with it. The era of the motor car also coincides with other important inventions that shaped society in the first decades of the twentieth century. On the 12th December 1901 Guglielmo Marconi sent a wireless radio signal from Poldhu, Cornwall across the Atlantic where it was successfully received by an aerial fixed atop a kite on the coast of Canada. From this point onwards, the development and success of the wireless radio and the telephone revolutionised communications in much the same way that the car revolutionised travel, tourism and living patterns. The broad diffusion of the car, particularly in the 1920s and 30s, led to a new dispersion of human geography. As the railway less than half a century before had allowed people to live outside urban centres and commute to work by train, a similar pattern immerged in the 1900s. People were able to live further away from towns, cities and railway links as the car could carry them easily and quickly to their destinations. A vogue for buying country cottages and villas that families could travel to at the 2 weekends was also responsible for a rapid growth in buildings to cater to such tastes. These were the lament of motor tourists as their perceived ugliness and vulgarity were ruining visions of rural England that motorists had taken to the road to find. The travelogues and motoring publications were platforms to vent such concerns about the despoliation of the countryside. The arrival of electricity and the invention of cinema in the late nineteenth century also contributed to a modern cultural experience. Living in the 1900s was to experience new technology and a radically new reality to the century that had just been left behind. This excitement of technological possibility gathered momentum when in 1903 the Wright brothers took to the air.

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