The BRIGHTON DAY MAILS CROSSING HOOKWOOD COMMON, 1838.From an engraving after W. J. Shayer.
THE COACHING AMATEURS
The “Age” had been one of the best equipped and driven of all the smart drags in that period when aristocratic amateur dragsmen frequented this road, when the Marquis of Worcester drove the “Beaufort,” and when the Hon. Fred Jerningham, a son of the Earl of Stafford, a whip of consummate skill, drove the day-mail; a time when the “Age” itself was driven by that sportsman of gambling memory, Sir St. Vincent Cotton, and by that Mr. Stevenson who was its founder, mentioned more particularly on page 37. When Mr. Capps became proprietor, he had as coachman several distinguished men. For twelve years, for instance, Robert Brackenbury drove the “Age” for the nominal pay of twelve shillings per week, enough to keep him in whips. It was thus supremely fitting that it should also have been the last to survive.
In later years, about 1852, a revived “Age,” owned and driven by the Duke of Beaufort and George Clark, the “Old” Clark of coaching acquaintance, was on the road to London,viaDorking and Kingston, in the summer months. It was discontinued in 1862. A picture of this coach crossing Ham Commonen routefor Brighton was painted in 1852 and engraved. A reproduction of it is shown here.
From 1862 to 1866 the rattle of the bars and the sound of the guard’s yard of tin were silent on every route to Brighton; but in the latter year of horsey memory and the coaching revival, a number of aristocratic and wealthy amateurs of the whip, among whom were representatives of the best coaching talent of the day, subscribed a capital, in shares of £10, and a little yellow coach, the “Old Times,” was put on the highway. Among the promoters of the venture were Captain Haworth, the Duke of Beaufort, Lord H. Thynne, Mr. Chandos Pole, Mr. “Cherry” Angell, Colonel Armytage, Captain Lawrie, and Mr. Fitzgerald. The experiment proved unsuccessful, but in thefollowing season, commencing in April, 1867, when the goodwill and a large portion of the stock had been purchased from the original subscribers, by the Duke of Beaufort, Mr. E. S. Chandos Pole, and Mr. Angell, the coach was doubled, and two new coaches built by Holland & Holland.
The Duke of Beaufort was chief among the sportsmen who horsed the coaches during this season. Mr. Chandos Pole, at the close of the summer season, determined to carry on by himself, throughout the winter, a service of one coach. This he did, and, aided by Mr. Pole-Gell, doubled it the next summer.
The following year, 1869, the coach had so prosperous a season that it showed never a clean bill,i.e., never ran empty, all the summer, either way. The partners this year were the Earl of Londesborough, Mr. Pole-Gell, Colonel Stracey Clitherow, Mr. Chandos Pole, and Mr. G. Meek.
From this season coaching became extremely popular on the Brighton Road, Mr. Chandos Pole running his coach until 1872. In the following year an American amateur, Mr. Tiffany, kept up the tradition with two coaches. Late in the season of 1874 Captain Haworth put in an appearance.
In 1875 the “Age” was put upon the road by Mr. Stewart Freeman, and ran in the season up to and including 1880, in which year it was doubled. Captain Blyth had the “Defiance” on the road to Brighton this year by the circuitous route of Tunbridge Wells. In 1881 Mr. Freeman’s coach was absent from the road, but Edwin Fownes put the “Age” on, late in the season. In the following year Mr. Freeman’s coach ran, doubled again, and single in 1883. It was again absent in 1884-5-6, in which last year it ran to Windsor; but it reappeared on the Brighton Road in 1887 as the “Comet,” and in the winter of that year was continued by Captain Beckett, who had Selby and Fownes as whips. In 1888 Mr. Freeman ran in partnership with Colonel Stracey-Clitherow, Lord Wiltshire, and Mr. Hugh M’Calmont, and in 1889 became partner in an undertaking to run the coach doubled. The two “Comets” therefore served the road in this season supported by two additional subscribers, the Honourable H. Sandys and Mr. Randolph Wemyss.
THE “AGE,” 1852, CROSSING HAM COMMON.From an engraving after C. Cooper Henderson.
JIM SELBY
In 1888 the “Old Times,” forsaking the Oatlands Park drive, had appeared on the Brighton Road as a rival to the “Comet,” and continued throughout the winter months, until Selby met his death in that winter.
The “Comet” ran single in the winter season of 1889-90, and in April was again doubled for the summer, running single in 1891-2-3, when Mr. Freeman relinquished it.
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 Dickey, 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 Cockney team as “deny” and “to-dy” to water at the Pierian springs.
“Carriages without horses shall go,” is the “prophecy” attributed to that mythical fifteenth century pythoness, Mother Shipton; really theex post factoforgery 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 mispronounced—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.
MOTOR-CARS
In 1886 Daimler produced his motor-bicycle, and by 1891 his motor engine was adapted by Panhard and Levassor 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.
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 passed 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 passed so quietly, under the ægis 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.
“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’sproposed 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 advertisement, 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 anticipated the immense crowds that assembled 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 “parse 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 altitudes 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 ashore on the neck of a policeman. Rumour got around that an organised massacre 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.
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.
“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 passing 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 Bollée three-wheeled car, were precisely what they were frequently styled, “horseless carriages,” vehicles built on traditional lines, from which the horses and the customary shaftswere 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.
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 Bollée 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 assembled 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. Somesaid 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 passengers 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 “classic” road, and afterwards on the Dorking and Horsham route. He met his death on board theLusitania, when it was sunk by the Germans, May 7th. 1915.
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 pass 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 thesedisplays 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.
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 surpassed, they were not altogether bad for a “simulacrum,” as Thackeray was pleased to style him.
Twenty-five years passed 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 200guineas 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 cocked hat. The rider stopped a while at Reigate to take a glass 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 changeden routeas 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 ofpost-mortemexaminations and “crowner’s quests,” but it proved not more dangerous than the “Mors” or “Hurtu” cars of to-day. The “Autopsy” was Walter Hancock’s steam-carriage, and ran fromhis 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 Brightonand 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. Saturday, 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 arenoticed. The Hobby Horse and McAdam, the man who first preached the modern gospel of good roads, were contemporary.
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]
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 thoseof 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 circumstances 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. ButIxionnever 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 theTimesin the early part of 1868; and certainly we find in theDaily Newsof September 7th in that year an allusion, in grotesque spelling, to “bysicles and trisicles which we saw at the Champs Elysées 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.
JOHN MAYALL JUNIOR
Mayall was fired with enthusiasm. The next day (Saturday) he was early at the Gymnasium, “intending to have a day of it,” and I think, from his account of what followed, that hedid, 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. Accordingly, at one o’clock in the afternoon, amid the plaudits of a hundred men of the adjacent factory, engaged in the congenial occupation of lounging against the blank walls in their dinner-hour, the velocipede was hoisted on to a cab and driven to Portland Place, where it was put on the pavement, and Mayall prepared to mount. Even nowadays the cycling novice requires plenty of room, and as Portland Place is well known to be the widest street in London, and nearly the most secluded, it seems probable that this intrepid pioneer deliberately chose it in order to have due scope for his evolutions.
It was a raw and muddy day, with a high wind. Mayall sprang on to the velocipede, but it slipped on the wet road, and he measured his length in the mud. The day-out was beginning famously.
Spencer, who had been worsted the night before, contented himself with giving Mayall a start when he made another attempt, and this time that courageousperson got as far as the Marylebone Road, and across it on to the pavement of the other side, where he fell with a crash as though a barrow had been upset. But again vaulting into the saddle, he lumbered on into Regent’s Park, and so to the drinking-fountain near the Zoological Gardens, where, in attempting to turn round, he fell over again. Mounting once more, he returned. Looking round, “there was the park-keeper coming hastily towards me, making indignant signs. I passed quickly out of the Park gate into the roadway.” Thus early began the long warfare between Cycling and Authority.
Thence, sometimes falling into the road, with Spencer trotting after him, he reached the foot of Primrose Hill, and then, at Spencer’s home, staggered on to a sofa, and lay there, exhausted, soaked in rain and perspiration, and covered with mud. It had been in no sense a light matter to exercise with that ninety-three pounds’ weight of mingled timber and ironmongery.
On the Monday he trundled about, up to the “Angel,” Islington, where curious crowds assembled, asking the uses of the machine and if the falling off and grovelling in the mud was a part of the pastime. The following day, very sore, but still undaunted, he re-visited the “Angel,” went through the City, and so to Brixton and Clapham, where, at the house of a friend, he looked over maps, and first conceived the “stupendous” idea of riding to Brighton.
The following morning he endeavoured to put that plan into execution, and toiled up Brixton Hill, and so through Croydon, up the “never-ending” rise, as it seemed, of Smitham Bottom to the crest of Merstham Hill. There, tired, he half plunged into the saddle, and so thundered and clattered down hill into Merstham. At Redhill, seventeen and a half miles, utterly exhausted, he relinquished the attempt, and retired to the railway station, where he lay for some time on one of the seats until he revived. Then, to the intense admiration and amusement of the station-masterand his staff, he rode about the platform, dodging the pillars, and narrowly escaping a fall on to the rails, until the London train came in.
On Wednesday, February 17th, Mayall, Rowley B. Turner, and Charles Spencer, all three on velocipedes, started from Trafalgar Square for Brighton. The party kept together until Redhill was reached, when Mayall took the lead, and eventually reached Brighton alone. The time occupied was “about” twelve hours. Being a photographer, Mayall of course caused himself to be photographed standing beside the instrument of torture on which he made that weary ride, and thus we have preserved to us the weird spectacle he presented; more like that of a Russian convict than an athletic young Englishman. A peaked cap, an attenuated frock-coat, very tight in the waist, and stiff and shiny leather leggings, completed a costume strange enough to make a modern cyclist shudder. Fearful whiskers and oily-looking long hair add to the strangeness of this historic figure.
RECORDS
With this exploit athletic competition began, and the long series of modern “records” on the Brighton Road were set a-going, for during the March of that year two once well-known amateur pedestrian members of the Stock Exchange, W. M. and H. J. Chinnery,walkeddown to Brighton in 11 hrs. 25 mins., and on April 14th C. A. Booth bettered Mayall’s adventure, riding down on a velocipede in 9 hrs. 30 mins.
Then came the Amateur Bicycle Club’s race, September 19th, 1872. By that time not only had the word “velocipede” been discarded for “bicycle,” and “treadles” become “pedals,” but the machine itself, although in general appearance very much the same, had been improved in detail. The 36-inch front wheel had been increased to 44 inches, the wooden spokes had given place to wire, and strips of rubber, nailed on, replaced the iron tyres. Probably as a result of these refinements the winner, A. Temple, reached Brighton in 5 hrs, 25 mins.
JOHN MAYALL, JUNIOR, 1869.From a contemporary photograph.
By 1872 the bicycle had advanced a further stage towards the giraffe-like altitude of the “ordinary,” and already there were many clubs in existence. On August 16th of that year six members of the Surrey and six of the Middlesex Bicycle Clubs rode from Kennington Oval to Brighton and back, Caustoncaptain of the Surrey, being the first into Brighton. Riding a 50-inch “Keen” bicycle he reeled off the fifty miles in 4 hrs. 51 mins. The new machine was something to be reckoned with.
On February 9th. 1874, a certain John Revel, junr., backed himself in heavy sums to ride a bicycle the whole distance from Brighton to London quicker than a Mr. Gregory could walk the 22½ miles from Reigate to London. Revel was to leave Brighton at the junction of the London and Montpellier roads at the same time as Gregory started from a point between the twenty-second and twenty-third milestones. The pedestrian won, finishing in 3 hrs. 27 mins. 47 secs., Revel taking 5 hrs. 57 mins. for the whole journey.
The bicycle had by this time firmly established itself. It grew more and more of an athletic exercise to mount the steadily growing machines, but once seated on them the going was easier. April 27th, 1874, found Alfred Howard cycling from Brighton to London in 4 hrs. 25 mins., a speed which works out at eleven miles an hour.
In 1875 the Brighton Road seems to have been left severely alone, and 1876 was signalised only by two of the fantastic wagers that have been numerously decided on this half-century of miles. In that year, we are told, a Mr. Frederick Thompson staked one thousand guineas that Sir John Lynton would not wheel a barrow from Westminster Abbey to the “Old Ship” at Brighton in fifteen hours; and the knight, accepting the bet, made his appearance airily clothed in the “shorts” of the recognised running costume and wheeling a barrow made of bamboo, and provided with handles six feet long. He won easily, but whether the loser paid the thousand guineas, or lodged a protest with referees, does not appear. He should have specified the make of barrow, for the kinds range through quite a number of varieties, from the coster’s barrow to the navvy’s and the gardener’s. But the wager did not contemplate the fancy article with which Sir John Lynton made his journey. At anyrate, I have my doubts about the genuineness of the whole affair, for, seeking this “Sir John Lynton” in the usual books of reference of that period, there is no such knight or baronet to be discovered.
According to the Sussex newspapers of 1876, over fifteen thousand people assembled in the King’s Road at Brighton to witness the finish of the sporting event between Major Penton and an unnamed competitor. Major Penton agreed to give his opponent a start of twenty-seven miles in a pedestrian match to Brighton, on the condition that he was allowed a “go-as-you-please” method, while the other man was to walk in the fair “heel-and-toe” style. The major won by a yard and a half in the King’s Road, through the excitement of his competitor, who was disqualified at the last minute by breaking into a trot.
Freakish sport was at this time decidedly in the ascendant, for the sole event of 1877 was the extraordinary escapade of two persons who on September 11th undertook to ride, dressed as clowns, on donkeys, from London to Croydon, seated backwards with their faces towards the animals’ tails. From Croydon to Redhill they were to walk the three-legged walk—i.e., tied together by right and left legs—and thence to Crawley (surely a most appropriate place) on hands and knees. From that place to the end their pilgrimage was to be made walking in boots each weighted with 15 lb. of lead. This last ordeal speedily finished them, for they had failed to accomplish more than half a mile when they broke down.
John Granby was another of these fantastic persons, whose proper place would be a lunatic ward. He essayed to walk to Brighton with 50 lb. weight of sand round his shoulders, in a bag, but he sank under the weight by the time of his arrival at Thornton Heath.