M. F. Mansfield

“ A certain picturesqueness of travel may be wanting when comparing the automobile with the whirling coach-and-four of other days, but there is vastly more comfort for all concerned, and no one will regret the march of progress when he considers that nothing but the means of transportation has been changed. The delightful prospects of hill and vale are still there, the long stretches of silent road and, in France and Germany, great forest routes which are as wild and unbroken, except for the magnificent surface of the roads, as they were when mediæval travelers startled the deer and wild boar. ”

“ Too great a speed undoubtedly detracts from the joy of travel, but a hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty, or three hundred kilometres a day on the fine roads of France, or a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles on the leafy lanes of England's southern counties will give the stranger more varied impressions and a clearer understanding of men and matters than the touring of a country from end to end in express-trains which serve your meals en route, and whisk you from London to Torquay between tea and dinner, or from Paris to the Cote d'Azur between breakfast and nightfall. ”

“ The advantages of touring by automobile are many: to see the country, to travel agreeably, to be independent of railways, and to be an opportunist—that is to say to be able to fly off at a tangent of fifty or a hundred kilometres at a moment's notice, in order to take in some fête or fair, or celebration or pilgrimage.
"Le tourisme en automobile" is growing all over the world, but after all it is generally only in or near the great cities and towns that one meets an automobile on the road. They hug the great towns and their neighbouring resorts with astonishing persistency. ”

“ We took a turn backward on our route from Arles and went to Les Baux, the now dismal ruin of a once proud feudal city whose seigneurs held sway over some sixty cities of Provence.
To-day it is a Pompeii, except it is a hill town worthy to rank with those picturesque peaks of Italy and Dalmatia. Its château walls have crumbled, but its subterranean galleries, cut three stories down into the rock itself, are much as they always were. Everywhere are grim, doleful evidences of a glory that is past and a population that is dead or moved away. ”

“ This is the month when, at certain periods of the day, the mile length of roadway from railway station to sea is a closely packed crowd of excursionists; when the long expanse of sea-front and sand presents its most animated spectacle of holiday-keeping people; when the steamers plying along the Sussex coast, or to France, the white-sailed yachts, the rowing-boats, and motor-boats are the most numerous; and when the hundred and one entertainers and providers of all kinds do their busiest trade. ”

“ There is no earthly, sensible logic which should induce a garçon in a hotel or restaurant to think that because one arrives in an automobile he wishes to dine in a special room off of rare viands and drink expensive wines, but this is his common conception of the automobile tourist. One fights up or down through the scale of hotel servants, and does his best to allay any false ideas they may have, including those of the hostler, who has done nothing for you, and expects his tip, too. It's an up-hill process, and the idea that every automobilist is a millionaire is everywhere dying hard. ”

“ Just how much pleasure and edification one can absorb during an automobile tour depends largely upon the individual—and the mood. Once the craving for speed is felt, not all the historic monuments in the world would induce one to stop a sweetly running motor; but again the other mood comes on, and one lingers a full day among the charms of the lower Seine from Caudebec to Rouen, scarce thirty miles. ”

“ Once one was content to potter about with a solitary companion in a buggy, with a comfortable old horse who knew his route well by reason of many journeys. To-day the automobile has driven thoughts of solitude to the winds. Two in the tonneau, and another on the seat beside you in front—a well-assorted couple of couples—and one may make the most ideal trips imaginable.
Every one looks straight ahead, there is no uncomfortable twisting and turning as there is on a boat or a railway train, and each can talk to the others, or all can talk at once, which is more often the case. ”

“ The distant view from the road, as one approaches the city, is one that can only be described as grand. The fabric of the great cathedral, the rooftops of the houses, the sloping hills rising from the water's edge, and again falling lightly down to the town, form a grandly imposing view, the equal of which one seldom sees on the main travelled roads of England. ”

“ Out through Piccadilly and Knightsbridge was bad enough, but, by the time Hammersmith Broadway, its trams and tram-lines and its butchers' and bakers' and milk carts, was reached and passed, it was as if one had been trying to claw off a lee shore in a gale, and driver and passengers alike felt exceeding limp and sticky. The Londoner who drives an automobile thinks nothing of it, and covers the intervening miles with a cool clear-headedness that is marvellous. ”

“ A hotel that is full and overflowing is no more a fear or a dread; the automobilist simply takes the road again and drops in on some market-town twenty, thirty, or fifty miles away and finds accommodations that are equally satisfactory, with the possibility—if he looks in at some little visited spot like Meung or Beaugency in Touraine, Ecloo in Holland, or Reichenberg on the Rhine—that he will be more pleased with his surroundings than he would be in the large towns which are marked in heavy-faced type in the railway guides, and whose hotels are starred by Baedeker. ”

“ Never before has the individual man been able to accomplish what the soulless corporations have with railway trains. In steamboat or train we are but a part and parcel of the freight carried, but in the automobile we are stoker, driver, and passenger in one, and regard every road-turning and landmark with a new wonder and appreciation.
We are the aristocrats of tourists, and we are bound therefore to have a kindly regard for other road users or a revolution will spring up, as it did in feudal times.
Take Maeterlinck's wise sayings for your guide, and be tolerant of the rights of others. ”

“ In France, in particular, the contrast of the new and old that one occasionally meets with is staggering. It is all very well in its way, this blending of antiquity and modernity, and gives one something of the thrill of romance, which most of us have in our make-up to a greater or lesser extent; but, on the other hand, romance gets some hard knocks when one finds a Roman sarcophagus used as a watering-trough; or a chapel as an automobile garage, as he often will in the Midi. ”

“ The small shopmen, and the men and women of the markets, all look and talk Flemish, and the environment is everywhere as distinctly Flemish as if one were standing on one of the little bridges which cross the waterways of Ghent or Bruges.
The men and women are broad-bodied and coarse-featured,—quite different from the Dutch, one remarks,—and they move slowly and with apparent difficulty in their clumsy sabots and heavy clothing. The houses round about are tall and slim, and mostly in that state of antiquity and decay which we like to think is artistic.
Such is Flemish Brussels. ”

“ It's astonishing how good a job a locksmith in France can do, even on an automobile, the mechanism of which he perhaps has never seen before. Officially the locksmith in France is known as a serrurier, but in the slang of the land he is the cambrioleur du pays, a name which is expressive, but which means nothing wicked. He can put a thread on a bolt or make a new nut to replace one that has mysteriously unscrewed itself, which is more than many a mere bicycle repairer can do.
The automobilist touring France should make friends with the nearest cambrioleur if he is in trouble. ”

“ Perpignan is possessed of much history, much character, and much local colour of the tone which artists love, and above all a certain gaiety and brilliancy which one usually associates only with Spain.
There is what might be called a street of cafés at Perpignan, not far from the Castillet. They are great, splendid establishments, with wide, overhung, awninged terraces, and potted plants and electric lights and gold and tinsel, and mixed drinks and ices and sorbets, and all the epicurean cold things which one may find in the best establishment in Paris. ”

“ In France not all the difficulties one meets with en route are willful obstructors of one's progress. In La Beauce the geese and ducks are prudent, in the Nivernais the oxen are placid, and in Provence the donkeys are philosophical; but in Brittany the horses and mules and their drivers take fright immediately they suspect the coming of an automobile, and in the Vendée the market-wagons, and those laden with the product of the vine, career madly at the extremities of exceedingly lusty examples of horse flesh to the pending disaster of every one who does not get out of the road. ”

“ There are other methods of travel that, in their own ways, are certainly enjoyable, but none quite equal the automobile for independence of action, convenience, and efficiency. It is well for all motor-car users, however, to realize that they are not the only road users, and to have a due regard for others,—not only their rights, but their persons. This applies even more forcibly, if possible, to the automobilist en tour.
One must in duty bound regulate his pace and his actions by the vagaries of others, however little he may want to, or unfortunate consequences will many times follow. ”

“ All the same an automobile is like David Balfour's Scotch advocate: hard at times to ken rightly—most of the time, one may say without undue exaggeration. Often an automobile is as fickle as a stage fairy, or appears to be, but it may be that only your own blind stupidity accounts for the lack of efficiency. Once in awhile an automobile gets uproariously full of spirits and runs away with itself, and almost runs away with you, too, simply for the reason that the carburetion is good and everything is pulling well. ”

“ We left Utrecht after lunch and slowly made our way along the picture landscapes of the Holland countryside, through Hobbema avenues, and under the shadow of quaint Dutch church spires.
One does not go to a foreign land to enjoy only the things one sees in cities. Hotels, restaurants, and cafés are very similar all over Europe, and the great shops do not vary greatly in Rotterdam from those in Liverpool. It is with the small things of life, the doings of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker that the change comes in. ”

“ Comparatively speaking, the railway is not to be thought of for a moment. It has all the disadvantages of the automobile (for indeed there are a few, such as dust and more or less cramped quarters, and, if one chooses, a nerve-racking speed) and none of its advantages, and, whether you are a mere man or a millionaire, you are tied down to rails and a strict itinerary, whereas you may turn the bonnet of your automobile down any by-road that pleases your fancy, and arrive ultimately at your destination, having made an enjoyable detour which would not otherwise have been possible. ”

“ When one considers how difficult to control, particularly amid crowded traffic, a horse-drawn vehicle is, and how very easy it is to control an up-to-date automobile, one cannot but feel that a little more consideration should be shown the automobilist by those in authority.
The road obstructions, slow-going traffic which will not get out of one's way, carts left unattended and the like, make most of the real and fancied dangers which are laid to the door of the very mobile motor-car. ”

“ In the Pyrenees, and in the Alps of Savoie and Dauphiné, one finds everywhere the insignia of the "Club-Alpin Français," which caters with information, etc., not only to the mountain-climber, but to the automobilist and the general tourist as well.
More powerful and effective than all—more so even than the famous Automobile Club de France—is the great Touring Club de France, which, with the patronage of the President of the Republic, and the influence of more than a hundred thousand members, is something more than a mere touring club. ”

“ One of the charms of travel, to the tried traveller, is, just as in the time of the Abbé Prévost, the ability to exchange remarks on one's itinerary with one's fellow travellers. In France it does not matter much whether they are automobilists or not. The commis-voyageur is a more numerous class here, apparently, than in any other country on the globe, and the detailed information which he can give one about the towns and hotels and sights and scenes en route, albeit he is more familiar with travel by rail than by road, is marvellous in quantity and valuable as to quality. ”

“ Noyon is not down in the itineraries of many guide-book tourists, which is a pity for them. It is altogether the most unspoiled old-world town between the Ile de France and the Channel ports of Boulogne and Calais through which so many Anglo-Saxon travellers enter. It is off the beaten track, though, and that accounts for it. Blessed be the tourist agencies which know nothing beyond their regular routes, and thus leave some forgotten and neglected tourist-points yet to be developed.
The majesty of Noyon's cathedral of Notre Dame is unequalled in all the world. ”

“ The most we would do was to admire the park and the ramifications of its paths and alleys which dwindled imperceptibly into the great Forêt de Chantilly itself. The forest is one of those vast tracts of wildwood which are so plentifully besprinkled all over France. Their equals are not known elsewhere, for they are crossed and recrossed in all directions by well-kept carriage roads where automobilists will be troubled neither by dust nor glaring sunlight. They are the very ideals of roads, the forest roads of France, and their length is many thousands of kilometres. ”

“ The bulk of the automobile traffic between France and Italy enters through the gateway of the Riviera, and, taken all in all, this is by far the easiest, and perhaps the most picturesque, of routes. Alternatives are through Gap and Cuneo, Briançon and Susa, Moutiers and Aosta, or by the Swiss passes, the latter perhaps the most romantic of routes in spite of their difficulties and other objections.
Automobiling in Spain is a thing of the future, and it will be a big undertaking to make the highroads, to say nothing of the by-roads, suitable for automobile traffic. ”

“ France is the land par excellence for automobile touring, not only from its splendid roads, but from the wide diversity of its sights and scenes, and manners and customs, and, last but not least, its most excellent hotels strung along its highways and byways like pearls in a collarette. ”