51 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



proposed celebration of the event by a great procession 

 of the newly-enfranchised " light locomotives " from 

 Whitehall to Brighton, on November 14th. 



The Motor-ear 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 sight- 

 seers such as no Lord Mayor's Show or Royal Procession 

 had ever attracted. Everybody in the crowd w r anted 

 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 con- 

 templated, and myriads of mounted police appeared 

 and had their photographs taken from the tops of 



