I'm currently laid up after a knee operation, so I haven't had a
chance to be actively engaged in British motoring short of firing
up the B yesterday to keep it mollified. I did, however, run across
an interesting passage in a book by Aldous Huxley, circa 1925.
At this point, if I had any strength of mind, I should stop talking
about Citroens and return to higher themes. But the temptation of
talking about cars, when one has a car, is quite irresistible. Before I
bought a Citroen no subject had less interest for me; none, now has
more. I can talk for hours about motors with other car owners. And I
am ruthlessly prepared to bore the non-motorist by talking interminably
of this delightful subject even to him. I waste much precious time
reading the motoring papers, study passionately the news from the racing
tracks, gravely peruse technical lucubrations which I do not understand.
It is a madness, but a delightfule one.
The spiritual effects of being a car-owner are not, I notice, entirely
beneficial. Introspection and the conversation of other motorists have
shown me, indeed, that car-owning may have the worst effect on the
character. To begin with every car-owner is a liar. He cannot tell the
truth about his machine. He exaggerates his speed, the number of miles
he goes to the gallon of petrol, his prowess as a hill climber...
Another horrible sin encouraged by the owning of an automobile,
particularly of a small automobile, is envy. What bitter discontement
fills the mind of the 10 H.P. man as the 40 H.P. shoots silently past
him! How fiercely he loathes the owner of the larger machine! What
envy and covetousness possess him! In a flat country one envies less
than in a hilly. For on the flat even the little car can do quite
creditably enough to keep up its owner's self-esteem. It is in a
moutainous country, like Italy, where the roads are constantly running
up to tow or three thousand feet and down again that the deadly sin of
envy really flourishes...
Such are the moral consequences of being the owner of a small car. We
tried to reason with ourselves. "After all," we said, "this little
machine has done good service. It has taken us over bad roads, up and
down enormous hills, through a variety of countries. It has taken us,
not merely through space, across the face of the map, but through time -
from epoch to epoch - through art, through many languages and customs,
through philology and antrhopology. It has been the instrument of great
and varied pleasures. It costs little, behaves well, its habits are as
regular as those of Immanuel Kant. In its unpretentious way it is a
model of virtue." All this we said, and much more; and it was
comforting. But in the bottom of our hearts envy and discontent still
lurked, like coiled serpents, ready to raise their heads the very next
time that fourty horses should pass us on a hill.
-----
The relation to British cars is up to the reader to determine. I suspect,
though, that the "technical lucubrations" that Aldous refers to were no
doubt the 1925 equivalents of Slick-50 and Redline... :-)
-- Scott
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