From the front lines of WW1: Edith’s motorcars

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You may well know that we have a real soft spot for pioneering female drivers. And when we first heard of Edith Wharton she seemed a real lady to our heart. Wharton (1862-1937) was the American author of a couple of books which may well have changed the world’s opinion on women. To a great extent because she was an early car owner and adventurer who was keen to explore ‘the mystery beyond the next blue hills’, as she took out her 1904 Pope-Hartford to the countryside, basing her characters and descriptions of life on reality rather than romance.

In her book ‘A Motor-Flight through France’ (1908) she travels through the titled country by her Pope-Hartford car, which was, of course, a very modern means of transport at the time and a modern way to come up with travelling stories. But Wharton also described some kind of love-hate relationship with her car, as somebody else mentioned: “Her appreciation for how the automobile allows her better access to both historical and natural spectacle contrasts with her disdain for how new technologies eclipse the past, a tension reflected in the narrative as a dialectical relationship between technology and history."

She had a fondness for France though and actually lived there when WW1 broke out. During those tough times, she set up a workroom for unemployed women and later also several hostels for refugees, organizing shelter, meals, work and clothes for them. In early 1915 she organized the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, which gave shelter to nearly 900 Belgian refugees who had fled when their homes were bombed by the Germans. Meanwhile, she also travelled to the front lines of the great war, reporting about it in a series of articles that were first published in Scribner's Magazine and later published in a book named ‘Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort’. It became a bestseller. Today, January the 24th, is Edith Wharton’s birthday. We found three pictures of her taken during her automobile travels and, judging by the rear wings, we believe that the cars seen on them are at least two different vehicles. Anyone who can shed a light on that?

Words by Jeroen Booij.

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