The Car That Went Abroad: Motoring Through the Golden Age — A Reader’s Guide

A Car as Companion and Comic Foil

Paine treats his automobile not as a machine but as a willing servant, a “genii” that obeys a touch. This personification is central to the book’s charm. The car is both enabler and source of mishap: it nearly gets damaged by a cherry wagon when the author’s impatience leads to a collision with a cart, earning him a burst of French profanity that he analyzes with mock seriousness. The vehicle’s reliability is contrasted with the narrator’s own fallibility—he admits to being “about the only person in the world” who thought William of Orange took his name from an Irish society. These small, self-aware jokes keep the narrative from becoming a dry itinerary. The car’s mechanical needs are rarely detailed; instead, it is a prop for adventure, allowing the party to camp on an island, make tea, and watch the sunset over Avignon. Paine’s relationship with the car is one of affectionate dependence, and his descriptions of its swift, willing nature echo the period’s wonder at the new freedom of motoring.

Digressions on Local Color and Language

Paine’s eye for the peculiar is sharp. At Orange, he notes that the guidebook omits the local jam, “put up in tin pails” with “lumps of them” for one franc. In Villeneuve, the cherry harvest overwhelms the streets with “basketfuls, boxfuls, bucketfuls, barrelfuls, wagonloads.” These details ground the travelogue in sensory reality. He also devotes a paragraph to French profanity, finding it featherweight: “Sacre bleu” and “Nom d’un chien!” strike him as harmless, and he muses on why blue was chosen for sacred oaths. Such digressions are typical of the book’s structure: a historical site prompts a personal reflection, which then leads to a culinary or linguistic observation. Paine does not lecture; he shares his own puzzlement and amusement. The reader learns about the theater at Orange almost incidentally, as a backdrop to the jam and the cherry wagons. This method makes the history feel lived-in rather than recited.

Structure: Two Journeys, One Narrative Arc

The book is divided into two parts, each with its own table of contents. Part I covers an earlier trip through southern France, with chapters like “Across the Crau” and “The Lost Napoleon.” Part II, “Motoring Through the Golden Age,” is a longer journey that loops through the Jura, Auvergne, and up to Paris, then to the châteaux of the Loire, Rheims, and even into Germany. The excerpts from Part II show a more seasoned traveler: the narrator now knows to camp on islands and buy local jam. The structure allows Paine to revisit places—Avignon appears in both parts, first as a site of “smoke adventure” and later as a familiar landmark. This repetition creates a sense of growth and familiarity. The reader watches the narrator become more confident, more attuned to the rhythms of French life. The two-part structure also mirrors the book’s dual identity: a record of a specific trip and a celebration of the motoring age itself.

The Golden Age: Nostalgia and Practicality

The subtitle “Motoring Through the Golden Age” hints at a retrospective glow, but Paine’s text is firmly anchored in the practicalities of early twentieth-century travel. He notes costs, road conditions, and the occasional breakdown. In the excerpt, he mentions that the car “came near getting damaged” by a cherry wagon, and later chapters include titles like “We Come to Grief” and “The Damage Repaired.” This blend of wonder and pragmatism defines the book’s tone. Paine is not a romantic; he is a journalist who records both the sublime view and the price of repairs. The “golden age” is not idealized but experienced as a series of small, vivid moments: making tea on an island, buying cherry jam, listening to French curses. The reader is invited to share in the pleasure of discovery without the burden of exhaustive historical detail. Paine’s voice is that of a companionable guide, one who is as interested in the present moment as in the past.

Paine’s narrative rewards a reader who enjoys leisurely digressions and wry self-deprecation. The book is best approached not as a systematic guide but as a series of vignettes, each built around a specific place or incident. Pay attention to the small details—the price of jam, the color of cherries, the shape of a curse—because these are the threads that hold the journey together. The car, for all its magic, is ultimately a means to an end: the pleasure of being somewhere unexpected, with time to stop and make tea.

I keep thinking about that old road-trip book, the way it made a dusty car feel like a secret doorway. There's a quiet pleasure in wandering slowly, noticing what others hurry past. It reminded me of curling up with another, gentler journey through Holland — same unhurried spirit, same warmth. A Wanderer in Holland — Reading Notes felt like a postcard from that same twilight. Some books simply stay with you.