The Automobile: Speed and Status

While the masses descended underground, the elite embraced the automobile. The first Paris-Rouen race in 1894 had been won by a steam-powered car averaging 19 kilometers per hour. By 1900, hundreds of automobiles prowled Paris streets, their wealthy owners competing in displays of mechanical prowess and social status.

The Comte de Dion, manufacturer and enthusiast, embodied the automobile's aristocratic adoption. His De Dion-Bouton factory produced cars that were mechanical jewelry—brass fittings gleaming, leather seats hand-stitched, engines purring with precision. Owning a De Dion announced wealth, taste, and embrace of progress. The Comte himself raced his creations, crashing spectacularly and frequently, each accident reported breathlessly in society pages.

But automobiles disrupted more than traffic. The traditional coachman, symbol of aristocratic households for centuries, faced obsolescence. Some adapted, learning to drive and maintain motors. Others resisted. Pierre Bonnard, coachman to the Rothschild family, left a memoir describing his transition: "The horses knew me, trusted me. The automobile was a demon that obeyed sometimes, rebelled others. But the family insisted, so I learned to master the demon."

Women drivers scandalized conservatives but thrilled progressives. Camille du Gast, wealthy divorcee and accomplished athlete, competed in international races. When the Automobile Club de France tried to ban women, she founded the Automobile Club Féminin. Her 1901 Paris-Berlin race performance—she finished despite a cracked cylinder—proved women's mechanical competence. "Speed," she declared, "recognizes no gender."

The automobile's social impact rippled outward. Fashions adapted to open-air motoring: goggles, dusters, veils. New crimes emerged—"automobilists" who struck pedestrians and fled. Laws struggled to regulate speed, licensing, liability. The Boulevard des Italiens, once dominated by leisurely flâneurs, became a racecourse for showing off new models. Progress had a soundtrack: the honk of horns, the backfire of engines, the curses of displaced pedestrians.