This picture looks rather formal and professionally posed – and it is. It is part of a promotional article that nowadays we would call “advertorial”, and is subtly putting forward the qualities of Humber cars – and the quality of the people who buy and use them.
The article is from the Modern Motoring magazine of January 1936. This looks at first glance to be a perfectly innocent general motoring and lifestyle magazine – until you realise that virtually every advertisement, article and report is about Hillman, Talbot, Humber, Karrier, Commer and their suppliers. You have to dig really deep to find the admission that this is a Rootes Group publication. Cheeky!
But this still leaves us with a charming report from Lady Claude Hamilton, the lady in the picture, of her Continental tour. She travelled 2,500 miles in five weeks in her 1936 Humber Snipe. Using a cargo boat from Folkestone to Boulogne, she travelled through France, Switzerland, Italy, back into Switzerland and then back through France, via Dijon and, of course, Paris.
As we might expect from an article to promote the excellence of the Humber, no real problems occurred, except for low oil pressure in Italy – which Lady Hamilton, with no Italian, tried to communicate to four or five mechanics by blowing out her cheeks and pointing to the ground. Some tried to blow up the tyres, and others looked under the bonnet. Finally, she indicated the oil filler and showed them the oil gauge. This did the trick, and oil was added. All was well once more.
Lady Hamilton was a privileged member of the landed gentry, but she was no delicate, fragile flower. She had been driving since “the lowest possible age”, and had been badly hurt in the First World War “when cranking a huge lorry.” She was perfectly happy to stay in a B&B in a seedy back street in Folkestone when all hotels were full. She stressed that she deplored class distinction of any kind. However, rather quaintly, she added “…I should so much like to see greater co-operation by pedestrians.” Things haven’t changed much.
A common problem with images from this time was the rather dull nature of published black and white photographs. But magazines of the 1930’s had a trick up their sleeves: the colour illustration on the cover. This issue of Modern Motoring was no exception, and gives a far more exciting illustration entitled “Across the Ages” – featuring the 1936 Talbot 3½ Litre Speed Saloon compared with an early horse-drawn mail coach; we have added it here. We can only imagine Lady Hamilton in a similar illustration, driving her Humber over the Simplon Pass to Lausanne in 1936.
Words and pictures by Peter Moss |
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A 1936 Continental tour by Lady Hamilton
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