Literary giant with a taste for motors

3:16pm Monday 7th July 2008

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One of the biggest attractions at Bateman's, the house near Burwash in East Sussex, where writer Rudyard Kipling lived for many years, is the great man's Rolls-Royce.

The 1928 Phantom now graces the garage and is kept in air-conditioned splendour so it will last for many years yet.

It was bought 80 years ago this week (July 11) for £2,833, a goodly sum back in 1928 for even then Rolls-Royces were expensive.

Kipling and his wife Carrie took the Rolls to Scotland and were impressed by what he called its unequalled performance.

According to Michael Smith, in his new book Kipling's Sussex, the writer thought the car was merely "sleeping" when it travelled as fast as 60mph.

Although Kipling was a wealthy man, he sold the Phantom after only four years because the road tax for such a powerful vehicle was too expensive.

By now in poor health, Kipling had only one more car, a lighter Rolls, which lasted until his death in 1936, but he was unable to travel much.

The Phantom had half a dozen owners over the years before it was bought in the 1970s by patriot and philanthropist Sir Jack Hayward, who was, like Kipling, an admirer of Sussex.

Hayward, whose previous gifts to the nation included Lundy Island in Devon and the Great Britain ship now at Bristol, enjoyed Kipling's work. He was enthusiastic when the Kipling Society approached him about buying the car. It was renovated by Sir Edward Caffyn at his firm's Haywards Heath works and transferred to Bateman's in 1982 on permanent loan.

Kipling had been an enthusiast for cars since the early days of motoring. He was first alerted to the joys of automobiles by Alfred Harmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe.

Harmsworth wanted to enlist the support of Kipling for a public appeal to support servicemen fighting in the Boer War and their dependents. Early in October 1899, he drove down in his Panhard to The Elms at Rottingdean, where Kipling lived before he moved to Bateman's.

He invited Kipling out for a short spin and Smith says: "His car must have been one of the first horseless carriages to disturb the peace of the village".

Kipling wrote later: "A friend cried at our door: Mr Harmsworth has just brought round one of those motor car things. Come and try it'. It was a 20-minute trip. We returned white with dust and dizzy with noise. But the poison worked from that very hour."

The poison was a love of cars that lasted a lifetime. His first vehicle was a hired car which could reach the dizzy speed of eight miles an hour. In it, he somehow reached Arundel, taking all day to get there and back.

It cost three and a half guineas a week to hire this fearsome vehicle, called the Embryo, including the services of a driver.

That was more than his rent for The Elms. Kipling was so enthused, he decided to buy a car for himself, a Locomobile, which he called "the Holy Terror".

In those days, journeys by car were slow and often interrupted by breakdowns. Once when he went to Salisbury, it took him three hours just to reach Pulborough.

The Locomobile also needed to be filled frequently with water because it was powered by steam.

Eventually, Kipling became impatient with the Holy Terror and replaced it with a Lanchester three years later.

Kipling was already friendly with FW Lanchester, who invented the brand of vehicle, for the two men shared an interest in poetry and motion.

He called the car Amelia, always giving motors nicknames, and used it to make visits to Bateman's, which he was about to buy.

Despite difficulties, Kipling had a succession of Lanchesters, some better than others. Once he broke down at Ditchling in a car nicknamed Jane Cakebread after a well known London drunk. He sent a telegram to the Lanchester works reading: "Jane disembowelled on village green, Ditchling. Pray remove your disorderly experiment".

After moving to Bateman's, Kipling moved up a grade to buy a Daimler and once took it on a trip to meet Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts.

But in 1910, when staying in a Pyrenean spa, Kipling met car enthusiast Lord Montagu and Claude Johnson, the first manager of Rolls-Royce, He offered Kipling and Carrie a trip in one and sent his Rolls all the way to Paris. From that point, Kipling was hooked.

He bought a succession of Rolls-Royces, keeping detailed notes of his journeys in them, and these survive today.

Like the 1928 Phantom, they showed Kipling loved cars as much as he was passionate about Sussex and writing. But he never drove one himself.

• Kipling's Sussex by Michael Smith is published by Brownleaf at £15. Email brownleaf@talktalk.net for more information.