One hundred years ago this spring, the infant world of motor racing was eagerly looking forward to the Gordon Bennett Trophy race, to be held in counties Carlow and Kildare on July 2nd, 1903. This would be the first motor race to be held in either Britain or Ireland. The leading French driver Henri Fournier was selected to be one of France's three competitors, though in the end he did not participate, writes Brian Maye.
Nothing very remarkable about this, you might think; but there is something fascinating about the Fournier connection, and it concerns one of our greatest writers and this newspaper.
James Joyce entered University College Dublin in 1898 and graduated in 1902. While there, he wrote an essay entitled "Ibsen's New Drama", which was published by the Fortnightly Review in April 1900. The following month, he visited London, hoping to be offered an appointment to a journal or review after he had completed his university course. But had little success and returned to Dublin.
After graduation, hoping to study medicine, he went to Paris where he tried to find work teaching English to support himself. However, there was not much teaching available. As another way of making some money, he contributed reviews to Dublin newspapers. In fact, he hoped to be appointed Paris correspondent of The Irish Times but his only published contribution was an interview with Henri Fournier, which appeared just over 100 years ago, on April 7th, 1903.
The interview took place at the premises of Paris-Automobile, a company that Fournier managed. Reading Joyce's piece, one can quickly see his eye for detail and his ability to describe that detail vividly, so evident in his later fiction. Early in the interview he gives us a picture of the large, square, roofed-over courtyard, filled with cars of all shapes, sizes and colours, which was Paris-Automobile. "In the afternoon, this court is full of noises - the voices of workmen, the voices of buyers talking in half a dozen languages, the ringing of telephone bells, the horns sounded by the 'chauffeurs' as the cars come in and go out."
Because the place was so busy, it wasn't easy to see Fournier. "But the buyers of 'autos' are, in one sense, people of leisure," Joyce observes, and so the morning was the best time to see the racing driver. After two failed attempts, Joyce managed to corner his man early one morning.
"Early as the hour was," he tells Irish Times readers, "our interview was now and again broken in upon by the importunate telephone." There is nothing striking about the first part of the interview. Fournier confirms that he plans to take part in the race in Ireland and tells what type of car he will be driving. When they get to discussing speed, things liven up.
Fournier informs Joyce that the highest speed his vehicle can reach is 140 kilometres an hour. When Joyce inquires what would be the average speed for the race, Fournier replies somewhere between 100 and 110 k.p.h.
The exchange that follows shows we were very much in the pre-calculator era when people could do quite complex calculations pretty quickly in their heads.
Joyce: A kilometre is about half a mile, is it not?
Fournier: More than that, I should think. There are how many yards in your mile?
Joyce: Seventeen hundred and sixty, if I am right.
Fournier: Then your half-mile has 880 yards. Our kilometre is equal to 1,100 yards.
Joyce: Let me see. Then your top speed is nearly 86 miles an hour, and your average speed is 61 miles an hour?
Fournier: I suppose so, if we calculate properly.
Such speed on Irish rural roads shocks Joyce: "It is an appalling pace! It is enough to burn our roads," he exclaims. He next asks the Frenchman if he has seen the roads he is due to race over. The reply is to the effect that Fournier has not seen the Carlow-Kildare roads but only sketches of the course in Parisian newspapers. He assures Joyce that he intends to go to Ireland to inspect the course. Whether he managed to do so or not, I do not know.
Fournier does not venture an opinion for his interviewer about who will the race and when asked which nation he fears the most, he is a model of diplomacy, answering that he fears them all - "Germans, Americans and English." (Camille Jenatzy, the actual winner of the 1903 event in Ireland, was a Belgian but he raced for Germany; he was nicknamed "Le Diable Rouge" because of his spectacular racing style and his big red beard.)
Joyce concludes the interview by referring to the previous year's winner, Selwyn Edge of Britain, and asking if he is not likely to be Fournier's most formidable opponent. The answer might seem a bit odd on a first reading: "O yes. But, you see, Mr Edge won, of course, but a man who was last of all, and had no chance of winning, might win if the other machines broke." This is actually what happened in the 1902 event and Edge had only to finish the race in order to win it.
The last word in the interview goes to Joyce. His comment on Fournier's apparently odd answer is: "Whatever way one looks at this statement, it appears difficult to challenge its truth." James Joyce never became a full-time journalist. Imagine what great works of literature might have been lost to posterity if he had.