8091: Cars 3

As fascinated as Edgar Rice Burroughs was with automobiles throughout his adult life, it’s not surprising to find them scattered throughout the fiction that he produced during his adult life. He even designed some interesting extra-terrestrial vehicles for use by alien races in his Mars and Venus tales, but let’s put them aside for now, and examine the motor vehicles he used in his stories set on Earth.

First, a vocabulary lesson on the terminology that ERB utilized. He often used “automobile” and “car,” terms commonly in use today. However, he also used another term, outdated now, to refer to all cars, particularly in his early stories. At one point in the second part of The Mad King, written in 1914, Barney Custer revealed what he found in a nearby building. “It’s a machine,” he whispered to his companion, who then understood that Barney had found an automobile.

ERB identified that specific car as a roadster, another term seldom used today. Initially it was an American term for a two-seat car with no weather protection. The model evolved over the years to included two-seat convertibles. Another early car model Burroughs mentioned was a phaeton. Like a roadster, a phaeton lacked any fixed weather protection, but had a back seat to carry passengers. In Marcia of the Doorstep, written in 1924, family patriarch Marcus Aurelius purchased a new car. Its initial outing with the family aboard ended sadly.

“There was a crash, a volley of profanity, a couple of screams from the back seat and Marcus Aurelius’ new sport model phaeton was merged with a yellow taxi.”

A vehicle model mentioned more often by ERB is the touring car. It was a popular American family style of open car seating four or more people. It was popular in the early 1900s and 1920s. In ERB’s story The Rider, the Bass family packed into a “large touring car” for a planned European tour.

Keeping those terms in mind, let’s look at some of the ways ERB utilized cars in some of his earliest stories. Since Burroughs first novel was set on Mars and his second was about events that took place on earth in the Middle Ages, it wasn’t until his third, and most famous novel, that automobiles first played a part in his fiction. (The period during which Burroughs wrote each story is listed below the story’s title.)

In the final two chapters of Tarzan of the Apes, the notable characters shuttle around in three different automobiles. To keep them straight, let’s call them the “Clayton Car,” the “Canler Car,” and the “Tarzan Car.” The first to appear is the “Clayton Car,” which, with its owner, William Clayton and family friend Mr. Philander, was waiting at the train station in Wisconsin when Jane, her father, and Esmeralda arrived. They all piled into the “Clayton Car,” which then “quickly whirled away through the dense northern woods toward the little farm” that Jane had inherited from her mother.

A week later, the “Canler Car,” “a purring six cylinder,” pulled up to the farmhouse. The driver, Robert Canler, had come to demand that Jane marry him as promised. After she finally gave in, Canler drove away the next morning to get a marriage license and a minister.

While Canler was gone, a fourth automobile, a great black car, came careening down the road and stopped with a jolt at the cottage. It was Tarzan, of course, come to rescue the whole crowd from an approaching forest fire. When he learned Jane was off walking in the woods, he ordered Clayton to put everybody else in his car and drive them to safety by the north road. “Leave my car here,” Tarzan directed. “If I find Miss Porter we shall need it.” The rest of the party then climbed in the “Clayton Car” and he drove them off to safety. Meanwhile, with the ape-man at the wheel, the “Tarzan Car” drove toward the fire to find and rescue Jane. With her in the car, Tarzan sped toward safety. “The car was plunging along the uneven road at a reckless pace,” Burroughs noted. When the danger had passed, Tarzan slowed the car down. It was in that vehicle at that time that Tarzan offered Jane his love and asked for hers.

Before she could answer definitely, they arrived at a little hamlet where they found Clayton and his passengers standing around the “Clayton Car.” They were all sitting in the parlor of a little hostelry, when “the distant chugging of an approaching automobile caught their attention.” It was the “Canler Car” returning with a minister to solemnize the driver’s marriage to Jane. Canler was only in the hostelry for a few moments before Tarzan “convinced” him to drive away in his car.

The remaining group went outside and got into the two cars — Clayton, Jane, her father, and Esmeralda in the “Clayton Car” and Mr. Philander with the ape-man in the “Tarzan Car.” Mr. Philander spoke to the silent driver. “Bless me,” he said, “Who would ever have thought it possible! The last time I saw you you were a veritable wild man, skipping about among the branches of a tropical African forest, and now you are driving me along a Wisconsin road in a French automobile.”

Meanwhile, ahead in the “Clayton Car,” a confused Jane Porter made a fateful mistake. She convinced herself that life with Clayton would be preferable to life with a wild man. In the train station waiting room, she told Tarzan she had agreed to marry Clayton. Later, on the station platform, Tarzan renounced his birthright. Unable to face Clayton, Tarzan decided at the last minute to drive his car back to New York. Jane told Clayton it was because Tarzan was anxious to see more of America than is possible from a car window.

Tarzan’s automobile and his ability to drive it at the end of Tarzan of the Apes pose some questions. The episode at Jane’s Wisconsin farm occurred just a little over a month after Tarzan first arrived in France with Paul D’Arnot. Evidentially, Tarzan learned to drive during that month in Paris, but Burroughs made no mention of it. And from where did Tarzan get the “French automobile” that he drove that fateful day in the Wisconsin woods? Did car rental companies exist in New York City in 1909? Maybe D’Arnot purchased the automobile and had it waiting for Tarzan in New York. It’s also possible that D’Arnot arranged for an American associate to loan Tarzan an automobile to use during his stay in America. In any event, that French automobile is the only car that Tarzan is seen driving in the entire Tarzan series.

Two automobiles play roles during the two months Tarzan lived in Paris at the beginning of The Return of Tarzan. While out for a walk one night, Tarzan stood on the sidewalk of a well-lighted boulevard waiting for traffic to clear before crossing the street. Burroughs recounted the communication between him and a passenger in a passing vehicle.

“As he stood directly beneath a brilliant arc light, waiting for a limousine that was approaching to pass him, he heard his name called in a sweet feminine voice. Looking up, he met the smiling eyes of Olga de Coude as she leaned forward upon the back seat of the machine. He bowed very low in response to her friendly greeting. When he straightened up the machine had borne her away.”

Tarzan and Olga had met on the ocean liner that brought both of them back to France from America. Their passing encounter on a street in Paris that evening set in motion events that a month later led Tarzan to a potentially fatal ride in another automobile. On the morning of November 26, 1909, Tarzan climbed into Paul D’Arnot’s “great car” for a short drive to a field outside Paris. Tarzan went there to answer the challenge of Count de Coude for an incident that occurred in the boudoir of the count’s wife a few days before. Although wounded twice, Tarzan survived the duel, and after some discussion, the opponents “rode back to Paris together in D’Arnot’s car, the best of friends.”

Nearly three years and many adventures passed before another automobile played a role in Tarzan’s life. In September 1912, Lord Greystoke was in Paris visiting D’Arnot, when he received a telegram informing him that his infant son had been kidnapped in London earlier that day. Hurrying home, Tarzan was met by a “roadster” at the station and driven to his family’s London townhouse. There he learned the kidnapping details from his distraught wife. While the baby’s nurse was wheeling him along the sidewalk outside the Greystoke residence, a taxicab drew up at the corner ahead. Carl, new houseman, then lured the nurse back toward the house. When the nurse reached the townhouse door, she turned to see the man wheeling the buggy toward the corner.

“She saw the door of the taxicab open … with a shriek she dashed down the steps and up the walk toward the taxicab into which Carl was now handing the baby. Just before she reached the vehicle, Carl leaped in beside his confederate, slamming the door behind him. At the same time, the chauffeur tried to start his machine, but it was evident that something had gone wrong, as though the gears had refused to mesh, and the delay caused by this, while he pushed the lever into reverse and backed the car a few inches before again attempting to go ahead, gave the nurse time to reach the side of the taxicab.

“Leaping to the running board, she had attempted to snatch the baby from the arms of the stranger, and here, screaming and fighting, she had clung to her position after the taxicab had got underway; nor was it until the machine had passed the Greystoke residence at a good speed that Carl, with a heavy blow to her face, had succeeded in knocking her to the pavement.”

After Lady Greystoke witnessed the nurse’s brave attempt, she also tried in vain to reach the passing vehicle. After Tarzan arrived home, a conspirator’s phone call lured him to Dover to retrieve his son. Lord Greystoke told his wife to stay home, but her fear for her son overcame his directive, and she had her chauffeur drive her to the station to catch the late train to Dover. There both Tarzan and Jane were shanghaied. No automobiles existed where they spent the next four months. They would not return to their London home until January 1913.

After establishing himself as a successful writer of imaginative fiction, ERB made his first attempt at contemporary social fiction with The Girl From Farris’s. Since the setting is Burroughs’ hometown of Chicago, automobiles play a part in the storyline. The reader learns at the end of the story that, prior to the beginning of the story, the car of Chicago businessman John Secor stalled in front of the countryside homestead of the Lathrop family. While the chauffeur tinkered with the motor, Secor knocked on the Lathrops’ door and asked for a glass of water. Infatuated immediately with the widowed Mrs. Lathrop’s daughter June, Secor returned many times in his chauffeured automobile to visit her. After being convinced to marry Secor, June was driven into town in her new husband’s car and installed in a room at Farris’s, a Chicago brothel.

June didn’t learn until after Secor died that he was already married. Identifying herself as Maggie Lynch, June found a friend in “Eddie the Dip,” a shady character in Chicago’s underworld. At first believing Maggie was a prostitute, Eddie offered to set her up with another man who would provide everything for her, including a classy car. Eddie told her:

“I know a gink right now that’ll pass me out five hundred bones any time for a squab like you. Say the word and I’ll split with you … He’d set you up in a swell apartment, plaster sparklers all over you, and give you a year-after-next model eight-lunger and a shuffer. You’d be the only chesse on Mich. Boul.”

After June declined the officer, Eddie gave her money to buy new clothes so that she could get a respectable job. Meanwhile, Ogden Secor, son of John, the bigamist who duped June, was engaged to Sophia Welles, a Chicago socialite, whose father had made “several fortunes in the automobile industry.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs may have loved automobiles, but Billy Byrne, the protagonist in The Mucker, decidedly did not. As a young man growing up on Chicago’s East Side, Billy hated everything that was respectable. An expensive car was one of those things. “He had writhed in torture at sight of every shiny, purring automobile that had ever passed him with its load of well-groomed men and women.”

Years later, after escaping from police following a murder conviction, Billy had another reason for disliking automobiles. The Kansas City police received a tip that Billy was at a farmhouse outside the city. ERB noted, “It was but a little past one o’clock that a touring car rolled south out of Kansas City with Detective Sergeant Flannagan in the front seat with the driver and two burly representatives of Missouri law in the back.” Billy and Bridge were saying good-bye to the woman at the farmhouse, when “the dust of a fast-moving automobile appeared about a bend in the road a half-mile from the house.” Fortunately for Billy, the farmer’s wife hid the two hobos in her attic before the police car arrived.

Although Billy achieves respectability at the end of the story, he is never seen driving a car, a machine he had hated and feared all his life.

Of the hundreds of characters Edgar Rice Burroughs created, Barney Custer of Beatrice, Nebraska, drove the most cars. In The Mad King, he appears behind the wheel of four automobiles, two that he owned and two that he stole. Barney is first seen paying a storekeeper for gasoline he had just purchased for his gray roadster. It was the fall of 1912, and Barney was visiting for the first time his mother’s native land, the small Balkan kingdom of Lutha. After leaving the hamlet of Tafelberg, he drove through the picturesque countryside. Burroughs then described the incident that his life changed forever.

“Just before him was a long, heavy grade, and as he took it with open muffler the chugging of his motor drowned the sound of hoof beats rapidly approaching behind him. It was not until he topped the grade that he heard anything unusual, and at the same instant a girl on horseback tore past him.”

Noticing the girl’s horse was out of control, Barney pressed the accelerator, and, “Like a frightened deer the gray roadster sprang forward in pursuit.” As the road was narrow, Barney drove up the outside to prevent the horse from plunging into the ravine below. He was able to pull her off the horse and onto the car’s running board, but the roadster skidded though a tight turn in the road and toppled over into the ravine. Barney shoved the girl off the running board, but he went over the embankment with his car. Fortunately, he was thrown from the vehicle and landed unharmed in a bush. Much later in the story, the reader learns that Barney’s car actually landed on Leopold, the heir to the throne of Lutha, pinning him go the ground temporarily. He escaped before the car burst into flames.

The girl Barney sacrificed his car to save was Emma Von der Tann, who later became his love interest in the story. After a series of typical Burroughsian adventures, Barney left Lutha a month later and returned to his home in Nebraska at the conclusion of part one of The Mad King.

Nine months passed before Barney’s second car appeared at the beginning of part two. After an agent by an enemy in Lutha failed in an attempt to kill Barney in Beatrice, Barney decided he must return to Lutha. While his new roadster, which Burroughs described as “a later model of the one he had lost in Lutha,” was in a Beatrice repair shop, Barney learned the assassin has fled to Lincoln, Nebraska. Without even saying good-bye to family, “he leaped into his gray roadster … and the last that Beatrice, Nebraska, saw of him was a whirling cloud of dust as he raced north out of town toward Lincoln.” He left his car there and took a train to New York. He tracked the assassin across the ocean, eventually making his way to Burgova, Austria-Hungary, in early August 1914. Since World War I had broken out in the Balkans, the border with neighboring Lutha was closed.

Near the headquarters of an Austrian army corps, “his eyes hung long and greedily upon the great, high-powered machines that chugged or purred about him … If he could but be behind the wheel of such a car for an hour! The frontier could not be over fifty miles to the south … what would fifty miles be to one of those machines?” Clothed in the uniform of an Austrian corporal he had killed, Barney walked boldly to a “big, gray machine” left unattended in front of the headquarters building.

“To crank it and leap to the driver’s seat required but a moment. The big car moved slowly forward. A turn of the steering wheel brought it around headed toward the wide gates. Barney shifted second speed, stepped on the accelerator and the cutout simultaneously, and … shot out of the courtyard. None who saw his departure could have guessed from the manner of it that the young man at the wheel of the gray car was stealing the machine.”

Outside the town, Barney drove south down a country road with Austrian troops marching on both sides. He bluffed his way onto the open road toward the frontier, and at the border was waved through without comment by an Austrian customs officer.

Barney was bound for the castle of Prince Ludwig von der Tann, Prince of Lutha and father of Emma von der Tann. “He flew through the familiar main street of the quaint old village (Tafelberg) at a speed that was little, if any less, than 50 miles an hour … On he raced toward the south, his speed often necessarily diminished upon the winding mountain roads, but for the most part clinging to a reckless mileage.” Half way to his destination, a patrol of Austrian infantrymen signaled him to pull over. Instead, he pressed the accelerator down. “At over sixty mils an hour the huge, gray monster bored down upon them. One of them fell beneath the wheels — two others were thrown high in air as the bumper struck them.”

“For a few minutes he held to his rapid pace before he looked around, and then it was to see two cars heading toward him in pursuit. Again he accelerated the speed of the car. The road was straight and level. Barney watched the road rushing rapidly out of sight beneath the gray fenders. He glanced occasionally at the speedometer. Seventy-five miles an hour … He saw the needle vibrate up to eighty. Gradually he nursed her up and up to great speed … The needle rose steadily until it reached 90 miles an hour — and topped it.”

Then the radiator, penetrated by a bullet fired at the roadblock, began to hiss and expel steam. “At the speed he was going it would be but a short time before the superheated pistons expanding in their cylinders would tear the motor to pieces. Barney felt that he would be lucky if he were not killed when it happened.” The sight ahead of a bridge over a river gave Barney an idea.

“As he neared the bridge, he reduced speed to 15 miles an hour, and set the hand throttle to hold it there. Still gripping the steering wheel with one hand, he climbed over the left-hand door to the running board. As the front wheels of the car ran up onto the bridge, Barney gave the steering wheel a sudden turn to the right and jumped. The car veered toward the wood handrail (and) the big machine plunged through them headforemost into the river. Barney ran across the bridge, leaped the fence and plunged into the shelter of the wood. Then he turned to look back up the road in the direction from which his pursuers were coming. They were not in sight — they had not seen his ruse. The water in the river was of sufficient depth to completely cover the car.”

After hiding in the woods for week avoiding capture by Austrians, Barney just happened to be in the right place at the right time to save Emma von der Tann, who was fleeing from abductors taking her to Blentz to be forcibly married to Peter. Looking for a way to reach the capital city of Ludstadt, the couple came upon a driveway outside a small town. “People who build driveways into their grounds usually have something to drive,” Barney said to Emma. “Whatever it is it should be at the other end of the driveway. Let’s see if it will carry two.” In a garage, Barney found a roadster. “He ran his hand over the pedals and levers, breathing a sigh of relief as his touch revealed the familiar control of a standard make.” For the second time in less than a week, Barney became a car thief. “It’s the through express for Lustadt and makes no stops for passengers or freight,” he joked with Emma.

Soon, though, they heard the sound of horses on the roadway behind them. Barney increased the speed of the car, but the road was heavy with sand, and ruts gripping the tires slowed the speed. They held the lead for a mile. “She’s reached her limit in this sand, and there’s a grade just ahead,” Barney lamented. “We may find better going beyond, but they’re bound to gain on us before we reach the top.” An excited Emma responded, “I know where we are now. The hill ahead is sandy, and there is a quarter of a mile of sand beyond, but then we strike the Lustadt highway, and if we can reach it ahead of them their horses will have to go ninety miles an hour to catch us.”

“They had reached the grade at last, and the motor was straining to the Herculean task imposed upon it. Grinding and grating in the second speed the car toiled upward through the clinging sand. The pace was snail-like. Behind, the horsemen were gaining rapidly … The top of the ascent lay but a few yards ahead, and the pursuers were but a few yards behind.” Emma turned and fired three shots at their pursuers. Then the car topped the hill and sped forward downhill through the last quarter-mile of sand toward the good road ahead.

“At last the white ribbon of the main road became visible. To the right they saw the headlights of a machine. But the machine was a mile away and could not possibly reach the intersection of the two roads before they had turned to the left toward Lustadt. Then the incident would resolve itself into a simple test of speed between the two cars — and the ability and nerve of the drivers. Barney hadn’t the slightest doubt now as to the outcome. His borrowed car was a good one, in good condition. And in the matter of driving he rather prided himself that he needn’t take his hat off to anyone when it came to ability and nerve.”

Suddenly, from the engine came a “sickly, sucking sputter,” and the car slowed down. The engine shut down, and the two passengers sat in silence as their “machine” coasted to a stop. It was out of gasoline. When their pursuers arrived they found Barney and Emma standing beside the worthless car. Peter’s soldiers took them into custody.

That was the fourth and last “machine” that Barney Custer drove in ERB’s The Mad King. It was not the last car in the story, however. Much royal intrigue ensued as supporters of Leopold and Barney sparred for their man’s right to be king of Lutha. On September 3, 1914, Leopold arrived at the cathedral in Ludstadt to marry Emma von der Tann. Captain Ernest Maenck, convinced that the man about to marry the princess was not Leopold, but instead Barney Custer, attempted to take action to prevent the ceremony.

“At the first cross-street he turned up the side of the cathedral. The grounds were walled up on this side, and he sought in vain for entrance. At the rear he discovered a limousine standing in the alley where its chauffeur had left it after depositing his passengers at the front door of the cathedral. The top of the limousine was but a foot or two below the top of the wall. Maenck climbed to the hood of the machine, and from there to the top of the wall. A moment later he dropped to the earth inside the cathedral grounds.”

After using the parked limousine to gain entrance to the cathedral, Meanck, thinking it was Barney who was about to wed Emma, mistakenly assassinated Leopold, ironically clearing the way for Barney not only to marry Emma, but also to become the legitimate King of Lutha.

— to be continued in Part Two—

Royal automobiles come and go often in this story about intrigue in a mythical European kingdom. After his father was assassinated, his grandson and apparent heir to the throne, was spirited from the palace in one of the “royal motors” and transported out of the kingdom for his protection.

Count Sarnya, previously one of the king’s closest counselors, then took precautions to protect himself.

“Ordinarily he left by the postern door, but today he had order one of the palace motors to meet him inside the gates. His own car and police guard waited at the postern gate. Count Sarnya was keeping a rendezvous that he did not wish even his own police to know about.”

Ten years later, Ferdinand, son of the kingdom’s puppet king, used the “royal motors” to help him carry on an affair with Hilda de Groot, the daughter of royal gardener. Hans de Groot knew Ferdinand was taking advantage of his sister.

“He saw a girl and two men enter a limousine and drive away. The girl was Hilda, and one of the men was Ferdinand … The car stopped in the city and picked up the pretty daughter of a cobbler; then it drove on out into the country to the hunting lodge in the woods.”

Eventually, Hilda’s method of transportation made people start to wonder how her family could afford it.

“When people saw Hilda come home for a visit with her mother, as she did when her father was away, they would have thought Martin de Groot must be making a great deal of money; for Hilda rode in a beautiful English car with a chauffeur and footman.”

The affair became public after King Otto was assassinated and Ferdinand became king. “Hilda had two new motors and many magnificent jewels.” She didn’t enjoy driving her cars, however. “When I drove today, some people hissed at me; when I passed the cemetery, I saw a man digging a grave.” The sight was prophetic. The next car Hilda rode in was a hearse.

In The Man-eater, Burroughs used an automobile in a most unusual way — as the setting for the story’s culminating action. Passing over the strange circumstances that brought all the major characters together, the final scene opened one night with a chauffeur driving Mrs. Scott and her daughter Virginia home to the family’s Virginia mansion. A quarter mile from its destination, the car came to a stop. ERB, perhaps drawing from the breakdowns of his own autos, described how the chauffeur analyzed the problem.

“Getting down from his seat and raising one side of the bonnet … he fussed about between the engine and the control board, trying first the starter and then the horn. ‘Ah guess we-all blowed a fuse,’ he announced presently. ‘Have you others, or must we walk the rest of the way?’ inquired Mrs. Scott. ‘Oh, yasm, Ah got some right year,’ and he raised the cushion from the driver’s seat and thrust his hand into the box beneath. For a moment he fumbled about in search of an extra fuse plug.”

As he clipped the new fuse plug in place, making the car ready to run again, the chauffeur noticed something emerging from the darkness and moving toward the car — a lion. The driver bolted to the side of the road, jumped a fence, and disappeared, leaving the two women to deal with the lion. Virginia considered their options.

“Should she and her mother leave the machine and attempt to escape, or were they safer where they were? The lion could easily track them should he care to do so after they had left the car. On the other hand, the strange and unusual vehicle might be sufficient safeguard in itself to keep off a nervous jungle beast.”

Meanwhile, the lion was considering his options as well. “He did not like the looks of this strange thing. What was it? He would investigate. The beast was beside the car now. Leisurely, he placed a forepaw on the running board and raised himself until his giant head topped the side of the tonneau.”

Enter Dick Gordon, courageous hero. While distracting the lion, he cried out asking Virginia if she knew how to drive. When she responded, “Yes,” Gordon commanded, “Then climb over and drive. Drive anywhere just as fast as you can.”

“The girl clambered over into the driver’s seat and started the engine. With the whir of the starter (the lion) wheeled about with a low snarl, but in an instant the girl drew the speed lever back into low, pressed down on the accelerator, let in the clutch, and the car shot forward. Still the lion seemed in doubt. He took a few steps toward the car, which he could easily reach in a single bound.”

At that instant, Gordon distracted the beast, allowing the two women to drive safely away.

In the European principality of Karlova, the adventurous Prince Boris wanted to avoid an arranged marriage with the daughter of the King of nearby Margoth. His solution was to trade places for a week with the country’s notorious highwayman known as The Rider. The outlaw, dressed in the prince’s military uniform, rode in the first of many automobiles in the story. A French limousine carried him down a flower-strewn boulevard into Demia, the capital city of nearby Margoth. In the crowd along the boulevard, the real Prince Boris, incognito, met American Hemmington Main, who had come to Europe to track down love-interest Gwendolyn Bass, whose mother had taken her on a tour of Europe to keep Main from courting her daughter.

In one of those wondrous coincidences that ERB used so much in his stories, Main just happened to spot the Bass automobile arriving in the city at the same time the Karlovian French limo drove by.

“An automobile, a large touring car, honked noisily out of a side street and crossed toward the hotel entrance. Main chanced to be looking down into the street at the time. With an excited exclamation he half rose from his chair. ‘There they are!’ he whispered. “The car drew up before the hotel and stopped. Two maids alighted, followed by a young girl and a white haired woman.”

Meanwhile, Princess Mary of Margoth decided to avoid the supposed Prince of Karlova. “The open car, Stefan,” she instructed her aid. “The old one without the arms, and take me west on the Roman road.” Before leaving town, though, the princess decided to stop at the hotel where her American friend Gwendolyn Bass was staying.

Meanwhile, Prince Boris, incognito, hatched a scheme to help Main hook up with Gwendolyn so that he could propose to her. Unfortunately, Boris wound up hijacking Princess Mary’s car instead of the Bass car, leading to multiple automobile scenes in the Margothian countryside through the remainder of the story. Below is one example.

“Slowly the big car wound its way up the steep grade. The gears, meshed in second speed, protested loudly, while the exhaust barked in sympathy through an open muffler. Stefan, outwardly calm, was inwardly boiling, as was the water in the radiator before him threatening to do. Silent, but none the less sincere, were the curses where with he cursed the fate which had compelled him to drive “the old car” up Vitza grade which the new car took in high with only a gentle purring.

“Almost at the summit there is a curve about a projecting shoulder of rock, and at this point the grade is steepest. More and more slowly the old car moved when it reached this point — there came from the steel and aluminum lungs a few consumptive coughs which racked the car from bumper to tail light, and as Stefan shifted quickly from second to low the wheels almost stopped, and at the same instant a horseman reined quickly into the center of the road before them, a leveled revolver pointing straight through the frail windshield at the unprotected breast of the astonished Stefan.

“One single burst of speed and both horse and man would be ridden down. The gears were in low, the car was just at a standstill. Stefan pressed his foot upon the accelerator and let in the clutch. The car should have jumped forward and crushed the life from the presumptuous bandit; but it did nothing of the sort. Instead, it gave voice to a pitiful choking sound, and died.”

Hemmington Main’s romantic automobile-filled plans to find and marry Gwendolyn Bass were successfully concluded at the story’s end.

In ERB’s chronologically challenged novella, The Oakdale Affair, the initial event in the three-day storyline is first revealed halfway through the second chapter.

“Reginald Paynter was dead. His body had been found beside the road just outside the city limits at midnight by a party of automobilists returning from a fishing trip. The skull was crushed back of the left ear. The position of the body, as well as the marks in the road beside it indicated that the man had been hurled from a rapidly moving automobile.”

That same evening, Abigail Prim, the “spinster” 19-year-old daughter of Oakdale’s prominent banker, disappeared from her parents’ home. The town’s citizens viewed the two events as somehow interlinked, since Abigail and Reginald were old friends. On frequent occasions she had “ridden abroad in Reginald’s French roadster.” That evening, though, Abigail was not with Reginald. Instead, in a desperate attempt to escape her dreary life, she had stuffed her pockets with cash, disguised herself as a boy, and headed out into the adventurous world claiming to be the criminal “Oskaloosa Kid.” After teaming up with the philosophical drifter, Bridge, the two witnessed a scary automobile incident.

“Bridge, turning, saw a brilliant light flaring through the night above the crest of the hill they had just topped in their descent into the small valley, where stood the crumbling house of Squibbs. The purr of a rapidly moving motor rose above the rain … As the car swung onto the straight road before the house a flash of lightning revealed dimly the outlines of a rapidly moving touring car with lowered top. Just as the machine came opposite the Squibbs’ gate a woman’s scream mingled with the report of a pistol from the tonneau and the watchers upon the verandah saws a dark hulk hurled from the car, which sped on with undiminished speed, climbed the hill beyond and disappeared from view. Bridge started on a run toward the gateway, followed by the frightened Kid. In the ditch beside the road they found in a disheveled heap the body of a young woman.”

The young woman, Hettie Penning, survived and joined an aggregate of characters shuffled back-and-forth throughout the night in various automobiles between the towns of Oakdale and Payton. Passengers in the crowded cars included Bridge, Abigail Prim (disguised as the “Oskaloosa Kid”), a gang of felonious hoboes (Dopey Charlie, Soup Face, Sky Pilot, and The General), Abigail’s father, Chicago Detective Dick Burton, half a dozen sheriff deputies, and a dozen carloads of indignant citizens looking for a lynching. Eventually, Miss Penning explained how some Oakdale lowlifes killed Reginald Paynter and threw his body out of their speeding car shortly before they tried to do the same to her. Other than Reginald’s “French roadster,” the only other specific type of car mentioned in The Oakdale Affair is the large “touring car” used by Detective Burton and his crew of Chicago cops.

Only one automobile appears in Tarzan the Untamed, and for this one, ERB specified the make. While British Colonel Capell and Lieutenant Thompson discussed a rescue mission to find a British pilot missing in West Africa, “a big Vauxhall drew up in front of the headquarters of the Second Rhodesians.” The vehicle carried British General Smut to a conference with Colonel Capell. Vauxhall Motors was then, and still is, a British maker of motor vehicles.

In the summer of 1915, a flat tire and a beautiful woman gave Jimmy Torrance the self-esteem boost he needed to continue trying to make something of himself in Chicago. The left front tire of Miss Elizabeth Compton’s car was flat. Burroughs explained, “There was an extra wheel on the rear of the roadster, but it was heavy and cumbersome, and the girl knew from experience what a dirty job changing a wheel is. She had just about decided to drive home on the rim when a young man crossed the walk from Erie Street.” Jimmy asked if he could help her. “It looks like a new casing,” he observed. “It would be too bad to ruin it. If you have a spare I will be very glad to change it for you.” After Miss Compton thanked him for changing the tire, Jimmy stood on the curb and watched as she drove away.

Later in the story, three people, two cars, and a motorcycle participate in a scene important to Jimmy Torrance’s future. It started when two taxis drew up side-by-side in front of a Chicago roadhouse. The Lizard, a pickpocket and safecracker, got out of one taxi and joined Little Eva, a lady of the evening, in the back seat of the other cab. Jimmy had made friends with both characters. After agreeing to get some “papers” that would be helpful to Jimmy, The Lizard got back in his cab, just as a motorcycle policeman pulled up beside it. When The Lizard ordered the driver to “Beat it, bo!’ the taxicab leaped forward, accelerating rapidly. Also wanting to avoid the cops, Eva ordered her cab driver to, “Go on to Elmhurst, and then come back to the city on the St. Charles Road.”

Burroughs characterization of the youthful Eva Pennington began with her impetuousness while driving a car.

“Now the chauffeur was taking her bag and carrying it to the roadster that she would drive home along the wide, straight boulevard that crossed the valley — utterly ruining a number of perfectly good speed laws … The headlights of a motor car turned in at the driveway … With a rush the car topped the hill, swung up the driveway, and stopped at the corner of the house. A door flew open, and the girl leaped from the driver’s seat.”

Her brother, Custer Pennington, also could be careless behind the wheel, but for a different reason. When he had been drinking, he tended to swing “the roadster around the curves of the driveway leading down the hill a bit more rapidly than usual.” Custer next appeared driving the Pennington roadster in Los Angles. He had requested that it be sent to the city and parked in a garage for him to use the day he was released from jail. After first stopping to visit Grace Evans, a close family friend, Custer headed north to rejoin his family at their valley home.

“Custer found them waiting for him on the east porch as he drove up to the ranch house. The new freedom and the long drive over the beautiful highway through the clear April sunshine, with the green hills at his left and the lovely valley spread out upon his right hand, to some extent alleviated the depression that had followed the shock of his interview with Grace; and when he alighted from the car he seemed quite his normal self again.”

After learning from Custer about his sister Grace’s problems, Guy Evans’ drove along the same highway back to LA in a decidedly different state of mind.

“Guy Evans swept over the broad, smooth highway at a rate that would have won him ten days in the jail at Santa Ana had his course led him through that village … When he approached the bungalow on Circle Terrace, and saw a coupé standing at the curb, he guessed at what it portended; for though there were doubtless hundreds of similar cars in the city, there was that about this one which suggested the profession of its owner.” It belonged to a doctor.

After he learned that movie producer Wilson Crumb had been the cause of Grace’s disgrace and death, Guy resolved to kill him. When Guy came upon Crumb standing by his broken down car one evening, he revenged his sister.

“He rode to the mouth of Jackknife, and saw the lights of Crumb’s car up near El Camino Largo … He rode up to where Crumb was attempting to crank his engine. Evidently the starter had failed to work, for Crumb was standing in front of the car, in the glare of the headlights, attempting to crank it. Guy accosted him, charged him with the murder of Grace, and shot him.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs revealed his knowledge of different makes and styles of automobiles in the text of Marcia of the Doorstep, the only story he wrote in 1924. For instance, listen to the conversation between Marcia Sackett and her fiancé as they enjoy a ride in the Steele Ford that his father had loaned him for the day.

“When we’re married,” Dick was saying, “we’ll buy a classy little roadster like that maroon one that just passed.”

“Oh, let’s have a Pierce,” cried Marcia, “it don’t cost any more to drive a dream Pierce than a dream Buick, and they are so much more satisfying.”

“I don’t care for foreign built cars,” the girl announced, as one who has given a subject much expert consideration.

“Oh, wouldn’t it be great to be rich, Marcia,” he cried, “and be able to buy any kind of car you wanted?”

While no actual cars appear in this play that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote for his daughter Joan, the plot is based on competition for obtaining two car dealerships in the Midwest city of Millidge. Bill Mason is a 29-year-old owner of a small garage and repair shop who wants to purchase a local agency to sell the new Gormley Six automobile. He’s convinced it’s “going to be the biggest selling car in this country inside of a year.” Bill explains to his good friend Corrie West that, unfortunately, he doesn’t have the $10,000 needed to invest in the agency.

Jumping forward three years in the play, the audience learns that Bill and his father have not only found the money somewhere to buy the Gormley Six agency, but also a second car dealership. That brings Bill into conflict with Phil Mattis, the well-healed son of the town’s banker.

Phil to Bill: “Well, listen. You succeeded in getting the agency for the Gormley Six away from me last year. I don’t know how you did it, but you did it. All right, you won that time. I don’t know where you got the money and I’m not asking. You seem to have taken in a lot of new capital since your father resigned at the bank and went into business with you, but that is neither here nor there. What I am up here to see you about is the Packard agency. Your father knew that I wanted that and just today I had a wire from the factory saying that they were closing negotiations with another dealer here. I know that means you.”

Phil: “I want that Packard agency and I want the Gormley Six back, too. I have my own reason for wanting them and I can afford to buy what I want. I have come up here to buy those two agencies.”

At the end of the play, the audience learns where the money came from to finance Bill’s car dealerships. His father tells Bill that Corrie West, who had since become a successful actress, provided the needed money and thereby became a silent partner in Mason & Mason Automobiles.

The appearance of the word “cars” in this ERB short story tips the reader off that cars play a part in the plot. The suspense begins late one night when Maddox, a servant in a mansion on a Hollywood hilltop, hears the humming of gears, indicating “a car was coming up the hill in second.” Unsure about the reason any car would be climbing up the hill road at that time of night, Maddox called the police.

“Presently the car came in sight, grinding slowly up the grade. Maddox could see that it was a dark colored sedan and that there were two people in the front seat. The car drew directly into the curb in front of the house and stopped … As they got out of the car the light from a street lamp fell upon them, revealing a hatless young man in grey coat and white trousers. He was about five feet ten, and his companion, a young woman, was perhaps five inches shorter.”

Meanwhile, Maddox’s call to the police drew a response. “From far below them, somewhere out of that vast network of city streets, rose faintly the weird wail of a police siren. Gradually it rose in volume as the car raced west on Sunset Boulevard. Presently they caught occasional glimpses of its red spotlight as it flashed by open spaces in the traffic. Like the hopeless plaint of a lost soul, its raucous screech cleft the night.”

The man and woman, who had reached the top of the hill in the first car, leaned over a railing in front of the mansion and watched the police car approach.

“It flashed into view on the visible stretches of the winding canyon road below them — a red-eyed demon of the night, appearing and disappearing as it roared its shrieking way around the innumerable curves and shoulders of the ascent. With an expiring wail the siren suddenly went dumb. The car drew into the curb and three officers leaped out. Two of them walked briskly toward the Gothic entrance, the other remained by the car.”

It turned out that the two cars played minor roles in the story’s plot. For Burroughs the two motor vehicles were simply “literary vehicles” to get the characters to the hilltop mansion, where the people in both cars became involved in solving a murder mystery.

Johnny Lafitte, the hero of Pirate Blood, tells the story in the first person. Although he was a star athlete in college, Johnny was a poor student who couldn’t find a high-paying job after graduating. Early on in the story he worked as a police officer. Below he gives the details of a particular stop he made of a speeding driver.

“I’d been handing out tickets on the state highway just outside town until I almost had writer’s cramp. I was sitting on my machine in a little hide-out on a side road waiting for the next victim, when a great big, flashy roadster with the top down streaked by at about seventy … About the only people in town who drove cars like that were members of that country club. And I was right. The car was slowing down to make the turn into the entrance to the club grounds when I pulled up alongside and motioned it over to the side of the road.

“As I left my machine and walked toward the side of the roadster I was reaching into my inside pocket for my book without looking up at the driver. When I did, I saw it was a girl (Daisy Juke) … I was leaning close to her, my heart full of love, she was a thousand miles away from me — the chassis of the car she drove cost sixteen thousand dollars without any body … She asked me to come and see her, and I promised that I would; then she started up and turned up the driveway of the country club — where I could only go as a cop. I didn’t write any more tickets that day.”

The storyline is structured around a Hollywood studio’s expedition in Africa to obtain film scenes for use in a “jungle movie.” The actors and crew were sent to Africa with a fleet of 28 motor vehicles to film in the Ituri Forest. Included were a generator truck, two sound trucks, 20 five-ton supply trucks, and five passenger cars. ERB didn’t mention much about the 23 trucks, but one of the cars had a role in the action. Burroughs didn’t mention the make or type of the cars, but they must have been heavy-duty vehicles to manage the off-road route taken by the expedition.

The car seen most often in the story is the one carrying Naomi Madison, the film’s female lead, and Rhonda Terry, her stand-in. The girls’ hand baggage was in their car’s backseat and a makeup bag was upfront with them.

Three times a flurry of arrows was launched at the film company by warriors of the Bansuto tribe. During the attacks, Naomi Madison screamed and crouched upon the floor of her car, even fainting once. Rhonda Terry, however, fought back. During the first attack, she “stood with one foot on the running board, a pistol in her hand.” During the second attack, Rhonda stepped out of the car, joining the men in all the other cars looking for attackers to fire at.” During a third attack, the natives rushed Naomi and Rhonda’s car. Again, “Naomi Madison slipped to the floor of the car.” As a dozen men with rifles rushed to defend the girls, “Rhonda drew her revolver and fired into the faces of the onrushing blacks.” The film company finally got the footage it needed, and the five cars were part of the “long caravan” of vehicles that Tarzan watched heading out of Africa and back to Hollywood.

The final chapter of Tarzan and the Lion Man finds Tarzan in Hollywood a year after the events earlier in the story. The city’s environment, including its many automobiles, depressed the ape-man.

“He saw many people riding in cars or walking on the cement sidewalks and the suggestion of innumerable people in the crowded, close built shops and residences; and he felt more alone than he ever had before in all his life.”

When a couple of Hollywood troublemakers invited him to go to a party with them, the curious Tarzan agreed. He thought the circuitous route they were taking to the party seemed strange, but he didn’t realize he was about to crash a party with them.

“On a side street near Franklin they climbed into a flashy roadster. Brouke drove west a few blocks on Franklin and then turned up a narrow street that wound into the hills. Presently they came to the end of the street. ‘Hell!’ muttered Brouke and turned the car around. He turned into another street and followed that a few blocks; then he turned back toward Franklin. On a side street in an otherwise quiet neighborhood they sighted a brilliantly lighted house in front of which several cars were parked; laughter and the sounds of radio music were coming from an open window. ‘This looks like the place,’ said Reece. ‘It is,’ said Brouke with a grin, and drew up at the curb.”

When he heard the sirens, Tarzan decided he’d forego riding back to town in a police car. Instead, he jumped out an upstairs window into a tree and disappeared.

A look back at a humorous reference to contemporary automobiles is a good way to conclude this study of cars in ERB’s fiction. Since the “lost cities” that Tarzan encountered were inevitably frozen in time long before the internal combustion engine was invented, 20^th century automobiles were never found there. In fact, citizens of those lost cities couldn’t even conceive of modern cars, as Erich von Harben discovered in Tarzan and the Lost Empire.

Obviously, there were no motorized vehicles in Castrum Mare, a Roman city that had not advanced technologically in the two millennia since it was founded in a secluded location in Central Africa. However, Burroughs obviously had some fun when he had his 20^th century character, Erich von Harben, try to explain the characteristics of the modern automobile. During a conversation while he and Mallius Lepus were riding on a slave-carried litter, von Harben told his friend that many changes had occurred in modern Rome. Lepus responded, “But certainly that could have been no great change in the style of litters, and I can’t believe that the patricians have ceased to use them.” Von Harben then struggled to describe motorized vehicles to the incredulous Roman. Some excerpts from that conversation:

Mallius: “Incredible! It would be torture to bump over the rough pavement and country roads on the great wooded wheels of ox-carts.”

Erich: “The city pavements are smooth today and the countryside is cut in all directions by wide, level highways over which the litters of the modern citizens of Rome roll at great speeds with small wheels with soft tires.”

Mallius: “I warrant you that there be no litters in all Rome that move at greater speed than this … better than eighty-five hundred paces an hour.”

Erich: “Fifty thousand paces an hour is nothing unusual for the wheeled litters of today. We call them automobiles.”

Mallius: “You are going to be a great success. Tell (the guests of Septimus Favonius) that there be litter-carriers in Rome today who can run fifty thousand paces in an hour and they will acclaim you the greatest entertainer as well as the great liar Castrum Mare has ever seen.”

Erich: “I never said that there were litter-bearers who could run fifty-thousand paces an hour.”

Mallius: “But did you not assure me that the litters traveled that fast? Perhaps the litters of today are carried by horses. Where are the horses that can run fifty thousand paces in an hour?”

Erich: “The litters are neither carried nor drawn by horses or men, Mallius.”

Mallius: “They fly then, I presume. By Hercules, you must tell this all over again to Septimus Favonius. I promise you that he will love you.”