Compared to today’s automobiles, you find in the picture above a rather comfortable back seat, with nice padding and plenty of, er, leg room. If you could combine that with a very discreet chauffeur, so you didn’t have to waste any of your attention on actual driving, you created prime romantic real estate. Or so our ancestors liked to pretend, in song, story, and postcard.
In truth, those seats were built to be solid and largely unyielding, and anyone with sense would have put the roof up. (No matter how discreet the driver, the neighbors are going to pay a lot of attention to auto-hugging.) But you did get a little more fresh air than you would have in the family parlor, and that horsehair sofa was certainly no more soft and comfortable than the car’s :eather seat. (Our ancestors, who by all accounts favored feather mattresses into which one could sink a good eighteen inches, preferred hard, straight furniture for sitting. Somebody else should write a dissertation on this: I have postcards to polish.
Those same ancestors were well-acquainted with the romantic possibilities of a long buggy ride. The automobile might have offered greater speed and perhaps more distance, but the principle was very much the same. A ride in the country offered that fresh air, beautiful scenery, and distance between a couple of joy riders and their parents.
If Ma didn’t drive, she couldn’t keep track of what you were up to. (If you reads French, you may realize this is actually a married couple explaining to Ma/Ma-in-Law that they’ll have a more charming trip by car if she walks.)
Postcard artists were not, certainly, unaware of the dangers of a long ride in the country, and were willing to warn their readers of the same.
Horse-drawn vehicles, after all, had offered a certain stability which might be lacking in an automobile. The multi-tasking driver, having lost that equine ally, was taking new risks.
The joys of observing nature were no excuse for not keeping one’s eyes on the road.
One was risking damage to one’s automobile, one’s body, and, most of all, one’s relationships.
Mind you, the artists were also willing to warn you about paying TOO much attention to your driving. This was an era of open cars.
Even if one paid a proper amount of attention to the driving AND one’s passengers, the toll could be exacting. Romance on the road had its hazards no matter how it was conducted.
One of those was marriage, of course, after which a ride in the country had to be rearranged.
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