A De Dion Bouton in Ireland

Sir,

I enclose a photograph of my father in his 6 h.p. single-cylinder De Dion Bouton. I don’t know the date of the photo, but I remember riding in the “dickey’ seat (I am now 70), and I remember having to get out and help to push it up a small hill in Co. Clare!

My father told me that once when he was driving a friend of his, Herbert Draper (the artist) round Co. Clare, the news went ahead, and a priest in a small village gave out from the pulpit that “a motor car was coming”, and he warned the congregation to keep their children and animals off the road! It must have been one of the first cars in the West of Ireland. My father was 15th Baron Inchiquin.

Andover F. M. M. O’Brien