The face of Napier’s success: Miss Dorothy Levitt

The elder and more adventurous of the girls, Dorothy, was born in Hackney in 1882 and became a noted horsewoman. By the time she was 18 her father, who was known as Jack to most anyway, chose to Anglicize the family name to Levitt and soon afterwards Miss Dorothy Levitt began the most exciting chapter of her life.

Dorothy became a secretary at the engineering firm Napier & Son, which had recently begun to forge a reputation in the new and exciting world of internal combustion engines. Ever unconventional, Dorothy was known about town to be an independent, privileged, “bachelor girl”, living with friends in the West End of London and waited on by two servants.

This elegant and confident young woman stood out a mile from the rest of the secretaries, even at a company as extraordinary as Napier. Before long Dorothy caught the attention of Montagu Napier’s swashbuckling partner in the engine building business, Selwyn Edge.

The burly Australian self-publicist Edge, with his magnificent cad-like moustache and larger-than-life persona, decided that this exotic young beauty was wasted behind a typewriter and would better serve Napier’s fortunes as the public face of the company. Thus he devoted himself to making her a walking, talking advert for Napier products – apprenticing her in car production and maintenance while teaching her to drive with the same verve that he applied to his own motor racing career.

While Dorothy got to grips with driving motor cars, Edge was taking Napier & Son onto the high seas. Motor boats were a new phenomenon and Edge desperately wanted to be a part of it – all the more so when Sir Alfred Harmsworth’s Daily Mail newspaper inaugurated a new race for motor boats, the Harmsworth Trophy, as a means of encouraging the development of a new motorised torpedo craft for the Royal Navy.

Officiated by the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland and the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, the Harmsworth Trophy took place at the Royal Cork Yacht Club at Queenstown (now Cobh) on Sunday 12 July 1903. The rules were very simple: competitors were to build craft specified to be of a maximum 40 ft waterline length and using any appropriate form of power.

In these the crews would race on an eight-and-a-half mile course from the Club down to the Marina. The magnificent trophy depicted a relief of how Harmsworth believed the victorious boat would look – but more important still were the kudos and the military contracts that seemed assured to the winning entry.

In the end only three boats were lined up at the start, among which all the pre-race talk was focused on the ebullient Mr. Selwyn Edge and his Napier craft. This was a 40ft steel-hulled, speedboat fitted with a 3-blade propeller that was driven by a derivative of Napier’s brilliant automobile engine – but it was the crew which captured most attention.

Edge was named as entrant and skipper, and alongside him was listed Mr. Campbell Muir but it was the third crew member around whom the interest was focused: Miss Dorothy Levitt. Very little of this interest was made official, because women were not recognised as competitors, but Edge made damned sure that his girl took centre stage throughout the three days of the event and milked her presence as hard as he could.

Dorothy Levitt aboard the Napier racing boat in 1903

The Cork Constitution made for breathless reading on 13 July, when it reported: “A large number of spectators viewed the first mile from the promenade of the Yacht Club, and at Cork several thousand people collected at both side of the river to see the finishes.

“Owing to the starters and the judges not being in communication by telephonic or any other means, people at either end of the course could only conjecture the result.” The result was victory for Napier, which attained the fantastical speed of 19.3mph after the company’s 50hp motor was suitably upgraded to 75hp in racing trim.

The name S.F. Edge was duly engraved as the inaugural winner on the Harmsworth Trophy, although it was officially recorded that Campbell Muir had done the driving. What the many thousands of onlookers saw, however, was the raven-haired young girl standing at the tiller as she guided the brilliant white-painted boat to victory.

Napier’s marine credentials were duly established, while the race itself passed into legend, courtesy of Dorothy Levitt. Four weeks later another race for powered craft was staged at Cowes during the annual sailing regatta, and once again it was the Napier boat which scythed to victory with its glamorous helmswoman soaking up the attention.

This time Dorothy achieved all the official recognition that she could hope for – and then some. After crossing the line for victory, she was commanded to board the Royal yacht Victoria & Albert III for an audience with King Edward VII where it was recorded that his majesty congratulated her on her pluck and skill before they discussed the performance of the boat and its potential for British government despatch work.

Capitalising on the phenomenon that he had created, Edge entered his Napier boat in the French answer to the Harmsworth Trophy – the five-mile Gaston Menier Cup at Trouville – later in August. Of course Dorothy Levitt was on board and, once again, the Napier claimed the honours – and with it a ₤1000 purse – while France fell under Miss Levitt’s spell.

Dorothy was to make one more appearance on behalf of Napier’s marine business when the team returned to Trouville that October for the Championship of the Seas race. Napier triumphed once again and, while Dorothy soaked up the adulation, the French government bought the boat from Edge for £1,000.

It was a case of ‘Mission: Accomplished’ for this remarkable young woman – although her career was only just getting started. See you for Part 2 in due course!

Then again, it is set at the same time as John Buchan’s book ‘The 39 Steps,’ though I hope it is less casually racist than that book and has many fewer plot holes.

I was reading of the popularity of the TV series ‘Downton Abbey’ in the States, which starts around the same time as my book and also involves life in English country houses. But how can I introduce my book to this potential audience without trying to indicate that it is primarily a drama of class and manners? There is no point in misrepresenting the book to this audience as they would only return it.

Another series I might try to latch onto is the Bourne novels by Robert Ludlum. There is none of the paranoia or superhuman efforts so beloved of Jason Bourne fans.

Part of the research I do is into the technology of the era. I now know a little of the cars, aeroplanes, naval vessels and motor bikes of the time. In doing this research I came across a character I really had to include in the story, an ex-secretary called Dorothy Levitt who held the women’s land speed record for several years, was the first British woman to learn to fly and also raced motor boats. Besides that she looked stunning and mysteriously disappeared in 1910. What better suggestion than that she was working for the intelligence agencies?

In fact, the title-page indicates (slightly patronisingly) that it is a “chatty little handbook for all women who motor or want to motor.”  It was written by Dorothy Levitt, who was the first female motorist in England to drive a car in a public competiton and who went on to win numerous cups and medals for her driving. She was obviously an enterprising and sporting person, as she was a good cyclist and horse rider, an excellent shot and good with a fishing rod, as well as being able to drive a car and a motor-boat. She was also pretty and stylish, and lived the life of a “bachelor girl” in a flat in West London, with a housekeeper, a maid, and a Pomeranian called Dodo. All in all, she sounds like a most unusual woman for her time.

Dorothy Levitt’s advice on motoring for women is at all times practical, although the photographs that illustrate her explanations must strike the modern reader as amusing, since I very much doubt that anyone these days would attempt to repair a car wearing such a hat! The overall (of Dorothy Levitt’s own design) was indispensable as it ensured that no smudges of oil or dirt should stain the driver’s clothes if roadside repairs had to be completed.  The author most helpfully lists all the costs likely to accrue from the moment of purchasing a car and also gives a handy list of items that should be kept in the equivalent of the glove compartment, which was, at that time. a little drawer under the driving seat. 

“This little drawer is the secret of the dainty motoriste. What you put in it depends upon your tastes, but the following articles are what I advise you to have in its recesses. A pair of clean gloves, an extra handkerchief, clean veil, powder puff (unless you despise them), hair-pins and ordinary pins, a hand mirror – and some chocolates are very soothing sometimes!”

She continues her list with soap, and makes sure that the aspiring motorist realises that the handmirror afore mentioned is “not strictly for personal use, but to occasionally hold up to see what is behind you.” This was, of course, in the days before wing or rear-view mirrors became standard. Then, rather startlingly, given that the list was supposed to be for the “dainty motoriste” she continues: “If you are going to drive alone in the highways and byways it might be advisable to carry a small revolver.” The list is then, most fittingly for the sporting person Dorothy Levitt obviously was, rounded off with that absolute necessity to enliven all excursions: a dog!

Although much of her advice seems simplistic, it was designed for complete novice drivers, who had previously only been driven by chauffeurs, or whose families had never owned a car before. It takes the novice through all the necessary pre-drive checks of fuel, oil, brakes, gears and battery for a single-cylinder car, describes how best to drive, gives advice on routine maintenance and repair and explains the rules of the road (as far as they existed at that point).

I don’t know much (anything)  about old timers but the advice that the author gives appears to be clear, concise and logical, and she is obviously interested in promoting driving for women, although she realises that with all the costs relating to the car, the number of women willing and able to take on such an expense must be relatively few in number.

Given Dorothy Levitt’s “dainty” and positively glamorous appearance, it seems hard to believe that she can really have achieved all the sporting success that she could justly claim as her own. I very much doubt whether, in her place, I would have had the strength or the nerve to drive an old timer of this vintage, without power-assisted stearing, what I would consider adequate brakes, or any of the safety features of the modern car – and I certainly couldn’t have done it with Dorothy Levitt’s inimitable style and panache!

The earliest recorded use of any device that resembles a rear view mirror was in 1911 in the inaugural race of the Indianapolis 500, by Ray Harroun in his Marmon racecar. He mounted a mirror on one of the struts so that he could see behind him. This wasn’t as much a safety feature as it was to lighten the load. As was the custom of the day, a mechanic would ride along with the driver to among other things watch behind to see the position of the other racers. Harroun didn’t take the credit for himself though. He claimed that he had seen a similar mirror mounted on a horse drawn carriage in 1904.

While Harroun’s car was the first record of a mirror mounted on a motor vehicle, the first recorded mention of a mirror to look behind you while in a vehicle dates back to 1906 by author Dorothy Levitt in in her book The Woman and the Car which noted that women should “carry a little hand-mirror in a convenient place when driving” so they may “hold the mirror aloft from time to time in order to see behind while driving in traffic”, thereby inventing the rear view mirror before it was introduced by manufacturers in 1914 by Elmer Berger, the man usually credited with its invention.

No matter where it gets it’s origin, it is rather amazing that a small peice of reflective glass can allow us to look behind us and know what surrounds us. As simple an idea as it is, I wish I had thought of it.