Among Kipling's minor distinctions was the fact that he was one of the earliest English motorists. When, in 1902, he settled with his wife in Sussex, he bought a car and drove more or less successfully about the countryside. To the conservative Henry James this form of transport was still highly suspect, and a mechanical breakdown was something that only served to confirm his suspicions. When Ford Madox Ford visited him one day at Lamb House, Rye, James launched into the following monologue, obviously finding some malicious satisfaction in the fact that it was his much more popular and wealthy contemporary who was having trouble with his expensive new toy.