Williamson, A. M. and C.N: The Princess Passes. V1. 18 Sep 2009
 

Alice Muriel Williamson (1869 - September 24, 1933) was a British novelist.
Born Alice Muriel Livingston, she married Charles Norris Williamson (1859-1920) in 1894 and many of her books were jointly written with her husband. After her marriage she introduced herself as Mrs. C.N.Williamson. A number of their novels cover the early days of motoring and can also be read as travelogues.

Excerpt

If any man had told me before I started, that in two days I should find it a genuine sacrifice to stop driving a motor car, I should have looked upon him as a polite lunatic. It was only because Jack could drive faster than he dared to let me, and because I was ashamed to tell Molly that after all I was not in a desperate hurry to reach Paris or anywhere else, that I finally tore myself from the driver’s seat of the Mercedes. Afterwards, though I had not reached the stage when confession is good for the soul, I sat wondering what there was expensive and at the same time disagreeable which I could give up for the sake of possessing a motor of my own. In various phases of my mental and spiritual development, I had framed different conceptions of a future state beyond this life. Never, even in my earliest years, had I sincerely wished to be an angel with an undeserved crown weighing down my forehead, and a harp, which I should be totally incompetent to play, within my hand; but now it struck me that there might be a worse sort of Nirvana than driving a 10,000 horsepower car along a broad, straight road free from dogs, chickens, or any other animals (except, perhaps, rich, knighted grocers), and reaching all round Saturn’s ring.