Part 14

“At _Blagrave’s_ once upon a time, There stood a phaeton sublime: Unsully’d by the dusty road Its wheels with recent crimson glow’d; Its sides display’d a dazzling hue, Its harness tight, its lining new: No scheme-enamoured youth, I ween, Survey’d the gaily deck’d machine, But fondly long’d to seize the reins, And whirl o’er _Campsfield’s_ tempting plains. Mean time it chanc’d, that hard at hand A one-horse chair had took its stand; When thus our vehicle begun To sneer the luckless chair and one. ‘How could my master place me here Within thy vulgar atmosphere? From classic ground pray shift thy station, Thou scorn of _Oxford_ education! Your homely make, believe me, man, Is quite upon the Gothic plan; And you, and all your clumsey kind, For lowest purposes design’d: Fit only with a one ey’d mare, To drag, for benefit of air, The country parson’s pregnant wife, Thou friend of dull domestic life, Or, with his maid and aunt, to school, To carry _Dicky_, on a stool. Or, haply to some christ’ning gay, A brace of godmothers convey.— Or, when blest _Saturday_ prepares For _London_ tradesmen rest from cares, ’Tis thine, o’er turnpikes newly made, When timely show’rs the dust have laid, To bear some alderman serene To _fragrant Hampstead’s sylvan_ scene. Nor higher scarce thy merit rises Among the polish’d dons of _Isis_. Hir’d for a solitary crown, Canst thou to _schemes_ invite the _Gown_? Go, tempt some prig, pretending taste, With hat new cock’d and newly lac’d, O’er mutton chops, and scanty wine, At humble _Dorchester_ to dine! Mean time remember, lifeless drone! I carry _Bucks_ and _Bloods_ alone. And oh! when ’er the weather’s friendly, What inn at _Wallingford_ or _Henley_, But still my vast importance feels, And gladly greets my entring wheels. And think, obedient to the throng, How yon gay streets we sneak along: While all with envious wonder view The corner turn’d so _quick_ and _true_.’ To check an upstart’s empty pride, Thus sage the one horse chair reply’d. ‘Pray, when the consequence is weigh’d What’s all your spirit and parade? From mirth to grief what sad transitions, To broken bones—and impositions! Or if no bones are broke, what’s worse, Your _schemes_ make work for _Glass_ and _Nourse_. On us pray spare your keen reproaches, From one-horse chairs men rise to coaches; If calm discretion’s steadfast hand, With cautious skill the reins command, From me fain health’s fresh mountain springs, O’er me soft snugness spreads her wings: And innocence reflects her ray To gild my calm sequester’d way; E’en kings might quit their state to share Contentment and a one horse chair.— What though, o’er yonder echoing street, Your rapid wheels resound so sweet, Shall _Isis’_ sons thus vainly prize A rattle of a _larger size_?’ _Blagrave_, who during the dispute, Stood in a corner, snug and mute, Surpriz’d no doubt, in lofty verse, To hear his carriages converse, With solemn care, o’er _Oxford_ ale, To me disclos’d this wondrous tale.

MORAL

“Things may be useful if obscure; The pace that’s slow is often sure; When empty pageantries we prize, We raise but dust to blind our eyes. The Golden Mean can best bestow _Safety_ for unsubstantial _Show_.”

From this poem it is possible to understand that this new-fangled carriage was used rather as a toy than anything else. That it was dangerous clearly appears, and it was this very danger which must have contributed not a little to its popularity. It was driven at a very great rate, and with a recklessness that excited the anger of the commoner folk—unless, as was often the case, it excited their admiration instead. The phaeton was the most sporting carriage you could have. It lent itself to the idea of racing, and there was always the chance that an accident might be fatal—an allurement in itself. And so in a very few years there was hardly a fashionable young gentleman in London who did not possess one of these carriages and drive about, insolently staring down from his enormously high seat on to the heads of the crowds below.

Experiments, too, were being made with them. The position of the body was gradually brought forward until it was directly over the front axle. In 1766 “the Hon. Sir Francis Blake Delavel, Knight of the Bath,” was experimenting with a “new-invented phaeton the other side of Westminster Bridge, where he put his horses in a full gallop, and in a moment, by pulling a string, the horses galloped off and left him in the carriage, which stood still.” Sir Francis was apparently working at some contrivance to be used in case the horses chose to run away—a common occurrence, no doubt, and apt to be far more dangerous to the driver than would be the case with other carriages, for the body of these early phaetons was slung high above the undercarriage by the most delicate supports, which bent and creaked and were obviously unfitted to bear any great strain. The body itself must have resembled that of the curious chaises which were still to be seen at this time in France and Italy—just a small chair varnished and sometimes painted, fixed to four thin and often carved and curled posts, which as often as not rose merely from the shafts, there being no springs of any kind. The shafts were very long, and the common practice seems to have been to drive two horses tandem, with, no doubt, a postilion on the leader. The phaeton was probably slimmer than these equally curious vehicles, and much higher, and their ability to turn corners with ease may be deduced from the lines just quoted.

A phaeton built for a lady is shown in a print published in 1776, called _Phaetona; or Modern Female Taste_. Here the carriage has a very small body, hung very high on large wheels, the undercarriage being abnormally long in consequence. The two horses which draw it are very undersized—another peculiarity possibly demanded by contemporary fashion.

Two years later the scandalous _Town and Country Magazine_ published a short and probably true tale called _The Rival Phaetons_, which shows to what lengths, or, rather, what heights the Bucks of the time would go.

“Lord M——,” it runs, “emulous of shining in the most elevated sphere, first drove a phaeton seven feet from the ground: Sir John L[ade] immediately made an addition of a supernumerary travelling case to his, and raised it six inches higher. Lord M—— applied immediately to his coachmaker in Liquor-pond-street for two travelling cases, with which he speedily drove about the streets for the entertainment of the public. Sir John L[ade] was stung to the quick; and Lord M—— ’s round hat was now a mere pigmy to his. His Lordship, happy at rival inventions, immediately added two more horses to his triumphal car, and drove four for expedition, from Grosvenor Square to Gray’s-inn-lane. ‘Now, my Lad,’ said he, ‘I have you;’ but how vain are the boastings of mankind? The knight appeared the very next day with a phaeton and six in Holborn. ‘Zounds,’ said his lordship, ‘this is too much! what shall I do?—how can I match my four with two more? No credit at my banker’s—in arrears with my horse-dealer—I am at my wit’s end. John, I shall not take an airing in Smithfield to-day; I’ll give my horses some rest—they were hard worked over the stones yesterday.’ Here the contest now lies—its importance must be obvious to every beholder—his lordship has not slept these three nights, and it is imagined he will at length be obliged to take the hint from Colman’s prologue to the Suicide, and preposterous as it may appear, add a fifth wheel to his phaeton. Sir John is greatly elated, and may literally be said to be in very high spirits upon his temporary triumph.”

Writing to Mann in June, 1755, Walpole, after regretting the absence of social news in England, mentions the latest Paris fashion. “All the news from France,” he says, “is that a new madness reigns there, as strong as that of Pantins was. This is _la fureur des cabriolets, Anglicè_, one-horse chairs, a mode introduced by Mr. [Josiah] Child; they not only universally go in them, but wear them; that is, everything is to be _en cabriolet_; the men paint them on their waistcoats and have them embroidered for clocks to their stockings; and the women, who have gone all the winter without anything on their heads, are now muffled up in great caps [calash hoods] with round sides, in the form of, and scarce less than the wheels of chaises.”

“The cabriolet head-dress,” says Wright,[43] “was soon improved into _post-chaises_, _chairs-and-chairmen_, and even _broad-waggons_.” So we have _A Modern Morning_, published in 1757:—

“Then Caelia to her toilet goes, Attended by some favourite beaux.

‘Nelly! why, where’s the creature fled? Put my post-chaise upon my head.’ ‘Your _chair-and-chairman_, ma’am, is brought.’ ‘Stupid! the creature has no thought!’ ‘And, ma’am, the milliner is come, She’s brought the _broad-wheel’d waggon_ home.’”

In which structures Caelia sallies forth.

These cabriolets rivalled the phaetons as fashionable carriages, and indeed as the _new gigs_ came to resemble them in every point save the number of the wheels. There is a print by Colley, dated 1781, showing one of these new gigs. The small chair, very high, holding two people, is supported by long curved supports, which in themselves of course acted as springs of a kind. Two horses are being driven tandem, with a postilion driving the leader. Another print, by Bunbury, called _Sir Gregory Gigg_, shows a young man driving a pair of horses abreast. He is seated in a still smaller, and slightly lower, chair. This was a _curricle_ rather than a cabriolet, and it was such a carriage which the braggart sportsman, John Thorpe, describes to Catharine in _Northanger Abbey_: “Curricle-hung, you see, seat, trunk, sword-case, splashing board, lamps, silver-moulding, all, you see, complete; the ironwork as good as new, or better. He [the first owner] asked fifty guineas; I closed with him, threw the money down, and the carriage was mine.” The shape of these curricles is well seen in Bunbury’s drawing.

A glance at the newspaper advertisements of the day will afford an insight into the various carriages in use. So, for instance, in 1767 we have:—

An exceeding good Post chariot, the Box to take off.

A neet genteel Single Horse Chaise, painted green, and hung upon Steel Springs.

An exceeding fine black gelding that goes well in an Italian Chair, with a Tail.

A very neat fashionable Chaise.

A very good second-hand Phaeton Chaise, that goes either with one horse or two, with Shafts, Poles, and Harness suitable, Steel Springs, and Iron Axletrees. Also a good second-hand Landau, which alters occasionally into a Phaeton, steel springs and Iron Axletrees to the Carriage.

The landau, by the way, was a recent invention (though made, as we have seen, before 1757) which may be dismissed with the observation that it was a coach made to open when required.

And put up for auction together on one occasion were:—

A green windsor chair, A good Post-Coach, A Post Landau, A very neat Italian Chair, 3 old Chariots, 4 Post-Chaises, and 3 single Chaises.

So run these advertisements, with scraps of information interspersed and little puffs of the advertiser on every other line. What the windsor chair was I have not been able to discover; but it is to be noticed both that Italian chairs (or chaises) were apparently popular, and that the English-built carriages were being constructed on rather a loftier scale. The curious reason for this will appear in the next chapter.

Meanwhile I may conclude by drawing attention to two other advertisements of a curious nature.

The first of these deals with a hackney coachman who had refused to carry a fare. The second, which I do not think has been reprinted since it originally appeared in 1767, shows the dangers to which travellers were still liable.

From the time when the dramatist Congreve had been appointed a Commissioner for Licensing Hackney Coaches (1695) there had been frequent legislation with regard to these hackney coaches. At this time there were stringent regulations, some of which are still in force, with regard to the taking up of passengers. It was the refusal of a coachman to drive a gentleman who had hailed him that led to the following pitiful notice:—

“Whereas I William Ford, late driver of an hackney coach, No. 694, did refuse to carry a gentleman, and did also grosly abuse him; for this I was fined thirty shillings by the Commissioners. I then most wickedly and falsely swore an assault against, and had the same gentleman carried before Sir John Fielding, who discharged the warrant. For this false imprisonment, I had a prosecution commenced against me, and though I made frequent application for pardon, I could not obtain it until the expence amounted to a sum which has almost ruined me, and which I have paid. I therefore voluntarily [?] insert this as a caution to other hackney coachmen, who well know that it is from the hope of forgiveness, which they too often meet, that they venture so daringly to abuse and insult their fare.

“WILLIAM X FORD “His mark.”

It was this same Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate, who inserted, some little time afterwards, the following warning to travellers and others:—

“To the Stage Coachmen, Carriers, Book-keepers, “Tradesmen in general, and others.

“Public Office, Bow Street, September 24, 1767.

“A most necessary caution at this season of the year.

“The remainder of that Gang of unhappy wretches, who live in Idleness and subsist on Plunder, and who make it their particular Business, from this Time to the End of Winter to cut off Trunks from behind Post Chaises, to steal Goods out of Waggons, from the Baskets of Stage-Coaches, Boots of Hackney Coaches, and out of Carts which carry Goods to and from Inns, &c. (though but few in Number) having already begun to wait in the Dusk of the Evenings, at the different Avenues leading to Town, and at several Inns, &c., for the above Purposes; ’tis hoped that an Attention to the following Observation, may be the Means of preserving much Property, which when once lost by these Means, is difficult to recover, or the Offenders to be detected.

“1. Those who cannot conveniently fasten their Luggage before them in Post Chaises, should take care to secure it behind with a small Chain instead of a Rope or Strip, and to place the Padlock that fastens it out of Sight or Reach; and those who have Servants to attend them, should direct them to keep close to the Carriage as they come to London, for these Plunderers extend themselves for fifteen Miles out of Town to the very Inns themselves in London, and are ready in an amazing Manner to take Advantage of the least Neglect.

“2. As it is common for Persons on their Arrival in Town to take a Hackney Coach when they come on the Stones, in the Boot of which they generally deposit their Luggage, they should be cautious never to send the Coachman from his Box, to make an Enquiry, &c. for if he be absent a Minute his Fare will be in great danger of losing his Property, by some of the above Offenders, who attend at the Inns at the Entrance of the Town, in order to follow Hackney Coaches to the Places where they set down or stop, to watch an Opportunity to plunder.

“3. Nothing can secure the Goods in Waggons, or the Baskets of Stage Coaches, but the Care of the Drivers, who should have them watched both on and off the Stones, and the Proprietors of the several Road Waggons should have a Man at least on Purpose to guard them five or ten Miles out of Town, a step which is absolutely necessary.

“J. FIELDING.”

Also, of course, there were the highwaymen.

_Chapter the Eighth_

_THE AGE OF TRANSITION_

“So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides The Derby Dilly, carrying three insides. One in each corner sits and lolls at ease, With folded arms, propt back, and outstretched knees; While the press’d Bodkin, pinch’d and squeezed to death, Sweats in the mid-most place, and scolds, and pants for breath.”

_Canning._

“In the year 1790,” wrote Mr. William Felton in an account of the carriages of his day, “the art of Coach-building had been in a gradual state of improvement for half a century past, and had now arrived at a very high degree of perfection, with respect to the beauty, strength, and elegance of our English carriages.” And the most cursory glance at his carefully compiled, if technical book, is evidence enough of the truth of his statement. At this time, indeed, the old flamboyant ornamentation had all but disappeared from the carriages, which were in process of taking on the appearance they largely retain to this day. Most vehicles, it is true, were still hung far higher than those of the nineteenth century—a fact due to the curious, though mistaken, belief, “that a high and short load possessed some mysterious property which made it easier to draw than a long one,” but new principles were being adopted as the result of careful experiments. Prizes were offered by learned societies, and won. Men like Dr. Lovell Edgeworth, who had been experimenting so early as 1768, and had shown that springs—then but little understood—were at least as advantageous to the horses as to the passengers, were at work. But it was only in 1804, when Mr. Obadiah Elliott produced his patent elliptic springs, which rendered unnecessary the old heavy perch, that a definite period in the art of coach-building was clearly marked. Thenceforth the older, cumbrous machines disappeared from the roads and made way for the lighter and more comfortable carriages which were to be seen at the time of Queen Victoria’s accession.

The question of the roads, too, was receiving the attention of experts. Anstice and Edgeworth published the results of their investigations, but were both completely overshadowed by James M’Adam, who about 1810 started those metal roads which have proved so wonderfully successful. Before his time gravel and the like had formed the basis of road-material; M’Adam used granite and other allied substances, and produced such a surface as had not been seen since the Romans had constructed their vast highways hundreds of years before.

Methods of travelling, moreover, were altering. The stage-coaches, useful though they were, disappeared before Palmer’s mail-coaches, which held their supremacy until the era of steam revolutionised locomotion. Post-chaises were still in favour, and less dangerous than of old. Incidentally, the highwaymen were taking to less romantic pursuits. And what is true of England was also in a great measure true of Europe as a whole. North America, too, at this period was providing herself with coachbuilders, who produced distinctive vehicles peculiarly adapted to the conditions of that country.

It was, in fact, a transition period.

We may consider in the first place such types of carriages as already existed. There is a whole catalogue of them, and only one of the older carriages is conspicuously absent. This was the calash—“now almost obsolete for any purpose,” comments Leigh Hunt, and indeed there is hardly a reference to it. But the others still survived, and one characteristic is immediately noticeable; the wheels of almost every sort of carriage at this time were enormously large. Consequently the carriages were generally very long. Crane-neck perches were still used, and what was called an upright spring. A coach of this period, belonging to the museum at South Kensington, is now exhibited in Edinburgh. It was built for the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. It has “a large body,” says Thrupp, describing it, “with deep panels, flat-sided, longer on the roof than at the elbow, with windows in the upper quarters; the carriage with two crane perches (easily seen in the accompanying photograph), Berlin fashion, whip springs, and very high wheels. There is no footboard, whilst a hammercloth for the footman is raised upon scroll ironwork, very well made.” Napoleon’s state coach, built at the time of his second marriage, and preserved at Vienna along with a chariot and barouche, is of a somewhat similar pattern. His travelling coach, with all its household contrivances, is now at Madame Tussaud’s exhibition, and must be familiar to all Londoners. Two Spanish coaches of the period are also to be seen at Madrid.

The Lord Chancellor’s coach was of course an exceptional carriage, and Mr. Felton is careful to give details of such lesser coaches as were being made. These he catalogues as a plain coach, a neat ornamental town coach, a landau, a travelling coach, an elegant crane-neck coach, and a vis-à-vis, which last, he says, “is seldom used by any other than persons of high character and fashion.” And, indeed, this particular carriage is to be seen in numerous plates and caricatures of the time.

Coming to the chariots and post-chaises, there is a good example of an English carriage of the kind at South Kensington. This apparently belonged to George III. The photograph gives but a poor idea of the great size of the original. The wheels are taller than an average man, and the length of the carriage is prodigious. The single window on either side is small, the panels are deep, and there is a small platform at the back of the body to carry luggage. A footboard still remains with supports for the driver’s seat that has disappeared.

It was in such a chariot, though even larger than George III’s, that the unhappy King and Queen of France attempted to escape from Paris—that “miserable new Berline,” as Carlyle calls it, which was the very last carriage to be used for such a purpose.

“On Monday night, the Twentieth of June, 1791,” runs Carlyle’s own wonderful account, “about eleven o’clock, there is many a hackney-coach and glass-coach (_carrosse de remise_), still rumbling, or at rest, on the streets of Paris.” Into one of these glass-coaches steps “a hooded Dame with two hooded Children, a thickset Individual, in round hat and peruke.” The coachman is Fersen himself.