Part 17

We come now to the two-wheeled carriages. Of these the most fashionable was still the curricle, though Bridges Adams considered the shape of the body “certainly unsightly.” It is interesting to notice in this connection that the mode of attaching the two horses to the curricle was “precisely that of the classic car, only more elegant.” It was in a curricle that Charles Dickens rode about so soon as he was able to afford the luxury of a private carriage. The _cabriolet_, somewhat similar to it in form, was simply the old one-horse chaise brought up to date. The body resembled a nautilus shell, thus differing from the popular two-wheeled carriage called a _tilbury_. This had been built first by a carriage-maker of the same name. It was constructed without a boot (or hind seat) and was a very light carriage, with, however, rather too much ironwork and too many springs—seven in all—about it. Italy and Portugal seem to have taken to this particular gig and numerous consignments were sent south by water. Another vehicle, not very different, was the _stanhope_, also built by Tilbury to the order of the Hon. Fitzroy Stanhope, a brother of Lord Petersham. This was much like the old rib chair, but hung from four springs. The only difference, so far as the shape of their bodies goes, between the tilbury and the stanhope is to be found in the fact that in the stanhope it is rather larger and more capacious. The _dennet_, invented by a Mr. Bennett of Finsbury, had a body resembling that of a phaeton. It had three springs, and Bridges Adams, without being certain upon the point, thinks that it took its name from these three springs, which were named after the three Misses Dennet, “whose elegant stage-dancing was so much in vogue about the time the vehicle was first used.” The lightest of all these carriages, however, was the common gig, such as that arch-joker, Theodore Hook, was accustomed to drive in, which at this time was “simply an open railed chair, fixed on the shafts, and supported on two side springs, the harder ends of which were connected to the loop irons by leathern braces—to give more freedom to the motion.” Small alterations in the gig, such as the addition of a deep boot and Venetian blinds to the lockers (to carry dogs) led to the first _dog-cart_. Here the passengers sat back to back. _Tandem-carts_ were very similar, though here the driver’s seat was raised. The dog-cart itself gave rise to numerous varieties, such as the _Newport_, the _Malvern_, the _Whitechapel_, the _sliding body_, and the _Norwich_ carts.

In America the _buggy_, a light waggon, the _sulky_, the _fantail gig_, the _tub-bodied gig_, the _chariotee_, and the _public sociable_ were the chief carriages. The _rockaway_, made first in 1830, was a light waggon with wooden springs on the outside of the body. The _volante_, much used at this time by the Spanish ladies of South America and Cuba, was a hooded gig upon two high wheels. But in America, as in Europe, no entirely new bodies or methods of framing were needed, and such little differences as there were are only of interest to the coachbuilder or the expert.

Before passing, however, to the public conveyances, to which, it would seem, most carriage-builders of an inventive turn were now giving their attention, I may mention one or two particularly quaint or fanciful carriages which do not readily fall into a recognised class.

About this time several people seem to have been at pains to produce a three-wheeled carriage, “apparently designed,” says Croal, “to overcome an element of danger in the ordinary two-wheeled gig, in which so much of the business and pleasure of travelling took place.” In America, the chief experiments in this direction were made by Dr. Nott, president of Union College at Schenectady, who produced a three-wheeled chariot, in which he drove about.[48] “The body of the vehicle was supported by the near axle on two wheels, while a third wheel in front was in close connection with the shafts, so that it revolved with them as they turned. By this arrangement the body of the carriage could be hung low, supported entirely by the wheels, while the third wheel in front, revolving in a small circle with the shaft, enabled the occupants to make a short and safe turn.” What became of this weird vehicle is not known, but its inventor’s memory was enshrined in a song, one verse of which runs as follows:—

“Where, oh where, is the good old Doctor? Where, oh where, is the good old Doctor? He went up in the Three Wheel Chariot, Safe into the Promised Land!”

A six-wheeled carriage was also proposed by Sir Sidney Smith. Here, as in Bridges Adams’s various equirotal carriages (never successful and particularly ugly, so far as the pictures of them are concerned), the wheels were all of equal size. Great things were promised of it, but that was all. The question, however, of safety carriages was being very widely considered. Accidents must have been all too frequent. Runaway horses and high gigs between them were constantly bringing the more reckless drivers to an untimely end. In 1825 a good proposal was made for a safety gig, which was to have a contrivance fixed to the shafts so that they should remain in a horizontal position, whether the horse were between them or not. Experiments were also made with some such contrivance as Sir Francis Delavel had first tried with his eighteenth-century phaeton. And then came a time when almost every coachbuilder had some “pet dodge” with which the dangers of travelling were supposed to be reduced to a minimum.

In Ireland, where at a very early date a rough, flat-boarded waggon on two solid wheels had been used for passenger-traffic—in which case the passengers sat on the boards back to back with their legs dangling over the sides—a peculiar vehicle called a _noddy_ was now popular. A writer in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for 1826 speaks of this carriage.

“A chaise and pair, miserable in show and substance as both really were, was a species of luxurious conveyance to which the ambition of the middle class of travellers in Ireland before 1800 never ventured to aspire. Such as were content with a less dignified mode of travelling on wheels, the city of Dublin accommodated with a vehicle unparalleled, I believe, in any part of the world, and singular in name as well as construction. It was called a _Noddy_, drawn by one horse, and carrying two, or if not of overgrown dimensions, three passengers. The body of this ‘leathern convenience,’ which bore some resemblance to an old-fashioned phaeton, ‘beetled o’er its base’ in front, the better to protect the inmates; and being slung from cross-bars by strong braces instead of springs, nodded formidably at every movement of the horse, hence deriving the appropriate appellation of Noddy. In case of rain blowing in, a curtain of the same material afforded its friendly shelter, wrapping the passengers in total darkness, though, as far as the prospect was concerned, the inconvenience was little; the only visible object when it was withdrawn being the broad back and shoulders of the brawny driver, who rested his legs upon the shaft, and his sitting part on a sort of stool a very little way removed from the knees of the person seated within. Simple, awkward, and uneasy as this contrivance was, it was not disdained even by senators at an earlier period than that of which I write; and a nobleman, some thirty years older than myself, too, of high rank and large estate, assured me that it was his usual conveyance to and from college accompanied by a trusty servant or private tutor.”

The ordinary _jaunting car_ and the larger _bian_—the invention of Bianconi, a rich tradesman in Dublin, though for many years an itinerant dealer—hardly differed in points of construction from English carriages, though the passengers sat back to back on a seat that ran parallel to the shafts.

In Wales the _market cart_ was even more primitive than the noddy of Ireland. This was a low, two-wheeled, springless box of an affair, in which you sat as best you could on the boards. There was no covering at all. A rail at the back, extending some way along the sides, helped to prevent you from falling out behind, if the horse gave a sudden lurch forward.

Whilst European carriages were thus taking on a soberer aspect, Eastern coaches were maintaining all their old magnificence. The Maharajah of Mysore, to take one instance, travelled in a truly marvellous elephant carriage in the early years of the nineteenth century.

“Its interior was a double sofa for six persons, covered with dark green velvet and gold, surmounted by an awning of cloth of gold, in the shape of two small scalloped domes, meeting over the centre, and surrounded by a richly ornamented verandah, supported by light, elegant, fluted gilt pillars. The whole was capable of containing sixty persons, and was about twenty-two feet in height. It moved on four wheels, the hinder ones eight feet in diameter, with a breadth of twelve feet between them. It was drawn by six immense elephants, an exact match in size, with a driver on each, harnessed to the carriage by traces, as in England, and their huge heads covered with a sort of cap made of richly embroidered cloth. The pace at which the elephants moved was a slow trot, of about seven miles an hour—they were very steady, and the springs of the coach particularly easy. The shape of the body was that of an extremely elegant flat scallop-shell, painted dark green and gold. This magnificent carriage was the production of native workmen, assisted by a half-caste Frenchman.”

Even this vehicle, however, was eclipsed by the state carriage of a ruling Burmese chief, captured by the British in 1824. “This carriage presented one entire blaze of gold, silver, and precious stones; the last-named amounting to many thousands, including diamonds, rubies, blue and white sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, garnets, topazes, crystals, and the curious and rare stones known as cat’s eyes. The carriage stood nearly thirty feet in height,” and was drawn by elephants. “In form and construction,” says Croal, “in its elaborate and superior carving, and its grand and imposing effect, this coach takes rank as one of the most splendid equipages in existence.”

Many changes, meanwhile, were taking place in the public carriages.

Of the mail-coaches I need say nothing at all. Numerous books exist which retell all those romances of the road which even in these days of motor-cars cannot be altogether forgotten. The Golden Age of coaching was at hand, and no print-shop is complete without some score or more of carefully coloured engravings of one or other of “the Mails.” They bore particular names—there were Flying Machines and Telegraphs and the like—and they were larger than in the days when Palmer had inaugurated the system, but that was all.[49]

Coming to such public vehicles, however, as were in general confined to the metropolis, we find many changes.

The old hackney-coaches still plied for hire. They had their particular stands, and the fares were subject to strict, though sometimes exceedingly quaint, regulations. The first section of the new _Orders_ issued in 1821 may be quoted as bearing upon the structure of the hackneys.

“It is ordered, constituted, and ordained, that, from and after the four-and-twentieth Day of _June_ next ensuing the Day of the Date of these Presents, the Perch of every Coach shall be Ten Feet long at the least; and such Coach [shall] have cross Leather Braces before, and not braced down, but shall hang upon a Level, and not higher behind than before, and to be decent, clean, strong, and warm, with Glass Windows on each Side, or Shutters with Glasses of Nine Inches in Length, and Six Inches in Breadth in each Shutter; and large enough to carry Four Persons conveniently; and the Horses to every such Coach shall be able and sufficient for the Business when such Coach and Horses come from Home, to Ply; on a Penalty not exceeding Ten Shillings, at the Discretion of the said Commissioners, to be paid by the Owner of the License, if the same be not rented out, and in Case the same shall be rented out, then upon a Renter thereof.”

Leigh Hunt could find little good to say of them. Says he, quoting from a supposititious poetess:—

“Thou inconvenience! thou hungry crop For all corn! thou small creeper to and fro Who while thou goest ever seem’st to stop, And fiddle-faddle standest while you go; I’the morning, freighted with a weight of woe, Unto some Lazar-house thou journiest, And in the evening tak’st a double row Of dowdies, for some dance or party drest, Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west.

“By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien, An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge; Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign, Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge; School’d in a beckon, learned in a nudge; A dull-eyed Argus watching for a fare; Quiet and plodding, thou doest bear no grudge To whisking Tilburies, or Phaetons rare, Curricles, or Mail-coaches, swift beyond compare.”

Dickens was familiar with these hackneys, and in one of the _Sketches by Boz_ draws a picture of them.

“Take a regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-coach, of the old school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembles it unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We have recently observed on certain stands, and we say it with deep regret, rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow, with four wheels of the same colour as the coach, whereas it is perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size. These are innovations, and, like other miscalled improvements, awful signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect paid to our time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be clean? Our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we, with a feverish wish to ‘keep moving,’ desire to roll along at the rate of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones at four? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of the land; they were settled by the Legislature; plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament.

“Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? Or why should people be allowed to ride quickly for eightpence a mile, after Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply—and, having no chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph....

“There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded—a great, lumbering, square concern, of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with very small glasses, but very huge frames; the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat, the axle-tree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking clothes; and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The horses with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness; and now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he were saying in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the ‘double shuffle,’ in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm....

“Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition, when it’s a matter of neck or nothing, life or death, your temporary home or your long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking that gravity of deportment which so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything better. A hackney-cab had always been a hackney-cab, from his first entry into life; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility, a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their arms, and in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their livery, stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office, progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at last it comes to—a _stand_!”

These new cabs, indeed, were, as Dickens says, a thing of yesterday, but they had had ancestors. Their immediate forefathers came from Paris, where they had been known for some time under the name of _cabriolets de place_. Light two-wheeled carriages, these were, which had been evolved quite naturally from the original French gig of the seventeenth century. The popularity of these cabriolets in Paris naturally led certain enterprising people in London to attempt their importation, but there was a difficulty to be surmounted. The proprietors of the hackney-coaches had secured a monopoly for carrying people in the streets of London. In 1805, however, licences were obtained for nine cabriolets, which thereupon started to run. In these two passengers could be carried, and the driver sat side by side with his fares.

They were not a great success. In the first place they were not allowed except in certain areas, and in the second passengers did not apparently appreciate the close proximity of the driver. A number of years passed before they either increased in numbers or caught the public fancy. But in 1823, the Mr. Davies who had designed the cab-phaeton built twelve new cabriolets, which were put on to the streets for hire at the end of April.

“‘Cabriolets,’ runs a newspaper account, ‘were, in honour of His Majesty’s birthday, introduced to the public this [April 23rd] morning. They are built to hold two persons inside besides the driver (who is partitioned off from his company), and are furnished with a book of fares for the use of the public, to prevent the possibility of imposition. These books will be found in a pocket hung inside the head of the cabriolet. The fares are one-third less than hackney-coaches.’”

These new cabs, painted yellow, had one novel feature which must have astonished the inhabitants, for the driver’s seat was a rather comical affair at the side—entirely _outside_ the hood. In this way privacy was ensured, particularly if the curtains in front of the hood were drawn together. “The hood,” says Mr. Moore,[50] “strongly resembled a coffin standing on end, and earned for the vehicle the nickname of ‘coffin-cab.’” Cruikshank’s picture of one of these, to illustrate a Sketch by Boz, shows the curious shape of the hood very well. In a short while these cabriolets became popular—there were over one hundred and fifty of them in 1830—particularly with the younger generation. A verse of a then popular song mentions them:—

“In days of old when folks got tired, A hackney-coach or a chariot was hired; But now along the streets they roll ye In a _shay_ with a cover called a _cabrioly_,”

which hints at a slightly incorrect pronunciation! But in a short while the cockney found it easier to say _cab_, did so, and has done so ever since.

Dickens describes these cabs in his essay on the London streets:—

“Cabs, with trunks and band-boxes between the drivers’ legs and outside the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets on their way to the coach-offices or steam-packet wharfs; and the cab-drivers and hackney-coachmen who are on the stand polish up the ornamental part of their dingy vehicles—the former wondering how people can prefer ‘them wild beast cariwans of homnibuses, to a riglar cab with a fast trotter,’ and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into one of ‘them crazy cabs, when they can have a ’spectable ’ackney cotche with a pair of ’orses as von’t run away with no vun’; a consolation unquestionably founded on fact, seeing that a hackney-coach horse never was known to run at all, ‘except,’ as the smart cabman in front of the rank observes, ‘except one, and he run back’ards.’”

There is another sketch of Dickens which merits quotation here. The two-wheeled cabs were, of course, soon superseded by others of more modern appearance, and Dickens speaks of the last of the cab-drivers and his particular cab, with a few instructions upon riding in it.

This cabriolet “was gorgeously painted—a bright red; and wherever we went, City or West End, Paddington or Holloway, North, East, West, or South, there was the red cab, bumping up against the posts at the street corners, and turning in and out, among hackney-coaches, and drays, and carts, and waggons, and omnibuses, and contriving by some strange means or other, to get out of places which no other vehicle but the red cab could ever by any possibility have contrived to get into at all. Our fondness for that red cab was unbounded. How we should have liked to have seen it in the circle at Astley’s!...

“Some people object to the exertion of getting into cabs, and others object to the difficulty of getting out of them; we think both these are objections which take their rise in perverse and ill-conditioned minds. The getting into a cab is a very pretty and graceful process, which, when well performed, is essentially melodramatic. First, there is the expressive pantomime of every one of the eighteen cabmen on the stand, the moment you raise your eyes from the ground. Then there is your own pantomime in reply—quite a little ballet. Four cabs immediately leave the stand, for your especial accommodation; and the evolutions of the animals who draw them are beautiful in the extreme, as they grate the wheels of the cabs against the curb-stones, and sport playfully in the kennel. You single out a particular cab, and dart swiftly towards it. One bound, and you are on the first step; turn your body lightly round to the right, and you are on the second; bend gracefully beneath the reins, working round to the left at the same time, and you are in the cab. There is no difficulty in finding a seat: the apron knocks you comfortably into it at once, and off you go.