Part 18

“The getting out of a cab is, perhaps, rather more complicated in its theory, and a shade more difficult in its execution. We have studied the subject a good deal, and we think the best way is to throw yourself out, and trust to chance for alighting on your feet. If you make the driver alight first, and then throw yourself upon him, you will find that he breaks your fall materially. In the event of your contemplating an offer of eightpence, on no account make the tender, or show your money, until you are safely on the pavement. It is very bad policy attempting to save the fourpence. You are very much in the power of a cabman, and he considers it a kind of fee not to do you any wilful damage. Any instruction, however, in the art of getting out of a cab is wholly unnecessary if you are going any distance, because the probability is that you will be shot lightly out before you have completed the third mile.

“We are not aware of any instance on record in which a cab-horse has performed three consecutive miles without going down once. What of that? It is all excitement. And in these days of derangement of the nervous system and universal lassitude, people are content to pay handsomely for excitement; where can it be procured at a cheaper rate?”

Thomas Hood also mentions both hackney-coaches and cabs in one of his comic poems, _Conveyancing_.

“O, London is the place for all In love with loco-motion! Still to and fro the people go Like billows of the ocean; Machine or man, or caravan, Can all be had for paying, When great estates, or heavy weights, Or bodies want conveying.

“There’s always hacks about in packs, Wherein you may be shaken, And Jarvis is not always _drunk_, Tho’ always _overtaken_; In racing tricks he’ll never mix, His nags are in their last days, And slow to go, altho’ they show As if they had their _fast days_!

“Then if you like a single horse, This age is quite a _cab-age_, A car not quite so small and light As those of our Queen _Mab_ age; The horses have been _broken well_, All danger is rescinded, For some have _broken both their knees_, And some are _broken-winded_.”

While these cabs were still running, several experiments were being made with patent carriages. One of these, placed on the streets for a short while, was the invention of Mr. William Boulnois. “It was a two-wheeled closed vehicle,” says Mr. Moore, “constructed to carry two passengers sitting face to face. The driver sat on a small and particularly unsafe seat on the top of it, and the door was at the back. It was, in fact, so much like the front of an omnibus that it was well known as the _omnibus slice_. Its popular name was the _back-door cab_. Superior people called it a _minibus_. This cab was quickly followed by a very similar, although larger, vehicle invented by Mr. Harvey. It was called a _duobus_.” These two cabs cannot have been very comfortable; the shafts were too short, and the knowledge that a possibly heavy coachman was sitting just above your head seems to have militated against their success.

Another cab, not wholly successful in itself, led the way to the widely popular _hansom_. This was a carriage invented in 1834 by Mr. Aloysius Hansom, the architect of the Birmingham Town Hall. Here the body was “almost square and hung in the centre of a square frame.” The driver, as before, sat on the roof, but had a small seat fixed there for his convenience. The doors were in front, on either side of the driver’s seat. And the wheels were of a prodigious height—being seven feet six inches. Mr. Hansom, who had obviously seen one of Francis Moore’s patent carriages of 1790,[51] himself drove this carriage from Hinckley in Leicestershire to London, and found financial support from Mr. Boulnois. Further experiments were made—in one model you had to enter the carriage actually _through_ the wheels, the door being in this case at the sides—and it was found that the wheels could be made considerably smaller without danger or inconvenience. Whereupon a company was formed to purchase the invention for a sum of ten thousand pounds. Hansom, however, obtained no more than three hundred, the balance being used to perfect the far from satisfactory cabs which had been placed on the streets. Such improvements as were carried out were the work of Mr. John Chapman,[52] then secretary to the Safety Cabriolet and Two-Wheel Carriage Company, who produced a much safer vehicle, afterwards purchased by Hansom’s company. This new cab was placed on the streets in 1836, and proved such a success that it was imitated by numerous other companies. Legal proceedings were instituted, but proved both expensive and not particularly successful, and the “pirate” cabs were allowed to flourish as best they could.

Then, in 1836, was made the first of those four-wheeled cabs,[53] which were not really cabs at all, but which will never be known by any other name. The first of these was built by the ingenious Mr. Davies. It bore superficial resemblance to the chariot. Two passengers could ride inside, and a third on the box at the coachman’s side. At this date the old two-wheeled cabs were “a source of acknowledged disgrace, of many alarming accidents, and of lamentable loss of life,” and a company was formed to provide “a cheap, expeditious, safe, and commodious mode of conveyance in lieu of the present disgraceful and ill-conducted cabriolets.” Two years later Lord Brougham was so pleased with the appearance of these new cabs that he ordered one for his own use. So was the first _brougham_ constructed—the earliest private four-wheeled closed carriage to be drawn by a single horse.

“The original brougham,” says Sir Walter Gilbey,[54] “differed in many particulars of design, proportion, construction, and finish from the modern carriage. The body ... was several inches wider in front than at the back, and though both larger and heavier, was neither so comfortable nor so convenient.... [It] was held together by heavy, flat iron plates throughout, and the front boot was connected with the front pillars by strong outside iron stays, fixed with bolts. The wheels were at once smaller in diameter and much heavier. [The carriage] carried a large guard or ‘opera board’ at the back of the body to protect the occupants from risk of injury in a crush, when the pole of a carriage behind might otherwise break through the back panel—an accident now occasionally seen in our crowded streets. Like all other carriages of the time there was a sword case in the back panel for weapons. It was painted olive green, a very fashionable colour at that period.”

Another hansom, the _tribus_, may be noticed here, though it was not invented until 1844. In this carriage the driver’s seat was at the back on a level with the roof, and the door to his left at the back—the reason of this being that the driver could open or close it without leaving his seat. Another peculiarity was the presence of five windows, two in front, one at either side, and a fifth at the back underneath the driver’s seat. The _tribus_ was the invention of Mr. Harvey, who also built a _curricle tribus_, for two horses, but neither was successful. The _quartobus_ (1844) of Mr. Okey, a four-wheeled vehicle to hold four inside passengers, was likewise withdrawn after a short trial.

A word may here be said of the _omnibus_, which had been introduced in 1819 into Paris, though not under that name, by M. Jacques Laffitte. It was a modern outcome of the old _gondola_. Nine years later the modern name was given to it by M. Baudry, a retired military officer. Laffitte had rivals, and ultimately determined to triumph over them by building a superior vehicle. At this time one of the most celebrated coachbuilders in Paris was an Englishman, once in the Navy, named George Shillibeer. To him came Laffitte, and Shillibeer, whilst at work on the new conveyance, conceived the idea of starting a similar one in London. Accordingly he shipped one over and ran it from Paddington to the Bank. This first omnibus of his was a long, much be-windowed, four-wheeled carriage with a door at the back, and not unlike a private omnibus of to-day. A top-hatted coachman sat on a high seat in front and drove three horses abreast. This was in 1819, and from that time, in spite of the usual opposition, these new and rather unsightly vehicles increased in numbers until there were forty or fifty routes in London alone upon which they were to be hourly seen. A song sung with great success at a time when Shillibeer was extending his operations, particularly in the direction of Greenwich, whither it was proposed to run one of the new railroads, may be quoted:—

“By a Joint-Stock Company taken in hand, A railroad from London to Greenwich is plann’d, But they’re sure to be beat, ’tis most certainly clear, Their rival has got the start—George Shillibeer.

“I will not for certainty vouch for the fact, But believe that he means to run over the Act Which Parliament pass’d at the end of last year, Now made null and void by the new Shillibeer.

“His elegant _omnis_, which now throng the road, Up and down every hour most constantly load; Across all the three bridges how gaily appear The _Original Omnibus_—George Shillibeer.

“These pleasure and comfort with safety combine, They will neither blow up nor explode like a mine; Those who ride on the railroad might half die with fear— You can come to no harm in the new Shillibeer.

“How exceedingly elegant fitted, inside, With mahogany polished—soft cushions—beside Bright brass ventilators at each end appear, The latest improvements in the new Shillibeer.

“Here no draughts of air cause a rick in the neck, Or huge bursting boilers blow all to a wreck, But as safe as at home you from all danger steer While you travel abroad in the gay Shillibeer.

“Then of the exterior I safely may say There never was yet any carriage more gay, While the round-tire wheels make it plainly appear That there’s none run so light as the smart Shillibeer.

“His conductors are famous for being polite, Obliging and civil, they always act right, For if just complaint only comes to his ear, They are not long conductors for George Shillibeer.

“It was meant that they all should wear dresses alike, But bad luck has prompted the tailors to strike. When they go to their work, his men will appear _A la Française, Conducteur à Mons. Shillibeer_.

“Unlike the conductors by tailors opprest, His horses have all in new harness been drest: The cattle are good, the men’s orders are clear, Not to gallop or race—so says Shillibeer.

“That the beauties of Greenwich and Deptford may ride In his elegant omni is the height of his pride— So the plan for a railroad must soon disappear While the public approve of the new Shillibeer.”

_Chapter the Tenth_

_MODERN CARRIAGES_

“Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar Drag the slow barge, or urge the rapid car; Or on wide waving wings expanded bear The flying chariot through the realms of air.”

_Erasmus Darwin._

The year of Queen Victoria’s Coronation saw the successful opening of the London and Birmingham Railway, and from that time all but a few obstinate folk recognised the fact that the horse as a necessary adjunct to cross-country travelling was doomed. For some time, indeed, certain ingenious gentlemen had been carrying out a number of experiments with self-propelled carriages. Fifteen years before, several inventors had produced cumbrous machines which, without requiring rails, were able to progress along the roads at speeds which compared favourably with those attained by the ordinary coaches. Sir Goldsmith Gurney—to mention, perhaps, the most prominent of these men—had patented a steam-carriage in 1827 which, in spite of attacks from an irate populace who feared machinery as they feared the devil, was quite successful enough to lead the enterprising Mr. Hanning to ask for, and obtain, permission to run similar machines on many of the principal roads of England. Indeed, for a short while, there seems to have been a regular service of these primitive automobiles. Many people, it is true, fought shy of Gurney’s boilers, which in spite of the fact that they had been “constructed upon philosophical principles” occasionally exploded. It was after such an explosion at Glasgow that Tom Hood seized the opportunity to write the following lines:—

“Instead of _journeys_, people now May go upon a _Gurney_, With steam to do the horses’ work By power of attorney:

“Tho’ with a load it may explode And you may all be undone; And find you’re going up to Heaven Instead of up to London.”

Similarly, many people declared their intention of never patronising the railroads. Steam, however, had come to stay, and the days of coaching were already numbered.

The net result of the new state of things, so far as private carriages were concerned, seems to have been that the coachbuilders set themselves to perfect the urban vehicles, which became lighter, soberer, and more various. New and less conventional “models” were constantly being exhibited, while for those who could not afford more than a single carriage adaptable bodies were devised. So you might order a vehicle which with small trouble could be entirely changed in appearance. The older dignity, moreover, was giving place to a new smartness. “Carriage people” still formed a class, but families which before had been satisfied to use such public conveyances as there had been, now drove forth in one or other of the cheaper private carriages which were being constructed particularly for their convenience. The dog-cart, for instance, had become common and was undergoing various metamorphoses, and the brougham was rapidly becoming the most popular of all town vehicles. In country lanes, too, appeared the waggonette and its kind. Nothing, indeed, was quite so light as the American buggy with its shallow dish of a body and its extraordinarily thin wheels, but there was no longer that heaviness of line which gives to the older carriages what is to modern eyes such an uncomfortable appearance.

So in 1860 a London coachbuilder could write to the American author of _The World on Wheels_:—

“Ten years have completed a total revolution in the carriage trade in England. Not only have the Court and the nobility adopted economical habits, and insisted on cheap carriages, but they carry no luggage, as was formerly the case when carriages had to sustain great weight, both of passengers and luggage. The cumbrous Court carriages of former times are being gradually abolished, and instead of the rich linings, laces, fringes, and elaborate heraldry usual to the carriages of the nobility, light vehicles, furnished only with a crest, are used. The changes in construction, and consequent depreciation of stock, were a heavy blow to the master coachbuilders; many of the large houses must have lost, in this manner, from ten to twenty thousand pounds. The trade, having recovered from this blow, is in a more healthy state. The favourite carriages in England at this time were waggonettes, sociables, Stanhope and mail phaetons, basket phaetons and landaus.”

I may speak first of the state or “dress” carriages. “These vehicles,” says Thrupp, “had long passed the period in which beautiful carving and elegant painting had been used to disguise, as far as possible, the clumsy state carriages of the eighteenth century. Ever since the building of the Irish Lord Chancellor’s state coach by Hatchett or Baxter in 1790, coachbuilders had endeavoured to produce a graceful outline of body, of a fair size no larger than was necessary; the C-springs had been made of a perfect curve, the perch followed the sweeps of the body, the carving was reduced to a moderate amount, the ornamental painting was confined to the stripes upon the wheels, and the heraldic bearings of the owners of the carriages were beautifully emblazoned on the panels. For further ornament they relied on plated work in brass or silver round the body and on loops and wheel hoops. In every capital of Europe such carriages had superseded the old style, and London and Paris had supplied other countries with most of these state carriages.”

At the Queen’s Coronation in 1838, Londoners had a good opportunity of seeing these dress carriages, a number of which early in the day were lined up in Birdcage Walk. Most of these belonged to the various ambassadors. The one which excited the widest admiration belonged to Marshal Soult—a French-built carriage, originally built for one of the Royal family. Thrupp describes it. “The body had four upper quarter glasses, with a very elegant deep and pierced cornice of silver round the roof; there were four lamps with large coronets on the tops, and the coach bore a coronet on the roof also. The colouring of the painting was a lovely blue, such as was then called Adelaide blue;[55] this had been varnished with white spirit varnish, and seemed almost transparent in lustre. The whole coach was ornamented with silver and was finished in great taste.” Other particulars of these carriages are to be found in the contemporary newspaper reports. We are told of the enormous prices paid. Count Strogonoff purchased for £1600 the carriage which had originally been built at a cost of £3000 by the Duke of Devonshire for his state visit to St. Petersburg. Another ambassador, finding that it was too late to buy a carriage, hired one from one of the Sheriffs at a cost of £250 for the occasion, which strikes one as an excessive price even for Coronation Day.

Modern state carriages retain all their former magnificence with little if any of the old cumbersome and unnecessary ornament. One of the finest examples of this kind of carriage is the state landau built for King Edward and used by him in the Coronation procession.

“This magnificent example of the coachbuilder’s art,” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “is over eighteen feet long. The body is hung upon C-springs by strong braces covered with ornamentally stitched morocco; each brace is joined with a massive gilt buckle with oak leaf and crown device. Between the hind springs is a rumble for two footmen; there is no driving seat, as the carriage is intended to be drawn only by horses ridden postilion. The panels are painted in purple lake considerably brighter than is usual in order to secure greater effect; marking the contours of the body and the outlines of the rumble are mouldings in wood carved and gilt, the design being one of overlapping oak leaves.

“The door panels, back and front panels, bear the Royal Arms with crown, supporters, mantle, motto, helmet, and garter. On the lower quarter panel is the collar of the Order of the Garter, encircling its star and surmounted by the Tudor crown. Springing in a slow, graceful curve from the underpart of the body over the forecarriage is a ‘splasher’ of crimson patent leather. Ornamental brass lamps are carried in brackets at each of the four corners of the body.

“As regards the interior of this beautiful carriage, it is upholstered in crimson satin and laces which were woven in Spitalfields; the hood is lined with silk, as better adapted than satin for folding. The rumble is covered with crimson leather. It is to be observed that with the exception of the pine and mahogany used for the panels, English-grown wood and English-made materials only have been used throughout.

“While less ornate than the wonderful ‘gold coach’ designed by Sir William Chambers and Cipriani in 1761, the new state landau, in its build, proportions, and adornment, is probably the most graceful and regal vehicle ever built.”

Other English state carriages hardly less successfully designed have been made for the Lord Mayor of London (1887), for Sir Marcus Samuel, when holding that position in 1902-3, for the Sheriffs, and for various Indian Princes.

Coming to less pretentious vehicles, we may briefly consider in the first place the coach proper. At the time of Queen Victoria’s Coronation, coaches of the old pattern were, of course, still being constructed. There is in possession of Messrs. Holland and Holland a mail-coach built by Waude, one of the best-known coachbuilders of that time, which is typical of the period. This, says Mr. Charles Harper,

“is substantially and in general lines as built in 1830. The wheels have been renewed, the hind boot has a door at the back, and the interior has been relined; but otherwise it is the coach that ran when William IV was King. It is a characteristic Waude coach, low-hung, and built with straight sides, instead of the bowed-out type common to the productions of Vidler’s factory. It wears, in consequence, a more elegant appearance than most coaches of that time; but it must be confessed that what it gained in the eyes of the passers-by it must have lost in the estimation of the insides, for the interior is not a little cramped by those straight sides. The guard’s seat on the ‘dickey’—or what in earlier times was more generally known as the ‘backgammon-board’—remains, but his sheepskin or tiger-skin covering, to protect his legs from the cold, is gone. The trap-door into the hind boot can be seen. Through this the mails were thrust and the guard sat throughout the journey with his feet on it. Immediately in front of him were the spare bars, while above, in the still remaining case, reposed the indispensable blunderbuss. The original lamps in their reversible cases remain. There were four of them—one on either forequarter, and one on either side of the fore boot, while a smaller one hung from beneath the footboard, just above the wheelers. The guard had a small hand lamp of his own to aid him in sorting his small parcels. The door panels have apparently been repainted since the old days, for although they still keep the maroon colour characteristic of the mail-coaches, the Royal Arms are gone, and in their stead appears the script monogram in gold, V.R.”

It is the coach which of all vehicles has least changed its appearance in the last hundred years. The drag of to-day and the old coach just described differ from one another only in a few minor details of construction. The reason for this is not far to seek. “The brief ‘Golden Age,’” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “of fast coaching saw the vehicle, of which such hard and continuous work was required, brought as near perfection as human ingenuity and craftsmanship was capable of bringing it. No effort was spared to make the mail or road-coach the best possible conveyance of its kind, and in retaining the model of a former age the modern coachbuilder confesses his inability to improve upon the handiwork of his progenitors.”