Part 4

The roads had become no better. Even those most eager to welcome the new carriages must have been dismayed at the state of the country, not only in England, but in every European country. As one writer of the sixteenth century complains, the roads, “by reason of straitness and disrepair, breed a loathsome weariness to the passenger.” Nor is this writer a solitary grumbler: there are numerous complaints. In 1537 Richard Bellasis, one of the monastery-wreckers, was unable to proceed with his work: “lead from the roofs,” he reports, “cannot be conveyed away till next summer, for the ways in that countrie are so foule and deepe that no carriage [cart] can pass in winter.” Indeed, no one seems to have looked after the roads with any care, either in the fifteenth or the sixteenth century. Yet there were, in this country, repeated bequests for their preservation. Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, a sufferer himself, left one hundred marks to be bestowed on the highways in Craven, and the same sum on those of Westmorland. John Lyon, the founder of Harrow School, gave certain rents for the repair of the roads from Harrow and Edgware to London. This was in 1592, and Lyon’s example was speedily followed by Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse. There was, indeed, legislation of a kind, but in general the roads were in a terrible condition, and for a long time, so far as men were concerned, the saddle remained triumphant.

And for an even longer time continued that prejudice against carriages which led to the framing of actual prohibitive laws. Even women were occasionally forbidden the use of coaches, and there is the story of the luxurious duchess who in 1546 found great difficulty in obtaining from the Elector of Saxony permission to be driven in a covered carriage to the baths—such leave being granted only on the understanding that none of her attendants were to be allowed the same privilege. So, too, in 1564, Pope Pius IV was exhorting his cardinals and bishops to leave the new-fangled machines to women, and twenty-four years later Julius, Duke of Brunswick, found it necessary to issue an edict—it makes quaint reading now—ordering his “vassals, servants, and kinsmen, without distinction, young and old,” who “have dared to give themselves up to indolence and to riding in coaches ... to take notice that when We order them to assemble, either altogether or in part, in Times of Turbulence, or to receive their Fiefs, or when on other occasions they visit Our Court, they shall not travel or appear in Coaches, but on their riding Horses.” More stringent is the edict, preserved amongst the archives of the German county of Mark, in which the nobility was forbidden the use of coaches “under penalty of incurring the punishment of felony.” So, also, we have the case of René de Laval, Lord of Bois-Dauphin, an extremely obese nobleman living in Paris, whose only excuse for possessing a coach was his inability to be set upon a horse, or to keep in that position if the horse chanced to move. This was in 1550. In England there was a similar feeling of opposition. In 1584 John Lyly, in his play _Alexander and Campaspe_, makes one of his characters complain of the new luxury. In the old days, he says, those who used to enter the battlefield on hard-trotting horses, now ride in coaches and think of nothing but the pleasures of the flesh. The once famous Bishop Hall speaks bitterly of the “sin-guilty” coach:—

“Is’t not a shame to see each homely groome Sit perched in an idle chariot roome That were not meete some pannel to bestride Sursingled to a galled hackney’s hide? Nor can it nought our gallant’s praises reap, Unless it be done in staring cheap In a sin-guilty coach, not closely pent, Jogging along the harder pavement.”

Possibly the same idea is to be found in the framing of a Parliamentary Bill of 1601 “to restrain the excessive use of coaches,” which, however, was thrown out. So again in 1623, the delightful though sadly biased water-poet, John Taylor, is lamenting the decadence of England, due, according to him, to the growing custom of driving in coaches.

“For whereas,” he says, “within our memories, our Nobility and Gentry would ride well mounted (and sometimes walke on foote) gallantly attended with three or four, score brave fellowes in blue coates, which was a glory to our Nation; and gave more content to the beholders, then [_sic_] forty of your Leather tumbrels: Then men preserv’d their bodies strong and able by walking, riding, and other manly exercises: Then saddlers was a good Trade, and the name of a Coach was Heathen Greek. Who ever saw (but upon extraordinary occasions),” he goes on to ask, “Sir _Philip Sidney_, Sir _Francis Drake_, Sir _John Norris_, Sir _William Winter_, Sir _Roger Williams_, or (whom I should have nam’d first) the famous Lord _Gray_ and _Willoughby_, when the renowned _George_ Earle of _Cumberland_, or _Robert_ Earle of _Essex_? These sonnes of _Mars_, who in their time were the glorious Brooches of our Nation, and admirable terrour to our Enemies: these, I say, did make small use of Coaches, and there were two mayne reasons for it, the one was, that there were but few Coaches in most of their times: and the second is, they were deadly foes to all sloth and effeminacy.”

To Taylor, indeed, and probably to every one of his fellow-watermen, a coach was always a “hell-cart” designed on purpose to put an end to his own most worthy calling. But less biased poets than outspoken Taylor gave tongue to an opposition which continued for nearly two centuries. Gay, for instance, looked on the vastly improved vehicle of his day as no more than an excuse for extravagant display:—

“O happy streets, to rumbling wheels unknown, No carts, no coaches shake the floating town! Thus was of old _Britannia’s_ city bless’d, Ere pride and luxury her sons profess’d.”

And again:—

“Now gaudy pride corrupts the lavish age, And the streets flame with glaring equipage; The tricking gamester insolently rides, With _Loves_ and _Graces_ on his chariot’s sides; In saucy state the griping broker sits, And laughs at honesty, and trudging wits.”

Perhaps he is thinking of some personal inconvenience, rather than of mere unnecessary luxury, when he asks:—

“What walker shall his mean ambition fix On the false lustre of a coach and six?”

And so late as 1770, the eccentric Lord Monboddo, who still maintained the superiority of a savage life, refused to “sit in a box drawn by brutes.” It is, of course, easy to magnify such opposition to coaches as followed on the grounds of mere luxury and display, but in the earlier history of the coach, to which we are now come, it is a factor which must by no means be neglected. The coach, like every other novelty, had to fight its way, and if one is inclined to believe, after reading such accusations as there are of the earliest coaches with their magnificent adornments and numerous attendants, that the owners altogether deserved the reproaches of their more Spartan fellows, it may be well to recall Macaulay’s words. In his sketch of the state of England in 1685, when coaches were still lavishly adorned, he says of them: “We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable necessity. People in the time of Charles the Second travelled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire.” And what is true of 1685 is certainly true of 1585.

Buckingham is supposed to have been the first man to use a coach and six in this country, though this is by no means certain. Of him a well-known story apropos of this question of undue luxury is told. “The stout old Earl of _Northumberland_,” it runs, “when he got loose, hearing that the great Favourite _Buckingham_ was drawn about with a Coach and six horses (which was wondered at then as a _novelty_, and imputed to him as a _mastring pride_) thought if _Buckingham_ had six he might very well have eight in his Coach, with which he rode through the City of _London_ to the _Bath_, to the vulgar talk and admiration.... Nor did this addition of two horses by _Buckingham_ grow higher than a little _murmur_. For in the late Queen’s time there were no coaches, and the first [had] but two Horses; the rest crept in by _Degrees_ as men at first venture to _sea_.”[18] Yet what may have been true of Buckingham, whose love of luxury was notorious, need not have been true of those other owners of coaches, who were constantly travelling about the country.

Finally there is the other side of the question to be remembered, and, as M. Ramde quaintly points out in his _History of Locomotion_, the very luxury which people so disliked had a beneficent effect; for “after the development of the use of carriages, and their frequent employment by the court and nobility, the liberty to throw everything out of the window became intolerable! Thus the carriage of luxury has been the cause of cleanliness in the streets.”

Now it must be understood that the coach proper differs from all earlier vehicles in being not only a covered, but also a suspended carriage. The canopy has given place to the roof, a roof, that is to say, which forms part of the framing of the body; and the body itself is swung in some fashion, however primitive, from posts or other supports. Further, it seems reasonable to suppose, on the analogy of the _berlin_ and the _landau_—two later carriages which took their names from the towns in which they were first made—that the first coaches were built in a small Hungarian town then called Kotzee. Yet it is to be observed that Spain, Italy, and France, in the persons of various enthusiasts, have claimed the invention—their claims being mainly based on such similarities as may be observed between the real coach and the earlier cars and charettes.[19] Bridges Adams, indeed, not to be outdone, hazards the suggestion that England might also be included in such a list by reason of her invention of the whirlicote, though he is obliged to admit that nobody knows _exactly_ what a whirlicote was like. It is probably due to these patriotic gentlemen that several rather ludicrous suggestions have been made to explain the derivation of the word _coach_, which has a similar sound in nearly all European languages. Menange rashly suggests a corruption of the Latin _vehiculum_. Another writer puts forward the Greek verb ὀχέω, to carry. Wachten, a German, finds in _kutten_, to cover, a suitable explanation, and Lye produces the Flemish _koetsen_, to lie along. This last, perhaps, is the most reasonable suggestion of those unwilling to give the palm to Hungary, for not only were the Flemish vehicles well known before the introduction of the new carriage, but there is also some confusion, at any rate, in this country, between the two words _coach_ and _couch_, both being found in the old account books. Even in the sixteenth century the word seems to have bothered people. There is an amusing reference to this point in an early seventeenth-century tract called _Coach and Sedan Pleasantly Disputing_, of which I shall have more to say in the next chapter.

“Their first invention,” says a character in this dialogue, “and use was in the Kingdome of _Hungarie_, about the time when _Frier George_, compelled the Queen and her young sonne the King, to seeke to _Soliman_ the Turkish Emperour, for aid against the Frier, and some of the Nobilitie, to the utter ruine of that most rich and flourishing Kingdome, where they were first called _Kottcze_, and in the _Slavonian_ tongue _Cottri_, not of _Coucher_ the French to lie-downe, nor of _Cuchey_, the Cambridge Carrier, as some body made Master _Minshaw_, when hee (rather wee) perfected his Etymologicall dictionarie, whence we call them to this day _Coaches_.”

It is also to be noted that the first English coaches, so called, were probably not suspended at all, but merely upholstered carts for reclining—in fact nothing more than the old chariots. In the second half of the sixteenth century, practically every pleasure carriage in England, though not on the Continent, was called a _coach_ or a _carroche_. Consequently it is difficult to give a date for the importation of the first real coach into this country. Indeed, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty precisely when carriages of the suspended type were first made. Such early accounts as exist are at once fragmentary and obscure, and the few illustrations little better than caricatures with a perspective reminiscent of that in Hogarth’s famous example of false drawing. It can only be repeated that the hammock slung from the four posts of a waggon, such as we have seen existed amongst the Anglo-Saxons and possibly was also in use in parts of Europe, may have provided the idea of permanent suspension as a means to comfort, and that such scanty evidence as there is goes to prove that the carriages exported from Hungary towards the end of the fifteenth century seem to have been the first _coaches_ to be built.

So early as 1457 there is mention of such a carriage, given by Ladislaus, King of Hungary, to the French King, Charles VII. The Parisians who saw it described it as “branlant et moulte riche.” What this “trembling” carriage was like there is no means of discovering, but it certainly suggests an attempt at suspension, and may perhaps be taken for the earliest coach to be recorded by history. This obviously was Hungarian, and Hungary is again mentioned in the same connection by Stephanus Broderithus, who relates that in 1526, “when the archbishop received intelligence that the Turks had entered Hungary, not content with informing the King of this event, he speedily got into one of those light carriages which from the name of the place we call kotcze, and hastened to His Majesty.” And apparently these light carriages were actually used for military purposes, Taylor avowing that “they carried soldiers on each side with cross-bowes,” this being the best purpose to which he considered the coach had ever been put or was likely to be put in the future. All this is clear enough, but Beckmann, in his _History of Inventions_, mentions another circumstance which strengthens the evidence: “Siegmund, Baron de Herberstein, ambassador from Louis II, to the King of Hungary, says in his _Commentarie de rebus Moscoviticis_, where he occasionally mentions some travelling-stages in Hungary: ‘The fourth stage for stopping to give the horses breath is six miles below Taurinum, in the village of Cotzi, from which both drivers and carriages take their name, and are generally called cotzi.’”[20]

Very probably these new Hungarian carriages were seen in most European countries before 1530. “At tournaments,” says Bridges Adams, “they were made objects for display; they are spoken of as being gilded all over, and the hangings were of crimson satin. Electresses and duchesses were seldom without them; and there was as much rivalry in their days of public exhibition as there is now [1837] amongst the aspirants of fashion in their well-appointed equipages at a queen’s drawing-room.”

What did these early coaches look like? Shorn of their hangings, they must have resembled nothing so much as the hearse of to-day. The first illustrations show no signs of suspension, and portray what appear to be gaudily decorated waggons, and that in effect is what they were. The first coach makers of Hungary, like their predecessors, were certainly content to take for their model the common agricultural waggon of Germany. Indeed, Hungary seems to have played pioneer in this respect at a very early date. Von Ginzrot, in his work on early vehicles, gives an illustration of a closed passenger carriage which bears more than a superficial resemblance to the later coaches. “The body,” says Thrupp, “is a disguised waggon; the tilt-top has two leather flaps to fall over the doorway, and the panels are of wicker-work.” It would have been quite easy, he continues, to use such waggons, as had been the case long before, for passenger traffic, “by placing the planks across the sides, or suspending seats by straps from the sides”; and he further mentions an oil painting at Nuremberg, of two waggons “with carved and gilt standard posts both in front and behind the body”—an interesting stage in the transformation from rude cart to private coach. There is a detailed and technical description of these waggons in Thrupp’s own book, but it will be enough here to notice that they were generally narrower at the bottom than at the top, as were the first coaches, and that the four wheels were nearly of the same size. Working from such a model, the Hungarian artificers produced a comparatively light, though large, four-wheeled carriage with some pretensions to grace of line, a roofed body, broad seats, and a side entrance. The body, however, was not completely enclosed by solid panels, which only took the place of the curtains at a later date. Carvings and other ornamentation followed on the owner’s rank and taste. And towards the end of the sixteenth century, if not before, the actual body was suspended on straps or braces. There are preserved at Coburg and Verona one or two coach-bodies which show signs of the iron hoops by which they were hung. The earliest of these was built for Duke Frederick of Saxony in 1527, and Count Gozzadini, in a slim folio which he privately printed some sixty years ago, describes a coach-body built in 1549 which still shows traces of its heraldic ornamentation on the framework.

“This coach,” says Thrupp, acting as the Count’s translator, “was built under the direction of an Italian at Brussels, for the ceremony of the marriage of Alexander, the son of Octavius Farnese, Duke of Parma, with a Portuguese princess. The wedding took place in 1565 at Brussels. There were four carriages Flanders fashion [? charettes] and four coaches after the Italian fashion, swinging on leather braces. The chief, or state, coach is described as being in the most beautiful manner, with four statues at the ends, the spokes of the wheels like fluted columns. There were seraphims’ heads at the end of the roof and over the doorway, and festoons of fruit in relief over the framing of the body. The coachman was supported by two carved figures of lions, two similar lions were at the hind wheel, and the leather braces that supported the body and the harness were embossed with heads of animals. The ends of the steps were serpents’ heads. The whole of the wood and ironwork was covered with gold relieved with white. The coach was drawn by four horses, with red and white plumes of feathers, and the covering of the body and of the horses was gold brocade with knotted red silk fringe. The cushions of gold-embroidered stuff were perfumed with amber and musk, that infused the soul of all who entered the coach with life, joy, and supreme pleasure.”

Truly a Southern notion!

What is apparently the oldest coach to be preserved practically intact is to be seen at Coburg. This coach was built for a particular occasion—the marriage of John, Elector of Saxony, in 1584. The body is long and ornate, and is hung from four carved standard posts surmounted by crowned lions. The wheels are large—four feet eight inches and five feet—and the roof is at a slightly higher level than the lions’ heads. Mounting steps must have existed, but have been lost.

Not unnaturally the advent of these coaches followed upon the commercial prosperity of each country. Germany seems to have imported a number of carriages from Hungary, and made others from Hungarian models, but even more prosperous than Germany at this time was Holland, which probably possessed more coaches than any other country in Europe. Here there would have been native designs to follow and improve upon, and, as I shall show in a moment, it was probably from the Netherlands that the first coach was imported into England. Antwerp, for instance, a superlatively rich city in the sixteenth century, is credited by Macpherson with having no less than five hundred coaches —and so five hundred scandals, according to the local philosophers—in 1560, at which date London had but two, and Paris no more than three. Of the French trio of _carosses_, as they were called, one was the Queen’s property, a second belonged to the fashionable Diana of Poitiers, and the third had been built for the use of that corpulent noble who has already been mentioned. Some Italian towns possessed many, others none. There is preserved at the Musée Cluny in Paris a Veronese _carriole_ built in the sixteenth century by Giovanna Batta Maretto, with panels painted by a distinguished artist of the time. Verona, indeed, seems to have had many coaches. But it was easily surpassed by Ferrara, which so early as 1509 is credited with the possession of no less than sixty coaches, the whole of these forming the Duke’s procession on the occasion of a state visit from the Pope. And, as Thrupp points out, these sixty carriages were not litters or cars, as might be supposed, but coaches, for it is particularly mentioned by the historian that “the Duchess of Ferrara rode in a _litter_, and her ladies followed her in twenty-two _cars_.” Spain had apparently no coaches until 1546, and here again there was considerable opposition to their use. Yet although England, France, and Spain seem to have been behind other countries in taking to the new carriages, all three possessed a flourishing, if not very large, coach-building trade before 1600.