Chapter III: Part 3

The coachman, as we learn from the water-poet, was “mounted (his fellow-horses and himselfe being all in a finery) with as many varieties of laces, facings, Clothes and Colours as are in the Rainebowe.” Nor was he over-polite, particularly if the coach he drove was hired. In Jonson’s _Staple of News_ one of the pieces of mock-news to appear in the ideal paper concerns the fraternity:—

“and coachmen
To mount their boxes reverently, and drive
Like lapwings with a shell upon their heads
Through the streets.”

They seem to have thought that their finery allowed them to treat the pedestrians with but scant respect. And no wonder these “way-stopping whirligigges,” as Taylor calls the coaches, surprised the inhabitants. When one of them was seen for the first time, “some said it was a great Crab-shell brought out of _China_, and some imagin’d it to be one of the Pagan Temples in which the Cannibals adored the devill.” For some time, indeed, the coaches must have given the common folk something to think about. A coach rumbling along brought them to their windows, just as the horseless carriage, centuries later, proved a similar attraction. There is a scene in _Eastward Hoe_ which well illustrates this point.

_Enter a Coachman in haste in ’s frock, feeding._

_Coach._ Here’s a stir when citizens ride out of town indeed,
as if all the house were afire! ’Slight, they will not give a
man leave to eat ’s breakfast afore he rises.

_Enter Hamlet, a footman, in haste._

_Ham._ What coachman? My lady’s coach, for shame! her
ladyship’s ready to come down.

_Enter Potkin, a tankard bearer._

_Pot._ ’Sfoot, Hamlet, are you mad? whither run you now?...

_Enter Mrs. Fond and Mrs. Gazer._

_Fond._ Come, sweet mistress Gazer, let’s watch here, and see
my Lady Flash take coach.

_Gazer_. O’ my word, here’s a most fine place to stand in. Did
you see the new ship launch’d last day, Mrs. Fond?

_Fond._ O God, and we citizens should lose such a sight!

_Gazer._ I warrant here will be double as many people to see
her take coach, as there were to see it take water.

My lady’s point of view is put forward by Lady Eitherside in _The Devil is an Ass_. Says she:—

“If we once see it under the seals, wench, then,
Have with them for the great caroch, six horses,
And the two coachmen, with my Ambler bare,
And my three women; we will live, i’ faith,
The example of the town, and govern it.
I’ll lead the fashion still.”

Contemporary references to coaches, however, are but scarce. The most important of these is Taylor’s own _The World runnes on Wheeles: or, Oddes betwixt Carts and Coaches_, an amusing pamphlet written in prose and not in verse, because the author, as he says, was lame at the time of its composition, and because beyond the three words, broach, Roach, and encroach, he could find no suitable rhymes. Encroach, however, he thinks might have done, for that word, as he explains in his dedication to various companies likely to suffer from the importation of the coach, “best befits it, for I think never such an impudent, proud Intruder or Encroacher came into the world as a Coach is; for it hath driven many honest Families out of their Houses, many Knights to Beggers, Corporations to poverty, Almesdeedes to all misdeedes, Hospitality to extortion, Plenty to famine, Humility to pride, Compassion to oppression, and all Earthly goodnes to an utter confusion.” To the cart he does not object, but for the “hyred Hackney-hell-carts” he cannot find sufficient abuse. His arguments in favour of carts as against coaches are certainly novel, if not entirely convincing as coming from a waterman well used to live passengers himself.

“And as necessities and things,” he says, “whose commodious
uses cannot be wanted, are to be respected before Toyes and
trifles (whose beginning is Folly, continuance Pride, and
whose End is Ruine) I say as necessity is to be preferred
before superfluity, so is the _Cart_ before the _Coach_; For
Stones, Timber, Corne, Wine, Beere, or any thing that wants
life, there is a necessity they should be carried, because
they are dead things and cannot go on foot, which necessity
the honest _Cart_ doth supply: But the _Coach_, like a
superfluous bable, or uncharitable Miser, doth seldom or
never carry or help any dead or helplesse thing; but on the
contrary, it helps those that can helpe themselves ... and
carries men and women, who are able to goe or run; _Ergo_, the
_Cart_ is necessary, and the _Coach_ superfluous.”

In fact, the coach, according to poor Taylor, is directly responsible for every calamity from which the country has suffered since its introduction. Leather has become dearer, the horses in their traces are being prostituted, and there is a “universal decay of the best ash-trees.”

“A Wheele-wright,” he continues, “or a maker of Carts, is an
ancient, a profitable and a Trade, which by no meanes can be
wanted: yet so poore it is, that scarce the best amongst them
can hardly ever attaine to better than a Calves skin fate, or
a piece of beefe and Carret rootes to dinner on a Sunday; nor
scarcely any of them is ever mounted to any Office above the
degree of a Scavenger, or a Tything-man at the most. On the
contrary, your Coachmakers trade is the most gaine-fullest
about the Towne, they are apparelled in Sattens and Velvets,
and Masters of their Parish, Vestry-men, who fare like the
Emperors _Heliogabalus_ or _Sardanapalus_, seldome without
their Mackroones, Parmisants, Jellies and Kickshawes, with
baked Swannes, Pasties hot, or cold red Deere Pyes, which
they have fro their Debtor Worships in the Country: neither
are these Coaches onely thus cumbersome by their Rumbling and
Rutting, as they are by their standing still, and damming up
the streetes and lanes, as the Blacke Friers, and divers other
places can witnes, and against Coachmakers doores the streets
are so pestered and clogg’d with them, that neither man,
horse or cart can passe for them; in so much as my Lord Maior
is highly to bee commended for his care in their restraint,
sending in February last, many of them to the Courtes for
their carelessnesse herein.”

In another work of Taylor’s, _The Thiefe_, there is a passage of equal interest:—

“Carroaches, Coaches, Jades and Flanders Mares
Do rob us of our shares, our wares, our Fares:
Against the ground we stand and knock our heeles,
Whilest all our profit runs away on wheeles;
And whosoever but observes and notes,
The great increase of Coaches and of Boats,
Shall finde their number more than e’r they were
By halfe and more within these thirty yeeres.
Then watermen at Sea had service still,
And those that staid at home had worke at will:
Then upstart Helcart-Coaches were to seeke,
A man could scarce see twenty in a weeke,
But now I thinke a man may daily see,
More than the Whirries on the _Thames_ can be.
When Queen _Elizabeth_ came to the Crowne,
A Coach in _England_, then was scarcely knowne,
Then ’twas as rare to see one, as to spy
A Tradesman that had never told a lye.”

It will be seen from the first of these lines, that a difference is made between the coach and the caroche (carroch or carroache). On this point there is a definite statement in the Elizabethan play _Tu Quoque_:—

“Prepare yourself to like this gentleman,
Who can maintain thee in thy choice of gowns,
Of tires, of servants, and of costly jewels;
Nay, for a need, out of his easy nature,
May’st draw him to the keeping of a coach
For country, and carroch for London.”

This, too, is borne out by the speech of Lady Eitherside already quoted. Many servants were needed for the carroch. Massinger speaks of one being drawn by six Flanders mares, and having its coachman, groom, postilion, and footman, to look after it. “These carroaches,” says Croal[22] “were larger and clumsier” than the coaches, “but were considered more stately.” Taylor speaks of the town Vehicle as “a mere Engine of Pride,” and gives a rather ludicrous account of some common women who had hired one of them to go to “the Greene-Goose faire at _Stratford_ the _Bowe_.” The occupants of this carroch “were so be-madam’d, be-mistrist, and Ladified by the beggers, that the foolish Women began to swell with a proud Supposition or Imaginary greatnes, and gave all their mony to the mendicanting Canters.”

Poor Taylor! He felt very deeply on the question of these new coaches which were to put an end once and for all time to his trade. He must have felt that Henry of Navarre’s assassination in 1610 would never have taken place but for that monarch’s affection for his coach; yet in spite of his deep hatred, he was once prevailed upon to ride inside one of them. “It was but my chance” he records, “once to bee brought from Whitehall to the Tower in my Master Sir William Waades Coach, and before I had been drawn twenty yardes, such a Timpany of Pride puft me up, that I was ready to burst with the winde chollicke of vaine-glory. In what state I would leane over the boote, and looke, and pry if I saw any of my acquaintance, and then I would stand up vailing my Bonnet.”

It almost looks as though he had enjoyed his ride!

_Chapter the Fourth_

_INTERLUDE OF THE CHAIR_

“I love sedans, cause they do plod
And amble everywhere,
Which prancers are with leather shod,
And ne’er disturb the eare.
Heigh doune, derry derry doune,
With the hackney Coaches doune,
Their jumping make
The pavements shake,
Their noise doth mad the toune.”

_Ancient Ballad._

Just as the horse-litter gave way before the coach, so the coach, not long after its appearance, found a serious rival in the man-drawn litter or Sedan chair. When or where this chair came from, or who brought it into use once again, is not known. That Sedan itself was the first place to adopt this chair may be true—the analogy already mentioned holding good—but beyond a few half-serious words in a curious seventeenth-century pamphlet to be quoted in a little, there is no positive evidence whatever. Several writers, indeed, assert that Sedan had nothing to do with the chair for ever associated with its name, but in that tantalising manner which is unfortunately characteristic of former times, omit to state their reason. It has been suggested that _sedan_ was the name of the cloth with which the chair was lined, but if this were so, the cloth most probably took its name from the chair it adorned. But wherever it was first made it is reasonable to suppose that the narrowness of the streets made a smaller vehicle than either coach or horse-litter convenient.

The earliest chair, other than those ancient _lecticæ_ and φορεῖα mentioned in the first chapter, appears to have belonged to the Emperor Charles V, in the first half of the sixteenth century. This, indeed, does bear some resemblance to the common conception of a _chair_, but the first Sedans of some fifty years later resembled nothing so much as a modern dog-kennel provided with two poles. A more unsociable apparatus was surely never built, and yet its almost immediate popularity is easily explained. With the urban streets not yet properly paved and the eternal jolting of the coach, to the accompaniment of such a clatter as must have made speech almost impossible, anything in the nature of a conveyance that made at once for physical comfort and comparative silence would have been favourably received.

There is mention of a chair being shown in England in 1581—just at the time when the country was beginning to show an interest in carriages—but it was not until after the death of Elizabeth that such a novelty was seen in the streets of London. You are not wholly surprised, moreover, to hear that the innovation was due to Buckingham, that apostle of luxury, who probably first saw the chair on his visit to Spain with Prince Charles. Indeed the Prince is supposed to have brought back three of them with him.

At first, of course, there was opposition.

“Every new thing the People disaffect,” wrote Arthur Wilson,
the historian, “They stumble sometimes, at the _action_ for
the _person_, which rises like a little _cloud_ but soon after
vanishes. So after, when _Buckingham_ came to be carried upon
Men’s shoulders the _clamour_ and the _noise_ of it was so
extravagant that the People would rail on him in the Streets,
loathing that Men should be brought to as servile a condition
as Horses. So irksome is every little new impression that
breaks an old _Custom_ and rubs and grates against the _public
humour_. But when Time had made these Chairs common, every
loose _Minion_ used them, so that that which got at first so
much scandal was the means to convey those privately to such
places where they might give much more. Just like _long hair_,
at one time described as abominable, at another time approved
as beautiful. So various are the _fancies_ of the _times_!”

It is to be noticed that Buckingham, according to this account, was carried upon men’s shoulders. This was the case at first, but such a mode was speedily changed for that of hand-poles—at once safer and more comfortable for the occupant, and certainly more convenient for the men.[23]

John Evelyn disagrees with Wilson and ascribes the introduction of the chair into England to Sir Saunders Duncombe, a Gentleman-Pensioner knighted by James I in Scotland in 1617, who enjoyed Buckingham’s patronage. In his Diary for 1645, he writes of the Neapolitans: “They greatly affect the Spanish gravity in their habit; delight in good horses; the streets are full of gallants on horseback, in coaches and sedans, from hence brought first into England by Sir Saunders Duncombe.” Undoubtedly Duncombe was responsible for the great popularity of the chair in England, and for a time held a monopoly in such chairs as could be had for hire, but it may be that Buckingham suggested this monopoly in the first place, after the temporary opposition to their use had been overcome. Which rather suggests that Spain was actually the first country where they were used, though this is mere conjecture.

In the meantime much was happening to the coaches. They were increasing enormously in number, not only those privately owned, but also those hired out by the day. These latter soon became known as hackney-coaches.[24] They seem to have been put on the streets as early as 1605, but “remained in the owner’s yards until sent for.” In 1633 the Strand was chosen as the first regular stand for such coaches by a Captain Bailey, one of the pioneers of the movement.

“I cannot omit to mention,” writes Lord Stafford, “any new
thing that comes up amongst us though ever so trivial. Here
is one Captain Bailey, he hath been a sea captain, but now
lives on land about this city where he tries experiments. He
hath erected, according to his ability, some four hackney
coaches, put his men in livery and appointed them to stand at
the Maypole in the Strand, giving them instructions at what
rate to carry men into several parts of the town where all
day they may be had. Other hackney men veering this way, they
flocked to the same place and performed their journeys at the
same rate, so that sometimes there is twenty of them together,
which dispose up and down, that they and others are to be
had everywhere, as watermen are to be had at the waterside.
Everybody is much pleased with it, for whereas before coaches
could be had but at great rate”—one recalls the prices paid
by Lord Rutland a few years before—“now a man may have one
much cheaper.”

Most of these coaches that were put on to the streets seem to have been old and disused carriages belonging to the quality. Many of them still bore noble arms, and, indeed, it would seem that when the hackneys were no longer disused noblemen’s carriages, the proprietors found it advisable to pretend that they were. Nearly every hansom and four-wheeled cab at the end of the nineteenth century bore some sort of coronet on its panels.

The drivers of these first hackneys wore large coats with several capes, one over the other, for warmth. London, however, seems to have been the only town in which they were to be seen. “Coaches,” wrote Fynes Morison in 1617, “are not to be hired anywhere but in London. For a day’s journey a coach with two horses is let for about 10s. a day, or 15s. with three horses, the coachman finding the horses’ feed.” From the same author it would appear that most travellers still doggedly kept to their horses, and indeed, in some counties a horse could be hired for threepence a day, an incredibly small sum. “Carriers,” he also records, “have long covered waggons in which they carry passengers too and fro; but this kind of journeying is very tedious; so that none but women and people of inferior condition travel in this sort.” These were the stage-waggons which in due course gave rise to the stage-coaches, which in their turn were superseded by the mail-coaches.

A similar movement in France gave rise to the _fiacres_, so called from the sign of St. Fiacre, which adorned one of the principal inns in Paris, in front of which the public coaches stood. In Scotland, too, one Henry Andersen, a native of Pomerania, had in 1610 been granted a royal patent to provide public coaches in Scotland, and for some years ran a service between Edinburgh and Leith. England had yet to follow Andersen’s example, but the hackneys were increasing so rapidly in London that in 1635 a proclamation was issued to suppress them. And it is to be noticed that Taylor’s diatribes were directed more particularly against these public conveyances than against the privately owned carriages, which, after all, could hardly affect his trade. The proclamation was as follows:—

“That the great numbers of Hackney Coaches of late time seen
and kept in London, Westminster, and their Suburbs, and the
general and promiscuous use of Coaches there, were not only
_a great disturbance to his Majesty, his dearest Consort the
Queen, the Nobility, and others of place and degree, in their
passage through the Streets_; but the Streets themselves
were so pestered, and the pavements so broken up, that the
common passage is thereby hindered and more dangerous; and the
prices of hay and provender and other provisions of stable,
thereby made exceeding dear: Wherefore We expressly command
and forbid, That, from the feast of St. John the Baptist
next coming, no Hackney or Hired Coach, be used or suffered
in London, Westminster, or the Suburbs or Liberties thereof,
excepting they be to travel at least three miles out of London
or Westminster, or the Suburbs thereof. And also, that no
person shall go in a Coach in the said Streets, except the
owner of the Coach shall constantly keep up Four able Horses
for our Service, when required.”

It is dated January 19th, 1635/6, and must have had a considerable, if temporary, effect, for as Samuel Pegge points out in his unfinished manuscript on the early use of coaches[25] it could not “operate much in the King’s favour, as it would hardly be worth a Coach-master’s while to be at so great a contingent charge as the keeping of four horses to be furnished at a moment’s warning for His Majesty’s occasional employment.”

It was then that Sir Saunders Duncombe obtained his monopoly, and, of course, everything was in his favour. The actual patent granted to him belongs to the previous year, but the two are approximately contemporary. From a letter written in 1634 to Lord Stafford, it appears that Duncombe had in that year forty or fifty chairs “making ready for use.” Possibly the whole thing was worked up by Buckingham and his satellites. Duncombe’s patent gave the enterprising knight the right “to put forth and lett for hire” the new chairs for a term of fourteen years. In his petition he had explained that “in many parts beyond the seas, the people there are much carried in the Streets in Chairs that are covered; by which means very few Coaches are used amongst them.” And so Duncombe was allowed to “reap some fruit and benefit of his industry,” and might “recompense himself of the costs, charges, and expences” to which he had, or said he had, been put.

For two years these covered chairs held the advantage, and indeed seem to have been exceedingly popular. There is a most amusing pamphlet, which I have already mentioned, “printed by Robert Raworth, for John Crooch,” in 1636, entitled _Coach and Sedan pleasantly disputing for Place and Precedence, the Brewer’s Cart being Moderator_. It is signed “Mis-amaxius,” and is dedicated “to the Valorous, and worthy all title of Honor, Sʳ Elias Hicks.” “Light stuffe,” the author calls it, and tells us that he is “no ordinary Pamphleteer ... onely in Mirth I tried what I could doe upon a running subject, at the request of a friend in the _Strand_: whose leggs, not so sound as his Judgement, enforce him to keepe his Chamber, where hee can neither sleepe or studie for the clattering of _Coaches_.” It is an interesting little production, both for its own whimsicalities and for the sidelights it affords into the town’s views on the subject of vehicles at the time. It starts with the cuckoo warning the milkmaids of Islington to get back to _Finsburie_. The writer, accompanied by a Frenchman and a tailor, walks back to the city, and in a narrow street comes across a coach and a sedan quarrelling about which of them is to “take the wall.”

“Wee perceived two lustie fellowes to justle for the wall,
and almost readie to fall together by the eares, the one
(the lesser of the two) was in a suite of greene after a
strange manner, windowed before and behind with _Isen-glasse_,
having two handsome fellowes in greene coats attending him,
the one went before, the other came behind; their coats
were lac’d down the back with a greene-lace sutable, so
were their halfe sleeves, which perswaded me at first they
were some cast suites of their Masters; their backs were
harnessed with leather cingles, cut out of a hide, as broad as
_Dutch_-collops of _Bacon_.

“The other was a thick burly square sett fellow, in a doublet
of Black-leather, Brasse-button’d down the brest, Backe,
Sleeves, and winges, with monstrous wide bootes, fringed at
the top, with a net fringe, and a round breech (after the old
fashion) guilded, and on his back-side an Atcheivement of
sundry Coats in their propper colors, quarterd with Crest,
Helme and Mantle, besides here and there, on the sides of a
single Escutchion or crest, with some Emblematicall _Word_
or other; I supposed, they were made of some Pendants, or
Banners, that had beene stollen, from over some Monument,
where they had long hung in a Church.

“Hee had onely one man before him, wrapt in a red cloake,
with wide sleeves, turned up at the hands, and cudgell’d
thick on the backe and shoulders with broad shining lace (not
much unlike that which Mummers make of strawe hatts) and of
each side of him, went a Lacquay, the one a French boy, the
other Irish, all sutable alike: The _Frenchman_ (as I learned
afterward) when his Master was in the Countrey, taught his
lady and his daughter _French_: Ushers them abroad to publicke
meetings, and assemblies, all saving the Church whither shee
never came: The other went on errands, help’d the maide to
beate Bucks, fetch in water, carried up meate, and waited at
the Table.”

The writer attempts mediation, and his offer is favourably received. The combatants explain who they are. The burly fellow speaks first:—

“My name Sir (quoth hee) is _Coach_, who am a Gentleman of an
anciente house, as you may perceive by my so many quarter’d
coates, of _Dukes_, _Marquises_, _Earles_, _Viscounts_,
_Barons_, Knights, and Gentlemen, there is never a Lord or
Lady in the land but is of my acquaintance; my imployment
is so great, that I am never at quiet, day or night; I am
a Benefactor to all Meetings, Play-houses, Mercers shops,
Taverns, and some other houses of recreation.... This other
that offers me the wrong, they call him Mounsier _Sedan_, some
Mr. _Chair_, a Greene-goose hatch’d but the other day ... and
whereas hee is able with all the helpe and furtherance hee
can make and devise, to goe not above a mile in an houre; as
grosse as I am, I can runne three or foure in halfe an houre;
yea, after dinner, when my belly is as full as it can hold
(and I may say to you) of dainty bitts too.”

Whereupon the sedan chimes in:—

“Sir, the occasion of our difference was this: Whether an
emptie Coach, that has a Lords head painted Coate and Crest,
as Lion, Bull, Elephant, &c. upon it without, might take
the wall of a _Sedan_ that had a knighte alive within it.”
I confess, he goes on to say, I am “a meere stranger, till
of late in _England_; therefore, if the Law of Hospitalitie
be observed (as _England_ hath beene accounted the most
hospitable kingdome of the World,) I ought to be the better
entertained, and used, (as I am sure I shall) and find as good
friends, as Coach hath any, it is not his bigge lookes, nor
his nimble tongue, that so runnes upon wheeles, shall scare
mee; hee shall know that I am above him both in esteeme,
and dignitie, and hereafter will know my place better....
Neither, I hope, will any thinke the worse of mee, for that I
am a Forreiner; hath not your Countrey Coach of England been
extreemly enriched by strangers?”

Indeed, all your luxuries, he continues, are foreign, your perfumes are Italian, and your perukes made in France.

For some time it seems that Sedan is getting the best of it. Whereas the coach, he argues, has to wait out in the cold streets often for hours at a time, he is many times admitted into the privacy of my Lady’s chamber, where he is rubbed clean both within and without. “And the plain troath is,” he concludes, “I will no longer bee made a foole by you ... the kenell is your naturall walke.” At this moment a carman appears and supports the sedan. Coaches, he says, keep the town awake, endanger the lives of children, and, particularly in the suburbs, “be-dash gentlemen’s gowns.” There then follows a curious piece of dialogue between Sedan and Powel, a Welshman, one of his attendants:—

“_Sedan._ We have our name from _Sedanum_, or _Sedan_, that
famous Citie and Universitie, belonging to the Dukes of
_Bevillon_, and where hee keepes his Court.”

“_Powel._ Nay, doe you heare mee Master, it is from _Sedanny_,
which in our British language, is a brave, faire, daintie
well-favoured Ladie, or prettie sweete wench, and wee carrie
such some time Master....”

Most of the morning is wasted by such desultory talk, and the street becomes blocked. There comes on the scene a waterman, who, of course, is equally antagonistic to both, and would throw coach and sedan into the Thames if he were not afraid of blocking the stream, and so bringing harm to himself. There follows him a country farmer, who thinks the sedan the honester and humbler of the two, but really knows very little about it. “I heare no great ill of you,” he is good enough to say, but is bound to add, “I have had no acquaintance with your cowcumber-cullor’d men.” Yet in the country he has in his way tried a sedan-chair, which is a “plaine wheele-barrow,” just as his cart is his coach “wherein now and then for my pleasure I ride, my maides going along with me.” But if they both come to Lincolnshire, the sedan, he thinks, will receive a warmer welcome than the coach.

After him comes a country vicar who has no hesitation in accusing the coach of all sorts of robberies. Soon, he cries, you will be “turned off.” You never cared for church, and indeed, during service, you disturb everybody rumbling your loudest outside. Also you are so set up that you will never give place “either to cart or carre.” A surveyor is less personal than the vicar, but has little good to say of the coach, although he agrees with most of the others that for a nobleman of high rank, it is something of a necessity.

Finally the brewer appears and speedily puts an end to the wrangle.

“With that, comes up unto us a lustie tall fellow, sitting
betweene two mōstrous great wheeles, drawne by a great
old jade blinde of an eie, in a leather pilch, two emptie
beere-barrels upon a brewer’s slings besides him, and old
blew-cap all bedaub’d, and stincking with yest.... My name is
_Beere-cart_, quoth hee, I came into England in _Henry_ the
Seventh’s time.”

And the decision of the cart is, of course, that both coach and sedan shall give way to _him_. They are both to exercise great care, and the sedan is to have the wall. And he adds, turning to the smaller vehicle, a sentence which it is difficult to understand.

“You shall never,” he says, “carrie Coachman againe, for the
first you ever carried was a Coachman, for which you had like
to have sufferd, had not your Master beene more mercifull.”

Such quarrels were very frequent, not only at this time, but right on through the eighteenth century. Swift in one of his letters to Stella mentions an accident due to the carelessness of a chairman. “The chairman that carried me,” he says, “squeezed a great fellow against a wall, who wisely turned his back, and broke one of the side glasses in a thousand pieces. I fell a scolding, pretended I was like to be cut to pieces, and made them set down the chair in the Park, while they picked out the bits of glasses: and when I paid them, I quarrelled still, so they dared not grumble, and I came off for my fare: but I was plaguily afraid they would have said, God bless your honour, won’t you give us something for our glass?”

Swift was the author of an amusing satire on the same subject, wherein coach and sedan were no better friends than of old.

A CONFERENCE BETWEEN SIR HARRY PIERCE’S
CHARIOT AND MRS. D. STOPFORD’S CHAIR

CHARIOT

“My pretty dear Cuz, tho’ I’ve roved the town o’er,
To dispatch in an hour some visits a score;
Though, since first on the wheels, I’ve been everyday
At the ’Change, at a raffling, at church, or a play;
And the fops of the town are pleased with the notion
Of calling your slave the perpetual motion;—
Though oft at your door I have whined [out] my love
As my knight does grin his at your Lady above;
Yet, ne’er before this though I used all my care,
I e’er was so happy to meet my dear Chair;
And since we’re so near, like birds of a feather,
Let’s e’en, as they say, set our horses together.

CHAIR

“By your awkward address, you’re that thing which should carry,
With one footman behind, our lover Sir Harry.
By your language, I judge, you think me a wench;
He that makes love to me, must make it in French.
Thou that’s drawn by two beasts, and carry’st a brute,
Canst thou vainly e’er hope, I’ll answer thy suit?
Though sometimes you pretend to appear with your six,
No regard to their colour, their sexes you mix:
Then on the grand-paw you’d look very great,
With your new-fashion’d glasses, and nasty old seat.
Thus a beau I have seen strut with a cock’d hat,
And newly rigg’d out, with a dirty cravat.
You may think that you make a figure most shining,
But it’s plain that you have an old cloak for a lining.
Are those double-gilt nails? Where’s the lustre of Kerry,
To set off the Knight, and to finish the Jerry?
If you hope I’ll be kind, you must tell me what’s due
In George’s-lane for you, ere I’ll buckle to.

CHARIOT

“Why, how now, Doll Diamond, you’re very alert;
Is it your French breeding has made you so pert?
Because I was civil, here’s a stir with a pox:
Who is it that values your —— or your fox?
Sure ’tis to her honour, he ever should bed
His bloody red hand to her bloody red head.
You’re proud of your gilding; but I tell you each nail
Is only just tinged with a rub at her tail;
And although it may pass for gold on a ninny,
Sure we know a Bath shilling soon from a guinea.
Nay, her foretop’s a cheat; each morn she does black it,
Yet, ere it be night, it’s the same with her placket.
I’ll ne’er be run down any more with your cant;
Your velvet was wore before in a mant,
On the back of her mother; but now ’tis much duller,—
The fire she carries hath changed its colour.
Those creatures that draw me you never would mind,
If you’d but look on your own Pharaoh’s lean kine;
They’re taken for spectres, they’re so meagre and spare,
Drawn damnably low by your sorrel mare.
We know how your lady was on you befriended;
You’re not to be paid for ’till the lawsuit is ended:
But her bond it is good, he need not to doubt;
She is two or three years above being out.
Could my Knight be advised, he should ne’er spend his vigour
On one he can’t hope of e’er making _bigger_.”

Gay seems to have shared the watermen’s disgust at both coach and sedan.

“Boxed within the chair, contemn the street
And trust their safety to another’s feet,”

he says of those willing to use the chair. In another place he is comparing the two:—

“The gilded chariots while they loll at ease
And lazily insure a life’s disease;
While softer chairs the tawdry load convey
To court, to _White’s_, assemblies or the play.”

Elsewhere he exhorts the pedestrian to assert his rights:—

“Let not the chairman, with assuming stride,
Press near the wall, and rudely thrust thy side;
The laws have set him bounds; his servile feet
Should ne’er encroach where posts defend the street.”

By this time, however, many changes in the chairs had taken place. They seem to have been introduced into Paris in 1617 by M. de Montbrun, though unfortunately from whence this gentleman brought them we are nowhere informed. They were called _chaises à porteurs_. Possibly English and French chairs were at first quite similar to each other in appearance—square boxes with a pent-house—but in the middle of the century—in Paris, at any rate, they became far more elegant in form, and began to be ornamented and richly upholstered. Some of them resembled, in shape, the body of the modern hansom-cab. This was particularly the case with a new carriage, introduced about 1668, called the _brouette_ (wheelbarrow), _roulette_, or _vanaigrette_, which was merely a sedan upon two wheels. It was drawn in the usual way by a man, and was an early form of that vehicle which still survives in the East as the jin-rick-shaw. The brouette held but one person, its wheels were large, and its two poles projected some way in front. One Dupin was apparently the only person to manufacture them, and after his first experiments he applied “two elbow-springs beneath the front, and attached them to the axle-tree by long shackles, the axle-tree working up and down in a groove beneath the inside-seat.” This improvement is of more than ordinary interest in so far as it is the first mention of steel springs to carriages. In the ordinary coaches these steel springs were first applied beneath the bottom of the body. They were probably formed out of a single piece of metal.

In the case of the brouette there was the usual opposition—this time from the proprietors of the ordinary sedans—but although a temporary prohibition was made, the brouette triumphed, and in 1671 was a common sight in the streets of Paris. It was not very suitable for decoration. As one French writer remarks, it was enough if the machine were solidly constructed. The brouette had windows at the sides and a small support in front of the wheels to allow the carriage to maintain its proper position when not held up by an attendant.

The brouette does not seem to have come immediately to England, though in the eighteenth century there was a _sedan cart_, similar in appearance to it, to be seen in London. On the other hand, the ordinary sedans were rapidly gaining in popularity, and maintained that popularity right through the reigns of the first three Georges.

_Early Sixteenth Century_

(_At South Kensington_)]

In appearance they became rather more graceful towards the middle of the century, though less so in later days. The public chairs were generally made of black or dark green leather, ornamented with gold “beading,” the frame and roof, which had a double slope, being of wood, as was also the small square window-frame. Private chairs, however, could be as gorgeous as the owner pleased, though in this respect continental chairs far surpassed our own. At Paris are shown two magnificent chairs which belonged to Louis XV.

“These,” says Croal, “have glass windows in side and front,
through which the sumptuous lining of crimson velvet is
discernible. The outside is beautifully painted and gilt, and
though now somewhat faded, the splendour of the vehicles can
be imagined, even in their decay. The gorgeously attired king
within, or it might be the queen or some reigning favourite,
would be attended by a gay escort of gentlemen of the court,
with a crowd of bearers and lacqueys, not to speak of armed
guards, whose liveries probably equalled in grandeur the
courtly habits of the greater men who surrounded the royal
chair.”

At South Kensington a private English chair of about 1760 is shown, “rather handsomely ornamented in ormolu, the sides being divided into four panels, but without windows. In form,” continues Croal, “the chair may be described as ‘carriage-bodied,’ not being, as the later chairs, square at the bottom. At the two front corners heavy tassels are hung, and through the door in front it can be seen that the interior lining is of figured damask. The bearing rings through which the poles passed are of brass.” This, however, cannot compare with an Italian nobleman’s large conveyance of the early eighteenth century which shows a profusion of gold filigree work on the roof that calls to mind nothing so strongly as a Buszard wedding-cake. It belonged to a member of the Grand Ducal family of Tuscany, by whom it was used on baptismal occasions. Here, besides the gilt work on the roof, there is a medallion-painting of figures in antique costume over the door. The walls are painted a pale French grey “with elaborately carved mouldings round the panels, with groups of flowers painted in the middle. The interior is lined with satin corresponding to the painting outside, being in gold and colours upon a pale ground.”

The chairmen do not seem to have been a particularly agreeable lot of fellows. In London they were generally Irish or Welsh. They were often drunk, often careless, and nearly always uncivil. Says Gay:—

“The drunken chairman in the kennel spurns,
The glasses shatter, and his charge o’erturns.”

In Edinburgh, however, where there were ninety chairs in 1738, the chairmen were Highlanders and rather more civil. “An inhabitant of Edinburgh,” says Hugh Arnot in his history of that city (1789), “who visits the metropolis can hardly suppress his laughter at seeing the awkward hobble of a street chair in the city of London.” We learn from Markland that in 1740 a chair in Edinburgh could be hired for four shillings a day or twenty shillings a week.[26] In London, according to George Selwyn, you could be carried three miles for a shilling.[27] In Edinburgh, again, where chairs were used at a later date than anywhere in England, rules were made for the public convenience in 1740, the most interesting of these being one which forbade a soldier in the service of the city guard to carry a chair at any time. By 1789 their numbers had increased to 238, including fifty privately owned.

Scattered mention of them occurs amongst British authors. Steele, in one of his _Tatler_ papers, proposes to levy a tax upon them, and regrets that the sumptuary laws of the old Romans have never been revived. The chairmen, or “slaves of the rich,” he says, “take up the whole street, while we Peripatetics are very glad to watch an opportunity to whisk across a passage, very thankful that we are not run over for interrupting the machine, that carries in it a person neither more handsome, wise, nor valiant, than the meanest of us.”

Matthew Bramble in _Humphrey Clinker_ is made to draw a wretched picture of the chairs which abounded in Bath at the middle of the century:—

“The valetudinarian,” he writes, “is carried in a chair,
betwixt the heels of a double row of horses, wincing under
the curry-combs of grooms and postilions, over and above the
hazard of being obstructed or overturned by the carriages
which are continually making their exit or their entrance.
I suppose, after some chairmen shall have been maimed, and
a few lives lost by those accidents, the corporation will
think in earnest about providing a more safe and commodious
passage.... If, instead of the areas and iron rails, which
seem to be of very little use, there had been a corridor with
arcades all round, as in Covent Garden, the appearance of the
whole would have been more magnificent and striking; those
arcades would have afforded an agreeable covered walk, and
sheltered the poor chairmen and their carriages from the rain,
which is here almost perpetual. At present the chairs stand
soaking in the open street from morning to night, till they
become so many boxes of wet leather, for the benefit of the
gouty and rheumatic, who are transported in them from place to
place. Indeed, this is a shocking inconvenience, that extends
over the whole city; and I am persuaded it produces infinite
mischief to the delicate and infirm. Even the close chairs,
contrived for the sick, by standing in the open air, have
their fringe linings impregnated, like so many sponges, with
the moisture of the atmosphere.”

It was to Bath that Princess Amelia was carried in a sedan by eight chairmen from St. James’s, in April, 1728. This must easily have been the longest, and, so far as the chairmen were concerned, the most wearisome journey ever performed by a chair.

_By John Kay_]

_By L. P. Boitard_ (1767)]

John Wilkes mentions in one of his letters to his daughter that he ascended Mont Cenis in a chair “carried by two men and assisted by four more.” “This,” he says, “was not a sedan chair, but a small wicker chair with two long poles; there is no covering of any kind to it.” Such open chairs seem to have been very uncommon, and were, I imagine, unknown in England. Some, however, had more glass than others, and their size fluctuated. Fashionable ladies must have found a difficulty in getting into a public chair of the ordinary size at the time of the large hoop petticoat, and there is a satiric print, dated 1733, which shows a lady thus attired, being hauled out through the opened roof of one with ropes and pulleys. Similarly, when forty or fifty years later the head-dress of the women became so enormous, a ludicrous print appeared showing a patent arrangement whereby the roof of a chair could be raised on rods to as great a height as was required.

In general the roof opened upwards, being hinged at the back. This is clearly shown in a print published in 1768, called _The Female Orators_, in which a clergyman is stepping out of his chair, and the chairmen very obviously demanding their fare. Another print published about 1786, called the _Social Pinch_, shows a very famous chairman, Donald Kennedy, offering his “mull” to Donald Balack, a native of Ross-shire, whom he had just set down. Here the structure of the public chair in use at this date is clearly shown.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, the chair as a mode of conveyance was on the wane. Fenimore Cooper in his _Sketches of English Society_ (1837) was able to write: “Sedan chairs appear to have finally disappeared from St. James’ Street. Even in 1826 I saw a stand of them that has since vanished. The chairs may still be used on particular occasions, but were Cecilia now in existence, she would find it difficult to be set down in Mrs. Benfield’s entry from a machine so lumbering.” Which suggests that the chair had not only degenerated in numbers, but also in appearance. They had become larger and uncouth in Cooper’s day. One is reminded of that chair in _Pickwick_, which “having been originally built for a gouty gentleman with funded property, would hold Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Tupman at least as comfortably as a modern post-chaise.” Yet so late as 1775 the popularity of the chair had been at its highest. It was the old story. With the new century were coming new ideas. The chair slowly and quite naturally was dropping out of existence.

In Edinburgh, as I have said, it lingered on for rather a longer time. In 1806 stringent regulations were still required. Those chairs which maintained their stand at night had to have “a light fixed on the fore part of one of the poles.” On the occasion of a fire or a mob the chairmen had to hurry to the scene of excitement, and there await the magistrate’s orders. They were not allowed to charge more than ninepence a mile, seven-and-six a day, or a guinea and a half a week. Such rates, too, continued to be set out in the _Edinburgh Almanac_ until 1830. After that comes an ominous silence. By that time only the private chair was in use.

“Lady Don,” says Lord Cockburn in his _Memorials_, “was about
the last person (so far as I recollect) in Edinburgh, who
kept a private sedan chair. Hers stood in the lobby and was
as handsome and comfortable as silk, velvet, and gilding
could make it. And when she wished to use it two well-known
respectable chairmen, enveloped in her livery cloaks, were the
envy of her [superannuated] brethren. She and Mrs. Rochead
both sat in Tron Church; and well do I remember how I used to
form one of the cluster that always took its station to see
these beautiful relics emerge from coach and chair.”

The time, indeed, had come when the sight of a chair was as much a public entertainment as it had been when Buckingham had been borne through the streets “on men’s shoulders.”

Yet although they so rapidly disappeared off the face of Europe, in Asia they lost little of their popularity, and in many places to-day are the only methods of conveyance in common use. China, in particular, had long been a land of sedans. John Barrow in his _Collection of Authentic, Useful, and Entertaining Voyages and Discoveries_, 1765, mentions the fact that at an early date the Chinese “small covered carriages on two wheels, not unlike in appearance to our funeral hearses, but only about half their length,” had been superseded by chairs. To a European, he relates, this was hardly surprising, as the carriage was anything but comfortable, and required you to sit on your haunches at the bottom—“the most uneasy vehicle that can be imagined.”

“‘The Chinese,’ records another eighteenth-century traveller,
‘occasionally travel on horseback, but their best land
conveyance by far is the sedan, a vehicle which certainly
exists among them in perfection. Whether viewed with regard to
lightness, comfort, or any other quality associated with such
mode of carriage, there is nothing so convenient elsewhere.
Two bearers place upon their shoulders the poles, which are
thin and elastic and in shape something like the shafts of a
gig, connected near the ends, and in this manner they proceed
forward with a measured step in an almost imperceptible
motion, and sometimes with considerable speed. Instead of
panels, the sides and back of the chair consist of woollen
cloth for the sake of lightness with a covering of oilcloth
against rain. The front is closed with a hanging blind of the
same materials in lieu of a door, with a circular aperture of
gauze to see through.... Private persons among the Chinese are
restricted to two bearers, ordinary magistrates to four, and
the viceroys to eight, while the Emperor alone is great enough
to require sixteen.’”

There is further mention of these Chinese chairs in Oliphant’s much later account of Lord Elgin’s mission. Lord Elgin himself travelled in a chair of the kind usually reserved for mandarins of the highest rank, which was larger than those in ordinary use and had a fine brass knob on the top. Eight bearers carried it. In processions a _hwakeaou_ or flowered chair was often used.

Japan, too, had early had sedans both for travelling and for more purely ceremonial purposes. Light bamboo chairs, they were, called _kangoes_ or _norimons_, which were borne by two or more persons. On the introduction of the European coach, however, a kind of brouette, as I have said, was substituted, and in a few years there were hundreds of thousands of these _jin-rick-shaws_ on the streets, not only in Japan, but throughout Asia. At first many of these were grotesquely adorned, but their appearance is too well-known at the present day for need of a lengthy description. Equipped with “every modern convenience” and very well built indeed, they afford a European a delightful sensation on his first ride, even though he may have visions of those earlier days of his youth when he was carried about in a similar way (though at a less speed) in the homely perambulator.

_Chapter the Fifth_

_SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY INNOVATIONS_

“We took our coach, two coachmen and four horses,
And merrily from London made our courses.
We wheel’d the top of th’ heavy hill called Holborne
(Up which hath been full many a sinful soule borne,)
And so along we jolted past St. Gileses,
Which place from Brainford six (or neare) seven miles is.”

_Taylor._

The seventeenth century saw great changes in vehicular design. In 1660 the first _berlin_ was made. Steel springs, as we have seen, appeared a few years later in the brouette. About this time, too, a hooded gig or _calèche_ made its appearance in the streets of Paris, the first of many carriages to be built upon entirely new lines. Glass windows and complete doors were used in the coaches, both public and private, which became smaller, more compact, and certainly more graceful. Improvements were not confined to one country, but proceeded simultaneously not only in various European countries, but also in South America. Roads, too, were improved, and laws for the regulation of traffic framed with some regularity and effect.