Chapter VI: Part 6

In 1743 the system of travelling post, which so long before as 1664 had been common in France, was introduced into England by one John Trull, an artillery officer, who obtained a patent for letting carriages for hire across country. These were the _post-chaises_, of which the first were two-wheeled with the door in front—in this respect being similar to the French _chaises de poste_, from which the idea was taken. Trull’s scheme, however, though successful in itself does not seem to have brought money to its inventor, who thirty years later died in the King’s Bench. The door of these first post-chaises “was hinged at the bottom and fell forward on to a small dasher like a gentleman’s cabriolet,” and there was a window on either side. “It was hung upon two very lofty wheels,” says Thrupp, “and long shafts for one horse, and the body was rather in front of the wheels, so that the weight on the horse’s back must have been considerable. It was suspended at first upon leather braces only, but later upon two upright or whip springs behind, and two elbow springs in front from the body to the cross-bar, which joined the shafts and carried the step.” Soon, however, these post-chaises were built with four wheels, and resembled the ordinary private chariots of the day, though without their lavish ornamentation. In less than ten years, however, a larger body was given to them, so that they came to resemble the coach rather than the smaller and slimmer chariots, while the coachman’s box was made very much higher.

The post-chaise became extraordinarily popular. The literature of the mid-eighteenth century is full of references to it. All kinds of adventures happened to people in post-chaises. They were seen in every part of the country, they could be hired here, there, and everywhere. Dr. Johnson was only one amongst thousands who loved them. “If I had no duties,” he records, “and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.” “I have tried almost every mode of travelling since I saw you,” wrote Wilkes to his daughter, “in a coach, chaise, waggon, boat, _treckscuyt_, _traineau_, sledge, etc. I know none so agreeable as my English post-chaise.”

One thinks naturally of Laurence Sterne. Both in _Tristram Shandy_ and in the _Sentimental Journey_ he has much to say of the post-chaises. “Something is always wrong,” he is grumbling somewhere, “in a French post-chaise, upon first setting out.... A French postillion has always to alight before he has got three hundred yards out of town.” And then, of course, there is that never-to-be-forgotten _désobligeante_ which he purchased from M. Dessein at Calais.[40]

“There being no travelling in France and Italy,” he recounts,
“without a chaise—and nature generally prompting us to the
thing we are fittest for, I walk’d out into the coach-yard
to buy or hire something of that kind to my purpose: an old
_Désobligeante_, in the furthest corner of the court, hit my
fancy at first sight, so I instantly got into it.”

And there it was in that queer little carriage which would hold but one person, that Sterne wrote his famous Preface about Travellers, “though it would have been better,” he observed, when interrupted, “in a _Vis-à-Vis_.” The particular _désobligeante_ seems to have proved satisfactory, but for the species Sterne could not find much praise.

“In Monsieur Dessein’s coach-yard,” he says, “I saw another
old tatter’d _désobligeante_; and notwithstanding it was the
exact picture of that which had hit my fancy so much in the
coach-yard but an hour before, the very sight of it stirr’d up
a disagreeable sensation within me now; and I thought ’twas a
churlish beast into whose heart the idea could first enter, to
construct such a machine; nor had I much more charity for the
man who could think of using it.”

It was certainly not a very sociable carriage, but then neither was the sedan: both were very useful.

I may conclude this chapter by drawing attention to the tax upon coaches which was levied at the beginning of 1747. From the fuss that was made when such a bill was first introduced—it was temporarily abandoned—you might imagine that one of the most treasured articles of the Constitution was about to be swept away.

“It is impossible to express,” wrote a country clergyman to
his bishop in a letter which deserves quotation as affording
an insight into the lesser equipages used in the country
at this time, “the various impressions your lordship’s
letter, relating to the tax upon coaches, made here; as
people imagined it a jest, or serious: As most inclined to
the former, it would be too tedious to trouble you with the
witticisms and conundrums it occasioned. B. said the Church
was in danger; C. observed it would be like the gospel-feast
inverted, that the maimed and lame being the only guests
admitted there, would be the only ones excluded here.... As we
have now no reason to doubt such a tax being really intended,
give me leave to represent to you our thoughts of it here.
My living, your Lordship knows, is under £70 _per Ann._, yet
out of this, some years since, I made a shift to lay out six
pounds on an old chariot, which, with the help of my ploughman
and a pair of cart-horses, has drawn my wife, etc., half a
mile to church, who, for the future, must go in a cart, or
stay at home. Repairs, etc., have cost me, _communibus annis_,
for the eleven years I have had it, about 7s. so the interest
of my money, at 5 _per cent_, on the £6 and 7s. in repairs,
is 13s. _per Ann._, which with tax on this my pompous luxury,
will be increased to £4 13s. _per Ann._, almost the prime
cost of setting up my Equipage. I am afraid this is not my
case singly, but will be found pretty nearly so, of most of
the small clergy in England. Among the laity we have several
gentlemen farmers, who manage, in some degree, with the same
frugality, and who, for the same reasons, are prepared to part
with, or continue them according to the fate of this bill;
insomuch, that I can compute that in sixteen parishes I have
in my eye three times that number of coaches will be disposed
of, for we look on the same sum, which is but a trifling duty
on grand equipages, to amount to a prohibition on ours, which
resembles them no more than a ragged coat does an embroidered
suit. I shall not dwell on the quantity of glass (not to
mention leather, etc.), this will bring to market, nor the
future consumption of these commodities it will prevent.... To
me I own it looks a little like the son eating the father....
How many single gentlemen,” he goes on to ask, after pointing
out that it is the poorer married men who will suffer most,
“from 2, 3, to 800_l._ a year, and more, have no coaches, yet
keep a stable of hunters (the worst of which would purchase
my equipage) and a pack of hounds, whom this duty will not
affect?”

But the bill was passed, and so we must suppose that our clergyman and his farmer friends were forced to walk to church.

Some verses printed in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ at this time may also be quoted as reflecting the general opinion about the bill.

“Before Bohemian _Anne_ was Queen,
Astride their steeds were ladies seen;
And good Queen _Bess_ to _Paul’s_, I wot,
Full oft astride has jogg’d on trot:
Beaus then could foot it thro’ all weather,
And nothing fear’d but wear of leather.
But now (so luxury decrees)
The polish’d age rolls on at ease:
Coach, chariot, chaise, berlin, landau[41]
(Machines the ancients never saw)
Indulge our gentle sons of war,
Who ne’er will mount triumphant car.
The carriage marks the peer’s degree,
And almost tells the doctor’s fee;
Bears ev’ry thriving child of art;
Ev’n thieves to _Tyburn_ claim their cart.
O cruel law! replete with pain,
That makes us use our feet again;
Or, half our pair oblig’d to lack,
Bids us bestride the other’s back.
A shilling stage would suit with many,
Who cannot reach an eighteen penny.
_Rock_ must enhance the price of pills,
Or drive again—one pair of wheels.
The graduate too will be to seek,
Who mounts his chariot twice a week:
For if the hackneymen should grumble,
I fear our Phaeton[41] must tumble.
O cruel law! to raise the fare
Of Christmas turkey, chine, and hare;
The vails or wages to retrench
Of country serving-man or wench,
Who twice a year ride up and down,
Betwixt their native place and town.
O cruel tax! who must not say,
Which only those who will—need pay?”

From this bill, those who used the one-horse chaises certainly suffered. _Rusticus_ thereupon offered the following advice to his fellow-sufferers at the time of the next General Election:—

“Ye who late loll’d in easy _chaise and one_,
And now must walk, or ride _Old Grey_ or _Dun_,
Enquire when wheels were tax’d (to mend your fate)
What patriots, _spokesmen_ were in the debate.
And get this act, a promise to revoke,
Or _put_ into each _spokesman’s_ wheel a _spoke_.”

_Chapter the Seventh_

_THE WAR OF THE WHEELS: WITH SOME CURIOSITIES, REGAL AND OTHERWISE_

“The morning came, the chaise was brought,
But yet was not allowed
To drive up to the door, lest all
Should say that she was proud.

“So three doors off the chaise was stayed,
When they did all get in,
Six precious souls, and all agog
To dash through thick and thin.”

_John Gilpin._

“In my journey to _London_,” wrote an indignant correspondent to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, early in 1747, “I travell’d from _Harborough_ to _Northampton_, and well was it that I was in a light Berlin, and six good horses, or I might have overlaid in that turnpike road. But for fear of life and limb, I walk’d several miles on foot, met 20 waggons tearing their goods to pieces, and the drivers cursing and swearing for being robb’d on the highway by a turnpike, screen’d under an Act of Parliament.” These turnpikes, or toll-gates, had been but lately established in England for the preservation of the roads. That they did very much immediate good, however, may be doubted. A few years afterwards an English traveller was grumbling at the superiority of the French roads over our own. “Nothing piques me more,” he wrote in an amusingly satirical passage, “than that a trumpery despotic Government, like France, should have enchanting roads from the capital to each remote part.” He seems to have taken trouble to find out the cause for so lamentable a difference, and for this purpose consulted “the most solemn looking waggoner on the road.”

“This prov’d to be _Jack Whipcord_ of _Blandford_. Jack’s
answer was ‘That roads had but one object, namely,
waggon-driving. That he requir’d but five feet wedth in a line
[which he resolved never to quit], and all the rest might go
to the d—— l. That the gentry ought to stay at home and be
d—— and not run gossiping up and down the country. But,
added _Jack_, we will soon cure them, for my brethren since
the late act have made a vow to run our wheels in the coach
quarter. We tack on a sixth or seventh horse at pleasure.
What a plague would they send us to the galleys for this, as
papishes do in beyond-sea countries.’”

The Act to which Jack referred had been passed in 1745. It followed upon the fact that while coaches, generally speaking, were in process of becoming lighter, carts and waggons were becoming much heavier. And so it had been proposed that no waggon should be drawn by more than four horses, no matter whether these were “in length, pairs or sideways,” and no cart should have more than three. Every horse above these numbers could be forfeited together “with all geers, bridles, halters, harness and accoutrements.” There were to be collectors of tolls, and gentlemen’s private carriages and purely agricultural waggons were to be exempt. Also certain roads, presumably those but lately laid down according to the best ideas of the time, were to be treated as outside the scope of the Act. And if the wheels of these heavy waggons and carts possessed “wheels bound with streaks or tire of the breadth of eight inches at least when worn and not set on with rose-headed nails,” they might likewise be exempt.

This Bill gave rise to a curious wordy warfare, which was carried on for some years, and may be said to have interested people in the general questions of wheeled traffic right on until the time when McAdam’s schemes altogether altered general opinion. This war, of course, hardly touched private carriages, but was waged in so many quarters and with such various weapons that it deserves some mention in any account of carriages.

It was immediately “objected by multitudes” that the Bill of 1745 would “greatly enhance the price of carriage of goods,” but its apologists argued that even if it did, better-designed carriages and carts would be built, so that the roads would improve, and the price of cartage ultimately go down. “It is urged,” they said, “that light carts or waggons may be used, and the horses draw double, as in the rabbet waggons of Norfolk, which improves the road and contributes to expedition.”

At an early stage in this war two factions arose. On the one hand you had coachbuilders and others filling the newspapers and publishing tracts, some very serious, some extraordinarily mathematical, others merely facetious, to prove that the roads could be preserved only by using very broad wheels—some, indeed, advocated rollers, which, as we shall see, were actually tried—and on the other hand you had people filling more columns, and very dull columns some of them were, to show that a low broad wheel was the one thing which no really satisfactory vehicle could possibly possess. These were the apologists for the lighter waggons with large but slender wheels. Decrease your weight, said they, and never mind about the wheels; it is the great weight that ruins the roads. How can you decrease the weight, asked the broad-wheel faction, without increasing the cost of carriage? Increase the cost of carriage for a while, was the reply, and see what happens to the roads.

For a time, however, the broad-wheel faction held the advantage, and when further legislation was made in 1754, it was entirely in their favour.

“It is enacted that after next Michaelmas, no wheel carriage
of burthen (except it be drawn by oxen only, or if by horses
with less than five, if a four-wheeled carriage, with less
than four) shall travel any turnpike road, unless the fellies
of the wheels shall be nine inches from side to side under a
penalty of £5, or the forfeiture of one of the horses, with
all his accoutrements, to the sole use of the person who shall
seize them.”

So soon as such proposals had become law, it was asked with some pertinence: where were these huge wheels to come from? What of the heavy expenses that would fall on the farmers? The parrot cry, “Your wheels will cost you more,” was hinted at, if not expressed in so modern a way. Arguments were put forward to show that the correct height for wheels was anything between two and eight feet, and the correct breadth from three to eighteen inches. And the disputes became tinged with personalities. But the net result seems to have been that most people fought shy of the very wide wheels, and were content to use less horses.

The war dragged on, and particular inventions to cope with the difficulty began to appear. A new tire was widely advertised. An enthusiastic inventor occupied two or three pages of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ with details of his particular waggon, which had the front and back wheels of very different sizes, but what exactly its advantages might be were not very clear to any one but himself. Then on the 14th of April, 1764, one Daniel Bourn of Leominster produced a waggon on small rollers. Though it was unsuccessful, it led the way to further experiments, and as will be seen from the contemporary account immediately below, contained at any rate one novel feature which was subsequently widely adopted not only in waggons and carts, but also in four-wheeled carriages of every description.

“Mr. Bourn’s new machine for travelling the roads was tried
against a common broad-wheeled waggon, but did not answer,
the common waggon going as well with four horses, as the new
one with eight. The weight carried was five ton besides the
carriage. The wheels of this waggon are 14 inches; the fore
wheels go within the hind wheels, and are so shallow as to
turn under the bed of the waggon. The _Leominster_ stage
waggon has these wheels.”

The experiment took place “abreast between the new road just by Pancras to within a small distance of Bog-house Bar.” Apparently the only advantage which the new waggon possessed was its ability to turn in a narrow road, but although Mr. Bourn not only continued to build such waggons, but also answered his opponents in two tracts, we hear little more of him. Such “rolling-carts,” however, were also made by one James Sharpe, of Leadenhall Street. Sharpe was a pushful man. He believed in his system, and apparently made those in authority see its advantages. His rollers, you learn, were cylinders of cast iron, two feet in diameter and sixteen inches broad. An iron spindle was inserted through the centre of each. Several of Sharpe’s waggons were on the roads, but although every facility was given them, they never really took the popular fancy. And indeed, they must have been uncouth monsters rattling along the roads something after the fashion of the steam-roller of ten years ago. Just about this time, too, the light-cart faction showed that it was not in the least moribund. It indited learned and highly technical articles which the newspapers found space to print with some regularity. A typical reply to such articles was inserted in the _Public Advertiser_ early in 1767:—

“There are people, I may say,” runs this most impolite retort,
“a depraved Number, who write long letters upon this Subject
in an ignorant Manner. Their Errors confirm Mankind of a
sensible Turn what Measures ought to be taken for the Benefit
of the trading Part of this Nation. The illiterate Scribblers
he [the last correspondent] means to lash are those that
insist upon the Necessity of Horses going at length instead
of being placed abreast. The Power that draft Horses have in
being placed abreast is so well known, that ’tis amazing any
body is absurd enough to advance a Doctrine to the contrary.
Then again, these deluded Idiots propagate, that the Loads
drawn by eight Horses, having the Wheels placed nine Inches
within nine, are destructive to the Roads, and that the Weight
had better be divided into several narrow wheeled Carriages.
Being thus destitute of Judgment upon the Subject, they do
not reflect that the more Horses and Carriages the more the
Expence increases, consequently that the internal Trade of
this Kingdom would advance in this Article 100 per Cent. One
Waggon with eight Horses in Pairs, drawing eight Ton upon the
new Plan, don’t do near the Mischief that the same Weight
would in two Waggons with narrow Wheels. Besides, four Horses
at length cannot draw four Ton Weight. A late trifling Writer
upon the Subject says, the Appearance of a broad Wheel Waggon
was terrific. I think he may be pronounced a Cockney without
Ceremony—a Cit that carries his Wife and Children four Miles
out of Town in a Tim-Whisky, and, being most likely an aukward
Driver, suffers the Squalls of his Horn-making Spouse to alarm
his Dove-like Pusillanimity.”

Such a man, the article goes on to say, would surely be frightened if he saw a three-master sailing the seas, and he and his kind had better keep quiet upon a subject of which they appeared so entirely and pitiably ignorant.

The contest began to embrace wider issues than the mere wheels of waggons. It took in the whole question of wheeled carriages. It even went so far as to include a denunciation of the general policy of the Government, whose legislation, or lack of it, on this vexed question was, so the light-cart faction maintained, leading directly to an increase in the price of provisions. Nothing, apparently, was right. If waggons were constructed on principles which were as bad as they could be, so were the Stage-coaches, which also were using the public roads, though some of the controversialists seemed to forget the fact.

“We are desired,” runs a paragraph in the newspapers of this
time, “to inform the Masters of Stage-Coaches, Machines, &c.,
that their present Method of hanging their Carriages high with
a low Fore-Wheel, and the body of the Coach hung forwards with
the Stems of the Box leaning likewise forwards, is all upon a
ridiculous wrong Principle,—the Effect of the Stupidity of
Coachmen and Wheelwrights; that if they pursue the following
Regulations, they will find the same Advantage that the
Nobility and Gentry have already done by adopting this Plan:
Let the fore Wheels be three Feet, six, eight, or ten Inches
high, the Stems of the Box upright, and admit as little Weight
forward as possible upon the low Wheel; the Body of the Coach
to hang low for the Convenience of Passengers, as no Benefit
arises from its Hanging high to the Horses, their Advantage
laying intirely upon the Height of the Fore-Wheels.”

This in its turn was argued. Then came a proposal to tax private carriages according to the number of horses used, and see whether such revenue would not counterbalance in some way the increase in the prices of provisions, which, of course, was following on this eternal wrangle of the waggons. Also there was more legislation. Some of the new regulations read curiously. “No tree or bush is to be allowed to grow or stand within fifteen feet of the center of the highway, on forfeiture of 10s. by the owner.” Cartways were to be at least twenty feet wide, and horse causeways three feet wide. No waggon with more than four horses might have wheels less than nine inches in width, and some one on horseback or on foot had to go in front of it. More criticism filled the newspapers, and more inventions appeared.

Meetings were held. One advertisement which appeared in 1767 has an agreeable air of mystery about it.

“All persons working Shod-wheel’d Carts, Waggons, Drays, &c.
of all Breadths, are desired to meet at the Sun Tavern in St.
Paul’s Churchyard, on Friday next, at four o’clock in the
Afternoon. Enquire for No. 1.”

And more pamphlets appeared, but the roads failed to improve.

Then in 1770 another Act was passed giving privileges to the roller-carts which were denied to the ordinary waggons. “All carriages,” it ordered, “moving upon rollers the breadth of fifteen inches, are allowed to be drawn with any number of horses, or other cattle.” And, as a further inducement, such carts were to be toll-free for a year. Mr. Sharpe, of Leadenhall Street, prospered, and wrote to the papers to say so. The rollers, he maintained, were light and strong, and there was considerably less friction when they were used. And he challenged the world to disprove his statement. Whereupon an anonymous writer belonging to the rival faction—possibly Joseph Jacob, a coachbuilder who had already written against the system—entered the field, and ventured to suggest that cast iron was exceedingly brittle and not very light. Mr. Sharpe speedily replied. “The principle,” he said, and his point is of interest, “upon which rolling carriages are adopted is simply this, That, by the use of them the roads may be made smooth and hard, and by that means, _become part of the mechanism_: for thus the rollers are made to answer all the purposes of light wheels.” The anonymous writer appears to have felt the point of this argument, and was forced to retort, quite unworthily, that in any case Mr. Sharpe’s rollers were not his own ideas. “No,” replied Sharpe, “they were Mr. Daniel Bourn’s idea—a very sensible man and good mechanic, and who was also the first contriver of nine-inch broad wheels, who so long as ten or eleven years ago built a waggon on rollers at Leominster where he then lived, and brought it to the Society of Arts and Sciences in the Strand, by whom upon trial it was rejected.” The anonymous writer left it at that, but the controversy raged fiercely. It became so highly technical and apparently so interminable that somebody suggested we should all use flying machines and leave the wretched roads to look after themselves.

We may leave the war of the wheels here. The roller-carts were discarded soon afterwards, and M’Adam and his successors rendered for ever such wars unnecessary. But it must not be wholly neglected, and is a tiny chapter by itself in the history of locomotion.

We come to the curiosities.

To this period belongs the present State Coach of Great Britain—that famous “glass-coach” which Londoners had an opportunity of seeing at King George’s Coronation. Who built it is not known. Sir William Chambers, “an amateur,” as Thrupp is careful to point out, designed it in 1761 for George III. “There is come forth,” wrote Walpole to Horace Mann, “a new State Coach which has cost £8000. It is a beautiful object, though crowded with improprieties. Its supports are Tritons, not very well adapted to land carriage, and formed of palm trees, which are as little aquatic as Tritons are terrestrial. The crowd to see it on the opening of Parliament was greater than at the Coronation, and much more damage done.”

The ornamentation of the coach, indeed, is a mass of contradictions, but Sir William Chambers did no more than follow tradition. For over a century the principal State Coaches had had Tritons and other queerly inept figures, and Tritons there were in the new coach for King George. Gorgeousness was aimed at, and gorgeousness obtained. There is a detailed contemporary description of this coach which may be given with an account of the expenditure, not quite £8000 as Walpole writes, which it entailed.

“The carriage is composed of four Tritons, who support the
body by cables fastened to the roots of their fins: The two
placed on the front of the carriage, bear the driver on their
shoulders, and are represented in the action of sounding
shells to announce the approach of the monarch of the sea; and
those on the back part, carry the imperial fasces, topt with
tridents instead of the ancient axes. The driver’s footboard
is a large scollop shell, supported by a bunch of reeds,
and other marine plants. The pole represents a bundle of
lances, and the wheels are imitated from those of the ancient
triumphal chariots. The body of the coach is composed of eight
palm-trees, which, branching out at the top, sustain the roof.
The four angular trees are loaded with trophies, allusive to
the victories obtained by _Britain_ during the course of the
present glorious war. On the center of the roof stand three
boys, representing the Genii of _England_, _Scotland_, and
_Ireland_, supporting on their heads the Imperial Crown, and
holding in their hands the scepter, the sword of state, and
ensigns of knighthood. Their bodies are adorned with festoons
of laurel, which fall from thence towards the four corners of
the roof. The intervals between the palm-trees which form the
body of the coach, are filled in the upper parts with plates
of glass, and below with pannels adorned with paintings.
On the front pannel is represented BRITANNIA seated on a
throne, holding in her hand, a staff of liberty, attended
by _Religion_, _Justice_, _Wisdom_, _Valour_, _Fortitude_,
and _Victory_, presenting her with a garland of laurels. On
the back pannel, _Neptune_ issuing from his palace, drawn by
sea-horses, and attended by the Winds, the Rivers, Tritons,
Naids, &c., bringing the tribute of the world to the _British_
shore. On one of the doors are represented _Mars_, _Minerva_,
and _Mercury_, supporting the Imperial Crown of _Britain_; and
on the other, _Industry_ and _Ingenuity_, giving a cornucopia
to the Genius of _England_. The other four pannels represent
the liberal _Arts_ and _Sciences_ protected; _History_ burning
the implements of war. The inside of the coach is lined with
Crimson Velvet richly embroidered with gold. All the wood work
is triple gilt, and all the paintings highly varnished. The
harness is of Crimson Velvet, adorned with buckles and other
embelishments of silver gilt; and the saddle-cloths are of
Blue Velvet, embroidered and fringed with gold.”

The account was as follows:—

£ s. d.
Coachmaker 1673 15 0
Carver 2500 0 0
Gilder 933 14 0
Painter 315 0 0
Laceman 737 10 7
Chaser 665 4 6
Harnessmaker 385 15 0
Mercer 202 5 10-1/2
Bitt-maker 99 6 6
Millener 31 3 4
Sadler 10 16 6
Woollen-draper 4 3 6
Cover-maker 3 9 6
———————————————
£7562 4 3-1/2

Hardly less resplendent was the Lord Mayor’s coach which had been built at a cost of over a thousand pounds in 1757, and still performs its duties at stated and regular intervals. It was in 1711 that a Lord Mayor of London had ridden for the last time on horseback in his State procession, this distinction falling to Sir Gilbert Heathcote. Since that date he has been driven in his coach. The 1757 coach was not at first the property of the corporation, but had been built by subscription amongst the aldermen, to whom it belonged until 1778, when the corporation bought it. In that year it had been repaired and repainted—the panels possibly by Cipriani, the heraldic devices by Catton, one of the original members of the Royal Academy and “coach-painter to George III.” The Lord Mayor’s coach, like many other State coaches of this date, is full of allegorical devices of ornamentation, very plutocratic, very rich, very gorgeous, and incidentally rather more comfortable to drive in than that in which the British Sovereign drives to his Coronation.

Coming to lesser matters, we have mention of a carriage which performed a remarkable feat in 1750.

“On Wednesday 29,” runs a notice of this, “at seven in the
morning was decided at _Newmarket_ a remarkable wager for 1000
guineas, laid by _Theobald Taaff_, Esq., against the E. of
_March_ and Lord _Eglington_, who were to provide a four-wheel
carriage with a man in it to be drawn by four horses 19 miles
in an hour; which was performed in 53 minutes and 27 seconds.
The pole was small but lapp’d with fine wire; the perch had
a plate underneath, two cords went on each side from the
back carriage to the fore carriage, fastened to springs: the
harness was of thin leather covered with silk; the seat, for
the man to sit on, was of leather straps and covered with
velvet; the axles of the wheel were brass, and had tins of
oil to drop slowly for an hour. The breechens for the horses
were whale-bone; the bars were small wood, straightened with
steel-springs, as were most parts of the carriage, but all
so light that a man could carry the whole with the harness.”
Then followed the names of each of the four horses—all had
riders—and “lord March’s groom sat in the carriage. Two or
three other carriages had been made before, but disapproved;
and several horses killed in trials—to the expence of 6 or
700_l._”

Now such a carriage—there is a print of it by Bodger—was, of course, little more than a freak. It was a mere skeleton, fragile and entirely useless as a mode of conveyance over the ordinary roads. But the knowledge of those nineteen miles covered easily within the hour must have set people thinking. Such a speed was almost incredible to those accustomed to five or six miles an hour. The carriage itself was the work of Mr. J. Wright, a coachmaker in Longacre, already becoming the home of his brother tradesmen, and it was doubtless exhibited in London. It showed what could be done, and must have opened out agreeable vistas. Twenty miles an hour was something to aim for, and with the war with France concluded, people were able and willing to give rather more attention to the peaceful arts. Amongst other things they showed a desire for strange vehicles. I have mentioned the rolling-carts; there were far queerer carriages, as we shall see, used by the gentry.

The next curiosity I may speak of was seen in the streets of London during the following year.

“An odd machine, like an English waggon, drawn by 10 horses,
after the _Danish_ manner, belonging to Baron Rosencrantz, the
new _Danish_ envoy, came to his house in _Cleveland Row_, St.
James’s, from _Harwich_; a coachman drove it and a postilion
rode upon the 4th horse.”

It suggests rather a primitive type of coach, possibly innocent of springs. What the Baron suffered during his journey through East Anglia must be left to the imagination.

Eight years later, on August 30th, 1758, another strange carriage was seen.

“This day a remarkable carriage set out from
_Aldersgate-street_ for Birmingham, from which it arrived on
_Thursday_ last full of passengers and baggage, without using
coomb, or any oily, unctuous, or other liquid matter whatever,
to the wheels or axles, its construction being such as to
render all such helps useless. The inventor has caused to be
engraved on the boxes of the wheels, these words, FRICTION
ANNIHILATED, and is very positive that the carriage will
continue to go as long and as easy, if not longer and easier,
without greasing, than any of the ordinary stage-carriages
will do with it: This invention, if really answerable in
practice, is perhaps the must useful improvement in mechanicks
that this century has produced.”

(_From a Print by Bodger_)]

One would like to know who was the inventor of this coach, which, however, did not prosper—I doubt if it performed another journey—for it dropped out of history as suddenly as it had appeared. It would seem that the inventor was a Birmingham man. Possibly he was helped in his scheme by a very extraordinary character who lived and flourished in that town at this time—John Baskerville, successively footman, schoolmaster, graver, japanner, typefounder, and printer—a man whose beautifully printed books have hardly been excelled to this day. Baskerville had made a fortune japanning bread-baskets and the like, and now drove about the country wonderfully dressed in a coach apparently of his own design—he was a man who had to do everything for himself, and being of somewhat eccentric disposition, never did anything like anybody else—and his coach, like his house and his printing and his religious opinions, was like nothing in the world. He had a considerable idea of his own importance, and his coach was a reflection of his character. With its wonderful arms—the real Baskerville arms, to which the printer had no right whatever—it was standing until quite recently in an old barn in a field at Manton. It was thus described fifty years ago:—

“The body hangs by double straps, from the coachman’s seat
under the carriage, to which they are fastened, to the frame
behind.... It could be either closed or open, and when open
the leather top was rolled back upon crossed straps hung from
the coachman’s seat, and hooks secured to the front part
of the body. The whole framework of the carriage has been
elaborately carved and gilt, and the panels painted with what
appears to be a brownish green, with flowers and vases, rock
and shell-work, among which were numerous figures of boys and
emblems. In the centre panel on each side were the arms, on
the side panel the crest....”

None of the panels were identical, but all had been decorated by his workmen. “The pattern-cart of his trade,” Hutton, the Birmingham historian, calls this curiosity, which was once familiar to every village in the Midlands, and his daughter, Catherine Hutton, could remember the printer, “in his gold-laced waistcoat, and his painted chariot, each panel a picture, fresh from his own manufactory of japanned tea-boards.”

A most extraordinary conveyance appeared in London in 1771—this being “Mr. Moore’s new-invented Coal-carriage,” the wheels of which were no less than fifteen feet high.[42] A great concourse of people followed it through the streets, and no doubt applauded its ability to draw two caldrons and two sacks of coal, using only two horses abreast, “with more ease and expedition than the common carts do one caldron with three horses at length.” Unfortunately I have not been able to discover a print of this monstrous vehicle, which, like so many of the other mid-century freaks, disappeared almost at once.

To this period also belongs that wondrous _phaeton_, which in a few years threatened to become so lofty as to suggest to some ingenious artist the possibility of applying to it some pantograph arrangement whereby its seat could be raised or lowered at will. This print, called The _New Fashioned Phaeton—Sic itur ad Astra_, was published in 1776, a curious mezzotint showing a lady of fashion stepping out of a first-floor window into the seat of a phaeton which has been raised to the required height. The phaetons, indeed, seem to have been built high since their invention, and the importance of this feature must not be overlooked, when one remembers that almost every carriage, both English and foreign, was hung enormously high in the last years of the century, nine or ten steps being sometimes necessary to get inside.

Exactly when or where the phaeton was first made I cannot determine, but, like the _landau_, which has generally, though incorrectly, been considered to have been first built in 1757, it is mentioned so early as 1747 in the poem quoted at the end of the last chapter. That it was already popular with the fashionable people is shown by Tom Warton’s poem, _The Phaeton and the One Horse Chair_, which was first published in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for December, 1759. This is worth quoting in its entirety:—

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

MORAL

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

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

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

(_From a Print by Bunbury_, 1782)]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In which structures Caelia sallies forth.

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

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

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

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

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

A very neat fashionable Chaise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“WILLIAM X FORD
“His mark.”

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

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

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

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

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

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