Carriages & Coaches: Their History & Their Evolution
by Ralph Straus · English · Gutenberg #46216 · 528,522 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Carriages & Coaches: Their History & Their Evolution
Author: Ralph Straus
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARRIAGES & COACHES: THEIR HISTORY & THEIR EVOLUTION ***
CARRIAGES & COACHES
[Illustration]
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
BIOGRAPHICAL
ROBERT DODSLEY: POET, PUBLISHER AND PLAYWRIGHT
JOHN BASKERVILLE: A MEMOIR [with R. K. Dent]
NOVELS
THE PRISON WITHOUT A WALL
THE SCANDALOUS MR. WALDO
THE LITTLE GOD’S DRUM
THE MAN APART
PAMPHLETS
THE DUST WHICH IS GOD
5000 A.D.
CARRIAGES
& COACHES
THEIR HISTORY &
THEIR EVOLUTION
_By Ralph Straus_
FULLY ILLUSTRATED WITH REPRODUCTIONS
FROM OLD PRINTS, CONTEMPORARY
DRAWINGS & PHOTOGRAPHS
LONDON: _Published by_ MARTIN
SECKER _at Number Five
John Street_ ADELPHI _mcmxii_
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PLYMOUTH
[Illustration: _The State Coach of Great Britain_]
To
B. S. S.
_Contents_
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PRIMITIVE VEHICLE 17
II. THE AGE OF LITTERS 42
III. THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COACH 56
IV. INTERLUDE OF THE CHAIR 85
V. SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY INNOVATIONS 109
VI. EARLY GEORGIAN CARRIAGES 147
VII. THE WAR OF THE WHEELS 176
VIII. THE AGE OF TRANSITION 204
IX. INVENTIONS GALORE 227
X. MODERN CARRIAGES 255
INDEX 287
_List of Illustrations_
THE STATE COACH OF GREAT BRITAIN _Frontispiece_
TYPES OF PRIMITIVE CARTS _facing page_ 20
ASSYRIAN CHARIOT ” ” 22
CISIUM ” ” 30
CARPENTUM ” ” 30
PILENTUM ” ” 32
BENNA ” ” 32
_Fourteenth Century English Carriage_ ” ” 46
FOURTEENTH CENTURY REAPER’S CART ” ” 46
ELIZABETHAN CARRIAGES ” ” 70
NEAPOLITAN SEDAN-CHAIR ” ” 100
THE “SOCIAL PINCH” ” ” 104
SEDANS ” ” 104
COACH IN THE TIME OF CHARLES I ” ” 112
COACH IN THE TIME OF CHARLES II ” ” 112
EARLY FRENCH GIG ” ” 136
EARLY ITALIAN GIG ” ” 142
THE STATE CARRIAGE OF BAVARIA ” ” 148
THE DARNLEY CHARIOT ” ” 152
QUEEN ANNE’S PROCESSION TO THE CATHEDRAL OF S. PAUL ” ” 158
“THE CARRIAGE MATCH” ” ” 190
“PHAETONA, OR MODERN FEMALE TASTE” ” ” 196
“SIR GREGORY GIGG” ” ” 196
GEORGE III’S POSTING CHARIOT ” ” 206
THE LORD CHANCELLOR OF IRELAND’S COACH ” ” 208
“ENGLISH TRAVELLING, OR THE FIRST STAGE FROM DOVER” ” ” 216
“FRENCH TRAVELLING, OR THE FIRST STAGE FROM CALAIS” ” ” 218
EARLY AMERICAN SHAY ” ” 220
ENGLISH POSTING CHARIOT ” ” 220
BAROUCHE ” ” 232
LANDAULET ” ” 232
STANHOPE ” ” 234
TILBURY ” ” 234
CABRIOLET ” ” 234
“THE COFFIN-CAB” ” ” 246
LONDON CAB OF 1823 ” ” 246
DIOROPHA ” ” 252
BROUGHAM IN 1859 ” ” 252
EDWARD VII’S CORONATION LANDAU ” ” 258
DRESS COACH, 1860 ” ” 260
ENGLISH STATE CARRIAGE, 1911 ” ” 260
“PRINCESS VICTORIA IN HER PONY PHAETON” ” ” 266
CANOE-SHAPED LANDAU ” ” 268
DRAG ” ” 268
MODERN AMERICAN STATION WAGON ” ” 274
MODERN AMERICAN BUGGY ” ” 274
_Preface_
I am not a coachbuilder. Though such a pronouncement will seem entirely
superfluous to any coachbuilder who reads the following pages, it
is not perhaps a wholly unnecessary remark. For, with one or two
exceptions, such books upon the evolution or structure of vehicles as
have been written have been the work of industrious coachbuilders.
And I have not the least doubt that they are eminently the fit and
proper folk to carry out any such task. It is a melancholy fact,
however, that useful though these books may be to coachbuilders, they
lack, again with one or two exceptions, any general interest to the
layman. The language in which they are written is, to say the least,
peculiar, and the authors have obviously had small training in the art
of book-making. On the other hand, there is a whole library of books
dealing with the old stage and mail coaches, with all the romance and
adventure of the roads, packed with delightful anecdotes and personal
reminiscences. But such books hardly touch upon the structure of the
coaches themselves, and, so far as I know, there is no book entirely
devoted to a non-technical description of carriages in general, based
upon a chronological arrangement.
The nearest approach to such a book is Mr. G. A. Thrupp’s _The History
of Coaches_, published in 1877, a meritorious undertaking from which
I have freely quoted. Here, however, there are numerous gaps which I
have endeavoured to fill, and the various lectures from which it was
composed do not fit together so aptly as might be. As a whole, it is
diffuse. Sir Walter Gilbey’s two books, _Early Carriages and Roads_ and
_Modern Carriages_, have also been of great assistance, but here, too,
the ground covered is not so large as in the following pages. Other
pamphlets and small books have appeared in this country, but seemingly
owe a great deal of their information to Mr. Thrupp’s work. Indeed, I
notice that some of the authors have been almost criminally forgetful
of their inverted commas. For purely technical details there are, of
course, many books and trade papers to consult; but with these I have
not been concerned.
In the present book there are, indeed, large gaps, and it is not to be
taken either as a manual of the art of coach-building or as a history
of locomotion. It is merely a book about carriages, in which particular
regard has been paid to chronological sequence, and particular
attention to such individual carriages as have at all withstood the
test of social history. And it is written by a layman who, until he
enquired into the subject, had never looked at a carriage with any
particular emotion. The result of his labours, therefore, is not meant
for the expert, but for the general reader, who may have pondered over
the various vehicles he has seen, and idly wondered how they may have
been evolved.
Where possible, I have endeavoured to quote from contemporary authors
and documents. Most of such quotations are now included in a carriage
book for the first time.
I wish to thank the various publishers and authors who have given me
permission to reprint illustrations of carriages in books published
or written by them. Also I am obliged to Messrs. Maggs Bros., the
well-known booksellers, for permission to photograph a rare print
entitled _The Carriage Match_, in their possession.
RALPH STRAUS.
BADMINTON CLUB, _August, 1912_.
_Chapter the First_
_THE PRIMITIVE VEHICLE_
“This is a traveller, sir, knows men and
Manners, and has plough’d up sea so far,
Till both the poles have knock’d; has seen the sun
Take coach, and can distinguish the colour
Of his horses, and their kinds.”
_Beaumont and Fletcher._
It has been suggested that although in a generality of cases nature
has forestalled the ingenious mechanician, man for his wheel has had
to evolve an apparatus which has no counterpart in his primitive
environment—in other words, that there is nothing in nature which
corresponds to the _wheel_. Yet even the most superficial inquiry
into the nature of the earliest vehicles must do much to refute such
a suggestion. Primitive wheels were simply thick logs cut from a
tree-trunk, probably for firewood. At some time or another these logs
must have rolled of their own accord from a higher to a lower piece of
ground, and from man’s observation of this simple phenomenon must have
come the first idea of a wheel. If a round object could roll of its own
accord, it could also be made to roll.
Yet it is to be noticed that the earliest methods of locomotion, other
than those purely muscular, such as walking and riding, knew nothing of
wheels. Such methods depended primarily upon the enormously significant
discovery that a man could drag a heavier weight than he could carry,
and what applied to a man also applied to a beast. Possibly such
discovery followed on the mere observation of objects being carried
down the stream of some river, and perhaps a rudely constructed raft
should be considered to be the earliest form of vehicle. From the raft
proper to a raft to be used upon land was but a step, and the first
land vehicle, whenever or wherever it was made, assuredly took a form
which to this day is in common use in some countries. This was the
sledge. On a sledge heavy loads could be dragged over the ground, and
experience sooner or later must have shown what was the best form of
apparatus for such work. As so often happens, moreover, in mechanical
contrivances, the earliest sledge of which there is record—a
sculptured representation in an Egyptian temple—bears a remarkable
resemblance to those in use at the present time.[1] Then, as now, men
used two long runners with upturned ends in front and cross-pieces to
unite them and bear the load. Such sledges were largely used to convey
the huge stones with which the Egyptians raised their solemn masses
of masonry and, incidentally, also as a hearse. In time, however, it
was found that better results were obtained by the use of another and
rather more complicated apparatus which had for its chief component—a
wheel. This second discovery that to roll a burden proved an easier
task than to drag it was fraught with such tremendous consequences as
altered the entire history of the world.
It remained to find a better fulcrum than that afforded by the rough
turf over which such logs, when burdened, were rolled. What probably
followed is well described by Bridges Adams.[2] “The next process,”
he thinks, “would naturally be that of cutting a hole through the
roller in which to insert the lever. The convenience of several holes
in the circumference of the roller would then become apparent, and
there would be formed an embryo wheel nave. It could not fail to be
remarked also, that the larger the roller, the greater the facility
for turning it, and consequently the greater the load that could be
borne upon it.” Owing to the difficulty of using such large logs, he
goes on to suggest, a time would come when it was found that a roller
need not bear upon the ground throughout its length, but only at its
extremities. So from the single roller would be evolved two rough
wheels joined by a beam, square at first though afterwards rounded,
upon which could be fixed a frame for the load.
Such axle and wheels would revolve together and keep the required
position by means of pieces of wood which may be compared with the
thole-pins of a boat. And it is a remarkable fact that until last
century such primitive carts were in use in Portugal and parts of South
America. The chief drawback to a vehicle of this kind is its inability
to turn in a small space, and the pioneers, whoever they were, finally
discovered the principle of the fixed axle-tree, the wheels revolving
upon their own centre. So, “instead of fixing the cross-beam or axle
in a square hole,” these pioneers “would contrive it to play easily
in a round one of a conical form, that being the easiest form of
adjustment.” Such a car as this, with solid wheels and a rude frame,
was used by the Romans, and is still to be seen in parts of Chili. The
next process in the evolution of the wheel doubtless followed upon the
necessity of economising with large sections of wood, and there was
finally invented a wheel made of three portions—a central pierced
part, the nave, an outside circular piece, the rim or felloe, and two
or more cross-pieces, joining the two, the spokes. Of these the felloes
would tend to wear soonest, and a double set would be applied to the
spokes, as was the case until recently in the ox-carts of the Pampas,
or _barcos de tierra_, as they were called by the natives.
And indeed, the first carriages of which we have particular
information, the chariots of the Egyptians and their neighbours,
differ essentially from such primitive carts only in the delicacy and
ornamentation of the carriage body.
[Illustration: _Types of Primitive Carts_]
Various vehicles are mentioned in the Bible, though one must be chary
of differentiating between them merely because the translators have
given them different names. Both waggons and chariots are mentioned in
Genesis. Jacob’s family were sent to him in a waggon. Joseph rode
in the second chariot of Pharaoh as a particular mark of favour. At
the time of the Exodus, war-chariots formed an important part of the
Egyptian army, and indeed, right through the various dynasties, there
is an almost continuous mention of their use.[3] “The deft craftsmen of
Egypt,” says Breasted,[4] “soon mastered the art of chariot-making, and
the stables of the Pharaoh contained thousands of the best horses to be
had in Asia.” About 1500 B.C. Thutmose III went forth to battle in “a
glittering chariot of electrum.” He slew the enemy’s leader, and took
captive their princes and “their chariots, wrought with gold, bound to
their horses.” These barbarians also had “chariots of silver,” though
this probably means that they were built of wood and strengthened or
decorated with silver. At the dissolution of the Empire the Hittites
had increased wonderfully in power, and it is told of them that they
excelled all other nations in the art of chariotry. The Hittite chariot
was larger and more heavily built than that of the Egyptians, as it
bore three men, driver, bowman, and shield-bearer, while the Egyptian
was satisfied with two. The enormous number of chariots used in warfare
is shown by the fact that in the fourteenth century before Christ, when
the Egyptians defeated the Syrians at Megiddo, nearly a thousand were
captured, and against Ramses II the Hittites put no less than 2500 into
the field.
“The Egyptian chariots,” says H. A. White,[5] “were of
light and simple construction, the material employed being
wood, as is proved by sculptures representing the manufacture
of chariots. The axle was set far back, and the bottom of
the car, which rested on this and on the pole, was sometimes
formed of a frame interlaced with a network of thongs or
ropes. The chariot was entirely open behind and for the
greater part of the sides, which were formed by a curved rail
rising from each side of the back of the base, and resting
on a wooden upright above the pole in front. From this rail,
which was strengthened by leather thongs, a bow-case of
leather, often richly ornamented, hung on the right-hand side,
slanting forwards; while the quiver and spear cases inclined
in the opposite direction. The wheels, which were fastened on
the axle by a linch-pin secured with a short thong, had six
spokes in the case of war chariots, but in private vehicles
sometimes only four.[6] The pole sloped upwards, and to the
end of it a curved yoke was attached. A small saddle at each
end of the yoke rested on the withers of the horses, and was
secured in its place by breast-band and girth. No traces are
to be seen. The bridle was often ornamented; a bearing-rein
was fastened to the saddle, and the other reins passed through
a ring at the side of this. The number of horses to a chariot
seems always to have been two; and in the car, which contained
no seat, only rarely are more than two persons depicted,
except in triumphal processions.
[Illustration: _Assyrian Chariot_
(_From Smith’s “Concise History of English Carriages”_)]
“Assyrian chariots did not differ in any essential points
from the Egyptian.[7] They were, however, completely
panelled at the sides, and a shield was sometimes hung at
the back. The wheels had six, or, at a later period, eight
spokes; the felloes were broad, and seem to have been formed
of three distinct circles of wood, sometimes surrounded by a
metal tyre. While only two horses were attached to the yokes,
in the older monuments a third horse is generally to be seen,
which was probably used as a reserve. The later chariots
are square in front, not rounded; the car itself is larger
and higher; the cases for the weapons are placed in front,
not at the side; and only two horses are used. The harness
differs somewhat from the Egyptian. A broad collar passes
round the neck, from which hangs a breast ornament, the whole
being secured by a triple strap under the belly of the horse.
As in Egypt there are no traces visible; two driving-reins
are attached to each horse, but the bearing-rein seems to
be unknown. In addition to the warrior and the charioteer,
we often see a third man who bears a shield; and a fourth
occupant of the chariot sometimes appears.
“The Hittite chariots, as represented on Egyptian monuments,
regularly contain three warriors. In construction they are
plainer and more solid than the Egyptian, and the sides are
not open. The chariots on Persian sculptures closely resemble
the Assyrian.”
There is still preserved in the Archæological Museum at Florence an
Egyptian chariot, a light, simple, two-wheeled affair with a single
shaft and four spokes to the wheels. From the number of spokes it may
be supposed that this particular chariot was not used in war. In New
York, too, there is preserved the wheel of an Egyptian chariot found
at Dashour. The particulars of this bear out Mr. White’s description.
The wheel itself is three feet high, with a long axle arm, six spokes,
tapering towards the felloe, and a double rim. “The six inner felloes
do not meet as in modern wheels,” says Thrupp,[8] “but are spliced one
over the other, with an overlap of three inches.”
Artificial roads seem to have existed at an early period in Palestine,
but the country was hardly suitable for vehicles, and one first hears
of waggons in the flatter wastes of Egypt and the level plains of
Philistia. Agricultural carts these were, though no doubt early used
for passenger traffic. Some of these carts were most probably covered,
though no coverings seem to have been fixed to the chariots. The
Assyrians, however, occasionally took into their private chariots an
attendant, who was provided with a covering shaped somewhat like a
modern umbrella. This covering was held over the owner’s head, and was
sometimes provided with a curtain which hung down at the back.
Details of the private carriages in use during these Biblical times
filter through the chronicles. In Syria the merchants despatched by
Solomon to buy chariots had to pay 600 shekels each for them. Solomon
in his quest for luxury seems to have been the first man to build a
more elaborate car than satisfied his contemporaries. One to be used
on state occasions was built of cedar wood and had “pillars of gold.”
Probably it was some form of litter. The number of private cars was
increasing enormously in all these Eastern cities. The prophet Nahum
in lamenting the future woes of Nineveh speaks of “the noise of the
whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of the prancing
horses, and of the jumping chariots,” which will no longer bear witness
to the city’s prosperity. The absence of wide roads, however, militated
against great changes of form in the carriages, which maintained their
simple shape until many centuries later.
The war-chariot (ἄρμα or δίφρος) of the early Greeks was curved in
front, and loftier than that of the Egyptians. The entrance was at the
back. It was never covered, but frequently bore a curious basket-like
arrangement, the πείρινς, upon or in which two people could sit. The
ἄντυξ, or rim, in most cases ran round the three sides of the body, but
occasionally there was only a curved barrier in front. The body itself
was often strengthened by a trellis-work of strips of light wood or
metal. The barrier was of varying height; in some chariots it did not
reach above the driver’s knee; in others it came up to his waist, but
in war-chariots never higher than that. The axle was of oak, ash, elm,
or even of iron, and precious metals, according to the legend, were
used for the chariots of the gods. So of Juno’s car we read:—
“The whirling wheels are to the chariot hung.
On the bright axle turns the bidden wheel
Of sounding brass: the polish’d axle steel.
Eight brazen spokes in radiant order flame;
The circles gold, of uncorrupted frame,
Such as the heavens produce; and round the gold
Two brazen rings of work divine were roll’d.
The bossy naves of solid silver shone;
Braces of gold suspend the moving throne.”
The last line suggests an innovation which was certainly not followed
for some considerable time.
The chariot in general was about seven feet long, and could be lifted
by a strong man like Diomed. Indeed, it could be driven over the bodies
of dead warriors. The pole sloped sharply upwards, and sometimes ended
in the head of a bird or animal. It emerged either from the floor of
the car or from the axle. Towards its end the yoke for the horses was
fastened about a pin fixed into it. Though the Lydians used chariots
with two or even three poles, the Greeks never had more than one; and
as with the Egyptians, there were no traces. If the pole broke, the
horses must have dashed away with part of it, leaving the chariot at a
standstill. Occasionally, too, a third horse was used, upon which sat a
postilion.
At a later period several Grecian carriages were in common use,
though not in warfare. Representations of such cars are to be found
on the Elgin Marbles. And, as was the case a dozen or more centuries
afterwards, the carriage became the outward sign of luxury. It
invariably appeared in the state processions, and was made the
receptacle for the most gorgeous ornamentation. Gold, ebony, copper,
ivory, and white lead were all used for this purpose, while the
interiors of the cars were made comfortable with soft cushions and fine
tapestries. They appeared, too, in great numbers at the famous chariot
races, at which four or more horses were driven abreast. Often the same
man was rich enough to possess more than one carriage. So we read of
Xerxes changing from his ἄρμα to his ἁρμάμαξα, or state-carriage, at
the end of a march. Besides these, there were also the ἀπήνη, a kind of
family sociable, the ἅμαξα, a waggon, the κάναθρον, and the φορεῖον, or
litter.
The ἁρμάμαξα was a large four-wheeled waggon, enclosed by curtains and
provided with a καμάρα or roof. Four or more horses were required to
draw it. It was so large that a person could lie in it at full length,
and, indeed, on many occasions it acted the part of a hearse. By far
the most extraordinary hearse ever built was a ἁρμάμαξα used to convey
the body of Alexander the Great—himself the possessor of numerous
carriages—from Babylon to Alexandria.
“It was prepared,” says Thrupp, “during two years, and was
designed by the celebrated architect and engineer Hieronymus.
It was 18 feet long and 12 feet wide, on four massive wheels,
and drawn by sixty-four mules, eight abreast. The car was
composed of a platform with a lofty roof supported by eighteen
columns, and was profusely adorned with drapery and gold and
jewels; round the edge of the roof was a row of golden bells;
in the centre was a throne, and before it the coffin; around
were placed the weapons of war and the arms that Alexander had
used.”
The ἁρμάμαξα was also largely used by the ladies of Greece, who when
they drove forth were careful to see that the curtains completely
enclosed them. The ἅμαξα, also a four-wheeled waggon, was probably
similar to the ἁρμάμαξα, though built upon a less imposing scale. The
ἀπήνη was a still lighter carriage. It is described by Herodotus, and
seems to have been a covered vehicle surrounded by silken curtains
which could be pulled back when required. Its interior was generally
furnished with cushions of goat leather. Two wheels were more frequent,
but four were sometimes found. It was said that Timoleon, an old blind
man, drove upon one occasion into the senate house and delivered a
speech from his ἀπήνη. In some cases a two-wheeled carriage of this
kind was not furnished with curtains, but enclosed in an oval-shaped
covering of basket-work. Hesiod objected to such a conveyance because
of its inability to keep out the dust. Little is known of the κάναθρον,
but it was a Laconian car made of wood, with an arched, plaited
covering, used chiefly by women. Doubtless it was little different from
the ἀπήνη.
Coming to the Romans, we find a far greater variety of vehicles, though
the descriptions that have come down are meagre and not particularly
distinctive. That the Romans early realised the enormous importance,
both military and otherwise, of carriages, is shown by their amazing
roads. Such roads had never before been constructed. They were, says
Gibbon, “accurately divided by milestones, and ran in a direct line
from one city to another, with very little respect for the obstacles,
either of nature or private property. Mountains were perforated, and
bold arches thrown over the broadest and most rapid streams. The
middle part of the road was raised into a terrace, which commanded the
adjacent country, consisted of several layers of sand, gravel, and
cement, and was paved with large stones, or, in some places near the
capital, with granite.” Probably the most famous of these roads was the
Appian Way, connecting Rome with Capua. It was wide enough, according
to Procopius, who marched along it in the sixth century, for two
chariots to pass one another without inconvenience or delay, a matter
certainly not possible, for instance, in most of the Eastern cities
at that time. And so, with the finest engineers the world had seen
linking up various cities, cross-country travelling in a carriage, from
being well-nigh impossible, became comparatively easy. Gibbon mentions
in this connection the surprising feat of one Cæsarius, who journeyed
from Antioch to Constantinople, a distance of 665 miles, in six days.
The Roman war-chariot, or _currus_, was practically the same as the
Greek ἄρμα, though certain modifications were introduced. More than two
horses were driven, and from their number came several words, such as
_sejugis_, _octojugis_, and _decemjugis_, which sufficiently explain
themselves. It appears, moreover, that the _currus_ was occasionally
driven by four horses without either pole or yoke, and it has been
suggested that in such a case the driver probably stopped the car by
bearing all his weight on to the back of the body, so that its floor
would touch the ground, thus forming a primitive brake. Besides the
_currus_, and even before their marvellous roads had been laid down,
the Romans possessed other cars. The earliest of these seems to have
been a long, covered, four-wheeled waggon, called _arcera_, which was
mainly used to carry infirm or very old people. In this the driver sat
on a seat in front of the body, and drove two horses abreast. Though
the most ancient of the Roman carriages, the _arcera_, as seen on
monuments, has a very modern appearance. In more luxurious times the
_lectica_, a large litter, seems to have led to its gradual extinction.
The _essedum_, at one time very popular in Italy, was brought in the
first place to Rome by Julius Cæsar. It was the war-chariot of the
Britons, and was entirely unlike the Roman or Egyptian cars. The wheels
were much larger, the entrance was in front and not at the back,
there was a seat, and the pole, instead of running up to the horses’
necks, remained horizontal, and was so wide that the driver could step
along it. The British charioteers could drive their cars at a very
great rate, and were exceedingly agile on the flat pole, from the
extremity of which they threw their missiles. The cars were purposely
made as noisy as possible to strike dismay into the enemy’s lines. At
times the wheels were furnished with scythes, which projected from the
axle-tree ends, and helped to maim those unfortunate enough to be run
down.[9] Cicero, hearing good opinions of it, besought a friend to
bring him a good pattern from Britain, and took occasion to add that
the chariot was the only pleasing thing which that benighted country
produced. The _essedum_ speedily became popular in Rome, though not as
an engine of war. Decorated and constructed of fine materials, it was
the fashionable pleasure carriage. Curiously enough, however, the seat
which had been so conspicuous a feature of the chariot in its native
place was not used in Rome. The owner drove the _essedum_ himself, and
yoked two horses to the pole. There was some opposition to its use on
the grounds of undue luxury, and a tribune who rode abroad in one was
on that account considered effeminate. Seneca put the _esseda deaurata_
amongst things _quæ matronarum usibus necessaria sint_. Emperors
and generals used them as travelling carriages, and they were to be
hired at regular posting-stations. A somewhat similar carriage, the
_covinus_, was also in use in various countries at this date. This was
covered in except in front; like the _essedum_, it had no seat for
the driver, and in times of war it seems to have had scythes attached
to the axle in the British fashion. Little, however, is known of it,
and it may be dismissed here with a mere mention of its existence.
[Illustration: _Cisium_
_The Primitive Gig_
(_From a Roman Inscription_)]
[Illustration: _Agrippina’s Carpentum_
(_From a Roman Coin_)]
The _essedum_ is of particular importance insomuch as it may be
considered to be the prototype of all the vehicles of the curricle
or gig type. The first of these in use amongst the Romans was the
_cisium_, whose form is well shown on a monumental column near Treves.
It was surprisingly like the ordinary gig of modern times. The body
at first was fixed to the frames, but afterwards seems to have been
suspended by rough traces or straps. The entrance was in front, there
was a seat for two, and underneath this a large box or case. Mules were
generally used to draw it, one, a pair, or, according to Ausonius,
three—in which case a postilion sat on the third horse. They were
built primarily for speed, and were in common use throughout Italy and
Gaul, though the ladies, unwilling to be seen in an uncovered carriage,
drove in other conveyances. The _cisium_ on the whole must have been
comfortable and light. Seneca admits that you could write a letter
easily while driving in one. And in due course the new carriage became
so popular that it could be hired, and the _cisiarii_, or hackney
coachmen, could be penalised for careless driving. Indeed, so very
modern were the Roman ideas upon the question of travel, that there
were certain places at which the _cisium_ was always to be found—a
kind of primitive cab-rank.
Coming to the larger waggons and carriages, there were the _sarracum_,
the _plaustrum_, the _carpentum_, the _pilentum_, the _benna_, the
_reda_, the _carruca_, the _pegma_—a huge wheeled apparatus used for
raising great weights, particularly in theatrical displays—and a
mule-drawn litter, the _basterna_. Of these the _sarracum_ was a common
cart used by the country folk for conveying produce. It had either two
or four wheels, and was occasionally used by passengers, though, as
Cicero observed, as a conveyance the _sarracum_ was very vulgar. It was
not confined to Italy, but was common enough amongst those barbaric
tribes against whom Rome was so often victorious. It was in _sarraca_,
moreover, that the bodies were removed from Rome in times of plague.
Rather lighter than this carriage, though heavy enough to our modern
ideas, was the _plaustrum_,[10] an ancient two or four-wheeled waggon
of rude construction. This was, in its primitive form, just a bare
platform with a large pole projecting from the axle; there were no
supporting ribs at all, and the load was simply placed on the platform.
Upright boards, or openwork rails, however, were used to make sides,
and at a later period a large basket was fastened on to the platform
by stout thongs. The wheels of the _plaustrum_ were ordinarily solid,
of a kind called _tympana_, or drums, and were nearly a foot thick.
Such a cart was but a slow vehicle, and could turn only with great
difficulty. It was drawn by oxen or mules, and like the _sarracum_ was
also used to carry passengers.[11]
[Illustration: _Pilentum_
_The State Carriage of the Romans_]
[Illustration: _Benna_]
The _carpentum_, though two-wheeled, bore resemblance to the Greek
ἁρμάμαξα. It had an arched covering. It was in use during very early
times at Rome, though only distinguished citizens were privileged to
ride in it. The _currus arcuatus_, given by Numa to the Flamines,
was no doubt a form of _carpentum_, which was also the travelling
carriage of the elder Tarquin. It seems to have been evolved from
the _plaustrum_, being originally little more than a covered cart;
but in the days of the Empire it became most luxurious, and was not
only furnished with curtains of the richest silk, but seems to have
had solid panellings and sculptures attached to the body. Agrippina’s
_carpentum_, for instance, had fine paintings on its panels, and its
roof was supported by figures at the four corners. Like the ἁρμάμαξα,
it was also used as a hearse. Two mules were required to draw it.
The _pilentum_ was a carriage of a more official character. It may be
called the state coach of the Romans—a four-wheeled becushioned car
with a roof supported by pillars, but, unlike the _carpentum_, open
at the sides. It was always considered to be the most comfortable of
the Roman carriages, and may indeed have been hung upon “swing-poles”
between the wheels. The social difference between the _pilentum_ and
the _carpentum_ may be deduced from one of the many carriage laws
passed by the Senate. The Roman matrons were allowed to drive in the
_carpentum_ on all occasions, but might use the _pilentum_ only at the
games or public festivals. Such “sumptuary laws” were constantly being
passed, and a special vote was even required to enable the mother of
Nero to drive in her carriage in the city itself. It was not until the
fourth century A.D. that all such restrictions were banished.
Pliny mentions another carriage of imperial Rome—the _carruca_, which
had four wheels and was used equally in the city and for long journeys.
Nero travelled with great numbers of them—on one occasion with no
less than three thousand. In Rome itself the fashionable citizen drove
forth in a _carruca_ that was covered with plates of bronze, silver, or
even gold. Enormous sums were spent upon their decoration. Painters,
sculptors, and embroiderers were employed. Martial speaks of an _aurea
carruca_ costing as much as a large farm. The _carruca_, indeed, may
be said to correspond with the phaeton, which was so fashionable in
England towards the end of the eighteenth century. As with the phaeton,
so with the _carruca_—the higher it was built the better pleased
was its owner. Various kinds of _carruca_ existed. The _carrucæ
argentatæ_ were those granted by Alexander Severus to the senators.
There is also mention of a _carruca domestoria_. Unfortunately,
however, no contemporary representation of a carriage can definitely
be said to be a _carruca_. Little enough, moreover, is known of the
two other waggons, the _reda_ and the _benna_. The _reda_ was a large
four-wheeled waggon used mainly to convey agricultural produce. It
seems to have been brought into Italy from Wallachia. The _benna_ was a
cart whose body was formed entirely of basket-work. There is a drawing
of it on the column of Antoninus at Rome. A similar vehicle persists to
this day in Italy, South Germany, and Belgium, and bears a similar name.
Under the Empire, then, carriage-building flourished, particularly
after Alexander Severus had put an end to all the older restrictions.
Various forms of carriages were to be seen on the roads, and there was,
as I have hinted, even an attempt at a spring. One of the carriages
of this period is definitely described as “borne on long poles, fixed
to the axles.” “Now a certain amount of spring,” says Thrupp, “can be
obtained from the centre of a long, light pole. The Neapolitan Calesse,
the Norwegian Carriole, and the Yarmouth Cart were all made with a
view to obtaining ease by suspension on poles between bearings placed
far apart. In these the seat is placed midway between the two wheels
and the horse, on very long shafts, which are there made into wooden
springs.” And in the old Roman carriages, he goes on to say, “the
weight was carried between the front and hind axles, on long poles or
wooden springs. The undercarriage of the later four-wheeled vehicles
used by the Romans was, in all probability, the same as is in use at
the present day, both in this country and on the Continent, and indeed
in America, for the under-carriages of agricultural waggons.” Even with
such splendid roads as the Romans possessed, however, the streets of
their towns do not seem to have been very wide, and this must be one of
the reasons for the early appearance of another kind of conveyance, the
litter, which, during the dark ages, was practically the only carriage
to be used.
These litters came from the East. The Babylonians in particular
preferred to be carried about in a chair or couch rather than to be
jolted in a carriage. Ericthonius, a lame man, is supposed to have
introduced them into Athens, where they were known as φορεῖα or
σκιμπόδια. Speedily they became popular, especially with the women.
Magnificently decorated, the φορεῖον was constantly carried along
the narrow streets, and on being brought over to Rome proved no less
agreeable to the Romans. The _lectica_, or, as it was called at a later
period, the _sella_, may in the first instance have been used to carry
the sick, but in a short time became a common form of conveyance. This
palanquin had an arched roof of leather stretched over four posts.
The sides were covered by curtains, though at a later period it would
seem that crude windows of talc were used. The interior was furnished
with pillows, and when standing the litter rested upon four feet. Two
slaves bore it by means of long poles loosely attached. In Martial’s
time these _lecticarii_ wore red liveries, and were sometimes preceded
by a third slave to make way. Julius Cæsar restricted their numbers,
and in the reign of Claudius permission to use them was granted only
as a particular mark of the royal favour. Several varieties of litter
appeared. The _sella portatoria_ or _gestatoria_ was a small sedan
chair. Some, however, were constructed to hold two. The _cathedra_,
which was probably identical with the _sella muliebris_ mentioned by
Suetonius, was mostly used by women. The _basterna_ was a much larger
litter, also used by women under the Empire, which was carried by two
mules. In this carriage the sides might be opened or closed, and the
whole body was frequently gilded.
A few other primitive carriages here call for mention. The Dacians, who
inhabited parts of what is now Hungary, used square vehicles with four
wheels, in which the six spokes widened towards the rims. The Scythians
used a peculiar two-wheeled cart consisting of a platform on which was
placed a conical covering, resembling in shape a beehive, and made of a
basket-work of hazelwood, over which were stretched the skins of beasts
or a thatching of reeds. When camping out these people would lift this
covering bodily from the cart and use it as a tent. Much the same
custom was followed by the wandering Tartars. “Their huts or tents,”
says Marco Polo, “are formed of rods covered with felt, and being
exactly round and nicely put together, they can gather them into one
bundle, and make them up as packages, which they carry along with them
in their migrations, upon a sort of car with four wheels.” “Besides
these cars,” he continues, “they have a superior kind of vehicle upon
two wheels, covered likewise with black felt, and so effectually as to
protect those within it from wet during a whole day of rain. These
are drawn by oxen and camels, and serve to convey their wives and
children, their utensils, and such provisions as they require.” The
same traveller described the carriages of Southern China. Speaking of
Kin-sai, then the capital, he says, “The main street of the city ...
is paved with stone and brick to the width of ten paces on each side,
the intermediate part being filled up with small gravel, and provided
with arched drains for carrying off the rain-water that falls into the
neighbouring canals, so that it remains always dry. On this gravel it
is that the carriages are continually passing and re-passing. They are
of a long shape, covered at top, having curtains and cushions of silk,
and are capable of holding six persons. Both men and women who feel
disposed to take their pleasure are in the daily practice of hiring
them for that purpose, and accordingly at every hour you may see vast
numbers of them driven along the middle part of the street.” To this
day such carriages as are here described can be had for hire in China,
though in general they are of a smaller size. In some respects they
resembled what is called in this country a tilted cart.
The Persians used large chariots in which was built a kind of turret
from whose interior the warriors could at once throw their spears and
obtain protection. One, taken from an ancient coin, is thus described
by Sir Robert Ker Porter in his _Travels in Georgia, Persia, and
Ancient Babylon_ (1821):—
” ... a large chariot, which is drawn by a magnificent pair of
horses; one of the men, in ampler garments than his compeers,
and bareheaded, holds the bridle of the horses ... [which]
are without trappings, but the details of their bits and the
manner of reining them are executed with the utmost care. The
pole of the car is seen passing behind the horses, projecting
from the centre of the carriage, which is in a cylindrical
shape, elevated rather above the line of the animals’ heads.
The wheel of the car is extremely light and tastefully put
together.”
Here, too, it is to be noticed that the driver is shown with his
arms over the backs of the animals. In another chariot, which most
probably was Persian, the body seems to be made of a “light wood, as of
interlaced canes. Similar chariots are seen in the Assyrian bas-reliefs
and others, somewhat resembling this, on Etruscan and Grecian painted
vases. A chariot thus constituted must have been of extreme rapidity
and of scarcely any weight.”[12]
The Persians also had an idol-car, which was a kind of moving platform,
and their chariots were at one period armed with scythes. These
scythes, generally considered to be the invention of Cyrus, do not seem
to have hung from the axle-ends, as was the case in Britain, but from
the body itself, “in order,” thinks Ginzrot, who wrote on these early
carriages, “to allow the wheels to turn unobstructed. In this way,”
he says, “the scythes had a firm hold, and could inflict more damage
than if they had been applied to the wheels or felloes and revolved
with them. Nearly all writers treating on this subject are of this
opinion, and Curtius says: _Alias deinde falces summis rotarum orbibus
hærebant_ [thence curving downwards]. The scythes could easily have
been attached to the body ... and, notwithstanding, it might be said
they extended over the felloe, for Curtius said, not that the scythes
revolved with the wheels, but _hærebant_.”[13]
Early Indian carriages were probably not very different from some of
those now in use amongst the natives. The common _gharry_ is certainly
built after a primitive model. In this there are two wheels, “a high
axle-tree bed, and a long platform, frequently made of two bamboos,
which join in front and form the pole, to which two oxen are yoked.” In
Arabia there was the _araba_, a primitive latticed carriage for women,
which possessed “wing-guards”—pieces of wood shaped to the top of the
wheels and projecting over them—a feature also to be found in the
early Persian cars.
Taking these early carriages as a whole one may be inclined to feel
surprise at the varieties displayed, yet there were not after all
very great differences between them. They were two-or four-wheeled
contrivances with a long pole in front, and it is only in mere size and
decoration that discrimination can properly be made. “The Egyptians,”
says Thrupp, “with all their learning and skill, appear to have made
no change during the centuries of experience; as at the beginning, so
at the end, the kings stand by the side of their charioteers, or hold
the reins themselves. The Persians and Hindoos introduced luxurious
improvements, and in lofty vehicles elevated the nobles above the
heads of the people, and secluded their women in curtained carriages.
The Greeks introduced no new vehicles, but perfected so successfully
the useful waggon, that their model is still seen throughout Europe,
without change of principle or structure. The Romans, on the other
hand, in their career of conquest, gathered from every nation what was
good, and, wherever possible, improved upon it.” After the fall of the
Roman Empire, however, there was little further progress for several
centuries. In the general retrogression, which, rightly or wrongly, one
associates with those dark ages, the wheeled carriage, in common with a
multitude of other adjuncts to civilisation, was to suffer.
_Chapter the Second_
_THE AGE OF LITTERS_
“There is a litter; lay him in ’t and
drive toward Dover, friend!”
_King Lear._
As roadmakers, the Romans, if they can be said to have had successors
at all, were succeeded by the monks. On the assumption that travellers
were unfortunate people, as indeed they were, needing help, religious
Orders were founded whose chief work was that of building bridges and
repairing the roads. Other Orders likewise performed such tasks, though
possibly for more selfish reasons, being as they were large owners
of cattle, and immersed as much in agricultural as in theological
occupations. So in many parts of Europe the _Pontife_ Brothers, or
bridge-makers, were to be found. There were also Gilds formed to
repair the roads, such as the Gild of the Holy Cross in Birmingham,
founded in the reign of Richard II, which “mainteigned ... and kept
in good reparaciouns the greate stone bridges, and divers foule and
dangerous high wayes, the charge whereof the towne of hitsellfe ys not
hable to mainteigne.” In _Piers the Plowman_, too, the rich merchants
are exhorted to repair the “wikked wayes” and see that the “brygges
to-broke by the heye weyes” may be mended “in som manere wise.” The
maintenance of the roads in England, says M. Jusserand,[14] “greatly
depended upon arbitrary chance, upon opportunity, or on the goodwill
or the devotion of those to whom the adjoining land belonged. In the
case of the roads, as of bridges, we find petitions of private persons
who pray that a tax be levied upon those who pass along, towards
the repair of the road.” So in 1289, Walter Godelak of Walingford
is praying for “the establishment of a custom to be collected from
every cart of merchandize traversing the road between Jowemarsh and
Newenham, on account of the depth, and for the repair, of the said
way.” Unfortunately for him—and doubtless he was no exception to the
rule—the reply came: “The King will do nothing therein.”
Indeed the roads were in a truly abominable condition. As often as
not, deep ruts marred what surface there had ever been, and here
and there brooks and pools rendered easy passage an impossibility.
There is a patent of Edward III (Nov. 20, 1353) which ordered “the
paving of the high road, _alta via_, running from Temple Bar”—then
the western limit of London—“to Westminster.” “This road,” says M.
Jusserand, “had been paved, but the King explains that it is ‘so full
of holes and bogs ... and that the pavement is so damaged and broken’
that the traffic has become very dangerous for men and carriages. In
consequence, he orders each proprietor on both sides of the road to
remake, at his own expense, a footway of seven feet up to the ditch,
_usque canellum_,” and see to it that the middle of the road is well
paved. In France matters were just as bad. “Outside the town of
Paris,” runs one fourteenth-century ordinance, “in several parts of the
suburbs ... there are many notable and ancient high-roads, bridges,
lanes, and roads, which are much injured, damaged or decayed and
otherwise hindered by ravines of water and great stones, by hedges,
brambles, and many other trees which have grown there, and by many
other hindrances which have happened there, because they have not been
maintained and provided for in time past; and they are in such a bad
state that they cannot be securely traversed on foot or horseback, nor
by vehicles, without great perils and inconveniences; and some of them
are abandoned at all parts because men cannot resort there.” Wherefore
it was proposed that the inhabitants should be compelled, by force if
necessary, to attend to the matter.
While, however, the wretched state into which the roads were being
allowed to fall had a great deal to do with the almost total, though
indeed temporary, extinction of the wheeled pleasure carriage in
western Europe, there is another fact which must be taken into
consideration in any endeavour to account for it. As will appear
in a little, the renaissance of carriage-building in the sixteenth
century was for a time retarded in various places by a widespread
feeling of distrust against anything that could be thought to lead to
an accusation of effeminacy. Laws were passed—as was the case, for
instance, in 1294, under Philip the Fair of France—forbidding people
to ride in coaches, and sharp comparisons were drawn by the satirists
between the hardy horsemen of old and the modern comfort-loving
individuals who lolled, or were supposed to loll—though how they
could have done so in those springless monstrosities is past
comprehension—in their gaudily decorated carriages. I would not insist
upon the point, but it may be that in the reaction against such undue
luxuries as had helped to bring ruin to the Roman Empire, carriages for
that reason became unpopular. From which, of course, it would follow
that the disappearance of the carriage led, in part at any rate, to the
neglect of the roads, and such new roads as were made would be laid
down primarily for the convenience only of the horsemen. The same thing
applied also to the litters, though their popularity naturally followed
merely upon the state of the roads.
Before attempting to deal with these litters, it will be well to see
what is known—it is not very much—of such wheeled carriages as
there were at this time, and at the outset it is necessary to bear in
mind that the old chroniclers used the word _carriage_ in anything
but its modern significance. To them a carriage was no more than an
agricultural or baggage cart. Time and again you have accounts of this
or that great man making his way, peaceably or otherwise, through
some country, accompanied by numbers of carriages. These were simply
his luggage carts, and although, as in earlier times, the cart, gaily
ornamented, could very easily be converted into a pleasure carriage,
it is important to remember the real meaning of the word. Such
carts, in point of fact, were extremely common. In England they were
generally square boxes made of planks borne on two wheels. Others,
of a lighter pattern, were built of “slatts latticed with a willow
trellis.” Their chief peculiarity was to be found in their wheels,
which were furnished with extraordinarily large nails with prominent
heads. Contemporary manuscripts give rough pictures of such carts.
One of these is shown drawn by three dogs. One man squats inside, a
second helps to push it from behind. A most interesting illustration
in the Louterell Psalter—a fourteenth-century manuscript—shows a
reaper’s cart going uphill. Here the two huge, six-spoked wheels with
their projecting nails are clearly shown. The platform of the cart is
strengthened by upright stakes with a cross-rail connecting them at the
sides. The driver, standing over the wheels on the poles, is holding a
long whip which is flicking the leader of three horses. Three other men
are helping at the rear, and the stacks of wheat are held in position
by ropes.
The earliest Anglo-Saxon carriage of which there is record belongs to
the twelfth century. Strutt refers to a drawing in one of the Cottonian
manuscripts, which represents a peculiar four-wheeled contrivance with
two upright poles rising from the axle-trees, from which poles is slung
a hammock. Such a chariot or _chaer_ was apparently used by the more
distinguished Anglo-Saxons when setting out upon long journeys. The
drawing shows the figure of Joseph on his way to meet Jacob in Egypt,
but is no doubt a correct representation of a travelling carriage in
the artist’s lifetime. This hammock is interesting as being a primitive
form of suspension, which may or may not have led to the later
experiments in that direction.
[Illustration: _Fourteenth Century English Carriage_
(_From the Louterell Psalter_)]
[Illustration: _Fourteenth Century Reaper’s Cart_
(_From the Louterell Psalter_)]
A most luxurious English carriage of the fourteenth century is shown in
the Louterell Psalter. This was obviously evolved from a four-wheeled
waggon. Five horses, harnessed at length, drew it, a postilion with
a short whip riding on the second, and another with a long whip on the
wheeler. The tunnel-like body was highly ornamented, and its front
decorated with carved birds and men’s heads. The frame of the body was
continued in front as two poles, and underneath, hanging by a ring and
looking rather ludicrous, is shown a small trunk. Women only appear in
this carriage, the men riding behind it.
“Nothing,” remarks M. Jusserand, “gives a better idea of the
encumbering, awkward luxury which formed the splendour of
civil life during this century than the structure of these
heavy machines. The best had four wheels; three or four horses
drew them, harnessed in a row, the postilion being mounted on
one, armed with a short-handled whip of many thongs; solid
beams rested on the axles, and above this framework rose an
archway rounded like a tunnel; as a whole, ungraceful enough.
But the details,” he goes on to say, speaking of the carriage
shown in the Louterell Psalter, “were extremely elegant, the
wheels were carved and their spokes expanded near the hoop
into ribs forming pointed arches; the beams were painted and
gilt, the inside was hung with those dazzling tapestries, the
glory of the age; the seats were furnished with embroidered
cushions; a lady might stretch out there, half sitting, half
lying; pillows were disposed in the corners as if to invite
sleep, square windows pierced the sides and were hung with
curtains. Thus travelled,” he continues with a touch of
picturesqueness, “the noble lady, slim in form, tightly clad
in a dress which outlined every curve of the body, her long,
slender hands caressing the favourite dog or bird. The knight,
equally tightened in his _cote-hardie_, regarded her with
a complacent eye, and, if he knew good manners, opened his
heart to his dreamy companion in long phrases like those in
the romances. The broad forehead of the lady, who has perhaps
coquettishly plucked off her eyebrows and stray hairs, a
process about which satirists were indignant, brightens up at
moments, and her smile is like a ray of sunshine. Meanwhile
the axles groan, the horse-shoes—also heavily nailed—crunch
the ground, the machine advances by fits and starts, descends
into the hollows, bounds altogether at the ditches, and falls
violently back with a dull noise.”
Other gaily decorated carriages, surprisingly like our modern vans,
though on two wheels, are shown in _Le Roman du Roy Meliadus_, another
fourteenth-century manuscript preserved in the British Museum, but only
the richest and most powerful of the nobles could afford to keep them.
“They were bequeathed,” says M. Jusserand, “by will from one
another, and the gift was valuable. On September 25, 1355,
Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, wrote her last will and
endowed her eldest daughter with ‘her great carriage with
the coverture, carpets, and cushions.’ In the twentieth year
of Richard II, Roger Rouland received £400 sterling for a
carriage destined for Queen Isabella; and John le Charer,
in the sixth [year] of Edward III, received £1000 for the
carriage of Lady Eleanor—the King’s sister.”
These were fabulous sums, when it is remembered that an ox cost about
thirteen shillings and a sheep but one shilling and five pence.
Now it may be that such a “great carriage” as is shown in the Louterell
Psalter was identical with the _whirlicote_ in which, according to
Stowe, Richard II and his mother took refuge on the occasion of Wat
Tyler’s rebellion.
“Of old time,” says this honest tailor, who himself witnessed
the introduction of coaches into England, “coaches were not
known in this island, but chariots or whirlicotes, then so
called, and they only used of princes or great estates, such
as had their footmen about them; and for example to note, I
read that Richard II, being threatened by the rebels of Kent,
rode from the Tower of London to the Mile’s End, and with him
his mother, because she was sick and weak, in a whirlicote,
the Earl of Buckingham ... knights and Esquires attending on
horseback. But in the next year [1381] the said King Richard
took to wife Anne, daughter to the King of Bohemia, that
first brought hither the riding upon side saddles; and so was
the riding in whirlicotes and chariots forsaken, except at
coronations and such like spectacles.”
From this it would appear that the _whirlicote_ (which may, as Bridges
Adams suggests, have been derived from “whirling” or moving “cot” or
house) was identical with the _chariot_ or _chaer_. Unfortunately
the translators of Froissart, who mentions the incident of Richard’s
ride from the Tower, cannot agree upon the correct word to render
the original _charette_. _Charette_, _chariette_, _chare_, _chaer_
(Wicliffe), and _char_ (Chaucer) all occur in the early chronicles, and
there seems no means, if, indeed, there is any need, of differentiating
between them. All were probably waggons modified for the conveyance
of such passengers as could afford to pay highly for the privilege.
One fact, however, suggests that there were at any rate two different
kinds of carriages in England at this time, for we read that the body
of Richard II was borne to its last resting-place “upon a chariette
or sort of litter on wheels, such as is used by citizens’ wives who
are not able or not allowed to keep ordinary litters.” With this in
mind, it is difficult to agree with Sir Walter Gilbey when he says[15]
that the _chare_ was a horse litter, though it is fair to add that he
acknowledges an opposite view.
The _charette_ is obviously the French form of _caretta_, which was
the carriage in which Beatrice, the wife of Charles of Anjou, entered
Naples in 1267.[16] This vehicle is described as being covered both
inside and without with sky-blue velvet powdered with golden lilies.
Pope Gregory X entered Milan in 1273 in a similar carriage. The
_caretta_ was probably an open car “shaded simply by a canopy.” In the
next century, the _Anciennes Chroniques de Flandres_, a manuscript
belonging to 1347, shows an illustration of Ermengarde, the wife of
Salvard, Lord of Rousillon, travelling in a four-wheeled conveyance
remarkably like the ordinary country waggon of to-day.
“The lady,” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “is seated on the
floor-boards of a springless four-wheeled cart or waggon,
covered in with a tilt that could be raised or drawn aside;
the body of the vehicle is of carved wood and the outer edges
of the wheels are painted grey to represent iron tyres. The
conveyance is drawn by two horses driven by a postilion
who bestrides that on the near [left] side. The traces are
apparently of rope, and the outer trace of the postilion’s
horse is represented as passing under the saddle-girth, a
length of leather (?) being let in for the purpose; the
traces are attached to swingle-bars carried on the end of a
cross-piece secured to the base of the pole where it meets the
body.
“Carriages of some kind,” he continues, “appear also to have
been used by men of rank when travelling on the Continent.
_The Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land of Henry,
Earl of Derby, in_ 1390 _and_ 1392-3 (Camden Society’s
Publications, 1894) indicate that the Earl, afterwards King
Henry IV of England, travelled on wheels at least part of the
way through Austria.
“The accounts kept by his Treasurer during the journey contain
several entries relative to carriages; thus on November 14,
1392, payment is made for the expenses of two equerries named
Hethcote and Mansel, who were left for one night at St.
Michael, between Leoban and Kniltefeld, with thirteen carriage
horses. On the following day the route lay over such rugged
and mountainous country that the carriage wheels were broken
despite the liberal use of grease; and at last the narrowness
of the way obliged the Earl to exchange his own carriage for
two smaller ones better suited to the paths of the district.
“The Treasurer also records the sale of an old carriage at
Friola for three florins. The exchange of the Earl’s ‘own
carriage’ is the significant entry: it seems very unlikely
that a noble of his rank would have travelled so lightly that
a single cart would contain his own luggage and that of his
personal retinue; and it is also unlikely that he used one
luggage cart of his own. The record points directly to the
conclusion that the carriages were passenger vehicles used by
the Earl himself.”
It is to be noted that the carriage of the Lady Ermengarde was a
Flemish vehicle. Flanders, indeed, seems to have shared with Hungary
the honour of playing pioneer in carriage-building throughout the ages,
and long after the general adoption of coaches in Europe, Flemish
models, and also Flemish mares, were freely imported into the various
countries.
Another carriage of this time is described in a pre-Chaucerian poem
called _The Squyr of Low Degree_, in which the father of a Hungarian
princess is made to say:—
“Tomorrow ye shall on hunting fare,
And ride my daughter in a _chare_.
It shall be covered with velvet red,
And cloths of fine gold all about your head;
With damask white, and azure blue,
Well diapered with lilies new;
Your pomelles shal be ended with gold,
Your chains enammelled many a fold.”
The pomelles no doubt were “the handles to the rods affixed to the
roof, and were for the purpose of holding on by, when deep ruts or
obstacles in the road caused an unusual jerk in the vehicle.” One
notices that lilies were apparently a common form of decoration on
these early carriages, but it is to be regretted that the accounts in
general are so scanty.
We come to the litters.
Of these the commonest, both in England and on the Continent, seem to
have been modifications of the Roman _basterna_. Generally they were
covered with a sort of vault with various openings. Two horses, one
at either end, carried them. The great majority held only one person.
Thrupp describes them in some detail.
“They were,” he says, “long and narrow—long enough for a
person to recline in—and no wider than could be carried
between the poles which were placed on either side of the
horses. They were about four to five feet long, and two
feet six inches wide, with low sides and higher ends. The
entrance was in the middle, on both sides, the doors being
formed sometimes by a sliding panel and sometimes simply by a
cross-bar. The steps were of leather or iron loops, the latter
being hinged to turn up when the litter was placed on the
ground. The upper part was formed by a few broad wooden hoops,
united along the top by four or five slats, and over the whole
a canopy was placed, which opened in the middle, at the sides,
and ends, for air and light.”
Isolated references to these horse-litters are scattered throughout
the old chronicles, but afford meagre information. William of
Malmesbury states that the body of William Rufus was placed on a _reda
caballaria_, a horse-litter, the name of which suggests its origin.
According to Matthew of Westminster, King John, during his illness
in 1216, was removed from Swinstead Abbey to Newark in a similar
vehicle, the _lectica equestre_. Generally, however, the horse-litter
was reserved exclusively for women, men being unwilling to risk an
accusation of effeminacy. So, in recording the death of Earl Ferrers
in 1254, from injuries received in an accident to his conveyance, the
historian is careful to explain that his Lordship suffered from the
gout, which was why he happened to be in a litter at all.
As time passed, the litter rather than the wheeled carriage became the
state vehicle. Froissart, writing of the second wife of Richard II,
describes “la june Royne d’Angleterre” as travelling “en une litere
moult riche qui etoit ordondée pour elle.” Margaret, the daughter of
Henry VII, journeyed to Scotland, it is true, on the back of a “faire
palfrey,” but she was followed by “one vary riche litere, borne by
two faire coursers vary nobly drest; in wich litere the sayd queene
was borne in the intryng of the good townes, or otherwise to her good
playsher.” But on the Continent new improvements were being made in
wheeled carriages, and when in 1432 Henry VI wrote to the Archbishop
of Canterbury and other high dignitaries of the Church, with regard to
the widow of Henry of Navarre, he ordered them to place two _chares_ at
her disposal, rather than the litter to which one might have thought
she would be entitled. Sir Walter Gilbey translates the word to mean a
horse-litter, but Markland, in his paper on the _Early Use of Carriages
in England_ (_Archæologia_, Vol. XX), differentiates between the two,
ascribing a more ceremonial use to the litter, and this seems to me
to be nearer the truth. Both vehicles, for instance, are mentioned by
Holinshed in his description of the coronation ceremony of Catherine
of Aragon in 1509. The Queen herself rode in a litter of “white clothe
of golde, not covered nor bailed, which was led by two palfreys clad
in white damask doone to the ground, head and all, led by her footman.
Over her was borne a canopie of cloth of gold, with four gilt staves,
and four silver bells. For the bearing of which canopie were appointed
sixteen knights, foure to beare it one space on foot, and other foure
another space.” But the Queen’s ladies followed her in _chariots_
decorated in red, and the same thing is true of Anne Boleyn, who in
1533 rode to her coronation in a litter, but was followed by four
chariots, three decorated with red, and one with white. Such chariots
probably resembled those to be described in the next chapter; the point
to notice here is that they were being used now, and although the
litters still continued until the time of Charles II—Mary de Medicis,
the Queen-Mother of France, entered London in 1638 in a litter, though
she had travelled from Harwich in a coach, and as late as 1680 “an
accident happened to General Shippon, who came in a horse-litter
wounded to London; when he paused by the brewhouse in St. John Street
a mastiff attacked the horses, and he was tossed like a dog in a
blanket”—the wheeled carriage once again became the vehicle of honour,
and at the coronation of Mary in 1553 a chariot[17] and not a litter
was used by the Queen. This had six horses, and was covered with a
“cloth of tissue.” Whatever its discomforts may have been, it cannot
have been less dignified than the litter which it had, now for all
time, supplanted.
_Chapter the Third_
_INTRODUCTION OF THE COACH_ (1450-1600)
“Go—call a Coach; and let a Coach be called:
Let him that calls the Coach, be called the Caller!
And in his calling, let him no thing call,
But Coach! COACH!! COACH!!!”
_Chrononhotonthologos._
Both horse-litters and early wheeled carriages seem to have had some
pretensions towards comfort. They afforded protection against the
inclemency of the weather; there had been certain rude attempts at
suspension, and the soft cushions helped to minimise the unpleasant
joltings to which every carriage was liable. When, however, the
renaissance of carriage-building occurred, people seem to have been
but little more progressive than they had been centuries before. There
were, as I have already hinted, still two factors which militated
against a speedy adoption of such vehicles, more comfortable though
they undoubtedly were, as now began to be made—the state of the roads,
and the dislike of anything bordering upon the effeminate.
The roads had become no better. Even those most eager to welcome the
new carriages must have been dismayed at the state of the country, not
only in England, but in every European country. As one writer of the
sixteenth century complains, the roads, “by reason of straitness and
disrepair, breed a loathsome weariness to the passenger.” Nor is this
writer a solitary grumbler: there are numerous complaints. In 1537
Richard Bellasis, one of the monastery-wreckers, was unable to proceed
with his work: “lead from the roofs,” he reports, “cannot be conveyed
away till next summer, for the ways in that countrie are so foule and
deepe that no carriage [cart] can pass in winter.” Indeed, no one seems
to have looked after the roads with any care, either in the fifteenth
or the sixteenth century. Yet there were, in this country, repeated
bequests for their preservation. Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland,
a sufferer himself, left one hundred marks to be bestowed on the
highways in Craven, and the same sum on those of Westmorland. John
Lyon, the founder of Harrow School, gave certain rents for the repair
of the roads from Harrow and Edgware to London. This was in 1592, and
Lyon’s example was speedily followed by Sutton, the founder of the
Charterhouse. There was, indeed, legislation of a kind, but in general
the roads were in a terrible condition, and for a long time, so far as
men were concerned, the saddle remained triumphant.
And for an even longer time continued that prejudice against carriages
which led to the framing of actual prohibitive laws. Even women
were occasionally forbidden the use of coaches, and there is the
story of the luxurious duchess who in 1546 found great difficulty in
obtaining from the Elector of Saxony permission to be driven in a
covered carriage to the baths—such leave being granted only on the
understanding that none of her attendants were to be allowed the same
privilege. So, too, in 1564, Pope Pius IV was exhorting his cardinals
and bishops to leave the new-fangled machines to women, and twenty-four
years later Julius, Duke of Brunswick, found it necessary to issue an
edict—it makes quaint reading now—ordering his “vassals, servants,
and kinsmen, without distinction, young and old,” who “have dared to
give themselves up to indolence and to riding in coaches ... to take
notice that when We order them to assemble, either altogether or in
part, in Times of Turbulence, or to receive their Fiefs, or when on
other occasions they visit Our Court, they shall not travel or appear
in Coaches, but on their riding Horses.” More stringent is the edict,
preserved amongst the archives of the German county of Mark, in which
the nobility was forbidden the use of coaches “under penalty of
incurring the punishment of felony.” So, also, we have the case of René
de Laval, Lord of Bois-Dauphin, an extremely obese nobleman living in
Paris, whose only excuse for possessing a coach was his inability to
be set upon a horse, or to keep in that position if the horse chanced
to move. This was in 1550. In England there was a similar feeling of
opposition. In 1584 John Lyly, in his play _Alexander and Campaspe_,
makes one of his characters complain of the new luxury. In the old
days, he says, those who used to enter the battlefield on hard-trotting
horses, now ride in coaches and think of nothing but the pleasures
of the flesh. The once famous Bishop Hall speaks bitterly of the
“sin-guilty” coach:—
“Is’t not a shame to see each homely groome
Sit perched in an idle chariot roome
That were not meete some pannel to bestride
Sursingled to a galled hackney’s hide?
Nor can it nought our gallant’s praises reap,
Unless it be done in staring cheap
In a sin-guilty coach, not closely pent,
Jogging along the harder pavement.”
Possibly the same idea is to be found in the framing of a Parliamentary
Bill of 1601 “to restrain the excessive use of coaches,” which,
however, was thrown out. So again in 1623, the delightful though sadly
biased water-poet, John Taylor, is lamenting the decadence of England,
due, according to him, to the growing custom of driving in coaches.
“For whereas,” he says, “within our memories, our Nobility and
Gentry would ride well mounted (and sometimes walke on foote)
gallantly attended with three or four, score brave fellowes in
blue coates, which was a glory to our Nation; and gave more
content to the beholders, then [_sic_] forty of your Leather
tumbrels: Then men preserv’d their bodies strong and able by
walking, riding, and other manly exercises: Then saddlers
was a good Trade, and the name of a Coach was Heathen Greek.
Who ever saw (but upon extraordinary occasions),” he goes
on to ask, “Sir _Philip Sidney_, Sir _Francis Drake_, Sir
_John Norris_, Sir _William Winter_, Sir _Roger Williams_,
or (whom I should have nam’d first) the famous Lord _Gray_
and _Willoughby_, when the renowned _George_ Earle of
_Cumberland_, or _Robert_ Earle of _Essex_? These sonnes
of _Mars_, who in their time were the glorious Brooches of
our Nation, and admirable terrour to our Enemies: these, I
say, did make small use of Coaches, and there were two mayne
reasons for it, the one was, that there were but few Coaches
in most of their times: and the second is, they were deadly
foes to all sloth and effeminacy.”
To Taylor, indeed, and probably to every one of his fellow-watermen,
a coach was always a “hell-cart” designed on purpose to put an end
to his own most worthy calling. But less biased poets than outspoken
Taylor gave tongue to an opposition which continued for nearly two
centuries. Gay, for instance, looked on the vastly improved vehicle of
his day as no more than an excuse for extravagant display:—
“O happy streets, to rumbling wheels unknown,
No carts, no coaches shake the floating town!
Thus was of old _Britannia’s_ city bless’d,
Ere pride and luxury her sons profess’d.”
And again:—
“Now gaudy pride corrupts the lavish age,
And the streets flame with glaring equipage;
The tricking gamester insolently rides,
With _Loves_ and _Graces_ on his chariot’s sides;
In saucy state the griping broker sits,
And laughs at honesty, and trudging wits.”
Perhaps he is thinking of some personal inconvenience, rather than of
mere unnecessary luxury, when he asks:—
“What walker shall his mean ambition fix
On the false lustre of a coach and six?”
And so late as 1770, the eccentric Lord Monboddo, who still maintained
the superiority of a savage life, refused to “sit in a box drawn by
brutes.” It is, of course, easy to magnify such opposition to coaches
as followed on the grounds of mere luxury and display, but in the
earlier history of the coach, to which we are now come, it is a factor
which must by no means be neglected. The coach, like every other
novelty, had to fight its way, and if one is inclined to believe, after
reading such accusations as there are of the earliest coaches with
their magnificent adornments and numerous attendants, that the owners
altogether deserved the reproaches of their more Spartan fellows, it
may be well to recall Macaulay’s words. In his sketch of the state of
England in 1685, when coaches were still lavishly adorned, he says of
them: “We attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a
very disagreeable necessity. People in the time of Charles the Second
travelled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was
great danger of sticking fast in the mire.” And what is true of 1685 is
certainly true of 1585.
Buckingham is supposed to have been the first man to use a coach and
six in this country, though this is by no means certain. Of him a
well-known story apropos of this question of undue luxury is told.
“The stout old Earl of _Northumberland_,” it runs, “when he got loose,
hearing that the great Favourite _Buckingham_ was drawn about with a
Coach and six horses (which was wondered at then as a _novelty_, and
imputed to him as a _mastring pride_) thought if _Buckingham_ had
six he might very well have eight in his Coach, with which he rode
through the City of _London_ to the _Bath_, to the vulgar talk and
admiration.... Nor did this addition of two horses by _Buckingham_
grow higher than a little _murmur_. For in the late Queen’s time there
were no coaches, and the first [had] but two Horses; the rest crept in
by _Degrees_ as men at first venture to _sea_.”[18] Yet what may have
been true of Buckingham, whose love of luxury was notorious, need not
have been true of those other owners of coaches, who were constantly
travelling about the country.
Finally there is the other side of the question to be remembered,
and, as M. Ramde quaintly points out in his _History of Locomotion_,
the very luxury which people so disliked had a beneficent effect; for
“after the development of the use of carriages, and their frequent
employment by the court and nobility, the liberty to throw everything
out of the window became intolerable! Thus the carriage of luxury has
been the cause of cleanliness in the streets.”
Now it must be understood that the coach proper differs from all
earlier vehicles in being not only a covered, but also a suspended
carriage. The canopy has given place to the roof, a roof, that is to
say, which forms part of the framing of the body; and the body itself
is swung in some fashion, however primitive, from posts or other
supports. Further, it seems reasonable to suppose, on the analogy of
the _berlin_ and the _landau_—two later carriages which took their
names from the towns in which they were first made—that the first
coaches were built in a small Hungarian town then called Kotzee. Yet
it is to be observed that Spain, Italy, and France, in the persons of
various enthusiasts, have claimed the invention—their claims being
mainly based on such similarities as may be observed between the real
coach and the earlier cars and charettes.[19] Bridges Adams, indeed,
not to be outdone, hazards the suggestion that England might also be
included in such a list by reason of her invention of the whirlicote,
though he is obliged to admit that nobody knows _exactly_ what a
whirlicote was like. It is probably due to these patriotic gentlemen
that several rather ludicrous suggestions have been made to explain the
derivation of the word _coach_, which has a similar sound in nearly
all European languages. Menange rashly suggests a corruption of the
Latin _vehiculum_. Another writer puts forward the Greek verb ὀχέω,
to carry. Wachten, a German, finds in _kutten_, to cover, a suitable
explanation, and Lye produces the Flemish _koetsen_, to lie along. This
last, perhaps, is the most reasonable suggestion of those unwilling to
give the palm to Hungary, for not only were the Flemish vehicles well
known before the introduction of the new carriage, but there is also
some confusion, at any rate, in this country, between the two words
_coach_ and _couch_, both being found in the old account books. Even
in the sixteenth century the word seems to have bothered people. There
is an amusing reference to this point in an early seventeenth-century
tract called _Coach and Sedan Pleasantly Disputing_, of which I shall
have more to say in the next chapter.
“Their first invention,” says a character in this dialogue,
“and use was in the Kingdome of _Hungarie_, about the time
when _Frier George_, compelled the Queen and her young sonne
the King, to seeke to _Soliman_ the Turkish Emperour, for aid
against the Frier, and some of the Nobilitie, to the utter
ruine of that most rich and flourishing Kingdome, where they
were first called _Kottcze_, and in the _Slavonian_ tongue
_Cottri_, not of _Coucher_ the French to lie-downe, nor of
_Cuchey_, the Cambridge Carrier, as some body made Master
_Minshaw_, when hee (rather wee) perfected his Etymologicall
dictionarie, whence we call them to this day _Coaches_.”
It is also to be noted that the first English coaches, so called,
were probably not suspended at all, but merely upholstered carts for
reclining—in fact nothing more than the old chariots. In the second
half of the sixteenth century, practically every pleasure carriage
in England, though not on the Continent, was called a _coach_ or
a _carroche_. Consequently it is difficult to give a date for the
importation of the first real coach into this country. Indeed, it is
impossible to say with any degree of certainty precisely when carriages
of the suspended type were first made. Such early accounts as exist
are at once fragmentary and obscure, and the few illustrations little
better than caricatures with a perspective reminiscent of that in
Hogarth’s famous example of false drawing. It can only be repeated that
the hammock slung from the four posts of a waggon, such as we have
seen existed amongst the Anglo-Saxons and possibly was also in use in
parts of Europe, may have provided the idea of permanent suspension as
a means to comfort, and that such scanty evidence as there is goes to
prove that the carriages exported from Hungary towards the end of the
fifteenth century seem to have been the first _coaches_ to be built.
So early as 1457 there is mention of such a carriage, given by
Ladislaus, King of Hungary, to the French King, Charles VII. The
Parisians who saw it described it as “branlant et moulte riche.” What
this “trembling” carriage was like there is no means of discovering,
but it certainly suggests an attempt at suspension, and may perhaps be
taken for the earliest coach to be recorded by history. This obviously
was Hungarian, and Hungary is again mentioned in the same connection
by Stephanus Broderithus, who relates that in 1526, “when the
archbishop received intelligence that the Turks had entered Hungary,
not content with informing the King of this event, he speedily got
into one of those light carriages which from the name of the place
we call kotcze, and hastened to His Majesty.” And apparently these
light carriages were actually used for military purposes, Taylor
avowing that “they carried soldiers on each side with cross-bowes,”
this being the best purpose to which he considered the coach had ever
been put or was likely to be put in the future. All this is clear
enough, but Beckmann, in his _History of Inventions_, mentions another
circumstance which strengthens the evidence: “Siegmund, Baron de
Herberstein, ambassador from Louis II, to the King of Hungary, says in
his _Commentarie de rebus Moscoviticis_, where he occasionally mentions
some travelling-stages in Hungary: ‘The fourth stage for stopping to
give the horses breath is six miles below Taurinum, in the village of
Cotzi, from which both drivers and carriages take their name, and are
generally called cotzi.’”[20]
Very probably these new Hungarian carriages were seen in most European
countries before 1530. “At tournaments,” says Bridges Adams, “they
were made objects for display; they are spoken of as being gilded all
over, and the hangings were of crimson satin. Electresses and duchesses
were seldom without them; and there was as much rivalry in their days
of public exhibition as there is now [1837] amongst the aspirants of
fashion in their well-appointed equipages at a queen’s drawing-room.”
What did these early coaches look like? Shorn of their hangings, they
must have resembled nothing so much as the hearse of to-day. The first
illustrations show no signs of suspension, and portray what appear to
be gaudily decorated waggons, and that in effect is what they were. The
first coach makers of Hungary, like their predecessors, were certainly
content to take for their model the common agricultural waggon of
Germany. Indeed, Hungary seems to have played pioneer in this respect
at a very early date. Von Ginzrot, in his work on early vehicles, gives
an illustration of a closed passenger carriage which bears more than a
superficial resemblance to the later coaches. “The body,” says Thrupp,
“is a disguised waggon; the tilt-top has two leather flaps to fall over
the doorway, and the panels are of wicker-work.” It would have been
quite easy, he continues, to use such waggons, as had been the case
long before, for passenger traffic, “by placing the planks across the
sides, or suspending seats by straps from the sides”; and he further
mentions an oil painting at Nuremberg, of two waggons “with carved and
gilt standard posts both in front and behind the body”—an interesting
stage in the transformation from rude cart to private coach. There is
a detailed and technical description of these waggons in Thrupp’s own
book, but it will be enough here to notice that they were generally
narrower at the bottom than at the top, as were the first coaches, and
that the four wheels were nearly of the same size. Working from such a
model, the Hungarian artificers produced a comparatively light, though
large, four-wheeled carriage with some pretensions to grace of line,
a roofed body, broad seats, and a side entrance. The body, however,
was not completely enclosed by solid panels, which only took the place
of the curtains at a later date. Carvings and other ornamentation
followed on the owner’s rank and taste. And towards the end of the
sixteenth century, if not before, the actual body was suspended on
straps or braces. There are preserved at Coburg and Verona one or two
coach-bodies which show signs of the iron hoops by which they were
hung. The earliest of these was built for Duke Frederick of Saxony in
1527, and Count Gozzadini, in a slim folio which he privately printed
some sixty years ago, describes a coach-body built in 1549 which still
shows traces of its heraldic ornamentation on the framework.
“This coach,” says Thrupp, acting as the Count’s translator,
“was built under the direction of an Italian at Brussels,
for the ceremony of the marriage of Alexander, the son of
Octavius Farnese, Duke of Parma, with a Portuguese princess.
The wedding took place in 1565 at Brussels. There were four
carriages Flanders fashion [? charettes] and four coaches
after the Italian fashion, swinging on leather braces. The
chief, or state, coach is described as being in the most
beautiful manner, with four statues at the ends, the spokes of
the wheels like fluted columns. There were seraphims’ heads
at the end of the roof and over the doorway, and festoons of
fruit in relief over the framing of the body. The coachman was
supported by two carved figures of lions, two similar lions
were at the hind wheel, and the leather braces that supported
the body and the harness were embossed with heads of animals.
The ends of the steps were serpents’ heads. The whole of the
wood and ironwork was covered with gold relieved with white.
The coach was drawn by four horses, with red and white plumes
of feathers, and the covering of the body and of the horses
was gold brocade with knotted red silk fringe. The cushions of
gold-embroidered stuff were perfumed with amber and musk, that
infused the soul of all who entered the coach with life, joy,
and supreme pleasure.”
Truly a Southern notion!
What is apparently the oldest coach to be preserved practically
intact is to be seen at Coburg. This coach was built for a particular
occasion—the marriage of John, Elector of Saxony, in 1584. The body is
long and ornate, and is hung from four carved standard posts surmounted
by crowned lions. The wheels are large—four feet eight inches and five
feet—and the roof is at a slightly higher level than the lions’ heads.
Mounting steps must have existed, but have been lost.
Not unnaturally the advent of these coaches followed upon the
commercial prosperity of each country. Germany seems to have imported
a number of carriages from Hungary, and made others from Hungarian
models, but even more prosperous than Germany at this time was Holland,
which probably possessed more coaches than any other country in Europe.
Here there would have been native designs to follow and improve upon,
and, as I shall show in a moment, it was probably from the Netherlands
that the first coach was imported into England. Antwerp, for instance,
a superlatively rich city in the sixteenth century, is credited by
Macpherson with having no less than five hundred coaches —and so
five hundred scandals, according to the local philosophers—in 1560,
at which date London had but two, and Paris no more than three. Of the
French trio of _carosses_, as they were called, one was the Queen’s
property, a second belonged to the fashionable Diana of Poitiers, and
the third had been built for the use of that corpulent noble who has
already been mentioned. Some Italian towns possessed many, others none.
There is preserved at the Musée Cluny in Paris a Veronese _carriole_
built in the sixteenth century by Giovanna Batta Maretto, with panels
painted by a distinguished artist of the time. Verona, indeed, seems
to have had many coaches. But it was easily surpassed by Ferrara,
which so early as 1509 is credited with the possession of no less than
sixty coaches, the whole of these forming the Duke’s procession on the
occasion of a state visit from the Pope. And, as Thrupp points out,
these sixty carriages were not litters or cars, as might be supposed,
but coaches, for it is particularly mentioned by the historian that
“the Duchess of Ferrara rode in a _litter_, and her ladies followed her
in twenty-two _cars_.” Spain had apparently no coaches until 1546, and
here again there was considerable opposition to their use. Yet although
England, France, and Spain seem to have been behind other countries in
taking to the new carriages, all three possessed a flourishing, if not
very large, coach-building trade before 1600.
[Illustration: _From a Print by Hofnagel_, 1582]
Here, perhaps, we may consider the introduction of the coach into
England in rather greater detail. “It is a doubtful question,” remarks
Taylor in his ill-natured way,” whether the divell brought _Tobacco_
into England in a _Coach_, or else brought a _Coach_ in a fogge or
mist of _Tobacco_.” Apparently he had an equal dislike for both coach
and tobacco. But although we owe to the water-poet such contemporary
satirical writings on the subject as there are, he is not to be trusted
as an historian. Taylor, indeed, is a very bad historian, not so
much on account of his inability to see two sides of a question, as
because, like many another poet, he has made of exaggeration a fine
art, and allowed his memory to play second fiddle to his inclinations.
It is to the worthy Stowe that we must turn for the facts. Stowe liked
the coaches little better than did Taylor, but his training had made
him exact, and we may take it for granted that he is more or less
correct when he says that the first coach to be seen upon British
roads belonged to the year 1555. Curiously enough, this is the date
of the first General Highways Act. The preamble of this Bill stated
that certain roads were “now both very noisesome and tedious to travel
in and dangerous to all passengers and carriages [carts].” The local
authorities were empowered to compel parishioners to give four days’
work every year to the repairing of the roads, though how far such
orders were carried out it would be impossible to say. The merit of
actually introducing the coach is given by Stowe to Henry Manners,
second Earl of Rutland, who caused one Walter Rippon to build him a
carriage from some foreign, most probably Dutch, pattern. This Earl
of Rutland had borne the Spurs at the coronation of Edward VI, and in
1547 had been made Constable of Nottingham Castle. He had received
the French hostages in 1550 at the time of the treaty which followed
on the loss of Boulogne. It is to be regretted that neither in his
correspondence nor in the family account-books preserved at Belvoir
is there mention of either Rippon or his coach. There is, indeed, the
“Book of John Leek of riding charges carriages [carts] and forrene
paymentes” in 1550, and another book compiled by Leek’s successor,
George Pilkington, in the following year, but all travelling entries
concern only horses and the cartage of goods. In 1555 “George Lassells,
Esquyer” was “Comptroller to the householde” and paid “to Edward
Hopkynson for ij ryding roddes of bone for my Ladye and other thinges,
xxij_d_,” but there is no mention of any carriage for his Lordship’s
own use. What is more unfortunate is that there are no account-books
of the Manners family between 1559 and 1585, and it is not until
1587, when a fourth Earl of Rutland was head of his house, that this
significant entry occurs:—
“Coach, a newe, bought in London, xxxviij_li_.xiij_s_.ij_d_.”
To go back to Rippon, it is not known who he was. He is supposed to
have built a coach for Queen Mary in 1556, and in 1564 the first
“hollow turning coach” with pillars and arches, for Queen Elizabeth,
though precisely what is meant by a “hollow turning” coach it is
difficult to conjecture. This same Rippon twenty-four years later
built another coach for the Queen, which is described as “a chariot
throne with foure pillars behind, to beare a crowne imperiale on
the toppe, and before two lower pillars, whereon stood a lion and a
dragon, the supporters of the armes of England.” It cannot have been
very comfortable, and Elizabeth seems to have preferred another coach
brought out of Holland by one William Boonen, who about 1560 was
made her coachman, a position he was still occupying at the end of
the century. This Boonen was a Dutchman, whose wife is said to have
introduced the art of starching into England, whence followed those
huge ruffs so conspicuous in all the Elizabethan portraits. Boonen’s
coach could be opened and closed at pleasure. On the occasion of the
Queen’s passing through the town of Warwick, she had “every part and
side of her coach to be opened, that all her subjects present might
behold her, which most gladly they desired.” This coach is described as
“on four wheels with seven spokes, which are apparently bound round with
a thick wooden rim secured by pegs. It is precisely such a vehicle,”
adds the anonymous historian in the _Carriage Builder’s and Harness
Maker’s Art Journal_, “as is now [1860] used by the brewers, with a
tilt over it, which opens in the centre on one side, and would contain
half a dozen persons.” On the other hand, one may safely assert that no
brewer’s cart was ever decorated in the same way, for the framing of
Elizabeth’s carriage was of wood carved in a shell pattern and gilded.
“The whole composition,” runs another account, “contains many beautiful
curves. The shell-work creeps up to the roof, which it supports, and
which is dome-shaped.... The roof is capped by five waving ostrich
feathers, one at each corner, and the fifth on the centre of the roof,
and springing from a kind of crown.” The driver’s seat was apparently
a kind of movable stool, and two horses were used. Even this coach,
however, of which there is a print by Hoefnagle, dated 1582, cannot
have been very comfortable, and in 1568, when the French ambassador
obtained an audience, Elizabeth was complaining of “aching pains” from
being knocked about in a coach driven too fast a few days before. “No
wonder,” comments one historian, “that the great queen used her coach
only when occasions of state demanded.” Whenever possible, indeed, she
used her horse. “When Queen Elizabeth came to Norwich, 1578,” wrote
Sir Thomas Browne a hundred years later, “she came on horseback from
Ipswich, by the high road to Norwich, in the summer time; but she had a
coach or two,” he added, “in her trayne.”
In the print just mentioned there is shown a second coach, which is
perhaps a better example of the carriage of the period. One sees again
its hearse-like appearance, though the top is broader than the bottom,
and the body is partially enclosed; but there is one peculiarity which
deserves particular mention. This was a small seat which projected on
either side, between the wheels. It was known as the boot. Here sat the
pages or grooms or the ladies in attendance. Taylor, of course, has
his fling against it. The booted coach, he says, is like a perpetual
cheater, wears “two Bootes and no Spurs, sometimes having two paire of
Legs and one boote; and oftentimes (against nature) most preposterously
it makes faire Ladies weare the boote; and if you note, they are
carrried backe to backe like people surpriz’d by Pyrats to be tyed in
that miserable manner, and throwne overboard into the Sea. Moreover,
it makes people imitate Sea-crabs, in being drawne Side-wayes, as they
are when they sit in the boote of the Coach.” The boot, however, was
already tending to disappear in Taylor’s day. How it originated is
not clear. It was always uncovered, whence followed much hardship,
particularly if the weather was unfavourable. Nor can one think that
it was very capacious. There is an early seventeenth-century pamphlet
entitled _My Journie_, in which a stout old lady is put into the boot
of a coach, and cannot move. When going uphill all the passengers
are supposed to get out and walk, but the old lady, once settled,
refuses to budge, and, indeed, cannot be extricated until the end of
the journey. There is further mention of the discomfort in a boot in
1663, when Edward Barker, writing to his father, a Lancashire squire,
complains of his troubles in the side seat. “I got to London,” he says,
“on Saturday last, my journey was noe ways pleasant, being forced to
ride in the boote all the waye, yͤ company yᵗ came up wᵗͪ mee were
persons of greate quality as knightes and ladyes. My journeys expence
was 30 _s._ This traval hath soe indisposed mee, yᵗ I am resolved
never to ride againe in yͤ coatch. I am extreamly hot and feverish.”
The monstrous width of these early coaches followed, of course, on
their projecting side seats, which only entirely disappeared when
the coach had come to be completely enclosed and provided with glass
windows.
It may be that the boot in process of time was metamorphosed into the
large, deep, four-sided basket which was strapped to the back of public
coaches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and, indeed, this
basket seems to have been called the boot in eighteenth-century stage
coaches. It was probably in such a basket-boot as this that Mr. Pepys
put his great barrel of oysters, “as big as sixteen others,” which was
given him in 1664.
An interesting point in this connection is that those who travelled on
the seatless and presumably most uncomfortable roof of a coach plying
for hire, paid more for the privilege than did those who rode in the
boot.
However greatly the chroniclers may differ as to the date of the actual
introduction, and others besides Taylor disagree with Stowe, there
seems no doubt that by 1585 many of the nobility and some wealthy
commoners owned private coaches, and, indeed, certain enterprising
tradesmen, as will appear, let other coaches on hire at so much per day.
“After a while,” says Stowe, “divers great ladies, with
a great jealousy of the Queen’s displeasure, made them
coaches and rid them up and down the countries, to the great
admiration of all the beholders, but then little by little
they grew usual amongst the nobilitie and others of sort, and
within twenty years became a great trade of coach-making.”
Indeed, every one of any wealth was eager to possess them. A private
coach settled any doubts as to your quality. It was a new fashion, a
new excitement. “So a woman,” says Quicksilver, the rake, in _Eastward
Hoe_, “marry to ride in a coach, she cares not if she rides to her
ruin. ’Tis the great end of many of their marriages.” And again, in Ben
Jonson’s _Alchemist_ it is said of the Countess that she
“... has her pages, ushers
Her six mares—
Nay, eight!
To hurry her through London, to the Exchange,
Bethlem, the china-houses—
Yes, and have
The citizens gape at her, and praise her tires.”
Even the plain country-folk seem to have been smitten with the new toy,
for toy it was to them. “Has he ne’er a little odd cart,” asks Waspe
in _Bartholomew Fair_, “for you to make a coach on, in the country,
with four pied hobby-horses?” Any shift for a coach, thought he, and no
doubt voiced public opinion.
The first owners of coaches appear to have been those who had
travelled abroad. So early as 1556, Sir Thomas Hoby, who had been our
ambassador to France, possessed a coach and offered to lend it to
the Lady Cecil. The account-book for 1573 of the Kytson family, of
Hengrave, in Suffolk, mentions another early coach. “For my mʳᵉˢ
[mistress’s] coche, with all the furniture thereto belonging except
horses—xxxiiij_li._xiiij_s._ For the painting of my mʳ and mʳᵉˢ
armes upon the coche—ij_s._vj_d._” In 1579 the Earl of Arundel is
said to have brought a coach into England from Germany, and this coach
is interesting from the fact that certain historians have credited it
with being the first coach in England. How such a tradition arose is
not clear, but it may be that this German coach had certain features
which more nearly approached those of the later Stuart, fully-enclosed,
coaches. Further details are to be found in the Manners notebooks,
and these afford a glimpse of the methods adopted by the coachmakers,
not yet a large body, of the day. In the notebooks of Thomas Screven,
1596-97, after an item for twenty-eight shillings for three-quarters
of “scarlet sleves and labelles for his L[ordship’s] parlyament robes”
comes another of six shillings “to my Lady Adeline’s coachman,” and
one, just below, of greater interest:—
“Item paid to Wm. Wright, coachmaker, in parte of xl_li._ for
a coache now made, xx_li._”
After that, in the 1598-99 book comes an item to “the Countess of
South[ampton’s] coachman that wayted on my Lord to Dertford, v_s._”
This suggests the growing popularity of the coach, more especially
as there is another disbursement in the same year to the Countess of
Essex’s coachman. Then follow from November 25th, 1598, details of the
expenses of the new coach for my Lord’s own use—which apparently took
considerable time to furnish.
“Item for ij paire of new wheeles for the coache, tymber
worke and iron work, and setting them on the axeltrees,
iij_li._xiij_s._iiij_d._; payntinge them in oyle colour,
vj_s._viij_d._; a new pole for the horses to drawe by,
ij_s._vj_d._; a paire of springe trees, iij_s._iij_d._”
The provender bill for six horses is given, also an item “for setting
up the coach horses at dyvers times at Walsingham Howse, iiij_s._;
at Hatton Howse, xij_d._; at Baynardes Castle, ij_s._; dressing and
oyling the coach, ij_s._”; while the most necessary whip costs Mr.
Screven twelve pence. Other payments are six shillings for two new
bearing braces for the “double hanging” of the coach—here at any
rate is definite mention of suspension, a fact which might suggest
that, after all, either Rippon’s or Lord Arundel’s coach had been
of the suspended type—four shillings for a long spring brace, two
shillings and sixpence for a new “wynge,” and sixteen pence for two
“bearing raynes.” The new coach, however, is not ready in time for
his Lordship, who thereupon hires one with three horses to take him
“to the Court at Nonesuch, 23, 24, and 25 of September, at xvj_s.
per diem_.” Meanwhile payments for his own coach continue. For four
“skynnes of orange colour leather goate” he pays various sums; for the
timber work, for more painting, for a covering in “black lether,” and
for making the “curtaynes, and setting on the firinge, and making the
blew cloth cover” a sum of twenty-six pounds, nineteen shillings, is
expended. Nor is this all. My Lord was evidently determined to make his
coach as gorgeous as possible. Nine yards of “marygold coulour velvet
for the seat and bed in the coach” were required, and each yard cost
twenty-three shillings. The quilting for the bed cost forty shillings.
In addition, there was a lace of “crymosin silk” and no less than “v
elles of crymosin taffaty for curtaynes,” costing three pounds fifteen
shillings; also “9 yardes of blew clothe for a cover.” Then, of great
interest, comes the final entry:—
“Item, paid to Ryly, embroderer, in full for embrodering
iij sumpter clothes of crymosin with his L[ordship’s] armes
thereon at large, and vij otheres embrodered onely with great
peacocks, with carsey for the garding and tasselles and
frynge, 14 July, lxiiij_li._”
Mr. Ryly was well paid for his work[21].
From such details it is possible to imagine what this and other coaches
of the time were like. You figure a huge, gaudy, curtained apparatus
with projecting sides and incomplete panels, large enough to contain
a fair-sized bed, hung roughly from four posts, and capable of being
dragged at little better than a snail’s pace—“four-wheeled Tortoyses”
Taylor calls them—along roads hardly worthy of the name. Twenty miles
a day was considered good going. Says Portia, in the _Merchant of
Venice_:—
“... I’ll tell thee all my whole device
When I am in my coach, which stays for us
At the park gate; and therefore haste away,
For we must measure twenty miles to-day.”
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.
[Illustration: _Neapolitan Sedan Chair_
_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.
[Illustration: “_The Social Pinch_”
_By John Kay_]
[Illustration: _Sedans in “The Present Age”_
_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.
John Evelyn in his Diary gives interesting glimpses of such carriages
and other vehicles as he saw during his several European tours. In
Brussels (1641) he was allowed the use of Sir Henry de Vic’s coach and
six, and travelled luxuriously in it as far as Ghent. “On the way,” he
notes, “I met with divers little waggons, prettily contrived, and full
of peddling merchandize, drawn by mastiff dogs, harnessed completely
like so many coach-horses; in some four, in others six, as in Brussels
itself I had observed. In Antwerp I saw, as I remember, four dogs draw
five lusty children in a chariot.” When dogs were first used for the
purpose of traction does not appear, but they are still to be seen in
the Netherlands in a like capacity. A few days later, to continue with
Evelyn’s observations, he was going from Ostend to Dunkirk “by waggon
... the journey being made all on the sea sands.” On his return to
England, however, it is to be noticed that he rode post to Canterbury.
In 1643 he was again in Paris, mentioning “the multitude of coaches
passing every moment over the bridge,” this being, he says, to a new
spectator, “an agreeable diversion.” In the following year, while
standing in the garden of the Tuileries, he saw “so many coaches as
one would hardly think could be maintained in the whole city, going
late as it was, towards the course”—the fashionable rendezvous of the
day—“the circle being capable of containing a hundred coaches to turn
commodiously, and the larger of the plantations for five or six coaches
abreast.” The road from Paris to Orleans he describes as “excellent.”
Coming to Italy, he found Milan, in spite of the narrowness of its
streets, abounding in rich coaches. In Paris again, two or three
years afterwards, the design of a new coach so took his fancy that he
determined, like his friend Mr. Pepys, to possess one for himself.
And so on May 29th, 1652, “I went,” he writes, “to give orders about a
coach to be made against my wife’s coming, being my first coach, the
pattern whereof I brought out of Paris.” This was probably “booted,”
but differed from the earlier coaches in having a curved roof.
The commonest French coach of this time seems to have been the
_corbillard_, a flat-bottomed, half-open, half-close coach, furnished
with curtains of cloth or leather in the front part. These were merely
tied on to the supports, and would roll up when required. Doors there
were none, but there was a “movable rail, over which a leather screen
was hung” at the back portion of the carriage, which was about six
feet long, and here were the seats. There were also projecting movable
step-seats. Possibly Evelyn saw a newer model with a curved bottom and
door half-way up, panelled in the lower part, but curtained above. Such
a carriage was hung low, and would have swung from side to side, giving
such passengers as were “bad sailors” a fit of nausea.
The English-designed coaches of this time, though without glass
windows, were almost completely enclosed, and, compared with the new
_chariots_, which were just upon making their appearance, of a huge
size. In many of them three people could sit abreast, and seven or
eight find room for themselves. In 1641 when Charles I passed through
London on his return from Scotland, his was the only coach in the royal
procession, but seven people, including His Majesty, were driving,
apparently in comfort, within it.
The Commonwealth produced no new carriage, although isolated
experiments were already being made. Cromwell himself was wont to drive
his own coach and six “for recreation-sake” in Hyde Park, then as now a
fashionable resort.
“When my Lord Protector’s coach,” wrote Misson, a Frenchman
then on a visit to England, “came into the Park with Colonel
Ingleby and my Lord’s three daughters, the coaches and horses
flocked about them like some miracle. But they galloped (after
the mode court-pace now) round and round the Park, and all
that great multitude hunted them and caught them still at the
turn like a hare, and then made a lane with all reverent haste
for them, and so after them again, and I never saw the like in
my life.”
Cromwell’s desire to play coachman once led to an accident which might
have been serious. The particulars are given in a letter from the Dutch
Ambassador to the States-General, dated October 16th, 1654:—
“His Highness, only accompanied with secretary Thurloe and
some few of his gentlemen and servants, went to take the
air in Hyde Park, when he caused some dishes of meat to be
brought, when he had his dinner; and afterwards had a mind to
drive the coach himself. Having put only the secretary into
it,” he whipped up “those six grey horses, which the Count of
Oldenburgh had presented unto His Highness, who drove pretty
handsomely for some time. But at last, provoking these horses
too much with the whip, they grew unruly and ran so fast that
the postillion could not hold them in, whereby His Highness
was flung out of the coach upon the pole.... The secretary’s
ankle was hurt leaping out, and he keeps his chamber.”
[Illustration: _Coach in the time of Charles I_
(_From “Coach and Sedan Pleasantly Disputing”_)]
[Illustration: _Coach in the time of Charles II_
(_From Thrupp’s “History of Coaches”_)]
“From this,” comments Sir Walter Gilbey, who quotes the letter, “it is
evident that when six horses were used a postillion rode one of the
leaders and controlled them; while the driver managed the wheelers and
middle pair. When four horses were driven,” he continues, “it was the
custom to have two outriders, one to ride at the leaders’ heads, and
one at the two wheelers’. In town this would be merely display, but on
a journey the outriders’ horses might replace those of the team in case
of accident, or, more frequently, be added to them to help drag the
coach over a stretch of bad road.”
It is just possible that this coach which was overturned by Cromwell’s
faulty driving is at present in existence, repaired, of course, and
redecorated, and, incidentally, painted by Cipriani, as Mr. Speaker’s
coach. This undoubtedly belongs to the period, and one writer actually
commits himself to the statement that the two are identical. A commoner
report assigns the Speaker’s coach in the first place to Lenthall,
Cromwell’s Speaker. Whatever be its history, the coach is a fine
example of Jacobean work. It is of carved oak, the body being hung
upon leather braces. The workmanship, Mr. Oakley Williams thinks,[28]
is Flemish. Cipriani’s work, added late in the eighteenth century, is
still in good preservation. Five people can comfortably sit inside.
“The Speaker,” says Mr. Williams, “presumably occupied the seat of
honour alone. Opposite him sat his Chaplain and the Sergeant-at-Arms.
For the accommodation of his other attendants ... a low bench is
arranged across the floor of the coach, with a semicircular space for
the legs of its occupants scooped out against either door”—relic,
of course, of the boot. “The coach,” he continues, after mentioning
that the Speaker always has his own arms painted on the side of the
body, and is allowed an escort of a single Lifeguardsman, “weighs two
tons one hundredweight and several pounds, yet for all its size it so
beautifully hung and balanced that an able-bodied man was able without
undue effort to draw it out for my inspection. Its coach-house is one
of the vaults in the inner courtyard of the House of Lords.” Both
origin and subsequent history of this coach, however, are wrapped in an
impenetrable mystery.
Cromwell’s mishap naturally gave the Royalist writers an opportunity
for satire. Cleveland wrote the following lines:—
“The whip again; away! ’tis too absurd
That thou should lash with whipcord now, but sword.
I’m pleased to fancy how the glad compact
Of Hackney coachmen sneer at the last act.
Hark! how the scoffing concourse hence derives
The proverb, ‘Needs must go when th’ devil drives.’
Yonder a whisper cries, ‘’Tis a plain case
He turned us out to put himself in place;
But, God-a-mercy, horses once for aye
Stood to ’t, and turned him out as well as we.’
Another, not behind him with his mocks,
Cries out, ‘Sir, faith, you were in the wrong box.’
He did presume to rule because, forsooth,
He’s been a horse-commander since his youth,
But he must know there’s a difference in the reins
Of horses fed with oats and fed with grains.
I wonder at his frolic, for be sure
Four hamper’d coach-horses can fling a brewer;
But pride will have a fall; such the world’s course is.
He [who] can rule three realms can’t guide four horses;
See him that trampell’d thousands in their gore;
Dismounted by a party but of four.
But we have done with ’t, and we may call
The driving Jehu, Phaeton in his fall.
I wish to God, for these three kingdoms’ sake,
His neck, and not the whip, had giv’n the crack.”
Evelyn met with a similar mishap, but fortunately escaped injury.
He, too, was accustomed to ride in Hyde Park, and on one occasion is
grumbling that “every coach” there “was made to pay a shilling, and a
horse sixpence, by a sordid fellow who had purchased it of the State,
as they called it.”
Such experiments as were being made in this country were in the
direction of a safer and swifter vehicle than those in general use.
So early as 1625, one Edward Knapp had been granted a patent for
“hanging the bodies of carriages on springs of steel.” Apparently
Knapp was wholly unsuccessful, but forty years later Colonel Blunt,
working upon similar lines, produced several carriages which, if not
entirely satisfactory in themselves, led the way towards a wider
appreciation of the problems in question. If, as seems probable, he
was identical with the Blunt or Blount of Wicklemarsh, near Blackheath
(afterwards Sir Harry Blount), who had travelled extensively in
Turkey and elsewhere, it may be that he had brought back with him
several continental curiosities. We hear, indeed, of a French chariot
in his possession. In 1657 the Colonel was making experiments with
a “way-wiser” or “adometer” which exactly “measured the miles ...
showing these by an index as we went on. It had three circles, one
pointing to the number of rods, another to the miles, by 10 to 1000,
with all the subdivisions of quarters; very pretty,” opines Evelyn,
“and useful.” This seems to have been the first instrument of the kind,
and is overlooked by Beckmann in his account of such contrivances. The
Colonel’s work was brought to the notice of the newly formed Royal
Society, and a committee was formed to investigate it. The first model
shown to this committee was of “a chariot with four springs, esteemed
by him very easy both to the rider and the horse, and at the same time
cheap.” The Committee also examined the designs of Dr. Robert Hooke,
a distinguished member of the Society, and Professor of Geometry at
Gresham College, who “produced the model of a chariot with two wheels
and short double springs to be driven by one horse; the chair of it
being so fixed upon two springs that the person sitting just over or
rather a little behind the axle-tree was, when the experiment was made
at Colonel Blunt’s house, carried with as much ease as one could be
in the French chariot without at all burthening the horse.”[29] Dr.
Hooke showed “two drafts of this model having this circumstantial
difference—one of these was contrived so that the boy sitting on a
seat made for him behind the chair and guiding the reins over the top
of it, drives the horse. The other by placing the chair behind and the
saddle on the horse’s back being to be borne up by the shafts, that the
boy riding on it and driving the horse should be little or no burden to
the horse.”
The Colonel continued experimenting both with the older coaches and a
new light chariot. In 1665 Mr. Pepys was taken to see an improvement of
his on a coach.
“I met my Lord Brouncker, Sir Frederick Murrey, Dean Wilkins,
and Mr. Hooke, going by coach to Colonel Blunt’s to dinner....
No extraordinary dinner, nor any other entertainment good;
but afterwards to the tryal of some experiments about making
of coaches easy. And several we tried; but one did prove
mighty easy, not here for me to describe, but the whole body
of the coach lies upon one long spring, and we all, one after
another, rid in it; and it is very fine and likely to take.”
A few months later Pepys saw the new chariot itself.
“After dinner comes Colonel Blunt in his new chariot made with
springs; as that was of wicker, where in a while since we rode
at his house. And he hath rode, he says, now his journey, many
miles in it with one horse, and out-drives any coach, and
out-goes any horse, and so easy he says. So for curiosity, I
went into it to try it, and up the hill [Shooter’s Hill] to
the heath [Blackheath], and over the cart ruts, and found it
pretty well, but not so easy as he pretends.”
The Colonel persevered. At the beginning of the next year the Royal
Society’s committee met again at his house to consider, says Pepys, “of
the business of chariots, and to try their new invention, which I saw
here my Lord Brouncker ride in: where the coachman sits astride upon a
pole over the horse, but do not touch the horse, which is a pretty odde
thing; but it seems it is most easy for the horse, and, as they say,
for the man also.”
Others were also at work upon carriage improvement, and in 1667 the
Royal Society “generally approved” of a chariot invented by a Dr.
Croune. “No particulars of the vehicle are given,” says Sir Walter
Gilbey, “we are only told that ‘some fence was proposed to be made for
the coachman against the kicking of the horse.’” In the same year, Sir
William Pen possessed a light chariot in which Pepys drove out one day.
This, he says, was “plain, but pretty and more fashionable in shape
than any coaches he hath, and yet do not cost him, harness and all,
above £32.”
All such experiments were undoubtedly in the direction of a light,
swift carriage, such as was built about 1660 in Germany by Philip de
Chiesa, a Piedmontese, in the service of the Duke of Prussia. Indeed,
it is quite possible that Colonel Blunt either possessed, or had seen,
one of de Chiesa’s carriages, which were none other than the famous and
popular _berlins_.[30]
So far Germany had been taking the lead. Her State coaches were the
most wonderful in the world, and her coachbuilders were designing
lesser coaches for the ordinary folk. But the _berlin_ was the first of
these lesser carriages to catch the public fancy, and enjoy more than
a local success. Now the _berlin_ differed in the first place from
previous carriages in having two perches instead of the single pole,
“and between these two perches, from the front transom to the hind
axle-bed, two strong leather braces were placed, with jacks or small
windlasses, to wind them up tighter if they stretched.” The bottom
of the coach was no longer flat, and these braces of leather allowed
the body to play up and down instead of swinging from side to side as
before. Here, then, you had an entirely new principle.
“In the Imperial mews at Vienna,” says Thrupp, “are four
coach berlins, which, I think, may belong to this period.
They are said to have been built for the Emperor Leopold who
reigned at Vienna from 1658 to 1700, and Kink describes this
Emperor’s carriage as covered with red cloth and as having
glass panels; he also says they were called the Imperial glass
coaches. It is possible that the coaches have been a little
altered from the time of their construction, but I consider
that in these four we have the oldest coaches with solid doors
and glasses all round that exist in Europe. Whether they
are identical with the Emperor Leopold’s wedding-carriages
matters much less than the influence the _berlin_ undoubtedly
had upon the coach-building of that period. It was the means
of introducing the double perch, which, although it is not
now in fashion, was adopted for very many carriages both in
England and abroad, up to 1810. Crane-necks to perches were
suggested by the form of the _berlin_ perch; and as bodies
swinging from standard posts suggested the position of the C
spring, so bodies resting upon long leather braces suggested
the horizontal and elbow springs to which we owe so much. The
first _berlin_ was made as a small _vis-à-vis_ coach—small
because it was to be used as a light travelling carriage, and
narrow because it was to hang between the two perches, and
was only needed to carry two persons inside. It was such an
improvement in lightness and appearance upon the cumbersome
coaches that carried eight persons, that it at once found
favour, and was imitated in Paris and still more in London.”
These early _berlins_ were not nearly so gorgeous as the heavier
coaches which they gradually supplanted. Red cloth and black nails had
taken the place of the gilt ornamentation and crimson hangings of the
previous generation.[31] Only on festivals, we learn, the black harness
“was ornamented with silk fringe.” The coaches used by the Emperor
himself had leather traces, but the ladies of his suite had to be
content with carriages the traces of which were made of rope.
The glass windows which were such a conspicuous feature of the
_berlins_, were also used in the larger coaches, finally, as I have
said, eliminating the boot. Mr. Charles Harper thinks that the first
English coach to possess them belonged in 1661 to the Duke of York.
At first these windows seem to have caused trouble, and there is the
ludicrous incident mentioned by Pepys, of my Lady Peterborough who
“being in her glass-coach with the glass up and seeing a lady pass
by in a coach whom she would salute, the glass was so clear that she
thought it had been open, and so ran her head through the glass!” Lady
Ashly did not like the new invention, because, as she said, the windows
were for ever flying open while the coach was running over a bad piece
of road. Lady Peterborough’s misfortune was tribute indeed to the maker!
In this matter of the glass it would seem that Spain had taken the
lead, and it is quite possible that Spain invented the first two-seated
chariots. In 1631, thirty years before the first _berlin_ was made,
an Infanta of Spain is reported to have traversed Carinthia “in a
glass-carriage in which no more than two persons could sit.” What this
was like we do not know. It may have had rude springs, and been built
from the common coach models to a smaller measurement; it was certainly
bootless, and framed glass or mica took the place of curtains. In
France the first coaches to have glass windows, according to M. Roubo,
created something of a Court scandal in the time of Louis XIII. The
glass, he says, was first used in the upper panels of the doors, but
was soon extended to the whole of the upper half of the sides and front
of the body, so making of the carriage literally a glass-coach.
You may learn more of the English seventeenth-century carriages from
Pepys than from any other writer; nor is this a matter for wonder.
Pepys had a knack of knowing just exactly what posterity would desire
to know. From his Diary, we learn incidentally that the watermen
were still endeavouring to regain their lost prestige and custom,
but by this time coaches had enormously increased in number—in 1662
there were nearly 2500 hackneys in London alone—and thenceforth they
are hardly heard of. To be any one, moreover, you had to have your
private coach. Doctors, for instance, found it very well worth their
while to keep a coach, though, as Sir Thomas Browne told his son,
they were certainly “more for state than for businesse.” On the other
hand those who were well able to keep a private carriage occasionally
preferred the use of a hackney, and sometimes at times when they had
no business to do so. Mr. Pepys, with clear ideas upon the dignity and
responsibilities of rank, was indignant at any such foolery. He was
told, he recalls in one place, “of the ridiculous humour of our King
and Knights of the Garter the other day, who, whereas heretofore their
robes were only to be worn during their ceremonies and service, these,
as proud of their coats, did wear them all day till night, and then
rode into the Park with them on. Nay, and he tells us he did see my
Lord Oxford and Duke of Monmouth in a hackney-coach with two footmen in
the Park, with their robes on; which is a most scandalous thing, so as
all gravity may be said to be lost amongst us.”
The private coach, too, was the last luxury to be given up after
financial embarrassment. So we have Lady Flippant, in Wycherley’s _Love
in a Wood_, saying, “Ah, Mrs. Joyner, nothing grieves me like the
putting down my coach! For the fine clothes, the fine lodgings,—let
’em go; for a lodging is as unnecessary a thing to a widow that has a
coach, as a hat to a man that has a good peruke. For, as you see about
town, she is most probably at home in her coach:—she eats, and drinks,
and sleeps in her coach; and for her visits, she receives them in the
playhouse.” No lady’s virtue, according to this cynical dramatist, was
proof against a coach and six.
At the time of the introduction of the light, two-seated chariots,
ordinary private coaches were also changing in shape. In Charles I’s
reign they had been both very long and very wide; in his son’s time
they became much slenderer and less unwieldy. Alterations in this
direction were possibly suggested by the ubiquitous and most convenient
sedans, and, indeed, there is an allusion to this change of shape in
Sir William Davenant’s _First Day’s Entertainment at Rutland House_,
in which, during a dialogue between a Russian and a Londoner, the
foreigner says: “I have now left your houses, and am passing through
your streets; but not in a coach, for they are uneasily hung, and so
narrow that I took them for sedans upon wheels.”
Stage-coaches, however, remained just as huge and just as gorgeous
as ever. They were built, more particularly in Italy, in the old
fashion—unenclosed and curtained. Count Gozzadini describes a State
coach built in 1629 for the marriage of Duke Edward Farnese with
the Lady Margaret of Tuscany, and as we shall see in a moment, this
differed only in the details of its ornamentation from the State coach
in which Lord Castlemaine made his public entry into Rome sixty years
later.
The body of the Farnese coach, says Gozzadini, “was lined with crimson
velvet and gold thread, and the woodwork covered with silver plates,
chased and embossed and perforated, in half relief. It could carry
eight persons, four on the seats attached to the doors, and four in the
back and front. The roof was supported by eight silver columns, on the
roof were eight silver vases, and unicorns’ heads and lilies in full
relief projected from the roof and ends of the body here and there. The
roof was composed of twenty sticks, converging from the edge to the
centre, which was crowned with a great rose with silver leaves on the
outside, and inside by the armorial bearings of the Princes of Tuscany
and Farnese held up by cupids. The curtains of the sides and back
of the coach were of crimson velvet, embroidered with silver lilies
with gold leaves. At the back and front of the coach-carriage were
statues of unicorns, surrounded by cupids and wreathed with lilies,
grouped round the standards from which the body was suspended; on
the tops of the standards were silver vases, with festoons of fruit,
and wraught in silver. In the front were also statues of Justice and
Mercy, supporting the coachman’s seat. The braces suspending the body
were of leather, covered with crimson velvet; the wheels and pole were
plated with polished silver. The whole was drawn by six horses, with
harness and trappings covered with velvet, embroidered with gold and
silver thread, and with silver buckles. It is said that twenty-five
excellent silversmiths worked at this coach for two years, and used up
25,000 ounces of silver; and that the work was superintended by two
master coachbuilders, one from Parma and the other from Piacenza.” Lord
Castlemaine’s procession into Rome contained three hundred and thirty
coaches, of which thirteen were his own property; and of these two were
State coaches. These likewise were not properly enclosed, and had no
glass.
“They were hung,” says Thrupp, “inside and out, with
beautifully embroidered cloths, the one coach with crimson,
the other with azure-blue velvet, and gold and silver work.
The roofs were adorned with scroll work and vases gilt;
under the roof were curtains of silver fringes, and the
ambassador’s armorial bearings. The carriage of the principal
coach was adorned in front with two large Tritons, of carved
wood, gilt all over, that supported a cushion for the coachman
between them, and from their shoulders the braces depended.
The footboard was formed by a conch shell, between two
dolphins. In the rear of the coach were two more Tritons,
supporting not only the leather braces of the coach, but two
other statues of Neptune and Cybele, who in turn held a royal
crown. Below Neptune and Cybele, and projecting backwards,
were a lion and a unicorn, and several cupids and wreaths of
flowers. The wheels had moulded rims, and the spokes were
hidden by curving foliage carving. The second coach had
plainer wheels and fewer statues about it.”
They may have been magnificent, but they were certainly not very
beautiful. Much the same, too, might be said of those coaches in which
foreign ambassadors made their public entry into London. In 1660 Evelyn
saw the Prince de Ligne, Ambassador-Extraordinary from Spain, make a
splendid entry with seventeen coaches, and a month later Pepys was
watching “the Duke de Soissons go from his audience with a very great
deal of state: his own coach all red velvet covered with gold lace, and
drawn by six barbes, and attended by twenty pages very rich in cloths.”
In this year, 1660, there was a proclamation against the excessive
number of hackney-coaches, and two years later Commissioners were
appointed “for reforming the buildings, ways, streets and incumbrances,
and regulating the hackney-coaches in the city of London.” Of this body
Evelyn was sworn a member in May, 1662. Pepys, however, never found
any difficulty in obtaining one when he desired, and, indeed, of late
years, pressure of business had made a hackney-coach an almost daily
necessity. Finally, he found it cheaper to possess one of his own, and
the story of this coach is particularly interesting, and may be told in
some detail.
Long ago, Mr. Pepys had dreamt of owning a private coach. “Talking
long in bed with my wife,” he writes on March 2nd, 1661-2, “about our
frugal life for the time to come, proposing to her what I could and
would do, if I were worth £2000, that is, be a knight, and keep my
coach, which pleased her.” Times were bad, however, and although Pepys
enjoyed many a ride in a friend’s coach and witnessed Colonel Blunt’s
experiments, the great idea did not mature. But one of his particular
friends, Thomas Povey, M.P., who had been a colleague of his on the
Tangier committee, himself the owner of at least one coach, seems to
have kept Pepys’s ambitions astir. This was more especially the case in
1665, at which time Mr. Povey had purchased one of the new and already
fashionable chariots. This excited Pepys’s admiration. “Comes Mr.
Povey’s coach,” he records, “and so rode most nobly, in his most pretty
and best-contrived chariot in the world, with many new contrivances,
his never having till now, within a day or two, been yet finished.”
Povey was something of an inventor himself. Evelyn calls him a “nice
contriver of all elegancies, and most formal.” The necessary money
was apparently not forthcoming for a year or two, but in April, 1667,
Pepys had a mind “to buy enough ground to build a coach-house and
stable; for,” says he, “I have had it much in my thoughts lately that
it is not too much for me now, in degree or cost, to keep a coach,
but contrarily, that I am almost ashamed to be seen in a hackney.”
Accordingly, Mr. Commander, his lawyer, was bidden to look for a
suitable piece of ground. The idea had now taken definite shape, and
Pepys was committed. “I find it necessary,” he says, “for me, both in
respect of honour and the profit of it also, my expence in Hackney
coaches being now so great, to keep a coach, and therefore will do it.”
The next entry shows the first of his disappointments:—
“Mr. Commander tells me, after all, that I cannot have a
lease of the ground for my coach-house and stable, till a
lawsuit be ended. I am a little sorry, because I am pretty
full in my mind of keeping a coach; but yet,” he adds
philosophically—the date was June 4th, 1667—“when I think of
it again, the Dutch and French both at sea, and we poor, and
still out of order, I know not yet what turns there may be.”
So the summer passed, and “most of our discourse,” he admits, “is about
our keeping a coach the next year, which pleases my wife mightily; and
if I continue as able as now, it will save me money.” At the beginning
of the new year Will Griffin was ordered to make fresh inquiries about
the most necessary coach-house, but nothing seems to have been done
until the autumn. Then Pepys, more or less it would seem on the spur of
the moment, chose a coach for himself, and immediately disliked it. No
one seems to have given him the same advice. Some ladies, for instance,
Mrs. Pepys amongst them, preferred the large old-fashioned coaches.
Others wanted the latest thing from Paris. Says Mrs. Flirt in _The
Gentleman Dancing-Master_: “But take notice, I will have no little,
dirty, second-hand chariot, new furnished, but a large, sociable,
well-painted coach; nor will I keep it till it be as well-known as
myself, and it comes to be called Flirt-coach.” Her friend, Monsieur
Paris, shrugs his shoulders. “’Tis very well,” says he, “you must
have your great, gilt, fine painted coach. I’m sure they are grown so
common already amongst you that ladies of quality begin to take up with
hackneys again.” It was felt, no doubt, that fashion in carriages as
in everything else would speedily change. Mr. Pepys must have found
considerable difficulty in making up his mind. The new chariots were
small, light and, so far as he knew, most fashionable; but possibly
they were not quite to his taste, and equally possibly they might not
be fashionable in ten years’ time. Also they perhaps lacked the solid
dignity of the older carriages, and were less likely to attract public
attention—two important considerations. In the end, however, he seems
to have chosen a large coach of the old style. Mr. Povey saw it, and
poor Pepys knew at once that a dreadful mistake had been made.
“He and I ... talk of my coach,” runs the Diary for 30th
October, “and I got him to go and see it, where he finds most
infinite fault with it, both as to being out of fashion and
heavy, with so good reason, that I am mightily glad of his
having corrected me in it; and so I do resolve to have one of
his build, and with his advice, both in coach and horses, he
being the fittest man in the world for it.”
Accordingly on the following Sunday, “Mr. Povey sent his coach for
my wife and I to see, which we liked mightily, and will endeavour to
have him get us just such another.” Mr. Povey thought that his own
coachmaker had a replica for sale. Pepys thereupon went down into the
neighbourhood of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, found the man, but learnt to his
disgust that the coach had been sold that very morning. At the end of
the week, however, in company with his friend, he “spent the afternoon
going up and down the coachmakers in Cow Lane, and did see several, and
last did pitch upon a little chariott, whose body was framed, but not
covered, at the widow’s, that made Mr. Lowther’s fine coach; and we are
mightily pleased with it, it being light, and will be very genteel and
sober; to be covered with leather, but yet will hold four. Being much
satisfied with this, I carried him to White Hall. Home, where I give my
wife a good account of the day’s work.”
Having bought the coach, it was necessary to complete the arrangements
about a coach-house, and in the same week Pepys fared forth again for
the purpose.
“This afternoon I did go out towards Sir D. Gauden’s, thinking
to have bespoke a place for my coach and horses, when I
have them, at the Victualling Office; but find the way so
bad and long that I returned, and looked up and down for
places elsewhere, in an inne, which I hope to get with more
convenience than there.”
This not proving satisfactory, Sir Richard Ford was persuaded to lend
his own coach-yard. Then follow in quick succession the other entries:—
“_28th November, 1668._—All the morning at the Office, where,
while I was sitting, one comes and tells me that my coach is
come. So I was forced to go out, and to Sir Richard Ford’s,
where I spoke to him, and he is very willing to have it
brought in, and stand there: and so I ordered it, to my great
content, it being mighty pretty, only the horses do not please
me, and, therefore, resolve to have better.”
“_29th November._—This morning my coachman’s clothes come
home and I like the livery mightily.... Sir W. Warren ...
tells me, as soon as he saw my coach yesterday, he wished that
the owner might not contract envy by it; but I told him it was
now manifestly for my profit to keep a coach, and that, after
employments like mine for eight years, it were hard if I could
not be thought to be justly able to do that.”[32]
“_30th November._—My wife after dinner, went abroad the
first time in her coach, calling on Roger Pepys, and visiting
Mrs. Creed, and my cozen Turner. Thus ended this month, with
very good intent, but most expenseful to my purse on things
of pleasure, having furnished my wife’s closet and the best
chamber, and a coach and horses, that ever I knew in the
world; and I am put into the greatest condition of outward
state that ever I was in, or hoped ever to be, or desired; and
this at a time when we do daily expect great changes in this
office; and by all reports we must, all of us, turn out.”
“_2nd December._—Abroad with my wife, the first time that
ever I rode in my own coach, which do make my heart rejoice,
and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me and continue
it.”
“_3rd December._— ... and so home, it being mighty pleasure
to go alone with my poor wife, in a coach of our own, to a
play, and makes us appear mighty great, I think, in the world;
at least, greater than ever I could, or my friends for me,
have once expected; or, I think, than ever any of my family
ever yet lived, in my memory, but my cozen Pepys in Salisbury
Court.”
“_4th December._—I carried my wife ... to Smithfield, where
they sit in the coach, while Mr. Pickering, who meets me at
Smithfield and I, and W. Hewer and a friend of his, a jockey
did go about to see several pairs of horses, for my coach; but
it was late, and we agreed on none, but left it to another
time: but here I do see instances of a piece of craft and
cunning that I never dreamed of, concerning the buying and
choosing of horses.”
There were plenty of horses to be had, it seems, but either Mr. Pepys
did not like them or he was afraid of being cheated. “Up and down,”
he is recording a week or so later, “all the afternoon about horses,
and did see the knaveries and tricks of jockeys. At last, however, we
concluded upon giving £50 for a fine pair of black horses we saw this
day se’nnight; and so set Mr. Pickering down near his house, whom I am
much beholden to, for his care herein, and he hath admired skill, I
perceive, in this business, and so home.” So the horses were changed,
and for a while Mr. Pepys was obliged to revert to the despised
hackney, his “coachman being this day about breaking of my horses to
the coach, they having never yet drawn.” Towards the end of the month
the new horses were ready, and their master made his first ride behind
them on a visit to the Temple, though later in the day he was again
using the old pair, “not daring yet to use the others too much, but
only to enter them.” Then, before the new year, came the first mishap.
“Up, and vexed a little to be forced to pay 40s. for a glass
of my coach, which was broke the other day, nobody knows how,
within the door, while it was down; but I do doubt that I did
break it myself with my knees.”
At the beginning of February another misfortune is recorded:—
“Just at Holborn Circuit the bolt broke, that holds the
fore-wheels to the perch, and so the horses went away with
them, and left the coachman and us; but being near our
coachmaker’s and we staying in a little ironmonger’s shop, we
were presently supplied with another.”
Accidents of this kind were continually happening. Glasses smashed,
bolts broke, and, what seems incredible, doors were lost! Even so late
as 1710, a reward of 30s. was offered for a lost door. “Lost,” runs
this remarkable advertisement, “the side door of a Chariot, painted
Coffee Colour, with a Round Cipher in the Pannel, Lin’d with White
Cloath embos’d with Red, having a Glass in one Frame, and White Canvas
in another, with Red Strings to the Frames.”
To return to Pepys. In a month or two another matter connected with
his coach was occupying his attention. There were some people who did
not think that a man in the comparatively humble position of Secretary
to the Admiralty had any right to possess a coach, even though, in its
owner’s estimation, it might be “genteel and sober.”
“To the Park,” he is recording in April, “my wife and I; and
here Sir W. Coventry did first see me and my wife in a coach
of our own; and so did also this night the Duke of York, who
did eye my wife mightily. But I begin to doubt that my being
so much seen in my own coach at this time, may be observed to
my prejudice, but I must venture it now.”
This was no idle fear, for in a while there was printed an ill-written
and scurrilous pamphlet called _Plane Truth_, _or Closet Discorse
betwixt Pepys and Hewer_, in which the following passage occurs:—
“There is one thing more you must be mightily sorry for with
all speed. Your presumption in your coach in which you daily
ride as if you had been son and heir to the great Emperor
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