Ralph Straus

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.”

Coach in the time of Charles I
(From “Coach and Sedan Pleasantly Disputing”)

“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:—

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 Neptune, or as if you had been infallibly to have succeeded him in his government of the Ocean, all which was presumption in the highest degree. First, you had upon the fore-part of your chariot, tempestuous waves and wrecks of ships; on your left hand, forts and great guns, and ships a fighting; on your right hand was a fair harbour and galleys riding, with their flags and pennants spread, kindly saluting each other, just like P[epys] and H[ewer—his chief clerk].”

How far Pepys’s carriage was decorated is not known, though this description does not tally in the least with Pepys’s own. In any case, he took no notice of such attacks, and so far from making his coach less conspicuous, arranged to have it newly painted and varnished.

“19th April, 1669.—After dinner out again, and, calling about my coach, which was at the coachmaker’s, and hath been there for these two or three days, to be new painted, and the window-frames gilt against next May-day, went on with my hackney to White Hall.”

A few days later he gave orders for some “new sort of varnish” to be used on the standards at a cost of forty shillings, this being in his view very cheap. Indeed, “the doing of the biggest coach all over,” he learnt, “comes not above £6.” On his next visit to the coachmaker, he was surprised to find several great ladies “sitting in the body of a coach that must be ended tomorrow ... eating of bread and butter and drinking ale.” His own coach had been silvered over, “but no varnish yet laid on, so I put it in a way of doing.” A few hours later he called back again,

“and there vexed to see nothing yet done to my coach, at three in the afternoon; but I set it in doing, and stood by till eight at night, and saw the painter varnish it which is pretty to see how every doing it over do make it more and more yellow: and it dries as fast in the sun as it can be laid on almost; and most coaches are, now-a-days, done so, and it is very pretty when laid on well, and not too pale, as some are, even to show the silver. Here I did make the workmen drink, and saw my coach cleaned and oyled.”

And so eager was he to have it without delay that his coachman and horses were sent to fetch it that very evening, and on the following gala day, May 1st,

“we went alone through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses’ manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and the standards gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green reines, the people did mightily look upon us; and, the truth is, I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than ours all the day. But we set out, out of humour—I because Betty, whom I expected, was not come to go with us; and my wife that I would sit on the same seat with her, which she likes not, being so fine: and she then expected me to meet Sheres, which we did in Pell Mell, and against my will, I was forced to take him into the coach, but was sullen all day almost, and little complaisant; the day being unpleasing, though the Park full of coaches, but dusty and windy, and cold, and now and then a little dribbling of rain; and what made it worse, there were so many hackney-coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen’s; and so we had little pleasure.”

Henceforth Mr. Pepys, in spite of sundry warnings from his friend Mr. Povey and others, continued to use his coach, and although perhaps as he grew older, his coach was less brilliantly adorned, there seems no reason to suppose that he ever regretted its purchase.

Though it is not my intention to speak in any detail of public conveyances, a word must be said here of the stage-coaches,33 which made their appearance on English roads in 1640. These were large coaches, leather-curtained at first—glass does not seem to have been used until 1680—and capable of seating six or eight passengers. Their chief feature was the huge basket strapped to the back.

“There is of late,” says Chamberlayne in his well-known Present State of Great Britain (1649), “such an admirable commodiousness both for men and women, to travel from London to the principal towns in the country, that the like hath not been known in the world; and that is by stage-coaches, wherein one may be transported to any place sheltered from foul weather and foul ways, free from endangering of one’s health and one’s body by hard jogging or over-violent motion on horseback; and this not only at the low price of about a shilling for every five miles, but with such velocity and speed in an hour as the foreign post can make but in one day.”

Of course, there was opposition to these public coaches. In 1662, when there was not a round dozen of them, one writer was already exhorting their extinction on the ground that simple country gentlemen and their simple country wives could now come to London without due occasion, and there learn all the vice and luxury that were rampant. So in 1673, in a singular production called The Grand Concern of England, amongst the many proposals set forth for the country’s good, was one “that the Multitude of Stage Coaches and Caravans be suppressed.” One or two pamphlets of no particular interest appeared, both for and against these coaches, but it may be sufficient here to observe that they steadily increased in numbers and maintained their existence until the mail-coaches finally superseded them.

One other public carriage of this time also deserves mention. This was the carosse À cinq sous, which appeared in the streets of Paris in 1662. The history of this primitive omnibus is well told by Mr. Henry Charles Moore.34

“The leading spirits in this enterprise were the Duc de RouanÈs, Governor of Poitou, the Marquis de Sourches, Grand PrÉvÔt, the Marquis de Crenan, Grand Cup-bearer, and Blaise Pascal, the author of Lettres Provinciales. The idea was Pascal’s, but not being sufficiently wealthy to carry it out unaided, he laid the matter before his friend the Duc de RouanÈs, who suggested that a company should be formed to start the vehicles. Pascal consented to this being done, and the Duc set to work at once to prevail upon members of the aristocracy to take shares in the venture.” After obtaining a royal decree, “seven vehicles to carry eight passengers each, all inside, were built, and on March 18th, 1662, they began running. The first one was timed to start at seven o’clock in the morning, but an hour or two earlier a huge crowd had assembled to witness the inauguration ceremony, which was performed by two Commissaires of the ChÂtelet, attired in their official robes. Accompanying them were four guards of the Grand PrÉvÔt, twenty men of the City Archers, and a troop of cavalry. The procession, on arriving at the line of route, divided into two parts, one Commissaire and half of the attendants proceeded to the Luxembourg, and the others to the Porte St. Antoine. At the latter place three of the twopenny-halfpenny coaches were stationed, the other four being at the Luxembourg. Each Commissaire then made a speech, in which he pointed out the boon that carosses À cinq sous would be to the public, and laid great stress on the fact that they would start punctually at certain times whether full or empty. Moreover, he warned the people that the king was determined to punish severely any person who interfered with the coaches, their drivers, conductors, or passengers. The public was also warned that any person starting similar vehicles without permission would be fined 3000 francs, and his horses and coaches confiscated.

“At the conclusion of his address, the Commissaire commanded the coachmen to advance, and, after giving them a few words of advice and caution, presented each one with a long blue coat, with the City arms embroidered on the front in brilliant colours. Having donned their livery, the drivers returned to their vehicles and climbed up to their seats. Then the command to start was given, and the two vehicles drove off amidst a scene of tremendous enthusiasm. The first coach each way carried no passengers—a very unbusinesslike arrangement—the conductor sitting inside in solitary state. But the next two, which were sent off a quarter of an hour after the first, started work in earnest, and it need scarcely be said that there were no lack of passengers. The difficulty experienced was in preventing people from crowding in after the eight seats were occupied. At the beginning of every journey the struggle to get into the coach was repeated, and many charming costumes were ruined in the crush. Paris, in short, went mad over its carosses À cinq sous, and the excitement soon spread to the suburbs, sending their inhabitants flocking to the city to see the new vehicles. But very few of the visitors managed to obtain a ride, for day by day the rush for seats became greater. The king himself had a ride in one coach, and the aristocracy and wealthy classes hastened to follow his example, struggling with their poorer brethren to obtain a seat. Many persons who possessed private coaches daily drove to the starting-point, and yet failed to get a drive in one for a week or two.

“Four other routes were opened in less than four months, but at last the fashionable craze came to an end, and as soon as the upper classes ceased to patronise the new coaches the middle and lower classes found that it was cheaper to walk than to ride. The result was that Pascal, who died only five months after the coaches began running, lived long enough to see the vehicles travelling to and fro, half, and sometimes quite, empty.

“For many months after Pascal’s death the coaches lingered on, but every week found them less patronised, and eventually they were discontinued. They had never been of any real utility, and were regarded by the public much in the same light as we regard a switchback railway.”

And, indeed, it was a century and a half before the next omnibus was tried.

So then, at the middle of the century, when heavy and slow stage-coaches were making their appearance on the English country roads, and the unsuccessful carosse À cinq sous was being tried in the streets of Paris, the success of the berlin, the brouette, and other chariots, was in process of remodelling men’s ideas upon the most feasible carriage for town use. The older coaches, as I have said, were still retained for particular occasions, and, indeed, continued to be built with more ornamentation than ever before. The very spokes of the wheels were decorated, paintings appeared on the panels, and every inch of the coach made as brilliant as possible. France in particular possessed carriages of the most gorgeous possible description. These were not only entirely gilded over, but in some cases actually bejewelled. The richest stuffs lined their interiors, and masters painted their panels. Immense sums were spent. There is preserved at Toulouse a carriage of this date which shows most of these features. The interior “is, or rather was, lined with white brocade embroidered with a diaper of pink roses, the roof being lined with the same, while its angles are hidden by little smiling cupids gilded from top to toe. The surface of the panels is, or rather was, a piece of opaque white, exceedingly well varnished, and edged with a thick moulding of pink roses; the foliage, instead of being green, was highly gilded and burnished.”

But the ever-increasing traffic rendered necessary a much smaller vehicle than these monstrosities for general use, and this led, somewhere about 1670, to the introduction of the gig. This was a French invention, which, while no doubt the logical outcome of the brouette, bore resemblance to the old Roman cisium, and led ultimately to the cabriolets, once so popular both in France and England. Certain experiments tending towards a gig had been made earlier in the century with a chair fixed to a small cart. The first successful gig was a slender, two-wheeled contrivance, “the body little more than a shell,” says Thrupp, provided with a hood “composed of three iron hoop-sticks joined in the middle to fall upwards.” It was the prototype of the calÈche in France, the carriole of Norway, the calesso of Naples, and the volante of Cuba. Gozzadini describes one of them as “an affair with a curved seat fixed on two long bending shafts, placed in front on the back of the horse and behind upon the two wheels.” They were introduced into Florence, he says, in 1672, and “so increased in numbers that in a few years there were nearly a thousand in the city.” An early gig of this kind is preserved at South Kensington. It is a forlorn-looking vehicle. The body is curved, but there is no hood. The seat is absurdly small and “beneath the shafts are two long straps of leather and a windlass to tighten them—this apparatus was, no doubt, to regulate the spring of the vehicle to the road travelled over.”

The gig speedily underwent several minor changes of form. In France it was known as calÈche35 or chaise, in England, as calash, calesh, or chaise, in America as shay. Unfortunately there is small mention of them in contemporary writings, and one is left to suppose that for some time they did not, except in certain cities, prove serious rivals to the berlins and other four-wheeled chariots. It may be that the berlin itself was taken as a model from which these lighter carriages were evolved. You had first the big double berlins for four people, then you had a vis-À-vis for two or more persons facing each other. Later the front part of the carriage would be cut away for the sake of lightness. When not covered such a vehicle as this seems to have been known as a berlingot. Two could travel in these berlingots sitting side by side, “while a third person might travel uncomfortably in front on a kind of movable seat, which was not much patronised; for it was not only dangerous, but what was much worse in the eyes of the grand court gentlemen who used them—ridiculous.” There was also evolved a smaller and narrower berlin with the front cut away and capable of holding only one passenger, called the dÉsobligeante. The bodies of the ordinary chaises, which seated one or two people, seem to have differed from those of the older berlins in being placed partly below the frame. There were no side doors, but one at the back which opened horizontally. When and where all such changes were made, however, it is impossible to say. The accounts, such as they are, are often contradictory, and the same names used to describe what are obviously not identical carriages. But the two-wheeled gig having appeared there was nothing to prevent improvements of every conceivable sort or shape, and innumerable hybrid carriages appeared, some of which are only known by name.

There is mention of a truly remarkable calash which was tried in Dublin in 1685. Exactly who the inventor was is not known, but Sir Richard Bulkeley interested himself in the experiments, and read a paper on his carriage before the Royal Society. Evelyn was one of those who were present on this occasion.

“Sir Richard Bulkeley,” he says, “described to us a model of a chariot he had invented which it was not possible to overthrow in whatever uneven way it was drawn, giving us a wonderful relation of what it had performed in that kind, for ease, expedition, and safety; there were some inconveniences yet to be remedied—it would not contain more than one person; was ready to take fire every few miles; and being placed and playing on no fewer than ten rollers, it made a most prodigious noise, almost intolerable.”

It is to be deeply regretted that there is no print of this remarkable carriage, but further details may be found in a letter, dated May 5th, 1685, from Sir Richard Bulkeley himself.

“Sir William Petty,” he writes, “Mr. Molyneux, and I have spent this day in making experiments with a new invented calesh, along with the inventor thereof; ’tis he that was in London when I was there, but he never made any of these caleshes there, for his invention is much improv’d since he came from thence: it is in all points different from any machine I have ever seen: it goes on two wheels, carries one person, and is light enough. As for its performance, though it hangs not on braces, yet it is easier than the common coach, both in the highway, in ploughed fields, cross the ridges, directly and obliquely. A common coach will overturn, if one wheel go on a superficies a foot and a half higher than that of the other; but this will admit of the difference of three feet and a half in height of the superficies, without danger of overturning. We chose all the irregular banks, the sides of ditches to run over; and I have this day seen it, at five several times, turn over and over; that is, the wheels so overturned as that their spokes laid parallel to the horizon, so that one wheel laid flat over the head of him that rode in the Calesh, and the other wheel flat under him; so much I all but once overturned. But what I have mentioned was another turn more, so that the wheels were again in statu quo, and the horse not in the least disordered: if it should be unruly, with the help of one pin, you disengage him from the Calesh without any inconvenience. I myself was once overturned, and knew it not, till I looked up, and saw the wheel flat over my head; and, if a man went with his eyes shut, he would imagine himself in the most smooth way, though, at the same time, there were three feet difference in the heights of the ground of each wheel. In fine, we have made so many, and so various experiments, and are so well satisfied of the usefulness of the invention, that we each of us have bespoke one; they are not (plain) above six or eight pounds a-piece.”

Early Italian Gig at the South Kensington Museum