MODERN CARRIAGES

THE year of Queen Victoria’s Coronation saw the successful opening of the London and Birmingham Railway, and from that time all but a few obstinate folk recognised the fact that the horse as a necessary adjunct to cross-country travelling was doomed. For some time, indeed, certain ingenious gentlemen had been carrying out a number of experiments with self-propelled carriages. Fifteen years before, several inventors had produced cumbrous machines which, without requiring rails, were able to progress along the roads at speeds which compared favourably with those attained by the ordinary coaches. Sir Goldsmith Gurney—to mention, perhaps, the most prominent of these men—had patented a steam-carriage in 1827 which, in spite of attacks from an irate populace who feared machinery as they feared the devil, was quite successful enough to lead the enterprising Mr. Hanning to ask for, and obtain, permission to run similar machines on many of the principal roads of England. Indeed, for a short while, there seems to have been a regular service of these primitive automobiles. Many people, it is true, fought shy of Gurney’s boilers, which in spite of the fact that they had been “constructed upon philosophical principles” occasionally exploded. It was after such an explosion at Glasgow that Tom Hood seized the opportunity to write the following lines:—

Similarly, many people declared their intention of never patronising the railroads. Steam, however, had come to stay, and the days of coaching were already numbered.

The net result of the new state of things, so far as private carriages were concerned, seems to have been that the coachbuilders set themselves to perfect the urban vehicles, which became lighter, soberer, and more various. New and less conventional “models” were constantly being exhibited, while for those who could not afford more than a single carriage adaptable bodies were devised. So you might order a vehicle which with small trouble could be entirely changed in appearance. The older dignity, moreover, was giving place to a new smartness. “Carriage people” still formed a class, but families which before had been satisfied to use such public conveyances as there had been, now drove forth in one or other of the cheaper private carriages which were being constructed particularly for their convenience. The dog-cart, for instance, had become common and was undergoing various metamorphoses, and the brougham was rapidly becoming the most popular of all town vehicles. In country lanes, too, appeared the waggonette and its kind. Nothing, indeed, was quite so light as the American buggy with its shallow dish of a body and its extraordinarily thin wheels, but there was no longer that heaviness of line which gives to the older carriages what is to modern eyes such an uncomfortable appearance.

So in 1860 a London coachbuilder could write to the American author of The World on Wheels:—

“Ten years have completed a total revolution in the carriage trade in England. Not only have the Court and the nobility adopted economical habits, and insisted on cheap carriages, but they carry no luggage, as was formerly the case when carriages had to sustain great weight, both of passengers and luggage. The cumbrous Court carriages of former times are being gradually abolished, and instead of the rich linings, laces, fringes, and elaborate heraldry usual to the carriages of the nobility, light vehicles, furnished only with a crest, are used. The changes in construction, and consequent depreciation of stock, were a heavy blow to the master coachbuilders; many of the large houses must have lost, in this manner, from ten to twenty thousand pounds. The trade, having recovered from this blow, is in a more healthy state. The favourite carriages in England at this time were waggonettes, sociables, Stanhope and mail phaetons, basket phaetons and landaus.”

I may speak first of the state or “dress” carriages. “These vehicles,” says Thrupp, “had long passed the period in which beautiful carving and elegant painting had been used to disguise, as far as possible, the clumsy state carriages of the eighteenth century. Ever since the building of the Irish Lord Chancellor’s state coach by Hatchett or Baxter in 1790, coachbuilders had endeavoured to produce a graceful outline of body, of a fair size no larger than was necessary; the C-springs had been made of a perfect curve, the perch followed the sweeps of the body, the carving was reduced to a moderate amount, the ornamental painting was confined to the stripes upon the wheels, and the heraldic bearings of the owners of the carriages were beautifully emblazoned on the panels. For further ornament they relied on plated work in brass or silver round the body and on loops and wheel hoops. In every capital of Europe such carriages had superseded the old style, and London and Paris had supplied other countries with most of these state carriages.”

At the Queen’s Coronation in 1838, Londoners had a good opportunity of seeing these dress carriages, a number of which early in the day were lined up in Birdcage Walk. Most of these belonged to the various ambassadors. The one which excited the widest admiration belonged to Marshal Soult—a French-built carriage, originally built for one of the Royal family. Thrupp describes it. “The body had four upper quarter glasses, with a very elegant deep and pierced cornice of silver round the roof; there were four lamps with large coronets on the tops, and the coach bore a coronet on the roof also. The colouring of the painting was a lovely blue, such as was then called Adelaide blue;55 this had been varnished with white spirit varnish, and seemed almost transparent in lustre. The whole coach was ornamented with silver and was finished in great taste.” Other particulars of these carriages are to be found in the contemporary newspaper reports. We are told of the enormous prices paid. Count Strogonoff purchased for £1600 the carriage which had originally been built at a cost of £3000 by the Duke of Devonshire for his state visit to St. Petersburg. Another ambassador, finding that it was too late to buy a carriage, hired one from one of the Sheriffs at a cost of £250 for the occasion, which strikes one as an excessive price even for Coronation Day.

Modern state carriages retain all their former magnificence with little if any of the old cumbersome and unnecessary ornament. One of the finest examples of this kind of carriage is the state landau built for King Edward and used by him in the Coronation procession.

“This magnificent example of the coachbuilder’s art,” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “is over eighteen feet long. The body is hung upon C-springs by strong braces covered with ornamentally stitched morocco; each brace is joined with a massive gilt buckle with oak leaf and crown device. Between the hind springs is a rumble for two footmen; there is no driving seat, as the carriage is intended to be drawn only by horses ridden postilion. The panels are painted in purple lake considerably brighter than is usual in order to secure greater effect; marking the contours of the body and the outlines of the rumble are mouldings in wood carved and gilt, the design being one of overlapping oak leaves.

“The door panels, back and front panels, bear the Royal Arms with crown, supporters, mantle, motto, helmet, and garter. On the lower quarter panel is the collar of the Order of the Garter, encircling its star and surmounted by the Tudor crown. Springing in a slow, graceful curve from the underpart of the body over the forecarriage is a ‘splasher’ of crimson patent leather. Ornamental brass lamps are carried in brackets at each of the four corners of the body.

“As regards the interior of this beautiful carriage, it is upholstered in crimson satin and laces which were woven in Spitalfields; the hood is lined with silk, as better adapted than satin for folding. The rumble is covered with crimson leather. It is to be observed that with the exception of the pine and mahogany used for the panels, English-grown wood and English-made materials only have been used throughout.

“While less ornate than the wonderful ‘gold coach’ designed by Sir William Chambers and Cipriani in 1761, the new state landau, in its build, proportions, and adornment, is probably the most graceful and regal vehicle ever built.”

Other English state carriages hardly less successfully designed have been made for the Lord Mayor of London (1887), for Sir Marcus Samuel, when holding that position in 1902-3, for the Sheriffs, and for various Indian Princes.

Coming to less pretentious vehicles, we may briefly consider in the first place the coach proper. At the time of Queen Victoria’s Coronation, coaches of the old pattern were, of course, still being constructed. There is in possession of Messrs. Holland and Holland a mail-coach built by Waude, one of the best-known coachbuilders of that time, which is typical of the period. This, says Mr. Charles Harper,

“is substantially and in general lines as built in 1830. The wheels have been renewed, the hind boot has a door at the back, and the interior has been relined; but otherwise it is the coach that ran when William IV was King. It is a characteristic Waude coach, low-hung, and built with straight sides, instead of the bowed-out type common to the productions of Vidler’s factory. It wears, in consequence, a more elegant appearance than most coaches of that time; but it must be confessed that what it gained in the eyes of the passers-by it must have lost in the estimation of the insides, for the interior is not a little cramped by those straight sides. The guard’s seat on the ‘dickey’—or what in earlier times was more generally known as the ‘backgammon-board’—remains, but his sheepskin or tiger-skin covering, to protect his legs from the cold, is gone. The trap-door into the hind boot can be seen. Through this the mails were thrust and the guard sat throughout the journey with his feet on it. Immediately in front of him were the spare bars, while above, in the still remaining case, reposed the indispensable blunderbuss. The original lamps in their reversible cases remain. There were four of them—one on either forequarter, and one on either side of the fore boot, while a smaller one hung from beneath the footboard, just above the wheelers. The guard had a small hand lamp of his own to aid him in sorting his small parcels. The door panels have apparently been repainted since the old days, for although they still keep the maroon colour characteristic of the mail-coaches, the Royal Arms are gone, and in their stead appears the script monogram in gold, V.R.”

It is the coach which of all vehicles has least changed its appearance in the last hundred years. The drag of to-day and the old coach just described differ from one another only in a few minor details of construction. The reason for this is not far to seek. “The brief ‘Golden Age,’” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “of fast coaching saw the vehicle, of which such hard and continuous work was required, brought as near perfection as human ingenuity and craftsmanship was capable of bringing it. No effort was spared to make the mail or road-coach the best possible conveyance of its kind, and in retaining the model of a former age the modern coachbuilder confesses his inability to improve upon the handiwork of his progenitors.”

It is curious to note, by the way, that for a short time such coaches were hardly made at all, and the Report on the carriages shown at the London Exhibition of 1862 speaks of the “revival of an almost obsolete carriage, the four-in-hand coach, which had taken place within a few years.” This was undoubtedly due to the founding in 1856 of the Four-in-Hand Driving Club.

Nor was this revival confined to England. In the official Reports upon Carriages at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, Mr. G. F. Budd draws attention to the fact that “the French have closely adhered to the English styles in the general design and shape of the bodies of their vehicles, especially in broughams ... landaus ... and drags. In the latter description of carriage, which has become so popular during the last few years, though it is peculiarly an English carriage, the style has been closely followed, and with such considerable success, that the French builders now appear as our formidable rivals in this branch of the manufacture.” “A novelty,” he continues, “in the design ... consists in the roof being so constructed as to admit of being opened in the centre ... a cover is placed on the top of the two portions of the head thus opened, and so forms, to all appearance, an ordinary luncheon-case with the ends open: it thus serves the purpose of a table when required ... and affords an increase of ventilation to those riding inside the vehicle.” Similarly in America drags began to be built after the establishment of a driving club. These are identical with the English models.

With regard to the other four-wheeled carriages, we have now arrived at a period when it is almost impossible to speak at any length of each particular kind.56 For in the first place such a classification as I have used to describe the older vehicles must to a large extent break down, and in the second place, from the time when the great exhibitions did so much to make the manufacturers of all nations familiar with each other’s work, nearly every coachbuilder of standing has produced one model, if not more, peculiar to itself. So, in the middle of last century, you had carriages which approximated to the barouche, yet which had been evolved indirectly from so different a vehicle as the phaeton. You saw carriages, obviously dissimilar in appearance, yet bearing, to the layman, the same name. You had new combinations of perches and springs. And carriages were being exported from one country to be improved upon the lines most suitable to the roads and tastes of another.

Of all these carriages perhaps the two which deserve most mention are the landau and the victoria, both open carriages, which can be closed at will.

The landau, as I have said, had originally been a coach made to open. At the beginning of the century it had hardly been so popular as the landaulet, but at this time it underwent several improvements at the hands of Mr. Luke Hopkinson, a celebrated coachbuilder of Holborn. It was Hopkinson who first built what was known as a briska-landau, but he chiefly concerned himself not so much with the shape of the carriage-body as with the hood. He built his new landaus in such a way as to allow the hood to be folded, so that it lay horizontally at the back of the seat. At the same time the floor and the seats were raised so as to make the whole carriage a far more spacious and comfortable vehicle than had been possible when the hood could not be completely opened.57 And with the hood entirely “down” you had practically the landau of to-day, possibly the commonest carriage on the road. Nearly every “fly” which so often is to be seen standing rather forlornly outside the village station as your train thunders past is a landau modelled on Hopkinson’s designs. He was not, however, the only coachbuilder whose attention was being given to this useful carriage. Of one of the new landaus built by other firms a trade journal of the day observed with some truth that “its graceful outline and roominess” made it “the very beau-ideal of vehicular luxury.” And as the years passed the landau in its several varieties increased in popularity. Improvements tended almost solely in the direction of lightness. The Report on the carriages at the exhibition of 1862 pays particular attention to the landau. “The demand for them,” it runs, “has ... increased. They are well suited to the variable climate of the British Isles, as they can readily be changed from an open to a closed carriage and vice versa.” At a later exhibition—in 1885—the landau58 had become so popular that there was actually shown one, built for the Earl of Sefton, suited to the capabilities of a single horse. This was an important departure from tradition which seems to have shocked some of the old-fashioned designers. “That an established house with an aristocratic connection,” lamented one trade paper at the time, “should exhibit a landau for one horse would have been considered incredible twenty years ago.” No doubt this was true, but people persisted in their desire for light carriages, and a one-horse landau was the natural outcome. At a later date there was a tendency to alter the shape of the body. Hitherto this had generally been angular; now the lines became curving, the body, looked at from the side, forming the arc of a huge circle. Such a carriage was known as the canoe landau. To-day the canoe bodies, both in England and abroad, are made rather deeper than at the time of their introduction, but the square shape still persists. If there is one English vehicle which may be called the favourite carriage it is surely the landau.

The earlier history of the victoria, the landau’s chief rival, is rather obscure. As I have mentioned, the once popular cab-phaeton was still to be seen in the ’forties in many continental cities as the milord, which from a most aristocratic vehicle had descended into the realms of hackdom. An English coachbuilder, however, Mr. J. C. Cooper, saw possibilities in such a vehicle and prepared a series of designs. His drawings were scornfully treated in England, but “found favour in the eyes of his continental clients,” who about 1845 constructed from them a four-wheeled cabriolet with seats for two. This small open carriage was copied in more than one place, particularly, it would seem, in Paris and Vienna. Whether these copies were still called milords I am not sure, but in 1856 they seem to have been described as victorias. In the meantime the pony phaeton had become popular in England, and in 1851 a new model designed for Her Majesty was, according to Stratton, also called a victoria.

“In the summer of 1851,” he writes, “a unique little pony phaeton was built by Mr. Andrews, of Southampton, for the Queen. The original announcement stated that when the carriage was delivered in front of the palace in the Isle of Wight, ‘the Queen and Prince expressed to Mr. Andrews their entire satisfaction with the style, elegance, and extraordinary lightness and construction of the carriage,’ which scarcely weighed three hundredweight. The height of the fore wheels is only eighteen inches, and of the hind ones thirty inches. The phaeton is cane-bodied, of George IV style, with movable head; the fore part is iron, but very light and elegant and beautifully painted. This carriage is known as the victoria, and has since been much improved in England and America.”

Mr. Stratton is probably right; but it was the French-built carriage which the then Prince of Wales brought to England in 1869 to which the name may be more correctly ascribed. It is to be noticed, however, that the pony phaeton and the victoria proper differ from one another only in size and in the presence or absence of a driver’s seat. The Prince of Wales’s carriage was curved in shape and hooded, but about the same time Baron Rothschild imported a victoria from Vienna of the square shape. Both forms persist. At first, of course, the victoria was looked on with suspicion, but the Princess of Wales speedily showed her liking for it—it did indeed make an ideal lady’s carriage—and in a short while the world followed suit. “Light, low, easy, fit for one horse, and looking very well behind a pair of cobs,” remarks Thrupp, “it is not surprising that the victoria meets with so much patronage.” At first it would seem that the hood was not made to lie flat, a fact amongst others which prompted a caustic critic in 1877 to grumble at the conservatism of English manufacturers. “Even with so good a model of this carriage as that presented to them in the victoria,” he wrote, “the English builders do not see fit to maintain the same lines, and for some inscrutable reason deem that the hood when down should rest at an angle; whereas the ‘cachet’ of the Parisian equipages lies in the absolute straight line it maintains with the horizon.” Only a few years later, however, another critic was drawing attention to the superiority of the English victoria over its French counterpart. “Their rattle,” he wrote of the latter, “is enough to distinguish them. The French victoria is a low-mounted and decidedly unsymmetrical machine. The pole [is] a foot longer than it should be, the splinter bar and fore carriage too low”—a criticism which holds good to-day with most of the Italian carriages of this type.

Varieties of the victoria were constructed almost as soon as the carriage had reached to any degree of popularity. A hinge-seat was fitted into the front boot to face the ordinary seat, and this not proving enough, a permanent seat for two was built in its place, this innovation giving rise to the double victoria, which was built with or without doors. I need not, perhaps, dwell further on the victoria, except to observe that such changes as took place in the landau also took place in its more delicate rival.

Another open carriage which remained popular until the introduction of automobiles is the phaeton. Sir Walter Gilbey mentions several varieties. Of these the largest seems to have been the mail phaeton.

“It was a favourite carriage,” he writes, “seventy years ago or more, and was frequently used by gentlemen for long posting journeys in England and on the Continent. In these days this carriage was always built with a perch, the undercarriage resembling that of a coach, whence its name. For a time elliptical springs were adopted, but during the last ten years the fashionable mail phaeton has been a solid-looking square-bodied vehicle on its old undercarriage.”

In 1889, he also observes that a jointed perch was used, the object being “to prevent the vehicle being twisted on bad roads, and also to preserve its equilibrium under trying conditions of roads.” The demi mail phaeton, to which Sir Walter gives the credit of having ousted the ugly perch high phaeton from public favour, “derives its names from the peculiar arrangement of the springs in the construction of the undercarriage.” Another variety, the Beaufort phaeton, is large enough to carry six people, and was, in the first place, expressly designed to carry people to the meet. Yet another modification, the Stanhope phaeton, invented by the peer of that name, is smaller than the last-mentioned, and has achieved a world-wide popularity. “The head and apron render it suitable for winter work, and when the hood is thrown back the stanhope is an admirable vehicle for summer use whether in town or country.” The T-cart is a smaller stanhope “with compassed rail and sticked body in front and a seat for the groom behind.” Sir Walter records the fact that its greatest popularity was about 1888, after which it was supplanted by the spider phaeton—a “tilbury body on four wheels with a small seat for the groom supported on branched irons behind.”

It would be possible to mention half a dozen other varieties of the phaeton,59 but such a list is best relegated to a coachbuilder’s catalogue. There is only one innovation which should not be allowed to pass unnoticed here. Many of the phaeton bodies during the ’sixties were constructed of basket-work; indeed, Croydon, where lived the inventor, received all the benefits which a new industry brings in its trail, but the popularity of these basket-carriages waned as rapidly as it had waxed—due, according to one writer, to the ridicule heaped upon them by Punch. A revival was attempted in 1886, and “we have a reminiscence of it in the imitation cane-work painted on the panels of many carriages” at a still later date.60

We come to the closed carriages.

The brougham was undergoing about as many changes and improvements as fell to the lot of any other carriage, yet superficially it maintained much the same appearance. The coupÉ brougham so popular to-day is the relic of the old chariot.61 Of its several varieties the best-known is, or rather was—for it is rarely, if ever, seen now—the clarence. “It was introduced,” says Sir Walter, “about the year 1842 by Messrs. Laurie and Marner, of Oxford Street, and has fairly been described as “midway between a brougham and a coach.” It had very curved and rather fanciful lines, seated four persons inside, and was entered by one step from the ground, carried the coachman and footman on a low driving seat, and was used with a lighter pair of horses than the family coach.” Certain models, however, show the driver’s seat to have been high, on a level, that is to say, with the roof; and not long after the first clarence was designed, Lytton Bulwer caused to be built what was called a Surrey clarence, which possessed a hammercloth. The attempt, however, to produce a miniature chariot did not succeed. Another variety, named uncomfortably the dioropha, was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851.62 Here the side windows would slide up and down upon a new principle, and “the whole upper part of the body from the elbow-line could be lifted from the lower, leaving a barouche body.” You were shown models of this upper portion hanging rather forlornly from the roof of a coach-house. But improvements in the landau caused the extinction of the dioropha, which does not seem to have been built after 1875. The amempton, invented by a Mr. Kesterton, was a smaller form of this carriage. The one-horse “growler” or “four-wheeler,” by the way, which still wanders up and down the streets of London, is the lineal descendant of the clarence.

Of the more unconventional four-wheeled carriages, the waggonette seems to have been introduced about 1845 by the Prince Consort after a German model, though one writer gives the credit of the design to the Prince himself. Here, as every one knows, the seats faced each other at right-angles to the driver’s seat, the door being at the back. At first they were built very large—to carry out the original intention of providing a family carriage which should really be worthy of the name. Afterwards smaller models were produced, and proved equally popular. “The principle of riding sideways,” remarks Thrupp, “was not new. The Irish car, the four-wheeled Inside car of the Westmorland district, the old Break, and the Omnibus all contributed to the design of the modern vehicle.” A few particular varieties may be mentioned. The now forgotten perithron, a Suffolk invention, was a waggonette in which the driving seat was bisected down its centre, so as to allow a passenger entering from the back to reach the front seat. The Portland waggonette, built for the Duke of Portland in 1893, was a large carriage with a folding hood. Another carriage of the kind with a folding leather hood was presented by Lord Lonsdale to the King and Queen at the time of their wedding. This is known as a Lonsdale waggonette. “Lord Lonsdale,” remarks Sir Walter Gilbey, “allowed his name to be given to this device under the impression that he was the first to originate a head of this description; but his claim for invention of it was disputed at the time. Mr. Robertson stated that he had built such a waggonette so far back as 1864; Mr. Kinder had built one in 1865; and Messrs. Morgan stated that they had turned out a similar vehicle before the year 1870.” A very large waggonette, the brake, is a common enough object to-day, and is built in various forms. Sometimes a second seat is placed directly behind and parallel to the driver’s seat. In some models these seats stretch back throughout the length of the carriage, in which case it is a char-À-banc. Awnings, permanent or temporary, are generally provided.

In America the commonest four-wheeled carriage is the light wagon or buggy, a name given in England to a light two-wheeled, single-seated cart (also called a sulky63) towards the end of the eighteenth century. The buggy has one seat fixed on to a long, shallow tray; the wagon is similar, but has two or more seats.

“These American waggons,” says Thrupp, “were modelled from the old German waggon, but they have been so much improved as to be scarcely recognised. The distinctive feature of the German waggon was a light, shallow tray, suspended above a slight perch carriage on two grasshopper springs placed horizontally and parallel with and above the front and hind axle-tree; on the tray one or two seats were placed, the whole was light and inexpensive, and well adapted to a new, rough country without good roads. These waggons may still be found in Germany and Switzerland....

“American ingenuity was lavished upon these waggons, and they have arrived at a marvel of perfection in lightness. The two grasshopper springs have been replaced with two elliptical springs. The perch, axle-trees, and carriage timbers have been reduced to thin sticks. The four wheels are made so slender as to resemble a spider’s web; in their construction of the wheels the principle of the patent rim used in England in 1790 has been adopted. Instead of five, six, or seven felloes to each wheel, there are only two, of oak or hickory wood, bent to the shape by steam. The ironwork of the American buggy is very slender, yet composed of many pieces, and, in order to reduce the cost, these pieces of iron are mostly cast, not forged, of a sort of iron less brittle than our cast iron.... The weight of the whole waggon is so small that one man can lift it upon its wheels again if accidentally upset, and two persons of ordinary strength can raise it easily from the ground. The four wheels are nearly of the same height, and the body is suspended centrally between them. There are no futchels; the pole or shafts are attached to the front axle-tree bed, and the front of the pole is carried by the horses just as they carry the shafts; the splinter-bar and whipple-trees are attached to the pole on swivels. Some are made without hoods and some with hoods. These are made so that the leather of the sides can be taken off and rolled up, and the back leather removed, rolled, or fixed at the bottom, a few inches away from the back, the roof remaining as a sunshade....

“The perfection to which the American buggy or waggon has been carried, and every part likely to give way carefully strengthened, is marvellous. Those made by the best builders will last a long time without repair. The whole is so slender and elastic that it ‘gives’—to use a trade term—and recovers itself at any obstacle. The defect in English eyes of these carriages consists in the difficulty of getting in or out by reason of the height of the front wheel, and its proximity to the hind wheel—it is often necessary partly to lock round the wheel to allow of easy entrance. There is also a tremulous motion on a hard road which is not always agreeable. It is not surprising that, with the great advantages of extreme lightness, ease, and durability, and with lofty wheels, the American waggons travel with facility over very rough roads, and there is a great demand for them in our colonies. It must be remembered that the price is small, less than the price of our gigs and four-wheeled dog-carts.”

Indeed, the tourist in America will come away with the impression that there is hardly a family in the continent which does not possess at least one buggy or waggon. They can be driven, too, at a very great pace. In this connection it is interesting to notice that it was a buggy which Lord Lonsdale selected in order to carry out his great driving feat in 1891, when “he undertook to drive four stages of five miles within an hour, using for the first three stages one, a pair, a team, and riding postilion in the fourth.”

There are, of course, many varieties, several invented after Thrupp wrote the above account. Of these some are peculiar to a particular State, while others seem to be in general use throughout the continent. In Chicago, for instance, and other towns of the middle west, the commonest buggy seems to be the bike wagon, of which a variety is the cut-under bike wagon, where the tray is double—the seat forming a bridge between its two parts.

Stanhopes and phaetons are also manufactured in America, though on a much lighter scale than in England. Another popular American carriage is the surrey, which has the two-seated arrangements of the larger waggons, but is without the tray. The station wagon, very popular in New England, resembles the old English chariot, and differs from it only in its driving seat, which is on a level with the inside seat and directly against the front lines of the carriage-body. This is one of the most comfortable carriages in the country. The buckboard, even slenderer than the buggy, is hardly more than the skeleton of a carriage, but seems none the less popular on that account. The barge is the name given in Massachusetts to a two-seated waggon, and the word has a curious origin. It seems probable that it is a relic of the days when in that part of the country the boat sleighs used in the winter were put upon wheels in the summer. At a later date ordinary waggons were used for summer traffic, but the old name stuck. And I dare say there are a dozen or more local names of some peculiarity in other parts of America which to-day are given to carriages not in the least like those to which the name was originally applied.

Coming to the two-wheeled carriages, we find similar changes to those described above showing themselves. The old curricle, for instance, is now but rarely seen, its place being taken by one or other of the dog-carts. What was probably the most fashionable of these carriages during the early Victorian era is now practically extinct. This was the cabriolet, rather different in appearance from the vehicles of that name which had plied for hire but a few years before, yet built on the same principles as the earliest French gigs.

“They were greatly improved,” wrote Mr. G. N. Hooper in 1899,64 “about fifty years ago by the well-known Count D’Orsay and the late Mr. Charles B. Courtney, who greatly refined the outlines and proportions, making them lighter, more compact, and far more stylish. They became par excellence the equipage of the jeune noblesse, and no more stylish two-wheel carriages for one horse were driven for many years while they were fashionable. A large, well-bred horse was a necessity, and this the cabriolet generally had.

“The groom, or ‘tiger’ as he was then called, was a special London product: he was produced in no other city, British or foreign; all the genuine tigers hailed from London. His age varied from fifteen to twenty-five. Few there were that were not perfect masters of their horses, were they never so big. In shape and make he was a man in miniature, his proportions perfect, his figure erect and somewhat defiant: his coat fitted as if it had been moulded on him; his white buckskin breeches were spotless; his top-boots perfection; his hat, with its narrow binding of gold or silver lace, and brims looped up with gold or silver cord, brilliant with brushing, was worn jauntily. As he stood at his horse’s head, ready to receive his noble master, you might expect him to say, ‘My master is a duke, and I am responsible for his safety.’”

There is little enough to say of the gigs. The curricle, as I have said, is now rarely seen, though Sir Walter Gilbey mentions a particular one introduced about 1883 “which differed materially from the vehicle formerly known by that name. It consisted of a cabriolet, or whisky body, having an ‘ogee’ or chair back, the body being suspended by braces from C or S springs upon the undercarriage. Its peculiarity lay in the use of long lancewood shafts, set so far apart that the pole could be placed between them; the saddle-bar being used to support the pole, the shafts, it would seem, were somewhat unnecessary.” The Cape cart brought into England from South Africa is a two-wheeled vehicle of this class with a pole in place of shafts, and “the sides being framed so as to present three panels.”

“At the back,” says Sir Walter, “was built in a large box for provisions, the full width and depth of the cart, the back seat forming the lid; the tail-board was used only as a foot-rest. An adjustable centre seat with backrest could be used so as to provide accommodation for six passengers. A white canvas tilt on wooden hoops with sunblinds at the sides, which could be strapped up when not wanted, covered the whole body of the cart.”

And similar to the Cape cart is the Whitechapel cart, which brings me to a brief consideration of the dog-carts.

As originally designed, the dog-cart seems to have been built high, and, as its name implies, for the purpose of carrying dogs. Such a vehicle would seat four, a roomy, comfortable trap “with space under the seats, where a brace of pointers or other dogs could lie at ease.” As I have said in a preceding chapter, the sides of the cart “were made with Venetian slats to provide ventilation.” Such a cart, however, proved so agreeable that no long time elapsed before its original purpose was lost sight of, and it became one of the commonest of country carriages. Built on a small scale it was admirably suited for pony or cob. Numerous varieties exist. In the tandem cart, as generally constructed, the driver’s seat is high—the only cart, indeed, of the kind to maintain any height at all. In the Ralli cart two seats are placed back to back, the foot-rest to the latter closing on the body when required. (Built somewhat on the lines of the ralli, by the way, is the Indian tonga, “a rather low, hooded vehicle ... furnished for draught by a pair of ponies on the curricle principle with pole and bar.”) The Battlesden, Bedford, and Malvern carts are other varieties. More popular, perhaps, than any of these is the governess cart, which, while really in a class by itself, may be mentioned here. This is a low and particularly safe carriage, in which the seats are placed at the sides, as in the waggonette, and the door is at the back. An improvement on the governess cart, though not nearly so popular, is the Princess car, first designed in 1893. Here the back door is dispensed with, the entrance being in front. “The driving seat is arranged on a slide, whereby it can be moved forwards or backwards to adjust the balance; and it also enables the driver to sit facing the horse instead of sitting sideways as in the governess cart.”

In the last chapter I pointed out the chief varieties of public carriages. Of these the hansom and the omnibus have undergone considerable changes. The hansom was enormously improved by Mr. Forde, a Wolverhampton coachbuilder, in 1873, when the Society of Arts offered a prize for the best two-wheeled public conveyance. Mr. Forde’s carriage was much lighter than the older hansoms, and “its merits attracted the appreciative attention of foreigners, whereby an export trade became established.” Four years later another vehicle, the two-wheeled brougham, was introduced, but did not meet with success. The Floyd hansom of 1885 showed other improvements, and for the first time the hansom became a private carriage. Here the “side windows were made to open, as were two small windows at the back of the cab.” For a short while, indeed, the private hansom was one of the smartest of gentlemen’s carriages. Then in 1889 was shown another hansom with a movable hood. This was wholly unsuccessful, but the Arlington cab, a Dorchester invention of this time, may still be seen in provincial towns to which the taximeter petrol cab has not yet reached. The chief peculiarity about this hansom is its doors, which, instead of reaching only half-way up and being constructed at a backward angle, reach from door to roof and are upright—thus giving a more spacious interior. These doors are “fitted with sliding glasses in the top part after the manner of an ordinary brougham door.” A brougham hansom was introduced in 1887. “This afforded sitting-room inside for three or four; it was entered at the back, and when the door was shut, a seat across it was so arranged that there was no possibility of the door opening till the occupants’ weight was off the seat. The driver’s seat was in front, on the roof of the vehicle.” A four-wheeled hansom was also seen in London some twenty-five years ago. Here the driver’s seat was behind the carriage on a level with the roof.

“Everybody knows,” remarks Sir Walter Gilbey, “that the hansom, by reason of its steadiness, is an exceedingly comfortable conveyance; there is no vehicle that runs more easily, particularly when the load is truly balanced.” But in spite of such improvements as rubber tyres and patent windows, the hansom seems doomed.

Shillibeer’s huge omnibuses were succeeded by smaller vehicles of similar construction. For some years no passengers were carried upon the roof except one or two beside the driver. Then in 1849 an “outside seat down the centre of the roof was added,” to reach which you had to climb an iron ladder. This continued until 1890, when the much more convenient “garden-seats” were substituted, and a curved flight of steps took the place of the rather dangerous ladder. Private omnibuses were first constructed about 1867. They contained a rumble at the back for the footman, but this was speedily dispensed with. As built to-day, they are of various sizes.

One other carriage may be mentioned, and then I am done. This is the Irish car. Here, as in the larger bian, the seats are arranged back to back and sideways. “The wheels are very low and are concealed as far as the axle-boxes, or farther, by the panel of the footboard, which panel is hinged to the end of the tray, either side of which forms the seat, to allow of its being turned up when not in use.” Occasionally there is a well between the seats for small packages. In private cars of this kind there is a small seat in front for the driver, but this is rarely to be found in the public vehicles. The width of the Irish car is enormous, and occasionally leads the neophyte into trouble. Outside Ireland, I believe, the car is not seen.

“Walking in the pleasant environs of Paris,” wrote Mr. H. C. Marillier some seventeen years ago, in an article entitled The Automobile: A Forecast, “or even further afield, upon the broad routes nationales of Charente and La Beauce, it is no uncommon thing to meet on a summer’s day a little open vehicle flitting along without apparent means of motion, upon noiseless rubber-shod wheels, or panting forth a gentle warning from a square-shaped box in front. Two, and sometimes three, persons are seated in it, one of whom drives by means of a handle. To stop or to start again requires the turn of a screw or the push of a pedal. Such, in its most accomplished and most graceful form, is the automobile. To see it pass at racing speed—some of these little machines can spurt at twenty miles an hour—takes one’s breath away at first. The apparition is uncanny.”

In another passage he speaks of these horseless carriages as playing “a prominent part as the natural successors of the hansom cab and the omnibus,” and draws what must then have been a fanciful picture of a city upon whose roads there would be seen almost as many horseless as horse-driven vehicles. To-day we know what has happened since these words were written. The hansom is a rarity, except during a strike of petrol-car drivers. The omnibus is a speedy machine with a powerful engine. The growler persists, but only for the benefit of those with much luggage or for those afraid of the internal combustion engine, that extraordinary discovery which has revolutionised locomotion even more than did steam eighty years ago. With such facts as these it would be easy to prophesy a total extinction of horse-driven vehicles except for purely ornamental purposes. Yet I believe that there may be a reaction in favour of a more leisurely means of locomotion. As yet it is impossible to be truly dignified in even the most gorgeously appointed motor-car. “Carriage people” no longer form a class, and the old coach-building firms which have not followed the times and shown one or other make of automobile in their rooms are few in number. Mr. Marillier, moreover, in the article just quoted, speaks of “that ideal future when life shall consist of sitting in a chair and pressing buttons”; but the horse is not yet extinct, and although it is not probable that any horse-carriages of an entirely new type will be constructed, I imagine that the older forms will persist, at any rate, for the next century or two. Indeed, to my mind, there must always be the man who will prefer the reins to the driving wheel. And who can blame him for the choice?