Charles Dickens – English Carriages and their Changes – Page 2
Stanhope Gig Carriage Without Hood Illustration
from Modern Carriages by Sir Walter Gilbey, 1905
The curricle with its silver bar flourished in its most expensive shape with two grooms attendant, in the time of George the Regent. The little boot which in later days carried the grooms, was an economical compromise; four horses and two servants to carry two persons in a carriage only fit for day-work, was surely the height of extravagance. It was necessary, too, that the horses should be matched to the greatest nicety in size and step, as well as color, and match horses are always an additional expense.
The most celebrated curricle of the last century was built of copper, in the shape of a sea-shell, and was driven by that caricature of dandies, Romeo Coates. The last curricle about town was Count D’Orsay’s, and although the shape of the body of the carriage was inelegant, the effect of that kind of be-plated luxury was very striking when the horses were perfect, and the harness gorgeous and well varnished.
The Four-horse Coach Club was in great force forty years ago, when the highest professors of the art of four-in-hand were to be found by day and night on every highroad in the kingdom. The coaches of the club of the regiments in which the art still survives, are perhaps as complete specimens of mere mechanic art as ever. Among the carriages which have altogether disappeared since the Reform Bill, is the vis-a-vis, essentially a court carriage, requiring a pair of horses, a coachman and a footman; it must have been the work of an inventor seeking the smallest result at the largest expense, as it had no apparent advantage over a chariot, and was less useful.
The chariot still retains its place among those who always have at least one footman to spare — among a decreasing number of dowagers and a few physicians; but such is the effect of change of fashion, that a secondhand one is almost unsaleable; twenty pounds will buy what cost two hundred and fifty pounds; whereas fifty years ago no carriage was in such demand as the chariot; and in its lowest stages it was to be found on hack-stands and at livery stables, in the place of the modern fly.
The mail phaeton of the last generation of the pre-railroad age has been reduced in size and weight, and (in the majority of instances), by the abolition of the perch, transformed into the Stanhope phaeton. It is likely to continue popular with the large number who enjoy driving, and can afford to drive, a pair of horses. The old mail phaeton, some specimens of which may still be seen driven by country bankers and masters of hounds, required a pair of full-sized expensive horses to draw it well, instead of the small blood horses which best suit a Stanhope phaeton; but it was, of its kind, a luxurious carriage, by its strength and weight defying the jolts of the worst roads, and overpowering the impudence of the drunken drivers of market-carts. Nothing less than collision with a four-wheeled wagon could shake it, while the driver, high above his horses, held them in complete command, and rolled serenely along, overlooking garden walls, and looking down on all ordinary vehicles. In the days when roadside inns regularly expected and received a succession of guests, there was nothing pleasanter than a tour of visits to hospitable friends, in a well-appointed mail phaeton, with an agreeable companion at your side, and a clever handy groom behind. The big hood was a partial protection to the great-coated many-caped inmates, and the blazing lamps and rattling pole-chains made even a dark and foggy night not altogether disagreeable, from the comforting sensation that if anything .you could not see did run against you, it was not your solid carriage that would get the worst of it.
The fashionable two-wheeled half-covered town carriage of Reform Bill days was the cabriolet. Palace-yard was full of them on the evenings of great debates. Now, you may count on your fingers the number that are worth looking at in the Park, or at the doors of the best clubs. The Brougham killed the cabriolet, superseding it entirely as the one carriage of the bachelor, and leaving it only for a few, to whom a carriage, more or less, is of no con- sequence. In another twenty years the cabriolet will have followed its predecessor, the curricle, to the limbo of marine stores. The cabriolet, when perfectly appointed, was a very stately bachelor’s day-carriage, costing a large sum of money to build, requiring a very expensive horse, with a change if used at night as well as day, unfit for country expeditions, and not complete without a perfectly useless buy jolting unmercifully behind, and too small for any- thing but ornament.