COACHING DAYS
Coaching days! The words carry us back a hundred years or more,
and bring to our minds gay, romantic pictures of scarlet-clad
postilions, prancing horses, and a rosy-faced driver with his long
whip and quaint three-tiered cape. We seem to hear the merry sound
of the horns, the ring of hoofs, and the rattle of harness, as the
coach, with its passengers and piled baggage, clatters along a
broad high road or draws up at the open door of some old-fashioned
English inn. Those are the eighteenth-century days that we call
to mind, the days when coaching was at its height, but we must go
further back than that if we want to find the origin of this form
of conveyance, and to see how it developed out of the clumsy wagons
and quaint whirlicotes and charettes of mediæval times.
We first hear of coaches in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and they
are said to have been introduced into England in 1594 by a coachman
who was a native of Holland.
There is an old picture of the great queen riding in one of her new
equipages on some state occasion. It was open at the sides, had a
high roof decorated with waving plumes, and was drawn by two richly
caparisoned horses.
[Illustration: A MEDIÆVAL COACH.]
At first, it appears, coaches were reserved for the use of royalty,
but Stowe tells us that "after a while divers great ladies made
them coaches and rid in them up and down the country, to the great
admiration of all beholders." He goes on to say that within twenty
years coach-making became an important trade in England.
[Illustration: AN OLD FAMILY COACH.]
These coaches were very different from those of later times, for
they were open at the sides and the wheels were very small and low.
In shape they were not unlike the state coach that is still used
at coronations and other great occasions.
[Illustration: RIDING PILLION FASHION.]
During the seventeenth century many alterations and improvements
took place in coach-building both in England and France, and in
1620 we find Louis XIV. driving in a carriage with glass sides.
In the reign of this monarch, too, a curious light two-wheeled
conveyance was introduced. It was called a _flignette_ and very
much resembled a modern dog-cart.
[Illustration: SEDAN CHAIR.]
In the eighteenth century greater progress was made as roads
improved. Sedan chairs came into use, and ladies rode pillion
fashion, sitting on a cushion behind the saddle of the horseman.
[Illustration: POST-CHAISE.]
Hired carriages, too, began to be seen in the streets of Paris, and
in 1625 they appeared in London. Very few of them were allowed at
first, but in 1634 an old sea-captain named Baily established a
stand for hackney coaches near the Maypole in the Strand, and by
the end of the century there were no fewer than eight hundred of
these vehicles in the City and suburbs.
[Illustration: IN THE WILD WEST.]
Stage coaches to carry both passengers and mails were the next
innovation, and they were soon running regularly during summer on
three of the principal high roads of England.
Nowadays, when we can travel from one end of the country to the
other in a few hours, we should think the old conveyances very slow
coaches indeed, but at the end of the seventeenth and during the
eighteenth centuries they were thought marvels of swiftness. It
took a week--only a week, people said then--to go from London to
York, and the journey to Manchester could actually be made in four
days.
In Hogarth's pictures we can see what an early stage coach was
like, with its large, clumsy wheels, high roof, and an enormous
basket at the back in which baggage was carried and where
passengers who wished to travel cheaply could sit. Later on
this basket developed into an extra back seat, and in a picture
painted in 1834 there is a coach with no less than three separate
compartments, besides having seats on the roof.
In 1784 sixteen coaches left London every day, and it was one of
the sights of the City to see them start from the General Post
Office on their journeys. Each vehicle had an armed guard, for
those were the days of highwaymen, and it was no uncommon thing for
travellers to be stopped and robbed by gentlemen of the road.
Dick Turpin was one of these thieves, and for a long time he
terrorised Epping Forest and the outskirts of London, and another
famous--or infamous--robber was the young Frenchman Claud Duval,
about whom many romantic tales are told. On one occasion he
returned the jewels that he had stolen from a beautiful lady, on
condition that she would descend from her carriage and dance a
measure with him on the open road.
It is difficult now to realise what our highways were like a
hundred years ago and more, when coaching was at its height. Then
the great roads were crowded with traffic, post-chaises, stage
wagons, and pack-horses. Now it is sad to see the same roads
narrowed to half their former width by broad borders of grass that
have been allowed to grow.
In those days there were many private travelling carriages besides
the public coaches. A most interesting one is now in London at
Madame Tussaud's. This is the wonderful coach which belonged to
Napoleon Buonaparte. In it the great emperor rode back from Russia
after the burning of Moscow, and later on from Cannes to Paris on
his triumphal progress through France in 1815.
It is said that Napoleon himself designed the fittings of this
carriage, for it contained everything necessary for a long journey,
and was intended to serve the purpose of a bedroom, a dining-room,
and a kitchen. The coach was captured by a German officer after
the Battle of Waterloo, the emperor making his escape on horseback;
and having been purchased by a man named Bullock, it was exhibited
through the whole of the United Kingdom.
Gradually, as time went on, railways superseded the picturesque
old coaches. They continued to be used, however, in less civilised
countries, and can still be seen in the wild forest districts of
Australia, New Zealand, and America.
In the early pioneer days of the United States these coaches, with
their loads of passengers and mails, sometimes encountered bands
of Red Indians in their journeys across the prairies, and there
are stories of terrible disasters and narrow escapes when the
travellers were pursued and attacked by the savages.
Those exciting times have passed away now, but coaches have not
entirely disappeared. In Hyde Park on Sunday mornings before the
War we could see the beautiful vehicles of the Four-in-hand Club
to remind us of how our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers
travelled in the merry--but, perhaps, rather dangerous--days of
old.