capes, one over the other, for warmth. London, however, seems to have
been the only town in which they were to be seen. “Coaches,” wrote
Fynes Morison in 1617, “are not to be hired anywhere but in London. For
a day’s journey a coach with two horses is let for about 10s. a day, or
15s. with three horses, the coachman finding the horses’ feed.” From
the same author it would appear that most travellers still doggedly
kept to their horses, and indeed, in some counties a horse could be
hired for threepence a day, an incredibly small sum. “Carriers,” he
also records, “have long covered waggons in which they carry passengers
too and fro; but this kind of journeying is very tedious; so that
none but women and people of inferior condition travel in this sort.”
These were the stage-waggons which in due course gave rise to the
stage-coaches, which in their turn were superseded by the mail-coaches.
A similar movement in France gave rise to the _fiacres_, so called
from the sign of St. Fiacre, which adorned one of the principal inns
in Paris, in front of which the public coaches stood. In Scotland,
too, one Henry Andersen, a native of Pomerania, had in 1610 been
granted a royal patent to provide public coaches in Scotland, and for
some years ran a service between Edinburgh and Leith. England had yet
to follow Andersen’s example, but the hackneys were increasing so
rapidly in London that in 1635 a proclamation was issued to suppress
them. And it is to be noticed that Taylor’s diatribes were directed
more particularly against these public conveyances than against the
privately owned carriages, which, after all, could hardly affect his
trade. The proclamation was as follows:—
“That the great numbers of Hackney Coaches of late time seen
and kept in London, Westminster, and their Suburbs, and the
general and promiscuous use of Coaches there, were not only
_a great disturbance to his Majesty, his dearest Consort the
Queen, the Nobility, and others of place and degree, in their
passage through the Streets_; but the Streets themselves
were so pestered, and the pavements so broken up, that the
common passage is thereby hindered and more dangerous; and the
prices of hay and provender and other provisions of stable,
thereby made exceeding dear: Wherefore We expressly command
and forbid, That, from the feast of St. John the Baptist
next coming, no Hackney or Hired Coach, be used or suffered
in London, Westminster, or the Suburbs or Liberties thereof,
excepting they be to travel at least three miles out of London
or Westminster, or the Suburbs thereof. And also, that no
person shall go in a Coach in the said Streets, except the
owner of the Coach shall constantly keep up Four able Horses
for our Service, when required.”
It is dated January 19th, 1635/6, and must have had a considerable, if
temporary, effect, for as Samuel Pegge points out in his unfinished
manuscript on the early use of coaches[25] it could not “operate much
in the King’s favour, as it would hardly be worth a Coach-master’s
while to be at so great a contingent charge as the keeping of four
horses to be furnished at a moment’s warning for His Majesty’s
occasional employment.”
It was then that Sir Saunders Duncombe obtained his monopoly, and,
of course, everything was in his favour. The actual patent granted
to him belongs to the previous year, but the two are approximately
contemporary. From a letter written in 1634 to Lord Stafford, it
appears that Duncombe had in that year forty or fifty chairs “making
ready for use.” Possibly the whole thing was worked up by Buckingham
and his satellites. Duncombe’s patent gave the enterprising knight the
right “to put forth and lett for hire” the new chairs for a term of
fourteen years. In his petition he had explained that “in many parts
beyond the seas, the people there are much carried in the Streets in
Chairs that are covered; by which means very few Coaches are used
amongst them.” And so Duncombe was allowed to “reap some fruit and
benefit of his industry,” and might “recompense himself of the costs,
charges, and expences” to which he had, or said he had, been put.
For two years these covered chairs held the advantage, and indeed seem
to have been exceedingly popular. There is a most amusing pamphlet,
which I have already mentioned, “printed by Robert Raworth, for John
Crooch,” in 1636, entitled _Coach and Sedan pleasantly disputing for
Place and Precedence, the Brewer’s Cart being Moderator_. It is signed
“Mis-amaxius,” and is dedicated “to the Valorous, and worthy all title
of Honor, Sʳ Elias Hicks.” “Light stuffe,” the author calls it, and
tells us that he is “no ordinary Pamphleteer ... onely in Mirth I tried
what I could doe upon a running subject, at the request of a friend in
the _Strand_: whose leggs, not so sound as his Judgement, enforce him
to keepe his Chamber, where hee can neither sleepe or studie for the
clattering of _Coaches_.” It is an interesting little production, both
for its own whimsicalities and for the sidelights it affords into the
town’s views on the subject of vehicles at the time. It starts with the
cuckoo warning the milkmaids of Islington to get back to _Finsburie_.
The writer, accompanied by a Frenchman and a tailor, walks back to
the city, and in a narrow street comes across a coach and a sedan
quarrelling about which of them is to “take the wall.”
“Wee perceived two lustie fellowes to justle for the wall,
and almost readie to fall together by the eares, the one
(the lesser of the two) was in a suite of greene after a
strange manner, windowed before and behind with _Isen-glasse_,
having two handsome fellowes in greene coats attending him,
the one went before, the other came behind; their coats
were lac’d down the back with a greene-lace sutable, so
were their halfe sleeves, which perswaded me at first they
were some cast suites of their Masters; their backs were
harnessed with leather cingles, cut out of a hide, as broad as
_Dutch_-collops of _Bacon_.
“The other was a thick burly square sett fellow, in a doublet
of Black-leather, Brasse-button’d down the brest, Backe,
Sleeves, and winges, with monstrous wide bootes, fringed at
the top, with a net fringe, and a round breech (after the old
fashion) guilded, and on his back-side an Atcheivement of
sundry Coats in their propper colors, quarterd with Crest,
Helme and Mantle, besides here and there, on the sides of a
single Escutchion or crest, with some Emblematicall _Word_
or other; I supposed, they were made of some Pendants, or
Banners, that had beene stollen, from over some Monument,
where they had long hung in a Church.
“Hee had onely one man before him, wrapt in a red cloake,
with wide sleeves, turned up at the hands, and cudgell’d
thick on the backe and shoulders with broad shining lace (not
much unlike that which Mummers make of strawe hatts) and of
each side of him, went a Lacquay, the one a French boy, the
other Irish, all sutable alike: The _Frenchman_ (as I learned
afterward) when his Master was in the Countrey, taught his
lady and his daughter _French_: Ushers them abroad to publicke
meetings, and assemblies, all saving the Church whither shee
never came: The other went on errands, help’d the maide to
beate Bucks, fetch in water, carried up meate, and waited at
the Table.”
The writer attempts mediation, and his offer is favourably received.
The combatants explain who they are. The burly fellow speaks first:—
“My name Sir (quoth hee) is _Coach_, who am a Gentleman of an
anciente house, as you may perceive by my so many quarter’d
coates, of _Dukes_, _Marquises_, _Earles_, _Viscounts_,
_Barons_, Knights, and Gentlemen, there is never a Lord or
Lady in the land but is of my acquaintance; my imployment
is so great, that I am never at quiet, day or night; I am
a Benefactor to all Meetings, Play-houses, Mercers shops,
Taverns, and some other houses of recreation.... This other
that offers me the wrong, they call him Mounsier _Sedan_, some
Mr. _Chair_, a Greene-goose hatch’d but the other day ... and
whereas hee is able with all the helpe and furtherance hee
can make and devise, to goe not above a mile in an houre; as
grosse as I am, I can runne three or foure in halfe an houre;
yea, after dinner, when my belly is as full as it can hold
(and I may say to you) of dainty bitts too.”
Whereupon the sedan chimes in:—
“Sir, the occasion of our difference was this: Whether an
emptie Coach, that has a Lords head painted Coate and Crest,
as Lion, Bull, Elephant, &c. upon it without, might take
the wall of a _Sedan_ that had a knighte alive within it.”
I confess, he goes on to say, I am “a meere stranger, till
of late in _England_; therefore, if the Law of Hospitalitie
be observed (as _England_ hath beene accounted the most
hospitable kingdome of the World,) I ought to be the better
entertained, and used, (as I am sure I shall) and find as good
friends, as Coach hath any, it is not his bigge lookes, nor
his nimble tongue, that so runnes upon wheeles, shall scare
mee; hee shall know that I am above him both in esteeme,
and dignitie, and hereafter will know my place better....
Neither, I hope, will any thinke the worse of mee, for that I
am a Forreiner; hath not your Countrey Coach of England been
extreemly enriched by strangers?”
Indeed, all your luxuries, he continues, are foreign, your perfumes are
Italian, and your perukes made in France.
For some time it seems that Sedan is getting the best of it. Whereas
the coach, he argues, has to wait out in the cold streets often for
hours at a time, he is many times admitted into the privacy of my
Lady’s chamber, where he is rubbed clean both within and without. “And
the plain troath is,” he concludes, “I will no longer bee made a foole
by you ... the kenell is your naturall walke.” At this moment a carman
appears and supports the sedan. Coaches, he says, keep the town awake,
endanger the lives of children, and, particularly in the suburbs,
“be-dash gentlemen’s gowns.” There then follows a curious piece of
dialogue between Sedan and Powel, a Welshman, one of his attendants:—
“_Sedan._ We have our name from _Sedanum_, or _Sedan_, that
famous Citie and Universitie, belonging to the Dukes of
_Bevillon_, and where hee keepes his Court.”
“_Powel._ Nay, doe you heare mee Master, it is from _Sedanny_,
which in our British language, is a brave, faire, daintie
well-favoured Ladie, or prettie sweete wench, and wee carrie
such some time Master....”
Most of the morning is wasted by such desultory talk, and the street
becomes blocked. There comes on the scene a waterman, who, of course,
is equally antagonistic to both, and would throw coach and sedan
into the Thames if he were not afraid of blocking the stream, and so
bringing harm to himself. There follows him a country farmer, who
thinks the sedan the honester and humbler of the two, but really knows
very little about it. “I heare no great ill of you,” he is good enough
to say, but is bound to add, “I have had no acquaintance with your
cowcumber-cullor’d men.” Yet in the country he has in his way tried a
sedan-chair, which is a “plaine wheele-barrow,” just as his cart is his
coach “wherein now and then for my pleasure I ride, my maides going
along with me.” But if they both come to Lincolnshire, the sedan, he
thinks, will receive a warmer welcome than the coach.
After him comes a country vicar who has no hesitation in accusing the
coach of all sorts of robberies. Soon, he cries, you will be “turned
off.” You never cared for church, and indeed, during service, you
disturb everybody rumbling your loudest outside. Also you are so set up
that you will never give place “either to cart or carre.” A surveyor is
less personal than the vicar, but has little good to say of the coach,
although he agrees with most of the others that for a nobleman of high
rank, it is something of a necessity.
Finally the brewer appears and speedily puts an end to the wrangle.
“With that, comes up unto us a lustie tall fellow, sitting
betweene two mōstrous great wheeles, drawne by a great
old jade blinde of an eie, in a leather pilch, two emptie
beere-barrels upon a brewer’s slings besides him, and old
blew-cap all bedaub’d, and stincking with yest.... My name is
_Beere-cart_, quoth hee, I came into England in _Henry_ the
Seventh’s time.”
And the decision of the cart is, of course, that both coach and sedan
shall give way to _him_. They are both to exercise great care, and the
sedan is to have the wall. And he adds, turning to the smaller vehicle,
a sentence which it is difficult to understand.
“You shall never,” he says, “carrie Coachman againe, for the
first you ever carried was a Coachman, for which you had like
to have sufferd, had not your Master beene more mercifull.”
Such quarrels were very frequent, not only at this time, but right on
through the eighteenth century. Swift in one of his letters to Stella
mentions an accident due to the carelessness of a chairman. “The
chairman that carried me,” he says, “squeezed a great fellow against a
wall, who wisely turned his back, and broke one of the side glasses in
a thousand pieces. I fell a scolding, pretended I was like to be cut to
pieces, and made them set down the chair in the Park, while they picked
out the bits of glasses: and when I paid them, I quarrelled still, so
they dared not grumble, and I came off for my fare: but I was plaguily
afraid they would have said, God bless your honour, won’t you give us
something for our glass?”
Swift was the author of an amusing satire on the same subject, wherein
coach and sedan were no better friends than of old.
A CONFERENCE BETWEEN SIR HARRY PIERCE’S
CHARIOT AND MRS. D. STOPFORD’S CHAIR
CHARIOT
“My pretty dear Cuz, tho’ I’ve roved the town o’er,
To dispatch in an hour some visits a score;
Though, since first on the wheels, I’ve been everyday
At the ’Change, at a raffling, at church, or a play;
And the fops of the town are pleased with the notion
Of calling your slave the perpetual motion;—
Though oft at your door I have whined [out] my love
As my knight does grin his at your Lady above;
Yet, ne’er before this though I used all my care,
I e’er was so happy to meet my dear Chair;
And since we’re so near, like birds of a feather,
Let’s e’en, as they say, set our horses together.
CHAIR
“By your awkward address, you’re that thing which should carry,
With one footman behind, our lover Sir Harry.
By your language, I judge, you think me a wench;
He that makes love to me, must make it in French.
Thou that’s drawn by two beasts, and carry’st a brute,
Canst thou vainly e’er hope, I’ll answer thy suit?
Though sometimes you pretend to appear with your six,
No regard to their colour, their sexes you mix:
Then on the grand-paw you’d look very great,
With your new-fashion’d glasses, and nasty old seat.
Thus a beau I have seen strut with a cock’d hat,
And newly rigg’d out, with a dirty cravat.
You may think that you make a figure most shining,
But it’s plain that you have an old cloak for a lining.
Are those double-gilt nails? Where’s the lustre of Kerry,
To set off the Knight, and to finish the Jerry?
If you hope I’ll be kind, you must tell me what’s due
In George’s-lane for you, ere I’ll buckle to.
CHARIOT
“Why, how now, Doll Diamond, you’re very alert;
Is it your French breeding has made you so pert?
Because I was civil, here’s a stir with a pox:
Who is it that values your —— or your fox?
Sure ’tis to her honour, he ever should bed
His bloody red hand to her bloody red head.
You’re proud of your gilding; but I tell you each nail
Is only just tinged with a rub at her tail;
And although it may pass for gold on a ninny,
Sure we know a Bath shilling soon from a guinea.
Nay, her foretop’s a cheat; each morn she does black it,
Yet, ere it be night, it’s the same with her placket.
I’ll ne’er be run down any more with your cant;
Your velvet was wore before in a mant,
On the back of her mother; but now ’tis much duller,—
The fire she carries hath changed its colour.
Those creatures that draw me you never would mind,
If you’d but look on your own Pharaoh’s lean kine;
They’re taken for spectres, they’re so meagre and spare,
Drawn damnably low by your sorrel mare.
We know how your lady was on you befriended;
You’re not to be paid for ’till the lawsuit is ended:
But her bond it is good, he need not to doubt;
She is two or three years above being out.
Could my Knight be advised, he should ne’er spend his vigour
On one he can’t hope of e’er making _bigger_.”
Gay seems to have shared the watermen’s disgust at both coach and sedan.
“Boxed within the chair, contemn the street
And trust their safety to another’s feet,”
he says of those willing to use the chair. In another place he is
comparing the two:—
“The gilded chariots while they loll at ease
And lazily insure a life’s disease;
While softer chairs the tawdry load convey
To court, to _White’s_, assemblies or the play.”
Elsewhere he exhorts the pedestrian to assert his rights:—
“Let not the chairman, with assuming stride,
Press near the wall, and rudely thrust thy side;
The laws have set him bounds; his servile feet
Should ne’er encroach where posts defend the street.”
By this time, however, many changes in the chairs had taken place. They
seem to have been introduced into Paris in 1617 by M. de Montbrun,
though unfortunately from whence this gentleman brought them we are
nowhere informed. They were called _chaises à porteurs_. Possibly
English and French chairs were at first quite similar to each other
in appearance—square boxes with a pent-house—but in the middle of
the century—in Paris, at any rate, they became far more elegant in
form, and began to be ornamented and richly upholstered. Some of them
resembled, in shape, the body of the modern hansom-cab. This was
particularly the case with a new carriage, introduced about 1668,
called the _brouette_ (wheelbarrow), _roulette_, or _vanaigrette_,
which was merely a sedan upon two wheels. It was drawn in the usual way
by a man, and was an early form of that vehicle which still survives in
the East as the jin-rick-shaw. The brouette held but one person, its
wheels were large, and its two poles projected some way in front. One
Dupin was apparently the only person to manufacture them, and after
his first experiments he applied “two elbow-springs beneath the front,
and attached them to the axle-tree by long shackles, the axle-tree
working up and down in a groove beneath the inside-seat.” This
improvement is of more than ordinary interest in so far as it is the
first mention of steel springs to carriages. In the ordinary coaches
these steel springs were first applied beneath the bottom of the body.
They were probably formed out of a single piece of metal.
In the case of the brouette there was the usual opposition—this time
from the proprietors of the ordinary sedans—but although a temporary
prohibition was made, the brouette triumphed, and in 1671 was a common
sight in the streets of Paris. It was not very suitable for decoration.
As one French writer remarks, it was enough if the machine were solidly
constructed. The brouette had windows at the sides and a small support
in front of the wheels to allow the carriage to maintain its proper
position when not held up by an attendant.
The brouette does not seem to have come immediately to England,
though in the eighteenth century there was a _sedan cart_, similar
in appearance to it, to be seen in London. On the other hand, the
ordinary sedans were rapidly gaining in popularity, and maintained that
popularity right through the reigns of the first three Georges.
[Illustration: _Neapolitan Sedan Chair_
_Early Sixteenth Century_
(_At South Kensington_)]
In appearance they became rather more graceful towards the middle of
the century, though less so in later days. The public chairs were
generally made of black or dark green leather, ornamented with gold
“beading,” the frame and roof, which had a double slope, being of
wood, as was also the small square window-frame. Private chairs,
however, could be as gorgeous as the owner pleased, though in this
respect continental chairs far surpassed our own. At Paris are shown
two magnificent chairs which belonged to Louis XV.
“These,” says Croal, “have glass windows in side and front,
through which the sumptuous lining of crimson velvet is
discernible. The outside is beautifully painted and gilt, and
though now somewhat faded, the splendour of the vehicles can
be imagined, even in their decay. The gorgeously attired king
within, or it might be the queen or some reigning favourite,
would be attended by a gay escort of gentlemen of the court,
with a crowd of bearers and lacqueys, not to speak of armed
guards, whose liveries probably equalled in grandeur the
courtly habits of the greater men who surrounded the royal
chair.”
At South Kensington a private English chair of about 1760 is shown,
“rather handsomely ornamented in ormolu, the sides being divided into
four panels, but without windows. In form,” continues Croal, “the
chair may be described as ‘carriage-bodied,’ not being, as the later
chairs, square at the bottom. At the two front corners heavy tassels
are hung, and through the door in front it can be seen that the
interior lining is of figured damask. The bearing rings through which
the poles passed are of brass.” This, however, cannot compare with an
Italian nobleman’s large conveyance of the early eighteenth century
which shows a profusion of gold filigree work on the roof that calls
to mind nothing so strongly as a Buszard wedding-cake. It belonged to
a member of the Grand Ducal family of Tuscany, by whom it was used on
baptismal occasions. Here, besides the gilt work on the roof, there is
a medallion-painting of figures in antique costume over the door. The
walls are painted a pale French grey “with elaborately carved mouldings
round the panels, with groups of flowers painted in the middle. The
interior is lined with satin corresponding to the painting outside,
being in gold and colours upon a pale ground.”
The chairmen do not seem to have been a particularly agreeable lot of
fellows. In London they were generally Irish or Welsh. They were often
drunk, often careless, and nearly always uncivil. Says Gay:—
“The drunken chairman in the kennel spurns,
The glasses shatter, and his charge o’erturns.”
In Edinburgh, however, where there were ninety chairs in 1738, the
chairmen were Highlanders and rather more civil. “An inhabitant of
Edinburgh,” says Hugh Arnot in his history of that city (1789), “who
visits the metropolis can hardly suppress his laughter at seeing the
awkward hobble of a street chair in the city of London.” We learn from
Markland that in 1740 a chair in Edinburgh could be hired for four
shillings a day or twenty shillings a week.[26] In London, according to
George Selwyn, you could be carried three miles for a shilling.[27] In
Edinburgh, again, where chairs were used at a later date than anywhere
in England, rules were made for the public convenience in 1740, the
most interesting of these being one which forbade a soldier in the
service of the city guard to carry a chair at any time. By 1789 their
numbers had increased to 238, including fifty privately owned.
Scattered mention of them occurs amongst British authors. Steele, in
one of his _Tatler_ papers, proposes to levy a tax upon them, and
regrets that the sumptuary laws of the old Romans have never been
revived. The chairmen, or “slaves of the rich,” he says, “take up
the whole street, while we Peripatetics are very glad to watch an
opportunity to whisk across a passage, very thankful that we are not
run over for interrupting the machine, that carries in it a person
neither more handsome, wise, nor valiant, than the meanest of us.”
Matthew Bramble in _Humphrey Clinker_ is made to draw a wretched
picture of the chairs which abounded in Bath at the middle of the
century:—