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.”