The English Carriage

Hugh McCausland

Description

Mr Hugh McCausland is an authority on the history and turn-out of English Carriages and Coaches. He has also driven many, if not all, of the coaches that have appeared on English roads.
It had been said that few books of either fact or fiction are written, pictures painted or films made, in which carriages and their equipment have been correctly depicted. Mr McCausland has now fixed this problem with this fine book.

Sujets

• Pets
• Horses
• Sport équestre
• Sports équestres
• Sports équestres
• Sports équestres

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781473386648
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE
ENGLISH CARRIAGE
BY
HUGH McCAUSLAND
F. Ambrose Clark Collection
Lynwood Palmer
T ANDEM (D OG -C ART ). See page 52
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 CURRICLE AND CABRIOLET
2 OTHER TWO-WHEELED CARRIAGES
3 FAMILY OF PHAETONS
4 WAGONETTES, BRAKES AND OTHER INFORMAL CARRIAGES
5 DRESS AND TRAVELLING CARRIAGES
6 VICTORIAN COACHMAN-DRIVEN CARRIAGES
7 FOUR-IN-HAND COACHES
8 LONDON CABS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF PAINTERS
INDEX
FOREWORD
P ORTIONS of several of the chapters of this book have appeared, in somewhat different and shorter form, in articles on English Carriages which I contributed to Riding , and I am much indebted to the Editor for leave to make use of them here.
I am most grateful, also, to those who have helped by allowing their paintings, prints or photographs to be reproduced, and to Mr. Sidney F. Sabin, and Messrs. Frank T. Sabin of New Bond Street, for lending colour blocks of Mr. Ambrose Clark s two paintings by Lynwood Palmer and one by James Pollard. Details and sources of these and other plates are given fully in the List of Illustrations.
I have been concerned to limit the use of capital letters as far as possible. For convenience of reference at the first mention of a particular type of carriage it has been treated as a proper name, but subsequently printed without the capital letter.
H. McC.
ILLUSTRATIONS T ANDEM (D OG -C ART ) from the original painting by Lynwood Palmer, in the collection of Mr. F. Ambrose Clark. I. The Marquis of Anglesey driving his C URRICLE , from the print (lithograph) after the Hon. Henry Graves, in the collection of Mr Geoffrey Bennett. II. Mr Massey Stanley driving his C ABRIOLET , from the original painting by John E. Ferneley in the collection of Mr H. Arthurton. III. C ABRIOLET H ORSE AND T IGER , from the print Cab Horse, St. James , after J. F. Herring senior. (Author s collection). IV. Mr Barclay driving his S TANHOPE G IG , from the aquatint in colour, Something Slap , after Henry Alken senior. (Author s collection). V. T ANDEM C OCKING C ART , from the coloured aquatint Going to the Moors , after C. B. Newhouse (1833). (Author s collection). VI. The Prince of Wales s H IGHFLYER P HAETON , with horses and Thomas, the State Coachman, from the painting (1793) by George Stubbs, at Windsor. Reproduced by gracious permission of H.M. the King. VII. L ADY S (or G EORGE IV) P HAETON (1910) from the painting by Lynwood Palmer, in the possession of the International Horse Show. VIII. M AIL P HAETON meeting S TAGE C OACH , from the aquatint in colour (1848) In Time for the Coach , after Cooper Henderson. (Author s collection). IX. S PIDER P HAETON driven by Harry Milton (1910), from the original water-colour drawing by Lynwood Palmer. (Author s collection). X. F OUR-WHEELED D OG -C ART used for posting, from the aquatint in colour (1848) Late for the Mail , after Cooper Henderson. (Author s collection). XI. F AMILY W AGONETTE (1900). XII. P RIVATE O MNIBUS for a single horse (1920). XIII. Private W AGONETTE B RAKE (1930). A carriage in the late Lynwood Palmer s stable. XIV. S HOOTING B RAKE (1930). A carriage in the late Lynwood Palmer s stable. XV. T OWN C OACH (Dress or State Coach). XVI. T RAVELLING (Posting) C HARIOT , from the aquatint in colour (1817), The Elected M.P. on his way to the House , after James Pollard. XVII. D ORMEUSE C HARIOT , after G. D. Giles (from the Badminton Library) by courtesy of Messrs. Longmans Green Co. Ltd. XVIII. B AROUCHE , still in occasional use at the Royal Mews. By courtesy of Raphael Tuck Sons Ltd. XIX. T OWN C OACH H ORSES AND C OACHMAN , from the mezzotint (1798) after George Garrard. (Author s collection). XX. C HARIOT H ORSES AND P OSTILLIONS , from the mezzotint (1798) after George Garrard. (Author s collection). XXI. Modern S INGLE B ROUGHAM in the Royal Mews. By courtesy of Raphael Tuck Sons Ltd. XXII. H. M. Queen Alexandra and H.R.H. Princess Victoria watching a meet of the Four-in-Hand Club from a Cee-spring V ICTORIA . (Photograph by W. W. Rouch). XXIII. A S OCIABLE -L ANDAU in Hyde Park in the nineties. (From S. Sidney s Book of the Horse ). XXIV. R OYAL M AIL C OACH , Leeds and London, in the reign of William IV, from the original water-colour drawing by Cooper Henderson. (Author s collection). XXV. D RAG , or P ARK C OACH , from the International Horse Show picture by Lynwood Palmer. XXVI. S TAGE C OACH , the Tally-Ho , Birmingham and London ( c .1830), from the original painting by James Pollard, in the collection of Mr F. Ambrose Clark. XXVII. R OAD C OACH , from the original painting by Lynwood Palmer, in the collection of Mr F. Ambrose Clark. XXVIII. R OYAL M AIL C OACHES preparing to leave the General Post Office, St. Martin s-le-Grand, showing in the foreground ( left to right ): C LARENCE F OUR -W HEELED C AB , an early H ANSOM C AB , two B OULNOIS B ACK-DOOR C ABS , and a H ACKNEY C ABRIOLET . From an aquatint in colour after James Pollard. (Author s collection). XXIX. H ACKNEY C ABRIOLET H ORSE AND C ABMAN , from the colour print, Cab Horse, St. Giles , after J. F. Herring senior. (Author s collection). XXX. A typical London H ANSOM C AB of later years.
INTRODUCTION
T RANSPORT claims as rapid and spectacular a development-progress, if you like the word-within the last few generations as any form of human activity or accomplishment. Particularly rapid, revolutionary and recent has been the metamorphosis of road travel.
The older generation of today, born to a world in which the horse was still supreme on the roads and in the streets, see him now a complete back number, nearing obsolescence and very nearly a pensioner dependent on sport for his survival. Within the span of the previous generation horses had been man s only means of land travel, except he walked. In broad terms, little more than a century separates us from the pre-railway age of long-distance travel by coach and chaise, and half as long from the time when carriages could claim the roads as their own.
Though public railways of a kind began to open in England in the eighteen-twenties, it was not until well into Queen Victoria s reign that the more important ones made any headway. In 1835 , says Stanley Harris, first-hand historian of coaching times, there was not a railway out of London. Not until 1840, according to the diary of John Sopwith, was it that the coaches discontinued running between York and London. Decades more elapsed before the four-horse stage coach gave place to the rail for carrying passengers in more remote parts of England; and, with the sport of driving as incentive, it survived disconnectedly right up to the outbreak of war in 1939. Carriages of private use only saw their best days in mid and late Victorian times, long after the coming of railways; their displacement by motors at the turn of the century was gradual enough to leave the reign of King Edward VII a time distinguished by its smart equipages. Two major wars and their consequences-to say nothing of such adverse factors as road surfaces designed for motors and unsuited to horses-were needed, almost, if not quite, to eliminate those who continued to use carriages for the love of the thing.
Only fifty-one years ago was the law repealed which forbade the use of the highway to a mechanically propelled vehicle not preceded by a man carrying a red flag. That occasion was marked by an organized run of motor cars from London to Brighton. With the enfranchised cars making that historic journey down a road replete with driving and coaching history there travelled one coach and four. Two old friends of mine drove the coach; they reached Brighton ahead of most of the cars, passing many on the way-some in motion, some broken down-and one or two in flames. More than once have I heard each of them tell the tale of that drive; and a good yarn they made of it. One of them-Sidney Truett, our senior surviving coach-proprietor-can still be persuaded to tell it in his Sussex home not far from the road down which, as late as the mid nineteen-twenties, he drove the last daily stage coach that ran between London and Brighton. The other, Stanley Cave, whose lifetime of professional activity in the renaissance of road coaching included some twenty seasons on that same London-Brighton road, died but a little more than a year since, when over eighty years of age and known as the Father of the Road . Other such human links with driving history have been broken only recently by the deaths of such personalities as Harry Milton, one of the most accomplished whips of his time, and the Ward brothers, coach-proprietors and jobmasters of Brompton Road. The former, whose ancestor, Mat Milton, had supplied horses and vehicles for the personal driving of George IV, when Prince Regent, himself found horses for the Royal Mews in King Edward VII s time and when a boy, as he told me but a few years since, was given his first driving lessons by one Tim Carter, then a very old man; and Tim Carter, be it known, was one of the coachmen of the Telegraph , crack stage coach between London and Exeter in days before railways were known. The Wards could claim an even closer connection with that period, being the sons of the once-famous Charles Ward of the Quicksilver , London and Devonport mail coach.
Facts of this kind serve to bring the coach and the carriage close to the present day, to show how little time really has elapsed since everyday people knew as familiar objects vehicles that now are nearly lost sight of, and are seldom mentioned without some such hackneyed prefix as old world tacked on to them. In truth they are but recent things, these English carriages and coaches, when confined to the limits of general interest, however remote they may seem to a generation without recollections of a youth in which horses and horse-vehicles had a place, and grown or growing up to a world dominated by things mechanical, rapidly changing and fast moving.
Within these limits I place only those