MAIL PHAETON
Dark green; cane work at back of seat. Trimmed in eggshell broadcloth.
Styles in carriages, like women’s fashions, changed continuously. Speaking of the mail phaeton, a massive, masculine pair-horse carriage, the Duke of Beaufort in 1899 said: “They are much in use by noblemen and gentlemen and frequently employed by bachelors for long posting journeys in England as well as the Continent. They have almost reached perfection in the hands of the builder, Peters.”
Just fourteen years later, Francis M. Ware wrote: “In phaetons, the cumbrous and lumbering mail phaeton is as extinct as the dodo.”
The mail phaeton took its name from the mail coach and was characterized by its wooden perch (the pole running from the rear to the front axle) and mail coach springing. In England, these vehicles were used to send out mail and parcels to the nearest point where the royal mail coach passed.
Gift of the Webb family in memory of Dr. and Mrs. W. Seward Webb
