The reason given why drag-coaches are made with the front wheel so far back is, that it was necessary in order to bring the horses close to their work, to use a phrase that has been much misapplied, and also to bring them under the driver’s hands, who prefers the reins short, but it would be quite possible to build a coach in which the driver might be over the horses, and yet have the advantage of higher front wheels, and properly placed for carrying the load.
The Coachmaker may often gather a useful hint by studying the construction of carts, which have to carry heavier loads than carriages, often at an equal speed, and certainly not with better horses.
If the wheels of a vehicle are of equal height, the load should rest in the middle of the wheels. When the front wheels meet with an obstacle in the road the horse will only have to lift half the weight of the load, the other half being on the hind wheels. When the hind wheels come to the same obstruction again only half the load will have to be lifted, the other half being on the front wheels. But, as in English carriages, the wheels are very rarely of equal height, we should proportion the load more upon the higher wheels than upon the lower. As long ago as 1770 a Coachmaker, named Joseph Jacob, of St. Mary Axe, wrote thus:—“A load should always be placed in a waggon over the highest wheels, and as low as possible.” This was the Mr Jacob who assisted at some experiments made at that time in the Strand, by direction of the Society of Arts, for the purpose of ascertaining the proper height of wheels. Mr Cuthbert Clarke was rewarded with a fifteen guinea gold medal. Mr Jacob had also received a twenty guinea medal for improved carriage springs.
During my lectures I exhibited some full-sized drawings of carriages made by M. Dupont, of Paris, to show how completely a Coachbuilder at a distance might be guided in building carriages by his designs. These drawings are quite works of art, and by means of them M. Dupont is educating the artistic taste of every manufactory which procures his aid. How much better our carriages would be if we worked from drawings as carefully planned out and executed as these. Many of our artisans could, with a little instruction, draw quite as well, and by degrees would learn to draw with as much artistic taste and sense of the beautiful. Some artisans are now being instructed in the art of design, and I trust the day is not far distant when every workman will see that his son learns drawing as part of his education, and as the essential preliminary to any technical education which is to follow. The power of producing on paper the images figured on the brain is an important part and factor in all the arrangements of our social life, whether those images and imaginations, and reasons and problems, are traced with the pen in writing or with the pencil in a drawing, by both we record, we discipline, and we clear up more or less the busy thoughts that nature or surrounding circumstances have gifted and endowed us with. On the Continent, and especially in Paris, this has long been understood, and workmen have been carefully educated for this work. And, thanks to the department of Science and Art of South Kensington, thousands of students have past through the schools of design scattered all over England. If the artisans of the Coach Trade would follow the example of those engaged in the china and pottery trades, they would meet with the same success, and restore their fame for Coachbuilding to its former greatness.
Last year, in November, Mr Gladstone gave an address at Greenwich upon the study of science and art. I may be permitted to record here how in that address he eloquently pressed upon his hearers that:—
“Beauty could and should be combined with economy and utility in all our industrial products; beauty was indeed a great element of utility; the trade of France was founded upon the beauty of that which it produces, and the economical application of means to ends; and that is due to the long culture and traditional application of the national mind to beauty in their products. The human nature in which we are cast was not endowed with all its marvellous faculties for nothing, and it is the due development of those faculties that constitutes the true and full idea of the duty of man in this world. It has been too much the habit in this country to regard beauty of production as something quite apart from usefulness of production, and at the same time to look upon the beauty which may result from human labour as a luxury reserved for the rich alone. But beauty has a commercial value, and its multiplication should form part of human education. We are all still at school, both young and old. We should then endeavour to work all things into beautiful forms, as did the ancient Greeks, so that artistic skill and love of the beautiful became an inheritance with them, formed part of their nature, accompanied their daily life, and entered into every kind of production. This is a time when all who are concerned in the welfare of the country feel it to be desirable that efforts should be made to give instruction, so as to improve the knowledge of the British artistic workman, and enable him to hold his position in the markets of the world. I confess,” said Mr Gladstone, “I should like to see a great deal of this work done by the London Companies. That they should strive to make themselves illustrious in the country by fulfilling the purpose for which they were founded, namely, developing the crafts, trades, and mysteries of this great country (as the Society of Arts has laboured to do for so many long years) to promote beauty and economy in the production of works of industry. But I believe,” Mr Gladstone continued, “that it is really in the individual that the secret of the whole matter lies. It is not as a body that you fill the benches of this room; you are here as individuals, and it is your thoughts and convictions, your own resolute efforts to improve, and energetically to direct your labours to the attainment of the highest end that constitutes the real resource to which we have to look. No auxiliaries can supplant, they can only aid individual exertion. Each individual worker may have a notion of doing his work in the way which is most useful, but he ought also to have a sense of the difference between what is more useful and less useful, and what is more beautiful and the less beautiful. Now the sense of beauty is not, under natural circumstances, the favoured inheritance of a few only, it is meant to be, should be, and may be the universal inheritance of civilised mankind. It ought, therefore, to be the aim of the humblest artisan to acquire by study and thought such a sense of beauty as may elevate the character of the work he performs. And it will at the same time be found that as he developes beauty in his work he will raise his self-respect, he will raise himself, his family, and his class infinitely more than by any effort to get out of his position, either for himself or his children.”
I trust I shall be excused for making this long extract from Mr Gladstone’s speech, but it expresses so much and in such true and kindly language, that I felt I ought to add his well-considered words to my History of the Art of Coachbuilding.
The fine series of photographs of State and other Carriages, and the valuable library of the Coach and Coach-harness Makers Company are open every Saturday afternoon. Tickets of admission may be obtained at the principal Coachbuilders of London.
London: Kerby & Endean, 190 Oxford Street,
Printers and Publishers.