Chapter the Tenth
MODERN CARRIAGES
“Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar
Drag the slow barge, or urge the rapid car;
Or on wide waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the realms of air.”
Erasmus Darwin.
THE year of Queen Victoria’s Coronation saw the successful opening of the London and Birmingham Railway, and from that time all but a few obstinate folk recognised the fact that the horse as a necessary adjunct to cross-country travelling was doomed. For some time, indeed, certain ingenious gentlemen had been carrying out a number of experiments with self-propelled carriages. Fifteen years before, several inventors had produced cumbrous machines which, without requiring rails, were able to progress along the roads at speeds which compared favourably with those attained by the ordinary coaches. Sir Goldsmith Gurney—to mention, perhaps, the most prominent of these men—had patented a steam-carriage in 1827 which, in spite of attacks from an irate populace who feared machinery as they feared the devil, was quite successful enough to lead the enterprising Mr. Hanning to ask for, and obtain, permission to run similar machines on many of the principal roads of England. Indeed, for a short while, there seems to have been a regular service of these primitive automobiles. Many people, it is true, fought shy of Gurney’s boilers, which in spite of the fact that they had been “constructed upon philosophical principles” occasionally exploded. It was after such an explosion at Glasgow that Tom Hood seized the opportunity to write the following lines:—