George V’s State Carriage
(From a Photograph)
Other English state carriages hardly less successfully designed have been made for the Lord Mayor of London (1887), for Sir Marcus Samuel, when holding that position in 1902-3, for the Sheriffs, and for various Indian Princes.
Coming to less pretentious vehicles, we may briefly consider in the first place the coach proper. At the time of Queen Victoria’s Coronation, coaches of the old pattern were, of course, still being constructed. There is in possession of Messrs. Holland and Holland a mail-coach built by Waude, one of the best-known coachbuilders of that time, which is typical of the period. This, says Mr. Charles Harper,
“is substantially and in general lines as built in 1830. The wheels have been renewed, the hind boot has a door at the back, and the interior has been relined; but otherwise it is the coach that ran when William IV was King. It is a characteristic Waude coach, low-hung, and built with straight sides, instead of the bowed-out type common to the productions of Vidler’s factory. It wears, in consequence, a more elegant appearance than most coaches of that time; but it must be confessed that what it gained in the eyes of the passers-by it must have lost in the estimation of the insides, for the interior is not a little cramped by those straight sides. The guard’s seat on the ‘dickey’—or what in earlier times was more generally known as the ‘backgammon-board’—remains, but his sheepskin or tiger-skin covering, to protect his legs from the cold, is gone. The trap-door into the hind boot can be seen. Through this the mails were thrust and the guard sat throughout the journey with his feet on it. Immediately in front of him were the spare bars, while above, in the still remaining case, reposed the indispensable blunderbuss. The original lamps in their reversible cases remain. There were four of them—one on either forequarter, and one on either side of the fore boot, while a smaller one hung from beneath the footboard, just above the wheelers. The guard had a small hand lamp of his own to aid him in sorting his small parcels. The door panels have apparently been repainted since the old days, for although they still keep the maroon colour characteristic of the mail-coaches, the Royal Arms are gone, and in their stead appears the script monogram in gold, V.R.”
It is the coach which of all vehicles has least changed its appearance in the last hundred years. The drag of to-day and the old coach just described differ from one another only in a few minor details of construction. The reason for this is not far to seek. “The brief ‘Golden Age,’” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “of fast coaching saw the vehicle, of which such hard and continuous work was required, brought as near perfection as human ingenuity and craftsmanship was capable of bringing it. No effort was spared to make the mail or road-coach the best possible conveyance of its kind, and in retaining the model of a former age the modern coachbuilder confesses his inability to improve upon the handiwork of his progenitors.”
It is curious to note, by the way, that for a short time such coaches were hardly made at all, and the Report on the carriages shown at the London Exhibition of 1862 speaks of the “revival of an almost obsolete carriage, the four-in-hand coach, which had taken place within a few years.” This was undoubtedly due to the founding in 1856 of the Four-in-Hand Driving Club.
Nor was this revival confined to England. In the official Reports upon Carriages at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, Mr. G. F. Budd draws attention to the fact that “the French have closely adhered to the English styles in the general design and shape of the bodies of their vehicles, especially in broughams ... landaus ... and drags. In the latter description of carriage, which has become so popular during the last few years, though it is peculiarly an English carriage, the style has been closely followed, and with such considerable success, that the French builders now appear as our formidable rivals in this branch of the manufacture.” “A novelty,” he continues, “in the design ... consists in the roof being so constructed as to admit of being opened in the centre ... a cover is placed on the top of the two portions of the head thus opened, and so forms, to all appearance, an ordinary luncheon-case with the ends open: it thus serves the purpose of a table when required ... and affords an increase of ventilation to those riding inside the vehicle.” Similarly in America drags began to be built after the establishment of a driving club. These are identical with the English models.
With regard to the other four-wheeled carriages, we have now arrived at a period when it is almost impossible to speak at any length of each particular kind.[56] For in the first place such a classification as I have used to describe the older vehicles must to a large extent break down, and in the second place, from the time when the great exhibitions did so much to make the manufacturers of all nations familiar with each other’s work, nearly every coachbuilder of standing has produced one model, if not more, peculiar to itself. So, in the middle of last century, you had carriages which approximated to the barouche, yet which had been evolved indirectly from so different a vehicle as the phaeton. You saw carriages, obviously dissimilar in appearance, yet bearing, to the layman, the same name. You had new combinations of perches and springs. And carriages were being exported from one country to be improved upon the lines most suitable to the roads and tastes of another.
Of all these carriages perhaps the two which deserve most mention are the landau and the victoria, both open carriages, which can be closed at will.
The landau, as I have said, had originally been a coach made to open. At the beginning of the century it had hardly been so popular as the landaulet, but at this time it underwent several improvements at the hands of Mr. Luke Hopkinson, a celebrated coachbuilder of Holborn. It was Hopkinson who first built what was known as a briska-landau, but he chiefly concerned himself not so much with the shape of the carriage-body as with the hood. He built his new landaus in such a way as to allow the hood to be folded, so that it lay horizontally at the back of the seat. At the same time the floor and the seats were raised so as to make the whole carriage a far more spacious and comfortable vehicle than had been possible when the hood could not be completely opened.[57] And with the hood entirely “down” you had practically the landau of to-day, possibly the commonest carriage on the road. Nearly every “fly” which so often is to be seen standing rather forlornly outside the village station as your train thunders past is a landau modelled on Hopkinson’s designs. He was not, however, the only coachbuilder whose attention was being given to this useful carriage. Of one of the new landaus built by other firms a trade journal of the day observed with some truth that “its graceful outline and roominess” made it “the very beau-ideal of vehicular luxury.” And as the years passed the landau in its several varieties increased in popularity. Improvements tended almost solely in the direction of lightness. The Report on the carriages at the exhibition of 1862 pays particular attention to the landau. “The demand for them,” it runs, “has ... increased. They are well suited to the variable climate of the British Isles, as they can readily be changed from an open to a closed carriage and vice versa.” At a later exhibition—in 1885—the landau[58] had become so popular that there was actually shown one, built for the Earl of Sefton, suited to the capabilities of a single horse. This was an important departure from tradition which seems to have shocked some of the old-fashioned designers. “That an established house with an aristocratic connection,” lamented one trade paper at the time, “should exhibit a landau for one horse would have been considered incredible twenty years ago.” No doubt this was true, but people persisted in their desire for light carriages, and a one-horse landau was the natural outcome. At a later date there was a tendency to alter the shape of the body. Hitherto this had generally been angular; now the lines became curving, the body, looked at from the side, forming the arc of a huge circle. Such a carriage was known as the canoe landau. To-day the canoe bodies, both in England and abroad, are made rather deeper than at the time of their introduction, but the square shape still persists. If there is one English vehicle which may be called the favourite carriage it is surely the landau.