Princess Victoria in her Pony Phaeton
(From a Drawing by Lowes Dickinson, 1835)
The earlier history of the victoria, the landau’s chief rival, is rather obscure. As I have mentioned, the once popular cab-phaeton was still to be seen in the ’forties in many continental cities as the milord, which from a most aristocratic vehicle had descended into the realms of hackdom. An English coachbuilder, however, Mr. J. C. Cooper, saw possibilities in such a vehicle and prepared a series of designs. His drawings were scornfully treated in England, but “found favour in the eyes of his continental clients,” who about 1845 constructed from them a four-wheeled cabriolet with seats for two. This small open carriage was copied in more than one place, particularly, it would seem, in Paris and Vienna. Whether these copies were still called milords I am not sure, but in 1856 they seem to have been described as victorias. In the meantime the pony phaeton had become popular in England, and in 1851 a new model designed for Her Majesty was, according to Stratton, also called a victoria.
“In the summer of 1851,” he writes, “a unique little pony phaeton was built by Mr. Andrews, of Southampton, for the Queen. The original announcement stated that when the carriage was delivered in front of the palace in the Isle of Wight, ‘the Queen and Prince expressed to Mr. Andrews their entire satisfaction with the style, elegance, and extraordinary lightness and construction of the carriage,’ which scarcely weighed three hundredweight. The height of the fore wheels is only eighteen inches, and of the hind ones thirty inches. The phaeton is cane-bodied, of George IV style, with movable head; the fore part is iron, but very light and elegant and beautifully painted. This carriage is known as the victoria, and has since been much improved in England and America.”
Mr. Stratton is probably right; but it was the French-built carriage which the then Prince of Wales brought to England in 1869 to which the name may be more correctly ascribed. It is to be noticed, however, that the pony phaeton and the victoria proper differ from one another only in size and in the presence or absence of a driver’s seat. The Prince of Wales’s carriage was curved in shape and hooded, but about the same time Baron Rothschild imported a victoria from Vienna of the square shape. Both forms persist. At first, of course, the victoria was looked on with suspicion, but the Princess of Wales speedily showed her liking for it—it did indeed make an ideal lady’s carriage—and in a short while the world followed suit. “Light, low, easy, fit for one horse, and looking very well behind a pair of cobs,” remarks Thrupp, “it is not surprising that the victoria meets with so much patronage.” At first it would seem that the hood was not made to lie flat, a fact amongst others which prompted a caustic critic in 1877 to grumble at the conservatism of English manufacturers. “Even with so good a model of this carriage as that presented to them in the victoria,” he wrote, “the English builders do not see fit to maintain the same lines, and for some inscrutable reason deem that the hood when down should rest at an angle; whereas the ‘cachet’ of the Parisian equipages lies in the absolute straight line it maintains with the horizon.” Only a few years later, however, another critic was drawing attention to the superiority of the English victoria over its French counterpart. “Their rattle,” he wrote of the latter, “is enough to distinguish them. The French victoria is a low-mounted and decidedly unsymmetrical machine. The pole [is] a foot longer than it should be, the splinter bar and fore carriage too low”—a criticism which holds good to-day with most of the Italian carriages of this type.
Varieties of the victoria were constructed almost as soon as the carriage had reached to any degree of popularity. A hinge-seat was fitted into the front boot to face the ordinary seat, and this not proving enough, a permanent seat for two was built in its place, this innovation giving rise to the double victoria, which was built with or without doors. I need not, perhaps, dwell further on the victoria, except to observe that such changes as took place in the landau also took place in its more delicate rival.
Canoe-shaped Landau, 1860
Drag, 1860