Modern American Station Wagon
Modern American Buggy
Both from Studebaker’s (Chicago) Catalogue
Indeed, the tourist in America will come away with the impression that there is hardly a family in the continent which does not possess at least one buggy or waggon. They can be driven, too, at a very great pace. In this connection it is interesting to notice that it was a buggy which Lord Lonsdale selected in order to carry out his great driving feat in 1891, when “he undertook to drive four stages of five miles within an hour, using for the first three stages one, a pair, a team, and riding postilion in the fourth.”
There are, of course, many varieties, several invented after Thrupp wrote the above account. Of these some are peculiar to a particular State, while others seem to be in general use throughout the continent. In Chicago, for instance, and other towns of the middle west, the commonest buggy seems to be the bike wagon, of which a variety is the cut-under bike wagon, where the tray is double—the seat forming a bridge between its two parts.
Stanhopes and phaetons are also manufactured in America, though on a much lighter scale than in England. Another popular American carriage is the surrey, which has the two-seated arrangements of the larger waggons, but is without the tray. The station wagon, very popular in New England, resembles the old English chariot, and differs from it only in its driving seat, which is on a level with the inside seat and directly against the front lines of the carriage-body. This is one of the most comfortable carriages in the country. The buckboard, even slenderer than the buggy, is hardly more than the skeleton of a carriage, but seems none the less popular on that account. The barge is the name given in Massachusetts to a two-seated waggon, and the word has a curious origin. It seems probable that it is a relic of the days when in that part of the country the boat sleighs used in the winter were put upon wheels in the summer. At a later date ordinary waggons were used for summer traffic, but the old name stuck. And I dare say there are a dozen or more local names of some peculiarity in other parts of America which to-day are given to carriages not in the least like those to which the name was originally applied.
Coming to the two-wheeled carriages, we find similar changes to those described above showing themselves. The old curricle, for instance, is now but rarely seen, its place being taken by one or other of the dog-carts. What was probably the most fashionable of these carriages during the early Victorian era is now practically extinct. This was the cabriolet, rather different in appearance from the vehicles of that name which had plied for hire but a few years before, yet built on the same principles as the earliest French gigs.
“They were greatly improved,” wrote Mr. G. N. Hooper in 1899,[64] “about fifty years ago by the well-known Count D’Orsay and the late Mr. Charles B. Courtney, who greatly refined the outlines and proportions, making them lighter, more compact, and far more stylish. They became par excellence the equipage of the jeune noblesse, and no more stylish two-wheel carriages for one horse were driven for many years while they were fashionable. A large, well-bred horse was a necessity, and this the cabriolet generally had.
“The groom, or ‘tiger’ as he was then called, was a special London product: he was produced in no other city, British or foreign; all the genuine tigers hailed from London. His age varied from fifteen to twenty-five. Few there were that were not perfect masters of their horses, were they never so big. In shape and make he was a man in miniature, his proportions perfect, his figure erect and somewhat defiant: his coat fitted as if it had been moulded on him; his white buckskin breeches were spotless; his top-boots perfection; his hat, with its narrow binding of gold or silver lace, and brims looped up with gold or silver cord, brilliant with brushing, was worn jauntily. As he stood at his horse’s head, ready to receive his noble master, you might expect him to say, ‘My master is a duke, and I am responsible for his safety.’”
There is little enough to say of the gigs. The curricle, as I have said, is now rarely seen, though Sir Walter Gilbey mentions a particular one introduced about 1883 “which differed materially from the vehicle formerly known by that name. It consisted of a cabriolet, or whisky body, having an ‘ogee’ or chair back, the body being suspended by braces from C or S springs upon the undercarriage. Its peculiarity lay in the use of long lancewood shafts, set so far apart that the pole could be placed between them; the saddle-bar being used to support the pole, the shafts, it would seem, were somewhat unnecessary.” The Cape cart brought into England from South Africa is a two-wheeled vehicle of this class with a pole in place of shafts, and “the sides being framed so as to present three panels.”