In Spain the coucou found an equivalent in the galera, which was provided with the ubiquitous basket—a low waggon it was, with its sides formed of a number of wooden spokes at a considerable distance from each other, and having no bottom save a strip of spartum on which the trunks and packages were heaped. In Spain there were several types of cart, two-or four-wheeled, which likewise plied for passenger hire. One of these, called a correo real, seems to have travelled at rather a greater pace, though with even less comfort to the unfortunate passengers than the others. A century later this correo real was described by Théophile Gautier, who speaks of it as “an antediluvian vehicle, of which the model could only be found in the fossil remains of Spain, immense bell-shaped wheels, with very thin spokes, considerably behind the frame, which had been painted red somewhere about the time of Isabella the Catholic; an extravagant body full of all sorts of crooked windows, and lined in the inside with small satin cushions, which may at some period have been rose-coloured, and the whole decorated with a kind of silk that was once probably of various colours.”
In 1743 the system of travelling post, which so long before as 1664 had been common in France, was introduced into England by one John Trull, an artillery officer, who obtained a patent for letting carriages for hire across country. These were the post-chaises, of which the first were two-wheeled with the door in front—in this respect being similar to the French chaises de poste, from which the idea was taken. Trull’s scheme, however, though successful in itself does not seem to have brought money to its inventor, who thirty years later died in the King’s Bench. The door of these first post-chaises “was hinged at the bottom and fell forward on to a small dasher like a gentleman’s cabriolet,” and there was a window on either side. “It was hung upon two very lofty wheels,” says Thrupp, “and long shafts for one horse, and the body was rather in front of the wheels, so that the weight on the horse’s back must have been considerable. It was suspended at first upon leather braces only, but later upon two upright or whip springs behind, and two elbow springs in front from the body to the cross-bar, which joined the shafts and carried the step.” Soon, however, these post-chaises were built with four wheels, and resembled the ordinary private chariots of the day, though without their lavish ornamentation. In less than ten years, however, a larger body was given to them, so that they came to resemble the coach rather than the smaller and slimmer chariots, while the coachman’s box was made very much higher.
The post-chaise became extraordinarily popular. The literature of the mid-eighteenth century is full of references to it. All kinds of adventures happened to people in post-chaises. They were seen in every part of the country, they could be hired here, there, and everywhere. Dr. Johnson was only one amongst thousands who loved them. “If I had no duties,” he records, “and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.” “I have tried almost every mode of travelling since I saw you,” wrote Wilkes to his daughter, “in a coach, chaise, waggon, boat, treckscuyt, traineau, sledge, etc. I know none so agreeable as my English post-chaise.”
One thinks naturally of Laurence Sterne. Both in Tristram Shandy and in the Sentimental Journey he has much to say of the post-chaises. “Something is always wrong,” he is grumbling somewhere, “in a French post-chaise, upon first setting out.... A French postillion has always to alight before he has got three hundred yards out of town.” And then, of course, there is that never-to-be-forgotten désobligeante which he purchased from M. Dessein at Calais.[40]
“There being no travelling in France and Italy,” he recounts, “without a chaise—and nature generally prompting us to the thing we are fittest for, I walk’d out into the coach-yard to buy or hire something of that kind to my purpose: an old Désobligeante, in the furthest corner of the court, hit my fancy at first sight, so I instantly got into it.”
And there it was in that queer little carriage which would hold but one person, that Sterne wrote his famous Preface about Travellers, “though it would have been better,” he observed, when interrupted, “in a Vis-à-Vis.” The particular désobligeante seems to have proved satisfactory, but for the species Sterne could not find much praise.
“In Monsieur Dessein’s coach-yard,” he says, “I saw another old tatter’d désobligeante; and notwithstanding it was the exact picture of that which had hit my fancy so much in the coach-yard but an hour before, the very sight of it stirr’d up a disagreeable sensation within me now; and I thought ’twas a churlish beast into whose heart the idea could first enter, to construct such a machine; nor had I much more charity for the man who could think of using it.”
It was certainly not a very sociable carriage, but then neither was the sedan: both were very useful.
I may conclude this chapter by drawing attention to the tax upon coaches which was levied at the beginning of 1747. From the fuss that was made when such a bill was first introduced—it was temporarily abandoned—you might imagine that one of the most treasured articles of the Constitution was about to be swept away.