Put my post-chaise upon my head.’
‘Your chair-and-chairman, ma’am, is brought.’
‘Stupid! the creature has no thought!’
‘And, ma’am, the milliner is come,
She’s brought the broad-wheel’d waggon home.’”
In which structures Caelia sallies forth.
These cabriolets rivalled the phaetons as fashionable carriages, and indeed as the new gigs came to resemble them in every point save the number of the wheels. There is a print by Colley, dated 1781, showing one of these new gigs. The small chair, very high, holding two people, is supported by long curved supports, which in themselves of course acted as springs of a kind. Two horses are being driven tandem, with a postilion driving the leader. Another print, by Bunbury, called Sir Gregory Gigg, shows a young man driving a pair of horses abreast. He is seated in a still smaller, and slightly lower, chair. This was a curricle rather than a cabriolet, and it was such a carriage which the braggart sportsman, John Thorpe, describes to Catharine in Northanger Abbey: “Curricle-hung, you see, seat, trunk, sword-case, splashing board, lamps, silver-moulding, all, you see, complete; the ironwork as good as new, or better. He [the first owner] asked fifty guineas; I closed with him, threw the money down, and the carriage was mine.” The shape of these curricles is well seen in Bunbury’s drawing.
A glance at the newspaper advertisements of the day will afford an insight into the various carriages in use. So, for instance, in 1767 we have:—
An exceeding good Post chariot, the Box to take off.
A neet genteel Single Horse Chaise, painted green, and hung upon Steel Springs.
An exceeding fine black gelding that goes well in an Italian Chair, with a Tail.
A very neat fashionable Chaise.
A very good second-hand Phaeton Chaise, that goes either with one horse or two, with Shafts, Poles, and Harness suitable, Steel Springs, and Iron Axletrees. Also a good second-hand Landau, which alters occasionally into a Phaeton, steel springs and Iron Axletrees to the Carriage.