But it is among the Italians, I think, that the desire appears more manifested for a good turn-out. In such large towns as Genoa, Rome, or Naples, one sees hundreds of beautiful carriages and fine horses. In fact, it would appear that in Italy every woman aspiring to be considered a lady must, at whatever sacrifice of other comforts, drive her carriage and pair with liveried coachman and man-servant. The Italians seem to consider that it is not comme il faut for a lady to be seen walking,—for which, indeed, the climate is not much suited,—and they are rather surprised at observing English ladies going so much about on their own feet. The public vehicles are also of so inferior a description, that one can scarcely wonder at a resident lady being ashamed to be seen in them. I fancy, too, that the expense is not so great as with ourselves. Men-servants’ wages must certainly be considerably less, and crops of hay are so abundant, while agricultural labour is so miserably recompensed that the expense of feeding is, no doubt, also much less than at home. Moreover, horse flesh would appear to be greatly cheaper in Italy than with ourselves. At Rome I asked the driver of the carriage in which we went to Tivoli what might be the cost of such a pair of horses as he was driving. They were poor hacks, although they went well. He said about 400 francs, or about £16. I pointed to a handsome pair of horses standing in a private carriage upon one of the streets of Rome, and asked him what they would cost. He said from 1000 to 2000 francs, or from £40 to £80. If this information can be relied on, horse flesh must be cheap enough in Italy. I am not sufficiently skilled in the subject to say whether the breeds are equal to our own, though I doubt it; but they look very handsome animals, and the Italians are careful to allow their tails to grow so as often even to sweep the ground; and in this way the natural grace and beauty of the horse is preserved, while it retains the protection it has received from nature against the attacks of flies, which are a great source of torment in some places.
The cart horses in France are sometimes fine, strong-looking beasts, but are scarcely equal to the more powerful breeds of Britain, although I think they are made to draw heavier loads; and these poor horses do discharge their duty most heroically in spite of the brutal treatment they often receive.
But present observation has rather to do with cabs or carriages which ply for hire.
In France, great variety of carriage is to be had. In such places as Biarritz, Nice, or Mentone, there are many elegant landaus having nearly all the appearance of private carriages, and, no doubt, most of them have been quite recently in private occupation. They are kept in good order and freshly painted, and are the best class. From them there is a descent to various kinds of smaller and inferior voitures. The close kind is generally of a very shaky, antiquated construction; although in some places, such as Lyons and Cannes, there is a kind of brougham plying for hire of a better quality, narrow and confined, holding two only, and even two with a squeeze, although some of them (to be seen in Paris) have also a folding down seat for a child. Other carriages have a hood. In Paris, where people are exposed to sudden showers of rain, the one-horse open carriages have an extraordinary huge kind of hood which can be promptly raised, but when turned over, falls so low as almost to extinguish the occupant and to exclude his view; but even then, and with a leathern apron drawn up over the knees, I have found in a storm that adequate protection against rain is not secured. One of the nicest of light vehicles in use is a kind of basket carriage, seated for four, or for two with a vis-à-vis folding down seat for one or for two more behind the box, the box seat sometimes holding a fifth, and occasionally there is a light miniature rumble behind holding another. These are drawn for the most part by a pair of smart horses, remarkably small, akin to the active little Exmoor ponies.
The horses always go most willingly, and the drivers delight in urging them at top speed. Regardless of consequences, they dash down a hill in a way which would make an English coachy’s hair stand on end, and like a cannon ball through a crowd, without halting or swerving from their course, expecting the crowd to scatter right and left to make way for them. This is all done to the noise of a horrid ear-splitting cracking of the whip. The driver cracks his whip, and considers that having done so, he is discharged of responsibility, and that it is the pedestrian’s own fault if he be run over; just as a golfer considers that when he has cried ‘faar’ before striking his ball, it is the fault of the person struck that he has not got promptly enough out of the way. This cracking of the whip goes on incessantly while the man is with his horse, and even when without, and seems indulged in most frequently from a boyish love of making the odious noise.
There is great variety in these cracks. The crack of the heavy carter’s whip differs from that of the coachman’s lighter one. There is the single crack, the double or back and fore crack, and the multiple crack, this last being like the dancing noise produced by those alarming crackers placed by mischievous urchins on a Queen’s Birthday night under the garments of terrified young women. There is the encouraging crack, supposed to cheer the horse on his way; the crack direct, when the driver applies the lash; the practising crack, when he practises for perfection in this ravishing art; the thoughtless crack, when done in vacancy from mere force of habit; the warning crack, when he wishes pedestrians to yield the smooth part of the road, that he may avoid the rough, or simply that he, the dominant power, may maintain majestically his straight undeviating course; the angry crack, when the supposed humble pedestrian, being an Englishman, disregards the warning crack, thinking that he has as good a right or a better to pursue his way, there being room enough to pass by making a slight deviation from the straight; the annunciating crack, particularly affected by town omnibuses to intimate their approach; and the crack jubilant, employed by the hotel omnibuses when, having bagged a man, the driver thus expends all his bottled-up rapture and announces the joyful event on nearing the door of his hotel. The crack may indicate a cracked driver or a crack one, according as it is the passers-by or the driver himself who forms the opinion, and it is an obviously enviable accomplishment which many can manage with their left hand. The poor horses are expected to disregard all cracks but the crack direct, and to appearance do so; but I can’t help thinking that the horrid din is to the animal very much what the buzz of the mosquito is to man, not a malum in se, but a sound which proclaims the existence of a torment which at any moment may descend upon its hide. The singular thing, too, is that this noise does not seem to disturb the equanimity either of the driver’s own horse or of the other passing horses. With our own high-spirited horses, the mere wag of the whip will make them frantic, and I believe there would be no holding in English horses in a Continental town. Whether it be that the foreign horses are not so high metalled, or get used to the noise, as horses do to passing trains, I do not know, but to the walkers along the streets it is an intolerable nuisance; nor is it altogether without its dangers, as on one occasion a lady of our party all but got her eye struck by a flying lash. The same sort of cracking goes on in Italy; but I noticed that in Florence and Rome, and particularly the latter city, the drivers did it very seldom. Probably to do so was against some police regulation, as from the large number of vehicles with which the streets of Rome are filled, the noise would be deafening, and might even be dangerous.
I was at first inclined to think that the Italian coachmen are kinder to their horses than the French or Swiss. It was long ere I saw an Italian behaving savagely to his horse; but I have observed it, and been informed by others of the cruel treatment they have seen practised by Italians. I have seen men behaving most savagely to their horses in France and Switzerland. For example, I have frequently seen a carter, or man in charge of a horse or donkey, when he wished it to move on, instead of quietly speaking to it, as even an English carter would, take the butt end of his heavy whip and lay heavily on the poor animal’s back, or even give it a violent kick. The carters lade their carts very heavily, and often—I might even say always—beyond the strength of the horse. I have observed a poor horse struggling with all his might to pull the improper load up a hill, the carter encouraging it by the whip all the time. Several times I could not resist speaking to the men about their conduct. On one occasion, at Cannes, I saw a horse, after having struggled to the utmost of his strength with a load twice as heavy as it ought to have been (the bystanders only looking on and giving it no aid), and remaining willing but helpless to do more, when the carter took the narrow end of his heavy whip, and came down twice with his whole force with the heavy-loaded butt end on his horse’s head. Ere he could repeat the villanous stroke, I rushed forward, arrested his hand, and told him, in the best French I could muster, what a brute I thought him to be. But it is not easy to give vent to one’s indignation in a foreign tongue. The fellow ought to have been prosecuted, and there does exist in France a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but policemen as well as others, I suspect, are as callous to such offences as our own policemen are to the destruction by boys of our meadow or park trees. Cruelty to a horse, however, often consists in little aggravating acts which a prosecution might fail to reach. I have often seen a coachman waiting at a stand, or at a door, and, having idle hands, mischievously proceed to touch up his horses for doing nothing—in short, to vent his own irritation at his idleness upon the poor dumb animals; and then, when they began to caper because of the whip, the whip was again applied because of the caper. However, I am afraid this is an evil habit which is not seldom to be witnessed in our own country. Another method abroad of torturing the horse is by the use of a bearing rein strapped up to the high and heavy saddle or collar borne by the cart horses, which from its weight is also of itself an infliction. But so long as Liverpool dray horses are so tortured, we cannot reasonably complain of bearing reins as a foreign peculiarity. A more extraordinary and hardly credible kind of torture a lady told me she had witnessed was in the passing of a strap or rope through the skin of the horse, compelling him to move on to avoid or lessen the pain so produced. I would fain believe she had been mistaken, but she was one on whose relation I could rely, and whose capacity for observing could scarcely be questioned.
The Italian carriages for hire are very inferior to the French. At Naples they are of the roughest possible kind—open little phaetons made of coarse wood, at some remote period having enjoyed a coat of paint, and exhibiting a barely decent seat for two, and a little folding seat for a third. The Roman carriages are similarly constructed, but a shade better. The drivers in Naples and its vicinity are, as regards person and clothes, the dirtiest-looking ragamuffins. One shrinks to come in contact with them. In Rome, on the other hand, the drivers are generally a respectable-looking class, and they wear a black glazed hat and red cloth waistcoat. The most stylish of coachmen we have seen are those at Biarritz, where they frequently mount a grand blue broidered jacket with scarlet facings; but this grandeur has to be paid for.
At Castellamare and the district round about in the Bay of Naples, and elsewhere in the south of Italy, the horses’ heads are decorated with long pheasant feathers, which give them a jaunty look; while in most places the generality of horses have fastened to their collars a string of small bells which keep a continual lively jingle,—genial, doubtless, to the animals,—and are as pleasant as the cracking of whips is odious. About Sorrento, the carriages are often drawn by three horses abreast, three being charged the same as for two. It seems a waste of power, the only explanation given for which was that the horses are not strong. Whatever may be the case in this respect, the horses in Italy always go with the greatest spirit, never seeming to require the lash. I fancy that the jingle of the bells operates as a stimulant. It was very cheery, sitting in our parlour at Sorrento, to hear every now and then the jingle of the bells announcing an arrival or a departure.