CHAPTER V
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES
I
France
The means of transportation in France in the eighteenth century were often praised, even by foreigners; and we have already seen that the French highways were among the best in Europe. "Travelling," says Nugent, "is no where more convenient than in France, with respect as well to carriages as accommodations on the road. Where there is conveniency of rivers, they have water carriages, which are large boats drawn by horses. Their land carriages are of four sorts, viz. post chaises, the carosse or stage-coach, the coche, and the diligence or flying-coach."[1] He might have added the berline, a four-wheeled vehicle with a hooded seat behind, which was said to be very comfortable.[2]
Yet English travelers of all classes find much to criticize in the vehicles offered for hire in France. It must be confessed that most countries of Europe were not so well provided, but the development of facilities for travel in France had been somewhat slow. "As late as 1686 there was between Rouen and Havre but one carriage for hire, which was covered with canvas[3] and was neither decent nor comfortable."[4] An Englishman in the last quarter of the seventeenth century summarized his impression of French horses and vehicles in the following terms: "Their horses [are] little, and so strangely put together that scarce any of them can either trot or gallop, and 'tis easier to teach an English horse to dance than one of them to amble, for they can only go the pas, whence their coaches and all manner of voiture, is so slow as 'tis intolerable."[5]
And another English tourist nearly a century later ob-
52
- ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 17.
- ↑ The Gentleman's Guide, p. 44.
- ↑ This appears to have been modeled after the vehicle that Coryate used early in the century: "I departed from Montrel in a cart, according to the fashion of the country, which had three hoopes over it, that were covered with a sheet of course canvasse." Crudities, i, 160.
- ↑ Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 10.
- ↑ Clenche(?), A Tour in France and Italy, p. 21. He adds: "Doggs of no kind worth a farthing, and, to conclude, such is the nature of the clime or soyl, that it produces no animal in perfection, but asses," p. 22.
