EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES
the passengers to sit in; and each chair has a sash-window to put up and take the air, or shut, as the passenger pleases. No body rides with their face backwards, but turned toward the horses. They change horses every twelve miles,[1] and go sometimes ninety or one hundred miles a day."[2]
The diligence grew in bulk and in massiveness until it was as large as an ordinary load of hay, carried twenty or thirty passengers, and weighed five tons.[3] The equipment of this huge machine always included a conductor and a postilion. At the opening of the nineteenth century John Carr pictures the overgrown vehicle of his day going between Cherbourg and Rouen: "At daybreak we seated ourselves in the diligence. All the carriages of this description have the appearance of being the result of the earliest efforts in the art of coach building. A more uncouth clumsy machine can scarcely be imagined.[4] In the front is a cabriolet fixed to the body of the coach, for the accommodation of three passengers, who are protected from the rain above by the projecting roof of the coach, and in front by two heavy curtains of leather, well oiled, and smelling somewhat offensively, fastened to the roof. The inside, which is capacious and lofty, and will hold six people with great comfort, is lined with leather padded, and surrounded with little pockets, in which the travellers deposit their bread, snuff, night caps and pocket handkerchiefs, which generally enjoy each others' company in the same delicate depositary. From the roof depends a large net work, which is generally crowded with hats, swords, and band-boxes; the whole is convenient, and when all parties are seated and arranged, the accommodations are by no means unpleasant. Upon the roof, on the outside, is the imperial, which is generally filled with six or seven persons more, and a heap of luggage, which latter also occupies the basket, and generally presents a pile, half as high again as the coach, which is secured by ropes and chains, tightened by a large iron windlass, which also constitutes another appendage of this moving mass. The body of the carriage rests upon large thongs of leather, fastened to heavy blocks of
55
- ↑ Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 261, says that the pace was generally a gallop and that changing horses took no time. When the route was difficult the distance between relays was only two leagues.
- ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, i, 236.
- ↑ (Cooper) Gleanings in Europe, i, 112, 113; Peale, Notes on Italy, pp. 10, 11.
- ↑ Already in 1775 the Lyons diligences were hung on springs which made them as comfortable as the post-chaises and the berlines. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 13.
