For a coach to run smoothly, the horses needed to be well matched and able to work together. In a team where horses were harnessed one in front of the other, the rear horse or one closest to the carriage was the wheeler and the horse in front the leader. The number and configuration of horses harnessed to a carriage varied according to the type of vehicle, the kind of horses available and the skill of the driver. A single-horse carriage was fairly straightforward to drive, as was a pair harnessed side by side. Putting a pair of horses one in front of the other, or driving tandem, was considered a serious test of skill, as was driving pickaxe, where five horses were harnessed to a coach with three across at the front and a pair of wheelers behind them. Driving unicorn or randem-tandem—as Vincent Darracott did so well in The Unknown Ajax—with a lead horse harnessed in front of a pair, was a serious test of a driver’s skill but was seen much less often than the carriage drawn by a team of four. The Prince Regent had once driven his phaeton to Brighton with his horses in unicorn but when Peregrine Taverner in Regency Buck told his sister Judith, herself an accomplished driver, that he would not drive that way she made it clear that he could not even if he wanted to. Driving a four-in-hand was a popular pastime and many Regency men drove their own coach or drag or paid the coachman on the public stage for the privilege of taking the reins for a time. Very skilled drivers drove a curricle and four, but the height of achievement for the real coaching devotee was membership in the exclusive Four-Horse Club.
The Four-Horse Club was originally called the Whip Club and was established in 1808 by a group of aristocratic coaching enthusiasts recognised as experts in the art of driving. Only those who had proven their skill driving a team of four horses harnessed to a four-wheeled coach were eligible to join the club and the group wore a distinctive uniform for their regular outings that year from Park Lane to Harrow-on-the-Hill. Members met four times a year between April and June to drive the twenty miles to Salt Hill, partake of a sumptuous lunch and return to London. The coaches were driven single file, at a strict trot, with their drivers resplendent in the club uniform of a long white driving coat with fifteen capes and two tiers of pockets, over a single-breasted blue coat with brass buttons, a Kerseymere waistcoat with inch-wide blue and yellow stripes, white corduroy breeches, short boots with long tops and a white muslin cravat with black spots. Only men were eligible to join the club, although some members acknowledged the prowess of those female drivers able to drive ‘to the inch’. Charles Rivenhall in The Grand Sophy was a member of the FHC as was his friend Cyprian Wychbold who, after being driven round Hyde Park by Sophy in her high-perch phaeton, told her that he would gladly support her candidature if the club ever decided to allow women to become members.
In many coaches—and sporting vehicles in particular—it was usual for a groom to sit or stand up beside or behind the driver. These men or boys usually had a particular affinity for horses, and grooms such as John Keighley in Sylvester and Lady Serena’s groom, Fobbing, in Bath Tangle, often became the trusted attendants of a horse-loving master or mistress. When carriage driving, it was the groom’s job to jump down and run to the horse’s head in the event of an accident or upset and to hold the horses while his master or mistress paid a social call, engaged in business or visited the shops. In the stable, the groom was responsible for feeding, exercising and grooming those horses assigned to his care as well as cleaning their tack and overseeing the stable boys. During the Regency it became fashionable for some among the top-sawyers to employ a tiger—a small groom peculiar to London and usually seen only on a curricle or standing up on the footboard at the back of a cabriolet. Tigers ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-five, were always small in build, and had an absolute mastery of horses. Lord Sheringham’s tiger Jason in Friday’s Child, having shown himself to have an extraordinary affinity with horses, found that instead of being sent to the Roundhouse for picking the Viscount’s pocket he was employed as his tiger instead. While most grooms wore some kind of livery, a tiger was always immaculately turned out with a close-fitting coat, white buckskin breeches, spotless top-boots and a well-brushed hat trimmed with gold or silver cord which he often set at a rakish angle on his head.
Carriage driving was one of the few physical activities, other than walking and horse riding, available to women. One- or two-horse vehicles such as a gig, tilbury, or one of the many types of phaeton, were considered most suitable for ladies to drive and they could often be seen tooling their coach around Hyde Park at the fashionable hour. Only the most accomplished drivers (of either sex) drove a high-perch phaeton or racing curricle, as these required considerable skill and the high-perch phaeton, in particular, was easily overturned. An upper-class woman rarely drove alone and then usually only in the environs of the family estate. Judith Taverner’s decision in Regency Buck to engage in a curricle race against her brother Perry would have been unremarkable if it had been run in the country on a private estate, but to travel down the busiest turnpike road in England in an open carriage with just her groom in attendance was to commit a grave social solecism and thereby lay herself open to public censure and ridicule. When in London, a woman driving a carriage would be always accompanied by her groom although she could take up a passenger or run errands as long as the proprieties were met, including never driving her carriage down St James’s Street—an activity forbidden to well-bred females.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
The hackney coach or hack was an early form of taxi-cab and during the Regency more than a thousand of these horse-drawn vehicles plied their trade around the streets of London and other major towns and cities of England. They were mostly closed, four-wheeled carriages, pulled by a pair of horses of no less than fourteen hands in height. They generally took up to four passengers, although more could be carried at the coachman’s discretion and at a cost of a shilling per additional passenger. Hackneys could be hailed at will and offered a degree of anonymity at times when the men and women of the wealthier classes (who usually travelled in their own carriages with their coachman, groom and footmen) wished to keep their personal affairs private. In Cotillion, Olivia Broughty, desperate to see her friend Kitty and solicit her help in an affair of the heart, took a hack to the house in Berkeley Square only to discover that she had insufficient funds to pay the driver.
The post-chaise was another popular means of public conveyance during the Regency, especially among those who could not afford to maintain their own carriage, but were disinclined to use public coaches such as the Mail or the stage. Stagecoaches were first run in the early 1600s and a general service, with London as its main hub, was operating by 1750. As Sir Richard Wyndham in The Corinthian knew only too well when compelled to travel on the public stage, the terrible state of the roads, the expense, the uncomfortable coaches and the slow rates of travel (eighty hours from London to Manchester in 1750) were a disincentive for many people to undertake long-distance travel unless they had to. By 1820, however, over forty major mail routes had been established between London and most major cities in England, Scotland and Wales, with a host of cross-routes connecting provincial towns and cities. Once the Mail was established it became a uniform service run by private contractors with twenty-five magnificent maroon-and-black coaches bearing the royal coat of arms on the door, with the name of the coach proprietor and the two terminals painted above it in fine gold lettering. A painted star adorned each of the four upper panels and a number on the boot identified the coach to passers-by. The guard was the only person directly employed by the Post Office and his priorities were the safe delivery of the mail and adherence to the timetable. It was a serious offence to delay or obstruct a Mail coach as the Duke of Sale discovered to his cost in The Foundling after his young charge, Tom Mamble, had almost caused the Mail to overturn while engaged in organising a backwards race between several farm animals. In its early days the Mail was allowed to carry only four inside passengers, but by 1814 the Post Office had introduced four classes of travel which allowed two, four o
r more passengers to travel outside depending on the route. The Mail ran mainly at night when the roads were clearer and each evening, except Sundays, at eight o’clock sharp, twenty-five coaches set off from the main London post office in Lombard Street on their various journeys around the country.
Stagecoaches were run by private companies who competed with the Mails for passengers. Although they were slower, stagecoaches had several advantages over the Mail, including cheaper fares, daytime travel, greater passenger capacity and routes that enabled travellers to get on or off at places the Mail did not allow. As road conditions and coach construction slowly improved, many people chose to travel by stage as Kate Malvern did when returning to London in Cousin Kate. A series of predetermined stops at various roadside coaching-inns made up the route. At the end of each stage the inn provided a new team of horses and passengers could partake of refreshments, or disembark the coach, while new passengers could be taken up. In The Corinthian, Pen Creed thoroughly enjoyed travelling on the stage where she whiled away the time conversing with the other passengers and even made room for a traveller not on the waybill. Provided they were properly loaded, most stagecoaches could hold up to six inside and eight to ten outside passengers, plus freight and baggage. An outside seat on the stage cost two to three pence per mile and an inside seat was between four and five pence, whereas an inside seat on the Mail cost between six and ten pence per mile and an outside seat was four to five pence. For those prepared to pay extra it was possible to buy the coveted seat next to the driver and a generous tip could secure a turn with the reins for a male enthusiast. In The Foundling, this privilege was offered to the Duke of Sale on his first trip on the public stage and politely refused; the Duke had discovered that travelling on the roof did not agree with him and was glad to leave the stage at Baldock. As the demand for shorter travel times increased, the stage eventually followed the Mail and gave up their traditional overnight stops on longer journeys and also reduced the time allotted for meal stops.
The stage was the most common form of public transport although many people,
such as the Duke of Sale in The Foundling, found it an extremely
uncomfortable way to travel.
ON THE ROAD
Travelling by coach, whether public or private, could be dangerous. Although highwaymen were becoming scarce there were plenty of other hazards to impede a journey or play havoc with life and limb. On the public stage and the Mail, as one of the passengers reminded the coachman in The Corinthian, there were strict rules governing the behaviour of coachman, guard and passengers. A waybill listing the names, pick-up points and destinations of the passengers who had booked a seat was given to the guard at the commencement of each journey and it was his job to see that the coach made the correct stops and kept to its timetable. Although it was possible to gain a place on the stage or Mail without having booked or paid in advance, those travellers already on board and uncomfortably crowded sometimes objected vociferously to additional passengers being allowed into the coach.
Overloading of coaches, with either people or baggage, was prohibited by the coach companies, as was furious driving and allowing passengers to take the reins. Drinking was also forbidden but was difficult to control and coachmen, such as the one in The Reluctant Widow who transported Elinor Rochdale to the village of Billingshurst, were rarely averse to downing a quick glass in the taproom of a posting-house while the horses were changed. After setting off again it was not uncommon for the coachman to let eager young bloods (themselves sometimes under the influence) drive the coach for a spell—an unfortunate occurrence which frequently ended (as it did in The Corinthian) in the coach being overturned and horses and passengers injured. Most coaches, and particularly those that travelled at speed, carried a three-foot-long coaching horn, also known as a ‘yard of tin’. A vital part of the guard’s equipment on the public stage or mail coach, it was the coaching horn that enabled the guard to keep to the timetable for he blew a call to summon the passengers before departing from one posting-house and again on approaching the next. The sound of a coaching horn told the ostlers to have fresh horses ready for the change and alerted the innkeeper to the need for food and drink. Ostlers were the grooms or horse-keepers who worked at the coaching-inns and posting-houses situated along the great network of post roads that criss-crossed England during the Regency. In addition to caring for the horses owned by the inn, ostlers were also responsible for the horses left there after a change of teams was completed at the end of a stage. Trained to replace carriage horses in under two minutes, the best ostlers could change a team in fifty seconds. They were expected to be ready with fresh animals at the first sound of the coaching horn and could only expect a tip if they were quick about their work. Arabella, on her slow journey to London in her uncle’s ponderous travelling coach, watched enviously as the ostlers ran to change the horses of any smart chaise or sporting curricle which halted at the posting-house where she had stopped to eat a meal. And when the Royal Mail swept by with the guard sounding his horn 250 yards before the toll-gate to alert the keeper to open the gate (the Mail was exempt from tolls) Arabella could only wish that her coachman had been supplied with a yard of tin to blow up for the pike. Although it was mainly used to facilitate greater speed and efficiency, the horn was also sounded for safety and was blown continuously in a fog or to alert shepherds or drovers to move their flocks and herds off the roads.
Blowing up for the change on the Royal Mail.
LONG-DISTANCE TRAVEL
Long-distance coaches were those which went beyond a ten-mile radius from the centre of London, and long-distance travel for the upper class was generally undertaken in a post or travelling chaise. Posting-houses were a type of inn set up by enterprising individuals along the main roads out of London at which travellers could stop for refreshment while their horses were stabled and fresh ones poled up for the next stage of the journey. Some wealthy men such as Jasper Damerel in Venetia had post-horses stabled along well-frequented routes all over England to save the trouble of hiring unknown teams, but most travellers hired horses and post-boys. Originally, post-boys were men who travelled the postal routes carrying the mail on horseback or in a mail cart but from 1784 they were gradually replaced by the new mail coaches and the term ‘post-boy’ eventually became interchangeable with the word ‘postilion’ which denoted an entirely different occupation. Postilions were men or boys employed to ride a horse or horses harnessed to a carriage. Well-to-do families and individuals such as Jonathan Chawleigh in A Civil Contract often had their own private postilions but anyone who travelled by post-chaise had to use them as they were needed to steer this driverless carriage. This was done by a postilion mounted on the nearside (left-hand) lead horse with one postilion required for each pair of horses harnessed to a coach. Every postilion wore a specially designed iron guard on his right leg to protect his foot and leg from the centre pole. A change of horses could be booked ahead and at the end of each stage of a journey new postilions or post-boys were employed to replace the old ones whose responsibility it was to ride or drive the horses back to the post-house or inn from which they were hired. As Mr Tarleton was blithely informed by the post-boy on arriving at the village of Emborrow in Friday’s Child, at a rate of one and six per mile, it cost eighteen shillings to travel the twelve miles of the first stage of a journey from Bath to Wells. Hiring a post-chaise and horses from one inn was a disadvantage because it meant that at the next a new vehicle and horse had to be hired. This also meant that passengers were forced to suffer the inconvenience of having to transfer their baggage at each change.
The distance which could be travelled by a single team varied according to the pace set, the number of changes made (if any), the condition and contour of the roads and the type of carriage they were pulling. For a traveller such as the young heroine in Arabella, opting to use her own carriage drawn by a single pair of horses without changes and which had to be rested at frequent intervals, it was a long journe
y of several days’ duration from Yorkshire to London. By contrast, the heroine in Venetia discovered after an exhausting journey of some two hundred miles that a seat on the Mail could take a traveller from the General Post Office in London to Yorkshire in about eighteen hours. The benefit of the stage or post-chaise over the Mail was the longer stops at the posting-inns which enabled passengers to eat, drink and rest for a while. Overnight stops were not as common during the Regency as the stagecoach companies increasingly competed with the speedier mail coaches for customers. For those who did choose to sleep at a posting-house there was always the risk of damp sheets and poor food, although most of the well-established posting-houses servicing the main coaching routes prided themselves on their cosy parlour, well-supplied taproom, comfortable bedrooms, hot coffee and satisfying meals. Most inns had a private parlour which could be hired by wealthier guests wanting privacy and in which they could enjoy the comforts of a fire and refreshments while their horses were put to. During the Regency hundreds of posting-houses dotted the countryside as a single stage of a journey rarely exceeded twelve or thirteen miles. As a result most coaching proprietors ran small-scale operations, stabling fewer than twenty horses and horsing between ten and twenty miles of road, and many inns worked in loose partnership with others further up the road. Even the big London contractors, responsible for the majority of passenger bookings, only ran their horses on the first stages out of the city before relying on a string of partners to horse the remainder of a route.
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