Coach (vehicle)

“ It is a good plan, when rounding a sharp corner with a top-heavy load, to make the turn so as to place the outside wheels as much as possible on the crest of the road. This can be effected, if the angle is to the left, by keeping near to the off-side of the road as you approach the bend, and then making a rather short turn so as to hug the near side hedge, by which means the outside wheels will be placed on the highest part of the road, just when the coach most requires the support, and this also gives the coachman more freedom in case of his meeting any vehicle in the middle of the turn. ”

“ At the present time probably not one per cent, of the owners of motor-cars have a suitable coach-house for this new class of vehicle. They are generally placed in sheds or outbuildings, more often damp than dry, or in coach-houses built for horse-drawn carriages. Few recognise that the motor-car is a far more delicate article than the horse-drawn carriage, most people having grown up in the common belief that anything to do with machinery is strong, and will bear knocking about. ”

“ The coach was a big vehicle, something after the style of a bus, the tilt and seats running parallel with the wheels. At the rear end, instead of a door, was a great tail-board, on the principle of a spring-cart. ”

“ The Queen, however, was at length provided with a coach, which must have been a very remarkable machine. This royal vehicle is said to have been one of the first coaches used in England, and it was introduced by the Queen's own coachman, one Boomen, a Dutchman. It was little better than a cart without springs, the body resting solid upon the axles. Taking the bad roads and ill-paved streets into account, it must have been an excessively painful means of conveyance. ”

“ The coach looks like a bobbed rooster with his tail down, for the dusty boot protrudes immensely at the rear, and all the weight appears to be on the hind seat. Up rolls the coach, the driver making his whip crack like Fanny Ellsler’s castanets in the “cracovienne,” and with a prodigious attempt at creating a sensation—the machine stops at Hamble’s. ”

“ In the Driving Coach, a novelty which now became popular with gentlemen of means, and at a later date came to be commonly known as the four-in-hand, the wheels were rather nearer together, and the perch was short and straight. This had the boots which, as we have seen, had been already added to the mail-coaches for the convenience of outside passengers. “The boots and body,” says Bridges Adams, “are framed together, and suspended on springs before and behind—the connection with the carriage being by means of curved blocks.” ”

“ The generality of passengers know not the danger of galloping a coach, with three tons’ weight in and out, down hill, at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, with no wheel locked, the whole resistance of the wheel-horses depending on a small leather strap and buckle at the top of the hames,—these coachmen deeming it beneath their dignity to drive with breechings. ”

“ There were four of them—one on either forequarter, and one on either side of the fore boot, while a smaller one hung from beneath the footboard, just above the262 wheelers. The guard had a small hand lamp of his own to aid him in sorting his small parcels. The door panels have apparently been repainted since the old days, for although they still keep the maroon colour characteristic of the mail-coaches, the Royal Arms are gone, and in their stead appears the script monogram in gold, V.R.”
It is the coach which of all vehicles has least changed its appearance in the last hundred years. ”

“ If your Coachman drives leisurely, you will escape many Dangers, and your Carriage last much longer;—by such gentle use (excepting as to the Wheels) it is worn almost as little as if it remained in the Coach-house.
In Crowded Streets, never permit any person to ride on the Coach Box:—Conversation diverts the attention of the Driver from his Business, and accidents frequently ensue. ”

“ He reduced the height of the wheels to 3 feet 3 inches in front, and 4 feet 5 inches behind, lengthened the coach body to better proportions and hung it lower, so that a double step would give access to the door instead of a three-step ladder. He wrought great improvements in the curves of the carriage, and did much to strengthen the details of the underworks.
FAST COACHES.
Coach driving became a favourite occupation among men of good birth who had run through their patrimony and could turn their hands to nothing more congenial. ”

“ Between the down mails leaving London and the day coaches arriving, none with less than three lamps, and many with five, and some even with six, it was a bad look-out for travellers who drove horses that were frightened at lights. Indeed, I have known some persons very nervous on this subject. They seemed to think that because the strong light dazzled them, it must have the same effect upon the coachman's eyes; and, when I have been driving a coach very strongly lighted, I have known men to leave the road and drive into a field to get out of my way. ”

“ The coach company now consisted of nine passengers inside, one on the top, (which, from its convex form, is a very precarious situation,) and three on the box, besides the coachman, who sat on the knees of the unfortunate middle man,—an uneasy burden, considering the intense heat of the weather.
It matters little to the American driver where he sits; he is indeed, in all respects, a far different personage from his great-coated prototype in England. He is in general extremely dexterous in the art of driving, though his costume is of a most grotesque description. ”

“ It was when no such useful functionary was carried, and when the coachman, combining the parts, descended from his box, and leaving the reins in charge of a passenger, or often merely resting them on the horses’ backs, went to explore the contents of the boots, or alighted for some other necessary business, that the horses often started off on273 their own accord and wrought disaster to coach and passengers.
In early days, when horses were either not changed at all on a long journey, or went twenty-mile stages, nothing was less likely than that they would bolt. ”

“ The precursor of all public vehicles was the carrier’s waggon, a conveyance of hoary antiquity, intended in the first instance for the carriage of heavy goods, but finding room for those wayfarers who were too poor to own or hire a horse, or possibly too infirm to sit one even if their means sufficed. At least a hundred and fifty years before the earliest stage-coach was put on the road, the waggon, the poor man’s coach, was creaking and groaning on its tedious way at a pace of little more than two miles an hour. ”

“ The man who can do this may be said to have passed his postgraduate examination as a first-class coachman.
There are not many men who can do that, but there is plenty of sport to be had in driving four horses, this side of that supreme ability. Men who lack the time, money, knowledge, and experience to put a coach on the road may still, with benefit to themselves, and to the inmates of their stables, [355] drive four horses. ”

“ I need hardly add, he remained on the slow coach.
A smart coachman usually took his place in changing horses, and it is quite possible, as I know from experience, having been timed by a box passenger, to effect the change in one minute and a half, with only one horse-keeper, assisted by coachman and guard; but to do this, each one must know his own place; they must not be tumbling over one another. ”

“ The London "'bus men" do have their pole chains very slack, and they are right, because their horses are continually falling upon the slippery streets, and it gives them room to struggle and get up again with little danger of breaking the pole; but this does not apply to road work, and there, if the pace is very fast, it is dangerous from its tendency to make the coach rock.
I am always puzzled when I see coachmen driving with the present fashion of long coupling reins. What good can they see in them? Here again the 'bus men, who I suppose set the example, have reason on their side. ”

“ For speed and ease cars are, of course, unsurpassed; but for romance, observation, interest, there is nothing like the old-fashioned coach. Cars are city; coaches are country. Cars are the luxurious life of well-born and long-purses people; coaches are the stirring, eventful career of people who have their own way to make in the world. Cars shoot on independent, thrusting off your sympathy with a snort ”

“ Yes, as Best, C. J., once said, a coachman must have competent skill and must use that skill with discretion; he must be well acquainted with the road he undertakes to drive; he must be provided with steady horses, a coach and harness of sufficient strength and properly made, and also with lights by night. If there be the least failure in any one of these things, the duty of the proprietor is not fulfilled, and he is answerable for any injury or damage that happens. [157] He also is so unless the driver exercised a sound discretion at the time of the accident. ”

“ Coaches no longer dash through the old “thoroughfare” villages; and when, with the advent of spring, the motorist appears upon the road, the villagers, rather than welcoming his appearance, curse him for the clouds of dust he leaves behind. Motor-cars, they tell us, are to repeople the old coaching-roads, whose prosperity is, through them, to return, and the picturesque old wayside inns, with their memories of the coaching age, are to once again experience the rush of business. ”

“ In pulling up, the driver must pull the reins equally, but rather those of the wheelers first. If this is attended with difficulty, take the wheelers’ reins in the right hand, and pull till they hang well on the breeching, or on the pole chains, thus increasing the leaders’ draught so much that they will easily be pulled up.
When a young coach-horse is stopped, it should be very gradually—allowing at least ten yards to do it in; for, if it be attempted to stop him short, he will resist. A careful driver will never keep his carriage standing in a great thoroughfare ”

“ It consists of a very large body, suspended from upright or whip springs by means of leather braces; the standing pillars slope outwards, making the sides longer at the roof than at the elbow line. The wheels are of good height, and the carriage part is very massively constructed, the upper part being finished off with scroll ironwork, and on this in the front the coachman’s hammercloth is raised. The panels are painted with landscapes, &c., by Hamilton, R.A., and no doubt altogether it cost a deal of money. ”

“ Thus very often, except on long-distance stages, even the smart day-coaches carried no guard, and when they did, his functions were not so much to safeguard the coach in the original sense as to help the coachman by skidding and unskidding down hill, and to look after the way-bill and the passengers’ luggage. ”

“ This “points the leaders,” who accordingly make the required turn, while at the same time the right hand bears lightly on the wheelers’ rein of the opposite side, to prevent them making the turn too sharply for safety to the coach behind them. As soon as the turn is made—and all this applies equally to the passing of other vehicles or obstacles on the road—the driver’s left thumb releases the loop, which runs out of itself, and the team returns to the straight formation. ”

“ 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. [22] 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 reason given why drag-coaches are made with the front wheel so far back is, that it was necessary in order to bring the horses close to their work, to use a phrase that has been much misapplied, and also to bring them under the driver’s hands, who prefers the reins short, but it would be quite possible to build a coach in which the driver might be over the horses, and yet have the advantage of higher front wheels, and properly placed for carrying the load. ”

“ Ever since the building of the Irish Lord Chancellor’s state coach by Hatchett or Baxter in 1790, coachbuilders had endeavoured to produce a graceful outline of body, of a fair size no larger than was necessary; the C-springs had been made of a perfect curve, the perch followed the sweeps of the body, the carving was reduced to a moderate amount, the ornamental painting was confined to the stripes upon the wheels, and the heraldic bearings of the owners of the carriages were beautifully emblazoned on the panels. ”

“ The carriage, horses, harness, and the whole equipage being now ready, the coachman attends his master or mistress for orders, if not previously received.
When the time is nearly arrived at which the coach is ordered, the helper or assistants harness the horses and put them to, while the coachman is dressing himself. He then narrowly inspects the whole equipage—sees that the coach, horses, harness, and all things are in order; when taking his whip and the reins in his left hand, a man standing at the heads of the horses, he mounts the box, on the near side, and drives off to the door. ”