Hansom cab driver

“ To a realist a hansom-cab driver is a man who makes twenty-five shillings a week, lives in a back street in Pimlico, has a wife who drinks and children who grow up with an alcoholic taint; the realist will compare his lot with other cab-drivers, and find what part of his life is the product of the cab-driving environment, and on that basis he will write his book. ”

“ I called a hansom from the rank just opposite to me, and jumped in, after giving my directions to so much of the driver as I could make out between his hat and his collar.
I felt tired, hungry, and depressed, so that I was glad to drop off to sleep, and forget weariness and worry for a little while; and I remained unconscious of bad pavement and rattling rain, blurred glass and misty lights, until the stoppage of the cab roused me. Thinking that I had arrived at my journey’s end, and wondering why the glass was not raised, I smote lustily on the roof with my umbrella. ”

“ I've got a cab round the corner, this way."
He whirled her round into an alley which she would hardly have noticed if it had not been for him. In the dim light a hansom stood waiting. He lifted her in without a with-your-leave or by-your-leave, sprang in after her, and in a moment the horse, urged by its driver, tore off at the top of its speed. So soon as they had started the man at her side broke into a peal of laughter, which, despite its heartiness, had about it a peculiar quality of silence, beginning at the same time to talk with surprising volubility. ”

“ The smart-liveried young chauffeur of the “taxi” is a strong contrast to the picturesque but decidedly gruff and untidy old driver, who for so long has figured conspicuously among the motley types of London.
A larger cab than the hansom, built like a brougham, came into use in 1836, and from that the familiar four-wheeled “growler” has developed,*362 *—backwards to a more remote ancestor, as some curious student of evolution might surmise. ”

“ It is, perhaps, well for the London resident to be liberally inclined, for in an incredibly short space of time his or her "ways" become known to the cab-driving community, and facilities for getting cabs largely depend on their verdict. It may be added that if the hansom-driver is inclined to be pert (a natural inclination, considering the height of his elevation above the general public) , more generally the "growler" is morose, and given to a huskiness that is suggestive of that abode of light and polished brass—the "poor man's club." ”

“ However, that drive spun a thread of intimacy between them. There are few conditions of companionship so favourable as those in a hansom cab. The driver is practically non-existent; the three sides and roof of the vehicle form a temporary home, a chez soi. The outside world lies in front of one, very near, and yet one is out of it. ”

“ The man in the second cab was dressed the same as the first, he was wetter than the first, for the sleet had fallen all night, but evening dress is evening dress all the world over. The driver wore the same oiled hat, the same waterproof cape as the other. And when the cab had passed the darkness swirled back where the two small lamps had been, and the slush poured into the wheel-tracks and nothing remained but the speculations of the shepherd to tell that a hansom cab had been in that part of China ”

“ Nothing is so typical of the London streets as the light, swift-moving hansom cab. Its extraordinary abundance everywhere is one of the first things that impresses the intelligent foreigner within this capital of ours. Joseph Hansom took out his patent so long ago as 1834. His was not, it is true,361 the present-day vehicle, which has been evolved out of all recognition from its original conception, though it still immortalises his name. ”

“ Still, as there are some people, virginal and remote from the world, who have not yet had this luxurious experience, I will give a short account of the psychology of myself when my hansom cab ran into the side of a motor omnibus, and I hope hurt it.
I do not need to dwell on the essential romance of the hansom cab--that one really noble modern thing which our age, when it is judged, will gravely put beside the Parthenon. It is really modern in that it is both secret and swift. My particular hansom cab was modern in these two respects ”

“ The Hansom cabs are the best and most convenient vehicles that can possibly be used for short excursions about the city. A shilling will carry you a smart fifteen minutes' ride, the legal price being sixpence a mile, but nobody ever expects to give a cabman any less than a shilling for ever so short a ride. Eighteen pence is readily accepted for a three mile trip, and it costs no more for two persons than one. There being nothing between the passenger and the horse but the dasher, as the driver is perched up behind, an unobstructed view is had as you whirl rapidly through the crowded streets ”

“ Lord Brougham was highly pleased with the new vehicle, and in 1840 he instructed his coachbuilder—Mr. Robinson of Mount Street—to make him one of a superior description. Hence the brougham.
The first four-wheeled cab. Elderly and sober-minded people showed a market preference for riding in clarences, and hansoms soon became considered the vehicles of the fast and disreputable. This reputation has not been lived down entirely, for, at the present day, there are some old ladies who will on no account enter a hansom, and shake their head sorrowfully when they see their grand-daughters doing so. ”

“ It is not an extravagant theory that the cabby’s singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom’s peculiar construction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trap—you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land—and must squeak upward through a slit in your peripatetic sarcophagus to make your feeble wishes known.
Then, in a cab, you are not even an occupant ”

“ If so I can understand the uses for the beheading blocks exhibited at the Tower.
All the vehicles used in the city are massive and solid. You see none of the flimsy spider-web wheels and light airy bodies in carriages that we affect in America. The wheels of a cab to carry four people are quite three inches thick, and the bodies are correspondingly clumsy. Like their owners, they are very solid.
But the hansom is the peculiar vehicle. The four-wheeler is a sort of a sober-going cab, the one you would expect the mother of a family or a respectable widow lady to use. ”

“ After plying for hire for a few weeks they were taken off the streets and have not yet reappeared.
The electric cab that is to be an all-round success has not yet been invented, but experience is being bought, and it will be strange if we have to wait long for it. But that it will ever supersede entirely the horse-drawn hansom is far from being likely, for while you meet hundreds of people who have had one ride in an electric cab, you come across very few who have had two. ”

“ The Hansom Cabs, which of late years have been exported to Paris and Vienna, are generally in a better condition than the four-wheeled vehicles; but their drivers are to the full as exacting and impertinent as their humbler brethren of the whip. To do them justice, if they are exorbitant in their demands, they at least are satisfactory in their performance. They go at a dashing pace whenever they have an open space before them, and they are most skilful in winding and edging their light vehicles through the most formidable knots of waggons and carriages. ”

“ In 1836, hackney-coaches, “outrigger” cabriolets, and back-door cabs were still plying for hire, but the immediate and continued success of Chapman’s cab prompted the proprietors of those [Pg 223] decaying vehicles to start similar conveyances. Cabs painted and lettered in close imitation of the new patented vehicle were soon as plentiful as the real ones. Some proprietors, who prided themselves on being very smart, always had the word “not” painted in very small letters before the inscription, “Hansom’s Patent Safety,” believing that this would save them from being prosecuted. ”

“ Here the driver’s seat was behind the carriage on a level with the roof.
“Everybody knows,” remarks Sir Walter Gilbey, “that the hansom, by reason of its steadiness, is an exceedingly comfortable conveyance; there is no vehicle that runs more easily, particularly when the load is truly balanced.” But in spite of such improvements as rubber tyres and patent windows, the hansom seems doomed.
Shillibeer’s huge omnibuses were succeeded by smaller281 vehicles of similar construction. For some years no passengers were carried upon the roof except one or two beside the driver. ”

“ The hero in charge of the hansom cab generously gave his more heavily-weighted competitors a start of fifty yards; and, standing up in his perch, shook his reins defiantly and smacked his whip, to the infinite delight of everyone but the licenced gentleman who was the nominal proprietor of the vehicle. Of the omnibuses, one got speedily into difficulties, owing to the charioteer getting the reins a trifle mixed and thereby spinning his vehicle round in a semicircle, and bringing it up finally in the middle of the lawn, where he abruptly vacated his post and retired into private life. ”

“ The cab horse, proceeding at a sharp trot, found himself suddenly at the top of an incline, where through the rain the pavement shone like an expanse of ice. It looked to me as if there was going to be a tumble. In an accident of such a kind a hansom becomes really a cannon in which a man finds that he has paid shillings for the privilege of serving as a projectile. ”

“ Well, in the Hansom sits a gentleman I wish to avoid (I knew him to be a detective, but did not choose to enlighten Cabby) . I must avoid him.”
“All right, sir. Come up old hoss.” (Lash, lash.)
“No, no, that won’t do, his horse is better, his cab runs lighter than yours. Now, attend. Just beyond that large van of Pickford’s, which is standing still in the distance, there is a turn to the right which cabmen sometimes take when driving to Hyde Park Corner. It is moreover an unfrequented street. If I mistake not there is just room for you to get round inside the van. ”

“ Another gent who is on the square comes up and sings out for a cab for him—first he says he don't know him, and then he shows plainly he does—he walks away in a temper, changes his mind, comes back and gets into the cab, after telling the cabby to drive down to St. Kilda. Then he polishes the drunk one off with chloroform, gets out of the cab, jumps into another, and after getting out at Powlett Street, vanishes—that's the riddle I've got to find out, and I don't think the Sphinx ever had a harder one. There are three things to be discovered—First, who is the dead man? ”

“ Several clubs of this kind are now flourishing to encourage manly sport, and with the capacity to promote improvements in the form of the “drag,” as it is now called.
It is to an architect that we owe the invention of the Hansom cab. The safety consisted in the arrangement of [21] the framework at the nearest part to the ground, so as to prevent an upset if the cab tilted up or down. The inventor was Mr. Hansom, the architect of the Birmingham Town Hall. Numberless improvements have been made on this idea, but the leading principles are the same. ”

“ The hansom, with its seat placed like a box behind the hood, is sufficiently original, but when one has seen a jaunting car, one begins to think that the cab is a rational conveyance.
Evidently the first idea of the jaunting car suggested itself to an ingenious man who found himself the owner of an old packsaddle and the frame of a cart. To utilise these articles he put the saddle on the two wheels and Erin was dowered with a jaunting car, the only one of her institutions that the Saxon conquest has respected.
The coachman seats himself on one side of the rolling saddle. ”

“ He deposed: I am a cabman, living in Collingwood, and usually drive a hansom cab. I remember Thursday last. I had driven a party down to St. Kilda, and was returning about half-past one o'clock. A short distance past the Grammar School I was hailed by a gentleman in a light coat; he was smoking a cigarette, and told me to drive him to Powlett Street, East Melbourne. I did so and he got out at the corner of Wellington Parade and Powlett Street. He paid me half a sovereign for my fare, and then walked up Powlett Street, while I drove back to town. ”

“ A hansom cab is better than any carriage you ever rode in, with soft cushions to lean against and little looking-glasses to look at yourself in, and, somehow, you don't hear the wheels. I leaned back and looked at myself and felt like a duchess, for I had my new hat and mantle on, and I knew I looked nice by the way the young men on the tops of the omnibuses looked at me and smiled. ”

“ The motor cabs in London are more comfortable than the hansoms were. But the old hansom was very good for seeing in the streets, as the driver was behind and not in front of you. The four-wheel horse cabs seem very slow to us now, but they carried more luggage than the taxi-cabs can. Some of us think that the old omnibuses and cabs were more interesting than the modern ones. ”

“ With the fall of the horse, Jack rose in the tonneau, with the instinct of protection over Molly. But he said not a word till she had guided the car to safety, when he gave her a little congratulatory pat on the shoulder. "Good girl; that was perfect. Couldn't have been better," he murmured. We waited until we had seen that neither man nor horse was badly hurt, and then sped on again, with a certain respect for the motor rankling in my reluctant heart. Comparing its behaviour with that of an automobile, Hansom's ironically named "Patent Safety" had not a wheel to stand upon. ”