Jennifer Kloester Read online

  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