EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES
your entertainment is exceeding good, and the whole expence seldom exceeds five or six livres a day."[1]
But as the route of the diligence and the stage-coach was fixed, there was sometimes an advantage in being able to direct one's own course, and to make use of a voiturin, who represented in France the familiar vetturino system of Italy. "These voiturins," says Smith, "are to be met with throughout Italy and the south of France. They undertake the conveyance of a traveller, for a certain sum, in a fixed time, to the place of his destination; and, if desired, will pay all his expenses at the inns by the way; which we afterwards found is the best method. This mode is much cheaper, and infinitely less embarrassing, than travelling post. It requires, indeed, very early rising, and is very slow; but the latter was no objection to us, as we could alight at pleasure to botanize, and walk full as fast as our horses or mules, till we were tired."[2]
But a great number of tourists elected to go by post. From "Calais to this place, Lyons," writes the Earl of Cork and Orrery, "we have passed most of our time in post-chaises."[3] All the main roads throughout the kingdom were minutely divided by the government into posting-stages.[4] At the posting-houses one might expect to find horses, and usually carriages, for hire at a fixed rate.[5] Wealthy travelers of the nobility or of some importance used to be preceded by an avant-courier who would order horses to be in waiting for them.[6] But at Mirepoix, a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants, Arthur Young could find no carriages at all for hire.[7]
As the posting-service was strictly regulated, the guide-books gave minute directions to the tourist, just landed at Calais, as to what he should do: "At the post house, which is the Silver Lion, kept by Mr. Grandsire, you bargain for a chaise to go to Paris; if there be only one person, he will let you have a pretty good one for two guineas and a half; and if two, he will have three guineas. You have the privilege of carrying a great weight of portmanteaus and trunks behind your post-chaise; but their horses are
57
- ↑ Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 18, 19.
- ↑ Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 151.
- ↑ Letters from Italy, p. 10.
- ↑ Here and there, as, for example, on the road from Avignon to Aix, there were, even late in the century, no fixed stages between several towns, "therefore no stipulated price; and it is the custom of these voituriers, as they are called, to ask a louis d'or, when they mean to take one third." The Gentleman's Guide, etc., p. 150.
- ↑ "These carriages drawn by mules make 30 m. a day." Ibid., p. 151.
- ↑ See Cook, Life of Ruskin, i, 35, 36.
- ↑ Travels in France, p. 56.
