The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century/Chapter 5

by William Edward Mead

CHAPTER V

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES

I

France

 

The means of transportation in France in the eighteenth century were often praised, even by foreigners; and we have already seen that the French highways were among the best in Europe. "Travelling," says Nugent, "is no where more convenient than in France, with respect as well to carriages as accommodations on the road. Where there is conveniency of rivers, they have water carriages, which are large boats drawn by horses. Their land carriages are of four sorts, viz. post chaises, the carosse or stage-coach, the coche, and the diligence or flying-coach."^[1] He might have added the berline, a four-wheeled vehicle with a hooded seat behind, which was said to be very comfortable.^[2]

Yet English travelers of all classes find much to criticize in the vehicles offered for hire in France. It must be confessed that most countries of Europe were not so well provided, but the development of facilities for travel in France had been somewhat slow. "As late as 1686 there was between Rouen and Havre but one carriage for hire, which was covered with canvas^[3] and was neither decent nor comfortable."^[4] An Englishman in the last quarter of the seventeenth century summarized his impression of French horses and vehicles in the following terms: "Their horses [are] little, and so strangely put together that scarce any of them can either trot or gallop, and 'tis easier to teach an English horse to dance than one of them to amble, for they can only go the pas, whence their coaches and all manner of voiture, is so slow as 'tis intolerable."^[5]

And another English tourist nearly a century later observes: "The French vehicles for travelling appear very unpromising to an Englishman: their timbers seem to constitute a sufficient load without the passengers or the baggage, especially as the French horses are but small; and their springs, which are placed behind to diminish the shocks upon the stone pavements of their great roads, very much resemble the hammers of a fulling-mill."^[6]

The same traveler remarks upon his journey from Saint-Omer to Lisle: "In the shafts of our chaise they place a horse of the cart breed, but below the size of our drawing horses, harnessed with ropes and a great wooden collar. By the sides of the shaft-horse are two ponies, on one of which the postilion rides, with boots, literally as big as two oyster-barrels, and armed with hoops of iron, to save his leg in case of accidents."^[7]

So, too, Mrs. Piozzi says that at Calais the "postillions with greasy night-caps and vast jack-boots, driving your carriage harnessed with ropes, and adorned with sheep-skins, can never fail to strike an Englishman at his first visit abroad."^[8]

But notwithstanding some weak spots in the system, the public transportation service in France in the eighteenth century was fairly satisfactory. Dr. Rigby, in 1789, remarks in a letter from Chantilly: "Yesterday we travelled more than ninety miles with perfect ease; the roads are most excellent; the horses are good for travelling, I really think better than the English, but they are all rough, with long manes and tails, and no trimmed or cropped ears, which I believe makes the English abuse them."^[9] One could with little difficulty find a conveyance making regular trips from most places of any size and connecting with all parts of the kingdom, and one could at most posting-houses find a chaise for one's personal use. For long journeys, as, for instance, between Calais and Paris or Paris and Lyons, unless the traveler could afford his own carriage, he commonly went in the diligence,^[10] "so called from its expedition." "This," says Nugent, "differs from the carosse or ordinary stage-coach in little else but in moving with greater velocity,"^[11] and in making from "seventy to a hundred miles a day."^[12] "But," objects Smollett, "the inconveniences attending this way of travelling are these. You are crowded into the carriage to the number of eight persons so as to sit very uneasy, and sometimes run the risk of being stifled among very indifferent company. You are hurried out of bed at four, three, nay often at two in the morning.^[13] You are obliged to eat in the French way, which is very disagreeable to an English palate."^[14] Arthur Young, too, notes in his "Travels in France":^[15] "This is the first French diligence I have been in, and shall be the last ; they are detestable."

Well on in the nineteenth century Bayard Taylor, though not particularly fastidious, agrees perfectly with Young. "After waiting an hour in a hotel beside the rushing Yonne, a lumbering diligence was got ready, and we were offered places to Paris for seven francs. As the distance is one hundred and ten miles, this would be considered cheap fare, but I should not want to travel it again and be paid for doing so. Twelve persons were packed into a box not large enough for a cow."^[16] For many travelers, however, the advantages of a system of transportation that was inexpensive and relieved them of all responsibility outweighed the discomfort.

More than one tourist has left us a striking picture of this mountainous and unwieldy vehicle, — "a huge, rickety, shabby, yellow argosy, all over dried, dirty mud splashes."^[17] Edward Wright, who traveled in France toward the end of the first quarter of the century, says of it: "The diligence, a great coach that holds eight persons, is a machine that has not its name for nothing; what it wants in quickness it makes up in assiduity; though by the help of eight mules which drew it, we sometimes went at a brisk pace too; having pass'd from Lyons to Marseilles, which they call a hundred leagues, in three days and a half."^[18]

"The stage-coach or diligence used in this country," says Nugent, "is much more convenient than those in England. It has eight chairs, neither of which touch one another, for

A DILIGENCE

the passengers to sit in; and each chair has a sash-window to put up and take the air, or shut, as the passenger pleases. No body rides with their face backwards, but turned toward the horses. They change horses every twelve miles,^[19] and go sometimes ninety or one hundred miles a day."^[20]

The diligence grew in bulk and in massiveness until it was as large as an ordinary load of hay, carried twenty or thirty passengers, and weighed five tons.^[21] The equipment of this huge machine always included a conductor and a postilion. At the opening of the nineteenth century John Carr pictures the overgrown vehicle of his day going between Cherbourg and Rouen: "At daybreak we seated ourselves in the diligence. 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 inside, which is capacious and lofty, and will hold six people with great comfort, is lined with leather padded, and surrounded with little pockets, in which the travellers deposit their bread, snuff, night caps and pocket handkerchiefs, which generally enjoy each others' company in the same delicate depositary. From the roof depends a large net work, which is generally crowded with hats, swords, and band-boxes; the whole is convenient, and when all parties are seated and arranged, the accommodations are by no means unpleasant. Upon the roof, on the outside, is the imperial, which is generally filled with six or seven persons more, and a heap of luggage, which latter also occupies the basket, and generally presents a pile, half as high again as the coach, which is secured by ropes and chains, tightened by a large iron windlass, which also constitutes another appendage of this moving mass. The body of the carriage rests upon large thongs of leather, fastened to heavy blocks of wood, instead of springs, and the whole is drawn by seven horses."^[23]

The charge for transportation in the diligence often included all the expenses of the traveler on the way.^[24]

Besides the diligence, we note as public conveyances the carosse and the coche. "The carosse," says Nugent, "is not unlike our stage-coach, containing room for six passengers, but does not move so quick, and is more embarrassed with goods and baggage. The coche is a large heavy machine, which serves the use both of waggon and coach; it is long-shaped, and provided with windows at the sides, containing generally sixteen passengers, viz., twelve in the body of the coach, sitting two abreast, and two each side at the door of the entrance, a seat being provided there for that purpose. It is furnished with two large conveniencies, one before and another behind, which are made of basket wicker, and are therefore called baskets. Into these baskets they put large quantities of goods, which makes it very heavy in drawing. Sometimes both the baskets are filled with goods, and sometimes the fore one is left empty for passengers, in which the fare is less than in the coach, and they have a covering overhead to preserve them from the injury of the weather. Its motion is but slow, seldom exceeding that of a brisk walk, and as the roads are generally paved with large stone, this kind of vehicle is generally very jumbling and disagreeable.^[25] The expence of travelling with the carosse or stage-coach is less than half the sum of riding post, but then you are to make an allowance for being longer upon the road. As for the particular fares of stage-coaches, we shall mention them in each journey; only we are to observe here that the expence of baggage is paid apart, and is generally three sols for every pound above fourteen or fifteen pound weight, which is free. With regard to provisions on the road, your safest way, if you travel post, is to know the price of everything before you order it; but with the stage-coach, your meals are generally regulated at fixed prices, as with us; your entertainment is exceeding good, and the whole expence seldom exceeds five or six livres a day."^[26]

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."^[27]

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."^[28] All the main roads throughout the kingdom were minutely divided by the government into posting-stages.^[29] At the posting-houses one might expect to find horses, and usually carriages, for hire at a fixed rate.^[30] 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.^[31] But at Mirepoix, a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants, Arthur Young could find no carriages at all for hire.^[32]

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 very indifferent, so that it is not advisable to encumber yourself with too much baggage, but rather to send it by the stage-coach, which sets out twice a week from Calais to Paris, and is seven days upon the road; the fare is thirty livres for each passenger, and three sols per pound for his baggage. The coach from Paris to Calais and Dunkirk sets up at the Grand Cerf, rue S. Denis. The roads from Calais to Paris are pretty good; and you go with any of their post-horses very near a post an hour. … From Calais to Paris are thirty-two posts. … Upon the whole, for the thirty-two posts you pay, if you are two in company, 164 livres, two sols, which is about 6l. 16s. 6d. But if you are single, the whole cost will be, horses and boys only 99 livres, two sols, which is about 4l. 6s. 9½d. English."^[33]

On the matter of posting Smollett gives also his experience, and adds that posting in England is pleasanter, with less imposition and expense:^[34] "The post is farmed from the king, who lays travellers under contribution for his own benefit, and has published a set of oppressive ordinances, which no stranger nor native dares transgress. The postmaster finds nothing but horses and guides: the carriage you yourself must provide. If there are four persons within the carriage, you are obliged to have six horses and two postillions; and if your servant sits on the outside, either before or behind, you must pay for a seventh. You pay double for the first stage from Paris, and twice double for passing through Fontainebleau when the court is there, as well as at coming to Lyons, and at leaving this city."^[35]

Of posting in 1739 we have a sketch by the poet Gray, who was going from Calais to Boulogne: "In the afternoon we took a post-chaise (it still snowing very hard) for Boulogne, which was only eighteen miles farther. This chaise is a strange sort of conveyance, of much greater use than beauty, resembling an ill-shaped chariot, only with the door opening before instead of the side; three horses draw it, one between the shafts, and the other two on each side, on one of which the postillion rides, and drives too. This vehicle will, upon occasion, go fourscore miles a day, but Mr. Walpole, being in no hurry, chooses to make easy journeys of it, and they are easy ones indeed; for the motion is much like that of a sedan. We go about six miles an hour, and commonly change horses at the end of it. It is true they are no very graceful steeds, but they go well, and through roads which they say are bad for France, but to me they seem gravel walks and bowling greens; in short, it would be the finest travelling in the world were it not for the inns, which are mostly terrible places indeed."^[36]

Posting certainly had some inconveniences, and complaints were frequent that the charges were excessive. But for the tourist of comfortable income it appears to have been the most satisfactory means of travel in France.^[37] When Morris Birkbeck was in France in 1814, his party was not at first entirely pleased with the system, but afterwards "found posting not so inconvenient or expensive. If you take your own voiture, or hire one for the journey, you escape the miserable cabriolets provided by the postmasters, and the trouble of changing every seven or ten miles. You may take also two horses at forty sous each instead of three at thirty sous; and you save thirty sous a stage, which is charged when they furnish a carriage. With these precautions, there is not much room to complain of French posting."^[38]

To avoid a succession of uncomfortable carriages Smollett's suggestion was worth heeding. "I would advise every man who travels through France to bring his own vehicle along with him, or at least to purchase one at Calais or Boulogne, where second-hand berlins or chaises may generally be had at reasonable rates."^[39]

Hired private coaches were an expensive luxury, drawn as they were by four or six horses, and accompanied by two postilions. One's private servant often attended on horseback or on the coach. Smollett when in Paris looked into the means of conveyance to the south of France. "When I went to the bureau, where alone these voitures are to be had, I was given to understand that it would cost me sixand-twenty guineas, and travel so slow that I should be ten days upon the road. These carriages are let by the same persons who farm the diligence; and for this they have an exclusive privilege, which makes them very saucy and insolent. When I mentioned my servant, they gave me to understand that I must pay two loui'dores more for his seat upon the coach box."^[40]

So ponderous were the French coaches that one ran the risk of being set on fire several times a day by the friction of the wheels.^[41] Besides this, there was often friction of another sort, as we see from the following delicious passage: "Through the whole south of France, except in large cities," Smollett found "the postilions lazy, lounging, greedy, and impertinent. If you chide them for lingering, they will continue to delay you the longer: if you chastise them with sword, cane, cudgel, or horse-whip, they will either disappear entirely, and leave you without resources; or they will find means to take vengeance by overturning your carriage. The best method I know of travelling with any degree of comfort, is to allow yourself to become the dupe of imposition, and stimulate their endeavors by extraordinary gratifications. I laid down a resolution (and kept it) to give no more than four and twenty sols per post between the two postilions; but I am now persuaded that for three-pence a post more, I should have been much better served, and should have performed the journey with greater pleasure."^[42]

However one might travel from place to place, a tourist of any pretensions was expected in any of the larger cities of the Continent to keep a carriage as a visible token of his respectability. For example, on going to Paris after having submitted to the "absolutely requisite" French tailor and barber, "the next thing is to get a conveniency to carry you abroad, that you may with elegance and ease go and see every thing that is curious in and about Paris. Your best way is to have a recommendation to some of those people who let coaches out to hire; and if you are only two in company, a chariot is most advisable. You may have a gay and easy gilt coach or chariot, and a coachman, with a good pair of horses, for twelve livres, which is about ten shillings a day, to attend you from seven in the morning till midnight, and to carry you to Versailles, etc. This is certainly the best way, because their hackney-coaches are dirty and mean, and few people of any fashion, especially strangers, either use them or walk much in the streets. It is to be observed that you must sign a contract for your coach or chariot, to have it a month as your own; the lawyer or notary draws the contract by the coach-lender's orders, and you pay five shillings for his fee and one shilling for his clerk, who attends you to get it signed. This contract the coachman carries in his pocket, to entitle him to drive you out of town to Versailles, etc., for without it the coach is not privileged to carry you out of the gates of Paris.^[43] But tho' you contract for a month for the sake of this privilege, yet you may give up your coach at the end of ten days, or a fortnight, paying for the days you have had it; and a fortnight will be long enough to carry you to most of the places you want to see in and about Paris."^[44]

For going short distances, particularly when attending a social gathering in full dress, the tourist in more than one Continental city found a sedan chair useful. But, obviously, this was a convenience of very limited range.

 

II

Italy

From what has been said of the Italian roads it is obvious that none but a very substantial conveyance could be trusted to bring the traveler safely to his destination. What the carriages were like we learn from many descriptions. Now and then, as in France, the tourist ventured to travel in his own private vehicle. In such a case, Baretti recommends that "a traveller ought to have his post-chaise not only strongly built to resist the many stony roads in Italy, but likewise have it so contrived as to be easily taken to pieces where it must inevitably be disjoined in order to pass a mountain or to be put into a felucca; that is, in going over mount Cenis, or from some part of southern France to Genoa."^[45]

In more detail Mariana Starke advises that "those Persons who design to travel much in Italy should provide themselves with a strong, low-hung, doubled-perched English coach or post-chaise, with well-seasoned corded springs,^[46] and iron axle-trees, two drag-chains with iron shoes, … tools for repairing … a carriage, … a sword-case … two moderate-sized trunks,"^[47] etc.

Arthur Young, however, was warned by men who had traveled much in Italy, that he must not think of going thither in his own one-horse chaise.^[48] "To watch my horse being fed would, they assured me, take up abundantly too much time, and if it was omitted, with respect to hay, as well as oats, both would be equally stolen. There are also parts of Italy where travelling alone, as I did, would be very unsafe, from the number of robbers that infest the roads. Persuaded by the opinions of persons, who I suppose must know much better than myself, I had determined to sell my mare and chaise, and travel in Italy by the veturini, who are to be had it seems everywhere, and at a cheap rate."^[49]

When he arrived at Toulon, Young accordingly tagged his chaise with a large label, "A vendre," and finally sold it and his mare for twenty-two louis — ten louis less than they had cost him at Paris. "I had next to consider the method to get to Nice [from Toulon]; and will it be believed, that from Marseilles with 100,000 souls, and Toulon with 30,000, living in the great road to Antibes, Nice, and Italy, there is no diligence or regular voiture. A gentleman at the table d'hôte assured me they asked him three louis for a place in a voiture to Antibes, and to wait till some other person would give three more for another seat. To a person accustomed to the infinity of machines that fly about England, in all directions, this must appear hardly credible. Such great cities in France have not the hundredth part of connection and communication with each other that much inferior places enjoy with us."^[50]

Obviously, with but such a happy-go-lucky system on a main road between France and Italy, nothing better could be expected on the less traveled roads of Italy itself. The ordinary accommodations are briefly outlined by Nugent in the "Grand Tour."^[51] and these we may supplement with more detail: "There are several ways of travelling in Italy, such as with post-horses; with a vettura or hired coach or calash in which they do not change horses; and, finally, with a procaccio or stage-coach that undertakes to furnish passengers with provisions and necessary accommodations on the road. Travelling post you pay five julios a horse at each post (a julio is about sixpence) and two julios to the postilion. The price of the vetturas is fixed differently according to the difference of province or road; and the same may be said of the procaccios, which is much the worst way of travelling."^[52]

The posting-system had the convenience of permitting the traveler to pay his way to the place he wished to visit,^[53] without placing upon him further responsibility for the carriage or the driver. Well organized as the system was, it did not, however, prevent occasional annoyance that stirred the wrath of irritable tourists. "Of all the people I have ever seen," said Smollett, "the hostlers, postilions and other fellows, hanging about the post-houses in Italy, are the most greedy, impertinent, and provoking."^[54]

Some of the petty regulations, moreover, were unquestionably very exasperating; and to avoid them De La Lande advises the traveler going from France to take a carriage straight through from Lyons to Turin.^[55] He remarks: "It is a rule at Chambéry, as in the rest of Italy, that when one arrives by post one must continue in the same fashion or spend three nights in the place where one arrives, if one wishes to take drivers."^[56] In the reverse direction, "Post-masters at Turin are not to furnish travellers with horses without a licence from the secretary of state for foreign affairs; and those in the provinces, from the governors or chief magistrate of the place. No person, without a particular order, is permitted to ride post without a postilion. None are suffered to pass by a post-house without changing horses, or to go beyond the frontiers in any other carriage but the usual post-waggon. It is an inconvenience to travellers, that, though they come by the post, they are not permitted to proceed in another carriage without staying three days in the place where the stage sets out from."^[57]

Sometimes post-horses were lacking, as was once the case when Dr. Moore was in a hilly district. But in this instance their place was taken by "three cart-horses and two oxen, which were relieved in the most mountainous part of the road by buffalos. There is a breed of these animals in this country; they are strong, hardy, and docile, and found preferable to either horses or oxen, for ploughing in a rough and hilly country."^[58] In more than one part of the country, particularly in the first third of the eighteenth century, the main dependence, indeed, was upon oxen or buffaloes.^[59]

All in all, however, in the second half of the century, as Baretti remarks, "The fact is, that the post-horses are in general very good all over Italy, and that our postillions generally drive at a great rate, trotting their horses on any ascent, and galloping on flat ground rather in a desperado way than otherwise."^[60]

Tourists who wished to escape the necessity of looking after themselves or their vehicle commonly arranged matters with a vetturino or his agent. We have numerous accounts of the journeys taken in this way, for until the introduction of railways it was the system ordinarily followed. Accounts dating from the early nineteenth century agree in general with those of a century or two earlier.^[61] Bayard Taylor in 1845 went in substantially the same fashion as Misson in the seventeenth century. Says Misson: "We agreed at Rome to be carried in calashes, and to have all our charges borne during the space of eleven days, from Rome to Florence, by the way of Viterbo, Sienna, Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca, and Pistoia, for six Italian pistoles apiece; which was somewhat too dear a rate, tho', 'tis true, calashes were very scarce at Rome when we left it."^[62]

Taylor, in his turn, remarks: "Travelling with a vetturino is unquestionably the pleasantest way of seeing Italy. The easy rate of the journey allows time for becoming well acquainted with the country, and the tourist is freed from the annoyance of quarrelling with cheating landlords. A translation of our written contract will best explain this mode of travelling: 'Our contract is, to be conducted to Rome for the sum of twenty francs each, say 20f. and the buona mano, if we are well served. We must have from the vetturino, Giuseppe Nerpiti, supper each night, a free chamber with two beds, and fire, until we shall arrive at Rome. I Geronymo Sartarelli, steward of the Inn of the White Cross, at Foligno, in testimony of the above contract.'"^[63]

In this fashion James Edward Smith made his tour in 1786 from Pisa to Florence and thence to Rome. His carriage had two wheels and a speed of about four miles an hour. "We engaged a voiturin to convey us both (from Pisa) to Florence, forty-nine miles, for fifty pauls (not twenty-five shillings), to be fed by the way into the bargain. To our astonishment, we were excellently accommodated; and we made use of this same honest fellow, whose name was Diego Baroncello, to carry us over most parts of Italy.^[64] We never had a word of dispute all the way."^[65]

Most tourists who could afford the time and the money went as far as Naples, commonly with a vetturino. The invaluable Misson^[66] tells us: "The journey from Rome to Naples is usually perform'd thus: the travellers hire either horses or carriages, or both together, that they may have the advantage of easing themselves by change: and the person with whom they agree at Rome, every passenger paying fifteen piasters,^[67] obliges himself to give them eight meals in their journey outwards, and as many in their return; to stay five whole days at Naples, to pay the boat at Cajeta, to lend his horses one day to Vesuvius, and another to Puzzolo; both which are comprehended in the five to be spent at Naples. Thus the whole journey is perform'd in fifteen days; on the last of which they return to Rome."

The German Keysler finds fault with the price and the length of time required for the journey: "In travelling from Rome to Naples it is very inconvenient to go with the vetturini; for though the road they take lies over Monte Cassino, and consequently gives one an opportunity of seeing the celebrated Benedictine monastery on that hill; yet it is attended with the mortification of being five days on the road and paying the vetturini an extraordinary price for their loss of time.^[68] In the months of February and March a person must be very expeditious to travel seven stages in a post-chaise from sun-rising to sunset; but in summer the seventeen stages and a half between Rome and Naples are easily performed in two days. For the two chaise-horses at every stage within the Neapolitan territories, one pays eleven carlini, and half as much for the chaise, if wanted."^[69]

In place of going with a vetturino, "It is more advisable," says Nugent, "to make use of the procaccio^[70] or ordinary carrier from Rome to Naples, with whom they may agree for seven crowns, for which he gives them seven meals, and carries them thither in five days. Those who chuse the first method with the vetturino are obliged to come back the same way they went, which is not so agreeable to a curious traveller. But gentlemen who have not agreed with the carrier may in their return leave the direct road and travel further within land, on the right side of it, hiring horses from town to town. With the vetturino from Rome to Naples, you pay five crowns a horse, fifteen for a calash, and eighteen for a litter. The road is generally bad, and the accommodations none of the best."^[71]

Obviously, the satisfaction of a traveler who went with a vetturino would largely depend upon the fairness and honesty of the conductor. An unscrupulous fellow had it in his power to cause the traveler great annoyance and discomfort. Nugent gives warning that if the coachman agrees to provide the food, passengers are in danger of short commons. And in the same tenor Hazlitt says:^[72] "The vetturino owners … bargain to provide you for a certain sum and then billet you upon the innkeepers for as little as they can."^[73] A further objection, says Nugent, is that the "coachman in winter travels very often before it is day,^[74] and after it is dark, in order to get to his station, where he expects to find his account in the reckoning."^[75] All in all, says Goethe, "It is but sorry travelling with a vetturino, it is always best to follow at one's ease on foot. In this way I travelled from Ferrara to this place"^[76]—i.e., Assisi. Of course, Goethe was a poet and an athlete in the pride of youth, but his opinion must have been shared by many a weary traveler.

With all its drawbacks, the vetturino system afforded a passable means of conveyance. One other system, however, was preferred by many travelers on account of its greater independence. But Smollett, as we might expect, comments upon the inconvenience^[77] of frequently shifting the baggage, and bestows a characteristic word upon the vehicle: "The chaise or calesse of this country is a wretched machine with two wheels, as uneasy as a common cart, being indeed no other than what we should call in England a very ill-contrived one-horse chair, narrow, naked, shattered and shabby."^[78]

According to Misson^[79] the shafts of the Roman calashes were "at least fifteen feet long, and consequently 'tis impossible to turn the calash in a narrow way." Even James Edward Smith bestows very moderate praise upon the calash. "Nothing is more ridiculous to an Englishman than the manner of driving these vehicles. We were allowed only to hold the reins, or rather ropes, and our driver stood behind, brandishing the whip over our heads."^[80]

From our survey it is clear that no method of travel in Italy was ideal. But on the whole the balance seems to be in favor of the cambiatura. This, too, is the opinion of Nugent, whose wide experience may be allowed to count for more than the utterances of the ever-irritable Smollett. Nugent's view, moreover, agrees so closely with Misson's that he has borrowed many of the older writer's very phrases. "But to return to the carriages; the best way … of travelling in this country is with the cambiatura, where it can be had, which is only in the ecclesiastical state, in Tuscany, and in the dutchies of Parma and Modena. The price of the cambiatura is generally at the rate of two julios a horse each post.^[81] The greatest conveniency of this way of travelling is that you may stop where you please, and change your horses or calash at every cambiatura, without being obliged to pay for their return, and besides you may take what time you please to satisfy your curiosity. There is room for two people in a calash, which is a much better way of travelling than on horseback, because a person has the advantage of being skreened from the sun and weather, and he is allowed to carry a portmanteau fastened to it of 200 weight. But 'tis proper to look from time to time to the portmanteau, or to make a servant follow the calash on horseback, in order to take care of the baggage; though this trouble may in great measure be prevented by fastening the portmanteau to the calash with an iron chain and a padlock, as is frequently done behind post-chaises in Germany. The tying and untying of the portmanteau at every cambiatura is a necessary piece of trouble that attends this way of travelling; wherefore those who have a long journey to make, and intend not to stop on the road, or only to make a short stay, ought always to agree with one Vetturino for the whole passage. But the best way is to have a calash of your own."^[82]

 

III

Germany

To pass from the well-ordered system of transportation in France to the primitive system of Germany seemed to most travelers almost like going from civilization to barbarism. Even Italy sustained without much difficulty a comparison with Germany in this particular.

The reasons for the backward condition of Germany we have considered in some detail elsewhere, but they are worth bearing in mind. "Germany," says Cogan at the end of the eighteenth century, "is but thinly inhabited in proportion to its great extent; excepting on the borders of the Rhine, the large towns are comparatively few, and at a great distance from each other;"^[83] and by Germany he meant not only what we now call Germany, but also the Teutonic regions of Austria. Communication at a distance was extremely difficult, and in winter practically impossible. The natural results of isolation followed. Particularism held sway in every part of the Empire. Moreover, almost every detail that we learn about German life in the eighteenth century strengthens the conviction that for the average burgher it was the day of small things. Trade was limited, and manufacturing enterprises were few. Incentives to travel for business or for pleasure were, in comparison with our time, strangely lacking. The country in various parts impressed strangers as being old-fashioned and very backward in its ways. Mariana Starke, in going from Italy to Vienna in 1798, observed that "The passing through this part of Germany seems like living some hundred years ago in England; as the dresses, customs, and manners of the people precisely resemble those of our ancestors."^[84]

Great cities there were, like Berlin and Hamburg and Leipsic and Vienna, where wealth and luxury abounded, and petty courts like Anspach and Cassel and Karlsruhe at least suggested the lavish display of Versailles, but the task of going from one city to another was the reverse of inviting. In some parts of Germany where one might reasonably have expected adequate means of transportation, there was a very painful lack.^[85] As we have already seen, the roads in general were very inferior, making "it downright misery to travel in bad weather."^[86]

In selecting the means of transportation the choice was between the rough, clumsy public vehicles and one's private carriage. A posting-wagon meant something very different in Germany from what it did in France or even Italy, and was practically a comfortless sort of stage-coach. For the public posting-wagons of Germany no one has a good word. Misson calls them "a miserable sort of cart," and adds: "They often move very slowly, but to make amends, they jog on night and day. This is the most troublesome of all carriages, as I found it to my cost."^[87]

Travelers throughout the eighteenth century and even much later are in entire accord with Misson. Nugent does, indeed, say: "There is no country in Europe where the post is under better regulation than in Germany," but he immediately adds: "The common way of travelling is in machines which they call post-waggons,^[88] and which very well deserve that denomination. These are little better than common carts, with seats made for the passengers, without any covering, except in Hesse Cassel, and a few other places. They go but a slow pace, not much above three miles an hour, and what is still more inconvenient to passengers, they jog on day and night, winter and summer, rain or snow, till they arrive at the place appointed. … But this is a way of travelling recommendable to those only who cannot be at the expense of a more commodious manner."^[89]

If the three-mile rate had been actually kept up day and night, one would of course have covered seventy miles or more in twenty-four hours. But such dizzy speed was not always possible, and sometimes the record for a day did not exceed eighteen miles.

As for the companions of one's journey in the post-wagon some travelers are not over-enthusiastic. "My company consisted of a swine of an Oldenburgh dealer in horses, a clodpole Bremen broker, and a pretty female piece of flesh, mere dead flesh, lying before me on the straw. There was not a word spoke all the way from Göttingen here [Cassel], so that if the dulcis et alta quies had not been now and then interrupted by coughing, sneezing, belching, and the like, I should not have known that I had company with me."^[90]

The Englishman Russell traveling in Germany in 1828 found the post-wagdn to be still of the eighteenth-century type. In going through the Rhine region he remarks: "What the Germans call a Diligence or Postwagen, dragging its slow length through this delicious scene, is a bad feature in the picture. Much as we laugh at the meagre cattle, the knotted rope-harness, and lumbering paces of the machines which bear the same name in France, the French have outstripped their less alert neighbours in everything that regards neatness, and comfort, and expedition. The German carriage resembles the French one, but is still more clumsy and unwieldy."^[91]

The luggage, towering on high like a "castle" as large as the wagon itself, was secured by chains. Inside the wagon sat six passengers, and with the guard sat two more. Four horses slowly dragged the great load, while from all the openings of the vehicle poured out in dense clouds the smoke of vile tobacco. Naturally enough, the Englishman traveling for pleasure and not as a penance was warned in advance not to use the public post-wagons. "The only way of travelling with comfort through Germany," says the author of the "Tour in Germany,"^[92] "is in a chaise of your own and with post-horses." This merely repeats the advice of Nugent, who points out that "then a person is at liberty to stop at what station he pleases, and as long as he pleases."^[93] He remarks, too, that by having a chaise to one's self one saves "the trouble of tying and untying the baggage; because when a person hires a chaise of the post-office, he must change it at every stage, which is vastly inconvenient."^[94]

Sometimes one arranged to travel in a post-chaise, but bargained to have all expenses on the road covered for a fixed sum. With an arrangement of this sort Mariana Starke, in April of 1798, left Florence for Dresden, "with a light strong German post-chaise unloaded, and a Voiturin's coach for our baggage, each carriage being usually drawn by three mules; and we gave for six of these animals, from Florence to Hamburg, three hundred and thirty Tuscan sequins; the Voiturin finding supper and beds for four Persons, and likewise defraying the expense of barriers, ferry-boats, guides, drivers, and mules. We paid a couple of florins a day for our dinner, and one florin a day to servants at inns, unless our carriages were guarded, when we usually gave two florins, and we allowed three sequins a day for the mules whenever we chose to stop. Buonamano to the drivers was not included in our bargain, and to these men (who behaved particularly well) we gave sixty sequins."^[95]

Those who made the long journey from Hamburg to Vienna — nearly five hundred and fifty miles — commonly went in summer by way of Nuremberg and Ratisbon, and if they chose they could go by public conveyance. The conveyance was typical for the whole of Germany. "There is a stage-coach, which sets out from Hamburg to Nurenberg on Saturday evening, at the shutting of the gates; it goes through Brunswic, Wolfembuttel, Erfurt, Bamberg, &c., and comes back to Hamburg on Tuesday morning. This coach sets up at Hamburg at the Swan by the change. 'Tis common for travellers to agree with the coachman for their provisions as well as for their passage. The fare is settled thus: From Hamburg to Nurenberg for passage and provisions twenty dollars," etc.^[96] But we need hardly foUow the tedious detail to the end.

 

IV

The Low Countries

One could not go far in the diminutive Low Countries without getting over the frontier, but within the narrow limits one could travel a great deal and with great convenience. Much of the travel was by water, but there was also considerable use of wheeled carriages. In Flanders, as in Holland, canals were frequent; and "most of the large towns" had "stage coaches, called diligences from their expedition."^[97] A tourist in 1773 indicated how keen was the competition for passengers, and how impartial was the award of the prize. "We left Helvoet on Monday morning in a stage waggon. All the waggoners in town were summoned by a bell, then dice shaken to see who should get the fare. The price is fixed, therefore imposition is impossible."^[98]

Post-wagons drawn by three horses went from most of the principal towns and communicated with all parts of Europe. The carriages were not unduly heavy and, says Nugent, were "as expeditious as our stage-coaches."^[99] In going from Rotterdam to Antwerp one started at five in the morning; the price for one's seat was nine guilders, nine stivers, with fifteen pounds of baggage free. Everything above that weight was charged one stiver a pound.^[100]

There were regular days for the arrival and departure of the post at and from Amsterdam, Brussels, The Hague, Rotterdam, and various other points in Europe.^[101] Thus the post arrived at Amsterdam on Sunday "from Germany, Cologne, Cleves, Munster, Liège, Gelderland, etc." On Tuesdays it came "towards noon" from Spain, Portugal, France, Brabant, and Flanders. With Nugent's "Grand Tour" in hand, the guide-book that chiefly supplanted Misson's, the tourist could easily mark out his route and select the proper conveyance. If he were at Arnheim, he would find that there starts for "Cologne in Germany, every Thursday morning a post-waggon from the Golden Swan with goods and passengers to Emmerick, Wesel, Dusseldorp, Solingen, Elberfelt, and reaches Cologne by Saturday. On Saturday the post-waggon sets out from Cologne for Arnheim from the Red Goose in the Egelstein, and passing through the above-mentioned places arrives at Arnheim by Tuesday."^[102] Likewise from Arnheim, we are informed, there sets out for "Frankfort on the Mayn, from the third of March till winter every Sunday morning a post-waggon at seven o'clock, which reaches Frankfort the next Friday."^[103]

Those who preferred a private conveyance to these democratic vehicles, could hire carriages gorgeous with red velvet and drawn by horses making a fine appearance.^[104]

When one hired a post-chaise for one's own use three horses at least were required by law. But if more than three had been taken for the first stretch, the extra number must be paid for until the entire journey was at an end. "Our vanity," says Cogan, who was going from Utrecht to Mainz, "induced us to take four horses" as far as Nimeguen. When they arrived at Nimeguen, says he, they "were obliged to continue, or at least to pay, for the same number; nor could we get ourselves purged of this superfluous horse until we arrived at Mentz. … We were first obliged to take four horses; and secondly obliged to pay twelve guilders for them; which together with the personal tax called passagie gelt amounts to about twenty pence per mile for horses alone."^[105]

In most cities of the Low Countries a carriage of some sort was easily obtainable. But at Amsterdam the tourist could not ride in a coach "for fear of shaking the houses"^[106] — unless he were a privileged person. At The Hague "very handsome hackney-coaches" were to be had for a shilling a drive, but chairs were lacking.^[107]

1. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 17.
2. The Gentleman's Guide, p. 44.
3. This appears to have been modeled after the vehicle that Coryate used early in the century: "I departed from Montrel in a cart, according to the fashion of the country, which had three hoopes over it, that were covered with a sheet of course canvasse." Crudities, i, 160.
4. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 10.
5. Clenche(?), A Tour in France and Italy, p. 21. He adds: "Doggs of no kind worth a farthing, and, to conclude, such is the nature of the clime or soyl, that it produces no animal in perfection, but asses," p. 22.
6. (Jones) Journey to Paris (1776), I, 32.
7. Ibid., i, 66, 67.
8. Travels, i, 5.
9. Letters, p. 16.
10. The general bureau of diligences and stage-coaches for the entire kingdom was at Paris, in the Rue Nôtre Dame des Victoires Subordinate bureaus were to be found in all the large towns. Thierry, Almanach des Voyageurs (1785), p. 109. As for prices, "The terms on which you travel are explained in the Liste générale des Postes de France, which keeps one from being cheated." (Jones) Journey to Paris (1776), i, 33.
11. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 19.
12. One traveled in the diligence from Paris to Lyons in five days
13. In making the trip to Lyons, James Edward Smith complains of having to rise at four or five in the morning. Tour on the Continent, i, 142, 153.
14. Travels, i, 126.
15. Page 151.
16. Views Afoot, p. 461.
17. Fitzgerald, Life of Sterne, i, 331.
18. Wright, Some Observations made in Travelling through France and Italy, i, 13, 14.
19. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 261, says that the pace was generally a gallop and that changing horses took no time. When the route was difficult the distance between relays was only two leagues.
20. Nugent, Grand Tour, i, 236.
21. (Cooper) Gleanings in Europe, i, 112, 113; Peale, Notes on Italy, pp. 10, 11.
22. Already in 1775 the Lyons diligences were hung on springs which made them as comfortable as the post-chaises and the berlines. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 13.
23. Carr, The Stranger in France, 42, 43.
24. The fare by diligence from Paris to Lyons, three hundred and sixty miles, with "maintenance on the road" was in 1763 one hundred livres. The journey took five days, — the last two days, from Chalons to Lyons, being by boat on the Saone. Carr, The Stranger in France, p. 93, gives the price for a place in the diligence from Rouen to Paris (ninety miles), with luggage, as twenty-three livres, eighteen sols. Smollett, Travels, i, 125, 126.
25. Hazlitt found the French stage-coach in his day "a very purgatory of heat, closeness, confinement, and bad smells. Nothing can surpass it but the section of a slave-ship or the Black-hole of Calcutta." Journey, Works, ix, 184.
26. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 18, 19.
27. Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 151.
28. Letters from Italy, p. 10.
29. 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.
30. "These carriages drawn by mules make 30 m. a day." Ibid., p. 151.
31. See Cook, Life of Ruskin, i, 35, 36.
32. Travels in France, p. 56.
33. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 19–22.
34. Travels, ii, 255.
35. Ibid., i, 127, 128. Cf. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 17.
36. Gray, Letters (ed. Gosse), ii, 17. An Englishman in 1773 remarks, "Their carriages are more clumsy than our dung-carts; their inns inferior to an English ale-house." Tour of Holland, etc. (1773), p. 221. Nevertheless the French were at this time among the best coach-builders in Europe. See Trevelyan, Early History of Charles James Fox, p. 274.
37. Babeau, Les Voyageurs en France, p. 405, says that "postes" were organized as in Prance throughout a large part of the Continent, but nowhere were they so regularly served, or at prices more reasonable, or better kept. Yet, in the opinion of some Englishmen, "Posting is much more easy, convenient and reasonable, upon a just comparison of all circumstances, in England than in France. The English carriages, horses, harness, and roads, are better; and the postilions more obliging and alert …" There is competition in England, "but in France the post is monopolized, etc." The Gentleman's Guide (1773). PP. 17. 18.
38. Notes on a Journey through France, pp. 17, 18.
39. Travels, i, 6. "The French post-chaises have only two wheels; and when one person is in them, must have two horses; and if two people, they must have three." The Gentleman's Guide, p. 18. Four-wheeled carriages required four horses and two drivers. Ibid., p. 19.
40. Travels, i, 127.
41. Smollett, who was always in trouble, notes that at Châlons the axle-tree of his coach actually took fire. Travels, ii, 260.
42. Travels, ii, 256, 257.
43. That is, without paying six livres every time for the privilege.
44. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 36, 37.
45. Manners and Customs of Italy, ii, 313.
46. Carriages with springs were by no means universal, as we see from the complaints of Horace Walpole, in 1740: "You will wonder, my dear Hal, to find me on the road from Rome. … We have been jolted to death; my servants let us come without springs to the chaise, and we are worn threadbare." Letters, i. 50.
47. Starke, Letters from Italy (1798) ii, 265.
48. Cf. Lady Mary Montagu's experience. She is writing from Naples: "Here I am arrived at length, after a most disagreeable journey. I bought a chaise at Rome, which cost me twenty-five good English pounds; and had the pleasure of being laid low in it the very second day after I set out. I had the marvellous good luck to escape with life and limbs; but my delightful chaise broke all to pieces, and I was forced to stay a whole day in a hovel, while it was tacked together in such a manner as would serve to drag me hither. To say truth, this accident has very much palled my appetite for travelling." Letters, ii, 38.
49. Young, Travels in France, pp. 265–66.
50. Ibid., p. 266.
51. Vol. iii, p. 39.

52. With this it is interesting to compare the suggestions offered to travelers nearly a century later, in Coghlan's Handbook for Italy (p. xiv):—

    "In the Italian states there are three modes of conveyance: posting, by diligence, and by veitturini; travellers by the first mode should always provide a bolletone at the police-office, without which no post-horses can be obtained.

    "In Italy, as in France, the number of horses put to a carriage is regulated by the number of persons; thus a post-chaise with two persons requires two horses, three persons three horses, and four persons four horses; but in those parts of Northern Italy where the roads are level, a calash, or open carriage, with three persons and one trunk, is allowed to travel with two horses.

    "In Tuscany, an English post-chaise with a pole, conveying three persons and without an imperial, if the road is not mountainous, is allowed to travel with two horses, but if there is an imperial it must have three horses; and English carriages, with four persons, imperial and trunks, must have four horses.

    "In the papal dominions, a two- wheeled carriage, with three persons and one trunk, is allowed to travel with two horses, but with more than one trunk three horses are indispensable; a four-wheeled carriage, with six persons and one trunk, is allowed to travel with four horses, but with six persons and two large trunks, or with seven persons, it must have six horses; a four-wheeled half-open carriage, much in use all over Italy, with two persons and one trunk, is allowed to travel with two horses.

    "In the Neapolitan territories, a two-wheeled carriage, with two persons and one large trunk, is allowed to travel with two horses, with three persons and two large trunks, three horses; with four persons and two large trunks, four horses; but with six persons and two large trunks, six horses are indispensable."

53. The distance between posting-stations all over Italy ranged from eight to ten miles. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 307.
54. Travels, ii, 76.
55. Voyage en Italie, i, 6.
56. Ibid., i, 5.
57. Keysler, Travels, i, 348, 349.
58. View of Society and Manners in Italy, i, 10.
59. So in the region about Capua: "The Buffaloes, which draw most of the Carriages in this part of the Country, were brought in originally by Alphonsus I. They are an ugly, stubborn, and sometimes mischievous Animal, but live upon Straw and are of prodigious Strength and Service." Breval, Remarks on Several Parts of Europe, i, 74. Wright remarks: "The carriages in Lombardy, and indeed throughout all Italy, are for the most part drawn with oxen. … In the kingdom of Naples, and some other parts, they use buffaloes in their carriages."
60. Baretti, Manners and Customs of Italy, p. 280.
61. Already in the sixteenth century "in Italy the vetturino system was in force — that is, a personally conducted tour, the traveller being relieved from all haggling with natives. By this predecessor of the Cook system Moryson travelled from Rome to Naples and back." Hughes, Life of Fynes Moryson, p. ix.
62. New Voyage to Italy, i², 550.
63. Views Afoot, pp. 102, 403.
64. He agreed to take them from Florence to Rome "for ten sequins, all accommodation included." Tour on the Continent, i, 339.
65. Ibid., i, 297.
66. New Voyage to Italy, i², 540.
67. Nugent in his Grand Tour (1756), iii, 378, repeats Misson's information, except that he states the charge at fifteen crowns instead of fifteen piasters; and adds: "You pay your own expences at Naples, board and lodging one crown a day each person, and half a crown for your servant." William Bromley at the end of the seventeenth century paid seventeen crowns for the trip from Rome to Naples and back, having five days at Naples. His trip is essentially Misson's. See Several Years' Travels, etc., p. 122.
68. Travels, iii, 1.
69. Ibid., iii, 15.
70. But see Grand Tour, iii, 39.
71. Ibid., iii, 378.
72. Journey, Works, ix, 259, 260.
73. Baretti, in criticizing Sharp, who had hired a vetturino to go to Rome, asks, "Did he not conceive that by such a bargain he made it the interest of the fellow to take him to the cheapest inns, which is as much as to say the most beggarly, that the feeding of his fare might cost him little?" Manners and Customs of Italy, i, 26.
74. Such early hours for stages are still common, even in summer, at San Marino, at Varese, and other places too numerous to mention.
75. Grand Tour, iii, 39.
76. Autobiography, ii, 344 (Bohn).
77. Moreover, De La Lande, who is not usually censorious, points out several other disadvantages of this system. "It is a sort of post, much less expensive, for which a special permission is required, but it does not travel at night. Besides, the masters of the post are not content when they see people who have the cambiatura, the postilions do not drive you so fast; and sometimes the post-masters annoy travellers by having their carriages weighed so as to charge for whatever is above a hundred pounds." Voyage en Italie, i, 265.
78. Travels, ii, 37.
79. New Voyage to Italy, i², 539.
80. Tour on the Continent, ii, 117.
81. But, as Misson had already observed, "A traveller ought never to defer enquiring about a carriage, till he is just ready to depart; if he would not be forc'd to submit to the most unreasonable terms." New Voyage to Italy, i², 562.
82. Grand Tour, iii, 40, 41.
83. Cogan, The Rhine, ii, 258.
84. Letters from Italy, ii, 211.
85. As late as 1756 Nugent cites two striking instances: "There is no post-waggon from Leipsic to Prague, but a sort of heavy coach by the way of Chemnitz, which sets out on Wednesday towards eleven in the morning and comes back on Sunday noon." Grand Tour, ii, 249. "From Dresden to Prague there is no post-waggon, so that you must either hire a coach or chaise for the whole journey, or travel with post-horses." Ibid., ii, 257.
86. Ibid., ii, 68.
87. Misson, New Voyage to Italy, i², 487–88.
88. "The stages or post-waggons, as they are called, are slow, heavy, and disagreeable in every respect." Tour in Germany, (1793). p. 2.
89. Grand Tour, ii, 67, 68. Cf. ibid., i, 175, 176.
90. Riesbeck, Travels through Germany, p. 231.
91. Tour in Germany, i, 13, 14.
92. Page 2.
93. Grand Tour, ii, 68.
94. Ibid., ii, 69.
95. Letters from Italy, ii, 187, 188.
96. Nugent, Grand Tour, ii, 282, 283.
97. Ibid., i, 65.
98. Tour in Holland, p. 11.
99. Grand Tour, i, 49.
100. Ibid., i, 205.
101. Ibid., i, 367–72.
102. Ibid., i, 326.
103. Ibid., i, 326.
104. Smith, Tour on the Continent, i, 5.
105. Cogan, The Rhine, i, 45.
106. A Description of Holland (1743), p. 159.
107. Ibid., p. 211.