This page needs to be proofread.
NOTES
| PAGE | ||
| 58. | 3. | Ibid., i, 127, 128. Cf. Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 17. |
| 59. | 1. | 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. |
| 2. | 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. | |
| 3. | Notes on a Journey through France, pp. 17, 18. | |
| 4. | 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. | |
| 60. | 1. | Travels, i, 127. |
| 2. | Smollett, who was always in trouble, notes that at Châlons the axle-tree of his coach actually took fire. Travels, ii, 260. | |
| 3. | Travels, ii, 256, 257. | |
| 61. | 1. | That is, without paying six livres every time for the privilege. |
| 2. | Nugent, Grand Tour, iv, 36, 37. | |
| 62. | 1. | Manners and Customs of Italy, ii, 313. |
| 2. | 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. | |
| 3. | Starke, Letters from Italy (1798) ii, 265. | |
| 4. | 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. | |
| 5. | Young, Travels in France, pp. 265–66. | |
| 63. | 1. | Ibid., p. 266. |
418
