EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES
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."[1]
On the matter of posting Smollett gives also his experience, and adds that posting in England is pleasanter, with less imposition and expense:[2] "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."[3]
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.
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