EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES
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."[1]
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.[2] 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."[3]
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."[4]
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 six-
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- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Notes on a Journey through France, pp. 17, 18.
- ↑ 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.
