EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CARRIAGES
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:[1] "The vetturino owners … bargain to provide you for a certain sum and then billet you upon the innkeepers for as little as they can."[2] A further objection, says Nugent, is that the "coachman in winter travels very often before it is day,[3] and after it is dark, in order to get to his station, where he expects to find his account in the reckoning."[4] 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"[5]—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[6] 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."[7]
According to Misson[8] 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."[9]
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
67
- ↑ Journey, Works, ix, 259, 260.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Such early hours for stages are still common, even in summer, at San Marino, at Varese, and other places too numerous to mention.
- ↑ Grand Tour, iii, 39.
- ↑ Autobiography, ii, 344 (Bohn).
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Travels, ii, 37.
- ↑ New Voyage to Italy, i2, 539.
- ↑ Tour on the Continent, ii, 117.
