THE FAMILY COACH

Evening Star, Issue 18173, 13 January 1923, Page 14

THE FAMILY COACH

MEMORIES OE TEE PAST. GEORGEOtTS LIVERIES AND COOKED HATS. THE BUTLER AND THE FAMILY. There it stands, & stately structure d canary yellow, with 1 the family anna painted large on the panels and the familv crest,, moulded in brass, shining on such portions aa aro colored black, writes the Hon, John Fortescuo in the ‘Morning Post.’ Look at the blue hammer-cloth, with its silken fringe of canary and bine. Lot down the steps, see how beautifully they fall and how easy is the ascent, to the interior. Sit down, and confess that you never have known s more com fortable scat in your life than these cushions of buff-grey silk dtanask. Now look again at the exterior and observe the beautiful finish of every detail; and, taking note of the C springs, assure yourself that there never was an easier carriage to ride in. When was it built? Between 1.815 and 1820, and built, as the name on the brass of the axle-trees will tell you, by the most celebrated coachmaker in London. The bill for it covered, as is. or was, the way of ooachmaJsera, several folio pages,' setting forth every item of the component parts, with, of course, separate charges for cadi of them, amounting in all to well over £SOO. It Is the best work of its time ; it is still as good as on the day when ii. waa finished; and no dealer would rive wn a £lO note for it. .For it weighs thirty hundredweight) and that ia too much even for an undertaker to face in these days, when people are whisked away to their graves at high speed in a motor car. The body and wheels might possibly bo of iii-o for breaking horses to harness ; but no one wants horses broken to harness. No! the family coach is as useless as a suit of mediaeval armor.

Possibly, if it could speak, it might have some little gossip to retail of the journeys that it made, taking two generations of my lord raid my lady out to dinner, to the theatre, and to court; nr at least of the family coachman, who presided on tho hammer-cloth, in threecornered hat, and the two tall footmenin cocked hats who stood 1 with long canes behind it, all three gorgeously attired in blue, gold luce, and canary yellow plush shorts. It could, a.t any rale, tell of the day when tho feathers worn at court wore so high that the cushions had to be taken out before her ladyship could, find spine to seat herself on her way to a drawing room. But I suspect that its liveliest recollections would be of tho laic ’sixties and ’seventies, when, towards tho end of July, a mob of schoolboys ’would suddenly appear in London, first for the two days of tho Eton and Harrow match, and a fortnight later for a day or two moie on their way to the country for the holidays. The young scapegraces (there "ere an astonishing number of them in thie family) had to be amused somehow ; and it was simplest to take a box a\ some theatre and pack them off to it 'n the family coach, which, would contain-com-fortably four or five of them, in addition to some guardian sisters.

It is needless to say that this was not the form of theatre-going preferred by tho 'boys, since it entailed an attention to their toilet which, they much pi»ferred not to give. Moreover, they dii not like to see the -friend who had la ugh i them to ride and loved to ,go ira-t-ca.iril-ing with them in the country, perched inaccessibly on a hammer-cloth, ail. blue, yellow, and gold lace. Indeed, the -family coachman did not like the family coach at any time, and least of all when it was full of tho family; for, even thougih his horses stood nearly seventeen ha mis high, tho effort of constantly stopping and restarting such a load in the streets of London was greater than ho thought fair upon, them. Tho footmen, too, dear friendtt at ordinary times, became distant and strange m their best liveries; and tho cooked Omits seemed to lull their reroe of humor. On tho whole, it was infinitely pleasanter to drivo off with tho family butler in a hansom (oven tho narrow hansom of those days would hold three hoys and a man at a pinch) and eco a play with him from tho pit. That was freedom ; that was life ; that was over a proud position; for tho family hutler, by some unwritten law, seemed to dominate every pit, and it was flattering to belong to such a man. But, failing such extreme joys, tho lada had to put up with the family coach, and, lined along the front of a box, to see tho beautiful Mrs Roushy burned at tho stake as Joan of Arc, or Sotihem <rs Lord Dundreary, and John Baldwin Buokstdno as Asa Tnmcdmrd in ‘ Our American Cousin.’ Nothing is so dead as a detfundt play, unless it ho a- defunct sermon, so it need only be nod that Mrs Rousby put a remarkably comply face upon her martyrdom (which was id I that was expected of her), and that Led Dundreary, porsomfyiug an English oxipiisite of tho time, wore long whiskers d.-wu to his collarbones, and a frock coat milling to his hook, while Buckptono, who was supposed to portray a contemporary American, was arrayed in a bright gre. u coat, with swallow-tails down to his a.nkh-r-. and yellow odhio trousers. So time and tho coach rolled on uu-’d tho eighties, in tho course of which tlm-e who had ridden therein were pr-aduallv dispensed all over fibo world, and the cna- h was eon'll down to tho country, where i's dignity is insulted Iby the close proximity of'bicycles, motor bicycles, motors, nml tho like low and vulgar company. As 10 its former ocowpanite, they are now u-rv thankful to fight for a place in a bus -a, conveyance which In those days Itry never dreamed of entering or that they would ever enter—amd, if they do go to a play, which they can seldom afford to J-s they go to the pit. End wish that I here were still the family butler to pa.\ a'l expenses and -to protect tlhcim. 'Perhaps it is good for thorn J they at any rate accml, it cheerfully. Even a motor bus has i’s advantages over the family coach; and yet the poor old lumbering vehicle real-a a certain dignity which jms vanished, -w is vanishing rapidly, from English li-V. Among motors tho coach seems rather hro a dowager of George IV.’s time amon; her groat-great-granddaughters. Ecu mav man’el at both coach and dowager, hut you will not, unless exceedingly ill-run-.-nerod, laugh mb Them, and you ceikw'v need not blush for -them. After all, He coach was tho very' host and newest thing of its time, and no modem motor can ny more: while tho dowager was probable five times os pretty ns any of her descendants, although she never powdered her nose in. her life.