HRH

I did not watch The Funeral. I am sure it will be more or less on a loop on social media and several TV channels for the next 24 hours. 

 

I drove my old Fell pony instead and thought, as we trundled gently through the sunshine, of the carriage drivers I've known who will do it no more, and the one who said that his Fell team were "all ancient, like me."

 

Carriages: a quick run-down

Carriages? 

I was such a horse-obsessed child that, for the whole year when I studied A level Art, my teacher had to ban me from including any in the work I produced for her. At home, I drew horses doing all sorts of things, from enjoying wild freedom on the hills or grazing in a field, to riding holidays or racing or jumping. The only discipline that didn’t interest me at all was horses being driven, in harness. That wasn’t just because of the intricacy of the harness itself – though a set of “straps” as the gypsies call it, when thrown on a bench, looks like nothing so much as a heap of leather spaghetti – no, it was the fact that horses pulling carriages or agricultural machinery wore bridles with blinkers. And the fact is that blinkers (winkers or blinders) conceal the horse’s most attractive features, its beautiful, deep, liquid eyes. The child artist that I was, therefore, chose to dismiss carriage horses entirely.

However, I developed an interest in driving horses quite by chance, when the equestrian author Clive Richardson asked me to provide a few line drawings for his book “Driving:  the Development and Use of Horsedrawn Vehicles”. When I expressed curiosity about the material I was producing, and mentioned that my Fell mare had been trained to harness before I got her, he was kind enough to lend me a set of harness and an exercise cart so I could try the discipline for myself. And the rest, as they say, is history. (See what I did there?)

Carriages for the historical novelist

For our purposes as historical writers, carriage driving needs to be understood because it’s an important form of transport. In the eras before steam and internal combustion we had an almost symbiotic relationship with the horse – though also with the donkey, mule, ox and even the dog, who were all pressed into use at our need. However, since Debbie has asked me to deal with carriages, I am going to leave the other species out of this article!

You’ll need to be clear on a few phrases and their meanings. Here’s a short list!

Traces – the long leather straps that join the horse’s collar to the carriage he is pulling. Even mainstream edited novels can get that wrong: Alexandra Ripley when writing “Scarlett” clearly thought that traces are another name for reins for controlling the horses. They aren’t.

Collar – the roughly oval, leather-stuffed-with-rye-straw thingy that goes round the horse’s neck. It pads his shoulders from the pressure of the hames, long brassplated or silverplated arms to which the traces are attached. The hames are fastened onto the collar at top and bottom by hame straps. The horse pushes into the collar and the hames take up the strain, then the traces which are slotted onto the trace hooks (on a carriage for a single horse) or looped over roller bolts  (on a pairs carriage) tighten and pull the carriage forward.

Whip – to encourage the horse/s to go forward, or sometimes sideways if he is jumping away from a scary object and you don’t want him to. A carriage whip is LONG. A holly stick (often also called the “stock”) is between 4 feet 6 inches and 5 feet long. The thong is made from 4, 5 or 6 finely plaited strips of “white leather” (ironically it’s traditionally made from horse hide). That is fastened to the stock using a tube of split goose quills “whipped” with black linen thread, to give the whip a nice curve from whipstock to thong. For the driver of a single or a pair of horses, the whip thong is also 4 or 5 feet long with a 6 inch lash of whipcord on the end, so a driver should be able to flick it forward to touch the horse some 10 feet ahead of his own shoulder. A four in hand whip has a lash up to 10 feet long. Hence the other meaning of “whip” – a driver good enough to be able to use a whip efficiently without taking off his passengers’ hats! Also, a great way for you or your servant to break the top of your whip is to put the carriage away through a low stable doorway with the whip standing upright in the whipholder beside the seat!

Tyre – the metal rim of a carriage wheel, fitted as a red-hot hoop by the local blacksmith and his boys, and immediately doused with water to cool it to a tight fit without burning the wood. Old, poorly maintained wheels could sometimes lose the tyre, which would then go bowling down the road ahead of the carriage – and sometimes the wheel, deprived of its support, could collapse. Some carriages from the mid-19^th century onwards had rubber or “caoutchouc” tyres which were solid (pneumatic tyres for carriages were a very late invention and only really took off in modern times on metal competition carriages). Coachbuilders described rubber tyres as “invaluable for invalids” because they had a slight cushioning effect and were very much quieter than iron on stony surfaces. Rubber tyres were held in a U shaped channel by two lengths of wire, which on an old carriage might rust through and allow the tyre to fly off – again, forwards, which wouldn’t help the driver controlling his horse!

Carriage – this is a trick question! Strictly the “carriage” is what we’d now call the “undercarriage” or chassis – the suspension of the vehicle. “Carriage” also tended to be the overall term  for a 4-wheeled private vehicle, such as a phaeton, landau or brougham, while public 4 wheeled vehicles were “coaches”, and from the mid-19thC included omnibuses and cabs or “growlers”. There were many different styles of carriages, often with subtle differences due to customer preferences, intended usage, and (of course!) fashion. A good starter list of carriage names can be found on Wikipedia.

Carriage types and construction

Your historical characters, especially the menfolk, might well be carriage experts, as men often try to be with cars today. They would know the age of carriages in part by the type of suspension they have: the oldest coaches have the body slung on leather straps from wooden or metal posts – see the Gold State Coach built in 1762. Even quite early coaches had glass in their windows – Samuel Pepys’ coach needed a window replaced in December 1668 and it cost him £2 (40 shillings).

Suspension

Spring suspension to relieve the jolts of metal tyres on stony roads was introduced from about 1700 onwards, with the “whip spring” and “cee spring”, both still using leather straps. The elliptic spring invented by Obadiah Elliott in 1804 did away with the need for a leather strap, and by increasing the number of springs to 4 for each axle and the number of metal “leaves” in each spring, even heavy coaches could provide a modicum of comfort for their passengers. 

At the other end of the scale, 2-wheeled vehicles were the cheapest to make and needed only one horse. Early gigs date from the late 18thC and might have been little more than a plank with a seat and shafts set above the wheels; in North America the “riding chair” and in England the “whisky” (nothing to do with the drink but referring to its lightness and speed). Gigs had either elliptical or semi-elliptical springs and seated two people side by side without provision for a third party – so your young unmarried ladies had better not ride in one beside a gentleman driver, because being unchaperoned, they risked acquiring the label “fast”.  On low-class country vehicles which saw a lot of use down narrow roads with scratchy hedgerows, it was quite usual not to paint the woodwork but to varnish it because damage could easily be touched up with fresh varnish without being noticeable, whereas paint needed to be colour matched by an expert.

Woodwork

English carriage-builders used oak for the spokes of the wheels, elm for the wheel hubs, and ash for shafts and poles and vehicle bodies. A gentleman’s carriage would be painted to a very high standard, with the grain of the wood filled and rubbed smooth, covered with many layers of undercoat and then several of the top coat of paint. Seating was durable and constructed like indoor furniture, with horsehair stuffing held in place by cloth, sometimes topped with felt, and then upholstered. The interior of a private carriage might be very luxurious, trimmed in morocco leather, silk, and lace. Parts of the exterior were also of hard leather, for instance dashboards to keep dirt from flying up off the horses’ hooves, and mudguards above the wheels for the same reason.

Maintenance

One of the reasons why a man who “keeps his carriage” was considered to have plenty of money was that he needed servants to look after his horses, to “put the horses to the carriage”, to drive (if he didn’t drive himself) and “take them out of the carriage” afterwards. It was a big job to maintain the equipment. Harness had to be wiped down and cleaned with saddle-soap and then oiled or greased to keep it supple, while the buckles (whether brass or silver plated) had to be polished and the buckle tongues kept greased – otherwise metal salts or rust could corrode the leather and cause it to break in use. Steel bits needed to be cleaned with sand to keep them bright. Carriages had to be washed with generous amounts of water to remove the dirt of the road, then dried and polished, and the cushions and floor mats needed to be brushed.  The coach-house in an English climate had to have a fire kept going most days, to keep woodwork and harness from deteriorating with rust, mould and damp.

And now a little something for your estate owners: farm horses

A conscientious estate owner would take an interest in the horses his tenants used to manage his land. The phrases “works in chains” and “is good in all gears” mean that the horse is trained for farm work.

Pairs of horses, who work either side of a pole, and plough horses, pull by chains, in the case of ploughing, very long ones. A single horse in a cart, however, draws the load by short chains. There’s one over the big heavy saddle on his back, to hold up the shafts; two from his collar to the shafts, to draw the load; and two from the breeching round his bum, to the shafts, to prevent the cart running him over on downhill stretches and to let him back it up to an unloading dock. The reins are more likely to be long plough-cords than leather.

Wains, wagons and carts which are agricultural or used for commercial heavy transport have heavy-duty everything – big, thick shafts, heavy wheels with iron hooped tyres, iron banded hubs. The harness is also wide, heavy leather, and it doesn’t have a shiny finish. The buckles are often iron or steel rather than brass.

There’s no brasswork on cart shafts like there is on a gentleman’s carriage. Brass is a relatively soft metal that will not take stress. Those work-chains are dealing with weight, so the staples on each shaft that carry a hook for the chains, are blacksmith-forged iron, 8 to 10 inches long with sharpened, bent-back points hammered into the wood. No screws or nails could be stronger. I have a cart shaft-staple that I found on our farm; I don’t have a farm cart, but it’s still being used, because I hammered it into the wall outside my stable. That’s where I tie up my pony while I put her harness on before we go out for a sunny drive along our Cumbrian roads.

References

Richardson, C, 1985: Driving: the Development and Use of Horse Drawn Vehicles. (Batsford.)

Walrond, S, 1974: The Encyclopedia of Driving. (Country Life.)

Sue Millard looks after the web site of the North West Driving Club, http://www.northwestdrivingclub.co.uk/, She is one of its honorary vice-presidents, having also been its secretary, treasurer, press officer and chairman at various times over the past 30 years. Her historical novel, Coachman, is available alongside several other genres from her Jackdaw E Books site, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk/

Trouble comes in Threes

I took my Fell mare Ruby out for a drive this afternoon. The weather was just too good to waste!

She's had her hooves trimmed by the blacksmith in the past few days, so I fit her road boots - Easyboot Epics on the front and Easyboot Gloves on the back - to prevent her getting sore. I was planning to do 6 miles, going round Orton and back. Said boots all go on very easily (which should really have been a warning to me). Harness up, yoke up, and away we go.

The outward leg of the journey is lovely. Just enough wind to keep us cool, lots of sunshine, and spectacular huge spikes of bright purple Northern Marsh Orchids coming into bloom in damp spots along the roadsides. Ruby settles into the work and goes past the event horses at Selsmire without any spookiness. Her bugbear, the extremely-white grey one, hasn't got his green rug on, so this time she recognises him as a horse and not a collection of fag packets or garden chairs, or whatever she imagined he was last time they met.

She isn't bothered by going down the middle of Orton village between all the parked cars. She isn't very bothered either by the Water Board men cleaning out drains at the junction opposite Hall Farm, until one of them retrieves a ten foot length of drainage rod, wipes it and throws it down beside its mates with a noise like a whipcrack. She jumps sideways about six feet. And the bloke shouts, "Hey - you've lost a shoe!" which is much more polite than what I am thinking!

Ruby isn't keen on standing still, but I tell her - fairly mildly - not to be such a fool. She takes her cue as much from the tone of my voice as anything else. The bloke retrieves her boot and trots obligingly after us, off the main road. He tosses it (he obviously has a habit of throwing stuff) and it misses the carriage and lands between Ruby's feet. I move her on a few yards so he can pick it up, and this time he manages to deposit it on the floor. "I'm not used to horses," he says. I say, "Not to worry," and thank him, and we walk along the lane past the school, then I stop in the Methodist chapel car park where I tie Ruby to the fence, and while she reaches over for grass, I reinstate the boot.

It goes all right after that, for a while. I meet a friend and have a chat, and Ruby is perfectly happy to wait for us. Then we set off to trot home.

Back past the eventers and the stands of marsh orchids. Suddenly there's a rhythmic clanking and I see that the yachting quick-release shackle on the end of one of the traces has quick released itself and the trace is swinging free. This doesn't seem to worry Ruby, but it worries me. I suspect the wind blew Ruby's long tail onto the webbing pull-tab and that was enough to flip the shackle open. Fortunately the trace-carrier loop does its job so the trace isn't tangling round her feet. We pull up and turn onto the grass verge, where with moderate swearing I re-fasten the shackle, and off we go again.

Ruby's got into her stride by now and as we trot down into Greenholme I can feel her bunching herself to canter up the brow to the farm.

And the bloody boot flies off again.

This time I say, "Sod it!" and let her canter on home. Unyoke, unharness, give her a small feed and leave her munching, still with three boots on, while I whizz back in the car to pick up the boot, before anyone can run over it and wreck it.

When I'm taking off Ruby's remaining boots it occurs to me to try the much-too-keen-to-fly hind boot (the Glove) on her front hoof, for which it used to be too small. And it fits. So now I am wondering - have all her hooves got smaller over the time she's been working unshod? That seems very strange, but it's possible. Or maybe the boots ease a bit with use? Measuring and re-fitting will have to be done before I can be sure. I may have to get a smaller pair of Gloves for her hind feet and move the current ones to her front feet.

I turn Ruby out into the paddock, which is what she's really been wanting since before we went for our drive.

Last of all, I dismantle both the quick-release shackles, take out the helical retaining springs, decompress them quite a lot, and re-fit them. It will take a much stronger pull to flip them open now, and if necessary I will shorten the pull tabs, or do without them altogether.

So, although things went wrong, we coped. And that's the main thing.

I conclude, though, that I must be in a time warp, because this is the kind of day that usually happens to me when we go back into work after winter. I can only assume it's very mild for January.





PS - I happen to have Ruby's foot measurements from 2007 which was when we went barefoot/booted. While assessing the actual figures is a bit mind boggling, charting them makes it very clear that her hooves have got BIGGER over the intervening years. The lines indicating length and width for each newly trimmed hoof make a significant upward leap from 2007 to this year's measurements.

Therefore - it's imperative that I clean the boots and her hooves of the oil I use to protect feather! I must away to the shops for some cheapo toothpaste!

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Sue's books can be found at her web site, Jackdaw E Books, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk/

Equestrian Resources for Historians

I hadn't realised until this last year that many historical novelists don't have even a nodding acquaintance with the world of horses. While to me it's very easy to visualise how the world looked and behaved when only horses were the fastest means of transport, clearly this aspect of life is - ehem - a closed book for many writers.

I had also forgotten that I have been collecting equine trivia from across history since I first created the Fell Pony Museum web site back in 2000. It's been up there on t'interweb for 13 years, waving gently at passers-by, but not making a nuisance of itself. You can Google "Fell pony history" and the Museum site will appear in the first half-dozen entries on page 1 (and: I manage two of the other sites that are up in that bracket!).

Since the concept of pedigree farm animal breeds didn't emerge in England till the 19th century, much of what I've recorded in the Museum site is generic British pony (horse) information. By definition, "Fell pony history" is not really available before then, but a good deal of information can be found about the animals who were of similar size, use and geographical distribution. So, when questions of colour, type, size, use and behaviour arise among my fellow authors, this site is a useful resource. There is a also long list of links to further reading.

This blog, Jackdaw E Books, also has several posts about horse use, and coaches and carriages, which could save much writerly embarrassment at the book reviewing stage!

Search for posts labelled:

"horse"

"carriage driving"

"coaching era"

"bluffer's guide"

MM Bennetts' Literary Historical Fiction blog and Jonathan Hopkins' Cavalry Tales blog frequently offer terrific insights into the world of horse usage. Both are riders and Jonathan is a professional saddle fitter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sue Millard is the author of several equestrian books including Hoofprints in Eden, Coachman and One Fell Swoop, and two children's educational activity books, Fell Facts and Fell Fun.

The Bluffers' Guide to Horses and Carriages (part 2)

Coaches
Tudor
In the TV series "The Tudors" 19th century carriages were shown conveying certain grand personages about on behalf of Henry VIII. WRONG. This was the point at which I began to shout at the screen. Coaches were not in use even by Royalty until his daughter Elizabeth I's reign, and they were uncomfortable, jolting unsprung things suspended on leather braces. Elizabeth complained of being badly bruised from being thrown about in a coach that had been driven too fast, and she was a fairly hardy lady. There was no glass in the windows at this time (guess why) and wheels were shod with iron rims.

17th Century
Lots of authors forget that in a city, it was often convenient to travel in a sedan chair. Of course it didn't allow of company unless on foot, on horseback or in another sedan chair, but it had a lot of advantages over a horsedrawn carriage in the city. It was narrow and manoeuvrable so it could take you to places many carriages could not go, and the motive power understood speech! Also, in London and other cities based on a major river, watermen provided a taxi service up, down or across the water. John Taylor the "Water Poet" complained in "The World Runs On Wheels" that hackney carriages were taking away the ferrymen's business.

Steel springs made an appearance in the 1660s, and Sam Pepys remarked on them on a coach in London. He bought himself a private 4 seater carriage and two black horses, and probably employed a man to drive; and he seems to have been happy with his purchase, despite having to pay £2 to replace the glass in a window.

Commercial coaches were starting to appear on the roads. These were "stage" coaches which changed horses at inns along the road. One "stage" of its journey would be anything from 8 to 15 miles depending on the nature of the terrain. In winter, warmth for the passengers' feet was provided by filling the floor with straw - it works, but could be infested with livestock ranging from woodlice to fleas and even mice, depending on the diligence of the stable staff in providing clean straw.

18th Century
By 1688, stage coaches ran from London to 88 different towns and by 1705 this increased to 180. However, Mail coaches were not seen until after the Post Office adopted John Palmer's suggestion to convey letters by coach instead of on horseback, following a successful experimental run from Bristol to London in 1784.

Smart light two wheeled vehicles for private use, such as gigs and dog carts, became popular from the 1800s onward. Four wheelers such as the various forms of phaeton were common. But for independence and access to open country, to make your own way to a destination, you rode - and were liked all the better for your active character, as opposed to being carried lazily about by carriage.

As for the curricle, that vehicle so beloved of the romance author, like a tandem of horses driven to a gig it was racy and showy and difficult and inherently unsafe... so beware which of your gentlemen you put at the reins. It was an owner-driven carriage. (I mean, you don't buy a Ferrari and let a chauffeur drive.) And don't forget that with a pair or team your whip, no matter how skilful, needs a groom behind him. Why? Common sense and safety... and the blasted curricle wouldn't balance without him.

Manpower and brakes
A gentleman driving his own carriage and four would have had one man, and more likely two, to see to tangles or mishaps with the horses. In Regency Buck, the hero tells off the heroine for driving his team with no groom to help her, because her passenger has an injured arm. Georgette Heyer knew her stuff.

Not even an exceptional "whip" - male or female - would ever have driven without a servant, because early coaches and carriages had no brakes. Down gentle inclines the horses could hold the carriage back with the harness, but on steeper ones the footman or guard got down and fitted an iron drag shoe under the gutter-side hind wheel. At the bottom of the hill, he got down again, the whip backed the team so the carriage wheel rolled off the shoe, and the guard picked it up by its chain and hung it on the hook again - not touching it, because it was hot from the friction! The guard or groom had to deal with broken harness, kicking horses and so on... or just to hold the horses when the driver and passengers got down at their destination.

19th Century
Hand or foot operated brakes were late Victorian inventions which eased the work because the coach did not have to stop. They could still only slow the coach downhill; when loaded it weighed between 3 and 4 tons and the wooden brake shoes only operated on a 6 inch by 2 inch area of each wheel rim, so brakes couldn't stop it completely. Equally, rubber tyres for wheels were not invented till the 19th century, and they were solid, not pneumatic. Vehicles with rubber tyres tended not to have brake-blocks because they pulled the rubber off the wheels.

The idea of a "parking" brake didn't arrive until the advent of the internal combustion engine... a carriage you could turn off when you stopped. There are contemporary stories of coach teams being left unattended at inns, and taking fright or assuming a noise behind meant they were to start, galloping off with the coach with no driver at the reins... Horses require manpower, time and knowledge. Therefore - pretty please, authors - your characters driving a carriage can NOT abandon it at the roadside like a car, unless you want to plot a horrendous accident. You always need someone to take charge of the horses.

Terminology
If you've got to describe a carriage drive or even a ride, it probably pays not to be too clever. Even simple things are very easily got wrong! For instance, you all know reins are for steering, and probably that traces come back from the horses' neck-collars to pull the carriage... the difference between the two purposes may seem obvious, but I've seen a mainstream published novel confuse the two.

Coachmen and good drivers held the reins in their left hand in an understated, workmanlike English coaching style and steered by turning the wrist, or by helping with their right hand which also carried the whip. They wouldn't drive with a rein (or two reins) in each hand; not unless you want to set them up to be ridiculed by their fellow drivers. For sheer style, watch any video of a British Royal parade with coachman driven carriages... the 2011 Royal wedding, or Trooping the Colour.

There is a big difference between sporty owner-driven carriages like phaetons (yes, and gigs and curricles), and sober coachman-driven carriages like barouches. It's very easy to get lost in their subtleties. For instance: pole chains. They were used to steer and stop commercial coaches, carriages and coachman driven vehicles, while pole straps denoted owner driven private vehicles... Probably best not to go into it too deeply unless you are prepared to read specialist books. Even the sainted Ms Heyer occasionally got things wrong.

Phew - I'd better leave waggons and farm carts and commercial trade carts for another day.

Sex
There, that got your attention, didn't it? I saved the best bits for the end.

Don't forget we have three genders in horses who are used as transport. There's the intact adult male, the stallion; the female, the mare; and the gelding, who is an equine eunuch and was probably "attended to" fairly brutally at the age of 18 months or so. Most working horses were geldings, whose lack of sexual interest made them easy to manage even for inexperienced staff.

Mares are the natural leaders in a herd situation - so they can be bossy. If they aren't in foal they come into "season" every three weeks from early spring to late summer, which means they may be distracted as well. Stallions have a sex-drive that rises and falls with time of year - up in early spring and throughout the summer, down again as autumn comes. To deal with either stallions or mares successfully takes tact and good horsemanship. So please don't have your heroine ride a stallion, unless you can also write about how she manages him in the company of strange mares, who will flirt by peeing at him if they're in season and try to kick his teeth in if they aren't. (Don't you love how horses can be upfront and obvious? My two favourite Fell ponies have been mares.)

In Black Beauty Anna Sewell tactfully fails to mention such matters, so generations of readers may well have assumed that Beauty's lack of sexual commentary simply meant that he had excellent manners, and that he was capable of retiring to stud and begetting. This is, sadly, very unlikely.

One final note
A horse in war, in a carriage, hunting or doing any other kind of work will NOT neigh or whinny when in a stressful situation - eg, battle or accident. You may hear a snort of fright, or a grunt of pain or effort, then the sound of hooves galloping rapidly away. Unlike movie heroines, horses do not scream.

The Bluffers' Guide to Horses & Carriages (part 1)

I've joined several forums for historical novelists recently while I've been completing COACHMAN. Reading some of their book previews on Amazon it has dawned on me that while historical novelists seem interested in being authentic about costume and weaponry, I've only found two who have any direct knowledge about horses, and one who understands carriages.

Given that until the start of Victoria's reign (or William IV if you are a Liverpudlian) the fastest means of transport anywhere was either a well bred horse or a well-horsed carriage, this seems rather strange. It's a bit like writing about modern London and not knowing that you can get your character across the city far more easily by Tube than by Ferrari.

Allow me to make some helpful information available!

Horses
Even for late medieval knights, war-horses were not huge beasts. (The modern Shire horse of 17 hands or more was developed for agricultural use, well after gunpowder put an end to the mounted armoured knight.) Ann Hyland proposes that the 15th C knight's "destrier" was likely to have been a sturdy cob type of about 15-2 hands. This type of horse was a "square gaited" animal who walked, trotted, cantered or galloped.

Horses for general riding were probably not taller than 15 hands, often smaller, and frequently they were "lateral gaited" or "soft gaited", which means they walked and cantered but their in-between gait was a pace, rack or amble, rather than a trot. All these were more comfortable than a trot; the pace is similar to that of a fast moving camel or giraffe, with the legs on each side moving at the same time (watch videos of harness-racing pacers). The amble was a rapid, level, shuffling movement. Over good going the rack, like the pace, could be quite fast. Horses that moved in this comfortable way were amblers or palfreys, popular mounts for both ladies and gentlemen.

Horses for racing or hunting were "coursers", ie running horses, who moved "square" like the knight's destrier; they trotted when not galloping, and even the racehorses were not large. Many early thoroughbreds were under 14 hands high.

A useful type from Shakespeare's time onward was the Galloway, originally a type from south-west Scotland. Later the term became a generic one (like Hoover for vacuum cleaner) for any sturdy, sensible small cob of 13 to 14-2 hands. They probably looked much like a Highland, Dales or Fell pony, though for practical reasons they probably didn't carry anywhere near as much hair on neck, tail or fetlocks ("foot locks") as their modern counterparts do.

Women travelling would have a choice of riding pillion behind husband or brother; rich ladies could ride side-saddle; or ride in a litter, which was a covered seat carried on 2 long poles, suspended either side of a horse before and behind.

Distances
Modern endurance horses ridden intelligently at suitable paces for the terrain can cover anything from 25 to 50 or even 100 miles in a day. This isn't just the racy Arabian types; I know a Fell pony that has completed a 100 miler in less than 18 hours. Bear in mind that the riders don't flog on at full gallop, which being anaerobic activity would rapidly exhaust the horses' energy; they go at the pace that suits the country they have to cover, and much of that is aerobic, steady trotting or cantering, with intervals of walk to allow the horse to have a breather.

Military dispatch riders galloped, of course, and covered short distances of 3 or 4 miles in a quarter of an hour (12 to 16 MPH); but ridden horses for civilian travellers over longer distances would average no more than 6 MPH, so a day's journey was probably no more than sixty miles and often much less if roads were bad. Working horses in a city were often forced to walk because of other traffic, and there were few highway regulations to ease their passage.

Unlike cars, horses do need recuperation time before they can reasonably be expected to make another journey. This involves them being groomed, fed with grain and hay, and given water to drink and a stall under shelter in which they can stand quietly and perhaps sleep - though horses can sleep standing up and tend only to lie down for short periods.

Part 2 will look at travelling by carriage and coach.

The next big thing?

English Historical Fiction Authors on Facebook have been writing blog posts based on ten interview questions about their latest Works in Progress. I thought I'd join in.

Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:

1.) What is the title of your book?
Coachman

2.) Where did the idea come from for the book?
A neighbour of ours mentioned that her family’s fortunes had been made by her great-grandfather who had been a coach proprietor in London. He was William James Chaplin (no relation to Charlie). In 1994 she asked me to transcribe a letter written by Chaplin, which a bookseller had bought at auction and brought to show her. Neither of them could read his writing, but I could… I wrote an article for “Carriage Driving” magazine about his career, but I wanted to do more with it. And it simply had to be a novel – the themes were too big for anything else.

Some of the phrases Chaplin used in that letter appear in his conversations in Coachman. Our neighbour also gave me a copy of the family tree, and permission to write the novel.

3.) Under what genre does your book fall?
Historical fiction. It isn’t really a romance in the usual sense.

4.) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
George – Tom Ellis. Chaplin – I’d love to see him played by Kenneth Branagh. For Lucy and Sarah – I’m not au fait with the names of young actresses, can’t think why. The main thing would be to portray their character, though.

5.) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Ambitious coachman George Davenport travels to London with his bride to take up a new job, but he discovers that his boss's daughter has designs on him that have nothing to do with his driving.

6.) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I’ve self published the last 3 of my books. As it happens, I’ve designed the covers for all my books, including those produced by mainstream publishers. So it has been quite good fun to go it alone. It would be nice if an agent picked it up but for now I’ll slog on with selling myself.


7.) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
The idea has been there for 18 years! It took all that time for the internet resources to appear, like Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, where I could read the full text of coaching books that were long out of print and hideously expensive to buy secondhand. The MS took about five months, but I kept going back and rewriting, developing the storylines, then putting it away and coming back and rewriting yet again. It’s been the messiest thing I’ve ever written, because I had to do a lot of U turns – into the history, then back to the characters. Lots of “killing my darlings” as the story itself straightened out in my head and much of my research became unnecessary. I probably have half a novel in the “spike” folder on my computer; journeys George made, and people he met, both before and after this story is told.

8.) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Malcolm MacDonald’s “World From Rough Stones” sequence. I don’t know yet whether I will follow George and Lucy any further, but I certainly like them enough to consider it.

9.) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My own great-grandfather was a coachman. I’ve been involved in carriage driving since 1985, and when I’m interested in a subject I read widely round it so I have shelves full of books about the coaching age, plus lots of stuff in PDF format.

There are many historical novels set during the age when the horse was the fastest thing on the road, and a few written about the dawn of the railway age, but there’s nothing – so far as I know, anyway – about what happened to the men who had been the Knights of the Road and whose work suddenly vanished. So I thought it was time to redress the balance. Of course, that one thread as the main theme of the book wasn’t enough; I had to make up characters and relationships that would be interesting, too. I knew I had to invent people whose lives would touch Chaplin’s, so I could show what might have happened to the drivers, stablemen and horses when railways took the heart out of coaching.

My great-grandfather was in domestic service, not on a commercial route, and he lived 50 years after Chaplin’s time, but his existence in my family tree gave me a name to hang my story on: George Davenport. And my great-grandmother really was called Lucy Hennessy, though she didn’t live in Carlisle and my relatives will no doubt be relieved to hear that I have completely invented her unpleasant mother and their unsavoury history. The religious belief that sustains Lucy in the novel is a known factor in the emotional survival of modern victims of child abuse.

Chaplin had a patriarchal number of children, including twin girls, Marianne and Sarah. Sarah was the only one of his children who died unmarried (not counting Rosa who died aged 8 and Horace who died in infancy). Nothing is known of Sarah Chaplin, so I could safely invent whatever reasons I liked to account for her spinster status. I’ve suppressed any mention of her twin sister for the sake of simplicity. My decision to make her obsessed with power sprang from her father’s dedication and the observation of a former coachman, who remarked that Chaplin’s business was founded on “systematic application ... in which the female members of the family were called to assist.”

Many of the drivers mentioned in Coachman were real people in the Golden Age of Coaching: the Ward brothers, for instance, and deaf George Eade. I’ve invented the less attractive ones like Anderson. Some of the real coachmen, such as Cross, wrote autobiographies during their twilight years for the benefit of Coaching Revivalists in later Victorian times. Their works were rich sources for this novel.

10.) What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It’s a love story about a marriage that survives – not perhaps a popular theme today, but probably true of its time. We think now of 1837/8 as the year of Victoria's Accession and Coronation and the opening of the Victorian age, but it was pivotal in England's history because huge changes began in industry due to the opening of the railways. It’s that change which is the catalyst for many of my book’s central events.

There are threads about abusive family relationships, and about same-sex relationships which were still punishable by hanging at that time; so it’s by no means a fluffy fantasy set in a past era as an excuse for heaving bosoms, tight breeches and randy behaviour. Books like that really annoy me as they are so often inaccurate on the history, habits and behaviour of the time in which they pretend to be set.

Victoria’s Coronation year had lots of celebrations, rather like 2012's Olympics and Diamond Jubilee, so it was fun to set my characters against those colourful backdrops.

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For links to other author's blogs please see my Next Big Thing post for November 2012.

HIstorical writers = hysterical

One hasty plea before bed time: I do wish that writers of historical fiction would check their facts before making their heroines attempt anything with horse transport other than sitting decoratively inside or on the box seat.

A man driving a team of 4 horses would have a groom sitting or standing behind on the carriage to attend to them in case of difficulty or breakage. He would not need a heroine to interfere.

Horses attached to carriages cannot be held still by a brake - especially when at the date of the story brakes on wheels were yet to be invented. Even when brakes had been invented, they didn't work as a "parking brake" in order to leave a team unattended, not even if the heroine ties the reins to the pole (not something I would attempt in trousers, let alone in a dress). Our author is thinking carriage = car. Not so.

And for goodness' sake, tidy up typos and wrong words and run-on comma-punctuated sentences before you stick a story onto Amazon Kindle.

A Historical Novel - laid bare (Part 1)

No novel has ever taken me so long to write as Coachman, which has gone onto Kindle in the past few days and will be in print shortly. Here is a taster of the background, which is included in full at the back of the novel in both formats.

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In the 1990s I had the idea that I would chronicle the life of William James Chaplin, who was a huge force in the London coaching business in the 1820s and 30s.

The Dictionary of National Biography says of him:

Chaplin, William James (1787–1859), transport entrepreneur, was born on 3rd December 1787 at Rochester, Kent, the son of William Chaplin, a coach proprietor on the Dover road, and his wife, Eleanor. Chaplin was educated at Bromley, and on 11 July 1816 married Elizabeth Alston at St Nicholas, Rochester. They had sixteen children.

About 1823 Chaplin succeeded William Waterhouse at the Swan with Two Necks inn, Lad Lane, London, and he was to become the largest ever coach proprietor. In 1827 his coach business employed 300 to 400 horses; by 1835 this had risen to 1200. As well as three London inns, he had extensive stables at Purley, Hounslow, and Whetstone, and was said to employ 2000 people. In 1836 he had ninety-two coaches leaving London every day, serving all the main roads from the city. He horsed fourteen of the twenty-seven mail coaches leaving London each night. His annual turnover was said to be £500,000.

Chaplin’s vision was so clear that when the railways came to change long-distance travel he was able instantly to step back and rebuild his business in relation to the new technology. He liquidated all his coaching assets, though he kept the inns, and he went away for six weeks to Switzerland to do his planning. Once his carrier partnership with Benjamin Worthy Horne was established, he invested heavily in railways.

The few stories about Chaplin that are recorded in books by his contemporaries all show him in an affectionate light. He was largely responsible for the abolition of heavy brutal driving whips in London’s coaching trade, and despite his nickname “Bite-Em-Sly,” everybody he employed seemed to like him. He was elected MP for Salisbury, and at his death his business was worth around £300,000. A thoroughly solid, sound, clever fellow.

When I realised how damn boring that story would be – Dallas with only the nice bits on display – I knew I had to invent someone whose life would touch his, so I could show what might have happened to the drivers, stablemen and horses when railways took the heart out of coaching.

My own great-grandfather was a coachman. He was in domestic service, not on a commercial route, and he lived 50 years after Chaplin’s time, but his existence in my family tree gave me a name to hang my story on: George Davenport. And my great-grandmother really was called Lucy Hennessy, though she didn’t live in Carlisle and my relatives will no doubt be relieved to hear that I have completely invented her unpleasant mother and their unsavoury history.

Driving, dear Google, is not necessarily in a car

OOh you couldn't make it up.... I have just had a phone call from a youngish man wanting driving lessons, and he said he'd found our phone number through Google. I teach carriage driving, and he said he was a beginner, so I listened and looked out an appointment for him.

It wasn't till he asked for 2 consecutive days of lessons *because he wanted to drive to Oxford in the car he had just bought*, that I gently broke the news to him.

I didn't mention the fact that he needed a licence and to pass both his theory and practical driving tests. I thought it might be too much for him to take in all at once.

Ruby and the Idiots

Normally I write about my drives out with Ruby the Magnificent in order to share the pleasure that carriage driving gives us. My driving is my recreation and I come home soothed in mind and spirit. Not so today. I’m BOILING.

I took Ruby out by herself because Mr T has had a few days off to ease a windgall on one his hind legs, and Jen didn’t want to work him hard today. So I packed up some plastic bags for “recycling” and strapped them to the cart seat before setting off towards Tebay over our big hill, Pikestoll. Since Pikey is a long hard haul, and I intended to go right round the circuit which is a distance of 8 miles, I let Ruby stroll along to warm up at a walk. I stopped at “Tom’s gateway” about a third of the way up to move the midge-repeller from the top of the collar, where it was touching Ruby’s wither as the collar moved, and clip it round the stem of the saddle terret. I don’t know if these sonic repellents actually work but when you’ve got a midgey farm and midge-sensitive horses all routes are worth trying. At any rate, the repeller (which is solar powered) didn’t give any other problems in its new position, and midges were the least of Ruby’s troubles on the drive!

It was all very peaceful over Pikey and down to Roundthwaite road end, where we paused for quite a while, waiting for a clear run out onto the A685. Ruby tends to think that once a car has passed it is time to move out, whereas I could see traffic coming from much further down the road. The traffic wasn’t actually heavy, but the cars kept coming. She was very good though and trotted straight out once the road really was clear. We kept a nice steady trot going over the motorway and railway bridges, up into Tebay and to David Trotter’s house, where I left the two bags of bags for him to reuse in his greengrocery deliveries. Then we went on our merry way through the village, through the narrows, down the hill and round the motorway roundabout. Keeping ourselves to ourselves, warning people of our presence with our flashing lights back and front.

Most people whom we meet on the road are courteous and smiling, and I smile and wave at them because I’m happy and why not share it? So it continued, until we were leaving the roundabout, when Ruby scooted because she saw a motorcyclist. But it was nothing serious, and I still managed to signal which exit I was going down. As we continued along the Orton section of the A685, however, I began to realise that there was a good deal more traffic than I’d expected; possibly leaving the motorway and heading for Appleby, where the Fair Hill gipsy gathering is coming to a close. Were they all horse people? I seriously doubt it. Horse sense was certainly not in evidence. When we approached blind summits where nobody should overtake because they can’t see if anything is coming, they overtook. When I signalled them not to overtake because, sitting higher than the cars, I could see oncoming traffic, they overtook. When a convoy of foreign registered cars came up behind me and the first one pulled out to overtake, they all did the same, as though an umbilical cord might snap if they were separated – never mind the fact that the oncoming traffic had to stop for them. I kept Ruby pounding along at a good straight trot, but her 11mph was just not fast enough for the idiots. I don’t mean that everyone who followed me was a fool, because I was aware of one car that sat politely twenty yards back from us for at least a mile; but my verbal commands along that stretch included several cries of greeting to members of the Head family [work it out], and my coachman style driving gave ample opportunity to exercise my whip hand in certain unconventional signals.

Do cyclists have these troubles? They are equally vulnerable on the road. How do they deal with them, I wonder?

Once past Orton, where we left the Appleby road, courtesy and good humour returned, and perfect strangers waved and grinned, just the way it all usually happens. And Ruby walked and cooled off from her frenetic two miles. When we passed the youngster being schooled on the lunge at Selsmire farm, and he used our passing as an excuse to squeal and buck in circles, she only flicked an ear and told him saddles weren’t that big a deal. She ignored the inquisitive Shetlands and the farm bikes, and only wanted to get back onto the yard and scream to Mr T that she hadn’t abandoned him, she still loved him and she was home.

And when I turned her out with him she squealed and told him to get lost!

If you were in your car on the A685 this summer Sunday lunchtime, heading for Appleby, and if Ruby and I held you up for a few minutes until the road was clear, then I apologise, and thank you. Nothing went wrong on the drive. We drove to the rules of the road. But I’m furious at the idiot behaviour we encountered, so come on Google, index this lot and let the idiots read the things I didn’t have the chance to say today. If they can read.

“If you risked your life and ours by overtaking on a blind brow, on a blind bend, or in the face of oncoming traffic, or if you forced me to rein in my horse as you pulled in front of me, then please tell me – what was so important, on a Sunday lunch time, that you couldn’t be patient for those few minutes?”