During the reign of William III. and Queen Mary, the funny sort of chair in which the driver sat was discarded, and the box was introduced on the coach. This was always occupied by the coachman, but it had another use besides providing a seat for him. After the Great Fire, the main London streets were certainly made wider, but they remained in a dreadful state, and the country roads were even worse. Therefore in the box were secreted various tools and implements for repairs should disaster happen to the coach, amongst them a hammer. As all this was very unsightly, it was hidden by a cloth, afterwards known as the “hammer-cloth”—a name which is retained to this day, though a hammer has long ceased to be part of the furniture of a smart turn-out: hammers and endless other instruments are now relegated to the motor car.

These wonderful old coaches are seldom seen nowadays except at Coronations, or such-like affairs, but when they are brought out they are splendid. The coachman with wig, three-cornered hat, gold embroideries, silk stockings, and smart livery, sits on his splendidly embroidered hammer-cloths, while behind the body of the vehicle stand a couple of footmen, almost as gorgeous in attire, holding on for dear life to the straps placed for the purpose. The Duke of Devonshire has a splendid turn-out of this type, and so have the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Duke of Marlborough, and the Duke of Buccleuch.

Sir Gilbert Heathcote was the last Lord Mayor who rode in the Annual Show on horseback. This was in 1711, but an old custom still exists of presenting the Aldermen with a mounting-block at their election. The Lord Mayor’s coach is a grand relic of the past, with its leather straps for springs, and all its gorgeousness; and one cannot but regret that, with innovations springing up all round, there is a vision in the future of the old coach being relegated to a quiet corner of one of the Museums.

Distinguished and wealthy people would not at first join the company on the public stage-coach, and either used a hired post-chaise or their own carriage. In the latter case, either four or six horses were employed, with a post-boy for every two; footmen sat behind, and a couple of runners dressed in white ran before, each carrying a staff with a lemon or orange on the end to quench their thirst.

Some of the nobility assumed great state when moving from place to place. When “the proud Duke of Somerset” of the later Stuart régime used to travel, he caused the roads to be cleared that he might pass without any delays or exhibitions of rude curiosity. On one occasion the servants riding in front of his coach overtook a countryman driving a pig, and in an imperative manner commanded him to be gone. The man asked the reason.

“Because my lord Duke of Somerset is coming, and he does not like to be looked upon,” was the reply, expecting the rough clown to disappear.

But, to the surprise and horror of the Duke’s men, the man stopped altogether, seized his pig by the ears, and before they could prevent him, advanced to the coach, held the animal up to the coach window, and shouted:

“I will see him, and, what is more, my pig shall see him too.”

The effect of this piece of early socialism is not recorded.

So late as 1831 the Earl of Malmesbury writes in his Memoirs that Lord Tankerville (his father-in-law) took him and the Countess of Malmesbury to Chillingham in a post-chaise drawn by four horses. The distance from London was three hundred and thirty miles, and they accomplished the journey in four days. The roads were terrible, and they had a somewhat lively time at the hands of the rioters, in the Reform Bill agitation.

The hired post-chaise had two post-boys, the servant sat in the dickey, and the luggage was strapped to the roof. These vehicles travelled at about nine miles an hour, and the horses were changed at every stage.

Stage-coaches themselves were conspicuous by their dull black leather, studded with nails. The starting-place and destination of the coach were marked on the outside, and the wheels were heavy and cumbersome. Three horses were generally attached, a postillion being on the first one, and the coachman and guard sat together on the box, the latter with his carbine on his knee. In addition to these stage-coaches, carriers were despatched on certain days to all the principal places in the country.

But the condition of the roads remained deplorable. In bad weather it often took a carriage two hours to get from Kensington to St. James’s Palace, allowing for the time it was stuck in the mud—roughly, a mile’s progress an hour. In the year 1765 the leather springs of the Bath coach were replaced by steel ones, and so small improvements in the general construction of carriages have continued.

À propos of coaches, the Royal Coach, which was built about 1761, and is always used for the opening of Parliament, Royal weddings, Coronations, etc., weighs about four tons. It is a wondrous production, with golden Tritons on the corners. The coach was designed by Sir William Chambers, and cost the sum of eight thousand pounds. The panels were by Cipriani. Those were troublous times, therefore the coach was built with steel blinds, that could easily be raised, so as to divide the occupants from danger, and this probably gave rise to Mr. Frederic Harrison’s remark that the coach in which the late Queen drove to open the Great Exhibition was lined with steel.

The passion for gorgeous coaches was if anything increasing. Lady Sarah Lennox, writing to Lady Susan O’Brien (the sister of Charles James Fox), describes a chaise she has just sent the latter, over which she is in great grief. It appears that the most fashionable colour for Park coaches at this time was grey, mounted with silver. Lady Sarah ordered one accordingly for her friend, but on seeing it she discovered the colour was only seen to advantage on large carriages and not on a chaise.

About fourteen years later the rage came in for four-in-hands. Ladies as well as men became marvellous charioteers. In fact, they used to drive much faster than gentlemen, although we should not now think their speed very great, for people in the eighteenth century did not put their best horses into harness. Sir John Lade (the nephew of Mrs. Thrale), Lord Rodney, and the Hon. Charles Finch were among the first to sport them. It was out of this fashion the modern Four-in-Hand Club arose, in the early days of the nineteenth century.

Mail coaches from London to the large provincial towns began to run in 1784. Their speed averaged about six miles an hour. By the end of the eighteenth century the journey to Bath—ninety miles, now completed by train in a couple of hours at a cost of nine shillings—was accomplished in seventeen hours, the fare with meals being £4, 9s. 6d. Nineteen mail-coaches left every night at seven or half-past seven, passengers paying fourpence a mile. One of the largest hostelries of the Metropolis, the “George and Blue Boar,” in Holborn, sent out as many as eighty and ninety coaches a day. As each one approached, or set out, from a stage, the guard blew a blast on his horn, and by the different calls, the stable-boys knew what coach was coming, and which horses would be wanted.

The Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.) encouraged dreadful extravagance in carriages. His favourite vehicle was in rose colour. Another appearing in Hyde Park at that time was lined with looking-glass, the horses were decorated with ribbons to match the colour of the carriage, and everything was made as gorgeous as possible. During the season, which then lasted from December to the end of May, the Park was full of gay equipages, painted every colour of the rainbow, and their panels bore representations of allegories and mythological subjects. Every person of importance was attended by numerous flunkeys, the coachman was a very grand display, with a periwig, a three-cornered hat laced with gold, and a capacious coat with flounces and fur-trimmings to the cape, a costume which added to that domestic’s vanity and assurance in no small degree, as he whipped up his four or six horses.

The phaeton with four horses superseded the curricle, and was considered the smart thing by Society.

A remnant of these painted vehicles may be seen to-day in Sicily, and on sledges in Norway, otherwise decorations on the panels of carriages have quite gone out of fashion. The Sicilian cart is still a marvel, and often depicts such scenes as hell, with Satan burning in a cauldron, or a martyr flayed alive at the stake; Greek soldiers before Troy; a king on his throne with Templars standing near him; Æneas landing in Sicily; the Virgin and Child; or scenes from the life of King Roger.

As for the roads in England, their condition was still execrable. Before macadam was introduced, nothing more was done towards repairing the surface than setting down enormous stones to be crushed by passing wheels, but as they were not set close, the wheels went bumping into the mud between, while the force of the jolt pushed the stones out of position, and matters became worse and worse. The streets of London were in such an ill-kept condition that people wanted their boots cleaned several times a day, and thus shoeblacks became an important factor in London life.

Before the making of turnpike roads, waggons had been the usual means of conveyance, and “flying coaches,” as they were at first called, were considered a great improvement. However, fares were high, and even after the introduction of public coaches many people who were not able to afford them still travelled by the slow-going waggon.

Here is an account of such a journey from London to Greenwich:

If one can imagine this kind of thing continuing hour after hour, while one’s bones ached with the cramp, and one was stupefied with the noise and smell, one gains some idea of the delights of waggon travelling.

The increase in driving led to great improvement in the roads. Even the “bagmen” of the country, whom we call commercial travellers, renounced their bags and adopted the gig, which was soon introduced into Hyde Park in a glorified form.

Toll-gates were instituted on every main road between towns to tax passers-by for the upkeep of the roads, and these increased tremendously in the early nineteenth century. So much so, that they led in 1843 to that strange series of riots, known as the “Rebecca Riots,” because the rioters took the scriptural words, “And they blessed Rebekah and said, ... let thy seed possess the gate of them which hate them,” as their motto. Men, dressed as women, attacked the gates.

These barriers were originally formed with a cross of two bars, armed at the end with pikes, turning on a pin, and fixed to prevent the passage of horses, hence their name. On many of the old highways throughout England a projecting house still shows where a turnpike gate stood, and over the door are the marks of the board on which the scale of charges was written. The twenty-seven London toll-bars were abolished in 1864, but it was not until 1889 that they disappeared in the country districts of England. What a blessing to motorists that they are gone.

Little more than half a century ago railroads drove the coaches off the highways. Only within the last decade or so the conditions of London street traffic have been entirely revolutionised. But what we take to be new is in a large measure old. The steam omnibus, which is quite the latest thing of to-day (1908), is really a direct descendant of the steam coaches introduced in the time of George IV. Many efforts were made to utilise steam motors between the years 1821 and 1833. The “Enterprise,” which ran from Paddington to the City in the latter year, was remarkably like the last type just placed on the streets. Most of these were private ventures, but in spite of a Select Committee being appointed, and their verdict being, on the whole, favourable, it has practically taken the entire nineteenth century to educate people up to this mode of transit.

Ten years after the Commission sat, other public steam carriages were attempted. One of them made the journey to Windsor, and was inspected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who were highly pleased with it. The motor had attained a speed of eighteen to twenty miles an hour. But it was still before its day.

The horse-drawn omnibus is older than most people think. Soon it will have reached the eightieth anniversary of its advent. The first real London omnibus was run from the “Yorkshire Stingo” (near the present Great Central Hotel), Paddington, to the Bank in 1829, and was found so convenient that in two years ninety vehicles of the kind were in public service. At first the driver used to collect fares; but as competition increased, the drivers raced on their routes (as they do at the present day), and the conductors—or “cads,” as they were then called—practically fought to secure passengers, especially if the passenger was an unprotected female of the Early Victorian days. The “knife board” of the eighties, and the narrow, horizontal footrests which made the top of the ’bus an impossible altitude for women to attain, has become as extinct as the dodo, since garden seats and staircases to the top have popularised the vehicle for both sexes.

If I may be allowed a digression, may I say that, in 1900 and 1904, when I was in up-to-date New York, omnibuses of the oldest possible type, with seats behind the driver almost as difficult to climb as a chimney-stack from the street, were still running from Maddison Square up Fifth Avenue past Central Park. I well remember admiring the Dewey Arch at the top of Broadway, erected after the Admiral’s victories in the Philippines, and then being persuaded to see the charms of Central Park from the top of a ’bus—“if you have the pluck to climb up,” said my friend.

Pluck! Fancy anyone using such a word to an Englishwoman. Why, of course I had.

We waited. The ’bus came. There, at one of the busiest points of that busy city’s streets, the vehicle drew up. There was no stairway, no ladder even as to a coach. I simply had to clamber from axle to wheel, from wheel to small step below the driver, and—dragged and hauled by that kindly person—land somehow into a seat beside him,—then to step over that into a row of seats placed still higher behind the driver’s back. I had split my sleeve and made a pair of white kid gloves filthy in the process, but I was there! No wonder American women do not aspire to the tops of omnibuses, and no wonder that the bustling crowd stopped to look at a mad Englishwoman in her best frock attempting athletic feats. Even the fat Irish policeman, white bâton in hand, looked on and marvelled. Up-to-date as the Americans boast to be, it was curious to find such an obsolete old vehicle still doing duty in the heart of their metropolis. Many of the roads in important towns in America are to-day little better than those of London a century and a half ago.

Another great change in locomotion in London came with the trams, which are more recent than ’buses; but the horse-drawn tram has already disappeared and given place to electricity, while the tubes are accustoming us to take our short journeys underground.

Nothing is so typical of the London streets as the light, swift-moving hansom cab. Its extraordinary abundance everywhere is one of the first things that impresses the intelligent foreigner within this capital of ours. Joseph Hansom took out his patent so long ago as 1834. His was not, it is true, the present-day vehicle, which has been evolved out of all recognition from its original conception, though it still immortalises his name. The cab itself was the outcome of the gig.

Cabriolets, or gigs with hoods, were introduced into London in 1762, but it was not until 1805 that they were established as public vehicles. Then eight received licences. They were two-wheeled, something like a modern hansom. The fare sat by the side of the driver; but under the hood. Only twelve were at first allowed to ply for hire, and these stood in Portland Street. They attained great popularity, and displaced the hackney coach, which by this time had grown into a heavy two-horsed vehicle.

That advent of the hansom is being repeated to-day in the placing of taximeter motor cabs on the streets. No one is so conservative as the London cabby, and the “new-fangled” vehicles, which were at the outset the object of so much chaff—not too good-humoured—had to live down opposition, but from the first little group placed at Hyde Park Corner at Easter, 1906, they grew so rapidly in popularity that in a short time thousands were plying our streets for hire. The smart-liveried young chauffeur of the “taxi” is a strong contrast to the picturesque but decidedly gruff and untidy old driver, who for so long has figured conspicuously among the motley types of London.

A larger cab than the hansom, built like a brougham, came into use in 1836, and from that the familiar four-wheeled “growler” has developed,* *—backwards to a more remote ancestor, as some curious student of evolution might surmise.

Bicycles rapidly evolved from the old “bone-shaker,” with wooden wheels and iron rims, through the high-wheeled “ordinary,” with solid rubber tyres, to the present “safety” type. The “bone-shaker” was itself an offspring of the earlier “hobby-horse” on wheels, awkwardly propelled by the rider’s feet touching the ground. This was almost a peculiarity of Hyde Park, where the young beaux of the middle-nineteenth century disported themselves on the bone-racking contrivance, for few ventured out into the streets or to the open country upon it.

Only the invention of the low-bent frame made cycling for women possible about 1892. I remember gazing one day out of an hotel window in Copenhagen, when to my surprise I saw a woman riding on a bicycle. It must be remembered that pneumatic tyres had only a short time before that been invented.

“Look!” I called to my husband. “Surely that is a woman cycling!”

“Why, so it is, and how nice she looks,” he replied, and as he spoke another woman similarly engaged came into view. We soon put on our hats, and wandered off to watch the ladies of Copenhagen indulging in such a novel pastime. I quickly decided that as soon as I returned to London I would try, too. I did, in the dusk round the Regent’s Park, stared at and jeered at by the little boys, who found great fun in a woman’s first futile endeavours to mount.

Paris quickly followed Denmark’s lead, and England came along slowly behind. Every man, woman, and child rides a bicycle nowadays. On their first appearance, and for many years afterwards, bicycles were not allowed in the parks, but gradually it was found impossible to keep them out, and in 1904 an order was issued allowing them to be ridden anywhere in Hyde Park except at the busiest hours. Even that restriction was shortly afterwards withdrawn, and one cycled among thousands of riders passing in a constant stream between the Achilles statue and along the banks of the Serpentine to the Magazine.

The cycle craze, however, as a means of town amusement for the fashionable world, has already died out. In Hyde Park it had but a short life. One year everyone flocked to Battersea Park, where in certain hours of the day the cycling throng mustered in battalions, and most of them were smart young Englishwomen. But nowadays the cyclists seen in the Park are not those who come out to while away an hour or two, but mostly riders taking a short cut to distant parts of London or to the country.

The evolution of the twentieth-century girl began with the “bike” at the end of the previous decade, and is taking root in the suffragette.

The motor seems to be the last word in locomotion, and until the flying machine is more firmly established to enable us poor groundlings to course through the air, it is difficult to foresee what is going to displace it. The first efforts of motoring were not altogether happy. So terrible had the smell and the noise of the petrol cars become, that in 1906 an order was issued that none but electrically driven vehicles were to pass through the Park between the hours of four and seven. Then those delightfully silent electric landaulettes plied in and out of the horsed traffic, almost unperceived, and the objectionable fumes disappeared.

Frequently the King’s car is to be seen in Hyde Park. One day, a year or two ago, his Majesty’s motor came to a sudden stop in Richmond Park, and a crowd which promptly assembled enjoyed the agreeable spectacle of the King instructing his chauffeur how to deal with a breakdown, and showing in a number of ways his intimate knowledge of motor-car mechanism.

His Majesty’s immunity from accident is owing as much to his own discretion in driving as to the abilities of his chauffeurs. His car seldom exceeds the twenty miles an hour limit, although he is subject to no speed regulations. His explicit instructions are that a moderate pace must be observed in passing towns or villages.

In these pages we have seen that the history and romance of Hyde Park dates from the time of the Roman encampment near the rude settlement of the Trinobantes, which the invaders called Londinium.

That Tyburn, probably the most tragic, if not the most historical, spot in all England, stood in the vicinity where the Marble Arch now stands. That the first hanging took place there in 1196, and executions continued until 1783. Every offence, from stealing a yard of ribbon to murder, heresy, and treason, paid its penalty at Tyburn, and the perpetrator was hanged, drawn, and quartered at the gallows.

Hyde Park has been a Royal Forest, the happy fishing ground of monks, from whose hands it passed at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. A closely preserved Royal Park, the scene of vile tragedies, a famous racecourse (the precursor of Newmarket), the training-ground of Cromwellian troops; and it was even sold by auction. The playground of Society, a refuge from the plague, the scene of public rejoicings, and the Great Exhibition of 1851. The safety-valve of individuals with grievances, the most remarkable, perhaps, of latter days being the revolution of the suffragettes in 1907.

And Hyde Park still remains the great social open-air centre of London, where the gay world desports itself as it has done through many centuries. That great green sward has been the high-ground of history and romance.