Georgette Heyer's Regency World (19 page)

On the Road

Travelling by coach, whether public or private, could be dangerous. Although highwaymen were becoming scarce there were plenty of other hazards to impede a journey or play havoc with life and limb. On the public stage and the Mail, as one of the passengers reminded the coachman in
The Corinthian
, there were strict rules governing the behaviour of coachman, guard and passengers. A waybill listing the names, pick-up points and destinations of the passengers who had booked a seat was given to the guard at the commencement of each journey and it was his job to see that the coach made the correct stops and kept to its timetable. Although it was possible to gain a place on the stage or Mail without having booked or paid in advance, those travellers already on board and uncomfortably crowded sometimes objected vociferously to additional passengers being allowed into the coach.

Overloading of coaches, with either people or baggage, was prohibited by the coach companies, as was furious driving and allowing passengers to take the reins. Drinking was also forbidden but was difficult to control and coachmen, such as the one in
The Reluctant Widow
who transported Elinor Rochdale to the village of Billingshurst, were rarely averse to downing a quick glass in the taproom of a posting-house while the horses were changed. After setting off again it was not uncommon for the coachman to let eager young bloods (themselves sometimes under the influence) drive the coach for a spell—an unfortunate occurrence which frequently ended (as it did in
The Corinthian
) in the coach being overturned and horses and passengers injured. Most coaches, and particularly those that travelled at speed, carried a three-foot-long coaching horn, also known as a ‘yard of tin’. A vital part of the guard’s equipment on the public stage or mail coach, it was the coaching horn that enabled the guard to keep to the timetable for he blew a call to summon the passengers before departing from one posting-house and again on approaching the next. The sound of a coaching horn told the ostlers to have fresh horses ready for the change and alerted the innkeeper to the need for food and drink. Ostlers were the grooms or horse-keepers who worked at the coaching-inns and posting-houses situated along the great network of post roads that criss-crossed England during the Regency. In addition to caring for the horses owned by the inn, ostlers were also responsible for the horses left there after a change of teams was completed at the end of a stage. Trained to replace carriage horses in under two minutes, the best ostlers could change a team in fifty seconds. They were expected to be ready with fresh animals at the first sound of the coaching horn and could only expect a tip if they were quick about their work. Arabella, on her slow journey to London in her uncle’s ponderous travelling coach, watched enviously as the ostlers ran to change the horses of any smart chaise or sporting curricle which halted at the posting-house where she had stopped to eat a meal. And when the Royal Mail swept by with the guard sounding his horn 250 yards before the toll-gate to alert the keeper to open the gate (the Mail was exempt from tolls) Arabella could only wish that her coachman had been supplied with a yard of tin to blow up for the pike. Although it was mainly used to facilitate greater speed and efficiency, the horn was also sounded for safety and was blown continuously in a fog or to alert shepherds or drovers to move their flocks and herds off the roads.

Long-distance Travel

Long-distance coaches were those which went beyond a ten-mile radius from the centre of London, and long-distance travel for the upper class was generally undertaken in a post or travelling chaise. Posting-houses were a type of inn set up by enterprising individuals along the main roads out of London at which travellers could stop for refreshment while their horses were stabled and fresh ones poled up for the next stage of the journey. Some wealthy men such as Jasper Damerel in
Venetia
had post-horses stabled along well-frequented routes all over England to save the trouble of hiring unknown teams, but most travellers hired horses and post-boys. Originally, post-boys were men who travelled the postal routes carrying the mail on horseback or in a mail cart but from 1784 they were gradually replaced by the new mail coaches and the term ‘post-boy’ eventually became interchangeable with the word ‘postilion’ which denoted an entirely different occupation. Postilions were men or boys employed to ride a horse or horses harnessed to a carriage. Well-to-do families and individuals such as Jonathan Chawleigh in
A Civil Contract
often had their own private postilions but anyone who travelled by post-chaise had to use them as they were needed to steer this driverless carriage. This was done by a postilion mounted on the nearside (left-hand) lead horse with one postilion required for each pair of horses harnessed to a coach. Every postilion wore a specially designed iron guard on his right leg to protect his foot and leg from the centre pole. A change of horses could be booked ahead and at the end of each stage of a journey new postilions or post-boys were employed to replace the old ones whose responsibility it was to ride or drive the horses back to the post-house or inn from which they were hired. As Mr Tarleton was blithely informed by the post-boy on arriving at the village of Emborrow in
Friday’s Child
, at a rate of one and six per mile, it cost eighteen shillings to travel the twelve miles of the first stage of a journey from Bath to Wells. Hiring a post-chaise and horses from one inn was a disadvantage because it meant that at the next a new vehicle and horse had to be hired. This also meant that passengers were forced to suffer the inconvenience of having to transfer their baggage at each change.

The distance which could be travelled by a single team varied according to the pace set, the number of changes made (if any), the condition and contour of the roads and the type of carriage they were pulling. For a traveller such as the young heroine in
Arabella
, opting to use her own carriage drawn by a single pair of horses without changes and which had to be rested at frequent intervals, it was a long journey of several days’ duration from Yorkshire to London. By contrast, the heroine in
Venetia
discovered after an exhausting journey of some two hundred miles that a seat on the Mail could take a traveller from the General Post Office in London to Yorkshire in about eighteen hours. The benefit of the stage or post-chaise over the Mail was the longer stops at the posting-inns which enabled passengers to eat, drink and rest for a while. Overnight stops were not as common during the Regency as the stagecoach companies increasingly competed with the speedier mail coaches for customers. For those who did choose to sleep at a posting-house there was always the risk of damp sheets and poor food, although most of the well-established posting-houses servicing the main coaching routes prided themselves on their cosy parlour, well-supplied taproom, comfortable bedrooms, hot coffee and satisfying meals. Most inns had a private parlour which could be hired by wealthier guests wanting privacy and in which they could enjoy the comforts of a fire and refreshments while their horses were put to. During the Regency hundreds of posting-houses dotted the countryside as a single stage of a journey rarely exceeded twelve or thirteen miles. As a result most coaching proprietors ran small-scale operations, stabling fewer than twenty horses and horsing between ten and twenty miles of road, and many inns worked in loose partnership with others further up the road. Even the big London contractors, responsible for the majority of passenger bookings, only ran their horses on the first stages out of the city before relying on a string of partners to horse the remainder of a route.

Turnpikes, Toll-gates and Tickets

Turnpikes were first established on the Great North Road in 1663 during the reign of Charles II as a means of charging road users a toll to supplement the cost of building and maintaining the highway. By the time of the Regency the poles or pikes originally used to bar the road had been replaced with wide wooden toll-gates, with small toll-houses built on the adjacent roadside as permanent residences for the toll-keepers or pikemen. It was in one of these toll-houses that Captain John Staple resided after he found himself unable to resist the promise of adventure and took over the role of gatekeeper in
The Toll-Gate
. The two main tasks of the trusts were to ensure the maintenance of the roads and the collection of the tolls, a long and often complex set of charges which depended on such things as who was travelling and whether they were on horseback, in a coach, driving a wagon or herd of animals, or transporting particular kinds of goods. Mail coaches travelled all toll-roads free of charge but in 1815 it cost a single-horse carriage sixpence, a coach and four a shilling and a wagon and six two shillings to pass the toll-gate and, as Captain Staple soon learned, it was not uncommon for travellers to tell any tale which might see them exempted from paying the toll. Once the toll was paid a ticket was issued which usually opened several more toll-gates along the highway.

What to Wear

Men’s Fashion from Head to Toe

A man of fashion was meticulous in both the choice and wearing of his clothes. From his elegant beaver hat and elaborately tied neckcloth to his gleaming hessian or top-boots, the cut of his clothes, the polish on his boots, the fit of his pantaloons all combined to designate him a Tulip of the
ton.
As one of the great leaders of London society, Mr Beaumaris in
Arabella
was known as the Nonpareil—the Arbiter of Fashion who had taken Beau Brummell’s place and whose taste and style in dress was copied everywhere by younger men. Not all gentlemen aspired to inclusion among the dandy set or even to turn out in fine trim but it would be a rare upper-class man who did not adhere to the established dress code of hat (when outdoors), shirt and collar, neckcloth, waistcoat, well-cut tail-coat, breeches and top-boots, or pantaloons and hessians—ensuring that his coat was dark-coloured and his trousers light. Gloves were essential outdoors or for formal occasions and a gentleman might also carry accessories such as a cane, quizzing glass or, in inclement weather, one of the new umbrellas. To guard against the cold, or while travelling, he could wear a top-coat or a driving-coat with any number of capes.

What a gentleman wore was dictated by the day’s or evening’s activities: whether he was in the town or the country; whether he was on the strut, visiting or driving; whether he was travelling, hunting or shooting; whether he was going to a ball, or to his club, or out for a night among the fleshpots, each activity had the appropriate dress. His choice of costume was also determined by his self-designated role as either a dandy, a Corinthian, a top-sawyer or a quiet man about town. But every gentleman wore black for mourning, buckskins and top-boots for riding, full dress on formal occasions, and a nightshirt—or nothing—to bed.

Hats were
de rigueur
for the Regency man and the most popular was the beaver hat. Made from felted beaver fur, it was similar to the modern top hat in shape with tall vertical sides (sometimes widening towards the top), a flat or slightly curved crown, and a slender brim which gently turned up at the sides. Men’s shirts were mostly home-made with replaceable cuffs (and even fronts) to extend the life of the garment. They were designed to go over the head with an opening halfway down the chest which could be tied at the neck or buttoned. Made of cotton, linen or the finest cambric, shirts were white and generally plain-fronted for day wear and ruffled for the evening. Collars were attached separately and were raised to accommodate the cravat. During the Regency it became fashionable to leave the collar standing with the points touching the cheeks and some men, such as the aspiring young dandy Matthew Ware in
The Foundling
, wore their collars so high and the points so stiff that they could not turn their heads. Worn over the shirt, waistcoats were either single- or double-breasted and were often a testament to the wearer’s taste and the tailor’s art. While coats were of plain, usually dark-coloured cloth, waistcoats could be of a wide variety of colours and fabrics. White or black were the essential colours for evening dress but during the day spotted, striped, patterned—even flowered—waistcoats in colour combinations of green, yellow, blue, grey, black, cream and lilac could be seen. Striking designs such as the blue and yellow striped kerseymere waistcoat of the Four-Horse Club could set the wearer apart as a sportsman or leader of fashion, while the wearer of a waistcoat that was too florid or ornate (such as those worn by Nathaniel Coate in
The Toll-Gate
) would be censured. Waistcoats were longer in the front than the coat, with the lower edge—either cut straight or to one or two points—emerging from beneath the coat. The fronts were made with fine fabrics, such as satin, kerseymere, marcella or Valencia, while the backs were of either cotton or silk; the waistcoat was pulled in from the back with tapes.

Until 1816, when the frock-coat was introduced, the skirt of a gentleman’s coat was cut at the back into two long tails reaching to the back of the knee—and sometimes longer for those aspiring to join the dandy set. Coats were either single- or double-breasted with a turn-over collar that was high at the back and lapels with a single or M-shaped notch at the point where they joined the collar. The coat waist was short and cut square with double-breasted coat fronts always shorter than single-breasted. Padding was sometimes added to the shoulders or breast of the coat and well-built gentlemen often had them made so close-fitting they needed assistance to get them on or off. Preferred fabrics were superfine and kerseymere, which both sat well and had an elegant finish, and colours were generally dark. Claret, bottle green, olive green, brown, corbeau, black and blue were the most popular colours for day wear, with blue the first choice for evening attire. The cut of a coat could indicate a man’s social status and in
Cotillion
Freddy’s concerns about the Chevalier d’Evron were somewhat allayed by the fellow’s appearance in a bottle-green, long-tailed coat that had clearly come from the hands of a master tailor.

Below their coats men wore either breeches, pantaloons or trousers. Breeches were made of soft leather, wool or nankeen, or of satin or velvet for formal occasions. They had a high waist, were full at the hips and ended just below the knee where they were buttoned, tied or buckled and had a front opening or narrow flap, known as a ‘fall’, which buttoned at the waist and could be dropped down. They had a deep waistband which gave extra support with a fob pocket in the right-hand side. For riding or day wear, breeches were worn with top-boots, but for evening wear or attendance at Court they were worn with plain or clocked stockings and shoes. Buckskins were men’s suede leather breeches made from the skin of the male deer which were naturally greyish yellow in colour. Soft and comfortable, each leg was made from a single piece of leather to avoid having an inner seam, making them especially comfortable for riding. Although they were worn as riding breeches they were perfectly acceptable for ordinary day wear. Pantaloons were an alternative to breeches and were, as Mr Beaumaris told his grandmother in
Arabella
, knitted. A close-fitting trouser, also known as ‘inexpressibles’, they were shaped to the leg and eventually replaced knee-breeches for day wear. The fashion was for light-coloured trousers, and pantaloons were often yellow, cream, biscuit, buff or fawn; they were worn with hessian boots or half-boots—never with top-boots. Trousers were long like pantaloons but cut wide at the ankle and could be worn with shoes, half-boots or boots. They were generally light-coloured and made of nankeen or jean.

Regency men usually wore short or knee-length cotton or linen drawers under their breeches which were tied at the waist with ribbon. Drawers had a small vent in the front and could be drawn in from behind with tapes. Ankle-length drawers were worn under pantaloons or trousers and these either had feet attached or were kept in place with a strap under the instep. Stockings were mostly worn with knee-breeches and came in a range of colours for day wear, with white or natural-coloured hose generally worn with evening dress. Knitted worsted, cotton and silk stockings were the most common, held up with garters, and stockings for evening wear were often decorated with the intricate embroidery at the ankle known as clocks.

The top-coat, also known as a Benjamin, was a loose-fitting overcoat, originally worn by the working classes. Its style was appropriated by upper-class gentlemen who wore it over their clothes in cooler weather or while travelling. Top-coats were usually ankle length and often drab-coloured—either light olive brown or grey. Also known as a box coat (from being worn by coachmen who sat on the box seat of a carriage), the driving-coat was a type of overcoat worn by gentlemen in cooler weather while driving, walking or travelling. Designed for a loose fit, they were usually light in colour, calf or ankle length, with several of the broad collars, known as capes, hung across the shoulders in layers. In
Regency Buck
, the Earl of Worth wore a driving-coat made of drab with fifteen shoulder-capes and a double row of silver buttons.

Shoes, gloves and a cane completed the gentleman’s wardrobe and the well-dressed man always wore the correct footwear. Leather knee-high boots worn with breeches, top-boots had turn-over tops of a different colour from the uppers. Tops were generally either brown or black but some of the dandies wore boots with white tops for hunting or short boots with very long tops. Both top-boots and hessians were expected to be polished to a high gloss and some valets, such as Vincent Darracott’s man Crimplesham in
The Unknown Ajax
(who considered the care of boots to be an Art), had their own jealously guarded recipes for boot blacking. Hessians were men’s calf-length, low-heeled boots which curved up in front to a point just below the knee (sometimes with a V-shaped cut-out) and were cut at the back into a curving V-shape to allow the leg to bend. Generally black in colour, they were worn with pantaloons and were usually decorated with a small tassel at the point below the knee. Shoes were usually worn with knee-breeches and later with trousers. They were made of leather (and shaped to the foot), low-heeled with rounded toes and were tied across a tongue above the instep. Shoes worn to Court were known as pumps and were made of soft leather with thin soles and low sides; they usually had buckles or were tied with ribbon.

Gentlemen wore short cotton or leather gloves both during the day and in the evening; the colour, fabric and style were dependent on the occasion. A fashionable man had his gloves made to measure and generally owned several pairs. In
Friday’s Child
, the Honourable Ferdy Fakenham wore elegant lavender gloves and carried a cane to his friend Sherry’s wedding. Made of polished wood, canes often had ornamental heads of semi-precious stones such as amethyst, or of carved ivory, polished glass or porcelain. Black was the colour for funerals and for mourning, during which period a gentleman wore all black clothes and sometimes a black muslin band tied around his hat. Court mourning precluded the wearing of gilt buttons or buckles and the usual swords were replaced with black ones. Francis Cheviot in
The Reluctant Widow
wore silver tassels on his hessian boots instead of the usual gold to mark the sombre occasion of his cousin’s funeral.

A gentleman of fashion was required, on certain occasions, to dress formally. Evenings at Almack’s or formal balls demanded that he appear in the exquisite attire of full evening dress. This consisted of a freshly laundered shirt and carefully tied neckcloth, white waistcoat, long-tailed coat (coats of blue superfine were popular), black satin or light-coloured knee-breeches, white stockings (either striped or with clocks), black shoes with ribbon ties, and a chapeau-bras. The ‘chapeau-bras’, also known as an opera hat, was a black, crescent-shaped hat which could be flattened, and was mainly designed to be held under the arm although it was worn on occasion. In
Cotillion
, Freddy Standen was ‘beautiful to behold’ when he appeared in full evening dress at Almack’s with his neckcloth the epitome of the wearer’s art.