I have, on occasion, noted that modern readers of the great classic novels of the previous era are unaware of the social significance of horses and horse-drawn vehicles. As I wrote, right here on this blague a couple of months ago, "no, I'm not obsessed, it's just that I have this little bee in my bonnet about the fact that we gasoline-era moderns understand exactly what is meant when our hero arrives in a jeep, Jaguar, Jetta, or jalopy, but we are utterly clueless as to the valence of barouche, basket carriage, berlin, britchka, brougham, buckboard, buggy, cabriolet, caleche, cariole, carryall, chaise, chariot, clarence, concord wagon, coupe, croydon, curricle, cutter, daumont, dearborn, dennet, diligence, dog-cart, fiacre, fly, four-wheeler, gig, go-cart, governess cart, hansom, herdic, jaunty car, jersey-wagon, kibitka, landau, phaeton, post-chaise, rockaway, shandrydan, shay, spider-phaeton, spring-van, stanhope, sulky, surrey, T-cart, telyezhka, tilbury, tarantass, trap, troika, victoria, vis-a-vis, wagonette, or wurt."
I'm not the only person who has taken note of the variety of horse-drawn vehicles. In an early essay (one of the Sketches by Boz), Charles Dickens reported that the road to Greenwich Fair was "in a state of perpetual bustle. Cabs, hackney-coaches, "shay" carts, coal-waggons, stages, omnibuses, sociables, gigs, donkey-chaises -- all crammed with people... roll along at their utmost speed." What, pray tell, is a "sociable?"
In another of Dickens' sketches, a newborn is taken to be christened in a "glass-carriage." It can't be made of glass; it must be windowed.
On an "assembly night", "a 'double-fly' was ordered to be at the door of Oak Lodge at nine o'clock precisely." A "double-fly" would appear to be twice as large as your run-of-the-mill fly. Twice as long? Twice as wide?
As little as I know about vehicles, it appears that I know less about nineteenth-century clothes for men. What does it mean that one of Dickens' characters wears "cordury knee-smalls?" Fashionable or ridiculous? What about "spotless inexplicables?" "Black knee-shorts?" "A black-glazed stock?" "Cloudy Berlins?" "Drab shorts and continuations?" "Knee-cords and tops?" What does it mean that a man had "various particles of sawdust, looking like so many inverted commas, on his inexpressibles." And what, finally, are "gamboge-coloured Bluchers?" I can't even begin to imagine. Help! I need an annotated Boz.
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