The Ruskinsʼ Traveling Carriages

Readers of Praeterita are familiar with Ruskinʼs description of the “trevelling chariot” used for the familyʼs summer holidays, which was lent by John Jamesʼs business partner, Henry Telford (d. 1859), in the years of Ruskinʼs youth, “before my father thought it right to hire a carriage” for long journeys (Ruskin, Works, 35:29). In documentary evidence related to the Ruskinsʼ 1827 journey to Scotland, John James lists a small expense connected with “chaise Perth”—presumably, the Telford carriage driven to Perth, since the terms post chaise, posting chariot, and travelling chariot describe the same type of vehicle, according to the 1837 text, English Pleasure Carriages (John James Ruskin, Account Book [1827–45], 2r; Adams, English Pleasure Carriages, 225; and see Tours of 1826–27: Wales and Scotland, 1827).

The terms chariot and chaise were applied to four‐wheeled vehicles of the same body type—the former typically referring to vehicles for town use, but which could be adapted to posting with removal of the coach box, and the latter to traveling carriages. A late eighteenth‐century source explains: as “a close carriage” that was “intended only for expeditious travelling”, the post‐chaise was considered “the most pleasant”, compared to a coach; “the view in front not being obstructed by a coach‐box, nor the draught impeded by any cumbersome weight: lightness and simplicity are the principles on which this carriage ought to be built, if intended for post work only”. However, “for travelling with on the continent”, the post‐chaise “require[d], like the coach, to be built strong, and finished with conveniences suitable for the journey” (Felton, Treatise on Carriages [1796], 2:50, 60).

Surviving examples of the post‐chaise or traveling chariot from the early nineteenth century can be viewed at the National Trust Carriage Museum at Arlington. As the museumʼs guidebook explains, the term chariot refers to the “shape of the body”, seating only two passengers—or as Ruskin comments in Praeterita, “two persons and so much of third personage as I possessed at three years old”—and that single seat is positioned “behind the doors” and facing the windows, which take up the front and sides. This configuration contrasts with the design of the heavier coach, which seated “four inside the body”—two couples facing one another, seated on either side of the doors in the middle of the coach body, one couple on “a seat ahead of the doors”, and the other couple on a seat “behind” the doors.

In the chaise, Ruskinʼs seat as a small boy “was the little box containing my clothes, strongly made, with a cushion on one end of it”, which, “set upright in front (and well forward)”, afforded him a “horizon of sight the widest possible” through the large front windows and the adjacent side windows set in the doors. While Ruskin says he “was thus not the least in . . . [his parentsʼ] way”, his box would likely have obstructed a set of two folding panels that—if so equipped, and as explained by the Carriage Museum, could ,be let down- from the wall beaneath the front windows, enabling ,the inside passengers to stretch their legs at full length into the boot and sleep while they travelled-. Johnʼs box could, perhaps, have been shifted to one side to let down one of the two panels (Nicholson, Parker‐Williams, and Martin, The National Trust Carriage Museum at Arlington Court Guidebook, 4; Ruskin, Works, 35:29, 32; “Conservation at the Carriage Museum”).