Phaeton (carriage)

Phaeton is the early 19th-century term for a sporty carriage drawn by a single horse or a pair, typically with four extravagantly large wheels, very lightly sprung, with a minimal body, fast and dangerous. It usually had no sidepieces in front of the seats. The rather self-consciously classicizing name refers to the disastrous ride of mythical Phaëton, son of Helios, who set the earth on fire while attempting to drive the chariot of the sun.

The most spectacular phaeton was the English four-wheeled high flyer. The mail and spider phaetons were much more reasonably constructed. The mail phaeton was used chiefly to convey passengers with luggage and was named for its construction, using mail springs originally designed for use on mail coaches. The spider phaeton, of American origin and made for gentlemen drivers, had a very high carriage of light construction, with a covered seat in front and a footman's seat behind. Fashionable phaetons used at horse shows included the Stanhope, typically having a high seat and closed back, and the Tilbury, a light two-wheeled carriage with an elaborate spring suspension system, with or without a top.

Phaetons in real life and fiction

Each June, during the official Queen's Birthday celebrations, Queen Elizabeth II travels to and from Trooping the Colour on Horse Guards Parade in an ivory-mounted phaeton carriage made in 1842 for her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. [ [http://www.army.mod.uk/ceremonialandheritage/household/trooping.htm "Trooping the Colour (The Queen's Birthday Parade)"] The British Army official website]

Phaetons rarely appear in movies, but a very glamorous one, painted yellow and driven by the character Mr. Willoughby, made an appearance in "Sense and Sensibility", 1995, based on the Jane Austen novel of 1811. It perfectly exemplifies Mr. Willoughby's reckless and dashing character, although in the book he actually drives a curricle. []

British author William Black published in 1862 a novel called "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton", based on a driving excursion that the author made from London to Edinburgh. [ [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=GjYNAAAAYAAJ&dq=black+%22strange+adventures+of+a+phaeton%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=N27pv-bP7X&sig=AgunLtAbw2hkNckAQQDi6BGet5w William Black, "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton: A Novel"] . Google Book Search ]

In the 1928 American children's book "Freddy Goes to Florida" (formerly published as "To and Again") by Walter R. Brooks, Hank the farm horse draws an old phaeton that carries the animals and their treasure back from Florida to the Bean farm.

In Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, Sutpen's wife Ellen had a phaeton that caused her daughter to become greatly distressed when it arrived in place of their normal carriage.

ee also

* Phaeton Car body style

References