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Updated: May 7, 2025
A gig and a couple of post-chaises, attended by the customary group of stablemen, topers, and gossips already stood before the house, but these were quickly deserted in favour of the more important equipage. The drawers in their aprons trooped out, but the landlord, foreseeing a rich harvest, was first at the door of the carriage, and opened it with a bow such as is rarely seen in these days.
With all his ability, with all his tact, it would be impossible to him, we conceive, to illustrate a novel of contemporary manners; he would inevitably throw it back to the age of hair-powder and post-chaises.
As I could not relish these terms, nor brook the thoughts of being so long upon the road, I had recourse to the third method, which is going post. In England you know I should have had nothing to do, but to hire a couple of post-chaises from stage to stage, with two horses in each; but here the case is quite otherwise.
At length all was ready; and Wilton led her down to the carriage, which it seems had been procured with difficulty; the machines called post-chaises being not so common in those days as they became within fifty years afterwards. The two magistrates stood bowing low to the young lady as she entered the tall, long-backed, but really not uncomfortable vehicle.
The carriages supplied were tarantas, or large post-chaises, drawn by six horses, and telagas, or four-wheeled waggons. They speedily made their way to Kiakhta, where they met with a most hospitable reception, and were splendidly fêted. Dinner, concert, ball were given in their honour; "nothing was wanting, not even the polka."
As we rolled along, wedged into one of the post-chaises of those days, through various kinds of country, and especially through the mountains between Dunkeld and Crieff, it was a perpetual play, I might almost say roar, of fun and laughter.
As yet we have travelled in post-chaises; but to-morrow we are to mount on horseback, and ascend into the mountains by Fort Augustus, and so on to the ferry, where we are to cross to Sky.
The road is gay now; carts and post-chaises, and girls in red cloaks, and, afar off, looking almost like a toy, the coach. It meets us fast and soon. How much happier the walkers look than the riders especially the frost-bitten gentleman, and the shivering lady with the invisible face, sole passengers of that commodious machine!
Having here provided myself with letters of credit for Florence and Rome, I hired the same boat which had brought us hither, to carry us forward to Lerici, which is a small town about half way between Genoa and Leghorn, where travellers, who are tired of the sea, take post-chaises to continue their route by land to Pisa and Florence.
You put me in mind of Sappho in Ovid. Goldsmith told us, that he was now busy in writing a natural history, and, that he might have full leisure for it, he had taken lodgings, at a farmer's house, near to the six milestone, on the Edgeware road, and had carried down his books in two returned post-chaises.
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