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Updated: June 28, 2025
It is represented in the old engraving with a coach-and-four drawn up before the door, surrounded by a crowd of spectators and passengers, some descending and ascending on ladders over the forward wheels; some looking with admiration at the scarlet coats of the pursy and consequential driver and guard; some exchanging greetings, others farewell salutations; ostlers in long waistcoats, plush or fustian shorts, and yellow leggings, standing bareheaded with watering-pails at the "'osses' 'eads;" trunks great and small going up and down; village boys in high excitement; village grandfathers looking very animated; the landlord, burly, bland, and happy, with a face as rotund and genial as the full moon shining upon the scene; and those round, rosy, sunny, laughing faces peering out of the windows with delightful wonderment and exhilaration, winked at by the driver, and saluted with a graceful motion of his whip-handle in recognition of the barmaid, chambermaid, and all the other maids of the house.
She walked across a meadow, where the dewy grass was cool under her feet, and so to the open space in front of the dairyman's house a shabby building attached like a wen to the ruined refectory. She started at hearing the snort of a horse, and the jingling of bit and curb-chain, and came suddenly upon a coach-and-four, with a couple of post-boys standing beside their team.
Ere he reached Duck Bank, the vivacity of the town, loosed after the day's labour to an evening's orgy of oratory and horseplay and beer, had communicated itself to Edwin. He was most distinctly aware of pleasure in the sight of the Tory candidate driving past, at a pace to overtake steam-cars, in a coach-and-four, with amateur postilions and an orchestra of horns.
He'd heard of a fairy years ago who made a coach-and-four out of a pumpkin, but he didn't think that was any harder than to make a coach-and-six out of a hay-wagon, and put twenty Cinderellas into it instead of one. He said it gave him great pride and pleasure to announce that the first prize for to-day's beautiful contest had been unanimously awarded to
A coach-and-four, resplendent in liveries, stopped at the door; I knew it well, and so did all Norton Bury. It was empty; but Lady Caroline's own maid so I heard afterwards sat in the rumble, and Lady Caroline's own black-eyed Neapolitan page leaped down, bearing a large letter, which I concluded was for Miss March.
Moreover, that this young princess of the blood might be accorded all the honors due her birth, lineage, and rank, the colonel's own coach-and-four, with two postilions and old Matthew on the box twenty years in the service his whip tied with forget-me-nots, the horses' ears streaming with white ribbons each flank as smooth as satin and each panel bright as a mirror had been trundled off to Kennedy Square, there to receive the fairest of all her daughters, together with such other members of her royal suite including His Supreme Excellency the Honorable Prim not forgetting, of course, Kate's old black mammy, Henny, who was as much a part of the fair lady's belongings when she went afield as her ostrich-plume fan, her white gloves, or the wee slippers that covered her enchanting feet.
The children laughed, and the old lady went on: "When I got to the lodge and the avenue, however, I became more thoughtful and steady. Even in that short drive, the idea of riding in a coach-and-four was losing some of its freshness, and deeper thoughts had come. I was a little put out, too, at the sight of the fine man-servant who opened the doors for me and led me upstairs.
In my childhood I knew an old lady whose mother saw the wedding, and she said that when Lord and Lady Uplandtowers drove away from her father's house in the evening it was in a coach-and-four, and that my lady was dressed in green and silver, and wore the gayest hat and feather that ever were seen; though whether it was that the green did not suit her complexion, or otherwise, the Countess looked pale, and the reverse of blooming.
It fairly blazed with the ostentatious splendor of the Second Empire; the shoddy Duke with his shady retinue, in gilded coach-and-four; the world-famous courtesan, bedizened with costly jewels and quite as well known as the Empress; the favorites of the Tuileries, the Comédie Française, the Opera, the Jardin Mabille, forming an unceasing and dazzling line of many-sided frivolity from the Port de Ville to the Port St.
And so the bill became a law; and then there followed such a farce in the courts as might make us lose faith in our Christian civilization and in our civilized jurisprudence. And it came to be understood that a coach-and-four could be driven through the loopholes that had been left in the law, and saloonkeepers began to remark, "Prohibition don't prohibit."
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