Phaeton (carriage)

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Phaeton (carriage)

Phaeton is the early 19th-century term for a sporty carriage

Carriage

A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn. It is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods....
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.

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Phaeton is the early 19th-century term for a sporty carriage

Carriage

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to quite distinct Cultural movement in the Decorative art and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw upon Western classical art and culture ....
name refers to the disastrous ride of mythical Phaëton

Phaeton

Phaeton, Pha?ton, Phaethon, or Pha?thon may refer to:*Pha?ton, in Greek mythology, either the son of Helios, the sun god; or son of Eos, the Dawn Goddess...
, son of Helios

Helios

Helios is the god of sun.In Greek mythology the sun was personified as Helios . Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion , while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn....
, 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 coach

Mail coach

In Great Britain, the mail coach or post coach was a horse-drawn carriage that carried mail deliveries, from 1784. The Coach was drawn by four horses and had seating for four passengers inside....
es. 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

Footman

A footman is a male servant, notably as domestic staff....
's seat behind. Fashionable phaetons used at horse shows included the Stanhope
Stanhope (carriage)

The stanhope was a gig, Horse and buggy or light Phaeton , typically having a high seat and closed back. It was named after Captain Hon. Henry FitzRoy Stanhope , a well-known sportsman of his time, and built by the London firm of Tilbury, coachbuilders in Mount Street ....
, 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

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Elizabeth II is the queen regnant of sixteen independent states known as the Commonwealth realms: Monarchy of the United Kingdom, Monarchy of Canada, Monarchy of Australia, Monarchy of New Zealand, Monarchy of Jamaica, Monarchy of Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Monarchy of the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Sain...
travels to and from Trooping the Colour

Trooping the Colour

Trooping the Colour is a military ceremony performed by regiments of the Commonwealth of Nations and the British Army. It has been a tradition of British infantry regiments for centuries and it was first performed during the reign of Charles II of England....
on Horse Guards Parade

Horse Guards Parade

Horse Guards Parade is a large Parade off Whitehall in central London, at British national grid reference system . It was formerly the site of the Whitehall Palace's tiltyard, where tournament s were held in the time of Henry VIII of England....
in an ivory-mounted phaeton carriage made in 1842 for her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria

Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria was from 20 June 1837 the Queen regnant of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and from 1 May 1876 the first Empress of India of the British Raj until her death....
.

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
Sense and Sensibility (1995 film)

Sense and Sensibility is a 1995 in film Great Britain drama film directed by Ang Lee. The screenplay by Emma Thompson is based on the 1811 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen....
, 1995, based on the Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose Literary realism, biting social commentary and masterful use of free indirect speech, Burlesque , and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and most beloved writers in English literature....
novel of 1811. It perfectly exemplifies Mr. Willoughby's reckless and dashing character, although in the book he actually drives a curricle

Curricle

A curricle was a smart, light two-wheeled chaise or "chariot", large enough for the driver and a passenger and— most unusual for a vehicle with a single axle—usually drawn by a carefully-matched pair of horses....
.

British author William Black

William Black

William Black was a novelist born in Glasgow, Scotland to James Black and his second wife Caroline Conning.He was educated with a view to being a landscape painter, a training that clearly influenced his literary life, and as a writer he became celebrated for the detailed and atmospheric descriptions of landscapes and seascapes in novels...
published in 1862 a novel called The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, based on a driving excursion that the author made from London

London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
to Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Edinburgh ; is the Capital city of Scotland, a position it has held since 1437. It is the seventh largest city in the United Kingdom and the second largest Scottish City status in the United Kingdom after Glasgow....
.

In the 1928 American children's book Freddy Goes to Florida
Freddy Goes to Florida

Freddy goes to Florida , is the first of the Freddy the Pig books written by Walter R. Brooks. It tells how the animals of the Bean Farm traveled to Florida and back again, and their adventures on the way....
(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.

In the short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" by Francis (F.) Scott Fitzgerald, Roger Button, Benjamin's father, owns a phaeton that is the primary mode of transportation until Benjamin buys the first automobile in Baltimore.

Phaeton (carriage)

Phaetons in real life and fiction

See also