Phaeton (carriage)

A phaeton (also phaéton) is a form of sporty open carriage popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Drawn by one or two horses, a phaeton typically features a minimal very lightly sprung body atop four extravagantly large wheels. With open seating, it is both fast and dangerous, giving rise to its name, drawn from the mythical Phaëthon, son of Helios, who nearly set the Earth on fire while attempting to drive the chariot of the Sun.

The sporty Lord Lonsdale's yellow phaeton with a calash top, c. 1900 (Mossman Collection)

Hooper's - royal coachbuilders - stylish design for a phaeton

With the advent of the automobile, the term was adopted to refer to open touring cars,^[1] which were in consequence referred to as phaeton-bodied.

Types

Hooper Spider Phaeton (1860)

The most impressive but dangerous phaeton is the four-wheeled 'high-flyer', the body of which consists of a light seat perched above two sets of springs.^[2] It was from one of these that the rising poet Thomas Warwick was thrown to his death near the fashionable town of Bath during the 1780s.^[3] The heavier mail phaeton, used chiefly to carry passengers with luggage and named after its construction, uses "mail" springs originally designed for use on mail coaches.^[4] The spider phaeton, of American origin and made for gentlemen drivers,^[4] was a high and lightly constructed carriage with a covered seat in front and a footman's seat behind.^[5] Fashionable phaetons used at horse shows included the Stanhope, typically having a high seat and closed back,^[6] and the Tilbury, a two-wheeled carriage with an elaborate spring suspension system, with or without a top.^[7] A variation of this type of a carriage is called a Victoria, with a retractable cover over the rear passenger compartment.

Use

Trooping the Colour in 2009

Thomas Jefferson owned two phaetons.^[8][9] Jefferson and James Madison rode in Jefferson's phaeton during their tour of the Northeast in 1791, a total of 920 miles. They were accompanied by James Hemings.^[10][11]

Queen Victoria was particularly associated with the phaeton and there are prints and photos of her driving in them both before^[12] and throughout her reign. Its openness put her in danger and there were assassination attempts made on her life while in one by Edward Oxford in 1840 and by Henry Holford in 1846.^[13] In her later years she enjoyed travelling in a phaeton drawn by a single donkey or mule, and there are examples of this type in the Royal Collection.^[14]

Another was put to use by Queen Elizabeth II each June from 1978 to 2011 during the official Queen's Birthday celebrations, when she travelled 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.^[15]

A social statement of a different kind was made during the 1880s by Valerie, Lady Meux, who defied London Society by driving herself in a high phaeton drawn by zebras.^[16] Yet another was the use of such carriages by revolutionaries to carry out the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery.

Gallery

• 
  Phaeton 1816 with a pair of outsized, swan-neck rear leaf springs and high-mounted body
• 
  A jump seat phaeton
• 
  Another view of the same jump seat phaeton
• 
  Phaeton carriage in Geraz do Lima Carriage museum
• 
  Argentine Presidential Phaeton in the Museo del Bicentenario, Buenos Aires
• 
  A phaeton
• 
  Basket phaeton engraved by John Henry Walker
• 
  A typical phaeton
• 

See also

• Carriage
• Volkswagen Phaeton