Phaeton (carriage)

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A phaeton

A mid-19th century engraving of a Phaeton, from a carriage-builder's catalog

Phaeton is the fanciful early 19th-century term for a sporty carriage drawn by a single horse or a pair, with extravagantly large wheels, very lightly sprung, with a minimal body, fast and dangerous (illustration, right). The rather self-consciously classicizing name refers to the disastrous ride of mythical Phaëton.

The most spectacular phaeton was the English four-wheeled high flyer. The mail and spider phaetons were much more reasonably constructed phaetons. The mail phaeton was used chiefly to convey passengers with luggage and was named for its constructing using mail springs originally designed for use on mail coaches. The spider phaeton was of American origin and was a light vehicle made for gentlemen drivers. Other fashionable carriages included the Stanhope and Tilbury phaetons. Both were used at horse shows.

[edit] 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.^[1]

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.^[2]

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.