It would be possible to mention half a dozen other varieties of the phaeton,[59] but such a list is best relegated to a coachbuilder’s catalogue. There is only one innovation which should not be allowed to pass unnoticed here. Many of the phaeton bodies during the ’sixties were constructed of basket-work; indeed, Croydon, where lived the inventor, received all the benefits which a new industry brings in its trail, but the popularity of these basket-carriages waned as rapidly as it had waxed—due, according to one writer, to the ridicule heaped upon them by _Punch_. A revival was attempted in 1886, and “we have a reminiscence of it in the imitation cane-work painted on the panels of many carriages” at a still later date.[60]
The _brougham_ was undergoing about as many changes and improvements as fell to the lot of any other carriage, yet superficially it maintained much the same appearance. The coupé brougham so popular to-day is the relic of the old chariot.[61] Of its several varieties the best-known is, or rather was—for it is rarely, if ever, seen now—the _clarence_. “It was introduced,” says Sir Walter, “about the year 1842 by Messrs. Laurie and Marner, of Oxford Street, and has fairly been described as “midway between a brougham and a coach.” It had very curved and rather fanciful lines, seated four persons inside, and was entered by one step from the ground, carried the coachman and footman on a low driving seat, and was used with a lighter pair of horses than the family coach.” Certain models, however, show the driver’s seat to have been high, on a level, that is to say, with the roof; and not long after the first clarence was designed, Lytton Bulwer caused to be built what was called a _Surrey clarence_, which possessed a hammercloth. The attempt, however, to produce a miniature chariot did not succeed. Another variety, named uncomfortably the _dioropha_, was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851.[62] Here the side windows would slide up and down upon a new principle, and “the whole upper part of the body from the elbow-line could be lifted from the lower, leaving a barouche body.” You were shown models of this upper portion hanging rather forlornly from the roof of a coach-house. But improvements in the landau caused the extinction of the _dioropha_, which does not seem to have been built after 1875. The _amempton_, invented by a Mr. Kesterton, was a smaller form of this carriage. The one-horse “growler” or “four-wheeler,” by the way, which still wanders up and down the streets of London, is the lineal descendant of the _clarence_.