Manchester University Press
8 Magnificent and mundane
Abstract
This chapter gives a more rounded picture of the priorities and practices that characterised elite transport and travel. Its purpose is twofold. Firstly, it aims to highlight the magnificent: the ways in which money was lavished on coaches, horses and liveried servants, and the processes of supply that brought these manifestations of conspicuous consumption to the country house. And secondly, it aims to examine the day-to-day costs of feeding horses and maintaining vehicles, and of hiring coaches, paying tolls and transporting goods to and from the house. As with the country house itself, the magnificent and mundane were two sides of the same coin; they were mutually inter-dependent. A coach was useless without well-fed horses to pull it and would have lost much of its cultural impact were it to appear in public in a dilapidated condition.
Abstract
This chapter gives a more rounded picture of the priorities and practices that characterised elite transport and travel. Its purpose is twofold. Firstly, it aims to highlight the magnificent: the ways in which money was lavished on coaches, horses and liveried servants, and the processes of supply that brought these manifestations of conspicuous consumption to the country house. And secondly, it aims to examine the day-to-day costs of feeding horses and maintaining vehicles, and of hiring coaches, paying tolls and transporting goods to and from the house. As with the country house itself, the magnificent and mundane were two sides of the same coin; they were mutually inter-dependent. A coach was useless without well-fed horses to pull it and would have lost much of its cultural impact were it to appear in public in a dilapidated condition.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of charts x
- Notes on contributors xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 ‘Antiquity mad’ 19
- 2 From Rome to Stourhead and thence to Rome again 42
- 3 Virtual travel and virtuous objects 63
- 4 Gentlemen tourists in the early eighteenth century 86
- 5 A foreign appreciation of English country houses and castles 106
- 6 ‘Worth viewing by travellers’ 127
- 7 ‘Enjoying country life to the full – only the English know how to do that!’ 145
- 8 Magnificent and mundane 168
- 9 On the road (and the Thames) with William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire, 1597–1623 188
- 10 ‘No Lady could do this’ 206
- Bibliography 225
- Index 242
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of figures vii
- List of charts x
- Notes on contributors xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 ‘Antiquity mad’ 19
- 2 From Rome to Stourhead and thence to Rome again 42
- 3 Virtual travel and virtuous objects 63
- 4 Gentlemen tourists in the early eighteenth century 86
- 5 A foreign appreciation of English country houses and castles 106
- 6 ‘Worth viewing by travellers’ 127
- 7 ‘Enjoying country life to the full – only the English know how to do that!’ 145
- 8 Magnificent and mundane 168
- 9 On the road (and the Thames) with William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire, 1597–1623 188
- 10 ‘No Lady could do this’ 206
- Bibliography 225
- Index 242
