Okay, here's the deal. When did people become "that" instead of "who?" I hear this on the radio on the TV ( and shouldn't news reporters know better )? and unless my memory is wrong, have even read it in places. Why? How hard is it to remember that people require a "who"? And here's another--myself instead of me. My boss did this all this time and it drove me crazy. Are we so afraid to be in the spotlight that we have to say, "So-and-so and myself did such-and-so?"
In my last post I wrote about the horses used for pulling vehicles in the Regency era. In this post, I will address the vehicles themselves. There is, I think, the romantic idea of what a coach and four should look like, largely engendered by illustrations for British Christmas cards. From those, it would be easy to think of the coach as being of British origin which is far from the fact. The English word ‘coach’ derives from the Hungarian post town of Kocs (pronounced koch) which was introduced into England from France during the reign of Elizabeth 1, reputedly by Henry FitzAlan, 19 th Earl of Arundel. The coach, as we think of it today, is a closed-cab heavy, four-wheeled vehicle drawn by four or six horses. This, together with harness, coachmen, and grooms is termed a turnout. The Four-In-Hand Club of many a Regency tale grew out of a driving club formed in 1807. Four-in-hand means to hold the reins controlling all four horses in one hand, the left, while the ...
