Chaise

Description

Fast, two-wheeled vehicles drawn by a single horse. These are more or less a seat on wheels with a moveable hood that can be rigged up to a horse. In fact, the word in French means chair. The version called the post chaise was used to deliver mail. Sometimes also called a shay.

Quick Facts

• Capacity: 1-2 Persons
• Average Speed: 10 mph
• Power: 1 Horse

Appearances in Madame Bovary

         She reflected occasionally that these were, nevertheless,

    the most beautiful days of her life, the honeymoon days, as

    people called them.  To be sure, their sweetness would be best

    enjoyed far off, in one of those lands with exciting names

    where the first weeks of marriage can be savored so much more

    deliciously and languidly!  The postchaise with its blue silk

    curtains would have climbed slowly up the mountain roads, and

    the postilion's song would have re-echoed among the cliffs,

    mingling with the tinkling of goat bells and the dull roar of

    waterfalls.  They would have breathed the fragrance of lemon

    trees at sunset by the shore of some bay.  And at night, alone

    on the terrace of a villa, their fingers intertwined, they

    would have gazed at the stars and planned their lives.  It

    seemed to her that certain portions of the earth must produce

    happiness, as though it were a plant native only to those

    soils and doomed to languish elsewhere.  Why couldn't she be

    leaning over the balcony of some Swiss chalet?  Or nursing

    her melancholy in a cottage in Scotland, with a husband clad

    in a long black velvet coat and wearing soft leather shoes, a

    high-crowned hat and fancy cuffs! (Part 1, Ch 7)

         Paying no attention to the pharmacist, who was venturing

    the hypothesis that "this paroxysm may mark the beginning of

    improvement," Canivet was about to give her theriaca when

    there came the crack of a whip, all the windows rattled, and

    a post chaise drawn at breakneck speed by three mud-covered

    horses flashed around the corner of the market place.  It was

    Doctor Lariviere. (Part 3, Ch 8)

References

Roney, Cusack. Rambles on Railways. London: Effingham Wilson, 1868.

"chaise." Online Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 18 Mar. 2008     <http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-4759>.

"chaise." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 18 Mar. 2008              <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9022250>.

“Coaching Terminology.” Cadillac Styling Section. April 2003. The Classic Car-Nection.

            18 Mar. 2008 <http://www.car-nection.com/yann/dbas_txt/Sty_apdx.htm>.