" A Russian equipage is a singular thing"

Peterskoi Park

Thomas Rowlandson

Peterskoi Park was this Evening filled with the society & beauty of Moscow, and I do not remember having any where seen a gayer show than [33] there.  A Russian equipage is a singular thing[.]  Their coaches & barouches, however are exactly English in appearance, though their coachmen footmen & postillions, are as different as could well [be] imagined.  In the first place all drive with at least four horses, sometimes six and arranged as French Posters in one respect, that is the leaders, with a young boy on the off horse as postillion, are placed with immensely long traces at the distance of some ten feet or more from the wheel-horses.  The horses are the handsomest I have ever seen, of the Arabian breed very long tails & manes, beautifully formed & as gay as one could wish.  The Coachman dressed in the same manner as the postillion is seated on the box having charge only of the wheel horses, which from the manner of his holding his reins one would suppose was as much as he could attend to, holding one in [34] either hand exactly like an old woman.  This the postillion business in front so manages his pair and keeps crying out at the top of his voice to clear the road, the footman behind presents rather a more civilized appearance being dressed in modern livery.  But the other two, (the coachman with his long beard moustache is in fact never shaved at all) are dressed in a blue cloth frock reaching down to below his knees and a red sash tied around their waists, a heavy pair of boots and the little low-crowned hat of the country.