Edwin Howlett

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Edwin Howlett (born May 25, 1835 in Paris , † June 14, 1914 there ) was a British coachman and teacher for driving sports in Paris. He was a master of the English technique of line guidance and made it known on the European continent.

Life

Edwin Howlett was born the fifth of eight children of Norwich- born English coachman John Howlett (1805-1878) and his wife Susannah Matthews (1804-1872), shortly after his father was the driver of Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800–1870) moved with the family to Paris at 2 rue Laffitte. Richard Seymour-Conway was a horse connoisseur. During the reigns of Louis-Philippe I and Napoleon III. he played an active role in the development of French horse racing. In 1835 he acquired the in Bois de Boulogne located Chateau de Bagatelle , because it is particularly suitable for its equestrian sporting activities.

Like his brother Albert (1843–1873), who later temporarily served as a driver for the Russian Tsar Alexander II , Edwin Howlett learned the coaching trade from his father and showed an extraordinary talent. His first job was as a groom with Princess Elisa Baciocchi, Napoleon Bonaparte's niece . As a 16-year-old assistant coachman, he joined Alexander von Horvath's stable. At the age of 17 he became the coachman of Prince Pericles Gikha, who commissioned him in 1852 to transfer his horses from Vienna to Paris. In 1853 he became the second coachman in the stable of Harriet Gardiner (1812-1869), the divorced Countess d'Orsay , then Mrs. Charles Spencer Cowper, wife of the owner of Sandringham House . In 1855 he took over the management of the stable from his father, who had been the first coachman since 1853.

In 1864 he started his own business. In the mid-1860s he founded his own stable at 15 rue Jean Goujon in the 8th arrondissement of Paris , in 1866 with ten horses and seven wagons. Within ten years he had three employed drivers, 60 horses and many carriages. Around 1894 he sold the property on which the Bazar de la Charité opened on May 3, 1897 and was destroyed in a fire the following day, and in 1895 he moved the location of his business to Rue de Belles Feuilles 24 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris , then urban Periphery on the Bois de Boulogne. In 1907 he expanded the business there to include the neighboring property at number 22. He also opened a branch at 45 Rue de la Ferme in Neuilly-sur-Seine , where he sold and rented horses. Around 1865 he opened a line between Paris and Versailles , which became particularly popular in the 1870s with the “Le Rocket” carriage and in the 1880s with the “The Magnet” carriage. The line was also used to train learner drivers.

A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand) , painting by Thomas Eakins , 1879/1880

It is not known whether he had students at the beginning of his career, but it is likely because the driving sport experienced an upswing at the time and Howlett was regarded in Paris as one of the best masters of English leash technique . This technique of driving Vierspännern , also called "Four-in-hand driving" called, was known for its smooth and precise management of horses. In 1865 at the latest, he began to teach driving. He soon made a name for himself as the preferred driving instructor for the Parisian upper class. Many students came to Paris from abroad to study with him, including many Americans, for example the horse expert Fairman Rogers . He gave his lessons in English, French, German and Italian. In the 1890s, for example, Benno Achenbach , the son of the Düsseldorf landscape painter Oswald Achenbach , was his student who further developed Howlett's technique in Germany. By 1892 he wrote the textbook Leçons de Guides , which he dedicated to his friend, the driver William George Tiffany (1844-1905), a cousin of the New York jeweler Charles Lewis Tiffany and brother-in-law of Alva Vanderbilt Belmont . In 1894 the book was published by RH Russell & Son in New York City under the title Driving Lessons, also in English, and became the "Bible of Driving Sports". Around 1895 he gave around 1200 driving lessons per year. Bear his name, the driving Curb mors Howlett and Side reins Howlett .

Edwin Howlett had five sons and two daughters from his marriage to Elisabeth Botwright. Her son Morris (1873-1939), the youngest child, who went to the United States at the end of the 19th century , was also known in the driving sport, in particular as a teacher, advisor, companion and organizer of races and routes, for example for Lewis Rodman Wanamaker or for James Hazen Hyde and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt , who called him "Napoleon", as well as for the Ladies' Four-in-Hand Driving Club founded in New York City in 1901 , for which he worked for more than ten years as a "coaching whip". At 151 West 54th Street in New York, he maintained a stable and a driving school until about World War I.

font

  • Leçons de Guides . Pairault & Cie., Paris 1893 ( digitized ).

literature

  • The Howlett Dynasty and the Art of Driving . In: The Carriage Journal . Volume 26, No. 4 (spring 1989), p. 195 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Furger: Carriages of Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries. Equipage manual . Olms, Hombrechtikon 2003, ISBN 978-3-487-08446-6 , p. 96
  2. ↑ Tom Ryder: On the Box Seat . In: The Carriage Journal . Volume 53, No. 3 (May 2015), p. 141
  3. ↑ See also Fairman Rogers : A Manual of Coaching . Philadelphia 1901, pp. 290, 316, 544 ( digitized version )
  4. ↑ Kenneth Edward Wheeling: The Gentleman Coachman George William Tiffany . In: The Carriage Journal . Volume 15, No. 4 (spring 1978), p. 377 ff.
  5. ↑ Kenneth Edward Wheeling: A Man and His Coach - James Hazen Hyde and the Road Coach "Liberty" . In: The Carriage Journal . Volume 11, No. 2 (autumn 1973), p. 56
  6. ^ Elizabeth Toomey Seabrook: Coaching in America . In: The Carriage Journal . Volume 3, No. 4 (spring 1963), pp. 139, 141, 145
  7. ^ Tom Ryder, p. 141
personal data
SURNAME Howlett, Edwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British coachman and driving instructor
DATE OF BIRTH May 25, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH June 14, 1914
Place of death Paris