RIDING TO NOSTALGIA

Coaching at Newport, one of the sporting galas of the social calendar around the turn of the century, was re-created at the last meeting of The Carriage Association of America, which drew many of the group's 600 members and their elegant equipages to the Rhode Island resort. For three days (following pages) they participated in driving demonstrations, marathons, coachman horn-blowing competitions and parades and attracted large, appreciative audiences, evidence of the rising interest in the art of driving (SI, June 24, 1968). The carriage age is making a modest comeback as horse lovers discover its pleasures—from a single pony hitched to a governess cart to an expensive four-in-hand pulling a $20,000 Brewster coach. Here, leaving the Hammersmith Farm of Mr. and Mrs. Hugh D. Auchincloss for the 10-mile ride to Marble House, is the Brewster park drag of Chauncey Stillman, pulled by four Hackneys and driven by Mrs. Frank Haydon, who flew from England for the event.

Along Ocean Drive, James K. Robinson Jr. moves his Hackney-Clydesdale crossbreds (left) under the eye of his wife, also an experienced whip, who sits next to him on the box. At right, George Weymouth halts his unicorn hitch of Standardbreds in front of The Elms; below, Meg Ferguson looks for a parking place at Marble House for her homebred Morgan drawing a phaeton.

Lamps that once adorned the coach of the Duke of Wellington are part of a private collection owned by C. Mathews Dick. From another collection comes the road coach Venture (following page) with which Alfred Vanderbilt became the first American to win an event at Richmond, England in 1907. It is driven by John Seabrook, who duplicated Vanderbilt's feat half a century later.

SIX PHOTOS

RICHARD MEEK