How are we new-millenium readers supposed to grasp the social significance of nineteenth-century horsedrawn vehicles when even characters in nineteenth-century novels can be easily baffled? True enough that Miss Alice Vavasor and Lady Glencora are both very young ladies, and true also that they've lived marvelously protected lives, but still — such appalling ignorance:
" [Alice Vavasor] saw a light stylish-looking cart which she would have called a Whitechapel had she been properly instructed in such matters, and a little low open carriage with two beautiful small horses….
"Dear Alice, I'm so glad you've come…. Your maid can go in the dog-cart with your things!" — it wasn't a dog-cart, but Lady Glencora knew no better."
A dog-cart was not pulled by dogs. It was an informal vehicle with a recessed box or cage in which dogs were transported. Trollope lords it over his Lady Glencora for her ignorance of such plebian matters. And a Whitechapel? There's no footnote in my edition of Can You Forgive Her and neither google nor wikipedia hazards a guess (though Wik is well aware of a "deathcore" band of the same name), so I'll just go with "light stylish cart."
And now add "Whitechapel" to the list: barouche, basket carriage, berlin, britchka, brougham, buckboard, buggy, cabriolet, caleche, cariole, carryall, chaise, chariot, clarence, concord wagon, coupe, croydon, curricle, cutter, daumont, dearborn, dennet, diligence, dog-cart, fiacre, fly, fourgon, four-wheeler, gig, go-cart, governess cart, hansom, herdic, jaunty car, jersey-wagon, kibitka, landau, patache, phaeton, pill-box, post-chaise, rockaway, shandrydan, shay, sociable, spider-phaeton, spring-van, stanhope, sulky, surrey, T-cart, telyezhka, tilbury, tarantass, trap, troika, victoria, vis-a-vis, wagonette, and wurt.
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