The Parisian passion for the countryside was such that the smallest ray of sunshine on a holiday was a pretext for getting out of the city. The land around Paris was still very countryfied at the beginning of the 19th century, the Seine was still a natural river where one could bathe, and where cows and sheep came to drink. To get away from the built-up areas of the city, Parisians used small carriages with one or two horses, a kind of suburban taxi, that would take them as far as Versailles, Montmorency or Longjumeau; these were known as ‘coucous’ (cuckoos) because of their yellow colour. Associated in memory with leisure, the coucous were appreciated despite their lack of comfort and slow pace, and their disappearance aroused nostalgic evocations from writers.
‘COUCOU in slang refers to the small carriages with four or six seats that drive in the environs of Paris. To go by coucou. You really get bounced around in coucous.
Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 6ème édition, 1832-1835
The print features a coucou carriage pulled by a single horse, which was still serving communities around Paris in 1840. The ‘rabbit’ seats were those next to the driver. Getting back to Paris from the suburbs after a beautiful day was not a simple matter, because, like today’s taxis, the coucous were too few. It is not to secure seats—this coucou is obviously overloaded already—that the bather hails the driver, but rather to shock his passengers by appearing all but naked.
‘Railroads, in a future not far distant, must force certain industries to disappear forever, and modify several others, more especially those relating to the different modes of transportation in use around Paris. ..The picturesque “coucous” which stood on the Place de la Concorde, encumbering the Cours-la-Reine,—coucous which had flourished for a century, and were still numerous in 1830, scarcely exist in 1842, unless on the occasion of some attractive suburban solemnity, like that of the Grandes Eaux of Versailles. In 1820, the various celebrated places called the “Environs of Paris” did not all possess a regular stage-coach service…For every small locality in the neighborhood of Paris there sprang up schemes of beautiful, rapid, and commodious vehicles, departing and arriving in Paris at fixed hours, which produced, naturally, a fierce competition. Beaten on the long distances of twelve to eighteen miles, the coucou came down to shorter trips, and so lived on for several years. At last, however, it succumbed to omnibuses, which demonstrated the possibility of carrying eighteen persons in a vehicle drawn by two horses.’
Balzac, Un début dans la vie, 1842 (translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley)