THE OLD POST-BOY

One of the most characteristic and interesting features of old English life has passed away beyond recall—the post-boy. Whatever his age he was always a boy, for he always wore the short jacket. His confrÈre the postillion has lasted on somewhat longer on the Continent, but he also is nearly gone. He was a picturesque feature, very different from the dapper English post-boy.

The latter figures in most old English romances. He took a part in all elopements, and was concerned in the conveyance of Queen’s Messengers with despatches; he was suspected of affording information to and furnishing opportunities for highwaymen.

Who does not remember the flight of Jingle with Miss Rachel, in “Pickwick,” and the pursuit by Mr. Wardle and Mr. Pickwick?

But the post-boy has taken more than a subsidiary part in a story, he is the hero in Smollett’s “Humphry Clinker,” and he figures as a leading part in the opera of “Le Postillon de Longjumeau.” His place now knows him no more. He is as extinct an animal as the dodo or the great auk.

The last I knew was fallen from his old estate—a slim, grey-haired man, who drove a hired carriage, but no longer mounted one of a pair of post-horses. At weddings the post-boy made his final appearance, with a white beaver hat, a yellow jacket and white breeches and top-boots, a showy individual, and poor old George Spurle, whom I knew, had appeared in his proper character on many such occasions before leaving the saddle altogether to mount the box. His jacket was of a buttercup yellow, but other colours were indulged in by these servants of the public. Humphry Clinker wore “a narrow-brimmed hat with gold cording, a cut bob [wig], a decent blue jacket, leather breeches, and a clean linen shirt, puffed above the waistband.”

Old George, like every other post-boy I have known, loved his horses. In his old age he loved them too well, spared them so much as to annoy those whom he was conveying, and who proved impatient at his walking them up the least hill, and at his frequent dismounting to ease his brute.

There was a grey mare he was specially fond of, and one night the grey got her halter twisted about her neck and was found strangled. George Spurle sat down and fairly cried. The landlord seeing him so cut up endeavoured to comfort him.

“George,” said he, “do not take on so. After all it is only a horse, and that an old one. If you had lost a wife, that would have been a different matter altogether, and there would have been some excuse for tears, but—a horse—” “Ah, maister,” replied the post-boy, “wives!—one has but to hold up the finger, and they’d come flying to you from all sides—more than you can accommodate; but an ’oss—and such a mare as this—booh!” and he burst into tears again. “Such a mare as this is not to be found again in a hurry.” When a little subdued, he explained himself: “You see, maister, ’osses cost money, good ’osses cost a power of money, but wimen wifes—they don’t cost you a ha’penny piece.”

George Spurle kept a list of all the great persons he had ridden before, and his list is before me as I write. Unhappily he has not dated his several stages, and his spelling makes his MS. sometimes hard to unravel.

For instance, “Druv the Duck of Dangle’em” apparently means le Duc d’AngoulÊme, and “the Count D. Parry” is le Comte de Paris. After a long list beginning with royalty, he winds up, “Members of the American legation and Van Amburgh’s lions and tigers in American vans. Lunatics and hospital patients with fractured limbs, gold bullion, convicts in vans, also naturalists and gaiests [sic] to be married, the junior of springs [sic] two months old and an aged person living ninety-four years, the oldest to the grave a hundred years and six months. Adventurers, photographers, explorers of Mont Blanck [sic] and Africa. Comercials [sic], astronomers and philosophers and popular auctioneers, Canadian rifles, American merchants, racehorses in vans with gold caps. Mackeral [sic] fish and several deans and bankers. Paupers to onions [sic], some idjots and Sir H. Seale Hayne Bart.”

The old post-boy was never married. Before the days of railways he was in constant request, but the whirligig of time brought about its changes that touched George Spurle to the quick, and thrust him from his seat.

He had begun life as a little urchin perched on the back of the waggon horse that had brought in the wheat at harvest, and this had so raised his ambition that nothing would content the child but becoming a post-boy. The scarlet of the Queen’s livery presented no attraction to him, nor the blue jacket of the navy. Nothing would do but the stable with the anticipation of wearing at some time the yellow jacket and white beaver. When not in the stable, he was to be found in the bar, where he told many a yarn. Here is one. “Gentlemen—I cannot tell you precisely the year, but it was at the very beginning of the century that there was a rather remarkable robbery of the mail, going from Exeter to Plymouth, near Haldon. A party of fellows with black over their faces sprang out of the bushes, and were all armed with pistols. They stayed the coach, and they got the letter-bags and carried them off. Now I was here—some fifteen miles away—and somehow I saw it all take place; I saw and counted the men—that is, in my dream, for I was sleepin’ in the little chamber over the stable; and I saw the men take the bags off to a quarry and there they ripped ’em open, and searched and took away some of the letters, and left the rest. I see’d it all distinct as daylight, though it took place in the night. Well, when I came down in the mornin’ and had washed at the pump, I went into the bar and I told Mary Foale about it; she was maid there then, and I was a bit sweet upon her. She laughed and thought nought on it. Then I went on and told the mistress of the inn, but, bless you! she gave no heed. Well—gentlemen, you may believe me or not, as you please; but it’s true enough, the mail had been robbed during the night, on Haldon, just as I had described, and we didn’t hear the news till the afternoon of the day—and I told all about it in the morning early. But that is not all. The mail-bags were not found for ten or twelve days, and they were in the old quarry just where I had seen the chaps cutting them open. That is a coorious story, ain’t it?”

“Indeed it is, George. It almost looks as if you had been riding that night and had been in it.”

“Ah! I’m not that sort of chap. Now there was a sequel to it.”

“What was that?”

“Why, a day or two arter I asked Mary Foale if she’d condescend to be Mrs. Spurle.”

“‘No thank y’, George,’ sez she; ‘you see too much to make it comfortable for me.’ And she didn’t take me, she took Jeremiah Ancker; and that just shows she didn’t see enough, for he turned out a drunken lout as whacked her.”

“Were you ever robbed on the road, George?”

“I’ve been stopped, but on that occasion things didn’t turn out as was intended.”

“How so?”

“I’ll just tell y’, gentlemen. There was some bullion to be sent up to London from India. It had been landed at Falmouth. Now the authorities had some suspicion, and so they didn’t send it the way as was intended. I had orders quite independent—I knowed nothing about it—to go to Chudleigh; I reckon there was a gentleman there as wanted me to drive him across the moors to Tavistock, and he knowed he could rely on me. He was to start early in the morning, so I drove in the direction in the evening before, with a close conveyance, as I knew there might be rough weather and rain next day going over the moors.

“I hadn’t got half-way when I was stopped by a man on horseback with his face blackened. He held a pistol and levelled it at my head; I had no mind to be shot, so I pulled up. In a rough voice he asked me who was in the chaise. ‘No one,’ said I. ‘But there is something,’ said he. ‘Nothing in the world but cushions,’ I replied. ‘Get down, you rascal,’ he ordered. ‘You hold my horse, whilst I search the chaise.’ ‘I’m at your service,’ said I, and I took his horse by the bridle, and as I passed my hand along I felt that there were saddle-bags. Well, that highwayman opened the chaise door and went in to overhaul everything. I had made up my mind what to do. So while he was thus engaged I undid the traces of my ’osses with one hand, holding the highwayman’s ’oss with the other.

“Presently he put his head out, and said, ‘There is nothing within—I must search behind.’ ‘Search where you will,’ said I, ‘you’ve plenty o’ time at your disposal.’ And so saying I leaped into his saddle. Then I shouted, ‘Gee up and along, Beauty and Jolly Boy!’ and struck spurs into the flanks of the horse, and away I galloped on his steed with my two chaise horses galloping after me; and we never stayed till we came to Chudleigh.”

“And the saddle-bags?”

“There was a lot of money in them—but there’s my luck. That fellow had robbed a serge-maker the same night, and this serge-maker came and claimed it all.”

“But you were handsomely rewarded?”

“He gave me a guinea and the highwayman’s ’oss, and that same ’oss is the old grey mare, gentlemen, as folks ha’ laughed at me for weeping over when she were hanged. Now it is a coorious sarcumstance that so far as I know that there highwayman went scot free to his grave, and the poor innocent grey were hanged.”

George Spurle lived to an advanced age, but he was one of those men whose age it is hard to determine: his face was always keen and his eye bright, he had a ruddy cheek, was always closely shaven, and his grey hair cut short. Till he died he drove a conveyance belonging to the inn; he could not be induced to drive the ’bus to the station. To that, “No, sir!” he said; “an old post-boy can’t go to that. There be stations and callin’s, and the station and callin’ of a post-boy is one thing, and the station and callin’ of a ’bus man is another. You can’t pass from the one to the other.”

He fell ill very suddenly and died almost before any one in the town—where he was well known—suspected that he was in danger.

But he had no doubt in his own mind that his sickness would end fatally, and he asked to see the landlady of the inn.

“Beg pardon, ma’am!” he said from his bed, touching his forelock, “very sorry I han’t shaved for two days and you should see me thus. But please, ma’am, if it’s no offence, be you wantin’ that there yellow jacket any more? It seems to me post-boys is gone out altogether.”

“No, George, I certainly do not want it.”

“Nor these?—you’ll understand me, ma’am, if I don’t mention ’em.”

“No, George; what can you require them for?”

“Nor that there old white beaver? I did my best, but it is a bit rubbed.”

“I certainly do not need it.”

“Thank y’, ma’am, then I make so bold might I be buried in ’em as the last of the old post-boys?”