The Holyhead and the Great North Roads are identical as far as Barnet, and the first landmark on the way is the “Angel.” Every one knows the “Angel,” Islington. It is a great deal more than a public-house, and has attained the dignity of a geographical expression. Any teetotaller can afford to know the “Angel,” and the acquaintance is no more a stigma than an intimacy with the English Channel or the North Foreland. Five roads meet at this spot—for seventy years or so the meeting and starting point of omnibuses to and from all parts of North London. Nothing strikes the foreigner with greater astonishment than that our omnibus routes start from or end at some public-house, and that the “Angel,” the “Elephant and Castle,” the “Eyre Arms,” and the “Horns,” should be household names in different parts of London. The intelligent foreigner goes away and writes scathingly upon what he considers an evidence of drunkenness rampant in all classes of English society, and does not stop to enquire the origin of the custom, to be found far back in omnibus history, when many public-houses had convenient stables, and omnibus proprietors had none.

The “Angel” is not in Islington at all, but just within the parish of Clerkenwell. How it came to be just inside the Clerkenwell boundary is told in the legend of a pauper being found dead in what was then called Back Road, now the Liverpool Road, at that time in the great parish of St. Mary, Islington (which by the way, is the largest and most populous parish in England, numbering over 350,000 souls), but now, with the “Angel” in that of St. John’s, Clerkenwell. Islington refused to bury the pauper and Clerkenwell performed that duty, afterwards claiming the land.

The modern “Angel,” built somewhere about 1870, before public-houses became Elizabethan, Jacobean, or Queen Annean, is frankly a public-house in appearance, like the rebuilt “Elephant and Castle” and others, and carries in its aspect no reminiscence of coaching times. It has been left for the proprietors in recent years to grow somewhat ashamed of that fact, for, painted on tiles, there now appears on the wall of its entrance lobby one of those quasi-historical pictures, that have of late begun to decorate the entrance walls of our otherwise unredeemed gin palaces. By means of these tile-pictures those patrons who are not too far gone in intoxication may learn something of local or national history and topography. In the case of the “Angel,” the subject selected is that of the starting of the Holyhead Mail from the old house, whose frontage, pictured from old prints, bears the inscription, “For Gentlemen and Families,” and at whose windows the gentlemen and families are accordingly observed to be sitting, enjoying the scene. It is not conceivable that any one should now hope to find pleasure in doing the like at these modern windows that nowadays light billiard-rooms, and look down upon a busy scene of omnibuses and tramcars; but perhaps even what we rightly consider to be a sordid confluence of traffic may come to have a retrospective romance of its own in, say, the twenty-first century. Exactly what the “Angel” was like in 1812 may be seen from the accompanying illustration by Pollard, of the illuminations on the night of the King’s birthday in that year. The Holyhead Mail is prominent in front of two others drawn up before the house.

A few paces north stood the at one time equally famous “Peacock,” and the not altogether obscure “White Lion”; coaching inns both, but long since rebuilt as mere “publics.” “All coaches going anywhere north called at the ‘Peacock,’” says Colonel Birch-Reynardson. “As they came up, the old hostler, or a man, whoever he was, called out their names as they arrived on the scene. Up they come through the fog, but our old friend knows them all. Now ‘York Highflier,’ now ‘Leeds Union,’ now ‘York Express,’ now ‘Rockingham,’ now ‘Stamford Regent,’ now ‘Truth and Daylight,’ and others which I forget, all with their lamps lit, and all smoking and steaming, so that you could hardly see the horses. Off they go. One by one as they get their vacant places filled up, the guard on one playing ‘Off she goes!’ on another, ‘Oh, dear, what can the matter be?’ on another, ‘When from great Londonderry’; on another, ‘The flaxen-headed ploughboy’; in fact, all playing different tunes almost at the same time. The coaches rattling over the stones, or rather pavement—for there was little or no macadam in those days; the horses’ feet clattering along to the sound of the merry-keyed bugles, upon which many of the guards played remarkably well, altogether made such a noise as could be heard nowhere except at the ‘Peacock’ at Islington, at half-past six in the morning. All this it was curious to hear and see, though not over pleasant in a dense fog, particularly if it were very cold into the bargain, with heavy rain or snow falling.”

Half-past six in the morning! Yes; but that was not by any means an early hour in coaching days. If we turn to Tom Brown’s Schooldays, we shall find that Tom, with his father, come to see him off to Rugby by the “Tally-Ho,” stayed at the “Peacock” overnight, to make sure of catching that conveyance, and that in order to do so they were actually up and breakfasting at ten minutes to three on a winter’s morning. And none too early, either; for just as Tom was swallowing the last mouthful of breakfast, winding his comforter round his throat, and tucking the ends into the breast of his overcoat, the horn sounded, Boots looked in, with the fateful cry of “Tally-Ho, sir,” and the “Tally-Ho” itself appeared on the instant outside. But what “Tally-Ho” this could have been that passed through Rugby does not appear. “Tell the young gent to look alive,” said the guard; “now then sir, jump up behind,” and they were off. “Good-bye, father—my love at home”; and the coach whirls away in the darkness.

London then ended at Islington. Where does it now end? At Highgate; at Whetstone, where the boundary of the Metropolitan Postal District is crossed; or beyond South Mimms, where the frontiers of the Metropolitan Police march with those of the Hertfordshire Constabulary? Highgate Archway was wont to be regarded as the northern gate into London, and may now be taken as dividing the far suburbs and the near. Seventy years ago it was quite rural.