DISCOMFORTS OF TRAVELLING

No one ever in coaching days thought it worth while to write the story of the Glasgow mail. The hard, dry facts of it may be sought, and with some diligence found and collated, in Parliamentary Papers, and in the pages of Cary, or in the coaching information common to directories of that age; but intimate accounts are sought in vain. Travellers who experienced the miseries of long-distance journeys were only too glad to be done with them, and to dismiss the memory of their sufferings. To have passed nearly forty-two hours continuously on the roof of a coach in severe weather, with every hair standing up like a porcupine’s quills, and with rain, dew, and hoar-frost as one’s dreary portion, forbade all that glamour with which that old era is regarded at this convenient distance of time.

Those who could endure such a journey without a break were few; and to those few, obliged from any cause to hasten from end to end, the recollection must have seemed a veritable phantasmagoria of dimly shifting scenes and aching, weary limbs.

Thus it is that we obtain only brief and disconnected glimpses of the mail’s progress. The most eloquent picture of misery is undoubtedly that presented by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, writing in November 1800, describing a journey from Carlisle to London:

“After passing a sleepless night at Carlisle, I was hurried away next morning without a morsel of breakfast, and grew so very sick and ill in a little while that I had almost fainted twice. When we stopt at Penrith and took up an old gentleman, I then got a large dram of gin, which did me much service; and we proceeded through snow and ice far and far, and farther than I can tell, till I fell asleep and got a much better night’s rest than at that accursed Carlisle. During the night (but Heaven knows where) we picked up two men going to London; and, lo! about daylight another qualm seized me. And when we got to Stilton, it blew such a hideous storm, with hail, snow, and wind, that for an hour and twenty minutes the six horses would not move forward, but attempted always to retreat to the stables. Such kicking, such rearing of beasts, such cursing and swearing of men (who had a stronger smack of the big brute in them than even their cattle), I never met with before; and after every cudgel in the house—yea, even my landlady’s private stick wherewith she corrects her spouse—had been bent or broken over their backs, they got on so slowly that we reached London only at eight in the morning. Here was no peace for the wicked. The ‘Bull and Mouth,’ which is the filthiest place you ever saw, gave me such an aversion to remaining where I was, that I took a place in the heavy coach which went on at one that day, and lay down on a bed till the time for departure. Here my head grew very bad indeed, so that I slept not a wink.”

“Stinking, noisy stye,” he elsewhere calls the “Bull and Mouth,” but we must recollect that Sharpe was very affected, a bundle of fine feelings, and a poseur: one, in short, born a hundred years before his time, and by no means one of those robust Englishmen to whom noise and stable-smells were but the ordinary and commonplace incidents of coach-journeys and coaching hostelries.

Nothing, you clearly perceive, could have roused Sharpe to enthusiasm. But there were some wildly enthusiastic people on the road then, and they had often cause, in the stirring news they brought with them, to feel exultation of spirits. For with the mail came news of the Battles of the Nile, of Trafalgar, of Waterloo; and many a wayside park was despoiled of laurel branches to deck out the coach in the emblems of victory. Many a time did the mail enter Glasgow in that fashion: decorated with the bays, a red flag flying from the roof, the guard in his best scarlet coat and gold-laced hat, sounding his bugle as the horses galloped at a thundering pace along the Gallowgate. Arrived at the foot of Nelson Street, at about seven o’clock in the morning, his duty was, on these historic occasions, to thrice discharge his blunderbuss in the air. Every one then rushed to the “Tontine” coffee-room to learn the news and get the papers: some one with a stentorian voice being generally elected to read the despatches aloud, for the common benefit.

A thrilling story of those old days, when we were generally at war with France, is that of one Archibald Campbell, a Glasgow merchant who had omitted to insure one of his ships, and, in the last few weeks before she fell due, repented of his omission. Alarmed, he sought to effect insurance with a Glasgow office, but found the premium so high that he resolved to insure ship and cargo in London. Accordingly, he wrote to his London broker, instructing him to insure on the best terms possible. The letter was posted and left by the up mail-coach at 2 p.m. At seven o’clock that night he received an express from Greenock, announcing the safe arrival of his ship, and instantly despatched his head clerk in pursuit of the coach, with instructions to overtake it if possible, or, if he could not do so, to proceed to London and deliver a note to the broker, countermanding the insurance.

But, in spite of making every effort to urge on the postillions, the clerk was unable to overtake the mail, with its five hours’ start. He arrived in London shortly after, and proceeded, early in the morning, to the residence of the broker, before the morning delivery, and thus countermanded the order; with the result that an insurance which would have cost £1,500 was saved at the expense of £100.

Such were the incidents that accompanied the mail on its long journey; but they had already faded from general knowledge, and were treasured chiefly in the memories of a few oldsters, when its last days were come, in February 1848. They had been “piping times of peace” ever since the echoes of Waterloo had died away, in 1815; and for two reasons the news of great issues was no longer brought by the mail. Firstly, because great national events had become more rare; and secondly, because when there was especially momentous intelligence, enterprising folks, travelling even faster than the mail-coach, and setting out at any hour they chose, had stolen away the prime position of that old-time national intelligencer. For example, when at length the great Reform Bill passed the House of Lords, after a long period of hazardous political agitation, at 6.35 in the morning of Saturday, April 14th, 1832, a Mr. Young, of The Sun newspaper, left the Strand sixty-five minutes later in a post-chaise and four, with copies of The Sun he had caused to be printed between 6.30 and 7.30, containing a report of the debate and division, and travelled literally “post-haste” to Glasgow. At 7.30 p.m. on the next day, Sunday, he alighted at the house of his agent, Thomas Atkinson, Miller Street, Glasgow, having performed the journey in 35 hours 50 minutes: a speed, including stoppages for changing horses, of 11¼ miles an hour throughout.

There were, it would appear, others on the road on this occasion, similarly engaged, for John Bright spoke in after years of having travelled up from Manchester to London at the time, by the “Peveril of the Peak,” and of having, in common with the other passengers, “observed something coming towards us. We saw horses galloping, and carriages coming at great speed. By-and-by we saw two chaises with four horses, each chaise with two or three men inside. They were throwing out parcels from each window as they went past, galloping as fast as it was possible for horses to travel. These were express chaises, coming from London, bringing the news to all the people of the country—for there were then no telegraphs and no railways—of the glorious triumph of popular principles, even in the House of Lords, for that House had sat all night, and it was not until the morning that the House divided and the second reading of that great measure was carried by a majority of nine votes.” Men thought the millennium was come, but events have proved that it had not; and, according to latest advices, it has not been signalled, even yet.