SLOW COACHES—FAST COACHES—"THE WONDER" AND "BLENHEIM"—PUBLIC DINNERS TO THE DRIVERS—PRESENTATION OF A SILVER CUP TO A DRIVER OF "THE BLENHEIM"—THE YOUNG OXONIANS FAIRLY TAKEN IN—NIMROD ON THE SHREWSBURY AND CHESTER "HIGHFLYER"—BANEFUL EFFECTS OF RAILWAYS ON THE ROAD—"THE DESERTED VILLAGE"—WONDERFUL FEAT OF LOCOMOTION.

CHAPTER III.

The term "slow coach" became proverbial, and was applied not only to the lumbering six-inside vehicles that travelled at almost a snail's pace, but to every schoolboy and collegian who possessed little or no gumption. Unfortunately, in those days the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did not exist, or many a hulking fellow would have been had up for his merciless use of the lash when urging his wretched cattle up a severe hill or over ruts recently laid down with large unbroken stones—smooth "macadamised" roads being not then in prospective existence. So heavy was the draught that an appeal was being constantly made to the passengers to alight and walk up any acclivity, which upon a wet day or when the mud was ankle-deep, was not a very pleasant thing.

Such was the system of travelling in the good old times, as they were called, when every affair of life moved on at a quiet, jog-trot pace. But when competition of the most eager kind became the order of the day, it cannot be said that mails or coaches stood still. The Edinburgh Mail ran four hundred miles in forty hours, stoppages included. The Exeter day coach, the "Herald," went over its ground, one hundred and seventy-three miles, in twenty hours, an admirable performance, considering the natural unevenness of the country; and the Devonport Mail performed the journey, two hundred and twenty-seven miles, in twenty-two hours. The increase of speed was alarming to those who had been accustomed to the old-fashioned slow coaches, and the rate at which the new vehicles travelled was considered reckless risking of human life.

It may not be here out of place to observe that the first requisite in a coach horse is action, and the second sound legs and feet, with blood and bone. The third desideratum is good wind, as the power of respiration is called, without which the first and second qualifications avail but little for any length of time. A clear-winded coach horse will always keep his condition, and consequently his health, because he does not feel distress on a reasonable length of ground. The hunter or racer is good or bad, chiefly in proportion to his powers of respiration, and such equally applies to the coach horse. The food most proper, then, for a coach horse in fast work is that which affords ample support, without having a pernicious influence on his wind; or to use a more elegant, though not more forcible, expression, that which does not impair his respiratory organs by pressing on them.

To return to the fast coaches, so splendidly were they horsed, and so admirably well did they keep their time, that they fully merited the following eulogium.

At a dinner given at Shrewsbury some five and thirty years ago by coachmen and guards to the Honourable Mr. Kenyon, that gentleman, in proposing the health of Mr. R. Taylor, coach proprietor, made some interesting statements on the subject of stage-coach travelling. Among other remarks, he said:—

"As a coach proprietor, Mr. Taylor was one of the most spirited in England. He had, at one time, two of the very best coaches that ever ran—the "Hirondelle" and "Wonder." No coach established for itself a higher reputation than the former. On May 1st, (the precise year he could not recollect) it accomplished its journey of one hundred and twenty miles in eight hours and twenty minutes—a speed few coaches could ever boast of.

"He (Mr. Kenyon) was in Shrewsbury that day, and saw a team of four greys, belonging to Mr. Taylor, enter the town, which had done their nine miles in thirty-five minutes. He recollected that there were two ladies inside the coach, who were informed that, as that day was appointed for a trial of strength, they might, if they were frightened at the speed, choose any other conveyance they pleased, and should be forwarded on their journey immediately; but their answer showed good blood; they said they were not aware that they had come at the great speed they had, and that they preferred going fast.

"With regard to the 'Wonder,' he himself left the 'Lion Yard,' Shrewsbury, one morning at six o'clock, and was at Islington the same evening at seven o'clock, being only thirteen hours on the road. On that occasion he was driven by four of the best coachmen he ever saw.

"Another instance of the reputation the 'Wonder' had acquired was given him by his friend Sir Henry Peyton, who had informed him that he had frequently seen persons at St. Albans regulating their watches by the 'Wonder' coach as it came into that town. This was the only instance he had ever heard of a coach regulating the time. It was clear that the coach could not have gained such a name for regularity without good cattle and good coachmen, and it was to the proprietors they were indebted."

Charles Holmes, the driver of the "Blenheim" coach was in the year 1835 presented with a silver cup bearing the following inscription,

/# "Presented to Charles Holmes by Sir Henry Peyton on behalf of himself and two hundred and fifty subscribers, in testimony of their admiration of his good conduct as driver of the 'Blenheim' coach for a period of upwards of twenty years." #/ The subscription was limited to ten shillings, the actual half sovereign subscribed by the late Duke of Wellington was let into the bottom of the vase. The cup was presented to this first-rate "dragsman" after a dinner at the "Thatched House," presided over by Sir Henry Peyton.

Among the numerous anecdotes the road have furnished, perhaps one of the most amusing ones is the story of the Oxford "Defiance."

Term was over; the coach was full of young Oxonians returning to their respective colleges; the morning was cold, wet, and miserable, when the well-appointed "drag" drove up to the "White Horse Cellar," Piccadilly.

"Have you room for one inside?" asked as pretty a girl as you would wish to see on a Summer's day.

"What a beauty!" exclaimed one.

"Quite lovely!" said another.

"Perfect!" lisped a third.

"Quite full, Miss, inside and out," replied the coachman.

"Surely you could make room for one," persevered the fair applicant. "Quite impossible, without the young gentlemen's consent."

"Lots of room," cried the insides; "we are not very large; we can manage to take one more."

"If the gentlemen consent," replied the driver, "I can have no objection."

"We agree," said the inside quartette.

"All right," responded the coachman.

The fare was paid, and the guard proceeded to open the door, and let down the steps.

"Now, Miss, if you please; we are behind our time."

"Come along, grandfather," cried the damsel, addressing a most respectable-looking, portly, elderly man; "the money is paid; get in, and be sure you thank the young gentlemen," at the same time suiting the action to the word, and, with a smile, assisting her respected grandfather into the coach.

"Here's some mistake. You'll squeeze us to death," cried the astonished party.

"Sorry to incommode you," replied the intruder; "I hope you won't object to have both windows up, I'm sadly troubled with a cough."

At this moment, "All right, sit fast!" was heard; and the "Defiance" rattled away, best pace, drowning the voices of the astonished Oxonians.

"Nimrod" tells a good story of the Shrewsbury and Chester "Highflyer," which started at eight o'clock in the morning and arrived at Chester about the same time in the evening—distance forty miles. This was always a good hard road for wheels, and rather favourable for draught; and how, then, could all these hours be accounted for?

"Why, if a commercial gentleman had a little business at Ellesmere there was plenty of time for that. If a real gentleman wanted to pay a morning visit on the road, there could be no objection to that. In the pork-pie season half an hour was generally occupied in consuming one of them, for Mr. Williams, the coachman, was a wonderful favourite with the farmers' wives and daughters all along the road.

"The coach dined at Wrexham, and Wrexham Church was to be seen—a fine specimen of the florid Gothic, and one of the wonders of Wales. Then Wrexham was also famous for ale, there being no public breweries in those days in Wales; and, above all, the inn belonged to Sir Watkin. About two hours were allowed for dinner, but Billy Williams, one of the best-tempered fellows on earth, as honest as Aristides, was never particular to half an hour or so.

"'The coach is ready, gentlemen,' he would say; 'but don't let me disturb you if you wish for another bottle.'"

What a contrast does this furnish to the hasty meals at the railway stations, where the bell for departure is heard long before the hungry passenger has swallowed half his scalding soup, or devoured his plate of cold meat!

The removal of posting and coaching from the road has had a baneful effect upon every branch of trade and industry. One example from each line of railway will show the consequences of the change that has taken place.

In the town of Hounslow, which was the first stage on the Great Western Road, there used to be kept, for the purposes of coaching and posting, two thousand five hundred horses. Any person acquainted with the nature of the business is aware that it would not be by any means an exaggeration to say that every one of these horses, for keep, duty, shoeing, ostlers, harness, &c., occasioned an outlay of two pounds per week, so that there was a sum of five thousand pounds circulated every week in this one town, besides the money that was spent by travellers at the different inns; and a very considerable portion of that amount was paid for labour and distributed among the different tradesmen, every one of whom was benefited directly or indirectly.

The state of things on the first stage of the Western Road will serve as an example for the whole of the remaining distance, as, of course, an equal number of horses was required all the way down the road, and the effect, therefore, was equally destructive upon all towns which were formerly thriving and prosperous—witness Reading, Newbury, Hungerford, Marlborough.

On the Northern Road an equally disastrous effect has been produced. At Barnet, where formerly Messrs. Bryant and Newman, the rival postmasters, could produce three hundred to four hundred pairs of horses, and where, also an immense number of coach-horses were kept, the grass has grown over the inn yard. The same observation applies with equal force to all towns east and south of the metropolis.

The above gave rise to the following parody on Goldsmith's "Deserted Village":—

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

"Quantum mutatus ab illo."

A popular writer who flourished some five and forty years ago quotes a letter from a personal friend, who boasts of the following wonderful feat of locomotion:—

"I was out hunting last season, on a Monday, near Brighton, and dined with my father in Merrion Square, Dublin, at six o'clock on the following Wednesday, distance four hundred miles."

It was done thus:—He went from Brighton in an afternoon coach that set him down in London in time for the Holyhead Mail, and this mail, with the help of the steamer to cross the Channel, delivered him in Dublin at the time mentioned.

What would the writer say now, when, by leaving London at 7.15 a.m., he may dine at the table-d'hÔte at the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin, at 7.30 p.m., with ample time to have a hot bath and change his dress before dinner is served?

The writer then proceeds to say:—

"In this wonder-working age few greater improvements have been made in any of the useful arts than in those applied to the system of travelling by land. Projectors and projects have multiplied with our years, and the fairy-petted princes of the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments" were scarcely transported from place to place with more facility or dispatch than Englishmen are in a.d. 1832. From Liverpool to Manchester, thirty-six miles, in an hour and a half! Surely DÆdalus is come amongst us again."

What would the writer of the above have thought if he had lived to travel by what is termed the "Flying Dutchman," which now runs from London to Plymouth in six hours and a quarter, and which, we understand, will shortly accomplish seventy miles an hour.

To resume—or, as the gentlemanly gang under Captain Macheath say, "Let us take the road" as it was at the period above mentioned.

The Edinburgh Mail ran the distance (four hundred miles) in forty hours, stoppages included. The Exeter day-coach, the "Herald," performed her journey of one hundred and seventy-three miles in twenty hours; Stevenson's Brighton "Age" kept its time to the minute; in short, from London to Cheltenham, Gloucester, Worcester, Birmingham, Norwich, Bath, Bristol, Southampton, Oxford, Cambridge, was little more than a pleasant Summer day's drive.

In order to accomplish the above fast journey two important considerations were required; first, that the horses should not be overworked, and, secondly, that they should be well fed. Horses have increased greatly in price since the period I write of, and a team which would have cost a hundred guineas in 1832 could not now be had for two hundred and fifty guineas. The cost of coaches of the best materials varied from one hundred and forty pounds to one hundred and sixty pounds; generally speaking, they were hired from the maker at from twopence half-penny to threepence per mile.