By the operation of the new Order in Council regulating Civil Service superannuations, under which officers who have attained the age of sixty-five have—nolens volens—to take their pensions, there will be, at the end of this year 1891, quite an exodus of many who through the survival of the strongest and fittest are still serving Her Majesty, although they have reached the Psalmist’s allotted span of three score years and ten.
The loss of our veterans in this manner will be accompanied by many a pang of regret, but in the case of Mr. Moses James Nobbs, the last of the Mail Coach Guards, who is now about to be pensioned, the regret is softened by the circumstance that he recognises his inability to work any longer, and finds the quiet and comfort of country life at Uxbridge, to which place he is retiring, more suitable than Post Office occupation at a busy London Railway Station.
Mr. Nobbs has been in the service of the Post Office fifty-five years. He commenced life as a Mail Guard, and for years worked on Mail coaches. When the old coach system was superseded by railway service Mr. Nobbs did postal duty for some years as Mail Guard on the London and Exeter Railway, and was afterwards appointed to superintend the receipt and despatch of Mail bags at Paddington Station. Thus he was better known to travellers of all degrees on the Great Western line of Railway than to his fellow-servants, with whom he was not brought much into contact, owing to the fact that his duties confined him to the Paddington Terminus. In order, therefore, that this Post Office rara avis might be brought into prominence—as his early retirement was then foreseen—I wrote of him as follows in a published report on the Post Office work in the Christmas Season of 1889:—
“The Christmas postal traffic on the Great Western Railway necessitated the running of the Night Mail train in two portions between London and Penzance, the first part taking the passengers, and the second being reserved exclusively for the Mails. Strangely enough, the despatch of the Mails from Paddington Station was superintended by the only Mail Coach Guard now in the service, Mr. James Nobbs, who for over fifty years has most faithfully looked after Her Majesty’s Mails. He well recollects that on Christmas Eve, 1839, just prior to the introduction of the Penny Post, he was the Guard to the Mail Coach running between Cheltenham and Aberystwith. What a contrast! His Christmas night’s load of Mails in 1839 did not exceed a hundredweight. In 1889 he saw off from Paddington twenty tons of Mail matter in the day, in the most prosaic manner, with no blowing of musical horn, and no carrying of deadly blunderbuss, as of yore. The still hale and hearty old gentleman, in the picturesque costume of the Mail Guard of the past, is a prominent figure at Paddington Station, and long may he so remain.”
Mr. F. E. Baines, C.B., Inspector-General of Mails, in his well-known humorous style, gave in “Blackfriars” the following account of a coach trip taken to Brighton by the chiefs of the Post Office Department, to inaugurate a Parcel Post Service by road with “London-super-Mare”:—
“Mr. Moses James Nobbs, the last (I think) surviving Mail Guard, began work June 27th, 1836, and still does duty as Mail Officer at Paddington. He could remember a good deal in his fifty-three years of service. Old memories must have revived as he went down from London to Brighton, two or three years ago, as Guard in charge of the special trip of the new Brighton Parcel Coach. He was fully equipped, as of yore, for that perilous journey, a timepiece from Jamaica serving to complete the outfit. We maintained (within an hour or two) a moderate punctuality, but the tropic sun, or a luncheon at Red Hill, I know not which—perhaps both—disturbed the due action of the watch. ‘Thrice armed the Guard who hath his timepiece just.’ All the same, a blunderbuss from Exeter was handed in at the last moment to make our armament fourfold; and, I grieve to state, had, amidst the delighted and (I fear) ironical cheers of a crowded courtyard, to be tied on to the hind seat with official string.”
Mr. Baines considerately omitted to say that Mr. Nobbs’ attempts to blow the horn were somewhat of a failure. When, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne, he was asked to act as guard to the coach, he represented that he could not blow a horn owing to having lost several teeth. He was, however, persuaded to attempt it, and to practise beforehand. Unfortunately his efforts in going down that busy London artery—Cheapside—were futile, and the feeble sounds he managed to extract from the horn excited the derision of all the street urchins en route. Mr. Nobbs took his discomfiture in perfect good humour, and I feel sure will not be offended at this public allusion to the amusing incident.
Another contretemps on the same journey was the stoppage of the coach at the bottom of Cheapside by the police on account of the coachman—that well known jehu, Mr. John Manley Birch—trying to take the coach on the wrong side of a particular post. Sir Arthur Blackwood tried his persuasive powers, Mr. Algernon Turnor threatened pains and penalties for the interference with Her Majesty’s Royal Mail, but the policemen were inexorable. The position was getting rather ludicrous, and the immense traffic was being considerably impeded, when, in a twinkling, our resolute coachman saw his opportunity, and having for leaders two horses accustomed to run in a fire-engine and quick to get a start, drove past the astonished policemen—who were not prepared for such a dash—and away we sped amid the plaudits of the assembled crowd.
At the Conversazione at the South Kensington Museum in 1890, in celebration of the Jubilee of Penny Postage, Mr. Nobbs, as one of the oldest officers in the Postal Service, had the honour of presenting to Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Edinburgh a letter signed by old officers of the Post Office, who entered the service more than fifty years previously. Again, at a meeting which was held at the General Post Office to inaugurate the City Telegraph Messengers’ Institute, Mr. Nobbs in his brilliant scarlet coat put Postmen and Telegraph Messengers quite into the shade. He said at this meeting what a boon it would have been to him if Institutes, with night classes, had been formed in the days when he first donned Her Majesty’s uniform. If he could then have obtained the educational advantages now enjoyed by every Telegraph Boy employed in the City, he would not, after a period of fifty-five years of most faithful and zealous service have occupied at the last the comparatively subordinate position of a Mail Guard.
In order that this good old man may not depart without some testimony that his sterling qualities have been recognised and respected, it has occurred to me that the publication of some incidents of his life, told by himself, may be of interest, as the words of a man who has seen the old order of things entirely displaced by the new, and who, by his integrity and unflagging zeal in a long life of faithful devotion to duty, has well exhibited—
“The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed.”
In introducing his interesting narrative, I would remark that the self-sacrificing spirit which Mr. Nobbs displayed on the trying occasions recalled in these reminiscences has characterised the whole of his official career. He would have deserved well of his country if he had done nothing more than show by his example, as he certainly has done, that he acted up to the bon mot, given in his narrative, that he would never “damage his own health by drinking other people’s.” Certainly no one should know so well as an old Mail Guard how many people put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains; and no doubt Mr. Nobbs has carried many a Squeers who found it necessary to alight at every stage “to stretch his legs,” but whose breath on getting up again was redolent of gin. Mr. Nobbs has, however, done more than present an example of self-control and temperance. To use his own unaffected words, it has always been his “greatest ambition” to do his duty faithfully, and thus earn the confidence of his superior officers. To this ambition he has been consistent throughout. He has succeeded in winning the confidence and esteem of his official superiors, and he retires from the Service with their heartiest good wishes.
R. C. TOMBS.
December, 1891.
