Mail Coaches.—Mr Palmer ill-used.—Vicinity of Birmingham.—Collieries on fire.—Stafford.—Stone.—Newcastle-under-Line.—Punishments for Scolding.—Cheshire.—Bridgewater Arms at Manchester.
The mail coach which communicates between Bristol and Manchester, leaves Birmingham at a reasonable hour in the morning. These coaches travel at a rate little short of two leagues in the hour, including all stoppages; they carry four inside passengers, two outside; the rate of fare is considerably higher than in other stages; but a preference is given to these, because they go faster, no unnecessary delays are permitted, and the traveller who goes in them can calculate his time accurately. Every coach has its guard, armed with a blunderbuss, who has charge of the mails; he has a seat affixed behind the coach, from whence he overlooks it, and gives notice with a horn to clear the road when any thing is in the way, to bring out the horses when he approaches the end of a stage, and to be ready with the letter-bags when he enters a post-town. Guards and coachmen all wear the royal livery, and the royal arms are upon the coaches.
It is now about twenty years since this plan has been adopted. Before that time the mails were carried by a single courier, who was as long again upon the road, and at the mercy of every footpad. They are now perfectly safe; they go without expense, in consequence of the profits of the coaches: and the effect of the rapid communication has been to double that branch of the revenue which is derived from the post-office. Yet the projector has little reason to be satisfied with the justice of the nation. He stipulated for a centage upon the clear increase of revenue above a certain sum. The whole management of the post-office was intrusted to him; but there were two lords above him with higher powers and higher salaries. These places he wished to abolish as useless, not recollecting that government desires to have as many places at its disposal as possible, and, instead of wanting to curtail the number of old ones, would have been obliged to him to have invented new. In the struggle he was displaced himself: so far all was fair, as he only lost the stake for which he was playing: but advantage was taken of this to annul the terms of the contract between him and the nation, and assign him 4000l. a-year, in lieu of his per centage, which already amounted to a much larger sum, and would yearly have increased with the increasing revenue. Of course he remonstrated against this breach of public faith; the cause was brought before parliament, and it was absurdly argued against him, that smaller pensions than this had been deemed a sufficient reward for their victorious admirals,—as if rewards and contracts were of the same nature. The minister was against him, and parliament therefore annulled its own contract in its own favour.[5]
Before this plan of Mr Palmer's was established, the ordinary pace of travelling in England differed little from what it still is in other countries: an able-bodied man might walk the usual day's journey. Its effects have not been confined to the revenue. Other stages immediately adopted the guard, and became secure from robbers; they were stimulated to rival speed, and in consequence improvements in coach-building of some kind or other are every year discovered and adopted; even waggons travel faster now than post coaches did before this revolution. Hence travelling consumes at present so much less time, and is attended by so much less fatigue, that instead of being regarded as an evil, it is one of the pleasures of the English; and people, as is our case at this very time, set out upon a journey of two hundred leagues to amuse themselves.
The morning was fair, we mounted the roof, and I looked back upon Birmingham not without satisfaction at thinking I should never enter it again. A heavy cloud of smoke hung over the city, above which in many places black columns were sent up with prodigious force from the steam-engines. We rejoiced that we were travelling into a better atmosphere, but the contagion spread far and wide. Every where around us, instead of the village church, whose steeple usually adorns so beautifully the English landscape, the tower of some manufactory was to be seen in the distance, vomiting up flames and smoke, and blasting every thing around with its metallic vapours. The vicinity was as thickly peopled as that of London. Instead of cottages we saw streets of brick hovels, blackened with the smoke of coal fires, which burn day and night in these dismal regions. Such swarms of children I never beheld in any other place, nor such wretched ones,—in rags, and their skins encrusted with soot and filth. The face of the country as we advanced was more hideous that can be described, uncultivated, black and smoking. I asked the coachman from whence the smoke proceeded, and he told me the whole earth beneath us was on fire; some coal-mines had taken fire many years ago, and still continued to burn. "If you were to travel this road by night, sir," said he, "you would see the whole country a-fire, and might fancy you were going to hell!"—A part of the road which is thus undermined gave way lately under one of the stages; it did not sink deep enough to kill the passengers by the fall, but one of them had his thigh broken.
This deplorable country continued for some leagues, till we had passed Wolverhampton, the last manufacturing town in this direction. Between this place and Penkridge it improved, we were once more in an agricultural land, and beheld clean skins and healthy countenances. We passed through Stafford, the county town, a small but well-built place, of which the main trade consists in shoes; and dined the next stage beyond it at Stone. Here were formerly venerated the two martyrs Wulfold and Rufinus, who were slain by their own father Wulpher, the Pagan king of Mercia, the father of StWerburga also; who, by the merits of his children, was himself at last favoured with grace to repentance. All traces of their worship have long since disappeared; only the town derives its name from the stones which were heaped over the place of their burial. Here we entered the country of the potteries, from whence the greater part of England is supplied with common ware, and also with that finer sort called Wedgewood, after its inventor, and known all over Europe. Etruria is the name which he gave to his fabric, because the Etruscan remains were his models, and to him it is that England, and, it may be added, Europe,—for where do not the fashions of England extend?—is indebted for having familiarised to us the beautiful forms of Etruscan design.
This is a populous province; in no other part have I seen the towns standing so near together. We soon advanced to Newcastle-under-Line. Here my friend the coachman told me they had a curious custom of punishing scolds, by putting a bridle and bitt into the mouth of the offender, so as to confine her tongue, and leading her in this manner through the streets as an example. Whether the English women are particularly addicted to this offence, I am not sufficiently acquainted with them to say; but it should seem so by the severity with which the laws regard it. In other places immersion is the punishment; the woman is fastened in a chair at the end of a long plank or pole, which is hoisted out over the river, and there elevated or lowered by means of a lever; in this manner they dip her as often as the officiating constable thinks proper, or till she no longer displays any inclination to continue the offence, which probably is not till she has lost the power. Both methods are effectual ones of enforcing silence upon an unruly tongue, but they are barbarous customs, and ought to be wholly disused.[6] We were now entering Cheshire, the great cheese country, and the difference between a land of manufactures and a land of pasturage was delightful. The houses of the labourers were clean cottages: those of the rich, old mansions with old trees about them in view of the village church, where generation after generation, for ages back, the heirs of the family had been baptized in the same font, and buried in the same vault; not newly-erected brick buildings with shrubs and saplings round them, in hearing of the mill-wheels and hammer, by which the fortune of the owner has been fabricated. One house which we passed was the most singular I have ever seen: very old it must needs be,—how many centuries I will not venture to conjecture. The materials are wood and mortar without stone; the timber-frames painted black, and the intervening panes of plaster-work whitened; no dress in an old picture was ever more curiously variegated with stripes and slashes. The roof rises into many points; the upper story projecting over the lower like a machicolated gateway, except that the projection is far greater; and long windows with little diamond-shaped panes reach almost from side to side, so that the rooms must be light as a lantern. There is a moat round it. I should guess it to be one of the oldest dwelling-houses in the kingdom.
We saw this quiet pastoral country to the best advantage; the sun was setting, and the long twilight of an English summer evening gives to the English landscape a charm wholly its own. As soon as it grew dark the coach lamps were lighted; the horses have no bells, and this is as needful for the security of other travellers as for our own. But the roads are wide; and if a traveller keeps his own proper side, according to the law of the roads, however fearful it may be to see two of these fiery eyes coming on through the darkness, at the rate of two leagues in the hour, he is perfectly safe. We meant, when evening closed, to have forsaken the roof and taken our seats withinside; but the places were filled by chance passengers picked up on the way, and no choice was left us. Star-light and a mild summer air made the situation not unpleasant, if we had not been weary and disposed to sleep; this propensity it was not safe to indulge; and the two hours after night set in till we reached Manchester, were the most wearying of the whole day.
The entrance into the city reminded me of London, we drove so long over rough street stones, only the streets were shorter and the turns we made more frequent. It was midnight when we alighted at a spacious inn, called the Bridgewater Arms. In these large manufacturing towns, inns have neither the cleanliness or comfort which we find in smaller places. In the country there is a civility about the people of the house, and an attention on their part, which, though you know hospitality is their trade, shows, or seems to show, something of the virtue. Here all is hurry and bustle; customers must come in the way of trade, and they care not whether you are pleased or not. We were led into a long room, hung round with great-coats, spurs, and horsewhips, and with so many portmanteaus and saddle-bags lying about it, that it looked like a warehouse. Two men were smoking over a bottle of wine at one table; they were talking of parabolics and elliptics, and describing diagrams on the table with a wet finger; a single one was writing at another, with a large pocket-book lying open before him. We called for supper; and he civilly told us that he also had given a like order, and if we would permit him should be happy to join us. To this we of course acceded. We found him to be a commercial traveller, and he gave us some useful information concerning Manchester, and the best method of proceeding on our journey. It was going towards two o'clock when we retired. We slept as usual in a double-bedded room, but we had no inclination to converse after we were in bed. I fell asleep almost instantaneously, and did not awake till nine in the morning.—I must not forget to tell you, that over the entrance to the passage on each side of which the bed-rooms are arranged, is written in large letters Morphean!
