Gentleman-coaching has scarcely been known in England seventy years. The Anglo-Erichthonius, the Hon. Charles Finch, brother to the Earl of Aylesford, used to drive his own coach-and-four, disguised in a livery great-coat. Soon after his dÉbut, however, the celebrated "Tommy Onslow," Sir John Lacy, and others, mounted the box in their own characters. Sir John was esteemed a renowned judge of coach-horses and carriages, and a coachman of the old school; but everything connected with the coach-box has undergone such a change, that the Nestors of the art are no longer to be quoted. Among the celebrities may be mentioned the "B. C. D.," or Benson Driving Club, which held its rendezvous at the "Black Dog," Bedfont, as one of the numerous driving associations, whose processions used, some five-and-thirty years ago, to be among the most imposing, as well as peculiar, spectacles in and about the metropolis. On the stage, the gentlemen drivers, of whom the members of the Four-in-Hand Club were the exclusive Élite, were illustrated rather than caricatured in Goldfinch, in Holcroft's comedy The Road to Ruin. Some of them who had not "drags" of their own, "tipped" a weekly allowance to stage coachmen, to allow them to "finger the ribbons," and "tool the team." Of course, they "What can Tommy Onslow do? He can drive a coach and two! Can Tommy Onslow do no more? He can drive a coach and four." It is a curious fact, that the fashion of amateur charioteering was first set by the ladies. Dr. Young has strikingly sketched, in his satires, the Delia who was as good a coachman as the man she paid for being so:— "Graceful as John, she moderates the reins, And whistles sweet her diuretic strains." The Four-in-Hand combined gastronomy with equestrianism and charioteering. They always drove out of town to dinner, and the ghost of Scrope Davies will pardon our suggesting that the club of drivers and diners might well have taken for their motto, "Quadrigis, petimus bene vivere!"[31] There is another version of the epigram on Tom Onslow:— "Say, what can Tommy Onslow do? Can drive a curricle and two. Can Tommy Onslow do no more? Yes,—drive a curricle and four." This is the version current, we are told, among Onslow's relations in the neighbourhood of Guildford. Lord Onslow's celebrity as a whip long preceded the existence of the Four-in-Hand Club (the palmy days of which belong to the times of George the Fourth), and it was not a coach, but a phaeton, that he drove. A correspondent of the AthenÆum writes: "I knew him personally, in my own boyhood, in Surrey, in the first years of the present century; and I remember then hearing the epigram now referred to, not as new, but as well known, in the following form:— 'What can little T. O. do? Drive a phaeton and two. Can little T. O. do no more? Yes,—drive a phaeton and four.' "Tommy Onslow was a little man, full of life and oddities, one of which was a fondness for driving into odd places; and I remember the surprise of a pic-nic party, which he joined in a secluded spot, driving up in his 'phaeton and four' through ways that were hardly supposed passable by anything beyond a flock of sheep. An earlier exploit of his had a less agreeable termination. He was once driving through Thames-street, when the hook of a crane, dangling down in front of one of the warehouses, caught the hood of the phaeton, tilting him out, and the fall broke his collar-bone." The vehicles of the Club which were formerly used are described as of a hybrid class, quite as elegant as private carriages and lighter than even the mails. They were horsed with the finest animals that money could secure. In general, the whole four in each carriage were admirably matched; grey and chestnut were the favourite colours, but occasionally very black horses, There remain a few handsome drags, superbly horsed. In a note to Nimrod's life-like sketch, "The Road,"[32] it is stated that "only ten years back, there were from thirty-four to forty four-in-hand equipages to be seen constantly about town." Nimrod has some anecdotical illustrations of the taste for the whip, which has undoubtedly declined; and at one time, perhaps, it occupied more attention among the higher classes of society than we ever wish to see it do again. Yet, taken in moderation, we can perceive no reason to condemn this branch of sport more than others. "If so great a personage as Sophocles could think it fitting to display his science in public, in the trifling game of ball, why may not an English gentleman exercise his skill on a coach-box? If the Athenians, the most polished nation of all antiquity, deemed it an honour to be considered skilful charioteers, why should Englishmen consider it a disgrace? To be serious, A commemoration of long service in the coaching department may be related here. In the autumn of 1835, a handsome compliment was paid to Mr. Charles Holmes, the driver and part proprietor of the Blenheim coach (from Woodstock to London) to celebrate the completion of his twentieth year on that well-appointed coach, a period that had elapsed without a single accident to his coach, his passengers, or himself; and during which time, with the exception of a very short absence from indisposition, he had driven his sixty-five miles every day, making somewhere about twenty-three thousand miles a year. The numerous patrons of the coach entered into a subscription to present him with a piece of plate; and accordingly a cup, bearing the shape of an antique vase, the cover surmounted by a beautifully modelled horse, with a coach and four horses on one side, and a suitable inscription on the other, was presented to Mr. Holmes by that staunch patron of the road, Sir Henry Peyton, Bart., in August, at a dinner at the Thatched House Tavern, St. James's-street, to which between forty and fifty gentlemen sat down. The list of subscribers amounted to upwards of two hundred and fifty, including among others the Duke of Wellington. |