• TILE OLD COACHING - DAYS. * THE old gentleman to whom
we are indebted for this spirited and humorous collection of anecdotes, incidents; and circuni- stances of coach-travel hi old times, laments—or -rather, does not lament, { for he is of too cheerful and philosophic a spirit for lamentation—but asserts that lie is so near the bottom of the hill, that if it were possible, there would still be no use in putting. the break on, fast as the pace is. However badly he may,he, suffering ; from what a friend. of the present writer calls “.thsdiripo.Doiniui complaint," we cannot find a symptom of itljn the jivAx?„9arpful; amusing chronicle before us, unless in deed,litAllifokli•Opented yearning after the old times, .and. gentle, and kindly impatience of new ways and expressions ; Of; for tØ gt„hifbyfalrona " of whieli he nevai" ,44644,44tliout :tile protest, at which. we cannot help smiling, of:, IS- they - thaw. dap," or " as : they..hsyo..4 nova" ,h7 h ()Ugh, spite tint of sporting eirelea and anything !. but 49,.i'.41-:44.3443",ilgh he never drove feur7in-hand,,t0 iftauttoettain..Avhetiiera hap has._ dAyPis a Pai1R-,9.kq't gtte Attie! prei*A> Ateiter feels ['slinost aal keen: ii.74deasurio o woba ova iyNin* 4.1kaL, th0:4I; AWOL(' *UPS AUSW.1117-:: P en aj. "TIF.4.1k neveliMinhettagaie.1-471nnpartrieular,- h.e remembers: 4,3p,nrner, onefr_Affehifidtinat'itghtehen he joined;litalrareietttlatnailat flire, only 'baiSenger',-, the Cott&' being loaded. insidarand, Onside with game and Poultry, with:and without harepers;,;itntl hang from every ieonceivable point,. covering tip the windows, and rhai‘ely the- box'and guarcr,aseiat to, be tenantable; -_,Theelear ring" i-of the. hoofs, on the frosty tulip* road; the echo in *henarraw,:ill-paved streets' -; the rousing,horn wherevergatesi,or preit,bags,i orfresh teams interruptedthe rapid journey;- the- clear, :starlight night '; the bright:welcome of inn fires ;. the-..sociablei coachman; the taciturn guard, and. the Alert horse7keepers;.whose sleepiness never seemed to dull :their wits'; .and.the,mysterierus,pictureisqueness. of everything, whether.,giant trees, or roadside barn, Or _quaiut old .winding . streets, in . the .semi-darknesa that, " coVereth. a multitude-of sins," and which is intensified- ra,ther than dispersed by the flashing . lights of the mail, are recalled with . vivid. pleasure. Not so, :however, the dreary.! change of scene to the White Horse -..Tard in Fetter -Lane at five on a winter's morning; to- the wretched dis- order of ; last might?s coffee-room, and the: sleepy, elatternly kitchen-maid, with not a glimpse of fire, or faintest hope of ,even a tardy breakfast. . Then, too; there was.the journey by the night mait.from-Chester to .Holyhead -in the- early- autumn weather, when the Welsh horse-keepers always swore in English, though that exhausted their- Angle-Saxon vocabulary.; and when the -Menai.Bridgastood up so:suddenly, like a strange ghost., with .its -complexity of i'dlittine and rods .flitting -hither and -thither, like living. things, in the shifting lights and shadows that. ,sprang out and retreated -in rapid alternation,, as the coach glided noise- lessly and smoothly' over the: floor of that marvellous bridge, and under its great arches, and-past the huge chains that flew up and down at its approach. And another reminiscence Comes back from the "passage" over the wide Severn, that had been crossed by the' light of a stormy moon over a stormy sea, in a huge, one-sailed ferry-boat ; when the luggage was packed on, as the coach stood on the wet and gleamy shore, and the lamps shone on the patient horses waiting to be put in, and on the men who muttered together the technicalities of the stable- yard, till the coachman took the ribbons and the horses pulled vigorously up the steep bank ; and at the entry to Bristol, how distinct is the picture of the scene where some early boys waited at the top of that steepest of English streets to put the "skid" on before the descent to College Green began. And many another coach-journey, east and west and north and south ; along the 'broad, flat roads of the east, the deep, steep lanes of Devon and Dorset, the bleak hills and lovely dales of Derbyshire ; amongst the mountains of North Wales—once in the bitter March of 1855—and on the road from Shrewsbury to Aberystwith, where the last long-coach of South Britain lingered, till it also suc- cumbed to the inexorable Railway,—all these comeback to awaken • Down The Road; or, Reminiscenc a es Re Gentleman Coachman. By C. T. S. B. Beynardson. 1 vol. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.
our sympathy with our author's yearnings after the old coaching days.
Our author, however, does not confine his narrative to the picturesque and romantic side of coach travelling ; he describes with candour and with feeling too—so that we wonder his en- thusiasm for driving never . died out—the experience of fog and gloom, and he rises through the varieties of drizzle and sleet, to blinding and continuous- rain or deep and driving snow. Hunger and cold, dripping garments, pulpy, slippery. reins, and still more pulpy gloves, " sticky " horses, stupid stablemen, surly landlords, bad roads, and cold and cheerless receptions when the drive came to an end in which nearly every possible discomfort had been his,-were unable to cool his passion for "working" a four-horse coach. But amongst all the discomforts and contretemps of such a life, it is curious that our author was never able to number an accident In those daya,,there were, he says, "wonderfully few accidents; and I. am „happy to say that in the many hundreds of miles I have travelled by them and driven them, .I never saw a coach turned over,!' Ale killed a pig once., and once knew a coach- man who, henget:1.44*J', but that w.as because he had ceased to drive, and fourtA,liflOnli. Wheolerahrpke their thighs, leadetli got clean away.,,,iathers hulled „Tight sound and took the Oagh, .back,i1OaAesayoymri,ui;Alm; and without ,into the bank, peaeclimen., ,bfeke,ihts . went out, fir`n,".1P1,9ff,1110119F 031144- AFR914 c'n Peri91-14 Pfrgi4enlAlfdtIORP,M4S1 kti* :Jar44th.eensaid, APS19ffie 0,96#1-1400411,WITAAMI til2ta0r-FleP44A110 *9idelit Aesit11.40100iTelifalrIgo3474,40P#PRMiWea',TOOR,F014- pgccf ,t2410(ibffoiwki 01444”:; and. tbj* qumgh our newepapeR letunotlAng,ascape. uow, vddle the untio`rity q-coach acci4eu417791q.43311Wa of beyond the locality* Which they occurred., But pie Aoqox:of railway. accident _lies partly in the expectation of itonclie the knowledge of its wholesale character andaWiul nature if it do occur. And of this terror of anticipation there was certainly nothing in the coaching, days, which had no experience-7-with their:eleven miles,an hour and sixteea passengers .of the terrible earuage of modern accidents. Mr. lleynardson's freedom from mishap may, however, without, doubt be attri- buted in. a groat measure to, his own good driving ;, for though We never read amore modest book of personal ;adventure, yet it does not escape us that his pluck and self-possession were as perfect as his And this is as we might have anticipated, for the cheerful endurance of hardship which the choice a such an amusement evidences, generally goes hand, in hand with courage and presence of mind. There is an anecdote a propos of these qualities which we must quote, for we can scarcely imagine greater coolness than that, which could unbuckle and separate the reins in such circumstances as those described :— " According to the orders I bad received, we were going up the sharp pitch at a dead pull and a foot's pace, when all of a sudden, just as we got under a large spreading oak tree, whose branches hung over the mad, so that there was hardly room for our heads without dunking, the off-leader, choked and wont down bang on his head, pulling Grimaldi ,down with him, broke the check rein, and pulled the tongue of one of the hackles on the coupling rein through the buckle. Up jumped Grimaldi, and being, like the famous clown of that name, very active on his legs, he went up the aide of the bank and then down again into the road, then up the bank again, looking as wild as a hawk, and at one time I really thought he was coming to sit beside me on the box. The grooms jumped down, my friend jumped down, and made the beet of his way up the bank, and everybody would have jumped down if they could'; but the scrimmage was very quick, and there was no time for anything, and matters were getting serious. The coach was running back, and the brutes of wheelers would not help me, and kept backing. I was under the tree, and, from the branches almost touching my head, I could not use my whip to keep them up; it Was impossible to administer any persuasion in the double-thong line. All of a sudden the two leaders turned short round, having got upon their legs again. The bars flew up, caught the pole-hook cross-ways, and pulled it out as straight as a kitchen skewer; the bars, all three, of course, fell down, and dangled about their heels. They set to kicking, and having no kind of command of them from the coupling reins being broken, I thought it advisable to get rid of them if possible. So I divided my leading reins from my wheelers, and when they made a plunge I dropped the leading reins on to the wheelers' tenets and let them go. I Was uncommonly glad.to see them free of me and the coach, and galloping away across the meadow with the bars dangling behind them and the reins trailing along on the ground. Had not the pole-hook bent and let the bars go free, I know not what would have become of us; as it was, all went as well as could be expected under such circumstances. Had the polo- hook behaved otherwise than it did, I conclude we should have had the pleasure of being run away with across the meadow, and should possibly ultimately have found ourselves in the river which ran hard by; for from the fact of the coupling reins beingbroken, and the tongue having been pulled through the buckle, all the steering power was gone from the man at the helm.' Whilst the scrimmage was going on, the wheelers, who had behaved very well on the whole, had backed one wheel against the bank, and there we were, half across the road.
It did not, therefore, take much time or trouble to turn round entirely and go to the bottom of the bill, where I pulled up, and having taken the longest breath I ever took in my life, or ever hope to take again, I congratulated myself and the two or three passengers that had remained on the coach that matters were no worse, and that we were 'all alive and kicking."
The book is full of hints valuable to four-in-hand gentlemen, and explanations of the derivation and origin of old coaching terms that may amuse the old coach traveller who remembers them. But for the ,sake of the non-sporting reader, we must content our- selves with one or two extracts of a more general and lively nature. One winter's day an officer mounted the coach, whom our author, who was driving, recognised as a fellow Etonian. He led the conversation that way therefore, and the officer followed willingly :—
" 'Well, sir,' said I, looking him as full in the face as the sleet, and wind, and rain, and snow would permit me to do, since you were at Eton, perhaps you can tell me how it used to go. Was it not something in this way : Lord Lincoln, Spottiswoode Major, Colville Minor, Rey- nardson Major, Stock, Boteler, Bromhead, Bowie, Tickell, Vyse Major, and so forth ?'—' Good gracious,' said he, all amazement, were you at Eton ?'—' Yes, sir,' I said; '1 was.'—' Why,' said be, looking hard at me, it surely must be Reynardson Major.'—' Yes, sir,' I said ; 'it is the very man.'—' Good heavens, old fellow !' he said, holding out his hand ; did not know you in that hat and macintosh, and driving the mail; bat I am very glad to meet you again. Do tell me, how the deuce did you come to this?'—Well, this was a facer ;' but I kept my countenance. 'How did I come to this ? Why, you see,' said we all have our ups and downs in life, I suppose, and I have had mine:" And so on till to towards the end of the journey, when, in fear of too handsome a "tip," he admits that he is only a gentle- man coachman. We have an amusing account of a Welsh coachman who had charge of the parcels, but who could not read, and who quarrelled with the guard who could, but who on a "paper cart "—the slang for mail coach—was only responsi- ble for the mail-bags. His other duty was to "see that his pair of pistols and blunderbuss were in such a state that they would not go off if called upon. The brace of pistols and the brass blunderbuss were always given to the guard in London with the letter-bags, and were always strapped and buckled up round the locks and trigger-guards in a sort of leather case, very securely, to prevent accidents. During the many years I drove, I never heard of one being used ; nor did I ever, to my recollection, see the guard produce them except to give them up at the Post Office at the end Of his journey."
There is a most humorous account of a whim our author took into his head, namely, to drive coach about the Continent, but he had not money to buy horses :—
" So I posted and travelled voiturier with my great yellow coach, sometimes lugging my harness with me, and sometimes sending it by roulage.' till I thought I should have gone mad with the bother and trouble I had. Sometimes I lost it altogether, and sometimes the Douaniers at the frontiers detained it, wondering what I could want with harness and no horses. They gave me all sorts of trouble ; still the harness stuck to me, and we got to Milan. From Milan I was per- suaded by a friend to go on to Rome, and the harness was again sent by 'roulage ' to Rome, where I was quite determined to get some horses, coaite qui mite.' When I reached Rome no harness had come, and when it did come the idiots—for I can call them nothing else—would not let it enter the 'Holy City.' It remained in the Custom House for some weeks, and no power could induce the officials to loose their hold of it. It was a 'contraband of war,' and they would not let me pay duty for it, or let me even see it. At last I got an audience of a good- natured old cardinal, Cardinal Tosti, who, upon my giving him the 'word of a Britisher' that I would not sell it, liberated my harness. What to do with it when I had it again I knew not. I could not find any horses' and if I had, I had not the cash to pay for them' and so, after much bother and perplexity of mind, I sent the infernal harness all the way back to England; and when I got home bad it made up into two pairs of pair-horse harness, and a dearish two pairs of harness It was to me."
His trouble with his " dreadful " harness was nearly equalled by that with his coach, which only fetched him ill when he got home, but which he would cheerfully have given away rather than keep. A great many amateur and aristocratic coachmen seem to have been much exercised in mind, and to have laid their heads together to know why horses, according to their unanimous and invariable experience, always went better in the dark :—
'" Well,' said 'his Honour,' I'll tell you. One night after dinner I got on the mail ; the horses seemed to go so well and merrily that I turned to Billy, and said, "Hang me, Billy, if I can make it out, but horses always seem to go better at night than they do in the day. I've tried to account for it, but I never could satisfactorily."—" Why, I am surprised at you," said Billy, "do you mean that you really don't know that?"—" Why, of course I don't," said 'his Honour,' "or I should not ask yo.i."—'• Well, then," said Billy, "if you want to know the real reason, it is because you have had your dinner." Of course, this must be the reason, and not a bad one either. I remember poor old Sir Henry was mightily pleased at this bit of information."
On one occasion a coachman was pestered by a Methodist parson to accept a few tracts. He had stuffed several, with only half a good grace, into his pockets, when just as one of the pole-chains came undone, and things grew critical, another tract was pressed upon him :—" Oh dear ! oh dear ! whatever can I do with your papers ; bow ever can you be a giving me papers now ; no skid on, pole-chain gone, and never a bit of gravel as I can see to run a wheel on. I don't see as we shan't be over yet ; so if you happens to know anything short, sir, now's your time."
The book—a small quarto—is beautifully get up on thick, rich paper, but the coloured illustrations are not remarkable, though lively. Sometimes the horses are admirablydrawn—theyare in those opposite pages 134 and 136—but the coach and passengers are of the thoroughly stereotyped kind ; and anything more amusingly unlike the reality, than the landscape at the top of Pen-maen- mawr, in the first of the two mentioned above, it is impossible to conceive. We wish Mr. Reynardson a hearty farewell, and hope that the remaining stages of his journey may be easy and pleasant.
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