LETTERS AND NEWSPAPERS.
Among the manifold arrangements which characterise the interior of
the British hive there is, we believe, no one which offers to an
intelligent observer a more important moral than the respect which is
everywhere paid by us to the correspondence of the nation. Prior to
the introduction of railways our post-office establishment was the
admiration of every foreigner who visited us. But although our light
mail-coaches, high-bred horses, glittering harness, skilful coachmen,
resolute guards, and macadamised roads were undeniably of the very
best description, yet the moral basis on which the whole fabric
rested, or rather the power which gave vitality to its movements,
evidently was a patriotic desire indigenous in the minds of people of
all classes to protect, as their common wealth, the correspondence
of the country; and accordingly it mattered not whether on our
public thoroughfares were to be seen a butcher’s cart, a brewer’s
dray, a bishop’s coach, a nobleman’s landau, the squire’s chariot
or his tenant’s waggon;--it mattered not what quantity of vehicles
were assembled for purposes good, bad, or indifferent, for church,
for race-course, or for theatre;--it mattered not for what party of
pleasure or for what political purpose a crowd or a mob might have
assembled; for at a single blast through a long tin horn people of
all ranks and conditions, however they might be disposed to dispute
on all other subjects, were ready from all quarters to join together
in exclaiming, “MAKE WAY FOR THE MAIL!”
At the magic whistle of the locomotive engine the whole of the
extremely slow, dull, little-bag system we have just referred to
suddenly fell to pieces. Nevertheless, the spirit that had animated
it flew from the road to the rails, and although our penny-postal
arrangements, notwithstanding their rapid growth, are less
conspicuous, there exists throughout the country the same honest
anxiety that our letter-bags should be circulated over the surface
of the United Kingdom with the utmost possible care and despatch. In
order, however, to fulfil this general desire the duties which our
Postmaster-General is now required to perform are most extraordinary.
The difficulty of transmitting from London to every part of the
United Kingdom, and _vice versâ_, the innumerable quantity of letters
which, like mushrooms springing up from a bed of spawn, have arisen
from our sudden adoption of a penny-postage, would alone require
minute calculations, involving an infinity of details; but when it
is considered that besides this circulation from and to the heart
of the metropolis--(the average weight of letters and newspapers
carried daily by the London and North-Western Railway is seventeen
tons)--there exists simultaneously a cross circulation, not only from
and to every great city and town, but from every little post-office
to every part of the United Kingdom and _vice versâ_, and moreover
to every region on the globe, the eccentric zigzag courses of all
these letters to their respective destinations may justly be compared
to the fiery tracks and sparks created by the sudden ignition of
a sackful of fireworks of all descriptions; of rockets, Catherine
wheels, Roman candles, squibs, stars, crackers, flower-pots,
some flying straight away, while others are revolving, twisting,
radiating, bouncing, exploding in every possible direction and in all
ways at once.
To explain the mode in which all our postal arrangements are
conducted would not only exceed our limits, but be foreign to our
subject; we will therefore only attempt to supply our readers with
a slight sketch of a very small portion of this business, namely,
the transmission of letters from the metropolis by the London and
North-Western Railway’s night mail.
While the passengers by the Lancashire mail-train are taking their
seats and making other preparations for their departure, two or
three Post-office vans are seen to enter the main carriage gate of
the Euston Station, and then to drive close to their tenders on the
railway, which form the last carriages of the train. The servants of
the Post-office, rapidly unloading their vans, remove a portion of
the bags they contained into the travelling-office and the remainder
into two large tenders, which, as soon as they are filled, are locked
up by the guard, who then takes his place in the flying office, in
which we propose to leave him to his flight for 132½ miles--only
observing, however, that no sooner has he started than another flying
post-office, which had been lying in ambush, advances (with its
tender), and, after being loaded in a similar manner, in a quarter of
an hour they are despatched to Yorkshire and the East of Scotland.
* * * * *
It had been raining for upwards of twenty-four hours, and it was
still pouring when, at about half-past one o’clock of a dark winter’s
night, we reached the railway platform at Stafford, to await there
the arrival from Euston Station of the night-mail, whose loading and
departure we have just described. At that lonely hour, excepting a
scarlet-coated guard, who, watching over a pile of letter-bags just
arrived from Birmingham by a branch-train, was also waiting for the
down-mail, there were no other passengers on the platform; and,
save the unceasing pattering of the rain, there appeared nothing to
attract the attention but the glaring lamps of three or four servants
of the Company. One with his lantern in his left hand was writing in
a small memorandum-book placed on a desk before him. Two others with
lights suspended round their necks were greasing the axles of some
carriage whose form could not be distinguished, while the station-man
on duty with his lamp in his hand was pacing up and down the boarded
platform.
At this moment the signal-man had scarcely announced the approach
of an up-train when there rapidly rushed by a very long, low, dark,
solid mass protected by some sort of wet black-looking covering
which here and there glistened as it rolled past the four lamps that
were turned towards it; in short, it was a common luggage-train.
The whole line of waggons, their various contents, as well as
the powerful puffing engine that was dragging them through utter
darkness, were all inanimate; and it was almost appalling to reflect
that, in case of any accident to the drivers, the great train with
two red eyes shining in front as well as in rear would proceed
alone on its dark iron path--lifeless--senseless--reckless of human
life--unconscious of the agonies it might cause or the mischief it
might create. It was the work of man--and yet it was ignorant of
his power, or even of his name. Devoid of reason or of instinct,
it knew nothing--saw nothing--heard nothing--loved nothing--hated
nothing--cared for nothing--had no pleasures--no pains--nothing to
fear--nothing to hope for; it knew not whence it came,--it rushed
forwards it knew not why,--to go it knew not where; it had substance,
it had motion, it produced loud sounds, and yet it was as lonely
and as destitute of life as the heavens and the earth when in chaos
they were without form and void, and when darkness was upon the face
of the deep! But these reflections were agreeably interrupted by
the arrival of a down-train, swarming alive with passengers, whose
busy feet were very shortly to be heard trampling in all directions
along or across the platform. At the same time the conductor of
the train was delivering over to the Post-office-guard, who had so
patiently been awaiting their arrival, a quantity of leather bags
of all sizes--white, brown, or black, according to their ages--and
which remained in a large heap on the platform until, in about eight
minutes, the signal-bell announced first the approach and then the
arrival of “the down London mail.”
As soon as this train, which we had been awaiting, stopped, the door
of the Flying Post-office was opened, and the bags which had been
lying on the platform were no sooner packed either into it or into
its tender behind, than, the engine-driver’s whistle announcing the
departure of the train, we without delay presented an order which we
had obtained to travel in the post-office from Stafford to Crewe, and
we were scarcely seated in a corner on some letter-bags to witness
the operations of its inmates, when the train started and away we
went!
_The flying Post-office._
This office, which every evening flies away from London to Glasgow,
and wherein Government clerks are busily employed in receiving,
delivering, and sorting letters all the way, is a narrow carpeted
room, twenty-one feet in length by about seven in breadth, lighted
by four large reflecting lamps inserted in the roof, and by
another in a corner for the guard. Along about two-thirds of the
length of this chamber there is affixed to the side wall a narrow
table, or counter, covered with green cloth, beneath which various
letter bags are stowed away, and above which the space up to the
roof is divided into six shelves fourteen feet in length, each
containing thirty-five pigeon-holes of about the size of the little
compartments in a dove-cote. At this table, and immediately fronting
these pigeon-holes, there were standing as we flew along, three
Post-office clerks intently occupied in convulsively snatching up
from the green-cloth counter, and in dexterously inserting into
the various pigeon-holes, a mass of letters which lay before them,
and which, when exhausted, were instantly replaced from bags which
the senior clerk cut open, and which the guard who had presented
them then shook out for assortment. On the right of the chief
clerk the remaining one-third of the carriage was filled nearly
to the roof with letter-bags of all sorts and sizes, and which an
able-bodied Post-office guard, dressed in his shirt-sleeves and laced
waistcoat, was hauling at and adjusting according to their respective
brass-labels. At this laborious occupation the clerks continue
standing for about four hours and a half; that is to say, the first
set sort letters from London to Tamworth, the second from Tamworth to
Preston, the third from Preston to Carlisle, and the fourth letters
from Carlisle to Glasgow. The clerks employed in this duty do not
permanently reside at any of the above stations, but are usually
removed from one to the other every three months.
As we sat reclining and ruminating in the corner, the scene was as
interesting as it was extraordinary. In consequence of the rapid
rate at which we were travelling, the bags which were hanging from
the thirty brass pegs on the sides of the office had a tremulous
motion, which at every jerk of the train was changed for a moment or
two into a slight rolling or pendulous movement, like towels, &c.,
hanging in a cabin at sea. While the guard’s face, besides glistening
with perspiration, was--from the labour of stooping and hauling at
large letter-bags--as red as his scarlet coat which was hanging
before the wall on a little peg, until at last his cheeks appeared
as if they were shining at the lamp immediately above them almost as
ruddily as the lamp shone upon them--the three clerks were actively
moving their right hands in all directions, working vertically with
the same dexterity with which compositors in a printing-office
horizontally restore their type into the various small compartments
to which each letter belongs. Sometimes a clerk was seen to throw
into various pigeon-holes a batch of mourning letters, all directed
in the same handwriting, and evidently announcing some death; then
one or two registered letters wrapped in green covers. For some time
another clerk was solely employed in stuffing into bags newspapers
for various destinations. Occasionally the guard, leaving his bags,
was seen to poke his burly head out of a large window behind him
into pitch darkness, enlivened by the occasional passage of bright
sparks from the funnel-pipe of the engine, to ascertain by the
flashing of the lamps as he passed them, the precise moment of the
train clearing certain stations, in order that he might record it in
his “time-bill.” Then again a strong smell of burning sealing-wax
announced that he was sealing up, and stamping with the Post-office
seal, bags three or four of which he then firmly strapped together
for delivery. All of a sudden, the flying chamber received a hard
sharp blow, which resounded exactly as if a cannon-shot had struck
it. This noise, however, merely announced that a station-post we
were at that moment passing, but which was already far behind us,
had just been safely delivered of four leather letter-bags, which on
putting our head out of the window, we saw quietly lying in the far
end of a large strong iron-bound sort of landing-net or cradle, which
the guard a few minutes before had by a simple movement lowered on
purpose to receive them. But not only had we received four bags, but
at the same moment, and apparently by the same blow, we had, as we
flew by, dropped at the same station three bags which a Post-office
authority had been waiting there to receive. The blow that the
pendent bag of letters, moving at the rate say of forty miles an
hour, receives in being suddenly snatched away, must be rather
greater than that which the flying one receives on being suddenly at
that rate dropped on the road. Both operations, however, are effected
by a projecting apparatus from the flying post-office coming suddenly
into contact with that protruding from the post.
As fast as the clerks could fill the pigeon-holes before them, the
letters were quickly taken therefrom, tied up into a bundle, and then
by the guard deposited into the leather bag to which they belonged.
On very closely observing the clerks as they worked, we discovered
that, instead of sorting their letters into the pigeon-holes
according to their superscriptions, they placed them into
compartments of their own arrangement, and which were only correctly
labelled in their own minds; but as every clerk is held answerable
for the accuracy of his assortment, he is very properly allowed to
execute it in whatever way may be most convenient to his mind or hand.
Besides lame writing and awkward spelling, it was curious to observe
what a quantity of irrelevant nonsense is superscribed upon many
letters, as if the writer’s object was purposely to conceal from the
sorting clerk the only fact he ever cares to ascertain, namely, _the
post town_. Their patience and intelligence, however, are really
beyond all praise; and although sometimes they stand for eight or ten
seconds holding a letter close to their lamp, turning sometimes their
head and then it, yet it rarely happens that they fail to decipher
it. In opening one bag, a lady’s pasteboard work-box appeared all
in shivers. It had been packed in the thinnest description of
whitey-brown paper. The clerk spent nearly two minutes in searching
among the fragments for the direction, which he at last discovered
in very pale ink, written apparently through a microscope with the
point of a needle. The letters sorted in the flying post-office are,
excepting a few “late letters,” principally cross-post letters,
which, although packed into one bag, are for various localities. For
instance, at Stafford the mail takes up a bag made up for Birmingham,
Wolverhampton and intermediate places, the letters for which, being
intermixed, are sorted by the way, and left at the several stations.
The bags have also to be stowed away in compartments according to
their respective destinations. One lot for Manchester, Liverpool, and
Dublin; one for Chester; a bundle of bags for Newcastle-under-Lyne,
Market-Drayton, Eccleshall, Stone, Crewe, Rhuabon; a quantity of
empty bags to be filled coming back; a lot for Edinburgh, Glasgow,
and Carlisle; and one great open bag contained all the letter-bags
for Dublin taken upon the road.
The minute arrangements necessary for the transaction of all this
important business at midnight, while the train is flying through the
dark, it would be quite impossible to describe. The occupation is
not only highly confidential, but it requires unceasing attention,
exhausting to body and mind. Some time ago, while the three clerks,
with their right elbows moving in all directions, were vigorously
engaged in sorting their letters, and while the guard, with the
light of his lamp shining on the gilt buttons and gold lace which
emblazoned the pockets of his waistcoat, was busily sealing a
letter-bag, a collision took place, which, besides killing four men,
at the same moment chucked the sorting clerks from their pigeon-holes
to the letter-bags in the guard’s compartment. In due time the chief
clerk recovered from the shock; but what had happened--why he was
lying on the letter-bags--why nobody was sorting--until he recovered
from his stupor he could not imagine.