Embellished
with pictures by
PAUL HARDY
H. M. CALDWELL CO.
BOSTON]
[Illustration: COACHES AND COACHING]
ACCORDING to the opinion commonly entertained respecting an author's
want of riches, it may be allowed us to say that we retain from
childhood a considerable notion of "a ride in a coach." Nor do we
hesitate to confess, that by coach we especially mean a hired one; from
the equivocal dignity of the post-chaise, down to that despised old
castaway, the hackney.
It is true that the carriage, as it is indifferently called (as if
nothing less genteel could carry any one), is a more decided thing than
the chaise; it may be swifter even than the mail, leaves the stage at a
still greater distance in every respect, and (forgetting what it may
come to itself) darts by the poor old lumbering hackney with
immeasureable contempt.
It rolls with a prouder ease than any other vehicle. It is full of
cushions and comfort; elegantly coloured inside and out; rich, yet neat;
light and rapid, yet substantial. The horses seem proud to draw it. The
fat and fair-wigged coachman "lends his sounding lash," his arm only in
action and that but little, his body well set with its own weight.
The footman, in the pride of his nonchalance, holding by the straps
behind, and glancing down sideways betwixt his cocked-hat and neckcloth,
stands swinging from east to west upon his springy toes.
The horses rush along amidst their glancing harness. Spotted dogs leap
about them, barking with a princely superfluity of noise. The
hammer-cloth trembles through all its fringe. The paint flashes in the
sun.
We, contemptuous of everything less convenient, bow backwards and
forwards with a certain indifferent air of gentility, infinitely
predominant.
Suddenly, with a happy mixture of turbulence and truth, the carriage
dashes up by the curb-stone to the very point desired, and stops with a
lordly wilfulness of decision. The coachman looks as if nothing had
happened. The footman is down in an instant; the knocker reverberates
into the farthest corner of the house; doors, both carriage and house,
are open;--we descend, casting a matter-of-course eye at the bystanders;
and the moment we touch the pavement, the vehicle, as if conscious of
what it has carried, and relieved from the weight of our importance,
recovers from its sidelong inclination with a jerk, tossing and panting,
as it were, for very breath, like the proud heads of the horses.
All this, it must be owned, is very pretty; but it is also gouty and
superfluous. It is too convenient,--too exacting,--too exclusive. We
must get too much for it, and lose too much by it. Its plenty, as Ovid
says, makes us poor. We neither have it in the republic of letters, nor
would desire it in any less jacobinical state. Horses, as many as you
please, provided men have enough to eat; hired coaches, a reasonable
number:--but health and good-humour at all events.
Gigs and curricles are things less objectionable, because they cannot be
so relied upon as substitutes for exercise. Our taste in them, we must
confess, is not genuine. How shall we own it? We like to be driven,
instead of drive;--to read or look about us, instead of keeping watch on
a horse's head. We have no relish even for vehicles of this description
that are not safe. Danger is a good thing for giving a fillip to a man's
ideas; but even danger, to us, must come recommended by something
useful. We have no ambition to have TANDEM written on our tombstone.
The prettiest of these vehicles is the curricle, which is also the
safest. There is something worth looking at in the pair of horses, with
that sparkling pole of steel laid across them. It is like a bar of
music, comprising their harmonious course.
But to us, even gigs are but a sort of unsuccessful run at gentility.
The driver, to all intents and purposes, had better be on the horse.
Horseback is the noblest way of being carried in the world. It is
cheaper than any other mode of riding; it is common to all ranks; and it
is manly, graceful, and healthy. The handsomest mixture of danger with
dignity, in the shape of a carriage, was the tall phaeton with its
yellow wings. We remember looking up to it with respect in our
childhood, partly for its loftiness, partly for its name, and partly for
the show it makes in the prints to novels of that period. The most
gallant figure which modern driving ever cut was in the person of a late
Duke of Hamilton; of whom we have read or heard somewhere, that he used
to dash round the streets of Rome, with his horses panting, and his
hounds barking about his phaeton, to the equal fright and admiration of
the Masters of the World, who were accustomed to witness nothing higher
than a lumbering old coach, or a cardinal on a mule.
A post-chaise involves the idea of travelling, which in the company of
those we love is home in motion. The smooth running along the road, the
fresh air, the variety of scene, the leafy roads, the bursting
prospects, the clatter through a town, the gaping gaze of a village, the
hearty appetite, the leisure (your chaise waiting only upon your own
movements), even the little contradictions to home-comfort, and the
expedients upon which they set us, all put the animal spirits at work,
and throw a novelty over the road of life.
If anything could grind us young again, it would be the wheels of a
post-chaise. The only monotonous sight is the perpetual up-and-down
movement of the postillion, who, we wish exceedingly, could take a
chair. His occasional retreat to the bar which occupies the place of a
box, and his affecting to sit upon it, only remind us of its exquisite
want of accommodation. But some have given the bar, lately, a
surreptitious squeeze in the middle, and flattened it a little into
something obliquely resembling an inconvenient seat.
If we are to believe the merry Columbus of Down-Hall, calashes, now
almost obsolete for any purpose, used to be hired for travelling
occasions a hundred years back; but he preferred a chariot; and neither
was good. Yet see how pleasantly good humour rides over its
inconveniences.
Then answer'd 'Squire Morley, "Pray get a calash,
That in summer may burn, and in winter may splash;
I love dirt and dust; and 'tis always my pleasure
To take with me much of the soil that I measure."
But Matthew thought better; for Matthew thought right,
And hired a chariot so trim and so tight,
That extremes both of winter and summer might pass;
For one window was canvas, the other was glass.
"Draw up," quoth friend Matthew; "Pull down," quoth friend John;
"We shall be both hotter and colder anon."
Thus, talking and scolding, they forward did speed;
And Ralpho paced by under Newman the Swede.
Into an old inn did this equipage roll,
At a town they call Hodson, the sign of the Bull;
Near a nymph with an urn that divides the highway,
And into a puddle throws mother of tea.
"Come here, my sweet landlady, pray how d'ye do?
Where is Cicely so cleanly, and Prudence, and Sue?
And where is the widow that dwelt here below?
And the hostler that sung about eight years ago?
And where is your sister, so mild and so dear,
Whose voice to her maids like a trumpet was clear?"
"By my troth," she replies, "you grow younger, I think:
And pray, sir, what wine does the gentleman drink?
"Why now let me die, sir, or live upon trust,
If I know to which question to answer you first:
Why, things, since I saw you, most strangely have varied;
The hostler is hang'd, and the widow is married.
"And Prue left a child for the parish to nurse,
And Cicely went off with a gentleman's purse;
And as to my sister, so mild and so dear,
She has lain in the churchyard full many a year."
"Well; peace to her ashes! What signifies grief?
She roasted red veal, and she powder'd lean beef:
Full nicely she knew to cook up a fine dish;
For tough were her pullets, and tender her fish."
PRIOR.
This quotation reminds us of a little poem by the same author, entitled
the _Secretary_, which, as it is short, and runs upon chaise-wheels, and
seems to have slipped the notice it deserves, we will do ourselves the
pleasure of adding. It was written when he was Secretary of Embassy at
the Hague, where he seems to have edified the Dutch with his insisting
upon enjoying himself. The astonishment with which the good Hollander
and his wife look up to him as he rides, and the touch of yawning
dialect at the end, are extremely pleasant.
"While with labour assiduous due pleasure I mix,
And in one day atone for the business of six,
In a little Dutch chaise on a Saturday night,
On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right:
No Memoirs to compose, and no Post-boy to move,
That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love;
For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea,
Nor the long-winded cant of a dull Refugee:
This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine,--
To good or ill-fortune the third we resign:
Thus scorning the world and superior to fate,
I drive on my car in processional state.
So with Phia through Athens Pisistratus rode;
Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god.
But why should I stories of Athens rehearse,
Where people knew love, and were partial to verse?
Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose,
In Holland half drowned in interest and prose?
By Greece and past ages what need I be tried,
When the Hague and the present are both on my side?
And is it enough for the joys of the day,
To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say?
When good Vandergoes, and his provident _vrow_,
As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow,
That, search all the province, you'll find no man _dàr_ is
So blest as the _Englishen Heer Secre ar'_ is."
If Prior had been living now he would have found the greatest want of
travelling accommodation in a country for whose more serious wants we
have to answer, without having her wit to help us to an excuse. There is
a story told of an Irish post-chaise, the occupier of which, without
quitting it, had to take to his heels. It was going down hill as fast as
wind and the impossibility of stopping could make it, when the foot
passengers observed a couple of legs underneath, emulating, with all
their might, the rapidity of the wheels. The bottom had come out; and
the gentleman was obliged to run for his life.
We must relate another anecdote of an Irish post-chaise, merely to show
the natural tendencies of the people to be lawless in self-defence. A
friend of ours, who was travelling among them, used to have this
proposition put to him by the postillion whenever he approached a
turnpike--"Plase your honour, will I drive at the pike?" The pike hung
loosely across the road. Luckily, the rider happened to be of as lawless
a turn for justice as the driver, so the answer was always a cordial
one--"Oh yes--drive at the pike." The pike made way accordingly; and in
a minute or two the gate people were heard and seen, screaming in vain
after the illegal charioteers.
"Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus."
VIRGIL.
"The driver's borne beyond their swearing,
And the post-chaise is hard of hearing."
As to following them, nobody in Ireland thinks of moving too much, legal
or illegal.
The pleasure to be had in a mail-coach is not so much at one's command
as that in a post-chaise. There is generally too little room in it, and
too much hurry out of it. The company must not lounge over their
breakfast, even if they are all agreed. It is an understood thing that
they are to be uncomfortably punctual. They must get in at seven
o'clock, though they are all going upon business they do not like or
care about, or will have to wait till nine before they can do anything.
Some persons know how to manage this haste, and breakfast and dine in
the cracking of a whip. They stick with their fork, they joint, they
sliver, they bolt. Legs and wings vanish before them like a dragon's
before a knight-errant. But if one is not a clergyman or a regular jolly
fellow, one has no chance this way. To be diffident or polite is fatal.
It is a merit eagerly acknowledged, and as quickly set aside. At last
you begin upon a leg, and are called off.
A very troublesome degree of science is necessary for being well settled
in the coach. We remember travelling in our youth, upon the north road,
with an orthodox elderly gentleman of venerable peruke, who talked much
with a grave-looking young man about universities, and won our
inexperienced heart with a notion that he was deep in Horace and Virgil.
He was deeper in his wig.
Towards evening, as he seemed restless, we asked with much diffidence
whether a change, even for the worse, might not relieve him; for we were
riding backwards, and thought that all elderly people disliked that way.
He insinuated the very objection; so we recoiled from asking him again.
In a minute or two, however, he insisted that we were uneasy ourselves,
and that he must relieve us for our own sake. We protested as filially
as possible against this; but at last, out of mere shame of disputing
the point with so benevolent an elder, we changed seats with him.
[Illustration: The Post-Chaise]
After an interval of bland meditation, we found the evening sun full in
our face. His new comfort set him dozing; and every now and then he
jerked his wig in our eyes, till we had the pleasure of seeing him take
out a nightcap and look very ghastly. The same person, and his
serious young companion, tricked us out of a good bed we happened to get
at the inn.
The greatest peculiarity attending a mail-coach arises from its
travelling at night. The gradual decline of talk, the incipient snore,
the rustling and shifting of legs and nightcaps, the cessation of other
noises on the road--the sound of the wind or rain, of the moist circuit
of the wheels, and of the time-beating tread of the horses--all dispose
the traveller, who cannot sleep, to a double sense of the little that is
left him to observe.
The coach stops, the door opens, a rush of cold air announces the
demands and merits of the guard, who is taking his leave, and is anxious
to remember us. The door is clapped to again; the sound of everything
outside becomes dim; and voices are heard knocking up the people of the
inn, and answered by issuing yawns and excuses. Wooden shoes clog
heavily about. The horses' mouths are heard, swilling the water out of
tubs. All is still again, and some one in the coach takes a long
breath. The driver mounts, and we resume our way.
It happens that we can sleep anywhere except in a mail-coach; so that we
hate to see a prudent, warm, old fellow, who has been eating our fowls
and intercepting our toast, put on his night-cap in order to settle
himself till morning. We rejoice in the digs that his neighbour's elbow
gives him, and hail the long-legged traveller that sits opposite.
A passenger of our wakeful description must try to content himself with
listening to the sounds above mentioned; or thinking of his friends; or
turning verses, as Sir Richard Blackmore did, "to the rumbling of his
coach's wheels."
The stage-coach is a great and unpretending accommodation. It is a cheap
substitute, notwithstanding all its eighteen-penny and two-and-sixpenny
temptations, for keeping a carriage or a horse; and we really think, in
spite of its gossiping, is no mean help to village liberality; for its
passengers are so mixed, so often varied, so little yet so much
together, so compelled to accommodate, so willing to pass a short time
pleasantly, and so liable to the criticism of strangers, that it is hard
if they do not get a habit of speaking, or even thinking more kindly of
one another than if they mingled less often, or under other
circumstances.
The old and infirm are treated with reverence; the ailing sympathised
with; the healthy congratulated; the rich not distinguished; the poor
well met; the young, with their faces conscious of ride, patronised, and
allowed to be extra.
Even the fiery, nay the fat, learn to bear with each other; and if some
high-thoughted persons will talk now and then of their great
acquaintances, or their preference of a carriage, there is an instinct
which tells the rest that they would not make such appeals to their good
opinion if they valued it so little as might be supposed. Stoppings and
dust are not pleasant, but the latter may be had on grander occasions;
and if anyone is so unlucky as never to keep another stopping himself,
he must be content with the superiority of his virtue.
The mail or stage-coachman, upon the whole, is no inhuman mass of
great-coat, gruffness, civility, and old boots. The latter is the
politer, from the smaller range of acquaintance, and his necessity for
preserving them.
His face is red, and his voice rough, by the same process of drink and
catarrh. He has a silver watch with a steel-chain, and plenty of loose
silver in his pocket, mixed with half-pence. He serves the houses he
goes by for a clock. He takes a glass at every alehouse; for thirst,
when it is dry, and for warmth when it is wet.
He likes to show the judicious reach of his whip, by twigging a dog or a
goose on the road, or children that get in the way. His tenderness to
descending old ladies is particular. He touches his hat to Mr. Smith. He
gives "the young woman" a ride, and lends her his box-coat in the rain.
His liberality in imparting his knowledge to any one that has the good
fortune to ride on the box with him is a happy mixture of deference,
conscious possession, and familiarity. His information chiefly lies in
the occupancy of houses on the road, prize-fighters, Bow Street runners,
and accidents.
He concludes that you know Dick Sams, or Old Joey, and proceeds to
relate some of the stories that relish his pot and tobacco in the
evening. If any of the four-in-hand gentry go by, he shakes his head,
and thinks they might find something better to do. His contempt for them
is founded on modesty.
He tells you that his off-hand horse is as pretty a goer as ever was,
but that Kitty--"Yeah, now there, Kitty, can't you be still? Kitty's a
devil, sir, for all you wouldn't think it." He knows that the boys on
the road admire him, and gives the horses an indifferent lash with his
whip as they go by. If you wish to know what rain and dust can do, you
should look at his old hat. There is an indescribably placid and
paternal look in the position of his corduroy knees and old top-boots on
the foot-board, with their pointed toes and never-cleaned soles. His
_beau-idéal_ of appearance is a frock-coat, with mother-o'-pearl
buttons, a striped yellow waistcoat, and a flower in his mouth.
"But all our praises why for Charles and Robert?
Rise, honest Mews, and sing the classic Bobart."
Is the quadrijugal virtue of that learned person still extant? That
Olympic and Baccalaureated charioteer?--That best educated and most
erudite of coachmen, of whom Dominie Sampson is alone worthy to speak?
That singular punning and driving commentary on the _Sunt quos curriculo
collegisse_? In short, the worthy and agreeable Mr. Bobart, Bachelor of
Arts, who drove the Oxford stage some years ago, capped verses and the
front of his hat with equal dexterity, and read Horace over his
brandy-and-water of an evening.
We had once the pleasure of being beaten by him in that capital art, he
having brought up against us an unusual number of those cross-armed
letters, as puzzling to verse-cappers as iron-cats unto cavalry, ycleped
X's; which said warfare he was pleased to call to mind in after times,
unto divers of our comrades.
The modest and natural greatness with which he used to say "Yait" to his
horses, and then turn round with his rosy gills, and an eye like a fish,
and give out the required verse, can never pass away from us, as long as
verses or horses run.
Of the hackney-coach we cannot make as short work as many persons like
to make of it in reality. Perhaps it is partly a sense of the contempt
it undergoes, which induces us to endeavour to make the best of it. But
it has its merits, as we shall show presently. In the account of its
demerits we have been anticipated by a new, and we are sorry to say a
very good, poetess, of the name of Lucy V---- L----, who has favoured us
with a sight of a manuscript poem, in which they are related with great
nicety and sensitiveness.
_Reader._ What, sir, sorry to say that a lady is a good poetess?
_Indicator._ Only inasmuch, madam, as the lady gives such authority to
the anti-social view of this subject, and will not agree with us as to
the beatitude of the hackney-coach.--But hold:--upon turning to the
manuscript again, we find that the objections are put into the mouth of
a dandy courtier. This makes a great difference. The hackney resumes all
which it had lost in the good graces of the fair authoress. The only
wonder is, how the courtier could talk so well. Here is the passage:--
"Eban, untempted by the Pastry-cooks
(Of Pastry he got store within the Palace),
With hasty steps, wrapp'd cloak, and solemn looks,
Incognito upon his errand sallies;
His smelling-bottle ready for the alleys;
He pass'd the Hurdy-gurdies with disdain,
Vowing he'd have them sent on board the galleys:
Just as he made his vow, it 'gan to rain,
Therefore he call'd a coach, and bade it drive amain.
'I'll pull the string,' said he, and further said,
'Polluted Jarvey! Ah, thou filthy hack!
Whose strings of life are all dried up and dead,
Whose linsey-wolsey lining hangs all slack,
Whose rug is straw, whose wholeness is a crack;
And evermore thy steps go clatter-clitter;
Whose glass once up can never be got back,
Who prov'st, with jolting arguments and bitter,
That 'tis of vile no-use to travel in a litter.
'Thou inconvenience! thou hungry crop
For all corn! thou snail creeper to and fro,
Who while thou goest ever seem'st to stop,
And fiddle-faddle standest while you go;
I' the morning, freighted with a weight of woe,
Unto some Lazar-house thou journiest,
And in the evening tak'st a double row
Of dowdies, for some dance or party drest,
Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west.
'By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien,
An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge;
Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign,
Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge,
School'd in a beckon, learned in a nudge;
A dull-eyed Argus watching for a fare;
Quiet and plodding, thou dost bear no grudge
To whisking Tilburies or Phaetons rare,
Curricles, or Mail-coaches, swift beyond compare.'
Philosophising thus, he pull'd the check,
And bade the coachman wheel to such a street;
Who turning much his body, more his neck,
Louted full low, and hoarsely did him greet."
The tact here is so nice of the infirmities which are but too likely to
beset our poor old friend, that we should only spoil it to say more. To
pass then to the merits.
One of the greatest helps to a sense or merit in other things is a
consciousness of one's own wants. Do you despise a hackney-coach? Get
tired; get old; get young again. Lay down your carriage, or make it less
uneasily too easy. Have to stand up half-an-hour, out of a storm, under
a gateway. Be ill, and wish to visit a friend who is worse. Fall in
love, and want to sit next your mistress. Or if all this will not do,
fall in a cellar.
Ben Jonson, in a fit of indignation at the niggardliness of James the
First, exclaimed, "He despises me, I suppose, because I live in an
alley:--tell him his soul lives in an alley." We think we see a
hackney-coach moving out of its ordinary patience, and hear it say, "You
there, who sit looking so scornfully at me out of your carriage, are
yourself the thing you take me for. Your understanding is a
hackney-coach. It is lumbering, rickety, and at a stand. When it moves
it is drawn by things like itself. It is at once the most stationary and
the most servile of commonplaces. And when a good thing is put into it,
it does not know it."
But it is difficult to imagine a hackney-coach under so irritable an
aspect. Hogarth has drawn a set of hats or wigs with countenances of
their own. We have noticed the same thing in the faces of houses; and it
sometimes gets in one's way in a landscape-painting, with the outlines
of the rocks and trees.
A friend tells us that the hackney-coach has its countenance, with
gesticulation besides: and now he has pointed it out, we can easily
fancy it. Some of them look chucked under the chin, some nodding, some
coming at you sideways. We shall never find it easy, however, to fancy
the irritable aspect above-mentioned.
A hackney-coach always appeared to us the most quiescent of movables.
Its horses and it, slumbering on a stand, are an emblem of all patience
in creation, animate and inanimate.
The submission with which the coach takes every variety of the weather,
dust, rain, and wind, never moving but when some eddying blast makes its
old body shiver, is only surpassed by the vital patience of the horses.