_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._
Friday, July 9.
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 4000_l._ 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 St Werburga 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!_
[5] If Don Manuel had remained long enough in England, he might have
seen parliament annulling its own contract in its own wrong, granting
away the public money at a time when the people were more heavily
burthened than they had ever been before, and doing this in defiance of
the legal authorities.—TR.
[6] D. Manuel is mistaken in supposing that they are still in use. The
ducking-stools are fallen into decay, and in many places the stocks
also,—little to the credit of the magistrates.—TR.