excursion some twenty or thirty years forward in the regions of time;
when the dark, unsightly, shapeless machine that now offends him,
even in idea, shall he metamorphosed into one of exquisite symmetry
and beauty, and as superbly emblazoned with heraldic honours as any
that are now launched from the floors of Long Acre—a machine that
may regale his nostrils with exhalations from some genial produce of
the earth whose essence may be extracted at an insignificant cost,
and its fragrance left on the breeze for the sensitive traveller’s
gratification; that, instead of the rumble of coaches, may delight his
ear with the concord of sweet sounds.”
Wonderful man: penetrating intuition! But barbaric conservatism blocked
the way, and not thirty years, but a weary period of seventy-two,
intervened between his day and the fulfilment of his dream. In 1896
the Motor Car came, and we have now our fill of “exhalations,” whose
“fragrance” is “left on the breeze” in the form of stinking petrol and
fried lubricating oil; while streets and roads are smothered in dust
and, in a “concord of sweet sounds,” resound to the crashing of gears
and the bellowing of motor-horns, like the bulls of Bashan afflicted
with bronchitis.
But in that early experimental period a London and St. Albans Steam
Carriage Company (among others) was formed, and made several trips
with its uncouth monsters. Proposals were even made to establish a
“steam-coach” service to Manchester, the coach to haul behind it a
number of goods-waggons; but the turnpike authorities at Dunstable,
anxious for the condition of their roads, hearing early of this
proposition, were prepared for the unwelcome visitors, and, procuring
cartloads of immense stones, strewed the highway with them. They
certainly brought the “steam-coach” to a halt, but at the same time
nearly wrecked the down Manchester mail; and it was a long while before
the Post Office allowed them to forget their excess of zeal.
VI
[Sidenote: _THE “DEFIANCE”_]
Up to 1821 there had been comparatively little coaching competition
along the Manchester Road. In that year there ran along the Coventry,
Atherstone, Lichfield, and Congleton route to Manchester (which is
not the Manchester Road as considered in these pages) the “Prince
Cobourg” coach, which set out from the “Swan with Two Necks,” and was
at Manchester in exactly twenty-six hours; but the “Defiance” was in
the first flight upon the route adopted here. It was not very swift,
for it set out at half-past two every afternoon from the “Swan with
Two Necks,” Lad Lane, and did not arrive at the “Bridgewater Arms,”
Manchester, until 5.30 the next afternoon: twenty-seven hours. That
was just before the era of the great Chaplin, and at that time the
“Swan with Two Necks” was still kept by one Kingsford, while the
Coach Office in its yard remained in the hands of William Waterhouse,
who had carried on business there as a mail contractor and coach
proprietor since 1792, and was well content with the old leisurely
ways. Such as it was, the “Defiance” was only equalled in that year
by the “Regulator,” which, running from the same establishment, was
no competitor, having a slightly different route, taking it through
Buxton. It also performed the journey in twenty-seven hours. The
“Manchester Telegraph” at that time took thirty hours.
But in 1822, probably nerved to great deeds by the establishment of a
smart rival, the “Independent,” which worked on alternate days from
Nelson’s “Bull” inn, Whitechapel, and the “Spread Eagle,” Gracechurch
Street, and leaving London every evening at 6 p.m. reached Manchester
in twenty-four hours, he did manage to expedite the “Defiance” by two
hours and a half. In that year it made the journey in twenty-four and
half hours. In 1826 it had become the “Royal Defiance,” and, starting
at 6.30 p.m., was at Manchester in twenty-four hours.
These successive accelerations were probably due to William Chaplin,
who seems to have become interested by degrees in the business so long
carried on by Waterhouse, and to have finally succeeded him about 1825.
The “Defiance” had in its earlier years very little to contend against.
In 1821 there was a “Manchester Telegraph” from the “Castle and
Falcon,” Aldersgate Street, also starting at 2.30 p.m., but taking
no less than twenty-nine and half hours to perform the journey: a
very modest pace of some six miles an hour. But in 1823 a powerful
rival appeared in Edward Sherman, who then established himself at
the “Bull and Mouth,” St. Martin’s-le-Grand, as a coach proprietor.
He had come up to London as a boy, from Wantage, Berkshire, with the
traditional half-crown in his pocket; and found work in Oxford Market
as a boy-porter, earning 8_d._ a day. Out of this scanty wage he saved
a daily 2_d._ According to some accounts, he found his way on to the
Stock Exchange, in some connection with one Levy, a wealthy farmer
of the turnpike tolls, who helped to establish him at the “Bull and
Mouth.” He was a tall, dark, fine-looking man; one of the very few who
at that time wore a moustache, the mark then of the fast, wild young
fellow. He married the wealthy widow proprietress of the “Oxford Arms,”
Warwick Lane. She soon died, and was not long afterwards followed by
her sister, who left him her property. He then married his wife’s niece.
[Illustration:
MAILS LEAVING THE YARD OF THE “SWAN WITH TWO NECKS,” 1834
[_After J. Pollard._
]
Eventually he raised himself to the first rank of coachmasters; almost
rivalling the great Chaplin himself, and running several coaches in
keen competition with him. He rebuilt the “Bull and Mouth,” and in his
prime owned seven hundred horses. Over fifty mail and stage-coaches,
chiefly for the northern and north-western roads, left his capacious
yard every twenty-four hours. The great stables were likened to a small
town.
He was not a horsey man, but his horses and coaches were of the best.
The coaches were easily distinguishable among all others, their lower
panels and wheels being painted a light yellow, and the upper quarters
black.
[Sidenote: _THE MANCHESTER TELEGRAPH_]
The famous “Manchester Telegraph” day coach, established by Sherman in
1833, left the “Bull and Mouth” at 5 a.m. and reached Manchester at
half-past eleven o’clock the same night. As competition with Chaplin’s
“Defiance” grew hotter, its speed was accelerated by a half, and then
by one whole hour; when the pace, allowing for twenty minutes at Derby,
where “the coach dined,” and reckoning the various changes, worked out
at just under twelve miles an hour.
To safely negotiate this, in parts, hilly road at so high an average
rate of speed, the “Telegraph” coach was especially designed and
constructed with flat springs, which gave it a comparatively low centre
of gravity.
The strict conduct of coaching business may readily be perceived by a
glance at the appended time-sheet carried on every journey:
TIME BILL, “TELEGRAPH” LONDON AND MANCHESTER COACH, 1833
_Down._ _Guard_....................
Leave the “Bull and Mouth,” 5 a.m.
Left the “Peacock,” 5.15 a.m.
+------------+-----------+--------+----------+---------+-------+-----+
|Proprietors.| Places. | Miles. | Time | Should | Did | |
| | | | allowed. | arrive.|arrive.| |
+------------+-----------+--------+----------+---------+-------+-----+
| | | | H. M. | H. M. | | |
| Sherman |St. Albans | 19-1/2 | 1 54 | 7 9 | | |
| Liley |Redbourn | 4-1/2 | 0 22 | 7 31 | | |
| Fossey |Hockliffe | 12-1/2 | 1 10 | 8 41 | | |
| |Northampton| | | | | |
| | Breakfast| | 0 20 | | | |
| Shaw |Harboro’ | 47-1/2 | 4 30 | 1 31 | | |
| |Leicester | | | | | |
| | Business | | 0 5 | | | |
| Pettifer |Loughboro’ | 26 | 2 27 | 4 3 | | |
| |Derby | | | | | |
| | Dinner | | 0 20 | | | |
| Mason |Ashbourne | 30 | 2 48 | 7 11 | | |
| Wood |Waterhouses| 7-1/2 | 0 43 | 7 54 | | |
| Linley |Bullock | | | | | |
| | Smithy | 29-1/2 | 2 46 | 10 40 | | |
| Wetherald | | | | | | |
| & Co. |Manchester | 9 | 0 50 | 11 30 | | |
| | +--------+----------+ | | |
| | |186 | 18 15 | | | |
+------------+-----------+--------+----------+---------+-------+-----+
_Guard (Sign your Name)_ .................... _Timepiece No._ ......
OBSERVE.—That a fine of 1_s._ per minute will be incurred by each
proprietor for every minute of time lost over his stage or stages,
to one-half of which the coachman and guard will be held equally
liable between them, should their employers see sufficient cause for
enforcing the same.
Misdating the time-bill, or neglecting to date at all (either with
pen and ink or pencil), at any of the above places, the moment he
arrives, will subject the guard to a fine of 5_s._ for each default.
The guard is also to leave his time-bill in the office on his arrival
at the “Bull and Mouth,” or forfeit 5s. for each omission.
[Illustration: THE “MANCHESTER TELEGRAPH,” 1834
[_After Robert Havell._
]
Sherman’s “Estafette” was a great advance in coaching luxury, and was
a product of the keen competition in the last few years of coaching.
The interior was lighted with a reflector lamp, illuminating an
elegantly engraved ivory tablet, showing a table giving all towns on
the route, distances, and intermediate times.
[Sidenote: _SPEED AND LUXURY_]
A very prosperous coach in later years, always loading well, was
the “Peveril of the Peak,” competing with the “Telegraph” and the
“Defiance” by dint of leaving London at a somewhat later hour. Another
fast night coach was the “Red Rover,” by Robert Nelson, of the “Belle
Sauvage,” Ludgate Hill. It started at 7 p.m. and accomplished the
journey, by way of the comparatively level Holyhead Road to Birmingham
and Wolverhampton, and thence by Newcastle-under-Lyme and Congleton,
in twenty hours. There was no mistaking the “Red Rover,” for not
only was the coach itself red, but the guards wore red hats and red
coats. Sherman soon bought out Nelson, and took the “Red Rover”; but
Nelson immediately put on another along the same route, calling it
the “Beehive.” It went to the other extreme, and set out at 8 a.m.,
arriving at Manchester at 4 o’clock the next morning. It sounded
the last note in coaching convenience, for not only was it fitted
inside with a reading-lamp, and the inside seats provided with spring
cushions, but every seat was numbered in order to avoid disputes.
In 1834, competition between coach proprietors on the chief routes
grew so keen that a war of extermination broke out; the stronger men
striving to crush the smaller by reducing fares below a paying level.
On this road it became possible for a while to travel at half the
former fares, and to journey the 186 miles to Manchester for 40_s._
inside, and 20_s._ out; but cheap travel was dearly bought in the
accidents occasioned through this extravagant rivalry. In addition,
were the usual and inevitable mischances of the highway. Thus the
Manchester “Defiance” was upset in August 1835 at Brailsford, through
the horses shying at a white gate, when a Mr. Holbrook was killed; and
the “Peveril of the Peak” was overturned in September 1836, a passenger
and the coachman being crushed to death.
Those coach proprietors with the longest purses would, of course, in
time have crushed the smaller men in this war of cheap prices; and
already, before the railway came to sweep big men and little into one
common limbo, those with slender resources were feeling the pinch
of daily expenses, and could sometimes hardly settle their turnpike
accounts—especially heavy on this road.
The onerous burden of the tolls payable by stage-coaches can scarcely
be realised, save by stating a specific example. The amount incurred on
a single journey to Manchester was no less than £5 13_s._ 5_d._, and
this was by no means exceptional. Of course, the coach did not stop
to pay toll at every gate, the practice being to settle monthly. The
burden seems a heavy one for coach proprietors, but was, like every
other tax, levied in the end upon the consumer, being finally paid by
the coach passengers in their fares, calculated on the basis of the
coach proprietors’ expenses.
At last, in 1837, with the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway
to Manchester, this petty warfare was stilled, and the business of the
coach proprietors seemed to be ended. In 1836, when the railway had
been opened as far as Birmingham, Chaplin and Benjamin Worthy Horne,
two of the largest proprietors, had been induced to withdraw from the
road, and to throw their interest on the side of the new methods;
but Sherman refused to hear anything of the kind. He was the most
courageous, not to say the most obstinate, of men; thoroughly British
in the characteristics of doggedness and unwillingness to own himself
beaten. He did not believe in railways, until the stern fact of his
coaches running empty along the road convinced him, at a considerable
loss; and when in 1837 temporary trouble arose between the public and
the railway, and some were already regretting the old days, he dashed
in and re-established his “Red Rover” coach, which lasted a year or
more, losing money heavily when the Manchester people and the railway
had composed their quarrel.
[Sidenote: _EDWARD SHERMAN_]
The character-sketch of Sherman, here begun, may here be fitly
concluded. Without doubt a man of strong character, he had many
peculiarities, among them a decided taste for extravagance in dress and
jewellery, remarkable even at that time, when dress was very exuberant
indeed. Instead of sporting a shirt front, his chest displayed an
expanse of black satin, plentifully covered with diamond pins. One
day a thief came behind him in the street, reached a hand over his
shoulder, and made off with a valuable specimen. Sherman afterwards had
them all attached to a chain.
His fighting temper, if it stood him in good stead among his fellow
coach proprietors, certainly, as we have seen, involved him in heavy
losses in quarrelling with railways, before he found them too strong
for him. To lose money was to him an especial grief. The very sight of
sovereigns was a solace to him, and he kept a hundred in a tankard,
deposited in his safe at the “Bull and Mouth,” so that he might always
have the pleasure of handling the gold.
He had—according to private information—a number of children “that he
ought not to have had,” whatever that may mean. His last years were
sad, for his relatives exploited his temper and some eccentricities he
had developed, and procured his committal, as a lunatic, to Bethlem
Hospital, where he died in 1866. There are those yet living who
remember him there, and tell how he was put away with little legitimate
excuse.
The “Bull and Mouth” was carried on by his executor, E. Sanderson,
until 1869, when it was purchased by the late Quartermaine East, and
re-named the “Queen’s Hotel.”
Nowadays, the most ruinously low coach fares of that competitive time
before railways are made to look absurdly high by even the ordinary
third-class railway fare, 15_s._ 5-1/2_d._, to Manchester: and
excursions are frequently run at the price of a few shillings.
VII
[Sidenote: _THE COACHMEN_]
We cannot well leave the subject of coaching without some fleeting
reminiscences of the coachmen and guards who worked up and down
the road. Not all of them have earned a measure of fame. They
formed, indeed, a very considerable body of men, and there were
some generations of them; beginning with the poor old red-nosed and
many-caped Tobys who, wrapped up in many wrappings and swathed about
the feet and legs with hay-and-straw bands, sat on the box like partly
animated mummies; and ending with coachmen who were in many attributes
considered gentlemen. A love of strong spirits was common to the
earlier and later generations, but those of the earlier were merely
“drivers,” if you please, and the later were “coachmen.” The old Tobys
drove chiefly through the night, and in times when speed did not exist
and skill was not essential: the rather flashy “swell” coachmen of a
later era cut a dash in the daytime, with a cigar between their teeth,
and had extraordinary skill with the reins. These were the two chief
classes, subdivided again and again by individual peculiarities; and
then there were the guards.
Coaching experts were never tired of sounding the praises or noting
the peculiarities of the fine coachmen on this road. Bob Snow, of
the “Telegraph,” was, according to “Nimrod,” who took his position
as a coaching critic very seriously indeed, “all right—a pink in
his way, and as well dressed for the road as a gentleman ought to
be for Almack’s.” Great, too, was his admiration for Harry Douglas,
another coachman on the “Telegraph.” He was “about the size of two
ordinary men.” Not only could he gallop a coach without it swinging,
but he could drink as much as would scald a porker. As Dibdin sang of
Tom Bowling, “his virtues were so rare.” He was, moreover, “a great
favourite with the Manchester gentlemen, and an artist of the first
order. His right arm”—for taking it out of the horses in tender places
with the whip—“was terrible. Jovial, singing many excellent songs,” he
appears to have been a prominent figure.
But Joe Wall was the unapproachable, the unsurpassed, at whose
magnificence the road gaped with astonishment. In the height of his
fame he drove the “Telegraph” the thirty-seven miles between London
and Hockliffe. He was “a tremendous swell,” keeping one or two hunters
at that place, and thus occupying the hours he passed there, waiting
to take his seat on the up coach. On one occasion he had a fall in
the hunting field, preventing him taking the “Telegraph” up to town
that night. Fortunately an able and experienced amateur hand was on
the coach, and took his place. None other less accomplished could have
been trusted with so fast a coach, going at night through the crowded
approach to town.
[Sidenote: _WHIPS OF THE “TELEGRAPH”_]
Meecher, on the other hand, although a competent whip on the
“Telegraph,” was a satirical and gloomy person: a kind of masculine
Gummidge. He was a reduced gentleman, and as such found the world out
of joint. In revenge, he “took it out of” the commercials travelling on
the coach, and lost much by refusing to allow any one who was not also
a gentleman to treat him. Exactly how he arrived at his estimate of
gentility or the want of it does not appear.
His humour was certainly of the sardonic kind, as appears by a story
told of him. “Pity those women have nothing to do,” exclaimed a
passenger on the box-seat, eyeing a gossiping group in the road.
“I’ll give them something,” said the saturnine Meecher; and, pulling
up to them, he asked in his gloomiest tones if any of them missed any
of their children; “for,” said he, “I’ve just run over and killed one,
down the road.” They all flew off, agonised, and Meecher grinned.
He came at last, in the general ruin of coaching, to drive a one-horse
railway omnibus; but he never ceased to consider himself a gentleman.
Another whip on the same coach, Samuel Inns, who—if names go for
anything—should certainly have become an innkeeper, became, instead,
a farmer, and grew prosperous; and yet another, Tom Davies, was
discovered, years afterwards, as a rural postman.
William Jervis, of the “Defiance,” was almost as “gentlemanly” as
Meecher, and a good deal more impudent, He would hold forth to
the box-seat passenger unfortunate enough to travel by his coach
upon the happy days when he had been in service with the Marquis
of Exeter—although, to be sure, he had been nothing more than a
stable-boy at Burghley House—and would affect to deplore those days,
“when he associated with gentlemen.” “And now, sir,” he would bitterly
remark, “I’ve got to drive d—d cotton-spinners and calico-printers.”
It mattered not at all that it was probably a calico-printer or a
cotton-manufacturer who was sitting by him at that moment. Indeed,
there was that in his nature which led him to seize the opportunity
to hurt the feelings of worthy Manchester men. It naturally followed
that the tips he received suffered in number and in value from this
extraordinary bias towards quarrelling with his inoffensive passengers:
and the balance was not redressed by the rare occasions on which he
found a peer or a landed proprietor by his side.
How the coachmen found themselves so constantly and so plentifully
in choice cigars of the most expensive kind must remain mysterious.
Jervis—who, by the way, refused to be known as “Bill” and was always
addressed as “Mr. William Jervis”—smoked the best Havanas as a rule,
and could not endure inferior brands. One memorable day, a passenger
beside him was puffing happily away at a cheap and nasty smoke—a real
_Flor de_ _Cabbage_—when Jervis turned upon him, and, without further
ado, snatched it from his mouth and threw it away.
“Can’t stand a bad cigar,” said Jervis, in not very adequate
explanation: “take one of mine.”
The end of this bold and haughty fellow was sad. When railways
superseded coaching, he hanged himself behind a stable-door of the
“Swan with Two Necks.”
[Sidenote: _THE GUARDS_]
The guards were, to a man, of more consideration and urbanity. Their
cue was a general heartiness to every one, from an ostler to a county
magnate; but there was much scope for development in the character of a
guard, for he came into intimate personal relations with the passengers
in general, while the coachman had but one companion—the passenger
beside him on the box-seat. Guards were entrusted, not only with
parcels of all kinds, but with buying-commissions in town for rural
customers; and acted frequently, as was sufficiently well known to the
more shady characters of the countryside, as interested intermediaries
between poachers and those poulterers in London who did not mind
dealing in poached game.
Comparatively little has come down to us, save in general terms, of
the guards who manned the coaches on this road; but Venables, one
of those upon the “Manchester Telegraph,” stands out prominently.
He was not, like so many of his brethren, a performer upon the
key-bugle, but possessed a beautiful tenor voice which he lifted up in
sentimental song along the roads on sunny days, greatly to the delight
of passengers, and to his own profit. He had at least one dramatic
experience, in being very nearly chloroformed and flung off the coach
by three confederated thieves, who had by some means learned of an
extremely valuable case of jewels that had been entrusted to him,
which he had, for greater safety, deposited in a locked box under his
seat. With the exception of the box-seat passenger, these enterprising
would-be jewel thieves formed the only passengers on the roof, and they
had reckoned on stifling the guard and heaving him over the side, in
the darkness between Ashbourne and Leek, trusting to the noise made
by the coach to drown the sound of any scuffle. What they would then
have done, after securing the jewels, is only to be guessed at, for the
behaviour of the conspirators had early attracted Venables’ suspicions,
and no sooner had one whipped out his chloroform-pad than he felt
himself struck full in the face with stunning force. The coachman’s
attention was aroused, and the coach was on the point of being stopped
when the three jumped off the roof and disappeared in the night.
Venables in later years became a guard on the London and Birmingham
Railway.
[Sidenote: _JIM BYRNS_]