SOME CHARACTERS.
There was a great character who drove out of Machynlleth at that time.
His name was David Lloyd, and he worked the mail between that place
and Dolgelly round by Towyn and the coast. When he came to a certain
long fall of ground, he would put his team into a gallop, and then,
taking a small twisted horn, which he slung in a strap over his
shoulder, would blow almost without ceasing, especially when it was
dusk, as was more or less the case during a considerable part of the
year, and, as his right hand was fully occupied with the horn, if he
wanted to take a pull at the reins he made use of his foot.
It was dark for the greater part of the year before he reached the end
of the journey, and, as his sight was not very good at night, he would
sometimes say to his box passenger, "If you please, sir, will you tell
me what is coming towards us." Perhaps the passenger after looking,
would say "A cart," to which David would reply, "Then I was get out of
his way;" but if the answer was "A gig," or "A carriage," he would
say, "Then he was get out of my way," and would keep straight on.
Dolgelly at that time contained a few boon companions, some of whom
were rather given to practical joking. One morning there happened to
be on the box seat one of these gentlemen, and when they had proceeded
a few miles on the road, he pulled a pill-box out of his pocket and
took some of the pills. Upon seeing this, David said to him, "If you
please, sir, what have you got there?" He replied, "Only a few pills,
which I find very beneficial after a hard night." "Well, indeed," says
David, "I had a rather heavy night; was you please give me some of
them?" "All right," says he, "hold out your hand," when he poured
several pills into it; and upon David asking how many he was to take,
he said, "Take them all," which he did; and the sequel was, that he
drove his coach to Machynlleth, but another man brought it back in the
evening.
For two summers, when I was driving the Aberystwith and Kington
"Cambrian," I had Ben Haslam as guard, who was also something of a
character, and quite one of the old coachmen. He had driven for many
years out of London on different coaches, and, like a good many
others, had followed the receding tide, and had got down to
Herefordshire, where coaches lingered for several years, and then on
to Wales, where, at that time, railways had not penetrated.
He was full of anecdotes connected with the road, and towards autumn,
when the down loads were usually very light, I would sometimes get him
to sit by me on the box that he might enliven the way with some of
them.
He had one story which amused me, of the only really crusty coachman I
ever heard of. They were, as a rule, very cheery, genial spirits, and,
indeed, had not much cause to be otherwise. There were few pleasanter
lives. They were generally made a great deal of, indeed, perhaps
rather too much so at times, although, as a body, they bore their
honours becomingly. Between the patronage they received from the
gentlemen and the deference shown them by the horse-keepers and
others, it is hardly to be wondered at if sometimes their heads were a
little turned, and they became rather too big for their boots. There
was a story told of one, who was rather cheeky, giving great offence
to a parson, who was his box passenger, by saying that he was not
going to drive the next day, but should send his curate. They were,
however, not very unfrequently taken down a peg by a lick from the
rough side of a crusty proprietor's tongue; but on the whole, they
were, as Tony Weller said, "priviledged indiwiduals."
But to return to the crusty coachman. His name was Spooner, and he
drove out of Oxford, and, though often causing trouble with the
passengers by his want of urbanity, he was too valuable a servant to
get rid of. As was not so very unusual with him, he had been lately
called to account for some want of civility to a passenger, whereupon
he announced his determination never to speak to one of them again,
and he kept his word, till one day, a gentleman who was going to
travel by his coach, asked him some question, but after repeating it
several times and eliciting no reply, turned to the proprietor, who
was in the office, saying, "Your coachman is so surly, he won't answer
a single question I put to him." The proprietor asked him what he
meant by not answering the gentleman, to which he replied, "If I do
speak to him he will only complain, like that other fool did the other
day."
On another occasion his whole coach was occupied by musicians, coming
to play at a ball at Oxford, and, as he did not expect very good pay
from them, he was not in the best of tempers. It happened that at the
last change of horses before arriving at Oxford, a boy, who had been
sent with a fresh horse, was returning by the coach, and, as every
seat was occupied, he sat upon the footboard by the bandmaster's feet,
and after they had gone a short distance, pulled a Jew's harp out of
his pocket and began to play upon it. Upon this the bandmaster asked
the boy to allow him to try what he could do with it, saying, "He
could play a good many instruments, but had never tried a Jew's harp."
The new instrument proved too much for him, whereupon old Spooner
looked at him with scorn and contempt, and said, "You are a pretty
sort of a man for a bandmaster, and cannot play a Jew's harp."
He also narrated how, when the Great Western Railway was opened over
only certain lengths, and coaches were employed over the other ground,
some of those were conveyed certain distances on trucks, and the
coachmen travelled in their respective coaches. Of course they did not
overflow with affection for their rivals, and the way they tried to
annoy them was by getting out of their coaches and applying the breaks
to the wheels of the trucks.
This reminds me of how very slow all those connected with coaches, as
also those who took a warm interest in them, were to realize the fact
that their occupation was fast leaving them, and that the railways
would, before many years, have entirely superseded the old system of
travelling.
We were not, however, the only people who were somewhat sceptical on
the subject, though with us, no doubt, the wish was father to the
thought; but the _Times_ newspaper, whilst admitting the financial
success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, warned investors
against speculative imitation, saying, "Where there are good roads and
convenient coaches, it would be a mistake to alter existing
arrangements."
Every little failure of the railways raised our spirits and gave
strength to the hope that they would fail, as all attempts to utilize
steam upon ordinary roads had hitherto done. At first, they were
unable to keep time in frosty weather, as the driving-wheels kept
turning round and round on the same spot of the slippery rail.
In the beginning of January, in the year 1838, I was travelling down
to Shrewsbury by the Holyhead mail. It was the first night of the long
frost and snow-up of that winter, which continued for two months, and
the roads were so much blocked up with snow, that for a few days the
coachmen and guards held a sort of wake at Dunchurch. On the night I
travelled down the frost set in exceedingly sharp, and the only up
mail that kept time was the Holyhead, which had come by road the whole
distance through North Wales. The other mails, whose bags had been
brought to Birmingham by what was then called the Grand Junction
Railway, were after time, as the trains could make but slow progress
on the slippery rails. The coachman and I, two silly creatures as we
were, made ourselves happy with the conviction that railways must
always be a failure for fast work, and that the coaching business was
not in such great danger after all. No doubt this opinion was
entertained by a good many others, and led to losses, by inducing some
coach proprietors to oppose the railways instead of coming to terms
with them.
It was on this journey, if I recollect rightly, that I had my last
experience of that conveyance, long since quite lost to sight, and now
nearly so to memory, that perhaps I may be pardoned if I linger for a
few moments to raise it, or its ghost, before the eyes of the present
generation, especially as I have seen some not very accurate
descriptions of them.
The old hackney coach, though frousty and damp, was generally roomy
and easy, as it had nearly always commenced its career in gentlemen's
service, and had consequently been built by one of the best
coachmakers of the day, and so far was decidedly better than the
modern "bounder." It carried about it a character of decayed
respectability, not to say grandeur, and upon entering one of them it
was not impossible for a gentleman to be greeted by his own
quarterings upon the panel. They were as ramshackling looking things
as could be imagined, with occasionally, wheels of different colours,
and the horses and coachman, together with his clothes, seemed made to
match.
But to return to coaches proper again: one called the "Dart" used to
run between Oxford and London, driven by a coachman who was commonly
known by the name of "Black Will;" and one fine morning the box seat
was occupied by an Oxford Don, who thought he would enjoy the air on
his journey. After they had gone a short distance he addressed our
friend Black Will, saying, "Are you the coachman they call Black
Will?" His answer was, "Blackguards call me Black Will, but gentlemen
call me Mr. Walters." It is needless to say that this shut up the Don
for the remainder of the journey.
Dick Dicas drove the "Cambrian" between Llangollen and Dolgelly for
several years, and one day it so happened that among the outside
passengers there was a ventriloquist. As they drove along the road a
man was seen walking leisurely across a field in the direction of the
coach, when the ventriloquist threw his voice so as to make it appear
that he was calling to it to stop. Of course, Dick pulled up, thinking
he had got another passenger; but as he did not quicken his pace, he
began to get impatient, for he was not a Job under any circumstances,
and called out to him to "Come on," and "Do you suppose I can wait
here all day for you?" At last, as he approached nearer, he said,
"What do you want with me?" when friend Dick answered, "Why, you
called me to stop." "I did nothing of the sort," replied the man in
the field. "I tell you you did," said Dick, waxing warmer. "Well, I'm
not coming with you, anyhow," said the leisurely man; whereupon there
was nothing left for Dick to do but to drive on, not in the best of
tempers, as may be supposed. Whether he ever knew of the trick played
upon him I do not remember to have heard, but if he did find it out in
time, I suspect he made it hot for the ventriloquist.
At one time Cambridge could boast of a clever poet as a coachman. Tom
Cross was his name, and he drove the Lynn coach from the "Golden
Cross," Charing Cross. He wrote "The Conflagration of Rome," and "Paul
before Nero," and some wags among the undergraduates said the idea was
given him by the fat from the bacon he was frying in the garret
igniting. But be that as it may, they were very clever compositions. I
fancy it was this man who published the first book on coaching which
has appeared in print.