THE AMATEURS
Those men ascend to lofty state,
And Phœbus’ self do emulate,
Who drive the dusty roads along
Amid the plaudits of the throng.
When round the whirling wheels do go,
They all the joys of gods do know.
See the Olympian dust arise
That gives them kindred with the skies!
HORACE, Book I., Ode 1.
Thus Horace sings, in his Ode to Mæcenas; and the driving ambition
observed by that old heathen, still to be noticed in these days, was a
very marked feature of the road at any time between 1800 and 1848, when
the railways had succeeded in disestablishing almost every coach, and
the opportunities of the gentleman coachman were gone.
The amateur coachman was a creation of the nineteenth century, He was,
for two very good reasons, unknown before that time. The first was that
coachmanship had not yet become an art, and, still in the hands of mere
drivers whose only recommendations were an ability to endure long hours
on the box and a brutal efficiency in punishing the horses, had no
chance of developing those refinements that characterised the Augustan
age of coaching; the second reason was that the box-seat, although
perhaps already beginning to be regarded as a place of distinction, was
much more certainly a very painful eminence. It rested directly upon
the front axle, and, being wholly innocent of springs, received and
transmitted to the frame of any one who occupied it every shock the
wheels encountered on the rough roads of that time.
Springs under the driving-box were unknown until about 1805, when they
were introduced by John Warde, of Squerryes, the old Kentish squire
who is generally known as the “Father of Foxhunting.” He was the first
amateur coachman, and in pursuing that hobby found the driving-seats of
the old coaches anything but comfortable. In resisting his arguments in
favour of the introduction of springs, the coach-proprietors declared
to a man that the coachmen would always be falling asleep if they were
provided with comfortable seats.
John Warde’s driving exploits were chiefly carried out on the Oxford,
Gloucester, and Birmingham roads. For years before coachmanship
became a fashionable accomplishment, he had been accustomed to take
the professional coachman’s place on the “old Gloucester” stage, “six
inside and sixteen out, with two tons of luggage”; or, relieving Jack
Bailey and other incumbents of the bench on the old Birmingham and
Shrewsbury “Prince of Wales,” would drive the whole distance between
London and Birmingham. He once drove this coach from London to Oxford
against the “Worcester Old Fly” for a wager, and won it, although
his coach went the Benson road, four miles longer than the route his
opponent had to travel.
Warde’s driving was by no means in the later style, and he probably
would have been very much out of his element with the smart galloping
teams of the Golden Age. He was, however, of those who were fit to be
trusted with a heavy load behind weak horses and on bad roads. There
was a peculiarity about him as regarded the driving of his own horses
which the history of the road, it was said, could not parallel. Let
the journey be in length what it might, he never took the horses out
of his private coach, giving them only now and then a little hay and
a mouthful of water at a roadside public-house. When he resided in
Northamptonshire, sixty-three miles from London, the journey was always
accomplished by his team “at a pull,” as he called it. The pace, as may
be supposed, was not quick. John Warde was one of the founders of the
B.D.C., or Benson Driving Club, in 1807.
Amateur coaching, as a fashionable amusement, took its rise on the
Brighton Road. Looked upon with contempt by stalwart and bluff Warde
and his kind, it nevertheless grew and flourished in the hands of
the Barrymores and their contemporaries, Sir John Lade and Colonel
Mellish; and in the early years of the nineteenth century the education
of no gay young blood was complete until he had acquired the art of
driving four-in-hand, in addition to the already fashionable and
highly dashing sport of driving the light whiskies, the high-perched
curricles, and the toppling tilburies that then gave a fearful joy
to the newly-fledged whip. There was not too much physical exertion,
endurance, or skill required on the road to Brighton, which was only
fifty-two miles in length, and already possessed a better surface than
most roads out of London; and, moreover, it was a road peopled from
beginning to end with fashionables, before whom the gentleman-coachman
could display his prowess. It was then pretty generally recognised that
coach-driving was a poor sport if the ease and grace of the performer
could not be displayed before a large and fashionable audience. That,
it will be conceded, was not altogether a worthy attitude.
Many of these brilliant amateurs of the road ran an essentially
identical career of viciousness and mad extravagance; and not a few of
them wasted themselves and their substance in the very shady pursuits
that then characterised the “man about town.” Those who are curious
about such things may find them fully set forth in Pierce Egan’s _Life
in London_ and its grim sequel, the _Finish_. The endings of the Toms
and Jerrys of that Corinthian age were generally sordid and pitiful.
[Illustration: FOUR-IN-HAND.
_After G. H. Laporte._
]
The truth is that the sporting world was then, as it always has been
and always will be, thronged with the toadies who were ever ready
to fool a moneyed youngster to the top of his bent. He must vie
with the richer and the more experienced, though he ruin himself in
the doing of it, and bring his ancestral acres to the hammer, in the
manner of a Mytton or a Mellish. The only satisfaction these reckless
sportsmen obtained, beyond the immediate gratification of their tastes,
was the eulogy of the sporting scribes, who discussed their style
upon the box-seat with as much gravity as would befit some question
of empire. Excepting “Nimrod” and “Viator Junior,” whose essays on
sport in general, and coaching in particular, were sound and honest
criticism, these writers were venal and beneath contempt.
A “real gentleman,” according to the ideas of these parasites, was
one who flung away his money broadcast in tips. Many foolish fellows,
foolish in thinking the good opinions of these gentry worth having,
spent their substance in this way. Of this kind was the amateur
whip described by a writer in the _Sporting Magazine_ in 1831. This
aspirant for the goodwill of the stable-helpers and their sort sat
beside the professional coachman on the Poole Mail starting from
Piccadilly, and when the reins were handed to him proclaimed his
gentility by the distribution of shillings among the horsekeepers.
First “Nasty Bob,” the ostler, got a shilling for talking about the
leaders’ “haction”; then “Greedy Dick,” the boots, had one also for
handing him the “vip”; and then came “Sneaking Will,” the cad and
coach-caller, to say something civil to the “gemman”; and even the
neighbouring waterman was seduced from his hackney-coaches to try the
persuasive powers of his eloquence. Four shillings and sixpence this
“real gentleman” distributed at Hatchett’s door, and left the capital
with the best wishes of the donees for his safe return. His generosity
was not allowed a long respite, for at “that vile hole Brentford,” a
slowly manœuvring waggoner blocked the way; and finding that he could
by no other means be induced to allow the mail to pass, our amateur
descended from the box, and, slyly placing a shilling in the waggoner’s
hands, said in a loud voice, “I don’t stand any nonsense, you know, so
now take your waggon out of the way.” This forcible and intelligible
appeal, so properly accompanied, was perfectly irresistible: the waggon
was drawn to the roadside, and the mail proceeded.
Very few of these amateurs have been considered worthy of biographical
treatment, but among them Sir St. Vincent Cotton is one. Let us just
see what the outline of his life was:--“Cotton, Sir St. Vincent, 6th
Baronet, son of Admiral Sir Charles Cotton. Born at Madingley Hall,
Cambs., October 6th, 1801; succeeded, February 24th, 1812; educated at
Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford. Cornet 10th Light Dragoons, May
13th, 1827; Lieutenant, December 13th, 1827, to November 19th, 1830,
when placed on half-pay. Distinguished himself in the hunting, skating,
racing, and pugilistic world. Played in Marylebone Cricket Matches,
1830–35. A great player at hazard. Dissipated all his property. Drove
the ‘Age’ coach from Brighton to London and back for some years from
1836. Died at 5, Hyde Park Terrace, January 25th, 1863.”
It is possible to largely supplement this skeleton biography from the
_Sporting Magazine_ and other sources. “The Cottons of Madingley and
Landwade,” said that classic authority, “are no ‘soft goods’ of recent
manufacture, but have held high rank among the gentry of Cambridgeshire
since the reign of Edward I. Sir John Cotton, the first baronet of the
family, was advanced to that honour in 1641, by Charles I., to whose
cause he was firmly attached. Sir St. Vincent used to ride in the first
flight with the crack men of Leicestershire, mounted on his favourite
mare, ‘Lark.’ The honourable baronet has, however, left both the Army
and the Chase to devote himself exclusively to the public service on
the ‘Road,’ where he performs the duties of a coachman very much to
his own pleasure, and the great satisfaction of all His Majesty’s
lieges who travel by the Brighton ‘Age’; and we are of opinion that
an English baronet is much better employed in driving a coach than in
endeavouring--like a certain mole-eyed wiseacre of the West, who also
displays the Red Hand on his scutcheon--to saw off the branch that he
is sitting on.
“We believe that the late Mr. H. Stevenson, who drove the ‘Age’ a
few years ago, was one of the first gentleman-whips who took a _bob_
and returned a _bow_--_i.e._, if you popped a shilling into his hand
at the end of a stage, he ducked his head and said, ‘Thank you.’ The
example thus set has been followed by the Baronet, who receives a
‘hog’ as courteously as his predecessor. When a noble Marquis, now in
the enjoyment of an hereditary dukedom, drove the ‘Criterion,’ and
afterwards the ‘Wonder,’ also on the Brighton Road, he did not take
‘civility money,’ we believe, but did the thing for pure love.
“By different means men strive for fame,
And seek to gain a sporting name.
Some like to ride a steeple-chase;
Others at Melton go the pace,
Where honour chief on him awaits
Who best takes brooks, and rails, and gates,
Or tops the lofty ‘bullfinch’ best,
Where man and horse may build a nest;
Who crams at everything his steed--
And clears it too--and keeps the lead.
Some on the ‘Turf’ their pleasure take,
Where knowing ‘Legs’ oft bite ‘the Cake’;
Others the ‘Road’ prefer; and drest
Like ‘reg’lar’ coachmen in their best,
Handle the ribbons and the whip,
And answer ‘All right!’ with ‘yah hip!’
At steady pace off go the tits,
Elate the Sporting Dragsman sits;
No peer nor plebeian in the land
With greater skill drives four-in-hand.”
[Illustration: SIR ST. VINCENT COTTON.]
Cotton, known to the plebeian professionals of the Brighton Road as
“the Baronet,” and to his familiars as “Vinny,” was so hard hit by his
disastrous gambling that he owned and drove the Brighton “Age” for a
living. Let us do him the justice to add that he did not attempt to
disguise the fact, and that he took his misfortunes bravely, like a
sportsman. Reduced, as a consequence of his own folly, from an income
of £5000 a year to nothing, “I drive for a livelihood,” he said to a
friend: “Jones, Worcester, and Stevenson have their liveried servants
behind, who pack the baggage and take all short fares and pocket all
the fees. That’s all very well for them. I do all myself, and the more
civil I am (particularly to the old ladies) the larger fees I get.”
He, indeed, made £300 a year out of this coach, and got his sport for
nothing.
The “Jones” of whom he spoke was Charles Tyrwhitt Jones, of whom,
being just an amateur with no eccentricities, we know little. Of
Harry Stevenson, one of the most distinguished and accomplished among
amateurs of the road, we know a good deal, although even of his short
life full particulars have never been secured. He made his first
appearance on the Brighton Road in August 1827, as part-proprietor of
the “Coronet,” and even then his name seems to have been one to conjure
with, for it was for painting it on a coach of which he was not one of
the licensees that Cripps was fined in November of that year. Stevenson
was then but little more than twenty-three years of age. He had gone
from Eton to Cambridge, and during his exceptionally short career was
always known by the fraternity of the road as “the Cambridge graduate.”
Although so little is known of him, sufficient has come down to us
to place him on a higher pedestal than that of the majority of the
gentlemen amateurs. He was not only a supreme artist with the ribbons,
“whose passion for the _bench_,” as “Nimrod” says, “exceeded all other
worldly ambitions,” but he was also a supremely good fellow, in a
broader and better significance of that misused term than generally
implied. That he was one of the spendthrifts who had run through their
money before taking to the road as a professional would appear to be a
baseless statement, invented perhaps to account for that higher form
of sportsmanship which entirely transcended that of the general ruck
of “sportsmen,” by inducing him to drive his coach, as an ordinary
professional would, day by day, instead of when fine weather and the
inclination of the moment served. A good professional he made, for he
did by no means forget his birth and education when on the box, and was
singularly refined and courteous. His second, and famous, coach was the
“Age,” put on the Brighton Road in 1828. This celebrated coach eclipsed
all the others of that time, from the mere point of view of elegance
and comfort. On a road like that to Brighton there was not, of course,
the chance to rival such flyers as the Devonport “Quicksilver” and
other long-distance cracks; but in every circumstance of its equipment
it was pre-eminent. It was not for nothing that Stevenson loved the
road. His ambition was to be first on it, and he succeeded. The “Age”
was built and finished, horsed and found in every way without regard
to cost. In a time when brass-mounted harness was your only wear,
his was silver-plated. The horse-cloths, too, exhibited this unusual
elegance, for they were edged with deep silver lace and gold thread,
and embroidered in each corner with a royal crown and a sprig of laurel
in coloured silks and silver. These cloths were, many years afterwards,
presented to the Brighton Museum by Mr. Thomas Ward Capps, a later
proprietor of the “Age,” and they are still to be seen there.
This was not by any means the sum of Stevenson’s improvements. The
usual guard he replaced by a liveried servant, whom he caused to
attend upon the passengers, when the coach changed horses, with silver
sandwich-box and offers of sherry of a kind that appealed even to the
jaded palates of connoisseurs. Stevenson was as excellent a whip as he
was a good-hearted gentleman. “I am not aware,” wrote “Viator Junior,”
“if, to quote a vulgar saying, he was ‘born with a silver spoon in his
mouth,’ but I certainly think he must have been brought into the world
with a whip and reins in his hand, for in point of ease and elegance of
execution as a light coachman he beats nineteen out of twenty of the
regular working dragsmen into fits, and as an amateur is only to be
approached by two or three of the chosen few.”
Of course, coaching on these luxurious terms resulted in a staggering
loss, and could not long have continued, but even those short
possibilities were ended by the early death of Stevenson. The cause
of the attack of brain-fever that ended his career early in 1830 is
imperfectly known, and is merely said to have been “an accident.” The
last scene was pathetic beyond the ordinary. Exhausted at the end of
delirium, the bandages that had held his arms were removed, when,
feebly raising himself up in bed and assuming as well as he was able
his old habitual attitude upon the box, he exclaimed, as if with the
reins in his hand, and to his favourite servant, who usually stood at
his leaders’ heads, “Let them go, George; I’ve got ’em!” and so sank
down, dying, upon his pillow, in the happy delusion of being once more
upon the road.
Mr. Harry Foker and others of the “young Oxonians” or “young Cantabs”
with more taste for driving four-in-hand than knowledge of that very
difficult art, were frequent aspirants for the ribbons, and as they
were generally flush of money and free with it, they often tasted the
delights of tooling a coach along the highway. Professional coachmen on
the Oxford and Cambridge roads reaped a bounteous crop of half-guineas
by resigning the reins into these hands, but equally plentiful was the
harvest of bruises and shocks gathered by the passengers as a result
of their reckless or unskilled driving. These chartered libertines
of the road are mentioned with horror by travellers in the first
half of the nineteenth century, who have pictured for us four horses
galloping at the incredible speed of twenty miles an hour, and the
coaches rocking violently, while the “outsides” hold on like firemen,
behind some uncertificated young cub from Oxford or Cambridge, or,
anticipating the final cataclysm, drop off behind or dive into the
hedges.
[Illustration: THE CONSEQUENCE OF BEING DROVE BY A GENTLEMAN.
_After H. Alken._
]
Even more than the passengers, coach-proprietors dreaded amateur
coachmen, and very properly dismissed those professionals whom they
caught allowing the reins out of their charge. They had cause for this
dread, for not only was the act of allowing amateurs to drive itself an
illegal one, entailing penalties, but it often resulted in accidents,
bringing in their train very heavy compensation claims. Juries
invariably satisfied themselves as to whether a professional or an
amateur was driving at the time when an accident occurred, and assessed
damages accordingly.
Sir St. Vincent Cotton was the cause of a serious accident that
happened to the “Star of Cambridge.” Springing the horses over a
favourable stretch of galloping-ground, he went at such a reckless pace
that Jo Walton, the professional coachman, seized hold of the reins. In
doing so the coach was overturned, and the passengers severely injured.
A jockey named Calloway had his leg broken, and, with others, brought
an action for damages. The affair cost Robert Nelson and his partners
nearly two thousand pounds.
A good amateur coachman was, as a general rule, like an accomplished
violinist, only to be produced by long training. Caught young and
properly schooled, he might become an elegant as well as a thorough
whip; but the late-comer rarely attained both grace and complete
mastery. “He who would master this most fascinating science of
coachmanship,” says Dashwood, in the _New Sporting Magazine_, “must
begin early, under good tuition. He must work constantly on all kinds
of coaches, and, thereby accustoming himself to every description of
team to be met with, no matter how difficult or unpleasant, will ere
long acquire a practical knowledge on that all-important point, the
art of putting horses well together.” He then proceeds to sigh for
one hour of “old Bill Williams,” of the “Oxford Defiance,” who, as a
schoolmaster of gentlemen-aspirants to coaching honours was, in his
time, unequalled. He was supposed to have turned out more efficient
coachmen than all the rest of his brethren put together. “Never by
any chance--confound him!--would he allow an error or ungraceful act
to escape unnoticed, and I have often got off his box so annoyed at
his merciless reproofs and lectures that I vowed no power on earth
should make me touch another rein for him. The first morning, in
particular, that I was with him I shall never forget. In spite of
all my remonstrances, nothing would satisfy him but I must take the
reins from the door of the very office, at the ‘Belle Sauvage,’ he
himself getting up behind, in order, as he said, not to ‘fluster the
young ‘un.’ By great good luck we got pretty well into the street,
and, without anything worth telling, for some way past Temple Bar;
but, as my evil star would have it, the narrow part of the Strand was
uncommonly full, and having rather an awkward team, and being moreover
in a pretty particular stew, we had more than one squeak at sundry
posts, drays, etc., etc. Still, not a word was uttered by the artist,
though by this time he had scrambled in front, till, after a devil of a
mistake in turning into the Hay-market, he touched my arm very civilly,
with a ‘Pull up, if you please, sir, by that empty coal-cart.’ I did
so--at least, as well as I could--and found, to my utter horror, that
it was for the purpose of his requesting the grinning blackamoors that
belonged to it _to lend him some six or seven of their sacks, to take
the drag home_; ‘for,’ said he, ‘I am sure the gentleman won’t take it
up to the Gloucester Coffee House _a coach_.’”