END OF THE COACHING AGE
“This is the patent age of inventions.”--_Byron._
In 1789, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, of Shrewsbury, in writing his poem, the
_Loves of the Plants_, penned a most remarkably accurate prophecy,
comparable with Mother Shipton’s earlier “carriages without horses
shall go.” He wrote:--
Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar
Drag the slow barge, or urge the rapid car;
Or on wide waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the realms of air.
Fair crews, triumphant, smiling from above,
Shall wave their fluttering kerchiefs as they move;
Or warrior bands alarm the gaping crowd,
And armies shrink beneath the rushing cloud.
The first part of this prophecy was fulfilled in the period between
1823 and 1833, when steam-carriages--the motor-cars of that age--had a
brief popularity.
Before railways successfully assailed the coaches, horsed vehicles had
faced the inventions of a number of ingenious persons who wrestled with
that problem of steam traction on common roads which had attracted
Murdock in 1781. Trevithick took it up in 1800, and others followed;
but it was not until 1823 that the subject began greatly to interest
engineers. At that period, however, Hancock, Ogle, Church, Gurney,
Summers, Squire, Maceroni, Hills and Scott-Russell plunged into that
troubled sea of invention. Chief among these, from the standpoint of
results achieved, were Mr. (afterwards Sir) Goldsworthy Gurney, Walter
Hancock, and Colonel Maceroni. Gurney as early as 1827 had patented and
tried a steam-carriage on the road. The boiler, it was explained for
the benefit of nervous people, was perfectly safe. Even if it were to
burst, being “constructed on philosophical principles,” no one could
be hurt. On July 28th, 1829, he ran one of his inventions on the Bath
Road. This was what he termed a “steam-tractor,” used as an engine to
draw an ordinary barouche. Unfortunately for Gurney, he and his party
reached Melksham on the annual fair-day, and a hostile crowd of rustics
not only surrounded the steam-carriage, shouting “Down with machinery!”
but stoned the engine, the carriage, and Gurney and his friends, with
such effect that the machinery was disabled and several of the party
very seriously injured.
But he evidently travelled the kingdom pretty extensively with his
machines, for he agreed with one Mr. Hanning to grant him the right of
working them on a royalty on the West of England roads, and entered
into similar arrangements on the routes between London, Manchester, and
Liverpool, London and Brighton, London and Southampton, and London,
Birmingham, and Holyhead. Their price was agreed upon--to be hired at
6d. a mile, or to be sold by Gurney at £1000 each. During four months
at the beginning of 1831, Sir Charles Dance, who had bought some of the
carriages, established a steam service on the road between Cheltenham
and Gloucester. Three double journeys a day were made, 396 regular
trips in all, covering 3644 miles, and conveying 2666 passengers, who
paid £202 4s. 6d. in fares. The enterprise was just beginning to show a
profit when the local Trusts secured an Act under which they raised the
tolls against steam-carriages to a prohibitive height, and even went
so far as to obstruct the roads with loose gravel and stones, with the
result that the axle of one machine was broken.
In June 1831 the “philosophical” boiler of one of Gurney’s
steam-carriages, warranted not to burst disastrously, exploded at
Glasgow, and seriously injured two boys. Tom Hood wrote:--
Instead of _journeys_, people now
May go upon a _Gurney_,
With steam to do the horses’ work
By power of attorney;
Tho’ with a load it may explode,
And you may all be undone;
And find you’re going up to Heaven,
Instead of up to London.
Yet a Select Committee of the House of Commons, which had been
appointed to consider the question of steam-carriages, reported, four
months later, that such carriages could be propelled at an average rate
of ten miles an hour; that they would become a cheaper and speedier
mode of conveyance than carriages drawn by horses, and that they were
perfectly safe (!).
Between 1832 and 1838 there were no fewer than seven important
Steam-Carriage Companies in existence, and probably, had it not been
for the hostility of Turnpike Trusts all over the country, the roads
would have been peopled with mechanically-propelled vehicles. But tolls
were raised to such a height against the new-fangled inventions that
it became commercially impossible to run them. Between Liverpool and
Prescot the 4s. toll for a coach became £2 8s. for a steam-carriage;
between Ashburton and Totnes the 3s. impost became £2.
Evidently, from a coloured print published in 1833, Goldsworthy Gurney
projected a London and Bath service, but the turnpike authorities
crushed that also. An inscription under the original print obligingly
tells us all about this type of Gurney’s carriages:--
“The Guide or Engineer is seated in front, having a lever rod from
the two guide-wheels, to turn and direct the Carriage, and another
at his right hand, connecting with the main Steam Pipe, by which
he regulates the motion of the Vehicle--the hind part of the Coach
contains the machinery for producing the Steam, on a novel and secure
principle, which is conveyed by Pipes to the Cylinders beneath, and by
its action on the hind wheels sets the Carriage in motion. The Tank,
which contains about 60 Gallons of water, is placed under the body of
the Coach, and is its full length and breadth. The Chimneys are fixed
on the top of the hind boot, and, as Coke is used for fuel, there will
be no smoke, while any hot or rarified air produced will be dispelled
by the action of the Vehicle. At different stations on a journey, the
Coach receives fresh supplies of fuel and water. The full length of
the Carriage is from 15 to 20 feet, and its weight about 2 tons. The
rate of travelling is intended to be from 8 to 10 miles per hour. The
present Steam Carriage carries 6 inside and 12 outside Passengers.
The front Boot contains the Luggage. It has been constructed by Mr.
Goldsworthy Gurney, the Inventor and Patentee.”
Gurney was held, by a Parliamentary Committee, to be “foremost for
practical utility”; but that statement was owing, there is little
doubt, to the influence of his many friends in Parliament. Hancock’s
steam-carriages were at least as efficient--but then he had no such
influential supporters. Gurney claimed to have lost £36,000 directly
in his experiments, and a much larger sum indirectly, through the
excessive tolls imposed, and brought his grievances before Parliament.
A Committee recommended a grant of £16,000 to him, as the first to
successfully apply steam-carriages to use on public roads.
[Illustration: GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY’S LONDON AND BATH STEAM-CARRIAGE,
1833.
_After G. Morton._
]
In 1824 Walter Hancock was experimenting on similar lines, but it
was not until 1828 that a proposal was made to run a service of
steam-carriages between London and Brighton, and not until November
1832 that his “Infant” actually made the attempt. It had already, at
the beginning of 1831, plied for public service as an omnibus between
Stratford and London, and now was to essay those 52 miles between
London and the sea.
It performed the double journey, but, owing to lack of fuel on the way,
not in anything like record time, although it is said in places to have
attained a speed of 13 miles an hour.
In 1833 Hancock started a steam omnibus between Paddington and the
City, and by 1836 had three. Between them, they conveyed no fewer
than 12,761 passengers. They were named the “Era,” “Autopsy,” and
“Automaton.” Why the middle one should have been named in a manner
so suggestive of accidents and post-mortem examinations is not
clear. But indeed, the names of old-time and modern motor-cars and
their inventors, strange to say, generally have been, and are now,
sometimes singularly unfortunate. Thus, in 1824, a Scotch inventor of
Leith produced a steam-carriage. His name was Burstall! Among recent
motor-cars are the “Mors” and the “Hurtu.”
In October 1833 Hancock ran the “Autopsy” to Brighton in 8½ hours
(including three hours in stops on the way), and later had successful
trips to Marlborough and back and Birmingham and back. These
performances were considered so promising that a “London and Birmingham
Steam-Coach Company” was formed, and more steam-coaches ordered to be
built. Fares between London and Birmingham were not to exceed £1 each,
inside, and 10s. out. Hancock, a thorough believer in his invention
and its capacity for solving the road-problems of the time, offered
to carry the mails at 20 miles an hour; but the Post Office declined.
Railways had, in fact, just succeeded in attracting attention, and were
so strongly supported by capitalists that steam-carriages suffered
neglect, and their inventors were utterly discouraged. Bright hopes
and prospects gradually faded away, and by 1838 the railways held the
field, undisputed.
Railways themselves were at first ridiculed, and suffered from the
necessity of obtaining Parliamentary sanction at a period when the
landowning interests and public opinion were decidedly hostile. Even
when their construction was authorised, every one ridiculed the
railways, and called those people fools who had invested their money in
them. To be a railway shareholder was at that time, to the majority of
people, proof positive of insanity, while engineers and directors were
regarded as curious compounds of fools and rogues. Any time between
1833 and 1837, the coachmen on the Great North Road would point out
to their box-seat passengers the works of the London and Birmingham
in progress beside that highway, and distinctly visible all the way
between Potter’s Bar and Hatfield and at various other points. “Going
to run us off the road, _they say_” a coachman would remark, jerking
his elbow and nodding his head towards the place where hundreds of
navvies were delving in a cutting or tipping an embankment. Then,
squirting a stream of saliva from between his front teeth, in the
practised manner assiduously cultivated by admiring amateurs, he would
lapse into a contemplative silence, quite undisturbed by any suspicion
that the railway really would run the coaches off. The passengers by
coach were nearly all of the same mind. Some thought the railways
would be useful in carrying goods, but declined to believe that they
or any one else would ever travel by them; and a large proportion
of the railway directors and proprietors shared the same opinion,
being quite convinced that railways would convey heavy articles and
general merchandise, and that coaches would continue to run as of old.
Lovers of the road, coachmen and passengers alike, called the engines
“tea-kettles,” protested that coaching had nothing to fear, and wished
their heads might never ache until railroads came into fashion. They
declared they would never--no, _never_--go by the railroad; but at
length, when some urgent occasion arose, demanding speed, they trusted
their precious persons in a railway train, and, to their surprise,
found it “not so bad after all.” The next occasion, such a person going
to town would shrink as he encountered the “Swallow” coach, by which he
had always travelled, and would feel guilty as he shook his head to the
coachman’s “Coming by me this morning, sir?” Why? Because he had made
up his mind to go by train, and so save something in time and pocket.
This time our traveller rather liked it; and thus the “Swallow,” and
many another coach not already withdrawn, was doomed.
Let us follow the career of such a coach, to its last days.
Deprived of its best passengers, the exchequer of our typical “Swallow”
began to decline. The stalwarts, whose love for the road was superior
to economy of time and money, were faithful, but they were not numerous
enough, and did not travel sufficiently often, for the old style of
that fast post-coach to be maintained, so it was reduced from four
horses to three. In coaching parlance, it ran “pickaxe,” or “unicorn.”
No connoisseur in coaching matters would condescend to travel as a
regular thing by a three-horse coach, and so those supporters were
alienated, and, against their will, driven to the railway; and the
“Swallow,” badly winged, carried only frightened old women who looked
upon steam-engines as wild beasts. As they died away, no one took their
places, and the old concern became a pair-horse coach. The coachman had
seen the change coming, and declared he would never be brought so low
as to drive two horses. He had said the same thing when it was proposed
to have three. “Drive unicorn!” he had said: “never!” But he did, and
he drove pair-horse as well, when the time came. It was better to do so
than to lose his place and face starvation.
By this time the iron had entered the soul of our poor old friend,
and had rusted there. He who had been so smart and gay, with song and
joke and always good-humoured, suffered, like the coach, a strange and
pitiful metamorphosis. The stringency of the times had thinned the
establishment, and in the absence of ostlers and stablemen he put in
the horses himself, badly groomed, and the harness dirty. No one washed
or cleaned the coach, and it ran with the mud and dirt of many journeys
encrusted on its sides. His coat grew seedy, his gloves soiled. Instead
of the silver-mounted whip he had wielded for years, he used one of
common make. The old one, he said, had gone to be repaired, but somehow
or another the job was never completed. At any rate, no one ever saw
the old whip again. At the same time his smart white hat disappeared
and was replaced by a black one: observant people, however, perceived
that it was the identical hat, disguised by process of dyeing. He
could sink no deeper, you think. But he could, and did. Even the short
journey to which the old “Swallow” had in course of time been reduced
by railway extensions came at last to an end; and then he drove the
“Railway Bus” to and from the station, with one horse. His temper,
once so high-mettled, had by now grown uncertain. He was like an April
day--stormy, dull, gloomy, and with fitful gleams of sunshine, all in
turn. No one knew quite how to take him, and every one at last left him
very much to himself. He was never a favourite with the “commercial
gentlemen,” who were now his most frequent passengers, for he had
always in the old days looked down upon any one under the rank of a
county gentleman, and could by no means rid himself of that ancient
attitude of mind. Indeed, he lived in the past, and when he could be
induced to talk at all, would generally be reminiscent of better days.
Commencing with the unvaried formula, “I’ve seen the time when....” he
would then proceed to draw comparisons, much to the disadvantage of
present time and present company. He was then absurdly surprised when
acquaintance, tired of these tactless speeches, avoided him. Not so
quick in his movements as of yore, and always impatient of dictation,
he resented the bluff impatience of a “commercial” one morning, and
when that “ambassador of commerce” desired him to “look alive there,
now, with those boxes,” flung the boxes themselves on the ground, and
told that astonished traveller to “go and be damned!” Unfortunately,
although the traveller would have overlooked the insolence, he could
not afford to disregard the loss of his samples, which happened to
be china, and were all smashed. He reported the occurrence to the
hotel-proprietor, who, being a compassionate man, explained, as he
instantly dismissed the offender, that he was very sorry, but he could
not afford to keep so violent a man in his employ.
After this dramatic incident the ex-coachman hung about the station,
and obtained a few, a very few, odd jobs as porter, until one day a
gentleman alighting from a train saw him. With surprise and sorrow in
his eyes he recognised the once smart coachman, who, years before, had
tutored him in driving. “Good God!” he exclaimed: “is it you?” The old
man burst into tears.
He ended more happily than, but for this chance, would have been the
case, for the Squire took him into his service, and there he remained
until he followed his generation to the Beyond.
The opening of the London and Birmingham Railway in September 1838 did
not suddenly bring the Coaching Age to a close. Many routes remained
for years afterwards practically unassailed, and even on the road to
Birmingham some coach-proprietors struggled with great spirit against
the direct competition of the railway. At the close of 1838 a newspaper
is found saying: “A few months ago no fewer than twenty-two coaches
left Birmingham daily for London. Since the opening of the railway that
number has been reduced to four, and it is expected that these will be
discontinued, although the fares by coach are only 20s. inside and 10s.
outside, whilst the fares for corresponding places on the railroad are
30s. and 20s.”
Prominent among those men who declined to give up without a struggle
was Sherman, of the “Bull and Mouth,” whose coaches had run to
Birmingham, Manchester, and other places on the north-western road.
For two years he maintained the unequal contest, and only relinquished
it when he had lost seven thousand pounds and found his coaches
running empty. Before finally beaten, he had even gone the length of
re-establishing some coaches originally withdrawn in 1836, on the
opening of the Grand Junction Railway. The reasons for this were many.
The train-service in those early days was very poor, and engine-power
insufficient, so that heavy loads, rain-showers that made the rails
slippery, and the innumerable minor accidents always happening to the
engines themselves, made travelling by railway not only uncertain, but,
in not a few instances, even slower than by coach. Railway officials,
too, were insolent to an incredible degree. Only when one has read the
“Letters to the Editor” in contemporary journals can we have any idea
of that insolence. The public complained that, having run the coaches
off and secured a monopoly, the officials, finding themselves masters
of the situation, behaved accordingly like masters, and not like the
servants of the public they really were, or should have been. Newspaper
comments dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, and generally emphasised
and embroidered these grievances. It is not, then, to be wondered
at that a regret for “the good old times” found expression, or that
coaches reappeared for a while. Many coach-proprietors were deceived
by this partly indignant, partly sentimental attitude, and when they
had committed themselves to a revival did not find the support which,
from the newspaper outcry, they might reasonably have expected. Thus
early do we find that gigantic evil of modern times--irresponsible
and misleading newspaper talk--directly to blame for losses and
disappointments to those foolish enough to pay heed to it.
[Illustration: THE LAST JOURNEY DOWN THE ROAD.
_After J. H. Agasse._
]
Sherman’s country partners were not so rash or so obstinate as he,
and some of the coaches he personally would have continued had been
withdrawn early in the railway advance. Among those was the Manchester
“Red Rover”; but when the popular indignation against railway delays
and official insolence was thus exploited by the newspapers, Sherman
was enabled to again secure the co-operation of his allies, and to put
that coach on the road once more. The decision to do so was announced
in a striking handbill:--
“THE RED ROVER RE-ESTABLISHED throughout to Manchester.
_Bull and Mouth Inn and Queen’s Hotel._
It is with much satisfaction that the Proprietors of the RED ROVER
Coach are enabled to announce its
RE-ESTABLISHMENT
as a direct conveyance THROUGHOUT, BETWEEN LONDON AND MANCHESTER,
and that the arrangements will be the same as those which before
obtained for it such entire and general approval. In this effort
the Proprietors anxiously hope that the public will recognise
and appreciate the desire to supply an accommodation which will
require and deserve the patronage and support of the large and
busy community on that line of road.
The RED ROVER will start every evening, at a quarter before seven,
by way of
Coventry,
Birmingham,
Walsall,
Stafford,
Newcastle-under-Lyme,
Congleton,
Macclesfield,
and
Stockport,
and perform the journey _in the time which before gave such general
satisfaction_.
☞ It will also start from the ‘Moseley Arms’ Hotel, Manchester, for
London, every evening, at nine o’clock.
EDWARD SHERMAN, } Joint
JOHN WETHERALD & CO., } Proprietors.
_London, October 28th, 1837._”
It was a gallant effort, but failed. Manchester men had grumbled at
railway delays, but they were not sentimentalists, and when the London
and Birmingham Railway was opened throughout, and an uninterrupted run
through to Manchester was possible, they forsook the road, and the “Red
Rover” roved no more.
But still, sentiment gushed freely over the coaches in every channel of
the periodical press, except, of course, in those railway journals that
even thus early had come into existence. Poetry, of sorts, was lavished
on the coachmen by the bucketful, and they were made to consider
themselves martyrs in a lost cause. They felt themselves greatly
honoured by all those attentions, and now began to perceive that they
were really very fine fellows indeed. It was a proud position they now
occupied in the public eye, but it had its own peculiar drawbacks.
Amid all this adulation they could not but see that they were like the
gladiators of ancient times, going forth to glory, it is true, but to
simultaneous extinction; and as all the plaudits of the multitude must
have seemed to them a hollow mockery, so did this latter hero-worship
appear cheap and unsubstantial to the coachmen. Some of them assumed
a pensive air, which did by no means sit well upon their burly forms
and purple countenances, and was often, to their disgust, mistaken for
indigestion.
Here, from among a wealth of verse, is a typical ballad of the time,
among the best of its kind; but even so, perhaps not altogether one
that Tennyson would have been proud to father:--
THE DIRGE OF THE DRAGSMEN
Farewell to the Coach-box, farewell to the Vip!
By Fate most unkindly we’re cotch’d on the hip;
Brother Dragsmen, come join in a general chorus,
For there’s nothing at present but ruin before us.
Once who were so gay as we trumps of the team?
Now our glory hath vanish’d away, like a dream;
Doom’d to suffer adversity’s punishing lash,
For the villainous Railroads have settled our hash.
Patricians no more of our craft will be backers,
And our elegant cattle must go to the knackers;
Guards, porters, and stablemen now on a level,
And all the road innkeepers book’d for the devil.
We four-in-hand worthies, however desarving,
Will have nothing in hand to prevent us from starving,
Compell’d by hard treatment our colours to strike,
We may shortly turn Chartists and handle the pike.
Our beavers broad-brimm’d, and our togs out and out,
Must, the needful to raise, be soon shov’d up the spout;
Our fine, portly forms will be meagre as spectres,--
So much for these steam and these railroad projectors.
By Heavens! ’tis a cruel affair, and the nation
In justice are bound to afford compensation;
And, as on the shelf we must shortly be laid,
To found an asylum for Dragsmen decay’d.
There, taking our pint in all brotherly love,
We may chaff at the swells and the prads as we druv,
While spectators, admiring, exclaim’d with a shout,
“We’re bless’d if that ’ere ain’t a spicy turn-out!”
And how, as we tied round our necks the silk fogle,
The rosy-cheek’d barmaids would tip us the ogle;
And when all was ready the ribbons to seize,
How slyly the darlings would give us a squeeze.
A plague upon Railways! the system be blowed!
Grim engineers now are the lords of the road;
And passengers now are conveyed to their goal,
Not by steaming of cattle, but steaming of coal.
’Tis a black, burning shame! Must our glory be crush’d,
And the guard’s lively bugle to silence be hush’d?
Oh! ’tis fit that our wrongs we should freely declare,
For we always look’d out for the thing that was _fare_.
Let mourning as gloomy as midnight be spread
O’er the _Swan with Two Necks_ and the _Saracen’s Head_;
Let the _Black Bull_, in Holborn, be cow’d, and the knell
Of glory departed be heard from the _Bell_.
The _Blossoms_ must speedily fade from the bough,
And cross’d are the hopes of the _Golden Cross_ now;
The _White Horse_ must founder, the _Mountain_ fall down,
The _Gloster_ be clos’d, and the _Bear_ be done _Brown_.
The _Eclipse_ is eclips’d, and the _Sovereign_ is dead,
And the _Red Rover_ now never roves from its shed;
The _Times_ are disjointed, the _Blucher_ at peace,
And the _Telegraph_ shortly from working must cease.
The _Victory_ now must submit to defeat,
And the _Wellington_ own he is cruelly beat;
The sport is all up with the fam’d _Tally-Ho_,
And the old _Regulator_ no longer will go.
Oh! had I, dear brethren, the muse of a Byron,
I’d write down the system of traveling on iron;
For flying like lightning but poorly atones
For crushing the carcase or breaking the bones.
So, farewell to the Coach-box, farewell to the Vip!
By Fate most unkind we are cotch’d on the hip;
Then join, brother Dragsmen, in sorrowful chorus,
For at present there’s nothing but ruin before us.
On a few out-of-the-way routes, originally not worth the while of
railway companies to exploit, coaching did, however, survive an
incredible time. Cordery in 1796 painted the even then old-established
Chesham coach, and coaches continued to run into Buckinghamshire until
quite recent times. Aylesbury, Chesham, Amersham, and Wendover only
obtained direct railway accommodation when the Metropolitan Railway,
under the lead of Sir Edward Watkin, extended into the country past
Harrow and Rickmansworth, reaching Aylesbury in 1892. The Amersham and
Wendover coach--really better described as a three-horsed ’bus--went
to London daily until 1890, returning from the “Old Bell,” Holborn, at
five o’clock in the evening. It was the sole survivor of the host of
coaches that left London fifty years earlier.
But two generations have passed away since coaches began to disappear
and to become historic, and the “elderly man,” with his enviable
memories of a long journey in mid-spring or autumn on the outside of a
stage-coach, written about by George Eliot, is no longer to be found,
reminiscent of the times that were. Nay, the locomotive steam engine
itself is doomed, in turn, to be replaced by self-moving electric
motor carriages, and we shall live to drop a salt tear upon an express
locomotive retired from active service, or to sigh at sight of a
solitary Metropolitan Railway engine placed in a museum of things
that were. The days of the prophets were not ended with the Biblical
prognosticators, with Nixon, red-faced or otherwise, or with Mother
Shipton, or even with Erasmus Darwin, who, although he could foresee
steam and the balloon, could not envisage electricity. They included
George Eliot, also, among the prophets, shadowing forth, in a most
remarkable way, the Central London Railway and other tube lines of
our own time, in this extraordinary passage: “Posterity may be shot,
like a bullet, through a tube, by atmospheric pressure ... but the
slow, old-fashioned way of getting from one end of our country to the
other is the better thing to have in the memory. The tube journey can
never lend much to picture and narrative; it is as barren as an
exclamatory ‘O!’” How true! The scenery on what the vulgar call the
“Tuppenny Tube” is distinctly uninteresting.
[Illustration: THE CHESHAM COACH, 1796.
_From the painting by Cordery._
]
But Marian Evans had, you see, her limitations as a diviner of things
to be. Electricity was not within her ken; she did not suspect
the steam-carriages of her youth would be reincarnated as modern
motor-cars. Yet, all the time, they were simply laid by, and Gurney,
Hancock, and their fellows are justified in this our day. Everything
recurs, essentially the same as before, with a complete revolution of
the wheel of time, and thus the Road has become itself again.
Will a time come when the day of the motor-car will be looked back
upon with that air of regretful sentiment with which the vanished
Coaching Age is regarded? The rhythmic footfall of the horses and the
rattle of the bars, the tootling of the “yard of tin” and the cheerful
circumstance that attends the progress of a well-appointed coach, are
things which have been, and may still be, experienced in our time by
those who journey down the roads affected by the summer coaches, to
Brighton, St. Albans, and Virginia Water; but as the Coaching Age
itself has passed away, these are only sentimental revivals. The
horseless carriages are upon us, and “going strong,” alike in speed
and scent. The odour of the imperfectly-combusted petrol desecrates
the airs of the country-side. Already the length and breadth of the
land have been explored by them, on roads good, bad and indifferent,
hilly or flat; and the characteristic rattle of their machinery and the
hoarse trumpeting of their cyclorns are becoming familiar even to the
rustics of Devon and Somerset.
Let it not be supposed, however, that skill in driving is not so
necessary now as in the days of the spanking teams of coach-horses.
The careful coachman of old saved his horses over the road for the
long climbs and rugged places; he “sprung” them perhaps on the level,
and gave them a “towelling” as a persuader to greater efforts through
snow-drifts, winds or floods; and the driver of a motor-car does many
of these things to his machinery, not indeed with the aid of a whip,
but through the agency of levers, taps and brakes. You can overdrive
and exhaust a motor just as easily as you can a horse, while it wants
feeding just as well. “A just man is merciful to his beast,” and a
cautious man is careful of his car, not only because if he was not he
would perhaps be left with half a ton of inert machinery upon the road,
but because he is just as fond of his automobile as many another of his
steeds of flesh and blood.
But to most people who have only seen motor-cars, and have neither
driven them nor ridden in one, this will not readily be understood;
while the veteran who remembers the sights and sounds of the
coaching days does not hear the clatter of the new occupants of the
road with pleasurable feelings. To him there is no music in the
“Gurr-r-r-_umph_! bang, gr-rrr!” of a Daimler, changing speeds in going
uphill, nor any charm in the rattle of a Benz; the “ft-ft-ft” of a
motor-tricycle, or the banshee-like minor-key wail, “wow-wow-wow,” of
an electric cab on wood pavement. How very odd if there were!
[Illustration: THE LAST OF THE “MANCHESTER DEFIANCE.”
_From a lithograph._
]
Does it never occur to thinking men that the “blessings” of invention
and the age of mechanical and other improvements have been too loudly
and consistently praised? We need not be thought fanatically opposed
to change if we deny the reality of some of those blessings. Let it be
granted that they are ultimately in favour of the community and for the
eventual improvement of the race; but if you view him unconventionally,
does not the inventor, with his ingenious devices to overturn the
practice and habits of generations past, seem sometimes rather a curse
than a benefactor to mankind? While with one hand he simplifies and
cheapens something (whether it be in travel or in anything else does
not particularly matter for argument’s sake), with the other he sets
a more strenuous pace to life. In the long ago he invented printing;
and the Devil, seeing prophetically ahead, looked on with approval,
because he foresaw the halfpenny evening papers. He introduced gas,
replaced horses by steam-engines, and away went the leisured pace of
that generation; and then, when a newer one was born to take steam
as a matter of course, brought electricity to bear upon lighting and
tractive problems. Always he sets you a quicker pace when you would be
going quietly or resting by the way. One generation of him takes away
the traffic of the roads; another filches that of the railways and puts
the traffic on the road again in an altered form. There is no finality
about the inventor, who ought, for the peace of the age, first to be
gently dissuaded, then admonished, and, in the last resort, severely
dealt with. Our ancestors had a “quick way” with such, and discouraged
invention by putting inventors to death as wizards. A drastic method,
but they saved themselves much worry and trouble thereby. The inventor
is not usually entitled to any consideration on the score of working
for the benefit of humanity. So little does he do so that he takes
infinite care to patent and to provisionally protect even his immature
devices. He works, in short, to build his own fortune.
Apply these feelings to the case of the coachmen who were born in
an age that knew nothing of steam. Every stand-by was rooted up in
the coming of railways, and the steam-engine was just as strange a
monster to them as the electric dynamo is to many of ourselves. Often
they could not transfer their allegiance to the railway, even though
they starved. It was not always stubbornness or pride that held them
aloof, but a certain and easily-understood lack of adaptability that
forbade one who had held the reins to handle the starting-lever of
the locomotive. More guards than coachmen transferred themselves from
the road to the rail, because the duties were not so diverse; but,
although there were coachmen who took positions on railways, no one has
ever heard of one who became an engine-driver.
But coachmen and guards and the passengers they drove are all passed
away, and the world rolls on as though they had never existed. The
coaches, like the old Manchester “Defiance,” shown in the picture,
rotting away in the deserted inn-yard, were left to decay in
unconsidered places or were reduced to firewood; unlike many of the old
“Bull and Mouth” mails, which, after lying there for some time idle,
were bought and shipped to Spain, running for many years on Peninsula
roads, from Malaga in the south to Vittoria and Salamanca in the north,
and by a singular fate visiting in their old age those blood-red
fields of victory whose fame they had once spread from London all over
triumphant England.