Orleans, and after Orleans (which is not quite so extraordinary, if all
were told,) fled before the Maid of Arc. Yes, says M. Michelet, you _did_:
deny it, if you can. Deny it, my dear? I don't mean to deny it. Running
away, in many cases, is a thing so excellent, that no philosopher would,
at times, condescend to adopt any other step. All of us nations in Europe,
without one exception, have shown our philosophy in that way at times. Even
people, "_qui ne se rendent pas_," have deigned both to run and to shout,
"_Sauve qui pent_" at odd times of sunset; though, for my part, I have
no pleasure in recalling unpleasant remembrances to brave men; and yet,
really, being so philosophic, they ought _not_ to be unpleasant. But
the amusing feature in M. Michelet's reproach, is the way in which he
_improves_ and varies against us the charge of running, as if he were
singing a catch. Listen to him. They "_showed their backs_," did these
English. (Hip, hip, hurrah! three times three!) "_Behind good walls, they
let themselves be taken,_" (Hip, hip! nine times nine!) They "_ran as
fast as their legs could carry them._" (Hurrah! twenty-seven times
twenty-seven!) They "_ran before a girl_;" they did. (Hurrah! eighty-one
times eighty-one!) This reminds one of criminal indictments on the old
model in English courts, where (for fear the prisoner should escape) the
crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. The law laid
its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. Whilst the
indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own eyes; and
yet, after all, the poor fellow had but committed one offence, and not
always _that_. N.B.--Not having the French original at hand, I make my
quotations from a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation, which
seems to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically English--liable, in fact,
only to the single reproach of occasional provincialisms.
THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH;
OR,
THE GLORY OF MOTION.
Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer,
M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little
planet, the Earth, however cheap they may happen to be held by the
eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had
married the daughter[1] of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great a
man as Galileo, who certainly invented (or _discovered_) the satellites of
Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital
points of speed and keeping time, but who did _not_ marry the daughter of a
duke.
These mail-coaches, as organized by Mr. Palmer, are entitled to a
circumstantial notice from myself--having had so large a share in
developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams, an agency which they
accomplished, first, through velocity, at that time unprecedented; they
first revealed the glory of motion: suggesting, at the same time, an
under-sense, not unpleasurable, of possible though indefinite danger;
secondly, through grand effects for the eye between lamp-light and the
darkness upon solitary roads; thirdly, through animal beauty and power so
often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service;
fourthly, through the conscious presence of a central intellect, that, in
the midst of vast distances,[2] of storms, of darkness, of night, overruled
all obstacles into one steady coöperation in a national result. To my own
feeling, this post-office service recalled some mighty orchestra, where a
thousand instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger of
discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme _baton_ of some great
leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, veins, and
arteries, in a healthy animal organization. But, finally, that particular
element in this whole combination which most impressed myself, and through
which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system tyrannizes
by terror and terrific beauty over my dreams, lay in the awful political
mission which at that time it fulfilled. The mail-coaches it was that
distributed over the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic
vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of Vittoria, of
Waterloo. These were the harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping,
redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the
meanest peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as
to confound these battles, which were gradually moulding the destinies
of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, which are
oftentimes but gladiatorial trials of national prowess. The victories of
England in this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural _Te Deums_
to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a
crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than
finally to France, and to the nations of western and central Europe,
through whose pusillanimity it was that the French domination had
prospered.
The mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty events,
became itself a spiritualized and glorified object to an impassioned heart;
and naturally, in the Oxford of that day, all hearts were awakened. There
were, perhaps, of us gownsmen, two thousand _resident_[3] in Oxford, and
dispersed through five-and-twenty colleges. In some of these the custom
permitted the student to keep what are called "short terms;" that is, the
four terms of Michaelmas, Lent, Easter, and Act, were kept severally by a
residence, in the aggregate, of ninety-one days, or thirteen weeks. Under
this interrupted residence, accordingly, it was possible that a student
might have a reason for going down to his home four times in the year. This
made eight journeys to and fro. And as these homes lay dispersed through
all the shires of the island, and most of us disdained all coaches except
his majesty's mail, no city out of London could pretend to so extensive a
connection with Mr. Palmer's establishment as Oxford. Naturally, therefore,
it became a point of some interest with us, whose journeys revolved every
six weeks on an average, to look a little into the executive details of
the system. With some of these Mr. Palmer had no concern; they rested upon
bye-laws not unreasonable, enacted by posting-houses for their own benefit,
and upon others equally stern, enacted by the inside passengers for the
illustration of their own exclusiveness. These last were of a nature to
rouse our scorn, from which the transition was not _very long_ to mutiny.
Up to this time, it had been the fixed assumption of the four inside
people, (as an old tradition of all public carriages from the reign
of Charles II.,) that they, the illustrious quaternion, constituted
a porcelain variety of the human race, whose dignity would have been
compromised by exchanging one word of civility with the three miserable
delf ware outsides. Even to have kicked an outsider might have been held to
attaint the foot concerned in that operation; so that, perhaps, it would
have required an act of parliament to restore its purity of blood. What
words, then, could express the horror, and the sense of treason, in that
case, which _had_ happened, where all three outsides, the trinity of
Pariahs, made a vain attempt to sit down at the same breakfast table or
dinner table with the consecrated four? I myself witnessed such an attempt;
and on that occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavored to soothe his
three holy associates, by suggesting that, if the outsides were indicted
for this criminal attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard it as
a case of lunacy (or _delirium tremens_) rather than of treason. England
owes much of her grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic element in her
social composition. I am not the man to laugh at it. But sometimes
it expressed itself in extravagant shapes. The course taken with the
infatuated outsiders, in the particular attempt which I have noticed, was,
that the waiter, beckoning them away from the privileged _salle-à-manger_,
sang out, "This way, my good men;" and then enticed them away off to the
kitchen. But that plan had not always answered. Sometimes, though very
rarely, cases occurred where the intruders, being stronger than usual, or
more vicious than usual, resolutely refused to move, and so far carried
their point, as to have a separate table arranged for themselves in a
corner of the room. Yet, if an Indian screen could be found ample enough
to plant them out from the very eyes of the high table, or _dais_, it then
became possible to assume as a fiction of law--that the three delf fellows,
after all, were not present. They could be ignored by the porcelain men,
under the maxim, that objects not appearing, and not existing, are governed
by the same logical construction.
Such now being, at that time, the usages of mail-coaches, what was to be
done by us of young Oxford? We, the most aristocratic of people, who were
addicted to the practice of looking down superciliously even upon the
insides themselves as often very suspicious characters, were we voluntarily
to court indignities? If our dress and bearing sheltered us, generally,
from the suspicion of being "raff," (the name at that period for
"snobs,"[4]) we really _were_ such constructively, by the place we assumed.
If we did not submit to the deep shadow of eclipse, we entered at least the
skirts of its penumbra. And the analogy of theatres was urged against us,
where no man can complain of the annoyances incident to the pit or gallery,
having his instant remedy in paying the higher price of the boxes. But
the soundness of this analogy we disputed. In the case of the theatre,
it cannot be pretended that the inferior situations have any separate
attractions, unless the pit suits the purpose of the dramatic reporter. But
the reporter or critic is a rarity. For most people, the sole benefit is in
the price. Whereas, on the contrary, the outside of the mail had its own
incommunicable advantages. These we could not forego. The higher price we
should willingly have paid, but that was connected with the condition of
riding inside, which was insufferable. The air, the freedom of prospect,
the proximity to the horses, the elevation of seat--these were what we
desired; but, above all, the certain anticipation of purchasing occasional
opportunities of driving.
Under coercion of this great practical difficulty, we instituted a
searching inquiry into the true quality and valuation of the different
apartments about the mail. We conducted this inquiry on metaphysical
principles; and it was ascertained satisfactorily, that the roof of the
coach, which some had affected to call the attics, and some the garrets,
was really the drawing-room, and the box was the chief ottoman or sofa
in that drawing-room; whilst it appeared that the inside, which had been
traditionally regarded as the only room tenantable by gentlemen, was, in
fact, the coal-cellar in disguise.
Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long before struck the
celestial intellect of China. Amongst the presents carried out by our first
embassy to that country was a state-coach. It had been specially selected
as a personal gift by George III.; but the exact mode of using it was a
mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, indeed, (Lord Macartney,) had made some
dim and imperfect explanations upon the point; but as his excellency
communicated these in a diplomatic whisper, at the very moment of his
departure, the celestial mind was very feebly illuminated; and it became
necessary to call a cabinet council on the grand state question--"Where was
the emperor to sit?" The hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous;
and partly on that consideration, but partly also because the box offered
the most elevated seat, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by
acclamation that the box was the imperial place, and, _for the scoundrel
who drove, he might sit where he could find a perch_. The horses,
therefore, being harnessed, under a flourish of music and a salute of guns,
solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English throne, having the
first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his
left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery people,
constructively present by representation, there was but one discontented
person, which was the coachman. This mutinous individual, looking as
blackhearted as he really was, audaciously shouted, "Where am _I_ to sit?"
But the privy council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the
door, and kicked him into the inside. He had all the inside places
to himself; but such is the rapacity of ambition, that he was still
dissatisfied. "I say," he cried out in an extempore petition, addressed to
the emperor through the window, "how am I to catch hold of the reins?" "Any
how," was the answer; "don't trouble _me_, man, in my glory; through the
windows, through the key-holes--how you please." Finally this contumacious
coachman lengthened the checkstrings into a sort of jury-reins,
communicating with the horses; with these he drove as steadily as may be
supposed. The emperor returned after the briefest of circuits; he descended
in great pomp from his throne, with the severest resolution never to
remount it. A public thanksgiving was ordered for his majesty's prosperous
escape from the disease of a broken neck; and the state-coach was dedicated
for ever as a votive offering to the god Fo, Fo--whom the learned more
accurately called Fi, Fi.
A revolution of this same Chinese character did young Oxford of that era
effect in the constitution of mail-coach society. It was a perfect French
revolution; and we had good reason to say, _Ca ira_. In fact, it soon
became _too_ popular. The "public," a well known character, particularly
disagreeable, though slightly respectable, and notorious for affecting the
chief seats in synagogues, had at first loudly opposed this revolution;
but when the opposition showed itself to be ineffectual, our disagreeable
friend went into it with headlong zeal. At first it was a sort of race
between us; and, as the public is usually above thirty, (say generally from
thirty to fifty years old,) naturally we of young Oxford, that averaged
about twenty, had the advantage. Then the public took to bribing, giving
fees to horse-keepers, &c., who hired out their persons as warming-pans on
the box-seat. _That_, you know, was shocking to our moral sensibilities.
Come to bribery, we observed, and there is an end to all morality,
Aristotle's, Cicero's, or anybody's. And, besides, of what use was it?
For _we_ bribed also. And as our bribes to those of the public being
demonstrated out of Euclid to be as five shillings to sixpence, here
again young Oxford had the advantage. But the contest was ruinous to
the principles of the stable establishment about the mails. The whole
corporation was constantly bribed, rebribed, and often sur-rebribed; so
that a horse-keeper, ostler, or helper, was held by the philosophical at
that time to be the most corrupt character in the nation.
There was an impression upon the public mind, natural enough from the
continually augmenting velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that
an outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger. On the
contrary, I maintained that, if a man had become nervous from some
gipsey prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular moon now
approaching some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnestly, "Whither
can I go for shelter? Is a prison the safest retreat? Or a lunatic
hospital? Or the British Museum?" I should have replied, "Oh, no; I'll tell
you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty days on the box of his
majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you there. If it is by bills at ninety
days after date that you are made unhappy--if noters and protesters are the
sort of wretches whose astrological shadows darken the house of life--then
note you what I vehemently protest, viz., that no matter though the sheriff
in every county should be running after you with his _posse_, touch a hair
of your head he cannot whilst you keep house, and have your legal domicile
on the box of the mail. It's felony to stop the mail; even the sheriff
cannot do that. And an _extra_ (no great matter if it grazes the sheriff)
touch of the whip to the leaders at any time guarantees your safety." In
fact, a bed-room in a quiet house, seems a safe enough retreat; yet it is
liable to its own notorious nuisances, to robbers by night, to rats, to
fire. But the mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the answer is
packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss.
Rats again! there _are_ none about mail-coaches, any more than snakes in
Van Troil's Iceland; except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who
always hides his shame in the "coal cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew
but one in a mail-coach, which was in the Exeter mail, and caused by an
obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of the law and the
lawgiver that had set their faces against his offence, insisted on taking
up a forbidden seat in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange
his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence was then known to
mail-coaches; it was treason, it was _læsa majestas_, it was by tendency
arson; and the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the
hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by the
wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the republic of letters. But
even this left the sanctity of the box unviolated. In dignified repose,
the coachman and myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our
knowledge--that the fire would have to burn its way through four inside
passengers before it could reach ourselves. With a quotation rather too
trite, I remarked to the coachman,--
----"Jam proximus ardet
Ucalegon."
But recollecting that the Virgilian part of his education might have been
neglected, I interpreted so far as to say, that perhaps at that moment the
flames were catching hold of our worthy brother and next-door neighbor
Ucalegon. The coachman said nothing, but, by his faint sceptical smile, he
seemed to be thinking that he knew better; for that in fact, Ucalegon, as
it happened, was not in the way-bill.
No dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the
indeterminate and mysterious. The connection of the mail with the state
and the executive government--a connection obvious, but yet not strictly
defined--gave to the whole mail establishment a grandeur and an official
authority which did us service on the roads, and invested us with
seasonable terrors. But perhaps these terrors were not the less impressive,
because their exact legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. Look at
those turnpike gates; with what deferential hurry, with what an obedient
start, they fly open at our approach! Look at that long line of carts
and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the very crest of the road. Ah!
traitors, they do not hear us as yet; but as soon as the dreadful blast of
our horn reaches them with the proclamation of our approach, see with what
frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our
wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings. Treason they
feel to be their crime; each individual carter feels himself under the
ban of confiscation and attainder: his blood is attainted through six
generations, and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the block
and the sawdust, to close up the vista of his horrors. What! shall it be
within benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high
road?--to interrupt the great respirations, ebb or flood, of the national
intercourse--to endanger the safety of tidings, running day and night
between all nations and languages? Or can it be fancied, amongst the
weakest of men, that the bodies of the criminals will be given up to their
widows for Christian burial? Now the doubts which were raised as to our
powers did more to wrap them in terror, by wrapping them in uncertainty,
than could have been effected by the sharpest definitions of the law from
the Quarter Sessions. We, on our parts, (we, the collective mail, I mean,)
did our utmost to exalt the idea of our privileges by the insolence with
which we wielded them. Whether this insolence rested upon law that gave
it a sanction, or upon conscious power, haughtily dispensing with that
sanction, equally it spoke from a potential station; and the agent in each
particular insolence of the moment, was viewed reverentially, as one having
authority.
Sometimes after breakfast his majesty's mail would become frisky: and in
its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets, it would
upset an apple cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was the affliction
and dismay, awful was the smash, though, after all, I believe the damage
might be levied upon the hundred. I, as far as possible, endeavored in such
a case to represent the conscience and moral sensibilities of the mail;
and, when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached under our horses' hoofs,
then would I stretch forth my hands in sorrow, saying (in words too
celebrated in those days from the false[5] echoes of Marengo)--"Ah!
wherefore have we not time to weep over you?" which was quite impossible,
for in fact we had not even time to laugh over them. Tied to post-office
time, with an allowance in some cases of fifty minutes for eleven miles,
could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and
condolence? Could it be expected to provide tears for the accidents of the
road? If even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, I contended, in
discharge of its own more peremptory duties.
Upholding the morality of the mail, _à fortiori_ I upheld its rights,
I stretched to the uttermost its privilege of imperial precedency, and
astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be lurking
constructively in the charters of this proud establishment. Once I remember
being on the box of the Holyhead mail, between Shrewsbury and Oswestry,
when a tawdry thing from Birmingham, some _Tallyho_ or _Highflier_, all
flaunting with green and gold, came up alongside of us. What a contrast to
our royal simplicity of form and color is this plebeian wretch! The single
ornament on our dark ground of chocolate color was the mighty shield of the
imperial arms, but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signet-ring
bears to a seal of office. Even this was displayed only on a single panel,
whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the state; whilst the
beast from Birmingham had as much writing and painting on its sprawling
flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor. For some
time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side--a piece of familiarity
that seemed to us sufficiently jacobinical. But all at once a movement of
the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind. "Do you
see _that_?" I said to the coachman. "I see," was his short answer. He was
awake, yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our
audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. But
his motive was loyal; his wish was that the Birmingham conceit should be
full-blown before he froze it. When _that_ seemed ripe, he unloosed, or, to
speak by a stronger image, he sprang his known resources, he slipped our
royal horses like cheetas, or hunting leopards, after the affrighted game.
How they could retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work they had
accomplished, seemed hard to explain. But on our side, besides the physical
superiority, was a tower of strength, namely, the king's name, "which they
upon the adverse faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it
seemed, we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between
us, as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst
our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph, that was really too
painfully full of derision.