THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: 1800–1824
The period at which this chapter begins is that when outside passengers
were first enabled to ride on the roofs of coaches without incurring
the imminent hazard of being thrown off whenever their vigilance and
their anxious grip were relaxed. It was about 1800 that fore and hind
boots, framed to the body of the coach, became general, thus affording
foothold to the outsides. Mail-coaches were not the cause of this
change, for they originally carried no passengers on the roof.
We cannot fix the exact date of this improvement, and may suppose
that, in common with every other innovation, it was gradual, and only
introduced when new coaches became necessary on the various routes.
The immediate result was to democratise coach-travelling. Exclusive
insides, who once with disgust observed the occasional soldier or
sailor dangling his legs in the windows, now were obliged to put up
with a set of cheap travellers who, if they did no longer so dangle
their common legs, being provided with seats and footholds, were
always to be found on the roof, laughing and talking loudly, enjoying
themselves in the elementary and vociferous way only possible to low
persons, and disturbing the genteel reflections of the insides. Let us
pity the sorrows of those superior travellers, unwillingly conscious of
those stamping, noisy, low-down creatures on the roof!
The revulsion of those sensitive persons led to the establishment of
a superior class of coach, carrying insides only; and accordingly,
we find the original improvement of seats on the roof bringing
far-reaching consequences in its train. While democratising coaches, it
at the same time necessitated another class, and thus directly brought
about a numerical increase. The exclusive were thus enabled to keep
their exclusiveness by going in such conveyances as that announced in
the advertising columns of the high-class papers:--
FOR PORTSMOUTH.
_A New Carriage on Springs, called_
THE LAND FRIGATE,
Sets out from the _Bell Savage_, Ludgate Hill, to the _Red Lyon_ at
Portsmouth, every Tuesday and Saturday, at 6 a.m. Fare, 15s. each
Passenger. Ladies and Gentlemen are requested to Observe that the
Frigate is elegantly sashed all round, and in order to preserve the
gentility and respectability of the vehicle, no outside passengers
are carried.
[Illustration: MRS. BUNDLE IN A RAGE; OR, TOO LATE FOR THE STAGE.
_After Rowlandson, 1809._
]
The period now under consideration was in other ways a very great and
progressive one. In this space of twenty-five years were included
the two most significant advances in the whole history of the road--the
introduction about 1805 of springs under the driving-box, and the
shortening of the stages. Without either of them, the acceleration that
resulted in the Golden Age of coaching, beginning in 1825, would have
been impossible.
The placing of springs under the driving-box was due to the suggestion
of John Warde, earliest of the coaching amateurs, who had been taught
the art of driving a stage-coach by Jack Bailey, a famed coachman on
the old “Prince of Wales,” between London and Birmingham. He had found
the jolting received directly from the axle an intolerable infliction
on a long drive, and urged coach-proprietors to provide springs.
Said “Mr. Wilkins of the ‘Balloon’”--a character in Nimrod’s _Life
of a Sportsman_--“they do say they are going to put the boxes of all
stage-coaches on springs, but Heaven knows when that will be--not in my
time, I fear. Our people say it won’t do; we shall go to sleep on them.
No danger of a man doing that now, even if he should be a bit overtaken
with drink.” Under these circumstances there was, as Mr. Wilkins went
on to show, “a great deal of _hart_ in sitting on a coach-box,” as well
as driving four horses. “Your body must go with the swing of the box,
and let your lines (loins, he meant) be as lissom as you can. It would
kill a man in a week to drive as far as I do, if he did not do as I
say.”
When it became clear to coach-proprietors that a coachman could drive
a longer distance when his body was not racked so intolerably, they
provided springs, and risked the remote chance of coachmen going to
sleep on the box.
Another reform, humane to the horses and directly productive of
increased speed and efficiency on the road, was the introduction of
shorter stages. From those almost incredible times when a coach went
from end to end of a long trip and returned with the same team, to
those when the stages were twenty miles long constituted, no doubt,
a great advance; but that was by this time no longer sufficient. The
mail stages, as we have seen, rarely at the earliest times exceeded ten
miles, and were often much less. The mails also travelled at night, a
thing the stage-coaches did not in the old times dare attempt. In the
early days of Pennant, and other chroniclers contemporary with him, the
coaches inned every evening. None dared travel when the sun had set and
darkness brooded over the land, for there were not only the highwaymen
to be feared--and they still continued to increase--but the badness of
the roads had constituted a danger even more dreaded. Now, however,
roads--thanks to Post Office insistence--were greatly improved; and
if the mails could go through the darkness, why not also the stages?
Coincident with these things, great minds perceived that by changing
horses every ten miles or so, and coachmen at intervals, a coach might,
in the first place, be made to go much faster, and secondly, might
put into twenty-four hours of continuous running what had formerly been
the work of three days. It is obviously easy to go over a hundred miles
in the twenty-four hours even if you only go five miles in every hour.
These great truths once perceived and acted upon, the coaching world
was revolutionised.
[Illustration: THE SHEFFIELD COACH, ABOUT 1827.
_From a contemporary painting._
]
No longer did coaching announcements propose to perform journeys in
so many hours _if the roads were good_. They boldly promised that
they would complete their course by a certain time, and altogether
disregarded contingencies. By this time the “God-permits” had also
become things of the past, and no proprietor was so old-fashioned as to
announce that his coach would set out or arrive, “God permitting,” as
aforetime had been the cautious or pious proviso. They now “started”
instead of “setting out,” and arrived, as an irreverent wag observed,
“God willing, or not.”
In fine, the world was made to go according to time-tables, and much
faster than of old. Coaches actually, as an ordinary everyday thing,
went at a quicker pace than an able-bodied man could walk, and it
was no longer possible for a weary traveller when offered a lift, to
decline with the _bonâ-fide_ excuse that he was in a hurry; and so,
continuing afoot, to arrive before the coach. Fielding shows us Parson
Adams outwalking the coach, about 1745; but in this era the passengers
just too late for the stage could by no means hope to catch it up.
Why, it commonly went at eight miles an hour, and often nine! Thus we
see Rowlandson’s anxious travellers, unable to attract the attention
of the coach in front of them and equally unable to overtake it, left
lamenting.
This, too, was the age of increased competition, when a continuous
smartening-up alone kept some of the old-stagers going. Thus, in 1805,
when three coaches left London every day for Sheffield, the quickest
took over thirty hours. In 1821 it left the “Angel,” Angel Street, St.
Martin’s-le-Grand, at 3.30 p.m., and arrived at Sheffield at 8 the next
evening,--163¼ miles in 28½ hours, or at the rate of 5¾ miles an hour,
including stops. In 1824 it started an hour later and arrived at the
same hour as before; and in 1827 was expedited by another half-hour.
That was very poor travelling, and it is not surprising that after 1827
it is heard of no more. More strenuous rivals usurped the route.
Here we see that coach drawn up in front of a wayside hostelry,--the
“Bull’s Head”--at some unnamed spot. Let us not criticise the drawing
of it too narrowly, for the painting whence this illustration was
engraved was the work of the coachman, Alfred Elliot. He was coachman
first, and artist afterwards.
[Illustration: THE “BIRMINGHAM EXPRESS” LEAVING THE “HEN AND CHICKENS.”
_From a contemporary painting._
]
Another result of competition was the gorgeous livery a coach on
a hotly contested route would assume, and the number of places it
would pretend to serve. In the illustration of the “Express” London
and Birmingham coach--represented in the act of leaving the “Hen
and Chickens,” New Street, Birmingham, and reproduced from a curious
contemporary painting executed on sheet tin--an extraordinary number of
place-names are seen; some those of towns this coach could not possibly
have served. The explanation is that the “Express” made connections
with other routes and booked passengers for them, whom they set down at
ascertained points to wait for the connecting coach. This in itself, an
early attempt at the through booking and junction system obtaining on
railways, is evidence of the progress made towards exact time-keeping
in this era.
De Quincey, as a mail-passenger, has a scornful passage reflecting upon
the gold and colour that adorned these stage-coaches, which, being
furiously competitive, could not afford to be quiet and plain, like
the mails. “A tawdry thing from Birmingham,” was his verdict upon the
“Tally-Ho” or “Highflyer,” that overtook the Holyhead Mail between
Shrewsbury and Oswestry. “All flaunting with green and gold,” it came
up alongside. “What a contrast with our royal simplicity of form and
colour is this plebeian wretch, with as much writing and painting on
its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs
of Luxor!” Precisely the same things might be said of omnibuses in our
own days.