We maintain that hackney-coaches, properly so called, belong solely to
the metropolis. We may be told, that there are hackney-coach stands in
Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our
position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, ‘and other
large towns’ (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have _their_
hackney-coach stands. We readily concede to these places the possession
of certain vehicles, which may look almost as dirty, and even go almost
as slowly, as London hackney-coaches; but that they have the slightest
claim to compete with the metropolis, either in point of stands,
drivers, or cattle, we indignantly deny.
Take a regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-coach of the old
school, and let any man have the boldness to assert, if he can, that he
ever beheld any object on the face of the earth which at all resembles
it, unless, indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date. We
have recently observed on certain stands, and we say it with deep
regret, rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow,
with four wheels of the same colour as the coach, whereas it is
perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the subject, that
every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and a different size.
These are innovations, and, like other miscalled improvements, awful
signs of the restlessness of the public mind, and the little respect
paid to our time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be
clean? Our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why should we,
with a feverish wish to ‘keep moving,’ desire to roll along at the rate
of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones
at four? These are solemn considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and
parcel of the law of the land; they were settled by the Legislature;
plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament.
Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? Or why should
people be allowed to ride quickly for eightpence a mile, after
Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a
shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a reply;—and, having no
chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph.
Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing. We are
a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves, half bound, as it were, to
be always in the right on contested points. We know all the regular
watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be
almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that
district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind. We
take great interest in hackney-coaches, but we seldom drive, having a
knack of turning ourselves over when we attempt to do so. We are as
great friends to horses, hackney-coach and otherwise, as the renowned
Mr. Martin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We keep
no horse, but a clothes-horse; enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of
mutton; and, following our own inclinations, have never followed the
hounds. Leaving these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of
depositing oneself upon it, to those who like them, by hackney-coach
stands we take our stand.
There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are
writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen
of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded—a great, lumbering,
square concern of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with
very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented
with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat, the
axletree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is
partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes,
and some extraordinary-looking clothes; and the straw, with which the
canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in
rivalry of the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot.
The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as
scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are
standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing, and
rattling the harness; and now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to
the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he
should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the
watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his
pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the ‘double
shuffle,’ in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm.
The servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5, opposite, suddenly
opens the street-door, and four small children forthwith rush out, and
scream ‘Coach!’ with all their might and main. The waterman darts from
the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags
them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for
the coachman at the very top, or rather very bottom of his voice, for
it is a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room; the
coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he
runs across it; and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and
grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door,
that the children are in perfect ecstasies of delight. What a
commotion! The old lady, who has been stopping there for the last
month, is going back to the country. Out comes box after box, and one
side of the vehicle is filled with luggage in no time; the children get
into everybody’s way, and the youngest, who has upset himself in his
attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off wounded and kicking. The
youngsters disappear, and a short pause ensues, during which the old
lady is, no doubt, kissing them all round in the back parlour. She
appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all the children,
and both the servants, who, with the joint assistance of the coachman
and waterman, manage to get her safely into the coach. A cloak is
handed in, and a little basket, which we could almost swear contains a
small black bottle, and a paper of sandwiches. Up go the steps, bang
goes the door, ‘Golden-cross, Charing-cross, Tom,’ says the waterman;
‘Good-bye, grandma,’ cry the children, off jingles the coach at the
rate of three miles an hour, and the mamma and children retire into the
house, with the exception of one little villain, who runs up the street
at the top of his speed, pursued by the servant; not ill-pleased to
have such an opportunity of displaying her attractions. She brings him
back, and, after casting two or three gracious glances across the way,
which are either intended for us or the potboy (we are not quite
certain which), shuts the door, and the hackney-coach stand is again at
a standstill.
We have been frequently amused with the intense delight with which ‘a
servant of all work,’ who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside;
and the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have been despatched
on a similar errand, appear to derive from mounting the box. But we
never recollect to have been more amused with a hackney-coach party,
than one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-court-road. It was
a wedding-party, and emerged from one of the inferior streets near
Fitzroy-square. There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a
great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy, good-humoured
young woman, dressed, of course, in the same appropriate costume; and
the bridegroom and his chosen friend, in blue coats, yellow
waist-coats, white trousers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped
at the corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of
indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the bridesmaid threw a
red shawl, which she had, no doubt, brought on purpose, negligently
over the number on the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the
belief that the hackney-coach was a private carriage; and away they
went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition was successful, and quite
unconscious that there was a great staring number stuck up behind, on a
plate as large as a schoolboy’s slate. A shilling a mile!—the ride was
worth five, at least, to them.
What an interesting book a hackney-coach might produce, if it could
carry as much in its head as it does in its body! The autobiography of
a broken-down hackney-coach, would surely be as amusing as the
autobiography of a broken-down hackneyed dramatist; and it might tell
as much of its travels _with_ the pole, as others have of their
expeditions _to_ it. How many stories might be related of the different
people it had conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or
pain! And how many melancholy tales of the same people at different
periods! The country-girl—the showy, over-dressed woman—the drunken
prostitute! The raw apprentice—the dissipated spendthrift—the thief!
Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition, when it’s
a matter of neck or nothing, life or death, your temporary home or your
long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking that gravity of deportment which
so peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten
that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything
better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first
entry into life; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past
gentility, a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English family,
wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their
livery, stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a
once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his
office, progressing lower and lower in the scale of four-wheeled
degradation, until at last it comes to—_a stand_!