We have often wondered how many months’ incessant travelling in a
post-chaise it would take to kill a man; and wondering by analogy, we
should very much like to know how many months of constant travelling in
a succession of early coaches, an unfortunate mortal could endure.
Breaking a man alive upon the wheel, would be nothing to breaking his
rest, his peace, his heart—everything but his fast—upon four; and the
punishment of Ixion (the only practical person, by-the-bye, who has
discovered the secret of the perpetual motion) would sink into utter
insignificance before the one we have suggested. If we had been a
powerful churchman in those good times when blood was shed as freely as
water, and men were mowed down like grass, in the sacred cause of
religion, we would have lain by very quietly till we got hold of some
especially obstinate miscreant, who positively refused to be converted
to our faith, and then we would have booked him for an inside place in
a small coach, which travelled day and night: and securing the
remainder of the places for stout men with a slight tendency to
coughing and spitting, we would have started him forth on his last
travels: leaving him mercilessly to all the tortures which the waiters,
landlords, coachmen, guards, boots, chambermaids, and other familiars
on his line of road, might think proper to inflict.
Who has not experienced the miseries inevitably consequent upon a
summons to undertake a hasty journey? You receive an intimation from
your place of business—wherever that may be, or whatever you may
be—that it will be necessary to leave town without delay. You and your
family are forthwith thrown into a state of tremendous excitement; an
express is immediately dispatched to the washerwoman’s; everybody is in
a bustle; and you, yourself, with a feeling of dignity which you cannot
altogether conceal, sally forth to the booking-office to secure your
place. Here a painful consciousness of your own unimportance first
rushes on your mind—the people are as cool and collected as if nobody
were going out of town, or as if a journey of a hundred odd miles were
a mere nothing. You enter a mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large
posting-bills; the greater part of the place enclosed behind a huge,
lumbering, rough counter, and fitted up with recesses that look like
the dens of the smaller animals in a travelling menagerie, without the
bars. Some half-dozen people are ‘booking’ brown-paper parcels, which
one of the clerks flings into the aforesaid recesses with an air of
recklessness which you, remembering the new carpet-bag you bought in
the morning, feel considerably annoyed at; porters, looking like so
many Atlases, keep rushing in and out, with large packages on their
shoulders; and while you are waiting to make the necessary inquiries,
you wonder what on earth the booking-office clerks can have been before
they were booking-office clerks; one of them with his pen behind his
ear, and his hands behind him, is standing in front of the fire, like a
full-length portrait of Napoleon; the other with his hat half off his
head, enters the passengers’ names in the books with a coolness which
is inexpressibly provoking; and the villain whistles—actually
whistles—while a man asks him what the fare is outside, all the way to
Holyhead!—in frosty weather, too! They are clearly an isolated race,
evidently possessing no sympathies or feelings in common with the rest
of mankind. Your turn comes at last, and having paid the fare, you
tremblingly inquire—‘What time will it be necessary for me to be here
in the morning?’—‘Six o’clock,’ replies the whistler, carelessly
pitching the sovereign you have just parted with, into a wooden bowl on
the desk. ‘Rather before than arter,’ adds the man with the
semi-roasted unmentionables, with just as much ease and complacency as
if the whole world got out of bed at five. You turn into the street,
ruminating as you bend your steps homewards on the extent to which men
become hardened in cruelty, by custom.
If there be one thing in existence more miserable than another, it most
unquestionably is the being compelled to rise by candlelight. If you
have ever doubted the fact, you are painfully convinced of your error,
on the morning of your departure. You left strict orders, overnight, to
be called at half-past four, and you have done nothing all night but
doze for five minutes at a time, and start up suddenly from a terrific
dream of a large church-clock with the small hand running round, with
astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate. At last,
completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep—your
thoughts grow confused—the stage-coaches, which have been ‘going off’
before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they
go off altogether; one moment you are driving with all the skill and
smartness of an experienced whip—the next you are exhibiting _à la_
Ducrow, on the off-leader; anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and
have just recognised in the person of the guard an old schoolfellow,
whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended
eighteen years ago. At last you fall into a state of complete oblivion,
from which you are aroused, as if into a new state of existence, by a
singular illusion. You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker; how, or why,
or when, or wherefore, you don’t take the trouble to inquire; but there
you are, pasting the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Confound that
other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering!—rap, rap,
rap—what an industrious fellow he must be! you have heard him at work
for half an hour past, and he has been hammering incessantly the whole
time. Rap, rap, rap, again—he’s talking now—what’s that he said? Five
o’clock! You make a violent exertion, and start up in bed. The vision
is at once dispelled; the trunk-maker’s shop is your own bedroom, and
the other apprentice your shivering servant, who has been vainly
endeavouring to wake you for the last quarter of an hour, at the
imminent risk of breaking either his own knuckles or the panels of the
door.
You proceed to dress yourself, with all possible dispatch. The flaring
flat candle with the long snuff, gives light enough to show that the
things you want, are not where they ought to be, and you undergo a
trifling delay in consequence of having carefully packed up one of your
boots in your over-anxiety of the preceding night. You soon complete
your toilet, however, for you are not particular on such an occasion,
and you shaved yesterday evening; so mounting your Petersham
great-coat, and green travelling shawl, and grasping your carpet-bag in
your right hand, you walk lightly down-stairs, lest you should awaken
any of the family, and after pausing in the common sitting-room for one
moment, just to have a cup of coffee (the said common sitting-room
looking remarkably comfortable, with everything out of its place, and
strewed with the crumbs of last night’s supper), you undo the chain and
bolts of the street-door, and find yourself fairly in the street.
A thaw, by all that is miserable! The frost is completely broken up.
You look down the long perspective of Oxford-street, the gas-lights
mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in
the road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be
had—the very coachmen have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is
drizzling down with that gentle regularity, which betokens a duration
of four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the house-tops
and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is
‘coming in’ in every area, the pipes have burst, the water-butts are
running over; the kennels seem to be doing matches against time,
pump-handles descend of their own accord, horses in market-carts fall
down, and there’s no one to help them up again, policemen look as if
they had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass; here and there a
milk-woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to
keep her from slipping; boys who ‘don’t sleep in the house,’ and are
not allowed much sleep out of it, can’t wake their masters by
thundering at the shop-door, and cry with the cold—the compound of ice,
snow, and water on the pavement, is a couple of inches thick—nobody
ventures to walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in
keeping himself warm if he did.
It strikes a quarter past five as you trudge down Waterloo-place on
your way to the Golden Cross, and you discover, for the first time,
that you were called about an hour too early. You have not time to go
back; there is no place open to go into, and you have, therefore, no
resource but to go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied
with yourself, and everything about you. You arrive at the office, and
look wistfully up the yard for the Birmingham High-flier, which, for
aught you can see, may have flown away altogether, for preparations
appear to be on foot for the departure of any vehicle in the shape of a
coach. You wander into the booking-office, which with the gas-lights
and blazing fire, looks quite comfortable by contrast—that is to say,
if any place _can_ look comfortable at half-past five on a winter’s
morning. There stands the identical book-keeper in the same position as
if he had not moved since you saw him yesterday. As he informs you,
that the coach is up the yard, and will be brought round in about a
quarter of an hour, you leave your bag, and repair to ‘The Tap’—not
with any absurd idea of warming yourself, because you feel such a
result to be utterly hopeless, but for the purpose of procuring some
hot brandy-and-water, which you do,—when the kettle boils! an event
which occurs exactly two minutes and a half before the time fixed for
the starting of the coach.
The first stroke of six, peals from St. Martin’s church steeple, just
as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself at
the booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself
much comforted by your brandy-and-water, in about the same period. The
coach is out; the horses are in, and the guard and two or three
porters, are stowing the luggage away, and running up the steps of the
booking-office, and down the steps of the booking-office, with
breathless rapidity. The place, which a few minutes ago was so still
and quiet, is now all bustle; the early vendors of the morning papers
have arrived, and you are assailed on all sides with shouts of
‘_Times_, gen’lm’n, _Times_,’ ‘Here’s _Chron—Chron—Chron_,’ ‘_Herald_,
ma’am,’ ‘Highly interesting murder, gen’lm’n,’ ‘Curious case o’ breach
o’ promise, ladies.’ The inside passengers are already in their dens,
and the outsides, with the exception of yourself, are pacing up and
down the pavement to keep themselves warm; they consist of two young
men with very long hair, to which the sleet has communicated the
appearance of crystallised rats’ tails; one thin young woman cold and
peevish, one old gentleman ditto ditto, and something in a cloak and
cap, intended to represent a military officer; every member of the
party, with a large stiff shawl over his chin, looking exactly as if he
were playing a set of Pan’s pipes.
‘Take off the cloths, Bob,’ says the coachman, who now appears for the
first time, in a rough blue great-coat, of which the buttons behind are
so far apart, that you can’t see them both at the same time. ‘Now,
gen’lm’n,’ cries the guard, with the waybill in his hand. ‘Five minutes
behind time already!’ Up jump the passengers—the two young men smoking
like lime-kilns, and the old gentleman grumbling audibly. The thin
young woman is got upon the roof, by dint of a great deal of pulling,
and pushing, and helping and trouble, and she repays it by expressing
her solemn conviction that she will never be able to get down again.
‘All right,’ sings out the guard at last, jumping up as the coach
starts, and blowing his horn directly afterwards, in proof of the
soundness of his wind. ‘Let ’em go, Harry, give ’em their heads,’ cries
the coachman—and off we start as briskly as if the morning were ‘all
right,’ as well as the coach: and looking forward as anxiously to the
termination of our journey, as we fear our readers will have done, long
since, to the conclusion of our paper.