Coaching, with Anecdotes of the Road. William Pitt Lord Lennox

ANCIENT CHARIOTEERS—CELEBRATED WHIPS—INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES INTO ENGLAND—MR. CRESSET'S PAMPHLET—THE STATE OF THE ROADS IN 1739—DANGEROUS CONVEYANCES—THE FLYING COACH OF 1669—DEAN SWIFT'S POETICAL LINES ON HIS JOURNEY TO CHESTER—DISCOMFORTS OF INSIDE TRAVELLING—TRAVELLING IN BYGONE DAYS.

CHAPTER I.

Before I allude to the road as it is, let me refer to what it was, and in so doing bring my classical lore into play. Pelops was a coachman, who has been immortalised for his ability to drive at the rate of fourteen miles an hour by the first of Grecian bards. Despite his ivory arm, he got the whip-hand of Œnomaus, a brother "dragsman" in their celebrated chariot-race from Pisa to the Corinthian Isthmus, owing more to the rascality of the state coachman, Myrtilus, whom he bribed to furnish his master, the King of Pisa, with an old carriage, the axletree of which broke on the course, than to his own coaching merits.

Hippolytus, too, "handled the ribbons well," but "came to grief" by being overturned near the sea-shore, when flying from the resentment of his father. His horses were so frightened at the noise of sea-calves, which Neptune had purposely sent there, that they ran among the rocks till his chariot was broken and his body torn to pieces.

Virgil and Horace sang the praises and commemorated the honours of the "whips" of their day. Juvenal tells us of a Roman Consul who aspired to be a "dragsman"—

"Volueri

Carpento rapitur pinguis Damasippus; et ipse

Ipse rotam stringit multo sufflamine Consul."

Again, I find the following lines:—

"Sunt quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum

Collegisse juvat metaque fervidis

Evitata rotis, palmaque nobilis

Terrarum dominos evehit ad Deos."

Which may be thus rendered—"The summit of some men's ambition is to drive four-in-hand."

Propertius, too, exclaims against the tandem as rivalling the curricle—that is, according to some witty translators:—

"Invide tu tandem voces compesce molestas.

Et sine nos cursu quo sumus ire pares."

Horace writes:—

"Tandem parcas insane;"

and to those who drive this dangerous vehicle the following line may not be inappropriate:—

"Tandem discedere campis admonuit."

In addition to the above classical names, there were, early in the present century, hundreds of whips who raised the character of coachmen to the highest pinnacle of fame. Let me instance:—

Richard Vaughan, of the Cambridge "Telegraph," 'scientific in horseflesh, unequalled in driving;' Pears, of the Southampton day coach; Wood, Liley, Wilcocks, and Hayward of the "Wonder," between London and Shrewsbury; Charles Holmes, of the Blenheim coach; Izaac Walton, the Mæcenas of whips, the Braham of the Bath road; Jack Adams, the civil and obliging pastor, who taught the young Etonians to drive; Bramble, Faulkner, Dennis, Cross, and others, all of whom have long since departed this life.

Many professional stage-coachmen were men of good education. Indeed, not a few had received the advantage of a college education, and could quote Latin and Greek in a manner that surprised some of their companions. They could also tell a good story and sing a good song; so that their society was much sought after, both on the box and in the snug bar-parlour.

I will not here stop to discuss the question of rail and road, or to lament that the "Light (coaches) of other days has faded," although many a man's heart sinks to the axle when he thinks of the past, and feels disposed to sympathise with Jerry Drag, "him wot drove," I quote his own words, "the old Highflyer, Red Rover, and Markiss of Huntley."

"Them as 'ave seen coaches," says this knight of the ribbons, "afore rails came into fashion, 'ave seen something worth remembering; them was happy days for Old England, afore reform and rails turned everything upside down, and men rode as natur' intended they should, on pikes with coaches and smart, active cattle, and not by machinery, like bags of cotton and hardware; but coaches is done for ever, and a heavy blow it is. They was the pride of the country, there wasn't anything like them, as I've heerd gemmen say from forrin parts, to be found nowhere, nor never will be again."

Mais revenons à nos moutons; my present object is to compare coaching as it is with coaching as it was.

It may not here be uninteresting to mention that coaches were introduced into England by Fitz Allan, Earl of Arundel, a.d. 1580, before which time Queen Elizabeth, on public occasions, rode behind her chamberlain; and she, in her old age, used reluctantly such

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