Читать книгу The Brighton Road: The Classic Highway to the South - Charles G. Harper - Страница 9

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We come now to the “Era of the Amateur,” who not only flourished pre-eminently on the Brighton Road, but may be said to have originated on it. The coaching amateur and the nineteenth century came into existence almost contemporaneously. Very soon after 1800 it became “the thing” to drive a coach, and shortly after this became such a definite ambition, there arose that contradiction in terms, that horsey paradox, the Amateur Professional, generally a sporting gentleman brought to utter ruin by Corinthian gambols, and taking to the one trade on earth at which he could earn a wage. That is why the Golden Age of coaching won on the Brighton Road a refinement it only aped elsewhere.

ARISTOCRATIC COACHMEN

It is curious to see how coaching has always been, even in its serious days, before steam was thought of, the chosen amusement of wealthy and aristocratic whips. Of those who affected the Brighton Road may be mentioned the Marquis of Worcester, who drove the “Duke of Beaufort,” Sir St. Vincent Cotton of the “Age,” and the Hon. Fred Jerningham, who drove the Day Mail. The “Age,” too, had been driven by Mr. Stevenson, a gentleman and a graduate of Cambridge, whose “passion for the bench,” as “Nimrod” says, superseded all other worldly ambitions. He became a coachman by profession, and a good professional he made; but he had not forgotten his education and early training, and he was, as a whip, singularly refined and courteous. He caused, at a certain change of horses on the road, a silver sandwich-box to be handed round to the passengers by his servant, with an offer of a glass of sherry, should any desire one. Another gentleman, “connected with the first families in Wales,” whose father long represented his native county in Parliament, horsed and drove one side of this ground with Mr. Stevenson.

This was “Sackie,” Sackville Frederick Gwynne, of Carmarthenshire, who quarrelled with his relatives and took to the road; became part proprietor of the “Age,” broke off from Stevenson, and eventually lived and died at Liverpool as a cabdriver. He drove a cab till 1874, when he died, aged seventy-three.

Harry Stevenson’s connection with the Brighton Road began in 1827, when, as a young man fresh from Cambridge, he brought with him such a social atmosphere and such full-fledged expertness in driving a coach that Cripps, a coachmaster of Brighton and proprietor of the “Coronet,” not only was overjoyed to have him on the box, but went so far as to paint his name on the coach as one of the licensees, for which false declaration Cripps was fined in November, 1827.

The parentage and circumstances of Harry Stevenson are alike mysterious. We are told that he “went the pace,” and was already penniless at twenty-two years of age, about the time of his advent upon the Brighton Road. In 1828 his famous “Age” was put on the road, built for him by Aldebert, the foremost coach-builder of the period, and appointed in every way with unexampled luxury. The gold- and silver-embroidered horse-cloths of the “Age” are very properly preserved in the Brighton Museum. Stevenson’s career was short, for he died in February, 1830.

Coaching authorities give the palm for artistry to whips of other roads: they considered the excellence of this as fatal to the production of those qualities that went to make an historic name. This road had become “perhaps the most nearly perfect, and certainly the most fashionable, of all.”

With the introduction of this sporting and irresponsible element, racing between rival coaches—and not the mere conveying of passengers—became the real interest of the coachmen, and proprietors were obliged to issue notices to assure the timid that this form of rivalry would be discouraged. A slow coach, the “Life Preserver,” was even put on the road to win the support of old ladies and the timid, who, as the record of accidents tells us, did well to be timorous. But accidents would happen to fast and slow alike. The “Coburg” was upset at Cuckfield in August, 1819. Six of the passengers were so much injured that they could not proceed, and one died the following day at the “King’s Head.” The “Coburg” was an old-fashioned coach, heavy, clumsy, and slow, carrying six passengers inside and twelve outside. This type gave place to coaches of lighter build about 1823.

THE “DUKE OF BEAUFORT” COACH STARTING FROM THE

“BULL AND MOUTH” OFFICE, PICCADILLY CIRCUS, 1826.

From an aquatint after W. J. Shayer.

In 1826 seventeen coaches ran to Brighton from London every morning, afternoon, or evening. They had all of them the most high-sounding of names, calculated to impress the mind either with a sense of swiftness, or to awe the understanding with visions of aristocratic and court-like grandeur. As for the times they individually made, and for the inns from which they started, you who are insatiable of dry bones of fact may go to the Library of the British Museum and find your Cary (without an “e”) and do your gnawing of them. That they started at all manner of hours, even the most uncanny, you must rest assured; and that they took off from the (to ourselves) most impossible and romantic-sounding of inns, may be granted, when such examples as the strangely incongruous “George and Blue Boar,” the Herrick-like “Blossoms” Inn, and the idyllic-seeming “Flower-pot” are mentioned.

NAMES OF THE COACHES

They were, those seventeen coaches, the “Royal Mail,” the “Coronet,” “Magnet,” “Comet,” “Royal Sussex,” “Sovereign,” “Alert,” “Dart,” “Union,” “Regent,” “Times,” “Duke of York,” “Royal George,” “True Blue,” “Patriot,” “Post,” and the “Summer Coach,” so called, and they nearly all started from the City and Holborn, calling at West End booking-offices on their several ways. Most of the old inns from which they set out are pulled down, and the memory of them has faded.

The “Golden Cross” at Charing Cross, from whose doors started the “Comet” and the “Regent” in this year of grace 1826, and at which the “Times” called on its way from Holborn, has been wholly remodelled; the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane, whence the “Duke of York” bowled away, has been demolished; the “Old Bell and Crown” Inn, Holborn, where the “Alert,” the “Union,” and the “Times” drew up daily in the old-fashioned galleried courtyard, is swept away. Were Viator to return to-morrow, he would surely want to return to Hades, or Paradise, wherever he may be, at once. Around him would be, to his senses, an astonishing whirl and noise of traffic, despite the wood-paving that has superseded macadam, which itself displaced the granite setts he knew. Many strange and horrid portents he would note, and Holborn would be to him as an unknown street in a strange town.

Than 1826 the informative Cary goes no further, and his “Itinerary,” excellent though it be, and invaluable to those who would know aught of the coaches that plied in the years when it was published, gives no particulars of the many “butterfly” coaches and amateur drags that cut in upon the regular coaches during the rush and scour of the season.

In 1821 it was computed that over forty coaches ran to and from London and Brighton daily; in September, 1822, there were thirty-nine. In 1828 it was calculated that the sixteen permanent coaches then running, summer and winter, received between them a sum of £60,000 per annum, and the total sum expended in fares upon coaching on this road was taken as amounting to £100,000 per annum. That leaves the very respectable amount of £40,000 for the season’s takings of the “butterflies.”

An accident happened to the “Alert” on October 9th, 1829, when the coach was taking up passengers at Brighton. The horses ran away, and dashed the coach and themselves into an area sixteen feet deep. The coach was battered almost to pieces, and one lady was seriously injured. The horses escaped unhurt. In 1832, August 25th, the Brighton Mail was upset near Reigate, the coachman being killed.

THE “AGE,” 1829, STARTING FROM CASTLE SQUARE, BRIGHTON.

From an engraving after C. Cooper Henderson.

STEAM CARRIAGES

This was the era of those early motor-cars, the steam-carriages, which, in spite of their clumsy construction and appalling ugliness, arrived very nearly to a commercial success. Many inventors were engaged from 1823 to 1838 upon this subject. Walter Hancock, in particular, began in 1824, and in 1828 proposed a service of his “land-steamers” between London and Brighton, but did not actually appear upon this road with his “Infant” until November, 1832. The contrivance performed the double journey with some difficulty and in slower time than the coaches: but Hancock on that eventful day confidently declared that he was perfecting a newer machine by which he expected to run down in three and a half hours. He never achieved so much, but in October, 1833, his “Autopsy,” which had been successfully running as an omnibus between Paddington and Stratford, went from the works at Stratford to Brighton in eight and a half hours, of which three hours were taken up by a halt on the road.

No artist has preserved a view of this event for us, but a print may still be met with depicting the start of Sir Charles Dance’s steam-carriage from Wellington Street, Strand, for Brighton on some eventful morning of that same year. A prison-van is, by comparison with this fearsome object, a thing of beauty; but in the picture you will observe enthusiasm on foot and on horseback, and even four-legged, in the person of the inevitable dog. In the distance the discerning may observe the old toll-house on Waterloo Bridge, and the gaunt shape of the Shot Tower.

By 1839 the coaching business had in Brighton become concentrated in Castle Square, six of the seven principal offices being situated there. Five London coaches ran from the Blue Office (Strevens & Co.), five from the Red Office (Mr. Goodman’s), four from the “Spread Eagle” (Chaplin & Crunden’s), three from the Age (T. W. Capps & Co.), two from Hine’s, East Street; two from Snow’s (Capps & Chaplin), and two from the “Globe” (Mr. Vaughan’s).

To state the number of visitors to Brighton on a certain day will give an idea of how well this road was used during the decade that preceded the coming of steam. On Friday, October 25th, 1833, upwards of 480 persons travelled to Brighton by stage-coach. A comparison of this number with the hordes of visitors cast forth from the Brighton Railway Station to-day would render insignificant indeed that little crowd of 1833; but in those times, when the itch of excursionising was not so acute as now, that day’s return was remarkable; it was a day that fully justified the note made of it. Then, too, those few hundreds benefited the town more certainly than perhaps their number multiplied by ten does now. For the Brighton visitor of a hundred years ago, once set down in Castle Square, had to remain the night at least in Brighton; for him there was no returning to London the same day. And so the Brighton folks had their wicked will of him for a while, and made something out of him; while in these times the greater proportion of a day’s excursionists find themselves either at home in London already, when evening hours are striking from Westminster Ben, or else waiting with what patience they may the collecting of tickets at the bleak and dismal penitentiary platforms of Grosvenor Road Station; and, after all, Brighton is little or nothing advantaged by their visit.

But though the tripper of the coaching era found it impracticable to have his morning in London, his day upon the King’s Road, and his evening in town again, yet the pace at which the coaches went in the ’30’s was by no means despicable. Ten miles an hour now became slow and altogether behind the age.

In 1833 the Marquis of Worcester, together with a Mr. Alexander, put three coaches on the road: an up and down “Quicksilver” and a single coach, the “Wonder.” The “Quicksilver,” named probably in allusion to its swiftness (it was timed for four hours and three-quarters), ran to and from what was then a favourite stopping-place, the “Elephant and Castle.” But on July 15th of the same year an accident, by which several persons were very seriously injured, happened to the up “Quicksilver” when starting from Brighton. Snow, who was driving, could not hold the team in, and they bolted away, and brought up violently against the railings by the New Steyne. Broken arms, fractured arms and ribs, and contusions were plenty. The “Quicksilver,” chameleon-like, changed colour after this mishap, was repainted and renamed, and reappeared as the “Criterion”; for the old name carried with it too great a spice of danger for the timorous.

SIR CHARLES DANCE’S STEAM-CARRIAGE LEAVING LONDON FOR BRIGHTON, 1833.

From a print after G. E. Madeley.