Читать книгу An Old Coachman's Chatter, with Some Practical Remarks on Driving - Edward Corbett - Страница 3

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I think it is Dr. Johnson who has somewhere remarked, that "everyone who writes a book should either help men to enjoy life or to endure it."

Whether these few pages will have the former effect I know not, but if they only help to dispel ennui for an hour or two, they will not have been written quite in vain, and, at any rate, I trust they will not be found so unendurable as to be unceremoniously thrown out of the railway carriage window, or behind the fire.

Though several books on the same subject have been already published, I entertain a hope that this may not prove "one too many," as the interest taken in coaching, so far from diminishing, would appear to be increasing, judging by the number of coaches running out of London and other places, some even facing the inclemency of winter in the love for the road. The number of private drags also never was so large. "Nimrod" put it at twenty to thirty in the early part of the century. It must be nearly four times that now.

I have not the vanity to suppose that I can contribute anything more racy or better told than much that has gone before, but having engaged in coaching as a matter of business, and in partnership with business men, when and where coaches were the only means of public travelling, and having driven professionally for upwards of four years, I have had the opportunity of looking behind the scenes, and have had experiences which cannot have fallen to the lot of most gentlemen coachmen, and certainly will fall to the lot of no others again.

I lay no claim to literary merit, nor will what I offer savour much of the sensational or perhaps of novelty; but this I can say, that it is all drawn from personal knowledge, and that, with the exception of one old friend, who has had great experience on some of the best coaches in England, I am indebted to no one for my facts, which has not been the case in all which has been published, judging from some inaccuracies I have met with. To mention only one, which, if considered for a moment, is so improbable, not to say impossible, that it surely must be a misprint.

In "Highways and Horses" we are told that the fare for one passenger by mails was eight shillings outside and twelve inside for a hundred miles. Why, this is less than Parliamentary trains! It would have been impossible to have horsed coaches at such prices. The real rate was from fourpence to fivepence per mile inside, and from twopence to threepence outside for that distance. The highest fares were charged by the mails and fast day coaches, the heavy night coaches having to be content with the lower rate.

The reader will observe that I do not confine myself to what were called, par excellence, "the palmy days of coaching," but have brought it down to a period twenty years later, when the coaches, though comparatively few, were still running in considerable numbers in out-of-the-way districts, upon the old lines, and by those who had learned their business in those palmy days. The pace was not generally so great, judged by the number of miles to the hour, but, taking into consideration the great inferiority of the roads, there was little or no falling off. Indeed, I doubt whether over some roads, eight miles an hour was not harder to accomplish than ten had been over the better roads. Of course, as in earlier days, the work was unequally done, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes indifferent.

If these pages should happen to fall into the hands of any of the many thousand passengers I have had the pleasure of driving, and on whom I hope Father Time has laid benevolent hands, perhaps some of them may recognize scenes which they themselves experienced; and to others memory may bring back the recollection of happy wanderings, thereby causing renewed pleasure. For, as the poet says:

"When time, which steals our hours away,

Shall steal our pleasures too,

The memory of the past shall stay,

And half our joys renew."

In the remarks on driving, I do not profess to have written a treatise or to have by any means exhausted the subject—that, indeed, were hard to do; a coachman should be always learning;—they are the result of having carefully watched old and experienced hands, together with such instructions as they gave me, followed up by long and continuous practice. I know that some, whose opinions are entitled to the greatest respect, hold different views upon some points; but, at any rate, whether others agree with me or not, they will see, from the examples I have given, that I have practical reasons for all that I advance.

I should like to add that these pages were in MS. previously to the publication of the seventh volume of the Badminton Library, and, indeed, I have not yet had the pleasure of reading it; therefore, if I have enunciated doctrines the same as are there given, I cannot be accused of plagiarism. I have felt compelled to make this statement on account of the very high authority of the writers in that book, and when we agree, I shall experience the satisfaction of knowing that I travel in good company.

I have been led on by my subject to spread my wings, and fly to southern latitudes; indeed, I have ventured, like Mr. Cook, to take my readers a personally-conducted tour round the world, I will not say exactly in search of knowledge, though, to most, what I have introduced them to must be an unknown world. So fast, indeed, has the world travelled in the last half century, that it has now become ancient history, indeed, sufficiently out of date to afford interest to an antiquary.

"Seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible. We heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest among brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs."—De Quincey.

AN

OLD COACHMAN'S CHATTER,

WITH SOME REMARKS ON DRIVING.

"Going Down With Victory.

"The absolute perfection of all the appointments, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicity, but more than all the royal magnificence of the horses were, what might first have fixed the attention. On any night the spectacle was beautiful. But the night before us is a night of victory, and, behold, to the ordinary display what a heart-shaking addition! Horses, men, carriages, all are dressed in laurels and flowers, oak-leaves and ribbons. The guards as officially His Majesty's servants, and such coachmen as are within the privilege of the Post Office, wear the royal liveries of course, and on this evening exposed to view without upper coats. Such costume, and the laurels in their hats dilate their hearts by giving them a personal connection with the great news. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the transcendent bond of his national blood. The spectators, numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the Post-Office servants and summoned to draw up the great ancestral names of cities known to history through a thousand years—Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen—expressing the grandeur of the Empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off which is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then come the horses into play. Horses! can these be horses that bound off with the action and gestures of leopards? What stir! what ferment! what a thundering of wheels! what a trampling of hoofs! what a sounding of trumpets! what farewell cheers! what peals of congratulation, connecting the name of the particular mail, 'Liverpool for ever,' with the name of the particular Victory, 'Salamanca for ever,' The consciousness that all night long, and all the next day, perhaps even longer, many of these mails like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself"—Thomas de Quincey, The English Mail-Coach.