Читать книгу The Royal Mail - James Wilson Hyde - Страница 9

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The present generation, who are accustomed to see the streets of our cities paved with wood or stone, or otherwise so laid out as to provide a hard and even surface suited to the locomotion of wheeled vehicles, or who by business or pleasure have been led to journey over the principal highways intersecting the kingdom in every direction, can form no idea of the state of the roads in this country during the earlier years of the Post-office—or even in times comparatively recent—unless their reading has led them to the perusal of accounts written by travellers of the periods we now refer to. The highways of the present day, radiating from London and the other large centres of industry, and extending their arms to every corner of the land, are wellnigh perfect in their kind, and present a picture of careful and efficient maintenance. Whether we look, for example, at the great north road leading from London, the Carlisle to Glasgow road, or the Highland road passing through Dunkeld, we find the roads have certain features in common: a broad hard roadway for vehicles; a neatly kept footpath where required; limits strictly defined by trim hedges, stone walls, or palings; and means provided for carrying off surface-water. The picture will, of course, vary as the traveller proceeds, flat country alternating with undulating country, and wood or moorland with cultivated fields; but the chief characteristics remain the same, constituting the roads as worthy of the age we live in.

How the people managed to get from place to place before the Post-office had a history, or indeed for long after the birth of that institution, it is hard to conceive. Then, the roads were little better than tracks worn out of the surface of the virgin land—proceeding in some cases in a manner approaching to a right line, over hills, down valleys, through forests, and the like; in others following the natural features of the country, but giving evidence that they had never been systematically made, being rather the outcome of a mere habit of travel, just as sheep-tracks are produced on a mountain-side. Such roads in winter weather, or in rainy seasons, became terrible to the traveller: yet the only repairs that were vouchsafed consisted in filling up some of the larger holes with rude stones; and when this method of keeping up repairs no longer availed, another track was formed by bringing under foot a fresh strip of the adjoining land (generally unenclosed), and thus creating a wholly new road in place of the old one. Smiles, in his 'Lives of the Engineers,' thus describes certain of the English roads: "In some of the older settled districts of England, the old roads are still to be traced in the hollow ways or lanes, which are met with, in some places, eight and ten feet deep. Horse-tracks in summer and rivulets in winter, the earth became gradually worn into these deep furrows, many of which in Wilts, Somerset, and Devon, represent the tracks of roads as old as, if not older than, the Conquest." And again: "Similar roads existed until recently in the immediate neighbourhood of Birmingham, long the centre of considerable traffic. The sandy soil was sawn through, as it were, by generation after generation of human feet, and by pack-horses, helped by the rains, until in some places the tracks were as much as from twelve to fourteen yards deep." In the year 1690, Chancellor Cowper, who was then a barrister on circuit, thus wrote to his wife: "The Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyond imagination. I vow 'tis melancholy consideration that mankind will inhabit such a heap of dirt for a poor livelihood. The country is a sink of about fourteen miles broad, which receives all the water that falls from two long ranges of hills on both sides of it, and not being furnished with convenient draining, is kept moist and soft by the water till the middle of a dry summer, which is only able to make it tolerable to ride for a short time."

In Scotland, about the same time, the roads were no better. The first four miles out of Edinburgh, on the road towards London, were described in the Privy Council Record of 1680 to have been in so wretched a state that passengers were in danger of their lives, "either by their coaches overturning, their horse falling, their carts breaking, their loads casting and horse stumbling, the poor people with the burdens on their backs sorely grieved and discouraged; moreover, strangers do often exclaim thereat." Nor does there appear to have been any considerable improvement in the state of the roads in the northern kingdom for long afterwards, as we find that in 1750, according to Lang's 'Historical Summary of the Post-office in Scotland,' "the channel of the river Gala, which ran for some distance parallel with the road, was, when not flooded, the track chosen as the most level and the easiest to travel in." The common carrier from Edinburgh to Selkirk, a distance of thirty-eight miles, required a fortnight for the journey, going and returning; and the stage-coach from Edinburgh to Glasgow took a day and a half for the journey. A Yorkshire squire, Thomas Kirke, who travelled in Scotland in 1679, gave a better account of the roads; but his opinion may have been merely relative, for travelling showmen to this day prefer the roads in the south of Scotland to those in the north of England, on account of their greater hardness; and this derives, no doubt, from the more adamantine material used in the repair of the Scotch roads. This traveller wrote: "The highways in Scotland are tolerably good, which is the greatest comfort a traveller meets with amongst them. The Scotch gentry generally travel from one friend's house to another; so seldom require a change-house (inn). Their way is to hire a horse and a man for twopence a mile; they ride on the horse thirty or forty miles a-day, and the man who is his guide foots it beside him, and carries his luggage to boot." Another visitor to Scotland in 1702, named Morer, thus describes the roads: "The truth is, the roads will hardly allow these conveniences" (meaning stage-coaches, which did not as yet exist in Scotland), "which is the reason that the gentry, men and women, choose rather to use their horses. However, their great men often travel with coach-and-six, but with so little caution, that, besides their other attendance, they have a lusty running footman on each side of the coach, to manage and keep it up in rough places."1 It might be supposed that the roads leading from Windsor, where one of the royal residences was, would have been kept in a tolerable state, so as to secure the Sovereign some comfort in travelling. But their condition seems to have been no better than that of roads elsewhere. An account of a journey made in 1703 by Prince George of Denmark, the husband of Queen Anne, from Windsor to Petworth, runs as follows:—"The length of way was only forty miles, but fourteen hours were consumed in traversing it; while almost every mile was signalised by the overturn of a carriage, or its temporary swamping in the mire. Even the royal chariot would have fared no better than the rest had it not been for the relays of peasants who poised and kept it erect by strength of arm, and shouldered it forward the last nine miles, in which tedious operation six good hours were consumed."

Yet later still, and in close proximity to London, a royal party had a most unsatisfactory journey, owing to the miserable state of the roads. It happened that in 1727 George II. and Queen Caroline were proceeding from the palace at Kew to that at St. James's, when they had to spend a whole night upon the way; and between Hammersmith and Fulham they were overturned, the royal occupants of the coach being landed in a quagmire. A year or two after this, Lord Hervey wrote that "the road between this place [Kensington] and London is grown so infamously bad, that we live here in the same solitude as we would do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean; and all the Londoners tell us that there is between them and us an impassable gulf of mud."

No part of the country could boast of a satisfactory condition of the roads, these being everywhere in the same neglected and wretched state, and travellers who had the misfortune to use them have recorded their ideas on the subject in no gentle terms. Arthur Young, who travelled much in the middle of last century, thus alludes to a road in Essex: "Of all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's Head at Tilbury. It is for near twelve miles so narrow that a mouse cannot pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his waggon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. To add to all the infamous circumstances which concur to plague a traveller, I must not forget the eternally meeting with chalk-waggons, themselves frequently stuck fast, till a collection of them are in the same situation, and twenty or thirty horses may be tacked to each to draw them out one by one." In a somewhat similar way he describes the road from Bury to Sudbury in Suffolk. Here, he says, "I was forced to move as slow in it as in any unmended lane in Wales. For ponds of liquid dirt, and a scattering of loose flints just sufficient to lame every horse that moves near them, with the addition of cutting vile grips across the road under the pretence of letting the water off, but without effect, altogether render at least twelve out of these sixteen miles as infamous a turnpike as ever was beheld." In one of his journeys, Young proceeded to the north by the great north road, thence making branch trips to the various agricultural districts. Of many of these roads he gives a sorry account. Thus: "To Wakefield, indifferent; through the town of Wakefield so bad that it ought to be indicted. To Castle Howard, infamous; I was near being swallowed up in a slough. From Newton to Stokesley in Cleveland, execrably bad. You are obliged to cross the moors they call Black Hambledon, over which the road runs in narrow hollows that admit a south-country chaise with such difficulty, that I reckon this part of the journey made at the hazard of my neck. The going down into Cleveland is beyond all description terrible; for you go through such steep, rough, narrow, rocky precipices, that I would sincerely advise any friend to go a hundred miles to escape it. The name of this path is very judicious, Scarthneck—that is, Scare-Nick, or frighten the devil.

"From Richmond to Darlington, part of the great north road; execrably broke into holes like an old pavement, sufficient to dislocate one's bones."

"To Morpeth; a pavement a mile or two out of Newcastle; all the rest vile.

"To Carlisle; cut up by innumerable little paltry one-horse carts."

One more instance from the pen of Young and we leave him. In the course of one of his journeys, he makes his way into Wales, where he finds his bête noire in the roads, and freely expresses himself thereupon in his usual forcible style: "But, my dear sir, what am I to say of the roads in this country? the turnpikes, as they have the assurance to call them, and the hardiness to make one pay for? From Chepstow to the half-way house between Newport and Cardiff they continue mere rocky lanes, full of hugeous stones as big as one's horse, and abominable holes. The first six miles from Newport they were so detestable, and without either direction-posts or milestones, that I could not well persuade myself I was on the turnpike, but had mistook the road, and therefore asked every one I met, who answered me, to my astonishment, 'Ya-as.' Whatever business carries you into this country, avoid it, at least till they have good roads; if they were good, travelling would be very pleasant."

The necessity for a better class of road cannot but have forced itself upon the Government of the country from time to time, if not for the benefit of travellers and to encourage trade, at any rate to secure a rapid movement of troops in times of disturbance or rebellion; yet we find the state of streets in the metropolis, and roads in the country, as in 1750, thus described in Blackie's 'Comprehensive History of England': "When the only public approaches to Parliament were King Street and Union Street, these were so wretchedly paved, that when the King went in state to the House, the ruts had to be filled up with bundles of fagots to allow the royal coach a safe transit. While the art of street-paving was thus so imperfect, that of road-making was equally defective, so that the country visitor to the metropolis, and its dangers of coach-driving, had generally a sufficient preparative for the worst during his journey to town. This may easily be understood from the fact that, so late as 1754, few turnpikes were to be seen after leaving the vicinity of London, for 200 miles together, although it had been made felony to pull them down. These roads, indeed, were merely the produce of compulsory pauper labour, contributed by the different parishes; and, like all such work, it was performed in a very perfunctory manner."

The same authority gives a further picture of the state of the highways some twenty years later, when apparently little improvement had taken place in their condition: "Notwithstanding the numerous Acts of Parliament, of which no less than 452 were emitted between the years 1760 and 1764, for the improvement of the principal highways, they still continued narrow, darkened with trees, and intersected with ruts and miry swamps, through which the progress of a waggon was a work of difficulty and danger. One of these—the turnpike road from Preston to Wigan—is thus described by an angry tourist in 1770, and the picture seems to have been too generally realised over the whole kingdom: "To look over a map, and perceive that it is a principal one, not only to some towns, but even whole counties, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings down. They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer; what, therefore, must they be after a winter? The only mending it receives is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts; for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles, of execrable memory."

Obvious as it must be to every mind capable of apprehending ordinary matters in the present day, that the opening up of the country by the laying down of good roads would encourage trade, promote social intercourse, knit together the whole kingdom, and render its government the more easy and effective; yet it is a fact that the improvement of the roads in various parts of the country, both in England and Scotland, was stoutly opposed by the people, even in certain places entailing riot and bloodshed. So strong were the prejudices against the improved roads, that the country people would not use them after being made. This bias may perhaps have partaken largely of that unreasoning conservatism which is always prone to pronounce that that which is is best, and opposes change on principle—an example of which is afforded by the conduct of the driver of the Marlborough coach, who, when the new Bath road was opened, obstinately refused to travel by it, and stuck to the old waggon-track. "He was an old man," he said; "his grandfather and father had driven the aforesaid way before him, and he would continue in the old track till death." Other grounds of objection were not wanting, having some show of reason; but these, like the others, were useless in stemming the tide of improvement which eventually set in, and brought the roads of the nation into their present admirable state.