Annals of the Road [pp. 181-185]

APPLETON$S' JO URNAL.
-the perfume of the hawthorn-hedges, pink and road had time to brew a lot of beer between the
white with blossom-the quiet of the yellow hay- time when they were sighted in the distance and the
fields and red-tiled cottages, to the throbbing succes- hour when they arrived.
sion of telegraph-poles, the thunderbolt roar and It was not until the government gave the mnails
rush of locomotives? There might be highwaymen to the stage-coaches that the latter became really imon the road, it is true. But who, living to-day, with portant and expeditious conveyances. After this
any tenderness or romance about him, would not re- they traveled as fast as ten miles an hour, or even
gard it a pleasure to sacrifice his purse to such im- twelve, and the guards were armed with blunderportunate gallants as Captain Macheath, Dick Tur- busses and pistols. In I825 was established the celepin, Paul Clifford, or Claude Duval? brated Shrewsbury" Wonder," whichkeptupitschar And, though the road was rough anl dark, it was acter for punctuality, safety, and speed, for thirteen
illuminated at well-known and much-loved points by years. Starting at 5 A. M. from Shrewsbury, it arrived
such cozy taverns as the Maypole, where the tray- in London at 9.45 P. M. on the same day, thus runelers found such hosts as old Joe Willett to entertain ning one hundred and fifty-four miles in sixteen hours,
them; where the fires blazed half-way up the chim- including two stoppages. In I836 the fastest coaches
ney; where the flip, the venison, the roasts, the ever known were running between London and
broils, and the jugged hares tickled the appetite- Brighton, fifty-one and a half miles in five and a
which needed no tickling-as the elaborate arts of quarter hours; London and Exeter, one hundred
the Trois Freres Provengaux could never do. and seventy-one miles, in seventeen hours; London
So it seems to us that the stage-coach is the mir- and Manchester, one hundred and eighty- seven
ror of many good old customs, and is in itself a cus- miles, in nineteen hours; London and Holyhead,
tom well worth reviving. Several years ago some two hundred and sixty-one miles, in twenty-six hours
English gentlemen, taking this view of it, put coaches and fifty-five minutes; and London and Liverpool,
driven by themselves on the most beautiful routes in two hundred and three miles, in twenty hours and
the south of England; and now the same spirit has fifty minutes. On one occasion the "Quicksilver"
broken out in the United States, and each morning Devonport mail made two hundred and sixteen miles
a four-in-hand leaves the Brunswick Hotel, in Fifth in twenty-one hours and fourteen minutes, including
Avenue, with passengers and baggage for Pelham stoppages.
Bridge. But all coaches did not sustain the reputation of
Nearly every phase of life has its own literature, the Shrewsbury "Wonder" for safety. Between
and this revival of stage-coaching has, we imagine, Hounslow and Staines there was a place known as
inspired a book by one Captain Malet, of the Eigh- the "hospital-ground," from the number of accidents
teenth Hussars, recently issued in London.l The that happened near it.
theme is a rich one, prolific in anecdote, and highly "I heard a shout ahead," writes a passenger, of
spiced with adventure. It recalls from oblivion an adventure here, " which came from the guard of
many a good story and many oddities of character. the Bristol mail just in front of us. One moment
It required no great literary skill in its treatment, more and we came to a sudden stop by our leaders
and w e may therefore congratulate Captain Malet on falling and the main bar unhooking itself. The
having satisfactorily performed his task. The grain wheelers passed over the leaders as they lay, and
was to be had for the reaping, and how abundant when I picked myself up-for I was half thrown off
the harvest was this book plainly shows. the box of our coach-I found the leaders under the
Stage-coaching became general in Great Britain splinter-bar. A flock of sheep had been frightened
between I662 and I703, and met with the same op- by the mail in front of us, and had stood stock-still
position, Captain Malet tells us, that nearly every in the middle of the road, and we had run into them,
innovation on' the established order of things is killing several and smashing ourselves."
doomed to. One pamphleteer went so far as to say Sometimes a coach running down-hill would find
that "it is the greatest evil that has happened of a market-wagon at a stand-still in the middle of the
late years in these kingdoms," and another more road with the driver asleep, and the collision would
sweepingly denounced it as being "mischievous to inevitably overturn both vehicles.
the public, prejudicial to trade, and destructive to The great day of the year for the mail-coaches
lands." "Those who travel in these coaches," con- was the king's birthday, when a goodly procession of
tinued this Spartan, "contract an idle habit of body, four-in-hands passed through the London streets to
become weary and listless when they have rode a few the general post-office. They were all freshly and
miles, and are then unable to travel on horseback, splendidly painted for the occasion, and were driven
to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the by men who, as well as the guards behind, were ar fieds." Yet the earliest stage-coaches were crude rayed in new scarlet and gold, with nosegays the size
and inconvenient compared with the farmers' wagons of cabbages on their breasts. The interiors of the
of our Western Plains. They were not coaches at coaches were filled with buxom dames and blooming
all, in fact, but wagons, and they moved so slowly lasses in canary-colored or scarlet silks-the wives,
that it was jocularly said that the publicans on the daughters, or sweethearts, of the drivers and guards.
But the greatest features were the music of the key 1 Annals of the Road; or, Notes on Mail and Stage Coaching bugles, played by the guards with much brilliancy,
in Great Britain. London: Longmans, Green & Co. and the review by the king and queen, who stood in
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