XVI
Stevenage is the first of the many wide-streeted towns and villages whose emptiness proclaims the something missing that was provided for by all this vast roominess. Its one street, lining the old road, was originally laid out so spaciously for the purpose of affording room for the traffic for which, once upon a time, it was not too spacious. It is all too wide now that the intercourse of two nations proceeds by rail, and many of the old inns that once did so famous a trade are converted into private residences. Prominent among them was the “Swan,” which may now be sought in the large red-brick house on the right-hand side of the forking roads, as the town is left for Baldock. It may readily be identified by its archway, which formerly led to the spacious stables.
The “Swan” at Stevenage, kept in pre-railway days by a postmaster named Cass, was one of those exclusive houses which, like the “Red Lion” and the “Green Man” at Barnet, did not condescend to the ordinary coach-traveller. Cass kept post-horses only, and his customers ranged from princes and dukes down to baronets and wealthy knights.
“Posting in all its branches,” as the postmasters used to say in the announcements outside their establishments, was at the beginning of the nineteenth century essentially aristocratic; but it had many changes, from its beginning, about the dawn of the seventeenth century, to its end, before the middle of the nineteenth. Originally “posting” meant the hire of horses only, and the traveller rode horseback himself, accompanied perhaps by a mounted guide. Thus Fynes Morison, in his Itinerary, published in 1617, speaks of the early days of posting:—“In England, towards the south, and in the west parts, and from London to Barwick upon the confines of Scotland, post-horses are established at every ten miles or thereabouts, which they ride a false gallop after some ten miles an hour sometimes, and that makes their hire the greater; for with a commission from the chief postmaster or chiefe lords of the councell (given either upon publike businesse, or at least pretence thereof), a passenger shall pay twopence halfpenny each mile for his horse, and as much for his guide’s horse; but one guide will serve the whole company, though many ride together, who may easily bring back the horses, driving them before him, who ‘know the waye as well as a beggar knowes his dishe.’ This extraordinary charge of horses’ hire may well be recompensed with the speede of the journey, whereby greater expences in the innes are avoided; all the difficultie is, to have a body able to endure the toyle. For these horses the passenger is at no charge to give them meat onely at the ten miles, and the boy that carries them backe will expect some few pence in gift.”
When carriages were introduced, the very great personages of the realm “progressed” in them, and had their love of display gratified thereby. But what they gained in pomp they lost in speed, for at the best of it they rarely travelled at a greater pace than seven miles an hour.
An odd institution with the noble and the wealthy families of that bygone age was the “running footman.” It has sometimes been supposed that these deer-footed servitors were for town service, perhaps because “old Q,” the profligate Marquis of Queensberry, who was the last to keep one, lived in town during his last years and necessarily kept his lackey running London streets. The unique sign of the “running footman,” with the portrait of such an one in costume, is also in London, and may be seen any day on a little public-house, still chiefly frequented by men-servants, in Charles Street, Berkeley Square. He wears a uniform consisting of blue coat and breeches, trimmed with gold lace. Round his waist is a red sash, on his head a cap with a nodding plume, and in his hand the long staff carried by all his tribe. This is an outfit somewhat different from that usually worn, for we are told that they wore no breeches, but a short silk petticoat kept down by a deep gold fringe.
The function of a running footman was to run ahead of his employer’s carriage, to point out the proper turnings to take, or to arrange for his reception at the inns; but as time went on and accommodation increased, he was not of any practical use, and became simply a kind of unnecessary fore-runner, who by his appearance advertised the coming of my lord and upheld my lord’s dignity. It is said that these ministers to senseless pomp and vanity usually ran at the rate of seven miles an hour, and frequently did sixty miles a day. The long and highly ornamented staff they carried had a hollow silver ball at the end containing white wine. Unscrewing it, the footman could refresh himself. More white wine, mixed with eggs, was given him at the end of his journey, and he must have needed it! Over the bad and hilly roads of a hundred and fifty years ago, the running footman could readily keep ahead of a carriage; on the flat the horses, of course, had the advantage.
Post-chaises were unknown in England until after the middle of the eighteenth century had come and gone. Thus we find Horace Walpole and Gray, taking the “grand tour” together in 1739, astonished to laughter at the post-chaises which conveyed them from Boulogne towards Paris. This French vehicle, the father of all post-chaises, was two-wheeled, and not very unlike our present hansom-cab, the door being in front and the body hung in much the same way, only a little more forward from the wheels. The French chaise de-poste was invented in 1664, and the first used in England were of this type; but they proved unsuitable for use in this country, and English carriage-builders at length evolved the well-known post-chaise, which went out only with the coaching age. But it was long before it began to supplant the post-horses and the feminine pillion.
Every one is familiar with the appearance of the old post-chaise, which, according to the painters and the print-sellers, appears to have been used principally for the purpose of spiriting love-lorn couples with the speed of the wind away from all restrictions of home and the Court of Chancery. A post-chaise was (so it seems nowadays) a rather cumbrous affair, four-wheeled, high, and insecurely hung, with a glass front and a seat to hold three, facing the horses. The original designers evidently had no prophetic visions as to this especial popularity of post-chaises with errant lovers, nor did they ponder the proverb, “Two’s company, three’s none,” else they would have restricted their accommodation to two, or have enlarged it to four.
It was an expensive as well as a pleasant method of travelling, costing as it did at least a shilling a mile, and, in times when forage was dear, one shilling and threepence. The usual rates were chaise, nine-pence a mile, pair of post-horses, sixpence; four horses and chaise, supposing you desired to travel speedily—say at twelve miles an hour—one-and-ninepence. But these costs and charges did not frank the traveller through. The post-boy’s tip was as inevitable as night and morning. Likewise there were the “gates” to pay every now and again. One shudders to contemplate the total cost of posting from London to Edinburgh, even with only the ordinary equipment of two horses. There were thirty post-stages between the two capitals, according to the books published for the use of travellers a hundred years ago. Those books were very necessary to any one who did not desire to be charged for perhaps a mile more on each stage than it really measured, which was one of those artful postmasters’ little ways. Here is a list of these stages with the measurements, to which travellers drew the attention of those postmasters who commonly endeavoured to overcharge:—
| Miles | Furlongs | Miles | Furlongs | ||
| Barnet | 11 | 0 | York | 9 | 3 |
| Hatfield | 8 | 4 | Easingwold | 13 | 3 |
| Stevenage | 11 | 7 | Thirsk | 10 | 3 |
| Biggleswade | 13 | 5 | Northallerton | 9 | 0 |
| Buckden | 15 | 7 | Darlington | 16 | 0 |
| Stilton | 13 | 7 | Durham | 18 | 2 |
| Stamford | 14 | 2 | Newcastle | 14 | 4 |
| Witham Common | 11 | 2 | Morpeth | 14 | 6 |
| Grantham | 9 | 5 | Alnwick | 18 | 6 |
| Newark | 14 | 3 | Belford | 14 | 5 |
| Tuxford | 13 | 2 | Berwick | 15 | 3 |
| Barnby Moor | 10 | 4 | Press Inn | 11 | 5 |
| Doncaster | 12 | 0 | Dunbar | 14 | 3 |
| Ferrybridge | 15 | 2 | Haddington | 11 | 0 |
| Tadcaster | 12 | 7 | Edinburgh | 16 | 0 |
Nearly four hundred miles by these measurements. This, at a shilling a mile for the posting, gives £20; but, including the postboys’ tips, “gates,” and expenses at the inns on the road, the journey could not have been done in this way under £30, at the most modest calculation. This list of post-stages was one drawn up for distances chiefly between the towns, but nothing is more remarkable along the Great North Road than the number of old posting-houses which still exist (although of course their business is gone) in wild and lonely spots, far removed from either town or village.
Another “branch” of posting was the horsing alone, by which a private carriage could be taken to or from town by hiring posters at every stage. This was a favourite practice with the gentry of the shires, who thus had all the éclat of travelling in private state, without the expense and trouble of providing their own horses. It is probably of this method that De Quincey speaks in the following passage:—
“In my childhood,” says he, “standing with one or two of my brothers and sisters at the front window of my mother’s carriage, I remember one unvarying set of images before us. The postillion (for so were all carriages then driven) was employed, not by fits and starts, but always and eternally, in quartering, i.e. in crossing from side to side, according to the casualties of the ground. Before you stretched a wintry length of lane, with ruts deep enough to fracture the leg of a horse, filled to the brim with standing pools of rain-water; and the collateral chambers of these ruts kept from becoming confluent by thin ridges, such as the Romans called lirae, to maintain the footing upon which lirae, so as not to swerve (or as the Romans would say, delirare), was a trial of some skill, both for the horses and their postillion. It was, indeed, next to impossible for any horse, on such a narrow crust of separation, not to grow delirious in the Roman metaphor; and the nervous anxiety which haunted me when a child was much fed by this image so often before my eyes, and the sympathy with which I followed the motion of the docile creatures’ legs. Go to sleep at the beginning of a stage, and the last thing you saw—wake up, and the first thing you saw—was the line of wintry pools, the poor off-horse planting his steps with care, and the cautious postillion gently applying his spur whilst manoeuvring across the system of grooves with some sort of science that looked like a gipsy’s palmistry—so equally unintelligible to me were his motions in what he sought and in what he avoided.”