“Here a passenger pointed out to ‘coachey’ a covey of partridges in an adjoining field, and asked him if he knew the price of birds at Worcester.
“‘No,’ says he, ‘I don’t—yaw-he-haw; but fresh herrings at Wolverhampton be mighty cheap at thirty a shilling.’
“Another quarter of an hour’s profound silence, and we arrived at the ‘Crown,’ Ombersley. Seeing the fate that awaited me, of being linked to this dreary fellow for a journey of nearly thirty miles, I proposed to him a gentle stimulant, and expressed my apprehension that he was considerably out of condition.
“‘Well, then, I’ll ha’ some brandy, I s’pose,’ he replied, with as much politeness and satisfaction at this sixpenny treat as a porker may be supposed to entertain on his first introduction to a bucket of grains. Too soon, however, I found this investment of my capital was more than useless—the man with the whip would not be drawn out. His horses, too, seemed to be under the influence of the same stupifying medium, jogging along at a rate which rendered our arrival at Dudley a probability somewhat remote.”
John, oddly enough, was succeeded by another Wilson, but not a relative. William Wilson was the direct antithesis to his predecessor, and when the “Everlasting,” belying its proud name, went off the road before the advance of the Great Western Railway from Oxford to Worcester, he left pleasing memories.
Jo Walton, on the Cambridge Road, was a notable whip of the smarter kind. No unwieldy stout man he, but tall and slim, faultlessly dressed, and one of the best coachmen that ever drove. The railway spoiled him in mid-career, but not before the very knowing gentlemen who wrote for the sporting periodicals of the age had made his a classic figure. The Cambridge Road alone was Walton’s ground. He drove the “Safety,” and then the “Times,” in six hours; but it was not until he succeeded to the box-seat of the “Star of Cambridge” that he came into notice. That coach performed the fifty-two miles between the “Belle Sauvage” and the “Hoop” at Cambridge in five hours. With fifteen minutes deducted for breakfast on the way, and another fifteen for changing, this gives four hours and a half actual running, or a speed of nearly eleven and three-quarter miles an hour: an incredible rate of progress, but vouched for by a contributor to the New Sporting Magazine in 1833.
Jo Walton drove the “Star” double, every day except Sunday, leaving the “Hoop,” at Cambridge at 7 a.m., reaching London at noon, and setting forth again for Cambridge the same afternoon. This feat of driving over a hundred miles a day he continued until the railway by degrees caused the splendour of the “Star” to wane.
The Cambridge Road has, of course, many dead level stretches, and Walton was sometimes known to put the coach along a certain five miles in twenty minutes. Yet, according to the enthusiastic chronicler of these things, he was among the safest of coachmen—a testimony not supported by the fact that he twice upset the “Star” between Royston and Buntingford. His determination to keep his time was, we are told, superior to all mercenary considerations or regard for the “short pocket.” Thus, although he pulled up on one occasion when hailed on the road by a gentleman in a phaeton, saying he “might as well have this half-crown as not,” he drove off again because the passenger did not come instantly.
He was, according to the admiring testimony of the time, a fixture on the box—nothing could throw him off. A scientific punisher of refractory horses, too; accompanying the corrective discipline of the whip with much grim humour. Passing through Buntingford one day, the chestnut near leader attempted to bolt into a public-house. “I didn’t know your friends lived there,” said Walton. “Come, come, now you are got into this coach you must give up low company,” and two slashing strokes of the whip followed. Walton, it was said, had the temper of an emperor and a tongue as fluent and free as that of a bargee. The story was told that he refused to pull up for a passenger who had lost his hat, and that the passenger thereupon pushed Walton’s off, compelling him to halt; but that tale was either untrue or the passenger unacquainted with Walton. It was not likely that any one who knew him would have taken such a liberty. We are not told what became of that impulsive passenger.
