“Diligence” had now become a very popular name for fast coaches, as speed was understood in those times. It derived from across the Channel, where conveyances known by this title had already supplemented the ordinary slow-going stage-coaches, called carrosses; but the importation of the word into this country in connection with stage-coaching was absolutely inexcusable, for already our “Post Coaches” and “Light Post Coaches” had begun to give the travelling public an idea of quick transit.
The English “Diligence,” as originally built and run upon the roads, was nothing more nor less than a light coach, to hold three inside passengers only, facing in the direction the coach travelled. It, indeed, greatly resembled, if even it was not identical in every particular with, the post-chaises of that time, themselves built to hold three persons, and by that measure of accommodation helping to prove every day and upon roads innumerable the truth of the old adage which declares that “Two’s company; three’s none.” If, in fact, we come to the conclusion that post-chaises were sometimes used as “Diligences” and on other occasions as post-chaises, we shall only be giving the proprietors of coaches and chaises their due credit of being clever business men, suiting their stock to the needs of the hour.
Between the appearance of the Shrewsbury “Diligence” and the opening of the nineteenth century, “Diligences” abounded. The first mail-coach was a “Diligence.” It is not to be supposed that they were all fast; and indeed, so early did the impudent slow coaches assume the title, in order to deceive the public, that it soon became a synonym for laziness and unpunctuality, and so far were they in many cases from being light coaches carrying only three passengers, that references to them in the literature of a hundred years ago mention as many as six, or even eight persons.
The word “diligence” in some subtle manner conveys a very true idea of these coaches. There is in it something soothing and trustworthy. In some vague way it radiates a calm atmosphere of plodding virtue and slow-going innocence, to which your dashing but breakneck “Tally-ho’s!” and “Comets” are entirely strange. The “mind’s eye, Horatio,” pictures in the progress of a Diligence a patient toiling against difficulties, rewarded in the end by the happy issue of an arrival at one’s inn, weary perhaps with long hours of travel, but still sound in body; an ending not always so comfortable when travelling by the swift “Tally-ho’s” and “Comets” aforesaid. Then, too, when “Diligence” became shortened into “Dilly,” as it very soon was, the title grew in a sense poetic. The “Derby Dilly,” which, faithful among the faithless, would appear to have remained really and truly a Diligence, has in fact been celebrated in verse by no less an one than Canning, in the lines contributed by him to the Loves of the Triangles:—
So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby Dilly, carrying[F] three insides.
One in each corner sits and lolls at ease,
With folded arms, propt back, and outstretched knees;
While the press’d Bodkin, pinch’d and squeezed to death,
Sweats in the mid-most place, and scolds, and pants for breath.
[F] It is worthy of note that these lines are generally misquoted. But the misquotations are improvements upon the original; as, in fact, the best known misquotations are. The usual version runs, “So down thy vale,” and substitutes “The Derby Dilly, with its three insides” for the original clumsy line, which fails to scan.
Canning’s vivid picture of travelling by Dilly describes in an unapproachable manner the peculiar defects of its construction.
There were those ingrates who, contemporary with the Diligences, did not appreciate them very highly. They valued speed more than safety.
“You should have called it the Sloth,” said the traveller at the Hawes Inn, somewhere about 1790, referring to the “Hawes Fly, or Queen’s-ferry Diligence,” which then plied between Edinburgh and the shores of the Forth; “why, it moves like a fly through a glue-pot.”
It is now necessary to turn aside for awhile to contemplate the final debasement of the Diligence, which in 1835 became, in the hands of Mr. George Shillibeer, something very like an omnibus. In 1829 he had introduced a line of public vehicles running from Paddington to the City, and had himself named them “omnibuses”; but in 1835 he appeared with a long-distance vehicle which he put on the Brighton Road and named “Shillibeer’s Improved New Patent Diligence.” By this, three classes of accommodation were provided: the “Coupé or Chariot,” to convey three persons, at £1 1s. each; behind it, in a separate compartment, the “Omnibus,” to hold eight, at 16s.; and the “Exterior,” as he somewhat grandly named the roof, accommodating an indefinite number at 10s. each. Shillibeer was a great advertiser, and gave this, as well as his omnibuses, due publicity. He was inordinately fond of advertisements cast in a metrical form, and accordingly his tame poet was made to grind out a set of halting verses which fully describe the beauty and convenience of his master’s new enterprise:—