“‘Ah!’ quoth the old man, climbing up, quite satisfied: ‘wonderful inventions nowadays, sir. We shall all get safe to Brighton: no chance of an accident by this coach.’”
The Brighton Road, as already hinted, was in many ways exceptional. It had exceptionally many Royal associations, reflected vividly enough in the names of its coaches. Among these was, of course, the “Prince Regent,” started in 1813, but preceded by the “Princess Charlotte,” established a year earlier, and followed by the “Regent,” “Royal George,” “Royal Adelaide,” “Royal Clarence,” “Royal Sussex,” “Royal Victoria,” and “Royal York.”
Later sporting names for coaches than the “Tally-ho’s” and the “Highflyers” were such as the “Bang Up,” the “Hieover”—surely no prudent person travelled by a coach with a name so suggestive of broken necks—and the “High-mettled Racer,” while the gay young bloods who drove the crack Windsor coach called it, after the first danseuse of that time, the “Taglioni.” The “Taglioni” was a fast coach, driven by fast men, and had a picture of Taglioni herself, pirouetting round on the tips of her toes, painted prominently on the body. But of all the sporting names, that of the “Tantivy” breathes most the classic spirit of that sporting age, and called forth one of the coaching classics, written in regretful anticipation of coaches being supplanted by railways. The “Tantivy Trot” was written by Egerton Warburton, of Arley, Cheshire. It was sung to the air of “Here’s to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen,” and was an especial favourite with the brazen-throated young sportsmen of the Bullingdon Club:—
THE TANTIVY TROT
Here’s to the heroes of four-in hand fame,
Harrison, Peyton, and Warde, sir;
Here’s to the dragsmen that after them came,
Ford, and the Lancashire lord, sir.
Here’s to the team, sir, all harnessed to start,
Brilliant in Brummagem leather;
Here’s to the waggoner skill’d in the art
Of coupling the cattle together.
Here’s to the arm that holds them when gone,
Still to a gallop inclined, sir;
Heads to the front with no bearing reins on,
Tails with no cruppers behind, sir.
Here’s to the shape that is shown the near side,
Here’s to the blood on the off, sir;
Limbs without check to the freedom of stride,
Wind without whistle or cough, sir.
Here’s to the dear little damsels within,
Here’s to the swells on the top, sir;
Here’s to the music in three feet of tin,
Here’s to the tapering crop, sir.
Here’s to the dragsmen I’ve dragged into song—
Salisbury, Mountain and Co., sir;
Here’s to the Cracknell that cracks ’em along,
Five twenty times at a go, sir.