“A thaw, by all that is miserable! The frost is completely broken up. You look down the long perspective of Oxford Street, the gas-lights mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be had—the very coachmen have gone home in despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with that gentle regularity which betokens a duration of four-and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the housetops and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. The water is ‘coming in’ in every area, the pipes have burst, the water-butts are running over; the kennels seem to be doing matches against time, pump-handles descend of their own accord, horses in market-carts fall down, and there’s no one to help them up again; policemen look as if they had been carefully sprinkled with powdered glass; here and there a milk-woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list round each foot to keep her from slipping; boys who ‘don’t sleep in the house,’ and are not allowed much sleep out of it, can’t wake their masters by thundering at the shop-door, and cry with the cold—the compound of ice, snow, and water on the pavement is a couple of inches thick—nobody ventures to walk fast to keep himself warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping himself warm if he did.
“It strikes a quarter past five as you trudge down Waterloo Place on your way to the “Golden Cross,” and you discover, for the first time, that you were called about an hour too early. You have not time to go back, there is no place open to go into, and you have, therefore, no resource but to go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself and everything about you. You arrive at the office, and look wistfully up the yard for the Birmingham Highflier, which, for aught you can see, may have flown away altogether, for no preparations appear to be on foot for the departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. You wander into the booking-office, which, with the gas-lights and blazing fire, looks quite comfortable by contrast—that is to say, if any place can look comfortable at half-past five on a winter’s morning. There stands the identical book-keeper in the same position as if he had not moved since you saw him yesterday. As he informs you that the coach is up the yard, and will be brought round in about a quarter of an hour, you leave your bag and repair to ‘the Tap’—not with any absurd idea of warming yourself, because you feel such a result to be utterly hopeless, but for the purpose of procuring some hot brandy-and-water, which you do—when the kettle boils! an event which occurs exactly two minutes and a half before the time fixed for the starting of the coach.
“The first stroke of six peals from St. Martin’s Church steeple just as you take the first sip of the boiling liquid. You find yourself at the booking-office in two seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much comforted by your brandy-and-water in about the same period. The coach is out; the horses are in, and the guard and two or three porters are stowing the luggage away, and running up the steps of the booking-office and down the steps of the booking-office, with breathless rapidity. The place, which a few minutes ago was so still and quiet, is now all bustle; the early vendors of the morning papers have arrived, and you are assailed on all sides with shouts of ‘Times, gen’l’m’n, Times,’ ‘Here’s Chron—Chron—Chron,’ ‘Herald, ma’am,’ ‘Highly interesting murder, gen’l’m’n,’ ‘Curious case o’ breach o’ promise, ladies.’ The inside passengers are already in their dens, and the outsides, with the exception of yourself, are pacing up and down the pavement to keep themselves warm; they consist of two young men with very long hair, to which the sleet has communicated the appearance of crystallised rats’ tails; one thin young woman, cold and peevish, one old gentleman ditto ditto, and something in a cloak and cap, intended to represent a military officer; every member of the party with a large stiff shawl over his chin, looking exactly as if he were playing a set of Pan’s pipes.
“‘Take off the cloths, Bob,’ says the coachman, who now appears for the first time, in a rough blue greatcoat, of which the buttons behind are so far apart that you can’t see them both at the same time. ‘Now, gen’l’m’n!’ cries the guard, with the waybill in his hand. ‘Five minutes behind time already!’ Up jump the passengers—the two young men smoking like limekilns, and the old gentleman grumbling audibly. The thin young woman is got upon the roof by dint of a great deal of pulling and pushing, and helping and trouble; and she repays it by expressing her solemn conviction that she will never be able to get down again.
“‘All right!’ sings out the guard at last, jumping up as the coach starts, and blowing his horn directly afterwards, in proof of the soundness of his wind. ‘Let ’em go, Harry; give ’em their heads!’ cries the coachman—and off we start as briskly as if the morning were ‘all right,’ as well as the coach.”
CHAPTER XV
HOW THE COACH PASSENGERS FARED: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS DOWN THE ROAD
There is no consensus of opinion to be found among travellers by coach on the subject of the joys or sorrows of old-time travel. Everything depended on the weather, the coach, the other passengers, and upon the nature of the traveller himself. Sometimes a coach journey was a misery; at others it was a joy to look back upon. Humourists of the early and mid-eighteenth century found the subject of coach-travelling very attractive, and returned again and again to the stock characters of the braggart and domineering military man among the passengers, who was really a coward, and the modest, unassuming young man who always killed or dispersed the highwaymen while the captain, who by his own account had fought at Ramilies with Marlborough, prostrated himself on the floor and tried to crawl under the petticoats of the lady passengers or cover himself with the straw that strewed the floor. Those humourists could always get a laugh from such accounts, and sighs of appreciation from the ladies, who all wished they numbered among their acquaintance such proper young men as Roderick Random, who in Smollett’s romance performs such prodigies of valour in the “Exeter Fly” somewhere about the neighbourhood of Turnham Green.
“When I had taken my seat,” says Roderick, after an adventure of the kind already hinted at, “Miss Snapper, who from the coach had seen everything that had happened, made me a compliment on my behaviour; and said she was glad to see me returned without having received any injury; her mother, too, owned herself obliged to my resolution; and the lawyer told me I was entitled by Act of Parliament to a reward of forty pounds for having apprehended a highwayman. The soldier”—who had behaved in the conventional style of poltroonery—“observed, with a countenance in which impudence and shame, struggling, produced some disorder, that if I had not been in such a d——d hurry to get out of the coach, he would have secured the rogue effectually without all this bustle and loss of time, by a scheme which my heat and precipitation ruined. ‘For my part,’ continued he, ‘I am always extremely cool on these occasions.’
“‘So it appeared by your trembling,’ said the young lady.