Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 2 (of 2) / A picturesque history of the coaching age

by Charles G. Harper

TIME LOST THE NEVER
CANNOT IMPORTANCE DESPAIR
BE OF —
REGAINED PUCTUALITY NOTHING
WITHOUT
LABOUR

METHOD is the very Hinge of Business; and there is no Method without Punctuality. Punctuality is important, because it subserves the Peace and good Temper of a Family: The want of it not only infringes on necessary Duty, but sometimes excludes this Duty. The Calmness of Mind which it produces, is another Advantage of Punctuality: A disorderly man is always in a hurry; he has no time to speak to you, because he is going elsewhere; and when he gets there, he is too late for his business; or he must hurry away to another before he can finish it. Punctuality gives weight to Character. “Such a man has made an Appointment:—then I know he will keep it.” And this generates punctuality in you; for, like other Virtues, it propagates itself. Servants and Children must be punctual, where their Leader is so. Appointments, indeed, become Debts. I owe you Punctuality, if I have made an Appointment with you: and have no right to throw away your time, if I do my own.

Of course, this good advice and insistence upon its being followed would have been of little avail had the author of it not been continually alert to see that his instructions took root. He, at any rate, practised what he preached, and rose early, was diligent all day, and went late to bed. As a business man whose business was conducted over a large stretch of country—extending chiefly in a diagonal line two hundred miles long, between London and Liverpool—he knew that only by personal supervision and by great and unwearied exertions in travelling could his subordinates be kept in a state of efficiency; and he accordingly was always travelling. By post-chaise or by private carriage he flew, day and night, along the great roads between London and Holyhead, and London, Derby, Manchester and Liverpool; appearing, suddenly and unexpectedly, at some great town-warehouse of the firm, or some wayside office or place of call, and often springing, as it were, out of the void, to encourage some diligent servant, or (it is to be feared) more often to reprimand a lazy and inefficient one. None could predicate his movements or where he might be at any given time; save indeed those with whom he had made appointments, and they knew, after only a short acquaintance, that the sun was scarce more likely to rise and set according to the calendar than Joseph Baxendale was to redeem his promise of any such assignation.

Forsaking for awhile the roads and his establishments along them, he would next appear on the canals of whose sullen waters his fly-boats flew, and pay flying visits of inspection to the many wharves along their course. These water expeditions were made in a vessel especially constructed—a “canal-yacht” called the Lark, whether significantly named in allusion to the early-rising habits of its owner we do not know. It was this boat, according to the still surviving tradition, he lent to the Earl of Derby on an occasion when Lady Derby was in London, too ill to travel by road to Knowsley, where, according to the doctor’s advice, she should be removed. In it she travelled all the way down to Lancashire, along the canals.

Another surviving tradition, and one that speaks well for the quality of the horses that drew the fly-boats—and perhaps even better for the keenness of the sporting instincts of the official concerned—-tells how Mr. Baxendale, on coming to Braunston, a Northamptonshire village on the Grand Junction Canal, discovered that the man who should have been in charge of his wharf there had gone hunting, mounted on one of the firm’s towing-path steeds. Records of that time do not tell us of that sportsman’s return, or of the reception that met him.

It was perhaps a consequence of the strenuous rule then obtaining that, at a time when the great roads to the north were blocked by the historic snowstorm of Christmas 1836, when the stage-coaches and the mails were buried in the drifts, Pickford’s Manchester Flying Van was first through. We may suppose that the horses were better specimens than those pictured here, from an old painting, which represents the fly-van team as a very sorry one indeed, comparing badly with the sturdy animals who are seen drawing the van in the first picture.

It would be a mistake to think that Baxendale’s ways with his staff were merely those of the strict disciplinarian, only anxious to obtain the utmost from them. His kindliness was perhaps his strongest point, and Pickford’s under his rule began the practice of recognising the loyalty and hard work of their servants by pensioning them on their retirement—a policy that still does honour to the firm.

Under this vigorous sway Pickford’s grew and prospered, and by the time when railways first loomed threatening upon the horizon of the carriers’ and coachmen’s outlook, commanded the bulk of the goods traffic between London and the Midlands, alike by road and canal. That was a period above all others when a clear head was requisite. It appeared to many to be a choice between giving up business or fighting the encroachments of steam. To the few, of whom Baxendale was one, the issues were more varied and hopeful. He foresaw that railways must succeed, and that, since to fight them would be hopeless, the best thing to do would be to work with them as far as possible. The business need not be injured; indeed, he saw that it must needs share in whatever prosperity attended the railways. Only methods must be changed. But to reorganise a vast business only just, after thirteen years of unwearied effort, re-established on new and improved lines, must have seemed a hard necessity. However, when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the second line in the country, was about to be opened, in 1830, he perceived that although the road traffic must cease between the two terminal points of a railway, yet there must be some agency prepared to collect goods, and deliver them to or convey them from the railway stations. He saw, too, an inevitable increase in the volume of traffic, and very prudently resolved to obtain a share of it by throwing in his lot with the railway people, who were themselves not so assured of instant success as to repel so unexpected an offer, and welcomed the proposed alliance. The same attitude was adopted towards the Grand Junction Railway and the London and Birmingham. In this far-seeing policy Baxendale was at one with William Chaplin, who at an early period in the history of railway enterprise had called upon him and asked him what his views were on this vital question. Chaplin withdrew his coaches when the London and Birmingham Railway was opened, and Pickford’s fly-vans and fly-boats ceased to run. In return for these really valuable services, Pickford’s, and Chaplin and his coaching ally, Horne, who had been equally complaisant, acquired shares in the town and country carrying agencies for what in 1845 became an amalgamation of railway interests under the style and title of the “London and North-Western Railway.” Unused as these new railway people were to the business of handling goods, they were glad enough that Mr. Baxendale should organise that class of traffic for them, and, as we have already said, really welcomed the aid thus somewhat unexpectedly forthcoming, although outwardly adopting a self-sufficient and omnipotent attitude. He became organising goods-manager, and contributed the services of his staff to the work, but resigned when everything had been duly set going to devote himself to his own business. He it was who drew up the documents still used in the goods departments of railways to this day, in all essentials unaltered.