Some were purchased with a doubtful title. In such a case, to prevent his being recognised and claimed, the horse would be worked on the night mail.
The coachman’s ideal was a team matching in colour, but few proprietors ever aimed at such perfection. The cost was great, and nothing, save the gratification of the eye, was gained.
With these business details the travelling public had no concern, and it was only the box-seat passengers who learnt the history of some of these cheap acquisitions from private stables. The box-seat passenger was generally a sporting character, aspiring to that companionship with the coachman from his love of horses and driving, but it naturally often happened that some stolid person, whose only desire was to be carried safely and who took no interest in driving, found himself perched on that place of honour. When such an one became the unwilling confidant of the coachman he was apt to hear some nerve-shaking things. “See that ’ere near wheeler?” said one Jehu. “Run avay vith a old gennelman last veek, he did; broke his neck; friends just goin’ to shoot ’im; guv’nor gave couple o’ suvrings for ’im, and ’ere ’e is. ’Ope we shan’t be upset!” The nervous passenger effected an exchange for an inside place with a sporting passenger at the next stage—which was precisely the result anticipated by the coachman.
At this time, when the fast day-coaches were in every respect as well-appointed as a gentleman’s private drag, it was the keenest ambition of every dashing young traveller to occupy this box-seat—an ambition generally satisfied by putting in an early appearance at the starting-point and tipping the head yard-porter, who thereupon placed a rug or some stable-cloths on it. These tips were not, as generally supposed, the coachman’s perquisite. His turn came later on, down the road.
The yard-porter was as a much more important official than the present generation might suppose, and in busy yards, such as those of the “Bull and Mouth” or the “Swan with Two Necks,” his weekly income from tips probably amounted to £5, or more. Nor was he merely the man with a pail of water, a broom and a pitchfork conjured up mentally by the sound of his title; his was an important department, and himself the ruler of many subordinates, whose duties ranged from grooming and bedding-down the horses and cleaning the stables to washing the coaches and cleaning and polishing the harness and metal-work.
At this period the public found themselves swiftly flying where they had formerly slowly and laboriously crawled, and generally compared ancient travelling with modern, greatly to the advantage of modern times. But if the coach-proprietors who were at such pains to compete with one another in establishing these swift and well-appointed coaches were of opinion that in so doing they were earning the admiration of the entire travelling public, they were very soon undeceived, and those weaker brethren who could not command the influence and the capital by which only could a fast coach be appointed and established, found that, after all, there was no immediate prospect of their being run off the road, and that a considerable section of the public actually preferred to travel in slow coaches, and would by no means consent to be whirled through the country at eleven miles an hour, with only hurried intervals for meals. “The art of travelling,” said an anonymous writer in 1827, “has undergone great alterations in the course of the last thirty years; these are not altogether improvements.” One of these changes for the worse, in the opinion of this unknown scribe, was that in the thunder of ten miles an hour there was no opportunity for conversation. That must be a powerful tongue, he thought, which could make itself heard amid the reverberations of such incessant and intemperate whirlings. He could not help looking back with some regret to the good old times when five or six miles an hour was the utmost speed. Then there was something sober and sedate in the fit-out and the set-out. All the faces in the inner-yard were so grave and full of importance, and there was some seriousness in taking leave. (Good reason, too, for such gravity and seriousness, think we of later ages.) How scrupulous and polite were the inside passengers, in making mutual accommodation of legs and arms, band-boxes, sandwich-baskets and umbrellas! Then, too, says this delightful snob, there was some difference between the inside and the outside passengers: the gentlefolks within were not confounded with the people on the outside. Distinctions were then better observed, and preserved. Older stage-coach conversation, he continued, was apt to be conducted with caution, for a false opening might make an ill companion on a long journey. So approaches were made skilfully, and with deliberation. A man was thought excessively forward and talkative if he had got into politics before he had well cleared the outskirts of London, and the first half-hour was generally occupied with the light skirmishings of talk, with reconnoitrings of one’s opposite neighbour’s countenance, and a variety of all-round questions and answers put and returned merely to ascertain how far the passengers were to be companions. These had to be framed with the utmost discretion. With what vivacity and air of pleasant expectation would one then ask an agreeable-looking person, “Are you going all the way to Toppington?” or, on the other hand, if the inside had its full complement of six, how carefully, and with what a discreetly modulated voice, in order to avoid all suspicion of wishing a speedy riddance, one would ask the same question of an unduly stout person, who occupied much more than his or her share of room.
The best conversational opening was considered to be, “Well, we are now off the stones. What a beautiful morning! How charming the outskirts of town! Pray, does not that house belong to——?”
Going up-hill one walked, to ease the horses, insides and outsides then equal; the insides, greatly condescending, holding converse with the occupants of the roof, always, however, with the strict understanding—no less strict if not mentioned—that this gracious act must not be taken advantage of by those outsiders claiming acquaintance when the coach stopped at the inns, where this all-important difference in caste was recognised by distinct eating apartments being provided.
Those were the good old days, according to this critic, when these customs were strictly observed, and when there was not only time to eat, but almost to digest at coach-dinners and breakfasts; when, too, there were generally a few minutes to spare while the horses were being got ready, so that the passengers could wander round the town and copy any curious epitaphs for the Gentleman’s Magazine, or do a little shopping.
Coachmen were of somewhat similar opinions. “Lord! sir,” said Hine, coach-proprietor and coachman on the Brighton Road, in 1831, who was, much against his will, obliged to accelerate his coaches in order to keep pace with newcomers, but did not relish the necessity, “we don’t travel half so comfortably now as we used to do. It is all hurry and bustle nowadays, sir—no time even for a pipe and glass of grog.” Not comfortable for the coachmen, who sadly missed their wayside, and often wholly unauthorised, halts.