THE “BEDFORD TIMES,” ONE OF THE LAST COACHES TO RUN, LEAVING THE “SWAN HOTEL,” BEDFORD.
BENJAMIN WORTHY HORNE.
He was a tall, lathy, irritable man, of eager face, quick, nervous speech, and rapid walk, with something of a military air in his alert, upright figure. The very antithesis of Chaplin, who was of short stature and possessed of a nature that nothing could ruffle, Horne must always expend his energies on the minor details of his extensive business, and himself do work that would have been better delegated to subordinates. In the end this wore him out, and brought him to a comparatively early death. Up early, no day was long enough for him, and he economised time by taking no regular meal until evening. He was generally to be seen eating his lunch out of a paper bag as he swung furiously along the streets. “There’s Horne,” said one of those many who did not love him, “with the devil at his elbow, as usual!”
It was, perhaps, well for him that Chaplin, calm and level-headed, came and entered into discussion on the railway question at that critical time when the fortunes of coach-proprietors were to be saved or lost by a simple declaration of policy. The time was 1837, the occasion the approaching opening of the first section of the London and Birmingham Railway. Should they hold out against the new order of things, as Sherman was bent upon doing, or should they enter into that alliance with the railway for which the railway people themselves were diplomatically angling? Chaplin thought they should, and proposed an amalgamation of their two interests. Horne was not so sure of railway success, and might have continued on his own way, but Chaplin, who was an old friend, urged his own views. “We shall lose £10,000 apiece if we don’t work with them,” he said, “and you won’t like that, Benny, my boy.” Eventually Horne agreed, and the firm of Chaplin & Horne was founded.
Dark rumours were current at the time that to this newly constituted firm a sum of several thousands of pounds was paid by the London and Birmingham directors as the price of their friendship; but, however that may be, the allied coach-proprietors agreed to withdraw their coaches from the Birmingham Road, and to throw the weight of their interest and influence on the side of the railway. In return, they were given the contract for the parcel agency of the line. Chaplin had perceived, as Baxendale had already done in the case of the goods traffic, that this agency would be very valuable, and to his far-seeing counsel Horne owed much.
Henry Horne, one of Benjamin Worthy Horne’s nine brothers, became a partner with him in 1836, and was a member of this firm of Chaplin & Horne for many years. He survived his brother, and was at the head of affairs when the London and North-Western Railway took over the parcel business and the London receiving offices in 1874. Henry was the kindest-hearted of men, and old coaching-men down on their luck always found him a sure draw for a loan or a gift. Wise by dint of long experience, he laid down a golden rule that it was cheaper in the end to give £50 than to lend £100.
When the fierce old fighting days of the road were ended and the business of Chaplin & Horne was set afoot, the restless energies of Benjamin Worthy Horne found an outlet in the management of the goods business in connection with the railway, and he was constantly in and out at Euston and Camden. In those early days the London and North-Western Railway headquarters staff was managed on somewhat lax and primitive lines, and if a departmental manager thought he wanted a little holiday, he took it, without a word to any one. To a strict and keen business man like Horne these proceedings seemed particularly strange, and were often, doubtless, the source of much annoyance and waste of time. He had the unchallenged run of the offices, and was so used to finding the various managers away, on some pretext or another, that he would humorously assume their absence on all occasions. With his abrupt manner, he would burst boisterously into a room, and exclaim—