“Sacred to the Memory of Frederic Webb, Coach Proprietor, of the firm of Webb, Houlden, & Co., of Bolton, who departed this life the 9th December, 1825, aged 23 years. Not being able to combat the malevolence of his enemies, who sought his destruction, he was taken prematurely from an affectionate loving wife and infant child, to deplore the loss of a good husband, whose worth was unknown, and who died an honest man.”

The inference intended to be drawn was obviously that the others were not honest men; but, honest or not, they are all gone to their account, and the world has forgotten them and their contentions. Only the stray historian of these things comes upon their infrequent footmarks, and wonders greatly at their elemental ferocity.

CHAPTER XI
THE AMATEURS

Those men ascend to lofty state,
And Phœbus’ self do emulate,
Who drive the dusty roads along
Amid the plaudits of the throng.
When round the whirling wheels do go,
They all the joys of gods do know.
See the Olympian dust arise
That gives them kindred with the skies!

Horace, Book I., Ode 1.

Thus Horace sings, in his Ode to Mæcenas; and the driving ambition observed by that old heathen, still to be noticed in these days, was a very marked feature of the road at any time between 1800 and 1848, when the railways had succeeded in disestablishing almost every coach, and the opportunities of the gentleman coachman were gone.

The amateur coachman was a creation of the nineteenth century, He was, for two very good reasons, unknown before that time. The first was that coachmanship had not yet become an art, and, still in the hands of mere drivers whose only recommendations were an ability to endure long hours on the box and a brutal efficiency in punishing the horses, had no chance of developing those refinements that characterised the Augustan age of coaching; the second reason was that the box-seat, although perhaps already beginning to be regarded as a place of distinction, was much more certainly a very painful eminence. It rested directly upon the front axle, and, being wholly innocent of springs, received and transmitted to the frame of any one who occupied it every shock the wheels encountered on the rough roads of that time.

Springs under the driving-box were unknown until about 1805, when they were introduced by John Warde, of Squerryes, the old Kentish squire who is generally known as the “Father of Foxhunting.” He was the first amateur coachman, and in pursuing that hobby found the driving-seats of the old coaches anything but comfortable. In resisting his arguments in favour of the introduction of springs, the coach-proprietors declared to a man that the coachmen would always be falling asleep if they were provided with comfortable seats.

John Warde’s driving exploits were chiefly carried out on the Oxford, Gloucester, and Birmingham roads. For years before coachmanship became a fashionable accomplishment, he had been accustomed to take the professional coachman’s place on the “old Gloucester” stage, “six inside and sixteen out, with two tons of luggage”; or, relieving Jack Bailey and other incumbents of the bench on the old Birmingham and Shrewsbury “Prince of Wales,” would drive the whole distance between London and Birmingham. He once drove this coach from London to Oxford against the “Worcester Old Fly” for a wager, and won it, although his coach went the Benson road, four miles longer than the route his opponent had to travel.