Warde’s driving was by no means in the later style, and he probably would have been very much out of his element with the smart galloping teams of the Golden Age. He was, however, of those who were fit to be trusted with a heavy load behind weak horses and on bad roads. There was a peculiarity about him as regarded the driving of his own horses which the history of the road, it was said, could not parallel. Let the journey be in length what it might, he never took the horses out of his private coach, giving them only now and then a little hay and a mouthful of water at a roadside public-house. When he resided in Northamptonshire, sixty-three miles from London, the journey was always accomplished by his team “at a pull,” as he called it. The pace, as may be supposed, was not quick. John Warde was one of the founders of the B.D.C., or Benson Driving Club, in 1807.
Amateur coaching, as a fashionable amusement, took its rise on the Brighton Road. Looked upon with contempt by stalwart and bluff Warde and his kind, it nevertheless grew and flourished in the hands of the Barrymores and their contemporaries, Sir John Lade and Colonel Mellish; and in the early years of the nineteenth century the education of no gay young blood was complete until he had acquired the art of driving four-in-hand, in addition to the already fashionable and highly dashing sport of driving the light whiskies, the high-perched curricles, and the toppling tilburies that then gave a fearful joy to the newly-fledged whip. There was not too much physical exertion, endurance, or skill required on the road to Brighton, which was only fifty-two miles in length, and already possessed a better surface than most roads out of London; and, moreover, it was a road peopled from beginning to end with fashionables, before whom the gentleman-coachman could display his prowess. It was then pretty generally recognised that coach-driving was a poor sport if the ease and grace of the performer could not be displayed before a large and fashionable audience. That, it will be conceded, was not altogether a worthy attitude.
Many of these brilliant amateurs of the road ran an essentially identical career of viciousness and mad extravagance; and not a few of them wasted themselves and their substance in the very shady pursuits that then characterised the “man about town.” Those who are curious about such things may find them fully set forth in Pierce Egan’s Life in London and its grim sequel, the Finish. The endings of the Toms and Jerrys of that Corinthian age were generally sordid and pitiful.
FOUR-IN-HAND. After G. H. Laporte.
The truth is that the sporting world was then, as it always has been and always will be, thronged with the toadies who were ever ready to fool a moneyed youngster to the top of his bent. He must vie with the richer and the more experienced, though he ruin himself in the doing of it, and bring his ancestral acres to the hammer, in the manner of a Mytton or a Mellish. The only satisfaction these reckless sportsmen obtained, beyond the immediate gratification of their tastes, was the eulogy of the sporting scribes, who discussed their style upon the box-seat with as much gravity as would befit some question of empire. Excepting “Nimrod” and “Viator Junior,” whose essays on sport in general, and coaching in particular, were sound and honest criticism, these writers were venal and beneath contempt.
A “real gentleman,” according to the ideas of these parasites, was one who flung away his money broadcast in tips. Many foolish fellows, foolish in thinking the good opinions of these gentry worth having, spent their substance in this way. Of this kind was the amateur whip described by a writer in the Sporting Magazine in 1831. This aspirant for the goodwill of the stable-helpers and their sort sat beside the professional coachman on the Poole Mail starting from Piccadilly, and when the reins were handed to him proclaimed his gentility by the distribution of shillings among the horsekeepers. First “Nasty Bob,” the ostler, got a shilling for talking about the leaders’ “haction”; then “Greedy Dick,” the boots, had one also for handing him the “vip”; and then came “Sneaking Will,” the cad and coach-caller, to say something civil to the “gemman”; and even the neighbouring waterman was seduced from his hackney-coaches to try the persuasive powers of his eloquence. Four shillings and sixpence this “real gentleman” distributed at Hatchett’s door, and left the capital with the best wishes of the donees for his safe return. His generosity was not allowed a long respite, for at “that vile hole Brentford,” a slowly manœuvring waggoner blocked the way; and finding that he could by no other means be induced to allow the mail to pass, our amateur descended from the box, and, slyly placing a shilling in the waggoner’s hands, said in a loud voice, “I don’t stand any nonsense, you know, so now take your waggon out of the way.” This forcible and intelligible appeal, so properly accompanied, was perfectly irresistible: the waggon was drawn to the roadside, and the mail proceeded.
Very few of these amateurs have been considered worthy of biographical treatment, but among them Sir St. Vincent Cotton is one. Let us just see what the outline of his life was:—“Cotton, Sir St. Vincent, 6th Baronet, son of Admiral Sir Charles Cotton. Born at Madingley Hall, Cambs., October 6th, 1801; succeeded, February 24th, 1812; educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford. Cornet 10th Light Dragoons, May 13th, 1827; Lieutenant, December 13th, 1827, to November 19th, 1830, when placed on half-pay. Distinguished himself in the hunting, skating, racing, and pugilistic world. Played in Marylebone Cricket Matches, 1830–35. A great player at hazard. Dissipated all his property. Drove the ‘Age’ coach from Brighton to London and back for some years from 1836. Died at 5, Hyde Park Terrace, January 25th, 1863.”
It is possible to largely supplement this skeleton biography from the Sporting Magazine and other sources. “The Cottons of Madingley and Landwade,” said that classic authority, “are no ‘soft goods’ of recent manufacture, but have held high rank among the gentry of Cambridgeshire since the reign of Edward I. Sir John Cotton, the first baronet of the family, was advanced to that honour in 1641, by Charles I., to whose cause he was firmly attached. Sir St. Vincent used to ride in the first flight with the crack men of Leicestershire, mounted on his favourite mare, ‘Lark.’ The honourable baronet has, however, left both the Army and the Chase to devote himself exclusively to the public service on the ‘Road,’ where he performs the duties of a coachman very much to his own pleasure, and the great satisfaction of all His Majesty’s lieges who travel by the Brighton ‘Age’; and we are of opinion that an English baronet is much better employed in driving a coach than in endeavouring—like a certain mole-eyed wiseacre of the West, who also displays the Red Hand on his scutcheon—to saw off the branch that he is sitting on.
“We believe that the late Mr. H. Stevenson, who drove the ‘Age’ a few years ago, was one of the first gentleman-whips who took a bob and returned a bow—i.e., if you popped a shilling into his hand at the end of a stage, he ducked his head and said, ‘Thank you.’ The example thus set has been followed by the Baronet, who receives a ‘hog’ as courteously as his predecessor. When a noble Marquis, now in the enjoyment of an hereditary dukedom, drove the ‘Criterion,’ and afterwards the ‘Wonder,’ also on the Brighton Road, he did not take ‘civility money,’ we believe, but did the thing for pure love.