GOLDSWORTHY GURNEY’S LONDON AND BATH STEAM-CARRIAGE, 1833.
After G. Morton.
In 1824 Walter Hancock was experimenting on similar lines, but it was not until 1828 that a proposal was made to run a service of steam-carriages between London and Brighton, and not until November 1832 that his “Infant” actually made the attempt. It had already, at the beginning of 1831, plied for public service as an omnibus between Stratford and London, and now was to essay those 52 miles between London and the sea.
It performed the double journey, but, owing to lack of fuel on the way, not in anything like record time, although it is said in places to have attained a speed of 13 miles an hour.
In 1833 Hancock started a steam omnibus between Paddington and the City, and by 1836 had three. Between them, they conveyed no fewer than 12,761 passengers. They were named the “Era,” “Autopsy,” and “Automaton.” Why the middle one should have been named in a manner so suggestive of accidents and post-mortem examinations is not clear. But indeed, the names of old-time and modern motor-cars and their inventors, strange to say, generally have been, and are now, sometimes singularly unfortunate. Thus, in 1824, a Scotch inventor of Leith produced a steam-carriage. His name was Burstall! Among recent motor-cars are the “Mors” and the “Hurtu.”
In October 1833 Hancock ran the “Autopsy” to Brighton in 8½ hours (including three hours in stops on the way), and later had successful trips to Marlborough and back and Birmingham and back. These performances were considered so promising that a “London and Birmingham Steam-Coach Company” was formed, and more steam-coaches ordered to be built. Fares between London and Birmingham were not to exceed £1 each, inside, and 10s. out. Hancock, a thorough believer in his invention and its capacity for solving the road-problems of the time, offered to carry the mails at 20 miles an hour; but the Post Office declined. Railways had, in fact, just succeeded in attracting attention, and were so strongly supported by capitalists that steam-carriages suffered neglect, and their inventors were utterly discouraged. Bright hopes and prospects gradually faded away, and by 1838 the railways held the field, undisputed.
Railways themselves were at first ridiculed, and suffered from the necessity of obtaining Parliamentary sanction at a period when the landowning interests and public opinion were decidedly hostile. Even when their construction was authorised, every one ridiculed the railways, and called those people fools who had invested their money in them. To be a railway shareholder was at that time, to the majority of people, proof positive of insanity, while engineers and directors were regarded as curious compounds of fools and rogues. Any time between 1833 and 1837, the coachmen on the Great North Road would point out to their box-seat passengers the works of the London and Birmingham in progress beside that highway, and distinctly visible all the way between Potter’s Bar and Hatfield and at various other points. “Going to run us off the road, they say” a coachman would remark, jerking his elbow and nodding his head towards the place where hundreds of navvies were delving in a cutting or tipping an embankment. Then, squirting a stream of saliva from between his front teeth, in the practised manner assiduously cultivated by admiring amateurs, he would lapse into a contemplative silence, quite undisturbed by any suspicion that the railway really would run the coaches off. The passengers by coach were nearly all of the same mind. Some thought the railways would be useful in carrying goods, but declined to believe that they or any one else would ever travel by them; and a large proportion of the railway directors and proprietors shared the same opinion, being quite convinced that railways would convey heavy articles and general merchandise, and that coaches would continue to run as of old. Lovers of the road, coachmen and passengers alike, called the engines “tea-kettles,” protested that coaching had nothing to fear, and wished their heads might never ache until railroads came into fashion. They declared they would never—no, never—go by the railroad; but at length, when some urgent occasion arose, demanding speed, they trusted their precious persons in a railway train, and, to their surprise, found it “not so bad after all.” The next occasion, such a person going to town would shrink as he encountered the “Swallow” coach, by which he had always travelled, and would feel guilty as he shook his head to the coachman’s “Coming by me this morning, sir?” Why? Because he had made up his mind to go by train, and so save something in time and pocket. This time our traveller rather liked it; and thus the “Swallow,” and many another coach not already withdrawn, was doomed.
Let us follow the career of such a coach, to its last days.
Deprived of its best passengers, the exchequer of our typical “Swallow” began to decline. The stalwarts, whose love for the road was superior to economy of time and money, were faithful, but they were not numerous enough, and did not travel sufficiently often, for the old style of that fast post-coach to be maintained, so it was reduced from four horses to three. In coaching parlance, it ran “pickaxe,” or “unicorn.” No connoisseur in coaching matters would condescend to travel as a regular thing by a three-horse coach, and so those supporters were alienated, and, against their will, driven to the railway; and the “Swallow,” badly winged, carried only frightened old women who looked upon steam-engines as wild beasts. As they died away, no one took their places, and the old concern became a pair-horse coach. The coachman had seen the change coming, and declared he would never be brought so low as to drive two horses. He had said the same thing when it was proposed to have three. “Drive unicorn!” he had said: “never!” But he did, and he drove pair-horse as well, when the time came. It was better to do so than to lose his place and face starvation.
By this time the iron had entered the soul of our poor old friend, and had rusted there. He who had been so smart and gay, with song and joke and always good-humoured, suffered, like the coach, a strange and pitiful metamorphosis. The stringency of the times had thinned the establishment, and in the absence of ostlers and stablemen he put in the horses himself, badly groomed, and the harness dirty. No one washed or cleaned the coach, and it ran with the mud and dirt of many journeys encrusted on its sides. His coat grew seedy, his gloves soiled. Instead of the silver-mounted whip he had wielded for years, he used one of common make. The old one, he said, had gone to be repaired, but somehow or another the job was never completed. At any rate, no one ever saw the old whip again. At the same time his smart white hat disappeared and was replaced by a black one: observant people, however, perceived that it was the identical hat, disguised by process of dyeing. He could sink no deeper, you think. But he could, and did. Even the short journey to which the old “Swallow” had in course of time been reduced by railway extensions came at last to an end; and then he drove the “Railway Bus” to and from the station, with one horse. His temper, once so high-mettled, had by now grown uncertain. He was like an April day—stormy, dull, gloomy, and with fitful gleams of sunshine, all in turn. No one knew quite how to take him, and every one at last left him very much to himself. He was never a favourite with the “commercial gentlemen,” who were now his most frequent passengers, for he had always in the old days looked down upon any one under the rank of a county gentleman, and could by no means rid himself of that ancient attitude of mind. Indeed, he lived in the past, and when he could be induced to talk at all, would generally be reminiscent of better days. Commencing with the unvaried formula, “I’ve seen the time when....” he would then proceed to draw comparisons, much to the disadvantage of present time and present company. He was then absurdly surprised when acquaintance, tired of these tactless speeches, avoided him. Not so quick in his movements as of yore, and always impatient of dictation, he resented the bluff impatience of a “commercial” one morning, and when that “ambassador of commerce” desired him to “look alive there, now, with those boxes,” flung the boxes themselves on the ground, and told that astonished traveller to “go and be damned!” Unfortunately, although the traveller would have overlooked the insolence, he could not afford to disregard the loss of his samples, which happened to be china, and were all smashed. He reported the occurrence to the hotel-proprietor, who, being a compassionate man, explained, as he instantly dismissed the offender, that he was very sorry, but he could not afford to keep so violent a man in his employ.
After this dramatic incident the ex-coachman hung about the station, and obtained a few, a very few, odd jobs as porter, until one day a gentleman alighting from a train saw him. With surprise and sorrow in his eyes he recognised the once smart coachman, who, years before, had tutored him in driving. “Good God!” he exclaimed: “is it you?” The old man burst into tears.