He ended more happily than, but for this chance, would have been the case, for the Squire took him into his service, and there he remained until he followed his generation to the Beyond.
The opening of the London and Birmingham Railway in September 1838 did not suddenly bring the Coaching Age to a close. Many routes remained for years afterwards practically unassailed, and even on the road to Birmingham some coach-proprietors struggled with great spirit against the direct competition of the railway. At the close of 1838 a newspaper is found saying: “A few months ago no fewer than twenty-two coaches left Birmingham daily for London. Since the opening of the railway that number has been reduced to four, and it is expected that these will be discontinued, although the fares by coach are only 20s. inside and 10s. outside, whilst the fares for corresponding places on the railroad are 30s. and 20s.”
Prominent among those men who declined to give up without a struggle was Sherman, of the “Bull and Mouth,” whose coaches had run to Birmingham, Manchester, and other places on the north-western road. For two years he maintained the unequal contest, and only relinquished it when he had lost seven thousand pounds and found his coaches running empty. Before finally beaten, he had even gone the length of re-establishing some coaches originally withdrawn in 1836, on the opening of the Grand Junction Railway. The reasons for this were many. The train-service in those early days was very poor, and engine-power insufficient, so that heavy loads, rain-showers that made the rails slippery, and the innumerable minor accidents always happening to the engines themselves, made travelling by railway not only uncertain, but, in not a few instances, even slower than by coach. Railway officials, too, were insolent to an incredible degree. Only when one has read the “Letters to the Editor” in contemporary journals can we have any idea of that insolence. The public complained that, having run the coaches off and secured a monopoly, the officials, finding themselves masters of the situation, behaved accordingly like masters, and not like the servants of the public they really were, or should have been. Newspaper comments dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, and generally emphasised and embroidered these grievances. It is not, then, to be wondered at that a regret for “the good old times” found expression, or that coaches reappeared for a while. Many coach-proprietors were deceived by this partly indignant, partly sentimental attitude, and when they had committed themselves to a revival did not find the support which, from the newspaper outcry, they might reasonably have expected. Thus early do we find that gigantic evil of modern times—irresponsible and misleading newspaper talk—directly to blame for losses and disappointments to those foolish enough to pay heed to it.
THE LAST JOURNEY DOWN THE ROAD. After J. H. Agasse.
Sherman’s country partners were not so rash or so obstinate as he, and some of the coaches he personally would have continued had been withdrawn early in the railway advance. Among those was the Manchester “Red Rover”; but when the popular indignation against railway delays and official insolence was thus exploited by the newspapers, Sherman was enabled to again secure the co-operation of his allies, and to put that coach on the road once more. The decision to do so was announced in a striking handbill:—
“The Red Rover re-established
throughout to Manchester.Bull and Mouth Inn and Queen’s Hotel.
It is with much satisfaction that the Proprietors of the Red Rover Coach are enabled to announce its
Re-establishment
as a direct conveyance throughout, between London and Manchester, and that the arrangements will be the same as those which before obtained for it such entire and general approval. In this effort the Proprietors anxiously hope that the public will recognise and appreciate the desire to supply an accommodation which will require and deserve the patronage and support of the large and busy community on that line of road.
The Red Rover will start every evening, at a quarter before seven, by way of
Coventry,
Birmingham,
Walsall,
Stafford,
Newcastle-under-Lyme,
Congleton,
Macclesfield,
and
Stockport,and perform the journey in the time which before gave such general satisfaction.
☞ It will also start from the ‘Moseley Arms’ Hotel, Manchester, for London, every evening, at nine o’clock.
Edward Sherman, } Joint
John Wetherald & Co., } Proprietors.London, October 28th, 1837.”
It was a gallant effort, but failed. Manchester men had grumbled at railway delays, but they were not sentimentalists, and when the London and Birmingham Railway was opened throughout, and an uninterrupted run through to Manchester was possible, they forsook the road, and the “Red Rover” roved no more.
But still, sentiment gushed freely over the coaches in every channel of the periodical press, except, of course, in those railway journals that even thus early had come into existence. Poetry, of sorts, was lavished on the coachmen by the bucketful, and they were made to consider themselves martyrs in a lost cause. They felt themselves greatly honoured by all those attentions, and now began to perceive that they were really very fine fellows indeed. It was a proud position they now occupied in the public eye, but it had its own peculiar drawbacks. Amid all this adulation they could not but see that they were like the gladiators of ancient times, going forth to glory, it is true, but to simultaneous extinction; and as all the plaudits of the multitude must have seemed to them a hollow mockery, so did this latter hero-worship appear cheap and unsubstantial to the coachmen. Some of them assumed a pensive air, which did by no means sit well upon their burly forms and purple countenances, and was often, to their disgust, mistaken for indigestion.
Here, from among a wealth of verse, is a typical ballad of the time, among the best of its kind; but even so, perhaps not altogether one that Tennyson would have been proud to father:—