AN OLD MAIL-GUARD
Thomas Adolphus Trollope’s reminiscences may be fitly supplemented by those of Moses James Nobbs, who died in June 1897, at the age of eighty years, and was one of the last of the mail-guards on the Exeter Road. To say that he was actually the last would be rash, for coachmen, postboys, and guards were a long-lived race, and it would not be at all surprising to learn that some ancient veterans still survive. Nobbs entered the service of the Post Office in 1836, and was transferred from the Bristol and Portsmouth to the London, Yeovil, and Exeter Mail in 1837.
Retiring at the close of 1891, he therefore saw fifty-five years’ service, and vividly recollected the time when the mails were conveyed in bags secured on the roof of the coach. At Christmas-time the load was always heavy; but although the correspondence of that season sometimes severely strained the capacity of the vehicle, it is not recorded that the mail had to be duplicated, as had to be done sometimes in after years when railways had superseded coaches.
When the Great Western Railway was opened through to Exeter in 1844 and the last mail coach on this route had been withdrawn, Nobbs was given the superintendence of the receiving and despatching of the mails from Paddington, and often spoke of the extraordinary growth of the Post Office business during the railway era. At one Christmas-tide he despatched from Paddington in a single day no less than twenty tons of letters and parcels.
He had not been without his adventures. ‘We had a very sad accident,’ he says, ‘with that mail on one occasion, between Whitchurch and Andover. The coach used to start from Piccadilly, where all the passengers and baggage were taken up. On this occasion the bags were brought up in a cart, as usual, and we were off in a few seconds. My coachman had been having a drinking bout with a friend that day, and when we had got a few miles on the road, I discovered that he was the worse for drink and that it was not safe for him to drive. So when we reached Hounslow I made him get off the box-seat; and after securing the mail-bags and putting him in my seat and strapping him in, I took the ribbons. At Whitchurch the coachman unstrapped himself and exchanged places with me, but we had not proceeded more than three miles when, the coach giving a jolt over a heap of stones, he fell between the horses, and the wheels of the coach ran over him, killing him on the spot. The horses, having no driver, broke into a full gallop, so, as there was no front passenger, I climbed over the roof, to gather up the reins, when I found that they had fallen among the horses’ feet and were trodden to bits. Returning over the roof, I missed my hold and fell into the road, but fortunately with no worse accident than some bruises and a sprained ankle. The horses kept on till they reached Andover, where they pulled up at the usual spot. Strange to say, no damage was done to the coach, though there was a very steep hill to go down. The “Old Exeter Mail,” which came behind our coach, found the body of my coachman on the road, and, a mile farther, picked me up.’
VI
THE SHORT STAGES
Suppose, instead of taking one of the fast mails to Exeter, and journeying straight away, we book a seat in one of the ‘short stages’ which were the only popular means of being conveyed between London and the suburbs in the days before railways, omnibuses, and tramways existed. We will take the stage to Brentford, because that is on our way.
What year shall we imagine it to be? Say 1837, because that date marks the accession of Her Majesty and the opening of the great Victorian Era, in which everything except human nature (which is still pretty much what it used to be) has been turned inside out, altered, and ‘improved.’
If, in the year 1837, we wished to reach Brentford and could not afford to hire a trap or carriage, practically the only way, other than walking the seven miles, would have been to take the stage; and as these stages, starting from the City or the Strand, were comparatively few, it was always advisable to go down to the starting-places and secure a seat, rather than to chance finding one vacant at Hyde Park Corner.