There is no nonsense of the plate-glass and electric-bell kind about the “White Horse.” If the old coachmen were to come back, and the passengers they drove, they would find the old house much the same—the stables docked perhaps of some of their old extent and a trifle ruinous, and the house in these less palmy days crying out for some fresh paint and a few minor repairs; but still the same well-remembered place. Even the windows in the gables, blocked up over a century ago to escape Mr. Pitt’s window-tax, have not been re-opened. There are low-browed old rooms at the inn, with a cosy kitchen that is as much parlour; with undisguised oaken beams running overhead, rich in pendant hams that by due hanging have acquired artistic old-masterish tones, like mellow Morlands and rich Gainsboroughs. There is a capacious hearth, there are settles to sit easily in, and warming pans that have warmed many a bed for old-time travellers; and there are memories, too, for them that care to summon them. Will they come? Yes, I warrant you. They are memories chiefly of moving accidents by flood and fell, for Hockliffe has had more than its due share of coaching accidents. They happened chiefly on the hills a mile out, where Battlesden Park skirts the road, and where, although Telford did some embanking of the hollows and cutting of the crests, they remain formidable to this day. Battlesden became an ominous name in those days, and the “White Horse” and many another Hockliffe inn very like hospitals. The year 1835 was an especially disastrous one. In May, the “Hope” Halifax coach, on the way to London, was being driven down hill at a furious pace, when the horses became unmanageable, and the coach, overloaded with luggage piled up on the roof, after reeling in several directions, fell on the off side. All the passengers were injured more or less severely. The next happening was when the Shrewsbury “Greyhound,” coming towards London, was overturned at a point almost opposite Battlesden House. Again most of the passengers were seriously injured, and the coachman had a leg broken. Two of the horses suffered similar injuries. This accident was caused by the near-side wheeler kicking over the pole and thus upsetting the coach while it was running at high speed down hill. Of course, when the great Christmas snowstorm of 1836 blocked nearly all the roads in England, Hockliffe was a very special place for drifts, and the Birmingham, Manchester, Holyhead, Chester and Holyhead, and Halifax mails were all snowed up. An attempt made to drag the Chester mail out resulted in the fore-axle giving way and the coach being abandoned. The boys went forward on horseback. The Holyhead mail, with the Irish bags, was more fortunate. When the horses suddenly floundered up to their necks in the snow, the coachman dived off headlong, and was nearly suffocated; but with the aid of the guard and the passengers he was pulled out by the legs, and, a team of cart-horses being requisitioned, the coach itself dragged through. These are examples of the perils His Majesty’s Mails encountered in those times, and of the discomforts endured by the men who carried them for little wage.

The Post Office has never been generous to the rank and file of its staff. The secretarial staff, whose business it is to receive complaints and to scientifically fob off the public with tardy promises of enquiries never intended to be made, draw handsome salaries, but those who do the actual work have always been paid something less than they could obtain from other walks of life. The guards in Post Office employment received half a guinea a week salary in the old mail-coach days—as, in fact, a retaining fee—it being estimated by the Department that they could make a good thing of it by the “tips” they would be receiving from passengers. That they did make a good thing of it we know, but the principle was a shabby one for a Government Department to adopt, and really created a kind of indirect taxation. No traveller could refuse to “tip” the guard as well as the coachman, unless very hard-hearted or possessed of a moral courage quite beyond the ordinary.

Beyond his half-guinea a week, an annual suit of clothes, and a superannuation allowance of seven shillings a week, a mail guard had no official prospects. Occasionally some crusty passenger, whom the guard, being extra busy with his letters and parcels, had perhaps no time to humour, would refuse to tip, and would write to the Post Office to complain; whereupon the Secretary would indite some humbug of this kind:—

THE GREAT SNOWSTORM, DEC. 26TH, 1836. THE BIRMINGHAM MAIL FAST IN THE SNOW, WITH LITTLE CHANCE OF A SPEEDY RELEASE: THE GUARD PROCEEDING TO LONDON WITH THE LETTER-BAGS.
From a Print after J. Pollard.

“Sir,—I have the honour of your letter of the ——, to which I beg leave to observe that neither coachman nor guard should claim anything of ‘vails’ as a right, having ten and sixpence per week each; but the custom too much prevails of giving generally a shilling each at the end of the ground, but as a courtesy, not a right; and it is the absolute order of the office that they shall not use a word beyond solicitation. This is particularly strong in respect of the guard—for, indeed, over the coachman we have not much power; but if he drives less than thirty miles, as your first did, they should think themselves well content with sixpence from each passenger.”

In those times sixpence might have been enough, but when, in later days, the coachman or the guard at the end of their respective journeys would come round with the significant remark, “I leaves you here, gentlemen!” he who offered sixpence would have been as daring as one who gave nothing at all. The sixpence would have been returned with a sarcastic courtesy, and a shilling not received with any remarks of gratitude. This custom was known as “kicking the passengers.”

Very occasionally, and under pressure, the Post Office doled out an extra half-guinea in seasons of extraordinary severity, when passengers were few and tips scarce, and on occasions when the mails were so heavy that the seats generally occupied by passengers were given up to the bags, the guards had an allowance made them. Their zeal under difficulties also received rare and grudging recognition, as when Thomas Sweatman, guard of the Chester mail in the early part of 1795, was awarded half a guinea for his labours at Hockliffe, where, in the middle of the night and up to his waist in water, he helped to put on new traces, travelling to town on his box with his wet clothes freezing to him.

XXII

The red-brick face of the “White Horse” is set off and embellished by a very wealth of elaborate old Renaissance wood-carving that decorates the coach-entrance. It was obviously never intended for its present position, and is said to have come from an old manor-house at Chalgrave, demolished many years ago. Long exposure to the weather and generations of neglect have wrought sad havoc with this old work. A fragment in the kitchen gives the date 1566, and some strips under the archway, with the inscription “John Havil dwiling in cars,” present a mystery not easy to solve.