Thus did the “Wonder” maintain its pre-eminence in the little time left before the London and Birmingham Railway came, in 1838, to cut its journey short, and the Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway, in 1849, to complete the work of sweeping all the coaches off the road into the limbo of obsolete institutions. In its last few years the “Wonder” was accelerated by one hour on both up and down journeys, for, starting an hour later, it reached its destination at the same time as before. Indeed, at the very time when railway enterprise cut it off in mid-career, a further acceleration was contemplated. It was proposed to perform the journey in thirteen hours. To do this it would have been necessary to establish six-mile, instead of ten-mile stages, and to abandon all stopping for taking up intermediate passengers.
But in the last days of its entire journey the “Wonder” was made to do a remarkable thing. It left the “Bull and Mouth” at the moment when the train for Birmingham steamed out of Euston, and reached Birmingham twenty minutes earlier. That extraordinary feat was not repeated, and was only possible even then by reason of the rails being slippery with rain and the locomotive wheels losing grip, causing great delay. From 1839 the “Wonder” ran only between Shrewsbury and Birmingham, by way of Ironbridge and Madeley, and ended its career, as a two-horse coach, in 1842.
XXIII
If Shrewsbury was a place to and from which came and went many fast coaches, it certainly sent forth one coach that was phenomenally slow. The “Shrewsbury and Chester Highflyer,” at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was very much less of a flyer than might have been expected from its name.
Those two places are forty miles apart. The “Highflyer” set out from Shrewsbury at eight o’clock in the morning, and arrived at Chester, under favourable circumstances, at the same hour in the evening. This snail-like crawl of little over three miles an hour is so remarkable that it invites investigation, whereupon some extraordinary things are revealed. At Wrexham, for example, two hours were allowed for dinner, and if his passengers wanted to linger over another bottle, Billy Williams, the coachman, who had looked in at the coffee-room door to announce the starting, would affably say, “Don’t let me disturb you, gentlemen.”
“Billy Williams,” as he was to one class, “Mr. William Williams” to another, “Chester Billy” and “Shrewsbury Billy” to the rest, was—need it be said?—a Welshman, and if any one wished for a little extra time in which to see Wrexham Church and its tower—one of the “wonders of Wales”—his patriotic ardour could not withstand the application for a further halt. Then, when Ellesmere was reached, another long stop was made to sample the cwrw da, the famous ale of that place; and, in fact, stops anywhere and everywhere, so that the wonder was, not that the journey occupied twelve hours, but that it did not take twenty-four. It must, indeed, have required some sharp driving, between whiles, to perform the distance in a dozen hours, and it was probably during one of these spurts that another coachman—one Jem Robins—was killed by being crushed under the coach when on one occasion it was overturned at an abrupt corner.
Billy Williams, however, made a peaceful end. He retired, or was retired by the railway’s usurpation of his line of country. He was what our grandfathers called an “original,” and a protégé of the Honourable Thomas Kenyon, at Pradoe, to whom he gave an excellent reason why horses should seem to go better at night.
“Hang me, Billy!” the honourable had exclaimed, “I’ve tried to account for it, but never could.”
“Why, I’m surprised at you,” said Billy; “do you mean you don’t know that?” “Why, of course I don’t,” replied the squire. “Well, then,” said Billy, “if you want to know the real reason, it’s because you’ve had your dinner.”
Billy was the hero of a story that long made a laughing-stock of him. The Honourable Thomas Kenyon was driving on one occasion to Chester races, but before setting out with his party from Pradoe thought that, as it was a particularly hot day, Billy might feel more comfortable if he exchanged his breeches and leather tops for lighter raiment. He accordingly told him to go upstairs and put on a pair of his own white trousers. Billy went up, and came back attired in a manner his host had never contemplated, for he had put the trousers on over the other garments!