Those who could endure such a journey without a break were few; and to those few, obliged from any cause to hasten from end to end, the recollection must have seemed a veritable phantasmagoria of dimly shifting scenes and aching, weary limbs.
THE GLASGOW MAIL LEAVING THE YARD OF THE “BULL AND MOUTH.”
[After C. Cooper Henderson.
Thus it is that we obtain only brief and disconnected glimpses of the mail’s progress. The most eloquent picture of misery is undoubtedly that presented by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, writing in November 1800, describing a journey from Carlisle to London:
“After passing a sleepless night at Carlisle, I was hurried away next morning without a morsel of breakfast, and grew so very sick and ill in a little while that I had almost fainted twice. When we stopt at Penrith and took up an old gentleman, I then got a large dram of gin, which did me much service; and we proceeded through snow and ice far and far, and farther than I can tell, till I fell asleep and got a much better night’s rest than at that accursed Carlisle. During the night (but Heaven knows where) we picked up two men going to London; and, lo! about daylight another qualm seized me. And when we got to Stilton, it blew such a hideous storm, with hail, snow, and wind, that for an hour and twenty minutes the six horses would not move forward, but attempted always to retreat to the stables. Such kicking, such rearing of beasts, such cursing and swearing of men (who had a stronger smack of the big brute in them than even their cattle), I never met with before; and after every cudgel in the house—yea, even my landlady’s private stick wherewith she corrects her spouse—had been bent or broken over their backs, they got on so slowly that we reached London only at eight in the morning. Here was no peace for the wicked. The ‘Bull and Mouth,’ which is the filthiest place you ever saw, gave me such an aversion to remaining where I was, that I took a place in the heavy coach which went on at one that day, and lay down on a bed till the time for departure. Here my head grew very bad indeed, so that I slept not a wink.”
AN AFFECTED TRAVELLER
“Stinking, noisy stye,” he elsewhere calls the “Bull and Mouth,” but we must recollect that Sharpe was very affected, a bundle of fine feelings, and a poseur: one, in short, born a hundred years before his time, and by no means one of those robust Englishmen to whom noise and stable-smells were but the ordinary and commonplace incidents of coach-journeys and coaching hostelries.
Nothing, you clearly perceive, could have roused Sharpe to enthusiasm. But there were some wildly enthusiastic people on the road then, and they had often cause, in the stirring news they brought with them, to feel exultation of spirits. For with the mail came news of the Battles of the Nile, of Trafalgar, of Waterloo; and many a wayside park was despoiled of laurel branches to deck out the coach in the emblems of victory. Many a time did the mail enter Glasgow in that fashion: decorated with the bays, a red flag flying from the roof, the guard in his best scarlet coat and gold-laced hat, sounding his bugle as the horses galloped at a thundering pace along the Gallowgate. Arrived at the foot of Nelson Street, at about seven o’clock in the morning, his duty was, on these historic occasions, to thrice discharge his blunderbuss in the air. Every one then rushed to the “Tontine” coffee-room to learn the news and get the papers: some one with a stentorian voice being generally elected to read the despatches aloud, for the common benefit.
A thrilling story of those old days, when we were generally at war with France, is that of one Archibald Campbell, a Glasgow merchant who had omitted to insure one of his ships, and, in the last few weeks before she fell due, repented of his omission. Alarmed, he sought to effect insurance with a Glasgow office, but found the premium so high that he resolved to insure ship and cargo in London. Accordingly, he wrote to his London broker, instructing him to insure on the best terms possible. The letter was posted and left by the up mail-coach at 2 p.m. At seven o’clock that night he received an express from Greenock, announcing the safe arrival of his ship, and instantly despatched his head clerk in pursuit of the coach, with instructions to overtake it if possible, or, if he could not do so, to proceed to London and deliver a note to the broker, countermanding the insurance.