He came at last, in the general ruin of coaching, to drive a one-horse railway omnibus; but he never ceased to consider himself a gentleman.
Another whip on the same coach, Samuel Inns, who—if names go for anything—should certainly have become an innkeeper, became, instead, a farmer, and grew prosperous; and yet another, Tom Davies, was discovered, years afterwards, as a rural postman.
William Jervis, of the “Defiance,” was almost as “gentlemanly” as Meecher, and a good deal more impudent, He would hold forth to the box-seat passenger unfortunate enough to travel by his coach upon the happy days when he had been in service with the Marquis of Exeter—although, to be sure, he had been nothing more than a stable-boy at Burghley House—and would affect to deplore those days, “when he associated with gentlemen.” “And now, sir,” he would bitterly remark, “I’ve got to drive d—d cotton-spinners and calico-printers.” It mattered not at all that it was probably a calico-printer or a cotton-manufacturer who was sitting by him at that moment. Indeed, there was that in his nature which led him to seize the opportunity to hurt the feelings of worthy Manchester men. It naturally followed that the tips he received suffered in number and in value from this extraordinary bias towards quarrelling with his inoffensive passengers: and the balance was not redressed by the rare occasions on which he found a peer or a landed proprietor by his side.
How the coachmen found themselves so constantly and so plentifully in choice cigars of the most expensive kind must remain mysterious. Jervis—who, by the way, refused to be known as “Bill” and was always addressed as “Mr. William Jervis”—smoked the best Havanas as a rule, and could not endure inferior brands. One memorable day, a passenger beside him was puffing happily away at a cheap and nasty smoke—a real Flor de Cabbage—when Jervis turned upon him, and, without further ado, snatched it from his mouth and threw it away.
“Can’t stand a bad cigar,” said Jervis, in not very adequate explanation: “take one of mine.”
The end of this bold and haughty fellow was sad. When railways superseded coaching, he hanged himself behind a stable-door of the “Swan with Two Necks.”
THE GUARDS
The guards were, to a man, of more consideration and urbanity. Their cue was a general heartiness to every one, from an ostler to a county magnate; but there was much scope for development in the character of a guard, for he came into intimate personal relations with the passengers in general, while the coachman had but one companion—the passenger beside him on the box-seat. Guards were entrusted, not only with parcels of all kinds, but with buying-commissions in town for rural customers; and acted frequently, as was sufficiently well known to the more shady characters of the countryside, as interested intermediaries between poachers and those poulterers in London who did not mind dealing in poached game.
Comparatively little has come down to us, save in general terms, of the guards who manned the coaches on this road; but Venables, one of those upon the “Manchester Telegraph,” stands out prominently. He was not, like so many of his brethren, a performer upon the key-bugle, but possessed a beautiful tenor voice which he lifted up in sentimental song along the roads on sunny days, greatly to the delight of passengers, and to his own profit. He had at least one dramatic experience, in being very nearly chloroformed and flung off the coach by three confederated thieves, who had by some means learned of an extremely valuable case of jewels that had been entrusted to him, which he had, for greater safety, deposited in a locked box under his seat. With the exception of the box-seat passenger, these enterprising would-be jewel thieves formed the only passengers on the roof, and they had reckoned on stifling the guard and heaving him over the side, in the darkness between Ashbourne and Leek, trusting to the noise made by the coach to drown the sound of any scuffle. What they would then have done, after securing the jewels, is only to be guessed at, for the behaviour of the conspirators had early attracted Venables’ suspicions, and no sooner had one whipped out his chloroform-pad than he felt himself struck full in the face with stunning force. The coachman’s attention was aroused, and the coach was on the point of being stopped when the three jumped off the roof and disappeared in the night.