RAILWAYS AND GRETNA GREEN
But it was evidently in existence in 1852, for it is referred to in an article in Household Words of that year, written by Blanchard Jerrold, who describes how he left Carlisle by train and came to Gretna station, where he alighted and found a couple who alighted at the same time being “addressed eagerly by one or two men of common appearance. Are these individuals making offers for the conveyance of the couple’s luggage? The station-master looks on at the warm conference with a sardonic grin; and with a quick twitch of the head, draws the attention of the guard to the interesting group. The train goes forward, and the conference breaks up. One of the men conducts the lady and gentleman to a little red-brick hotel close by; and the others retire discontentedly. I inquire about this rivalry, and am informed that it is a clerical contest. The little red-brick hotel is the property of Mr. Murray, who also inhabits the famous toll-bar which is on the Scotch bank of the stream. Thus this sagacious toll-keeper pounces upon the couples at the station; removes them to his ‘Gretna Hotel,’ and then drives them down a narrow lane, and over the bridge to the toll-bar, where he marries them. In this way it appears Murray has contrived to monopolise five-sixths of the trade matrimonial. It is to be observed, however, that there is a Gretna station, and a Gretna Green station, and that the latter is the point which deposits happy couples opposite Gretna Hall.”
Competition was evidently most extraordinarily keen for it to have gone the length of inducing a Border marriage-monger to build an hotel on the English side of the Sark, and for his agents and others to have wrangled and disputed for business on a railway platform, like so many cab-touts. The romance of Gretna obviously departed, leaving only the sordid dregs, when the Glasgow and South-Western Railway was made, 1848-50, and linked up with Carlisle and the whole of England.
Painters and engravers found the romance of Gretna greatly to their minds, and numerous pictures exist of scenes upon the road, and at Gretna itself. Two of the most striking are those by C. B. Newhouse, showing “A False Alarm on the Road: ’Tis only the Mail,” and “One Mile from Gretna: The Governor in sight, with a Screw loose.” In the first we see the love-lorn ones, halted in front of a wayside inn, the post-boys running out with fresh horses, while with a rush the Royal Mail suddenly dashes by. They think for the moment they are overtaken, but sink back with the heartfelt ejaculation, “’Tis only the Mail.” In the second picture we have the post-boys whipping and spurring on the frantic horses, and the prospective bridegroom standing up in the chaise, holding out a further inducement to speed, in the shape of a bag which, by the size of it, would appear to contain a modest competency for life. On the summit of a distant hill the governor’s chaise appears to have met with an accident, and the chase is virtually over.
The “Deaf Postilion,” pictured by George Cruikshank, seems to have been a real person, and the incident he illustrates to have really happened. He was stone-deaf, and when furiously driving an anxious couple towards the goal of their hopes, failed to notice that, in the lurching and plunging of the chaise, the springs had broken, leaving the body behind, while he hastened on, blissfully unconscious of the disaster, with the fore-carriage.
“ONE MILE FROM GRETNA: THE GOVERNOR IN SIGHT, WITH A SCREW LOOSE.”
[After C. B. Newhouse.