SONG OF THE B.D.C.[13]
You ask me, Gents, to sing a song,
Don't think me too encroaching.
I won't detain you very long,
With one of mine on coaching.
No rivalry we have to fear,
Nor jealous need we be, Sir,
We all are friends who muster here,
And in the B.D.C. Sir.
Horace declares the Greeks of old
Were once a driving nation;
But Shakespeare says ‘The World's a stage’—
A cutish observation.
The stage he meant, good easy man,
Was drawn by nine old Muses;
But the Mews for me is the B.D.C.,
And that's the stage I chooses.
I call this age the Iron Age
Of railways and pretension.
And coaching now is in a stage
Of horrible declension,
The day's gone by when on the fly
We roll'd to Alma Mater,
And jovial took the reins in hand
Of the Times or Regulator.
Those were the days when Peyton's grays
To Bedfont led the way, Sir,
And Villebois followed with his bays
In beautiful array, Sir.
Then Spicer, too, came next in view
To join the gay procession.
Oh! the dust we made—the cavalcade
Was neat beyond expression.
No turnpike saw a fancy team
More neat than Dolphin sported,
When o'er the stones with Charley Jones,
To Bedfont they resorted.
Few graced the box so much as Cox;
But there were none, I ween, Sir,
Who hold the reins 'twixt here and Staines
More slap up than the Dean, Sir.
Those are the men who foremost then
To coaching gave a tone, Sir,
And hold they will to coaching still,
Tho' here they stand alone, Sir—
Then drink to the coach, the B.D.C.,
Sir Henry and his team, Sir,
And may all be blowed right off the road
Who wish to go by steam, Sir.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Robert Poynter drove the Lewes stage for thirty years without an accident.