An old mail cart driver whom I once interviewed told me this story. “I was driving the mail one night from Chesham to Taplow, and arriving at Beaconsfield, which is nearly half way, I got down from my seat and went into the inn, saying to the Post Office official who was in attendance that he could take out the bag himself from the back of the car. He did so, and then shut down the lid of the mail box with a bang. This was sufficient notice to the horse that all was ready to start, and off he trotted without his driver, in the darkness of the night. Ten and a half miles was the distance he had to travel, and the horse knew his business as well as the required pace, and he trotted into Taplow station within a minute of his scheduled time.”
I asked the man if he got into trouble for the apparent neglect of his Majesty's mails. His face brightened up as the face of every official does when he recollects the sins he has committed which have not been found out.
“You see, sir, a porter was waiting for me at the station, and he wondered, but determined not to give the show away. He unloaded the mails as if nothing extraordinary was happening. Then he went in search of me. I walked the distance, full of terrible thoughts and gloomy fears.” And he added, “I wonder if these much-talked-of motor cars are likely to be of such service to the Post Office as my good old horse.”
Some time ago a motor mail van was coasting down a Kentish hill on a dark night, and at a bend of the road, the bright lights of the motor revealed a dark object lying right across the roadway. The powerful brakes were quickly applied, and the vehicle was pulled up just in time to avoid an accident. The obstacle was a railway sleeper, which had apparently been placed there by some miscreant with the idea of wrecking the mail. Several men were seen disappearing across the fields skirting the road when the motor stopped.
On another night a shot was fired at the same motor coach, only narrowly missing the driver, for the bullet passed through the glass window at his side. Both outrages are supposed to have been the work of the same persons, who had some grievance against the motor. They were perhaps making a last stand on behalf of their friends the horses. Country folk are conservative above all other people. The horse and cart is to them almost the divinely appointed means of transit, and to attempt to overthrow it is sacrilege. All other forms of locomotion are distasteful to the true countryman. “How did you like foreign parts?” asked a Kentish farmer of his labourer, who had been across to Boulogne. “Furrin parts was all right,” replied the labourer, “but that boat! Give me 'orse and cart, sir.”
One night a motor mail driver suddenly pulled up at what appeared to be an ordinary walking-stick lying across the road. On approaching nearer, to the consternation of the driver it glided rapidly away. The guard simply said “Snakes,” and this was the explanation.
The only light along the road for a great part of the way is that afforded by the motor's own lamps. Wonderful effects on the eye are often produced between lamplight and darkness, and commonplace objects often assume uncanny shapes and sizes. A number of heaps of stones intended for road-mending purposes had lain alongside a certain road for weeks. One night a motor van driver was startled by what appeared to be one of these heaps rising suddenly and approaching the coach. His heart went into his mouth, and he applied his brake, ready for a struggle with animated stones. And then to his relief—he was not anxious for miracles—an old white cow looked into his face; she had strayed on to the road; he had mistaken her for stones.
On some routes the guards of the motors have been employed for many years. These men seem to have inherited the superstitions common to the old postboys. On one of the roads out of London the following story is implicitly believed. A mail van travelling one night knocked down an old man with a long white beard, seriously injuring him. As the coach was fully loaded with the mails, there was no room for the injured man, so he was carefully laid by the roadside out of harm's way and the coach hastened away for assistance. Returning in a very short time to the spot, the old man was nowhere to be found, although there were traces of blood round about. He was never heard of again. At the same spot two drivers, neither of whom had heard of the previous occurrence, pulled up their coaches under the firm conviction that they had knocked down an old man with a long white beard. No trace could be found of the individual, nor anything which would explain the strange circumstance. The drivers, however, stick to their stories, and they tell them to you with the evident conviction that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your sceptical philosophy. Anyhow, it is a relief to think that the motors have not driven away the supernatural from the roads. The spirits are there still, and though men drive motors instead of horses, they see ghosts just in the same old way as their fathers. Motor men have not yet established a character of their own, as was the case with the coach-drivers. There was, years ago, a mail contractor and wagoner who was stated to be worth £100,000, but he always dressed in a white smock frock. He bore the delightful name of Jolly. One winter there was a great deal of snow, and Mr. Jolly thought he ought to be paid extra for the additional work, but the Department would not hear of it. So he memorialised the Postmaster-General in a very unconventional manner, but characteristic of his profession.
“My Lord,—I, John Jolly, of ——, have conveyed her Majesty's mails over hedges, ditches, and stone walls, and I, John Jolly, have never been properly paid for the same.” (Here it is thought he lost his temper and his limited vocabulary of decent words.) “And I, John Jolly, will see the Postmaster-General damned before I, John Jolly, do it again.”
Many Post Office memorialists probably mean this when they approach the Postmaster-General as “obedient servants,” but they have not been trained on the road.