"A short time before we started, a lady with her maid, who had been stopping in the hotel, sent her luggage to be placed on the coach, and upon Stockdale seeing it, he said to the porter, 'How many passengers, Tom?' 'Two, sir,' says Tom. 'Scale it, Tom,' says he, which he immediately did. When twelve shillings was demanded for extra luggage, the lady said, 'I never paid it before, and have taken two inside places.' 'You see, ma'ame,' says he, 'I horse this coach over Maramscote hill, and I cannot carry your luggage for nothing; you will bring the kitchen range next time if you have nothing to pay.'
"Having seated myself very comfortably on the box seat, our friend Stockdale and myself lit our cigars, going at a fair pace till we were descending Maramscote hill, the skid-pan being on the wheel. The wheel horses did not step well together, and we rocked very considerably, which led me to observe he had better be careful, or he would put the passengers down to count them. Upon this he turned round to me, looking daggers, and asked me to look what was painted on the board at the side of the hill, and looking, I read, 'Dry rubbish may be thrown here.' You may be sure I did not offer any more advice for the remainder of the stage; but our contretemps soon cooled down, and when we were changing horses, 'I say, governor!' says he, 'forget the dry rubbish, and come in and take a little cold brandy and water. It's the only place I ever go into on the road, for it's the only place where you can escape being poisoned.' After our refreshment we went at a very jolly pace, having Robert Nelson's horses, which were first-rate, and soon arrived at the Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, where we found a great bustle of coaches, and luggage just come by other coaches, arriving from different parts of the country, and porters were calling out, 'Any passengers for Leeds "Courier," "Hope," "Halifax,"'" etc., etc.
It was not only necessary that a coachman should be able to drive well, which required time and practice to acquire, but, what was of nearly equal importance, he had to learn how to get his coach quick through the country. Indeed, his was a position of no small responsibility, for he had the lives and limbs of the passengers in his hands, and as, when was sometimes the case with a strong opposition, his orders were simply "be first" his was no very enviable situation. When he could do all this with the minimum of wear and tear of the stock, he was a very valuable man to his employers.
As a rule, I think they were fairly careful of the stock, though certainly on slow coaches, when a little time lost could be recovered without much difficulty, the horses by no means always reaped the full benefit of the time allowed them. This, however, it must with justice be admitted, was not altogether the fault of the coachmen. The proprietors were too prone to encourage delay for the custom it brought to the "bar," and if a coachman was heard to decline the offer of a glass of sherry or brandy and water from his box passenger, he might expect black looks.
Of course, with the fastest coaches, such delays were impossible, neither could the coachman find time to pull up and patronize the house of a friend, as was frequently done by his brethren on the slower drags.
I have heard of the late Mr. Isaac Taylor, of Shrewsbury, when he wanted to select from among his coachmen one fitted for a fast coach, adopting the following plan: One of his coaches was driven by a man who he knew to be coachman enough for the job, but he was not so sure about his power of getting through the country. He, therefore, one day, quietly seated himself inside this man's coach, and after a time his doubts were confirmed, for on pulling up at a roadside inn, the landlady, without observing him, said to the coachman, "Mr. So-and-So, how will you have your eggs done to-day? Shall they be poached or boiled?" I need hardly add, he remained on the slow coach.
A smart coachman usually took his place in changing horses, and it is quite possible, as I know from experience, having been timed by a box passenger, to effect the change in one minute and a half, with only one horse-keeper, assisted by coachman and guard; but to do this, each one must know his own place; they must not be tumbling over one another. The best drill I ever knew for this purpose was as follows: As the coach gradually stopped, the guard got down, and ran forward to unhook the near leader's outside trace, and then drew the near lead rein through the territs, after which he changed the near wheel horse, and finished by running the near lead rein. The horse-keeper, on the off-side, unhooked the remaining lead traces, uncoupled the wheel horses, and changed the off-side one. The coachman, getting down from his box as fast as he could, finished changing the leaders. The horses had, of course, previous to the arrival of the coach, been properly placed; one wheeler on each side of the road, and the leaders coupled.
This, of course, could only be carried out when the team was pretty quiet to "put to," for with queer tempered ones, all sorts of dodges had to be resorted to, attended sometimes with considerable loss of time.
Occasionally, it would be necessary to run a leader's rein the first thing, and then the coachman had to bustle up to his box as quick as he could, trusting to the horse-keeper and guard to get the traces hooked as best they might. Again, some wheelers could not bear to be poled up till after the coach was started. Horse-keepers were often exceedingly smart at this sort of work, though they varied a good deal, so much so, that it was no uncommon thing for "queer ones" to start better from one end of the stage than the other.
These said horse-keepers were a rough lot, and no great wonder, for they had rough work to do. They were frequently expected to attend to eight horses, four out and four in, every day, or to take charge of six, with eight out and eight in, during the course of the day. But, what was worse than the work, they constantly had vicious horses to attend to, and such as it was dangerous to approach in the stall. To meet this difficulty, I have known a long cord used, with one end fastened to the head collar, and the other made fast to the stall-post, by which the horse could be pulled back far enough to enable the horse-keeper to keep clear of his heels whilst entering the stall. I was once travelling at night, when, upon arriving at the end of a stage, the coachman said to the horsekeeper, "Mind what you are about with that horse," pointing to a fresh one, "he bit a piece out of a man just before starting." It struck me as not a very enviable position to be left, in the middle of a dark night, to look single-handed after four dirty horses, and one of them a "savage."