I think it is Dr. Johnson who has somewhere remarked, that "everyone who writes a book should either help men to enjoy life or to endure it."
Whether these few pages will have the former effect I know not, but if they only help to dispel ennui for an hour or two, they will not have been written quite in vain, and, at any rate, I trust they will not be found so unendurable as to be unceremoniously thrown out of the railway carriage window, or behind the fire.
Though several books on the same subject have been already published, I entertain a hope that this may not prove "one too many," as the interest taken in coaching, so far from diminishing, would appear to be increasing, judging by the number of coaches running out of London and other places, some even facing the inclemency of winter in the love for the road. The number of private drags also never was so large. "Nimrod" put it at twenty to thirty in the early part of the century. It must be nearly four times that now.
I have not the vanity to suppose that I can contribute anything more racy or better told than much that has gone before, but having engaged in coaching as a matter of business, and in partnership with business men, when and where coaches were the only means of public travelling, and having driven professionally for upwards of four years, I have had the opportunity of looking behind the scenes, and have had experiences which cannot have fallen to the lot of most gentlemen coachmen, and certainly will fall to the lot of no others again.
I lay no claim to literary merit, nor will what I offer savour much of the sensational or perhaps of novelty; but this I can say, that it is all drawn from personal knowledge, and that, with the exception of one old friend, who has had great experience on some of the best coaches in England, I am indebted to no one for my facts, which has not been the case in all which has been published, judging from some inaccuracies I have met with. To mention only one, which, if considered for a moment, is so improbable, not to say impossible, that it surely must be a misprint.
In "Highways and Horses" we are told that the fare for one passenger by mails was eight shillings outside and twelve inside for a hundred miles. Why, this is less than Parliamentary trains! It would have been impossible to have horsed coaches at such prices. The real rate was from fourpence to fivepence per mile inside, and from twopence to threepence outside for that distance. The highest fares were charged by the mails and fast day coaches, the heavy night coaches having to be content with the lower rate.
The reader will observe that I do not confine myself to what were called, par excellence, "the palmy days of coaching," but have brought it down to a period twenty years later, when the coaches, though comparatively few, were still running in considerable numbers in out-of-the-way districts, upon the old lines, and by those who had learned their business in those palmy days. The pace was not generally so great, judged by the number of miles to the hour, but, taking into consideration the great inferiority of the roads, there was little or no falling off. Indeed, I doubt whether over some roads, eight miles an hour was not harder to accomplish than ten had been over the better roads. Of course, as in earlier days, the work was unequally done, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and sometimes indifferent.
If these pages should happen to fall into the hands of any of the many thousand passengers I have had the pleasure of driving, and on whom I hope Father Time has laid benevolent hands, perhaps some of them may recognize scenes which they themselves experienced; and to others memory may bring back the recollection of happy wanderings, thereby causing renewed pleasure. For, as the poet says:
"When time, which steals our hours away,
Shall steal our pleasures too,