A few years ago it would have been almost impossible for modern readers to imagine what a coach journey used to be in the good old times; but, thanks to certain gilded youths, more fortunate than persons of a higher intellectual type who have striven in vain to—
Revive old usages thoroughly worn out,
The souls of them fumed forth, the hearts of them torn out,
it is not now so difficult. Any one who has gone by one of our ‘summer coaches’ for a short trip out of town can picture the ‘Rockets’ and ‘Highflyers’ in which our ancestors took their journeys at the end of the last century. Those old mail-coaches were, in fact, their very counterparts; for the ‘basket’ had already made way for ‘the hind seat;’ only, instead of our aristocratic driver, there was a professional ‘whip,’ who in fair weather came out in scarlet like the guard, though in wet and winter-time he was wrapped in heavy drab, as though a butterfly should become a grub again. The roads were good, the milestones in a much better condition than they are at present, and the inns at which the passengers stopped for refreshments greatly superior to their successors, or rather to their few ghastly survivors, all room and no company, which still haunt the roadside. The highwaymen, too, were still extant, which gave an opportunity to young gentlemen of spirit to assure young female fellow-passengers of their being under safe escort, if not of displaying their own courage. Still, after eight hours in a stage-coach, most ‘insides’ felt that they had had enough of it, and were glad enough to stretch their legs when the chance offered.
This feeling was experienced by two out of the three passengers in the London coach ‘Tantivy,’ which on a certain afternoon in May, at the end of the last century, drew up at the ‘White Hart’ in the town of Banbury: it was their last ‘stopping stage’ before they arrived at their destination—Stratford-on-Avon; and they wished (at least two of them did) that they had reached it already.
Mr. Samuel Erin, the senior and head of the little party, was a man of about sixty years of age, but looked somewhat older. He still wore the attire which had been usual in his youth, but was now pronounced old-fashioned: a powdered wig of moderate dimensions; a plain braided frock coat, with waistcoat to match, almost as long; a hat turned up before and behind, and looking like a cross between a cocked hat and the head-gear of a modern archdeacon; knee-breeches, and buckled shoes. Upon his forehead—their ordinary resting-place when he was not engaged in his profession (that of a draughtsman), or poring over some musty volume—reposed, on a bed of wrinkles, a pair of gold spectacles. His eyes, which, without being very keen, were intelligent enough, appeared smaller than they really were, from a habit he had of puckering their lids, engendered by the more delicate work of his calling, and also by frequent examination of old MSS. and rare editions, of which he was a connoisseur.
As he left the coach with slow, inelastic step, he was followed by his friend Frank Dennis. This gentleman was a much younger man, but he too, though not so retrograde in attire as his senior, paid little attention to the prevailing fashion. He wore, indeed, his own hair, but closely cut; a pepper-and-salt coat and waistcoat, and a neckcloth, that looked like a towel, tied carelessly under his chin. Though not in his first youth, he was still a young man, with frank and comely features; but an expression habitually thoughtful, and a somewhat slow delivery of what he had to say, made him appear of maturer years than belonged to him. He was an architect by profession, but had some private means; his tastes were somewhat similar to those of his friend and neighbour Erin, and he could better afford to indulge them. His present expedition was no business of his own, but undertaken, as he professed, that he might enjoy the other’s society for a week or two in the country. It so happened, however, that Mr. Erin was bringing his niece, Miss Margaret Slade, with him; and, to judge by the tenderness of Mr. Dennis’s glance when it rested on her, it is probable that the prospect of her companionship had had some attraction for him.
Last of the three, she tripped out of the coach, declining, with a pretty toss of her head, the assistance the younger man would have rendered her in alighting. She could trip and toss her head like any fairy. No tower of hair ‘like a porter’s knot set upon end’ had she; her dress, though to modern eyes very short-waisted, was not, as an annalist of her time has described it, ‘drawn exceeding close over stays drawn still closer;’ her movements were light and free. Her lustrous brown hair fell in natural waves from under a beaver hat turned up on the left side, and ornamented with one grey feather. A grey silk spencer indicated, under pretence of concealing—for it was summer weather, and she could not have worn it for warmth—the graces of her form. Her eyes were bright and eager, and her pretty lips murmured a sigh of relief, as she touched ground, at her release from durance.
‘How I wish this was Stratford-on-Avon’! cried she naïvely.
‘That would be wishing that Shakespeare had been born at Banbury,’ said her uncle, in a tone of reproof.