A Hundred Years by Post: A Jubilee Retrospect

by James Wilson Hyde

Mail-coaches were first put upon the road on the 8th of August 1784. The term of about sixty years, during which they were the means of conveying the principal mails throughout the country, must ever seem to us a period of romantic interest. There is something stirring even in the picture of a mail-coach bounding along at the heels of four well-bred horses; and we know by experience how exhilarating it is to be carried along the highway at a rapid rate in a well-appointed coach.

THE MAIL, 1803.
(From a contemporary print.)

We cannot well separate the service given to the Post Office by mail-coaches from the passengers who made use of that means of conveyance, and we may linger a little to endeavour to realise what a journey was like from accounts left us by travellers. The charm of day travelling could no doubt be conjured up even now by any one who would take time to reflect upon the subject. But other phases of the matter could hardly be so dealt with.

De Quincey, in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater, gives a pleasing description of the easy motion and soothing influence of a well-equipped mail-coach running upon an even and kindly road. The period he refers to was about 1803, and the coach was that carrying the Bristol mail—which enjoyed unusual advantages owing to the superior character of the road, and an extra allowance for expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. He thus describes his feelings: "It was past eight o'clock when I reached the Gloucester Coffee-House, and, the Bristol mail being on the point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine fluent motion of the mail soon laid me asleep. It is somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the outside of a mail-coach....

"For the first four or five miles from London I annoyed my fellow-passenger on the roof by occasionally falling against him when the coach gave a lurch to his side; and, indeed, if the road had been less smooth and level than it is I should have fallen off from weakness. Of this annoyance he complained heavily, as, perhaps, in the same circumstances, most people would.... When I next woke for a minute from the noise and lights of Hounslow (for in spite of my wishes and efforts I had fallen asleep again within two minutes from the time I had spoken to him), I found that he had put his arm round me to protect me from falling off; and for the rest of my journey he behaved to me with the gentleness of a woman, so that, at length, I almost lay in his arms.... So genial and refreshing was my sleep that the next time, after leaving Hounslow, that I fully awoke was upon the pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post-office), and, on inquiry, I found that we had reached Maidenhead—six or seven miles, I think, ahead of Salthill. Here I alighted, and for the half-minute that the mail stopped I was entreated by my friendly companion (who, from the transient glimpse I had had of him in Piccadilly, seemed to me to be a gentleman's butler, or person of that rank) to go to bed without delay."

Night journeys might be very well, in a way, during the balmy days of summer, when light airs and sweet exhalations from flower and leaf gave pleasing features to the scenes, but in the cold nights of winter, in lashing rain, in storms of wind and snow, the unfortunate passengers and the guard and coachman must have had terrible times of it. It is said of the guards and coachmen that they had sometimes, when passing over the Fells, to be strapped to their seats, in order to keep their places against the fierce assaults of the mountain blast.

The winter experience of travelling by mail-coach in one of its phases is thus described by a writer in connection with a severe snow-storm which occurred in March 1827: "The night mail from Edinburgh to Glasgow left Edinburgh in the afternoon, but was stopped before reaching Kirkliston. The guard with the mail-bags set forward on horseback, and the driver rode back to Edinburgh with a view, it was understood, to get fresh horses. The passengers, four in number, entreated him to use all diligence, and meanwhile were compelled to wait in the coach, which had stuck at a very solitary part of the road. There they remained through a dark and stormy night, with a broken pane of glass, through which the wind blew bitterly cold. It was nine o'clock next morning when the driver came, bringing with him another man and a pair of horses. Having taken away some articles, he jestingly asked the passengers what they meant to do, and was leaving them to shift for themselves, but was persuaded at length to aid one who was faint, and unable to struggle through the snow. He was allowed to mount behind one of the riders; the other passengers were left to extricate themselves as best they could."