A Hundred Years by Post: A Jubilee Retrospect

by James Wilson Hyde

It is perhaps a pity that we have not fuller records of the scenes enacted at the stopping-places; they would doubtless afford us some amusement. There is the old story of the knowing passenger who, unobserved, placed all the silver spoons in the coffee-pot in order to cool the coffee and delay the coach, while the other passengers, already in their places, were being searched.

There is another story which may be worth repeating. A hungry passenger had just commenced to taste the quality of a stewed fowl when he was peremptorily ordered by the guard to take his place. Unwilling to lose either his meal or his passage, he hastily rolled the fowl in his handkerchief, and mounted the coach. But the landlord, unused to such liberties, was soon after him with the ravished dish. The coach was already on the move, and the only revenge left to the landlord was to call out jeeringly to the passenger, "Won't you have the gravy, sir?" The other passengers had a laugh at the expense of their companion; but we know that a hungry man is a tenacious man, and a man with a full stomach can afford to laugh. At any rate the proverb says, "Who laughs last laughs best."

The differences arising between passengers and the landlords at the stopping-places were sometimes, however, of a much more prosaic and solemn character. Charles Lamb has given us such a scene. "I was travelling," he says, "in a stage-coach with three male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was set before us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my way took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my companions discovered that she had charged for both meals. This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered it—so much for tea—I, in humble situation, tendering mine, for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in her demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, as did myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in. The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time inaudible, and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope that some justification would be offered by these serious persons for the seeming injustice of their conduct. To my surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length the eldest of them broke silence by inquiring of his next neighbour, 'Hast thee heard how indigos go at the India House?' and the question operated as a soporific on my moral feelings as far as Exeter."

A Frenchman was once a traveller by mail-coach, who, although he knew the English language fairly well, was not familiar with the finer shades of meaning attached to set expressions when applied in particular situations. An Englishman, who was his companion inside the coach, had occasion to direct his attention to some object in the passing landscape, and requested him to "look out." This the Frenchman promptly did, putting his head and shoulders out of the window, and the view obtained proved highly pleasing to the stranger. A stage further on in the journey, when the coach was approaching a narrow part of the road bordered and overhung by dense foliage, the driver, as was his custom, called out to the company, "Look out!" to which the Frenchman again quickly responded by thrusting head and shoulders out of the window; but this time with the result that his hat was brushed off, and his face badly scratched from contact with the neighbouring branches. This curious contradiction in the use of the very same words enraged the Frenchman, who said hard things of our language; for he had discovered that when told to "look out" he was to look out, and that again when told to "look out" he was to be careful not to look out.

Mackenzie graphically describes the part mail-coaches took in the distribution of news over the country in the early years of the century. Referring to the news of the battle of Waterloo, he says: "By day and night these coaches rolled along at their pace of seven or eight miles an hour. At all cross roads messengers were waiting to get a newspaper or a word of tidings from the guard. In every little town, as the hour approached for the arrival of the mail, the citizens hovered about their streets waiting restlessly for the expected news. In due time the coach rattled into the market-place, hung with branches, the now familiar token that a great battle had been fought and a victory won. Eager groups gathered. The guard, as he handed out his mail-bags, told of the decisive victory which had crowned and completed our efforts. And then the coachman cracked his whip, the guard's horn gave forth once more its notes of triumph, and the coach rolled away, bearing the thrilling news into other districts."

The writer of the interesting work called Glasgow, Past and Present, gives the following realistic account of the arrival of the London mail in Glasgow in war-time:—

"During the time of the French war it was quite exhilarating to observe the arrival of the London mail-coach in Glasgow, when carrying the first intelligence of a great victory, like the battle of the Nile, or the battle of Waterloo. The mail-coach horses were then decorated with laurels, and a red flag floated on the roof of the coach. The guard, dressed in his best scarlet coat and gold ornamented hat, came galloping at a thundering pace along the stones of the Gallowgate, sounding his bugle amidst the echoings of the streets; and when he arrived at the foot of Nelson Street he discharged his blunderbuss in the air. On these occasions a general run was made to the Tontine Coffee-room to hear the great news, and long before the newspapers were delivered the public were advertised by the guard of the particulars of the great victory, which fled from mouth to mouth like wildfire."

The mail-guards, and also the coachmen, were a race of men by themselves, modelled and fashioned by the circumstances of their employment—in fact, receiving character, like all other sets of people, from their peculiar environment. There are now very few of them remaining, and these very old men. These officers of the Post Office mixed with all sorts of people, learned a great deal from the passengers, and were full of romance and anecdote. We remember one guard whose conversation and accounts of funny things were so continuous that his hearers were kept in a constant state of ecstasy whenever he was set agoing. His fund of story seemed inexhaustible, and we can imagine how hilariously would pass away the hours on the outside of a mail-coach with such a companion. The guard of whom we are speaking was a north countryman, possessed of a stalwart frame and iron constitution, a man with whom a highwayman would rather avoid getting into grips. He used to tell of an occasion on which the driver, being drunk, fell from his box, and the horses bolted. He himself was seated in his place at the rear of the coach. The state of things was serious. He however scrambled over the top of the coach, let himself down between the wheelers, stole along the pole of the coach, recovered the reins, and saved the mail from wreck and the passengers from impending death. For this he received a special letter of thanks from the Postmaster-General.

It was the custom of this guard, as no doubt of others of his class, to take charge of parcels of value for conveyance between places on his road. On one occasion he had charge of a parcel of £1500 in bank notes, which was in course of transmission to a bank at headquarters. It happened that the driver had been indulging rather freely, and at one of the stopping-places the coachman started off with the coach leaving the guard behind. The latter did not discover this till the coach was out of sight, and realising the responsibility he was under in respect of the money, which for safety he had placed in a holster below one of his pistols, he was in a great fright. There was nothing for it but to start on foot and endeavour to overtake the coach; but this he did not succeed in doing till he had run a whole stage, at the end of which the perspiration was oozing through his scarlet coat. At the completion of the journey he sponged himself all over with whisky, and did not then feel any ill effects from the great strain he had placed himself under, though later in life he believed his heart had suffered damage from the exertions of that memorable day.

Before leaving this branch of our subject it may be well to note that while the mail guards received but nominal pay—ten and sixpence a week—they earned considerable sums in gratuities from passengers, and for executing small commissions for the public. In certain cases as much as £300 a year was thus received; and the heavy fines that were inflicted upon them were therefore not so severe as might at first sight seem. Unhappily these men were given to take drink, if not wisely, at any rate too often. The weaknesses of the mail guard are very cleverly portrayed in some verses on the Mail-Coach Guard, quoted in Larwood and Hotten's work on the History of Signboards; and while these frailties are the burden of the song, it will be observed how cleverly the names of inns or alehouses are introduced into the song:—