The Royal Mail: Its Curiosities and Romance

by James Wilson Hyde

But it may be of interest to learn what a mail-coach journey was from one who had just completed such a trip, and who, in the freshness of youth, and with the unreserve which can only subsist in correspondence between members of a family or dear friends, immediately commits his impressions to writing. We have a vivid sketch of a journey of this kind from no less a personage than Felix Mendelssohn, the great musical composer. Mendelssohn was at the time a young man of twenty: he had been making a tour in Scotland with his friend Klingemann—the visit being that from which, by the way, Mendelssohn derived inspiration for the composition of his delightful Scotch symphony; and the means by which he quitted the northern kingdom was by mail-coach from Glasgow to Liverpool. The following letter, descriptive of the journey, and dated August 19, 1829, is copied from an interesting work called 'The Mendelssohn Family':—

"We flew away from Glasgow on the top of the mail, ten miles an hour, past steaming meadows and smoking chimneys, to the Cumberland lakes, to Keswick, Kendal, and the prettiest towns and villages. The whole country is like a drawing-room. The rocky walls are papered with bushes, moss, and firs; the trees are carefully wrapped up in ivy; there are no walls or fences, only high hedges, and you see them all the way up flat hill-tops. On all sides carriages full of travellers fly along the roads; the corn stands in sheaves; slopes, hills, precipices, are all covered with thick, warm foliage. Then again our eyes dwelt on the dark-blue English distance—many a noble castle, and so on, until we reached Ambleside. There the sky turned gloomy again, and we had rain and storm. Sitting on the top of the 'stage,' and madly careering along ravines, past lakes, up-hill, down-hill, wrapped in cloaks, and umbrellas up, we could see nothing but railings, heaps of stones or ditches, and but rarely catch glimpses of hills and lakes. Sometimes our umbrellas scraped against the roofs of the houses, and then, wet through, we would come to a second-rate inn, with a high blazing fire, and English conversation about walking, coals, supper, the weather, and Bonaparte. Yesterday our seats on the coach were accidentally separated, so that I hardly spoke to Klingemann, for changing horses was done in about forty seconds. I sat on the box next by the coachman, who asked me whether I flirted much, and made me talk a good deal, and taught me the slang of horsemanship. Klingemann sat next to two old women, with whom he shared his umbrella. Again manufactories, meadows, parks, provincial towns, here a canal, there a railway, then the sea with ships, six full coaches with towering outsiders following each other; in the evening a thick fog, the stage running madly in the darkness. Through the fog we see lamps gleaming all about the horizon; the smoke of manufactories envelops us on all sides; gentlemen on horseback ride past; one coach-horn blows in B flat, another in D, others follow in the distance, and here we are at Liverpool."

Speed was of the first consideration, and the stoppages at the wayside stages were of very limited duration. At an inn, the travellers would hardly have made a fair start in appeasing their hunger, when the guard would be heard calling upon them to take their seats, which, with mouths full, and still hungry, they would be forced to do, though with a bad grace and a growl—the acknowledged privilege of Englishmen. A story is told of one passenger, however, who was equal to the occasion. Leisurely sipping his tea and eating his toast, this traveller was found by the landlord in the breakfast-room when the other passengers were seated and the coach was on the point of starting. Boniface appealed to him to take his place, or he would be left behind. "But," replied the traveller, "that I will not do till I have a spoon to sup my egg." A glance apprised the landlord that not a spoon adorned the table, and rushing out he detained the coach while all the passengers were searched for the missing articles. Then out came the satisfied traveller, who also submitted to be searched, and afterwards mounted the coach; and as the mail drove off he called to the landlord to look inside the teapot, where the artful traveller had placed the dozen spoons, with the double object of cooling the tea for his second cup, and detaining the coach till he drank it.

The illustration here inserted, from an old print, shows a passenger securing refreshment on a cold night.

Nocturnal Refreshment.

In the year 1836 the speed of some of the mail-coaches was nearly ten miles an hour, including stoppages, and this was kept up over very long distances. From Edinburgh to London, a distance of 400 miles, the time allowed was forty-five and a half hours; in the opposite direction the time was curtailed to forty-two and a half hours. From London to York, 197 miles, twenty hours were allowed; London to Manchester, 185 miles, nineteen hours; London to Exeter, 176 miles, nineteen hours; London to Holyhead, 259 miles, twenty-seven hours; London to Devonport, 216 miles, twenty-one hours. But in the earlier days of the mail-coach, travelling was much less rapid; for we find that in 1804 the mail-coach from Perth to Edinburgh, a distance by way of Fife of 40 miles, took eight hours for the journey, including stoppages and the transit by Ferry across the Forth—that is, at the rate of five miles an hour. The mail-guards rode about twelve hours at a stretch—quite long enough, in all conscience, on a wet or frosty night.

But though in the earlier days of the mail-coaches the speed achieved by them, even on the main lines, was probably not more than seven or eight miles an hour, the people at head-quarters would seem to have regarded this as a thing not to be trifled with; for in a Postmaster-General's minute of 1791, directing that, owing to the frequent robberies, a caution should be given to the public against sending bank notes otherwise than in halves, the following bit of advice is added. The minute directs that the notice shall contain "also a printed caution at the foot of the Table, directing all persons to avoid, as far as may be, sending any cash by the post, partly from the prejudice it does the coin by the friction it occasions from the great expedition with which it is conveyed, and especially as the cash is so liable to fall out of the letter by jolting, and to be found at the bottom of the bag," &c. It would be a species of high treason to treat with levity any kind of expression or decision proceeding from a reigning Postmaster-General, but at this safe distance of time we may venture to smile at the idea here propounded, that coins would seriously suffer by sweating in a mail-bag conveyed by coach at the surprising rate of eight miles an hour. Such ill-founded apprehensions of the mail-coach speed were not, however, confined to post officials, for Lord Campbell was frequently warned against the danger of travelling in this way, and instances were cited to him in which passengers died from apoplexy induced by the rapidity with which these vehicles travelled!

An incident of a romantic nature happened about the year 1780 in connection with the stage-coach (not a mail-coach, however, be it noted) running between Edinburgh and Glasgow at that period. The stage-coach, drawn by four horses, had been on the road for many years, having been established about the year 1758. The time occupied in the journey was twelve hours; nor, down to the period in question, had any acceleration taken place. A young lady of Glasgow, of distinguished beauty, having to travel to Edinburgh, a lover whose suit towards her had not hitherto proved successful, took the remaining tickets for the journey, and so became her sole companion on the way. By assiduous attentions, and all the winsome ways which the tender passion knows to suggest, as well as by earnestness of pursuit, the lover won the lady to his favour, and she soon thereafter became his wife. But the full day did not justify the brightness of the morning: the husband failed to prove himself worthy of his good fortune; "and the lady, in a state worse than widowhood, was, a few years after, the subject of the celebrated Clarinda correspondence of Burns."