This fires the veins,
That every labouring sinew strains,"
might have been the motto of those stage-coaches which in former days pursued their way at the rate of six miles an hour, to the misery, inconvenience, and detention of every passenger that was doomed to the adoption of such conveyances. The pillory would now be preferable to the top of a stage-coach on its passage from London to Exeter on a dark, tempestuous night in December. What inexpressible horrors does the very idea suggest!
The expense, too, was no trifling consideration; for after the fare was paid, half of which was recouped if you did not put in an appearance, fees were incessantly demanded and wrung from the luckless traveller, as if he were a sheep born to be fleeced by a pack of merciless hirelings.
Ere you started on your journey, a porter rushed up, and, whether permitted or not, seized your carpet-bag or hat-box, and pitching them into the boot, regardless of their contents, would turn round and, with audacious effrontery, demand a fee for his trouble; ay, and if he did not get it would abuse you roundly to your face. Then, the dignity of the box-seat! "Nota quæ sedes fuerat columbis"—pigeons they were, with a vengeance, that occupied it. At what price was it purchased! Entailing a double fee—one to the porter for casting your coat upon it, the other to the coachman for the privilege of sitting with your teeth in the wind, sharing his conversation, his rug, and his seat.
Talk not of the spicy team, the rattling bars, which for short journeys in fine weather was an agreeable way of travelling; but for distances the inside of a coach was almost insupportable. Outside in Winter not much better.
Then, again, the great improvement in travelling since the road gave way to the rail is never more deeply felt and rejoiced at than at Easter, Whitsuntide, and the festive season of Christmas, as it enables so many more to visit their friends in the country than was formerly the case, with a greater amount, too, of comfort to themselves, and at a considerably less expense.
In the old days of coaching and posting few, comparatively speaking, would be conveyed to or from the metropolis. Those who travelled post were often detained for horses; and those who went by coach had to book their places weeks before, paying half the fare, and even then a heavy fall of snow might put an end to all journeys. Now, instead of sitting for hours wet through from the pelting pitiless storm outside a coach—instead of being called by candlelight, and traversing the streets in a slow rumbling vehicle, the traveller can enjoy his breakfast in London, can be conveyed to the station in a fast-trotting hansom, can sit snugly protected from the weather, and reach his destination in a fourth of the time his predecessors could on the road.
And here it may not be out of place to describe a journey by coach, say from London to Bath, on a cold raw Winter's day. I speak of the time when the old, crawling, creaking, rattling, six inside vehicle had not given way to the fast four-horse light coach.
Often have I travelled by one of these wretched conveyances to Newbury, when I was at a private tutor's at Donnington Grove. As lucifer-matches had not then been introduced, the only method of getting a light was by striking a flint against a steel in a tinder-box. Your candle lit, a hasty toilet made, you descended, if at an hotel, into a coffee-room, miserably lit, and reeking with the odour of gin, brandy, and punch.