The reviewer adds that he trusts Parliament will limit the speed of railways to eight or nine miles an hour, which is as great as can be ventured upon with safety. Despite this prediction, the rail, as we all know, has proved a perfect success.
When railways were first proposed, in order to prove to Parliament that they would pay, persons called "traffic takers" were placed at the entrance of large towns to note down the traffic in and out of the town. When the Brighton and South Coast line was before the House of Commons, and evidence was given as to the existing traffic, the counsel for the company suggested that they might be allowed fairly to say that this would be doubled, when increased means of travelling were afforded. This seems ludicrous now, when probably one train of passengers and one of goods carries considerably more than the above estimate.
Many ineffectual attempts have been made to introduce steam-carriages on the roads, and in 1822 Mr. (afterwards Sir) Goldsworthy Gurney—inventor of the steam-jet, emphatically called by engineers "the life and soul of locomotion"—constructed a carriage for that purpose. To show that it was capable of ascending and descending hills, of maintaining a uniformity of speed over long distances and on different kinds of roads, a journey was undertaken from Hounslow Barracks to Bath and back. On arriving at Melksham, where a fair was being held, the people made an attack upon the steam-carriage, wounding the stoker and the engineer severely on their heads from a volley of stones. The return journey was more satisfactory, as the whole distance (eighty-four miles), stoppages for fire and water included, was travelled over in nine hours and twenty minutes, the carriage at one time increasing its speed to twenty miles an hour. The Duke of Wellington and his staff met the carriage at Hounslow Barracks, and were drawn in his Grace's barouche by the steam-engine into the town.
From February to June, 1831, steam-carriages ran between Gloucester and Cheltenham regularly four times a day, during which time they carried nearly three thousand persons and travelled nearly four thousand miles, without a single accident. Every obstacle, however, was thrown in the way of this new invention; large heaps of stones were laid across the road eighteen inches deep, under the pretence of repairing the highway; and on an Act of Parliament being passed which imposed prohibitory tolls on turnpike trusts, the steam-carriage was driven off the road.
On the journey to Bath above referred to, the toll for the steam-carriage was six guineas each time of passing. About this period Colonel Sir James Viney patronised a Mr. Pocock and the making of kites for the purpose of drawing a carriage, but these paper horses were ungovernable, particularly in a storm, and Sir John gave them up for a couple of ponies, which, in truth, were almost as wayward.
One conveyance alone remains to which I have not referred—the sedan chair, named after the town of Sedan, in France. In early days I well remember a very gorgeous specimen of the above, emblazoned with the family arms, which used to convey my mother to evening parties; and as late as the year 1834 I have often, at Leamington, Edinburgh, and Bath, made use of a sedan chair to take me to dinner. One advantage this conveyance had over a carriage was that, upon a snowy or rainy night, you could enter it under cover and get out of it in your Amphitryon's hall. Occasionally it was used by young spendthrifts against whom writs were out, as it enabled them to avoid the sheriff's officers. It was not always, however, a safe refuge, as Hogarth, in one of his prints, represents a tipstaff seizing hold of some debtor he was in search of.
Early in the present century a very clever caricature appeared, in which an Irishman was seen wending his way through dirt and slush, his legs and feet obtruding from a sedan chair—some waggish practical joker (the Theodore Hook of that day) having removed the bottom of it. Two stout chairmen, aware of the trick that had been played upon their inside passenger, are selecting the dirtiest streets, or most flinty part of the road, while the unfortunate Emeralder exclaims:
"Bedad! if it was not for the honour of the thing, I would as lief walk."
The costume of the chairmen at Bath was very peculiar: they wore long, light-blue coats highly ornamented with buttons about the size of a crown piece, the skirts of which reached down to their ankles; short "inexpressibles," white cotton stockings, shoes with buckles, and a huge cocked hat bound with gold lace. They were fine, powerful men, with calves to their legs which would have made the fortune of any fashionable footman. "When sedan-chairs were first introduced, a great feud arose between the chairmen and the hackney-coachmen, which led to many serious disturbances. The contest was carried on with the greatest bitterness; and the hatred it engendered was equal to that of the Montagues and Capulets, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the Red and White Roses; eventually, through the interference of the law, peace was restored.
Wilson thus refers to the sedan-chair named after Sedan on the Meuse. In his Life of James I., this passage, in speaking of the Earl of Northumberland, occurs: "The stout old Earl, when he was got loose (he had been imprisoned), hearing that the great favourite, Buckingham, was drawn about with a coach and six horses (which was wondered at then as a novelty, and imputed to him as a mastering pride), thought, if Buckingham had six, he might very well have eight in his coach; with which he rode through the city of London to Bath, to the vulgar talk and admiration; and, recovering his health there, he lived long after at Petworth in Sussex; bating this over-topping humour, which shewed it rather an affected fit than a distemper.