We did not bite, but went over by the night cargo-boat, at least the automobile did, at a cost of a hundred francs. This is cheap or dear, according to the way you look at it. For the service rendered it is dear, for the accommodation to you it is, perhaps, cheap enough. At any rate, it is cheap enough when you want to get away from England again, its grasping hotel-keepers, and its persecuting police.
Why do so many English automobilists tour abroad, Mr. British Hotel-keeper and Mr. Police Sergeant? One wonders if you really suspect.
Part III
On Britain's Roads
Chapter I
The Bath Road
The Bath Road is in many ways the most famed main road out of London. Visions as varied as those of highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, boating at Maidenhead, the days of the "dandies" at Bath, and of John Cabot at Bristol flashed through our minds whenever we heard the Bath road mentioned, so we set out with a good-will on the hundred and eighteen mile journey to Bath.
To-day the road's designation is the same as of yore, though Palmer's coaches, that in 1784 left London at eight in the morning and arrived at Bristol at eleven at night, have given way to automobiles which make the trip in three hours. You can be three hours or thirty, as you please. We figured it out for thirty-six and lunched, dined, slept, and breakfasted en route, and felt the better for it.
The real popularity of the Bath road and its supremacy in coaching circles a century and a quarter ago—a legacy which has been handed down to automobilists of to-day—was due to the initiative of one John Palmer, a gentleman of property, who had opened a theatre at Bath, and was sorely annoyed at the delays he had to submit to in obtaining star actors from London to appear on particular nights. Palmer was a man with a grievance, but he was also a man with ability and purpose. He travelled about, and made notes and observations, and organized a scheme by which coaching might be brought into a complete system; he memorialized the government, was opposed by the post-office authorities, abused, sneered at, laughed at, but not beaten; finally he gained the ear of William Pitt, who saw that there was more in the proposed plan than a mere experiment. On the 8th of August, 1784, Palmer ran his first mail-coach from London to Bristol, and made the journey in fifteen hours. That was the turning-point. The old lumbering coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages, marked by decent inns and comfortable hostelries, and improved roads. The post-office made a contract with the coaching speculator—a very safe contract indeed—by which he was to have two and one-half per cent of the money saved in the conveyance of letters. This would have yielded twenty thousand pounds a year; so the government broke its agreement, refused to vote the payment, and compromised with Mr. Palmer and its own conscience, after the fashion of politicians of all time, by a grant of fifty thousand pounds.