Mr. Nobbs tells that one night when the Bristol coach was between Bath and Warminster, two men jumped out of the hedge; one caught hold of the leaders, and the other the wheelers, and tried to stop
the coach. The coachman, immediately whipped up the horses, and called out, "Look out! we are going to be robbed!" Mr. Nobbs took the blunderbuss out of the arms case (which was a box just in front of the guard's seat); but, just as he did so, he saw the fellows making towards the hedge, and then lost sight of them altogether. To let them know that he was prepared, he fired off into the hedge. He didn't know whether he hit anything, but he heard no cries or groans. The recoil of the blunderbuss, however, nearly knocked him off his seat. The blunderbuss, he said, kicked like a mule. It had no doubt been loaded to the muzzle, as was usual with those weapons. In the memorable storm of Christmas, 1836, alluded to by Mr. Nobbs, the Bath and Bristol mail coach, due in London on Tuesday morning, was abandoned eighty miles from the metropolis, and the mails taken up in a post-chaise and four by the two guards, who reached St. Martin's-le-Grand at 6.0 on the Wednesday morning. For seventeen miles of the distance the guards had from time to time to go across the fields to get past the deep snowdrifts.
In the annual procession of mail coaches round
London, at the head thereof was "the oldest established mail,"—the Bristol mail, probably with Guard Nobbs in charge. Some twenty-seven to thirty coaches took part in the procession thus headed. The old mail guards had a literature of their own. As an example, one report on a guard's way-bill ran as follows (it was a note to account for loss of time on North Road):—"As we wos comin' over Brumsgroove Lickey won of the leaders fell, and wen we com to him he was ded."
One old fellow used to laugh, as the men said, down in his boots, or like a pump losing its water. Another used facetiously to say that he had better than a dozen children. "Oh, Mr. ——," said a barmaid to him one day, "what can you do with so many?" "Well, my dear," he replied, "you see I've got but two, and they be, you must confess, a good deal better than a dozen."
It is said that, with the exception of a single instance, no guard was ever convicted of a breach of trust while performing his duties.
In the year of Her Majesty's accession (1837) there were no fewer than twenty-seven coaches running daily between Bristol and London, and
twenty-seven others passed between this city and Bath every twenty-four hours. The times of the London coach were as follow: London depart 8.0 p.m., Bath 7.21 a.m., Bristol arrive 8.43 a.m., depart 6.15 p.m., arrive G.P.O. 6.58 a.m.,—a slight acceleration over 1830.
Where now is the fashionable roadside "Ostrich Inn" on Durdham Down of a century ago, approached by a rough and winding track from Black Boy Hill? At this inn the coaches called on their way to the Passage. Where now are the old four-horsed coaches rattling up to "The Bush," "White Hart," and "White Lion" hostelries, and the old jolly dozen-caped coachmen and scarlet-liveried mail guards, with blunderbuss and horn? Where now the Bath and Bristol mail pulling up at the roadside "King's Head Inn"? The inns are gone, the coaches gone, the jolly guards all gone too. What happiness their smiling faces brought to many who watched for their arrival by the mail coach from the West of England, and how gladdening the sight of their colonial mail bags to the merchants of the city and to the sailors' wives looking out anxiously for the monthly mail of those days! Though single-sheet