What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

A journey on the box of the mail was a great delight to me in those days—days somewhere in the third decade of the century; and faith! I believe would be still, if there were any mails available for the purpose. One journey frequently performed by me with infinite delight was to Exeter. My business was to visit two old ladies living there, Miss Mary and Miss Fanny Bent. The Rev. John Bent, rector of Crediton, had married the sister of my grandmother, the Rev. William Milton’s wife. Miss Mary Bent was his daughter by a second wife; but her half-sister, Fanny Bent, as we and everybody else called her, was thus my mother’s first cousin, and the tie between Fanny Milton and Fanny Bent had always from their earliest years been a very close one.

And that is how I came on several occasions to find myself on the box of the Exeter mail. A new and accelerated mail service had been recently established under the title of the “Devonport Mail.” It was at that time the fastest, I believe, in England. Its performances caused somewhat of a sensation in the coaching world, and it was known in those circles as “the Quicksilver Mail.” Its early days had chanced unfortunately to be marked by two or three accidents, which naturally gave it an increased celebrity. And truly, if it is considered what those men and horses were required to perform, the wonder was, not that “the Quicksilver” should have come to grief two or three times, but rather that it ever made its journey without doing so. What does the railway traveller of the present day, who sees a travelling post office, and its huge tender crammed with postal matter, think of the idea of carrying all that mass on one, or perhaps two, coaches? The guard, occupying his solitary post behind the coach, on the top of the receptacle called, with reference to the constructions of still earlier days, the hinder boot, sat on a little seat made for one, with his pistols and blunderbuss in a box in front of him. And the original notion of those who first planned the modern mail coach was, that the bags containing the letters should be carried in that “hinder boot.” The “fore boot,” beneath the driver’s box, was considered to be appropriated to the baggage of the three outside and four inside passengers, which was the mail’s entire complement. One of the former shared the box with the driver, and two occupied the seat on the roof behind him. The accommodation provided for these two was not of a very comfortable description. They were not indeed crowded as the four, who occupied a similar position on another coach, often were; but they had a mere board to sit on, whereas the seats on the roof of an ordinary stage coach were provided with cushions. The fares by the mail were always somewhat higher than those by even equally fast, or in some cases faster, coaches; and it seems unreasonable, therefore, that the accommodation should be inferior. I can only suppose that the patrons of “the mail” were understood to be compensated for its material imperfections by the superior dignity of their position. The box seat, however, was well cushioned.

But if the despatches, which it was the mail’s business to carry, could once upon a time be contained in that hinder boot, such had ceased to be the case before my day. The bulk of postal matter which had to be carried was continually and rapidly increasing, and I have often seen as many as nine enormous sacks heaped on the coach roof. The length of these sacks was just sufficient to reach from one side of the coach to the other, and the huge heap of them, three or even four tiers high, was piled to a height which was sufficient to prevent the guard, even when standing, from seeing or communicating with the coachman. If to the consideration of all this the reader will add (if he can) a remembrance of the Somersetshire and Devonshire roads, over which this top-heavy load had to be carried at about twelve miles an hour, it will not seem strange to him that accidents should have occurred. Not that the roads were bad; they were, thanks to Macadam, good, hard, and smooth; but the hills are numerous, and in many cases very steep.

But the journey, especially on the box seat, was a very pleasant thing. The whole of the service was so well done, and in every detail so admirable. It need hardly be said that the men selected for the drivers of such a coach were masters of their profession. The work was hard, but the remuneration was very good. There were fewer passengers by the mail to “remember the coachman,” but it was more uniformly full, and somewhat more was expected from a traveller by the mail. It was a beautiful thing to see a splendid team going over their short stage at twelve miles an hour! Of course none but good cattle in first-rate condition could do the work. A mot of old Mrs. Mountain, for many years the well-known proprietress of one of the large coaching inns in London, used to be quoted as having been addressed by her to one of her drivers: “You find whipcord, John, and I’ll find oats!” And, as it used to be said, the measure of the corn supplied to a coach-horse was his stomach.

It was a pretty thing to see the changing of the horses. There stood the fresh team, two on the off side, two on the near side, and the coach was drawn up with the utmost exactitude between them. Four ostlers jump to the splinter-bars and loose the traces; the reins have already been thrown down. The driver retains his seat, and within the minute (more than once within fifty seconds by the watch in my hand) the coach is again on its onward journey.

Then how welcome was breakfast at an excellent old-world country inn—twenty minutes allowed. The hot tea, after your night’s drive, the fresh cream, butter, eggs, hot toast, and cold beef, and then, with cigar alight, back to the box and off again!

I once witnessed on that road—not quite that road, for the Quicksilver took a somewhat different line—the stage of four miles between Ilchester and Ilminster done in twenty minutes, and a trace broken and mended on the road! The mending was effected by the guard almost before the coach stopped. It is a level bit of road, four miles only for the entire stage, and was performed at a full gallop. That was done by a coach called the Telegraph, which was started some years after the Quicksilver, to do the distance from Exeter to London in the day. We left Exeter at 5 A.M., and reached London between nine and ten, with time for both breakfast and dinner on the road. I think the performance of the Exeter Telegraph was about the ne plus ultra of coach travelling. One man drove fifty miles, and then meeting the other coach on the road, changed from one box to the other and drove back again. It was tremendously hard work! I once remarked to him as I sat beside him, that there was not much work for his whip arm. “Not much, sir,” he replied; “but just put your hand on my left arm!” I did, and felt the muscle swollen to its utmost, and hard as iron. “Many people think,” he said, “that it is easier work to drive such a coach and such a team as this, than to have to flog a dull team up to eight miles an hour. Nobody would think so that had ever tried both!”

I once persuaded my mother, who was returning with me from Exeter to London, to make the journey on the box of the Telegraph, while I sat behind her. She had been a good deal afraid of the experiment, but admitted that she had never enjoyed a journey more.

But having been led by my coaching reminiscences to speak of my visits to Exeter and to Fanny Bent, I must not turn that page of the past without dedicating a few lines to one to whom I had great cause to be gratefully attached, and whose character both in its high worth and its originality and singularity was a product of that day hardly likely to be reproduced in this.

Very plain in feature, and dressed with Quaker-like simplicity and utter disregard for appearance, her figure was as well known in Exeter as the cathedral towers. She held a position and enjoyed an amount of respect which was really singular in the case of a very homely-featured old maid of very small fortune. She affected, like some other persons I have known both in the far west and the far north of England, to speak the dialect of her country. Though without any pretension to literary tastes or pursuits, she was a fairly well-read woman, and was perfectly able to speak better English than many a Londoner. But she chose when in Devonshire to speak as Devonshire folks spoke. She was a thoroughgoing Churchwoman and Conservative, though too universally popular with all classes to confine her sympathies within any party bounds. She had a strong native sense of humour, and despite the traditions and principles which taught her to consider “Peter Pindar” as a reprobate, she could not resist the enjoyment of his description of the king’s visit to Exeter. It was a treat to hear her read the verses in her own Devon vernacular. And I shall never forget her whispering to me as we walked up the nave of the cathedral, “Nate, nate! Clane, clane! Do ye mop it, mop it, Mister Dane?” And how Dane Buller replied, “In all our Ex’ter shops we do not meet with such long mops. Our mops don’t reach so high!” I quote possibly incorrectly from the recollections of some sixty years ago; and I have never studied Mr. Woolcott’s works since. But the very tones of the dear old lady’s voice, as she whispered the words, bursting the while with suppressed laughter, remain in my ears.